Children's Health And The Alternative

The area of Complementary and Alternative Medicine Children's Health deserves much more attention and research.

So you'd think children's health is all about pediatrics, but it's really much more than that and even starts way before a child is born with the parents and their lives and involvement. It may seem that the focus is an individual child, but actually it's the entire family unit.

There's so much involved and it happens in stages and cycles of life. From planning a family, conception leading to pregnancy and childbirth, and then beginning with childhood vaccines shortly after birth.

Whether it's in in hospitals, long term care facilities, emergency care, or multidisciplinary primary health care settings, the natural community believes that healthy communities raise healthy children. So that also means empowering parents to use safe, effective and natural medicines at home with their children.

 

Natural / Alternative medicine offers a unique holistic approach to empowering children and families to break out of the conventional box and to actually improve their health.

Alternative care can compliment and is in addition to a child's regular doctor visits. The natural approach to health and healing differs from conventional medicine. By using gentle and non invasive treatments to restore and maintain health, side effects from natural treatments are absent or at least minor or rare.

 
As with adults, more aggressive therapies and surgery with children should be avoided unless absolutely necessary.

Communicating and listening to a child's symptoms is important for clues that indicate where the imbalance is in the body, and addressing the underlying causes of said symptoms will bring about healing.

The approach of suppressing symptoms thereby avoiding the cause through conventional medicine, will only cause more symptoms and decrease health.

 

Creating an individual health plan is necessary to focus on a child's specific strengths, weaknesses, sensitivities, and susceptibilities based on history, lifestyle, emotional health, mental health, environment and genetics.

The individual plan must be developed specifically for a child and may include the use of various different natural healing modalities.

The goal is to stimulate a child's natural healing ability through the use of natural medicines that are effective and safe. The body has an amazing talent to self heal given the correct environment and circumstances.

Natural and alternative medicine focuses on tweaking this natural talent to restore and maintain health and to get rid of blocks and barriers to healing. Health and healing can unfortunately be prevented by toxins, bad nutrition, and even too much stress.

Parents need to be encouraged to ask questions and to be empowered to make correct decisions about their own and their child's health by using open and honest communication. Even before conception while involved in family planning, they must make the effort to show their concerns and ask questions.

 

Both parents and a child's doctor and natural practitioner need to review important information and details together. In this way, both traditional wisdom combined with modern medicine and research are used to measure parents' health and that of each individual child so as to create a specific treatment plan.

 

Treatment plans and natural modalities may include:

• Herbal medicine (specific for children)
• Nutritional medicine
• Homeopathy
• Acupressure
• Bodywork / Massage
• Hydrotherapy
• Mind-body medicine

Also, counseling for parents and their children is necessary for support, especially during transitions and different stages in life, and gentle, understanding guidance while dealing with challenging events towards a life that is more balanced.

Natural medicine is useful for any child, with whatever symptoms they may have, because focus is given to improving the ability to heal. A treatment plan's extent, length, and other specifics will vary depending on an individual child's level of well being and health.

Parents often visit both doctors and natural practitioners in general for advice and help with many things, among them being:

stomach aches, stress, immunization and vaccine options or information, sleep disturbances, skin rashes / eczema / skin issues, sinus / nasal issues, hyperactivity, food sensitivity, flu, fever, eye infections such as pink eye or conjunctivitis, ear infections such as otitis media, diarrhea / constipation, cough, cradle cap, chickenpox, cold, colic, attention disorders, asthma, and allergies, and the list goes on...

Natural / Alternative Practitioners can help and should be consulted besides for doctors in order to give parents an informed choice as to how they wish to proceed in the treatment of their children.

As well, through Alternative medicine we can:

• aid kids and help them stay away from being exposed to various toxins and also help their body detoxify,
• reduce the risk of problems stemming from drugs, from being vaccinated or having surgeries,
• allow parents to receive appropriate information regarding childrens vaccinations, more natural vaccines or alternative choices,
• reduce a mother's and child's recovery time after birth,
• reduce the possibility of being injured, of having surgery, physical trauma, and emotional / mental trauma
• help improve a child's ability learn, concentrate, and study without the use of drugs in conditions such as ADD, ADHD, learning disorders or hyperactivity.
• optimize health through the stages of conception, growth and development, to adult,
• Make available to parents health advice congruent with a natural approach.

As much as possible, Alternative practitioners should also be taught to do total physical exams, and to know how to take a thorough medical history, but at the very least they should work hand in hand with the child's physician, considering and taking into account their medical exam and diagnoses.

All children should have a “physical” annualy at least. Depending on a child's medical history and symptoms, other examinations and tests should be done, such as blood tests, allergy tests, stress, orthopedic, or a nutritional assessment.

Performing and interpreting both natural and conventional medicine lab tests is necessary. Depending a child's present situation (and medical results obtained), a natural practitioner may ask and recommend other additional tests to evaluate stress, toxins, allergies, or sensitivities to food / substances etc.

This way, diagnosing is done for conditions from both a conventional as well as natural point of view. Natural diagnosis is more for seeking out specific imbalances in our body and systems.

Through this natural and alternative practitioners can get to the root cause of disease, not only its symptoms, and catch early disturbances, before they turn into conditions, diseases, and illnesses.

When natural treatment plans are prescribed and carried out, a child's specific plan may involve combinations of natural treatments and modalities some of which were mentioned. 

Progress is then monitored both by a parent as well as the practitioner. Reassessment in follow up visits during and following treatment plans is essential in order to assess a child's progress.

It is important to work in tandem with other different health care experts and practitioners. Naturopathic doctors, as well as other natural and alternative therapists actually do refer to pediatricians, work with them and family doctors, Osteopaths, Chiropractors, massage therapists, counselors and other various professionals to provide integrative healthcare of high standards as a team.

Often, natural doctors and practitioners may have similar training to physicians, but their guiding principles may be different. First and foremost, a child's health is top priority. As a result, not to cause harm, they use natural treatments that are effective and safe as opposed to conventional medicine which may tax the system and even be toxic.

The ultimate goal, is to strengthen and improve each person's ability to heal the self, and not to override the body's natural healing mechanisms. 

This is done by first finding and then treating the cause of disease rather than only suppressing symptoms, healing the whole person with their body, mind, and spirit, with thorough assessments, examinations, and individualized treatment plans, and by teaching the important principles of life long prevention and healthy natural living.