The Four Most Common Childhood Illnesses: What should you do?

A very high percentage of children will have one or more of the following illnesses during their tender years:

1.       Fever

2.       Ear infections (the #1 reason that children seek a physician’s help)

3.       Cold/sore throat/sinus issues

4.       Tummy ache (including constipation or diarrhea)

What you SHOULD NOT DO…IS PANIC!

This is not the time to call 911, rush to your doctor’s office, rush to the emergency room, shove medications at your child immediately or lose control.

This IS the time to do your best to be rational, look at your options, and react to the above four illnesses for what they usually are:

                Signals to you as a parent and to your child that something is wrong and then for you to

                figure out what to do about it.

In my opinion after practicing pediatric chiropractic for three decades the worst thing that you can do as a parent is:

                -Start shoving medications or over the counter drugs to cover up the symptoms

The best thing that you can do for these illnesses is:

                -Take stock of your child’s overall health FIRST

What do I mean by this?  Look at your child with any of the above symptoms/illnesses.  Does she:

                -still have good energy

                -look lethargic, have shallow breathing, have bad coloring

               

On the other hand recent history of your child:

                -Has she:

                                -been getting adequate sleep lately

                                -been particularly stressed with things at home, school, with friends, etc.

                                -been eating relatively well or does she deserve a spot on the classic “Super

                                Size” me video where a guy ate only McDonald’s super size meals for a month,

                                (if you haven’t seen it…it’s worth a viewing…it should gross you out and keep

                                you away from super sizing or even eating most of the fast food crap).

                                -been drinking enough water…or too much soda

                               

Are you starting to get the picture?  If your child has been sleeping badly, eating badly, is stressed out, then he or she kind of deserves to get sick!  Don’t treat the symptom of a cold or tummy ache only…

CHANGE YOUR CHILD’S HEALTH HABITS!

The old commercial with the dude at a bowling alley that has just consumed all kinds of nastiness in food and drink…and lo and behold he gets an upset stomach?!  GOOD…he deserves it!  The commercial was for an antacid and the slogan of the commercial was:

                “Don’t change your eating habits, just take our antacid with you.”

What the commercial should have said was:

                “Go ahead and eat like an idiot, pay for our antacid and we’ll help you keep abusing your body!”

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.