Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Ear Infections

After the excitement of having my cookbook (Delicious Detox) finally in my hands on Friday, I went to a wonderful seminar on Saturday and Sunday on common pediatric or childhood health concerns.

It was a good review of my third year pediatrics course but introducing some new concepts on treating childhood ailments with drainage remedies and homeopathy.

One concern that I see at least once a week is chronic ear infections in children. Parents will bring their little ones in because they've had a few ear infections in a short amount of time and their medical doctor wants to put tubes in their ears. So I'm usually the last option before this stage. It's wonderful because naturopathic medicine has so much to offer when it comes to treating ear infections acutely or if the child has a chronic problem.

The first thing I usually do is take the child off dairy for at least a month along with some other tricks of the trade like probiotics. Any naturopathic doctor will usually eliminate one of four common food allergens - dairy, wheat, sugar or soy.

The one thing that surprised me the most in the discussion of this topic was that even the American Pediatric Association knows otitis media (ear infections) is an immune reaction of the body typically to a food intolerance. There was an article in their journal in 1995. Elimination of these foods addresses about 90% of ear infections! So why do pediatricians or family medical doctors never mention this to parents as a first line?

Evidenced-based medicine eh?

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