family health

Raising Healthy Kids

If drugs are harmful enough to stop when you're pregnant, what makes them less harmful when you're not?

How to cure the common cold:

"Without medicine it takes 7 days, with medicine it takes a week." You've heard this classic punch-line about fighting the common cold, and there is truth in this statement.  When a child in America starts sniffling or sneezing, the first line of defense that most parents use is…a jog to their medicine cabinet.

In 2004, over 3 million prescriptions for five drugs were prescribed to children without adequate studies being conducted on their safety and effectiveness. (Dr. Sidney Wolfe, director of Public Citizen's Health Research Group)

The Food and Drug Administration was recently quoted as saying that the side effects of many cold medicines

are not usually serious, but that severe and deadly side-effects are not only possible, but are becoming more common everyday.

Prescription drug errors double a person's risk of dying in the hospital and cost an estimated $2 billion a year.

(Tim Friend, USA Today)

During a five year period in the late 1980's, more than 650,000 children had been reported as severely "ill" as a direct result of taking over the counter drugs, so says the Center for Poison Control.

The most common drug given to sick children - antibiotics - is actually a suppressor to the immune system!

The Journal of American Medical Association found that Amoxicillin is not effective ... and ... concluded that children who took the drug for chronic ear infections were 2-6 times more likely to have a recurrence of fluid buildup.

Immune Boost: This Is Spinal Zap

Give your immune system a leg up through chiropractic care.
By: Katie Gilbert - Psychology Today

It came to the point where something had to give. Lilian Garcia's pollen, dust, and food allergies were getting her down. Her allergies were even affecting her job. The recording artist and World Wrestling ringmaster's voice wasn't achieving optimal performance. But that soon changed. While she was cutting a record with singer-songwriter Jon Secada, he suggested chiropractic care. Though the recommendation struck her as unconventional, Garcia was desperate for a solution. She set up an appointment.

The test of efficacy came soon after she started regular chiropractic treatment, during a moment of weakness in the mall. "I saw an ice cream cone and I went for it," Garcia remembers. "I ate two and I had zero complications. It was my first ice cream cone in 12 years." The connection between her allergies and chiropractic care seemed natural. "Something's flowing better."

Terry Rondberg, president of the World Chiropractic Alliance, explains that the spine does play a role in wellbeing. He notes that many factors affect the body's ability to maintain optimal balance. Nutrition, posture, exercise, stress, fatigue are important, but so is the health of your spine.

Chiropractic care was first linked to improved immunity during the deadly flu epidemic of 1917 and 1918. The funny thing was: Chiropractic patients fared better than the general population. This observation spurred a study of the field. The data reported that flu victims under chiropractic care had an estimated .25 percent death rate, a lot less than the normal rate of 5 percent among flu victims who did not receive chiropractic care.

In the years since, studies are finding that chiropractic care is a way to improve immunity. One study, from the National College of Chiropractic in Lombard, Illinois, found that disease-fighting white blood cell counts were higher just 15 minutes after chiropractic manipulation was applied to the back. A similar study investigated the immune system response in HIV-positive patients under chiropractic care. After six months of treating spinal misalignment, the group receiving the chiropractic treatment showed a 48 percent increase in white blood cell counts. Conversely, the group that did not receive chiropractic manipulation experienced a 7.96 percent decrease in immunity cells.

Time—and more studies—will show whether chiropractic treatment is a necessary addition to your immune system's arsenal. Lilian Garcia, however, has all the proof she needs. "I see my chiropractor every week," she says, "and there's no way I'm going to stop."

Treatment of birth trauma injuries is well within the means of current practice in chiropractic and manual medicine.

The effects, frequency and overt damage of birth trauma is perhaps the easiest way to understand why all children need to be checked for spinal misalignments and cranial distortions. Gottlieb, medical researcher in his paper: Neglected spinal cord, brain stem and musculoskeletal injuries stemming from birth trauma has this to add:

Birth trauma remains an underpublicized and, therefore, an undertreated problem. There is a need for further documentation and especially more studies directed toward prevention. In the meantime, manual treatment of birth trauma injuries to the neuromusculoskeletal system could be beneficial to many patients not now receiving such treatment, and it is well within the means of current practice in chiropractic and manual medicine.

Neglected spinal cord, brain stem and musculoskeletal injuries stemming from birth trauma Gottlieb MS.

J Manipulative Physiol Ther 1993 (Oct);16 (8):537-543