How Your Chiropractor Can Decrease Your Child’s Earaches and Ear Infections
The most prevailing purpose for visits to a pediatrician is earache. By the age of three years, more than 70 percent of children will have had at least one incident of earache, and about a third will have had more than three incidents. However, what might be surprising is that earache is also the most general basis for children under the age of five years to be taken to the chiropractor’s office.
How Chiropractic Care Relates to Earache and Ear Infections
A pediatrician who determines that a child with an earache has a middle ear infection will normally prescribe antibiotics as a standard course of treatment. Current research, however, has determined that this is often imprudent. Antibiotics are only effective against bacterial pathogens, and due to the fact that the child’s middle ear infection may be generated by a virus, antibiotics are ineffectual. This may be the explanation for a child’s chronic ear infections.
One of the many assessments that a Honolulu chiropractor can make is whether the earache or ear infection is produced by inflamation of the small nerves in the spine, called free nerve endings.
An undue tension in the small muscles of the neck is produced when these nerve endings are inflammed. Pressure generated on the lymphatic drainage ducts as a consequence of muscle tension can stop adequate drainage from inside the ear. This condition keeps the body from naturally rectifying the problem. Additionally, balance can also be affected.
Assessment by a chiropractor of such a problem is made by the detection of increased tension in the neck and paraspinal muscles. Normally more tension is felt on the side of earache. The chiropractor also checks for spinal vertebrae that are either slightly out of alignment or are not moving within their normal range. This condition may have been the result of any one of the variety of bangs, jolts and falls that the majority of children encounter in the early years of their life. Restoration of normal lymph drainage is most often accomplished with a short regimen of treatments that include spinal adjustments and manipulation of the neck muscles. If your child is suffering from an earache or an ear infection, contact your Honolulu chiropractor as soon as possible.
Advanced Research and Guidelines
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), ear infection, the most prevalent childhood sickness after the common cold, accounts for nearly 30 million doctor visits every year. Furthermore, at least 6 million courses of antibiotics are unnecessarily prescribed for the condition.Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released new guidelines for treating pediatric ear inflammation, and specifically recommended a period of “watchful waiting” since, in many cases, infections clear up on their own, without medication.
The American Chiropractic Association (ACA) endorses the AAP on the guidelines and underlines that chiropractic care is a “good first option” for treating ear infection conservatively. “Doctors of chiropractic have been treating children for decades with great success – helping them to avoid painful ear infections, antibiotic overuse and resistance, and ear tube surgery,” said ACA President Donald Krippendorf, DC. “Particularly when dealing with young children, drugs and surgery should be an absolute last resort.”
