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Ear Infections in Children and Chiropractic Care

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EAR INFECTIONS

Ear Infections in Children and Chiropractic Care

Many parents know that dealing with painful ear infections at night is not fun. Children scream through an agonizing pain. At least that what my wife and myself have been experiencing the last couple of nights. We were stressed out and our four and half years old boy was even more stressed out. Fortunately our son was breast fed till he was 20 months old and I have to admit that it is a heroic act on my spouse’s behalf. Until recently we did not have any problems with ear infection and pain.

November was a month that our family was traveling a lot all over the country. That means only one thing, lots of time on an airplane full of people who most likely carry some sort of virus or cold infection, eating out and lack of exercises. These three main factors will do some serious damage to an adult’s health but child is taking it to a whole different level. Their fragile immune system has to fight new invaders every day.

Before I go into an explanation of a pain and suffering process of ear infection I would like to explain what it is and what the treatment procedures for such health problem. The ear has two functions – hearing and balance and it consists of three different parts – the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. I am not going to bore you with its function and anatomy, you can simply click on links that I have provided if interested. Kids develop ear infections more frequently in the first 2 to 4 years of their life for several reasons:

  • Their eustachian tubes are shorter and more horizontal than those of adults, which allows bacteria and viruses to find their way into the middle ear more easily. Their tubes are also narrower and less stiff, which makes them more prone to blockage.
  • The adenoids, which are gland-like structures located in the back of the upper throat near the eustachian tubes, are large in children and can interfere with the opening of the eustachian tubes.

A number of other factors can contribute to kids getting ear infections, such as exposure to cigarette smoke, bottle-feeding, and day-care attendance (that was our case as well in addition to travel). Ear infections also occur more commonly in boys than girls, in kids whose families have a history of ear infections, and during the winter season when upper respiratory tract infections or colds are frequent.

There are several options available for treating middle ear infections in children. One of the most popular is use of antibiotics where child has to take during a course of ten days or so. Sometimes this treatment will not work because it could also be a viral infection. For those children who have chronic infections in some cases, an ear, nose, and throat doctor will suggest surgically inserting tubes (called tympanostomy tubes) in the tympanic membrane. This allows fluid to drain from the middle ear and helps equalize the pressure in the ear because the eustachian tube is unable to.

In our particular case I have adjusted my son’s right occipital region about four nights in a raw. On a fifth night he slept through without any pain at all. It has been about a month since the last episode and so far he did not complain about any ear pain at all. Research showed that 80% of the children who get chiropractic care were free of ear infections for at least six-month period. Maintenance for one or two times of every four to six weeks would be necessary for this result. Chiropractic adjustment mobilizes drainage of the ear in children. Continues drainage of fluids will eliminate the infection and will strengthen the immune system and help the child to recover much faster.

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Teenager, High Blood Pressure and Lack of Sleep

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LACK OF SLEEPCase Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, has conducted a research which concluded that sleep depravation could be the cause of high blood pressure in healthy adolescents. These associations couldn’t be explained by being overweight, socioeconomic status, sleep apnea, or known co morbidities. About 238 teenagers ages 13 to 16 were participating in this study which provided an important data about relationship between lack of sleep and high blood pressure. All of the participants of this study were without any known health issues.

This study was published in a Journal of the American Heart Organization. Young adults were observed 3 to 7 nights about the sleep duration at their homes. Special digital wrist recorder was designed in order to record a motion, sleep and wake up patterns. Special laboratory was used for one night and the blood pressure was measured nine times during that night over two days period. In the research facility, an overnight polysomnography was also made; according to Wikipedia, a polysomnography “is a multi-parametric test used in the study of sleep”, and the test outcome is termed a polysomnogram.

Those young adults who had less than 6.5 hours of sleep a night were 2.8 times to have elevated blood pressure levels, compared to those teenagers who had more hours of sleep. Those with low sleep efficiency, on the other hand, were 4.5 times more likely to have prehypertension. Sleep efficiency might be broadly defined as sleep quality. It took into account factors such as having difficulty dropping off to sleep or staying asleep.

Scientific data was adjusted for gender, body mass index and socioeconomic status. Pre hypertension risks were 2.5 times higher for lack of sleep and 3.5 times higher for low sleep efficiency. Youngster with sleep deficiency had 4mm Hg higher systolic blood pressure than those who had good night sleep.

According to the NHLBI’s Your Guide to Healthy Sleep, children of school-going age and adolescents need at least 9 hours of sleep every night. According to the guide, hormonal influences during puberty tend to affect the biological clocks of adolescents. They are thus more likely to go to bed later at night, and want to sleep in longer in the morning.

 The Implications 

If the young ones are often having problems falling asleep, getting up several times or for long periods during the night, having sleepy spells during the day, or having difficulty concentrating, then it is possible that they are not having enough sleep, or are having poor sleep.

And, compared with twenty or even ten years ago, teenagers today have even more reasons to stay awake late into the night. Decades ago, there were no computers, no internet, and very small, if any, late night television. Add to that the stress and pressures of increased workloads in school, as well as the nutritional fiasco which is our modern diet of refined foods, and the issue gets a lot bigger.

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Prescriptions for Children or Conservative Care

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CHILDRENChildren in the USA becoming more and more drug dependent – I am talking about the legal kind of drugs. Pediatricians and Medical practitioners are prescribing drugs for different childhood conditions more then ever before. Many of these prescriptions have no positive effect on a condition that a child might have. Many conditions could have been resolved without any involvement of prescription medication and treated naturally. The truth is that there is a big pharmacological industry that has relationship with doctors who prescribe those medications. Yes, it is money driven medicine. The more medications pushed to a consumer the larger the compensation. Many of these drugs are not even safe to take, for a simple reason that there is not enough research done.  No one wants a child to be a guinea pig to find out weather a particular drug works or  not.

Chiropractic care is a natural and safe way for many pediatric conditions. You can always load your child with drugs which in most cases will only treat the symptom but not the cause. Chiropractic care allows the body to heal itself naturally. That means using conservative treatment options such as nutrition, diet, lifestyle changes and chiropractic adjustments first, rather than medications:

 

FACTS ABOUT DRUG CONSUMPTION IN USA BY CHILDREN:

ADHD drugs:

24.357 million

Children 0-9 years: 7.018 million

Children 10-19 years: 17.339 million

 

Antidepressants:

9.614 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.026 million

Children 10-19 years: 8.588 million

 

Antipsychotics:

6.546 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.396 million

Children 10-19 years: 5.150 million

 

Antihypertensives (treatment for high blood pressure):

5.224 million

Children 0-9 years: 1.819 million

Children 10-19 years: 3.405 million

 

Asthma Drugs:

45.388 million

Children 0-9 years: 28.252 million

Children 10-19 years: 17.136 million

 

Sleep Aids:

307,000

Children 0-9 years: 14,000

Children 10-19 years: 293,000

 

Statins (treatment for high cholesterol):

94,000

Children 0-9 years: 11,000

Children 10-19 years: 83,000

 

Non-insulin-dependent (type2) diabetes

424,000

Children 0-9 years: 30,000

Children 10-19 years: 394,000

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Backpacks, Children, Nook, Kindle and Bad Posture

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BACKPACKI wrote a post in September of 2010 – “Backpack Safety – Back To School and 14 Helpful Tips.” Millions of kids wear heavy backpacks that affect their posture, which results in interfering with a proper functioning of nervous system and thus leads to sick days and unnecessary pain. A post about “Relationship of Nervous System and Spine to Organs”, will provide you a better understanding of what I am talking about. A developing young organism must be free of any obstacles for proper development. It is even more true for young girls. These individuals are the future of this society. With advancing technology our future generation can save their posture by carrying all of their heavy load of books on an electronic book reader. I am talking about iPad, Kindle, Nook and probably some other electronic gadgets that are available on the market today.

These devices are not as expensive as they used to be. It is a very minor investment in the future of your kids. My boy is turning four next month and pretty soon he is going to go to school. Currently he is practicing on my iPhone to play with different apps.  Some of my patients are principles at schools and I have talked to them  about this issue. With budget cuts in every State in the United States and over 26 billion dollars deficit for 2011 in a State of California alone it is not an easy task to accomplish. Education budget cuts are growing every year and with bureaucratic system that the State make the transfer to electronic book reader is a distant possibility.

What is the solution to this problem? I think parents must take action in their own hands and provide their kids with these light readers that weight less than a pound versus full back pack of books which can weight up to 15 pounds and sometimes even more. The solution is easy the implementation is not. Below are comparison videos of the Nook from Barnes & Nobles and Kindle from Amazon that your child can use in school.

Getting the books you buy onto as many readers as possible is a matter of great interest to educators. Right now, there are basically three ways to leverage e-books to increase distribution of titles in schools.

When Amazon came out with the Kindle, the company realized that book-buyers would want to be able to load their purchases onto more than one reading device. So the company made it possible for customers to load their purchases onto as many as six devices, in most case, if the devices were registered to the same account. As schools began to implement ereader programs, educators saw the benefit of this policy: if a school purchases six or more Kindle, every book they buy can be distributed to six devices, effectively cutting the cost of an already lower-priced e-book by a factor of six. It is like buying six copies for the price of one. And with a little extra management, this “sharing” of books among devices registered to the same account has worked well. Here is how it works for two major booksellers:

Amazon Kindle: You can download up to six copies of each book to different platforms.

Nook/Nook Color: You can download each book within devices on an account, limit six.

I think parents should take advantage of this program and send their kids to school with Kindle or Nook, pen and notepad. Make a change now before it is too late. Currently there several models available on the market: Kindle 3, Kindle DX,  Nook Black & White, and Nook Color.