“First, do no harm” was Hippocrates’ most famous words, and they are particularly important in the care and treatment of infants and children. Most people don’t know it, but most conventional drugs are tested on adults, and then, doctors estimate the appropriate dosage for children on such crude measures as a child’s weight.
The second main reason that parents bring their children to homeopaths is that children respond so well to homeopathic medicines. You can really change a child’s life, both physical and psychologically, with the correct homeopathic remedy. And you can help make a parent’s life much easier and much better.
How do children respond to homeopathic medicine?
Children respond extremely well to homeopathic remedies, even when the perfect medicine is not always prescribed
I talk to the child as much as possible, I watch the child, both in the waiting room, as she or he approaches me, and throughout the interview. I have a lot of respect for children, and I try to show them this respect by talking directly to them, and usually in a quite adult fashion.
Often parents need a lot of reassurance and relevant information to make a good choice for their children. The best way to treat parent’s fears about their children’s health is with education about the wisdom of the body and about certain acute symptoms as an important defence. Physicians and physiologists today recognize that fever is a useful response of the person’s body to infection. While it is true that certain high or long-lasting fevers need to be treated, such fevers represent an extreme minority of fevers in children.
The overuse of conventional drugs to lower fevers is concerning. Homeopaths assert that we create a lot of chronic disease when we suppress acute illness.
I am often amazed at how well and how fast homeopathic medicines work in fevers. I can and will refer the child for immediate medical treatment if fever is experienced in newborns (within first 4 months) that does not respond to homeopathic treatment within two hours, or if a fever in any child is over 40 degree Celsius and doesn’t respond to home treatment after 6 hours, or if high fever in any child leads to great lethargy and neck stiffness.
Children seem to get a lot of ear infections and, of course, antibiotics are the only treatment offered. Is there anything wrong with this?
Antibiotics may have a place in treating ear infections but not necessarily as a treatment of first choice. The American Academy of Pediatrics’ guidelines for the use of antibiotics in acute ear infections in children is actually that they should be avoided for the first three months. It may surprise some people to learn that a meta-analysis of the best studies on ear infection (British Medical Journal, 1997, 87:pp.466-74) found no benefit of using antibiotics as compared to placebo.
To make matters worse, some evidence suggests that administration of antibiotics lead to three times the number of ear infections as those children left untreated. Part of the problem with antibiotics is a basic premise of healing that is commonly ignored, that is, anytime you get something done for the body, the body doesn’t learn to do it on its own as well.
The long-term consequences are unknown and scary. This over-prescribing of antibiotics for both newborns and any child is a part of what I call “medical child abuse.” I look forward to the day that homeopathy and other natural medicine receive the appropriate acknowledgment.
What is the general benefit for children who are treated homeopathically?
Good homeopathic treatment during childhood can and will help create healthier teenagers Good homeopathic treatment will also help build healthier adults, physically and psychologically; all of which then helps to create a healthier world. This is homeopathy at work!
(Some of last section quoted from Dana Ullman)
