How do you change the trajectory of a child’s health to improve for a better future without the use of surgery? Without the use of medications? Without the use of putting something in their body or taking something out of their body? This is an all-natural, drug-free approach to improving your child’s immune health and function, and building a happier and better life for them.
Let’s look at a typical kid. They get sick with an ear infection. The pediatrician prescribes antibiotics to help their little body fight off the illness. The child gets better but all too soon they are showing the same symptoms again, another round of antibiotics. Then it happens again! After many sleepless nights, trips to the doctor and rounds of antibiotics you are probably fed up with this cycle. You just want your child to feel better! Next, the discussion turns to ear tubes to help drain the ears and break the cycle. What if I told you there is a natural way to break this cycle that didn’t involve surgery!?! Sound too good to be true? Your child’s body was made to heal, what is keeping them from healing themselves?
The issue lies in taking care of the problem (the cause), versus just simply addressing the symptoms (the effect.) What are some deeper issues that you can change at home that can be contributing to your child’s ear infections? We typically find that our kiddo patients who suffer from allergies, sinus congestion/infections, ear congestion/infections, and other similar conditions typically have one or more of these problems:
- Poor Plumbing/Drainage
- An overactive Sympathetic (Fight/Flight) Nervous System that lowers immunity.
- Excessive Inflammation within the respiratory and/or digestive system.
Poor Plumbing/Drainage
There is a small muscle called the Tensor Veli Palatini (TVP) that is responsible for “milking” fluid down the ear canal. Similar to the way that your esophagus “milks” the food that you eat, down your throat and into your stomach. It’s the function of the smooth muscles to move stuff along in our organs, and the same muscles are located within your child’s eustachian tubes. So, if this muscle is not doing its job, fluid accumulates behind the eardrum and if not drained can create infections. The question is: What would cause this muscle NOT to work?
The muscle has attachments to the upper part of your cervical spine (right below your skull/head) and it gets its nerve supply from the upper part of your cervical spinal cord. Therefore, if there is a misalignment or nerve interference within this complex and crucial area, the muscle isn’t going to do its job very well, or at all. Imagine being broken down on the side of the road in your car and calling for help from your cell phone in a very remote area. Here you are trying to give directions to a friend. Your phone is connected to your friends’ phone, but you have barely any service, and she can only hear 2 or 3 words each sentence. Do you think your friend is going to be able to understand how to find you? Probably not, right? The same goes for your nervous system. If you have a build-up of interference and stress (signal loss), your brain cannot communicate to your organs and glands to promote good healthy function very easily, and their job now becomes harder because they don’t receive all of the directions. A very common cause of neurological stress and interference can be mapped back to the birth process. Very commonly seen in the kiddos that we care for who have a history of multiple ear infections in their past, they suffered some type of trauma from birth interventions. Those can include cesarean sections, forceps use, vacuum extractions, forced inductions with membrane sweeping or stripping, epidurals, Pitocin, etc. Creating stress in the specific regions that facilitate good healthy physiological and neurological function, can expose your child to a future of reduced immune health and support to fighting off infections in a healthy manner.
Overactive Sympathetic Nervous System
Your Central Nervous System (brain and spinal cord) is the air traffic controller of your entire body. Your brain sends signals and receives signals from the rest of your body, through your spinal cord and spinal nerves. That’s why we can feel a tiny rock in our shoe, through our sock without even looking at it. Because our brain understands and controls everything. We call it a two-way road. Information coming up, and information going back down. If you have an interference or fixated segment within your spinal column (subluxation as chiropractors call it), it causes nervous system irritation and neurological interference, traffic Jams, or a Road Block. When you have a traffic jam stuck on this sympathetic system, you have your foot stuck on what we call the “stress pedal”. This creates a system inside your body that fires on stress, sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system more often than it should. When this happens it can slow down the part of your body important for growth, development, and healing. If the stress wreaking havoc on your child’s little spine is released, it can allow their body to get out of this state of Overwhelm and Overactive sympathetic side. Then they will then begin to activate more of the healthy healing and growing side of the parasympathetic nervous system. This also plays a role in the Poor Plumbing/Drainage concept as well.
Excessive Inflammation
You are what you eat! Inflammation can be caused by an intolerance or sensitivity to certain foods, toxins, and other environmental factors. In most kids we see don’t have actual allergies, but their immune system overreacts to many types of irritants in their environment. That happens because of a poorly integrated system within their digestive system. We can take a drug to artificially decrease swelling and congestion within our ears, but they don’t do anything to calm an OVERACTIVE and STRESSED OUT immune system or get to the root cause of the actual problem. Many times, they create nasty side effects, especially in our gut. How do we support your child’s immune system once they are out of that Overactive Sympathetic side, and improving their Plumbing and Drainage systems?
- Remove DAIRY from their diet. (Cow’s milk, cheese, creams, yogurts).
- Limit Sugar and Grains.
- Limit/Remove Processed Foods
- Begin Combating Inflammation Naturally
- Fish Oils, Vitamin D, Probiotics.
- A good healthy gut creates a recipe for good healthy immune function and support.
Still want to learn more? Check out a free webinar here or give us a call at (843) 203-3199
-Dr. Chris Dixon