Colicky Baby? 8 Suggestions to Help ©

Colicky Baby?

Solutions and Suggestions:

1.      Get informed.  Find out what the causes are of colic and pursue them.  Go natural first!

One of the challenges in being informed is that there is a lot of information, and you need to decide what is applicable and what is not. 

Seek out medical advice from both Mechanistic and Vitalistic standpoints.  It is good to compare advice and see what your best options are.

2.      What are you feeding the baby?  If you are breastfeeding, then if your baby is unhappy or colicky, look at your eating habits first.  The top of the not to eat list would be:

-spicy foods, sweets, processed foods, dairy, wheat, nuts, etc.

                Be careful with baby foods that you purchase.  Some of them have processed foods and preservatives that are not good for your child.  Once your child has teeth, then just use a processor or even a baby food grinder to give your child the good food that you’re eating.

3.      Be careful to not just cover up your baby’s symptoms and think that all is well.  Symptom chasing can be dangerous and not in your child’s best interests.  Many symptoms should not be ignored, while some are more innocuous.  (A great read on this subject is Dr. Mendelshon’s book How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Dr.)

4.      Find some natural ways to soothe your baby’s needs.  Could your home be quieter some times in the day or night?  Could the room that he/she sleeps in be darker, more soothing?  Are there harmful substances in the home environment that could be removed, (smoking, strong odors, etc)?  Could the environment be made cleaner, more inviting, more relaxing to all that hang out there?

5.      See a Pediatric Chiropractor for a check up. 

A couple of Danish studies in over 91% of colicky babies improvement from Chiropractic care.  This was significantly higher than the efficacy of dimethicone (a digestive and anti-gas medication) with colicky babies. (4)

A pediatric chiropractor can check the baby’s nervous system for interference, (more in chapter 12 on this), and be helpful with digestive issues a7. s well.  I have personally seen great results in dozens to hundreds of colicky babies in my practice.

Since the four major categories of colic are:

a)       Stomach-reflux, difficulty digesting, etc.

b)       Intestinal-gas pains, constipation, diarrhea

c)      Muscular-particularly after a difficult birth

d)      Neurological-pressure on the nervous system

            All four of these categories respond particularly well to gentle chiropractic treatments and spinal adjustments.  Cranial sacral treatment is amongst the most gentle and can help the ‘over-stimulated’ baby the most.  Going back to Dr. Roumeliotis’ comment on an immature nervous system, who better to help than someone who specializes in the nervous system: a Pediatric Chiropractor.

6.      Are there some emotional issues that Mommy/Daddy and baby can improve on?  Are you in need of some counseling or assistance?  Seek help from family, friends, your community or your fellow church members.  You and your baby’s health is worth it.

7.      Swaddling a baby or wrapping them in a fairly tight blanket is sometime soothing

8.      Increase the noise level.  This seems counter-intuitive, but many parents swear that the blender, vacuum cleaner and other loud household noises seem to calm their colicky child down. 

The only explanation that I can think of is the physical therapy treatment using Electrical stimulation.  The P.T. actually ‘overstimulates’ an already unhappy muscle and sort of forces it to ‘calm down’.

Dr. Bill Lawler

Part 2 of “Our Daily Meds” by Melody Petersen

Drug companies target children and parents:

Pharmaceutical companies… “are now targeting the increasingly profitable and fast growing

Medicine market for children. The companies’ marketers have created:

                -storybooks

                -video games

                -soft, cuddly toys

This is all in an attempt to attract children’s attention.  These marketers also know that parents want to have as perfect of a child as possible, hence:

                -human growth hormone can help sons grow taller

                -ritalin can help children interact better

                -antidepressants can help shy children play better with other kids

What are the effects?  Thousands of children have been harmed by these drugs. More than 7,000 reports of drugs harming children ages 0-2! In three years: 1997-2000.  More than 750 of those children died!

Hooked on Prescription Drugs

Quotes from: Our Daily Meds: How the Pharmaceutical Companies Transformed Themselves
Into Slick Marketing Machines and Hooked the Nation on Prescription Drugs
By Melody Petersen




This book was written by a former New York Times correspondent, who specialized in covering the pharmaceutical companies. The more she looked into these companies, the more she realized that there was a major amount of information for a book.

What she discovered was that many drug companies are more concerned with sales than research. She found that the drug sales reps had enormous latitude in rewarding doctors with perks, bonuses, and that it was all part of the drug companies HUGE marketing budget.


“Selling prescription drugs-rather than discovering them-has become the pharmaceutical industry’s obsession.” (p.2)
“America has become the world’s greatest medicine show.” (p.4)


Americans spent $250 BILLION in 2005 on prescription drugs. Americans spend more on medicines that do all the people of:
-Japan, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico,
Brazil and Argentina…combined!


Celebrities are spokesmen for the products. Professors and distinguished Doctors are on the payroll of major drug companies earning $25K+ for ‘speaking opportunities’ and up to $500K a year to tell people how wonderful the drug is, in the guise of objectivity.


The average American takes home 12 prescriptions a year, while older Americans take home 30.


Consequences: more than 100,000 Americans die each year not from illness…but from prescription drugs! That breaks down to 270 Americans dying every day from prescription pills.


Dr. Arnold Relman, professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School wrote:


“Again and again you see examples where patients get far more medication than they
need. The average senior in American is probably taking twice or three times the
medications they require.”




More to come next week…

HOW TO BUILD YOUR RESILIENCY

HOW TO BUILD YOUR RESILIENCY:
How to be tough when tough times come a calling…

I thought I would pass on a great article that I just read in a wellness oriented magazine called:
Experience Life. It’s the September, 2011 issue, and the title of the article is:
“The 5 Ways to Build Resiliency”

The basic premise is that our attitude and our habit DO make a difference in how we react to life’s challenges…no matter how small or how severe they might be.

The tips include: 1. Pump up your positivity (positive mental attitude is not just a phrase)
2. Live to Learn (keep being curious and asking questions)
3. Open your heart (kindness, service, forgiveness)
4. Take care of yourself (eat right, exercise, reward yourself often)
5. Hang on to Humor(laughter and not taking life too seriously helps!)

Check out the article. You can make the choice of how happy you should be and want to be…no matter what happens to you and your loved ones.

Dr. Bill

http://www.experiencelife.com/issues/september-2011/life-wisdom/the-5-best-ways-to-build-resiliency.php

What should you go to a Doctor for?

When was the last time that you went to the Doctor to be
Healthier…and not just Less Sick?


So, go ahead and think about it…when was the last time you went to see a Doctor that was NOT because of a symptom?

Your immediate thought might be:
“Why would I go to a Doctor if I don’t have a symptom?”

Here are a couple of answers:
1. To a Western Medicine ‘mechanistic’ Doctor, you wouldn’t go unless it was for an annual screening or exam, which is still symptom based
2. To a Eastern Medicine or ‘vitalistic’ Doctor, you would go to get or stay healthy, and not just- to-not-be-sick.

Confusing? It probably is because it goes against what we have been raised on in the U S of A and many other parts of the world. The primary rule of western medicine is:
-Find the symptoms, make a diagnosis, treat it, next

What about finding out more about the individual? What are their:
-eating habits
-sleep habits
-stress levels
-exercise habits
-relationships
-nervous system function/interferences

I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer being in a health alliance with a professional that cares about the whole me and not just my heartburn, blood sugar level and blood pressure.

It’s time to re-think how we think about health and sickness. We were born to be healthy, not sick but if we only are concerned about our health when we are sick…then we’re missing the point.

Why does your kid get sick?

Why does your child get sick?


Here are some possible answers:
-germs
-allergies
-doesn’t clean his/her hands enough, etc.

Now here’s a totally different kind of list:
-poor eating habits
-doesn’t sleep enough
-depressed immune system
-too much stress
-decreased nervous system function

What’s the difference between the two lists? One is
-‘outside in’ thinking (Western medicine: treat the symptom approach)
-the other one is ‘inside-out’ thinking.(Eastern medicine or look for the cause approach)

When your child gets a headache, is it because she doesn’t have enough aspirin, Tylenol, or ibuprofen in her body? If that’s not the reason, then why do you give her a ‘pain inhibitor’?

When your child gets a fever, is that a good thing or a bad thing? If it’s a good thing, then 95% of the time you don’t over react or do anything right? Or do you react like it’s a bad thing and give your child an ‘anti-pyretic’ (once again, Tylenol, ibuprofen or aspirin…which and anti-fever…and reduce it).

WATCH AND WAIT=INSIDE-OUT THINKING
FREAK OUT AND REACT IMMEDIATELY WITH A PILL =OUTSIDE-IN THINKING
Inside-outers honor the body’s healing abilities
Outside-inners like to get rid of symptoms immediately

Want to try something different? Find ways to help your child be ‘healthier’…
-eat better
-sleep more
-get their nervous system checked by a pediatric chiropractor
-(like you did with a pediatric dentist for their teeth)
-find ways to de-stress
-get them out in nature more and around the TV and video games less

Symptoms are actually good. Their like the warning lights in your car telling you to pay attention and find out how you can help treat the body better.

Get the picture?

Our bodies were made to be healthy. We just need to help them out from time to time and not make it worse with all kinds of medicines and over the counter crap from the drugstore.

Bread is good for you, right?

"We actually ruin every meal of the day with one of the most antigenic foods on the planet, bread."

The Bread Trap
Pathways Magazine

Bread is a vehicle. In a sandwich, it drives other food neatly and with little spillage into a bag or wrapper, into a lunchbox, and then into the mouth. A popular meal while driving, the sandwich can be sort of neatly eaten with one hand while the other hand sort of competently manages the steering wheel. Bread envelops. It absorbs excess liquids, and shapes the contents within for optimal handling. And that’s just for lunch.

Later, at dinner, when eating tends to be somewhat more formal, often with some sauce or other potential messiness sitting on a plate, there is sometimes a desire to wipe up the last drop of liquid with an edible sponge. Again, bread serves a purpose. Lightweight, dry and fresh enough at room temperature (at least for a while), bread travels well and sits neatly on a shelf. No wonder that bread and similar wheat products, sweetened or plain, are ubiquitous throughout much of the world and the darling of the processed food industry. Bread takes on many forms: loaf, bagel, doughnut, muffin, pasta, croissant, fry bread, roll and even birthday cake. Bread and other wheat-flour products are among the most common breakfast foods.

The History of Bread

By 4000 B.C., wheat cultivation had spread from the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East through much of the world. Until modern food distribution and storage was developed, it played an essential role in sustaining populations through long periods between harvests, when there was no other food. This, in turn, enabled nomadic hunter-gatherers to settle into permanent communities, and to even trade away excess wheat with outsiders. Wheat’s utility in the problem of seasonal famines ensured its continual increase in acreage until the present day, when it has reached a peak of cultivated acreage.

However, the wheat our ancestors ate was different in form, quantity and antigenicity from what people eat today. Until the 19th century, a very recent time in human history, wheat was generally mixed with other grains, beans and nuts. Only in the last 200 years has pure wheat flour with high gluten content been milled to the point of refined white flour. Generally, the wheat people eat today is no longer stone-ground from whole meal flour, as even our recent ancestors ate. Almost all of us alive today have been given white wheat-flour products on a daily basis from a few months of age—before our intestinal lining can properly filter anything other than mother’s milk to our bloodstream.

For many years, the USDA’s food pyramid was dead-weighted with the absurdly large 11 servings of grains and grain products. The average person took this satire of a diet seriously, and actually ate up all that bread, bringing it into every meal—and snacks, as well.


An Inescapable Trap

Even if an individual attempts to eliminate all grains from her diet except for stone-ground grain, it’s too late. The high-gluten, refined grain that we have all eaten from infancy has created a ubiquitous problem, from the gut to the bloodstream to the brain…and sometimes the joints, cardiovascular system and endocrine system, as well. The food sensitivity that our culture has dropped on us has done the kind of damage that leaves no easily identifying marks. Bread inflicts wounds so subtly and gradually that most of us consider ourselves immune to any such damage.

The huge and complex gluten protein, especially its gliadin fraction, is thought to be the worst problem in the glutencontaining grains. The proportion of gluten in wheat has been enormously increased by hybridization since our distant ancestors first started making food from wild grasses. Gluten’s name comes from the Greek word for glue, and its adhesive, elastic property is the very thing that holds a loaf of bread or bite of cake together. But when that glue hits the intestines, it interferes with the breakdown and absorption of nutrients in the accompanying foods of the same meal. And because gluten is of almost no nutritional value itself—nutrients having been bred out in favor of its adhesive properties—little value is gained from that meal. At best, even the person who considers himself immune to wheat allergy is getting a worthless, glued-together, constipating lump in the gut from what was considered a nourishing meal. A run-down, mildly fatigued feeling is a constant symptom of adults with the most minor reaction to wheat. We actually ruin every meal of the day with one of the most antigenic foods on the planet.

At worst, such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis and lymphoma can result from severe celiac disease or extreme gluten sensitivity. Less severe reactions are experienced by many who may have occasional unexplained diarrhea or intestinal gas and bloating, vague joint pains, infertility or brain fog.

In order to effectively replace wheat in our lifestyle, we need to find a way to mimic some of the adhesive/elastic properties of wheat flour and bread products. A sandwich thus becomes a lettuce wrap, or its contents are placed on a plate or in a bowl. Meats, vegetables and fruits play a more prominent role. A spoon is ready to scoop up the last of the sauce on the dinner plate. Lunch goes into a thermos.

You can make a lot of extra work for yourself by going to the supermarket and attempting to replace all of the breads and desserts in a typical diet with gluten-free grains, but you’ll still be getting a nutritionally depleted meal—poor compensation for spending extra time reading processed food packages for gluten content. The whole-food solution is the simplest and most nourishing. Shop the produce aisle and the meat counter, and let those purchases alone comprise your diet. It will make you discover new and delicious vegetables that you have never tried before, and it will set you free from the bread trap.