Respiratory Infections:

by Dr. Cynthia Horner

Your little one is sick with another infection. You have been up most of the night holding a cranky, crying baby. The list of things you have to do tomorrow won’t stop whirling through your head. Your little one clings to you for comfort with a snotty nose and a slight fever. Every few minutes you hear a whimper as you stroke your precious child’s moist hair. Is it another ear infection? Is it a sinus infection, or is it a bad cold or the flu? You don’t want to go down the same trail of antibiotics and prednisone that didn’t help your oldest but did lead to tubes in his ears and long term digestive problems. A healthy child will at times be challenged to heal an illness. But what do you do when your child is healing?

First and foremost making a decision from confidence rather than fear is the most important hurdle for parents.  Too often when our little ones bodies are trying to heal we interfere because we fear those little bodies are not capable of the job of healing. A pediatric chiropractor can help you overcome that fear.

What a Parent Can Do While Their Child is Healing:

• Support their immune systemS
• Create a poor environment for germs to thrive
• Make them feel better while healing

Support Their Immune System:

It always makes sense to improve immune function rather than kill germs. Germs are struggling to survive just as we are, every time we make a bigger and better germ killer nature makes a bigger and better germ. Germs change and mutate to adapt to their environment.

Antibiotics may be effective in killing germs but they are ineffective in promoting health. They kill the harmful germs,  but also the good germs the body needs to be healthy. Allowing a mild fever strengthens the immune system, for every 1.5 degrees body temperature rises, immune competency is increased by 15%. Restoring lymph drainage especially in the head and throat allows the body to clear away dead germs and nectro-toxins.

Chiropractic  adjustments is one of the most effective ways to release tight muscles in the neck that stagnate lymph drainage. Having an infant or child adjusted by a pediatric chiropractor, trained in adjusting children, also allows their immune system to better read the environment and respond to it. Only if the brain’s mental impulses can travel uninterrupted will the immune system work efficiently. A chiropractic adjustment takes away irritation to nerve roots allowing mental impulses to travel freely.

Do a throat culture on any healthy human being and you will find strep, ningitis, staph, gonorrhea and a host of harmful germs. They don’t create illness because a healthy immune system keeps these germs in small numbers. Only when a weakened immune system allows germs to multiply to unmanageable numbers do they pose a threat to a healthy body.

Sugar, inadequate sleep and stress weaken the immune system. If antibiotics are introduced the baby or child is 2-6 times more susceptible to develop more respiratory infections. The high number of respiratory infection in children has been credited to the use of antibiotics for infants and the lack of support for breastfeeding. Breastfeeding enhances immune function.

Create a Poor Environment for Germs to Thrive:

Germs need a good environment to grow just as plants need good soil to grow. Creating an environment within the body that makes it difficult for bacteria and viruses to multiply and grow is an effective way to fight infection. Not all germs are harmful and some germs are actually helpful to the body if in small colonies.

Giving your child the good germs called probiotics will  compete for survival with the harmful germs and limit their multiplication. Just as some herbs have been used for years to preserve food from spoiling these same herbs can keep harmful germ colonies in check. Colliodal silver in a liquid form is safe and good at limiting the growth of bacteria. Garlic and olive leaf are also deterrents to bacteria growth.

Help Your Child Feel Better While Healing:

It’s hard to watch and do nothing when your child is in pain or discomfort. The trick is to relieve some of their discomfort while not interfering with the healing process. No matter how advanced or ‘smart’ a drug may be, all drugs are poison to the body and disrupt healing. The difference between a drug and an herbal remedy, homeopathic remedy or food is a that a drug produces a controlled response in the body and a remedy produces an elective response. The first forces the body into a chemical change the second feeds the body raw materials and allows the body to use them as it wishes.

Nothing  parents can do when their children are sick is more important than the simple act of being there for them. Your  intuition and instincts tell you that holding your children and allowing them to have contact with you is somehow healing. You are right, it is.

Email me for a list of specific herbs and foods that support the immune system, create a poor environment for germs and help children feel better:

What my patients have taught me:  “Fighting illness does not work as well as building a healthy body.”