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My favourite patients are young children, and animals.
However children only make up a small percentage of my patient group, animals much less again. So why are they my favourites? Actually I might need a better word than favourite, not all children are fun to be with, and not all animals are cute. And especially if they are very sick then it is a deeply sad business indeed, for all concerned. I think ‘easiest’ might be the concept I am looking for. The ‘least maddeningly difficult to get through to’. You see small children, and animals, don’t suffer from having much in the way of minds. They have the beginnings of what we could call a mind, but it is all very unshaped, and open. People who come to see a herbalist in a place like Christchurch, even if they are really into natural medicine and already believe in it, know they are venturing away from the safety and security of the mainstream. Herbal medicine is seen as being ‘nicer’ and safer, but also softer. The more advanced, or serious a health problem is the more there is that little element of doubt… I don’t mind people feeling that way, in fact I am used to it. Having been in practice for a while I am in a fortunate position in that the great majority of people that come in are personally referred by someone they know who got a good result from coming here so I have to meet very few real sceptics in my practice. Nevertheless, it has to be said that this ‘doubt’, this uncertainty, that people have is very effective at slowing down the healing process, often considerably so. The best proof I have of this is what typically happens when I work with small children. They do not have a clue that they are in an office that is not part of the New Zealand mainstream medical establishment. I am just another guy with a bunch of weird diagnostic devices and at the end of seeing me they get to take some medicine just like anywhere else they have been. And I see time and again how little children get better from stuff in days that typically take weeks for grown-ups to get through.
I should not be too simplistic about this though. There is one much more important factor at work here which also serves to speed up the healing process. It is what is known as the third rule of medicine, the vis medicatrix naturae, which loosely translates to ‘the healing power of nature’. This power, or force, is not something to underestimate. It is the self-correcting, self-healing intelligence that all living creatures are born with. And it is a lot more to do with the energy of the body than the nature of the mind. Animals heal quickly because they do not get in the way of the healing. If they are seriously ill or injured they stop whatever they are doing; frequently they even stop eating, and lie still. On the other hand little children are not so good at stopping, in fact many a parent has watched in open-mouthed amazement as their child, who 5 minutes ago looked like they might need to call an ambulance over, is now running at top speed around the house like a mad thing. But if a little child gets really sick then what they do is sleep, and sleep, and sleep. Their self-healing is taking up all their energy, for as long as it needs to, and they don’t get in the way of it. The vis medicatrix naturae is a gift, from life. We don’t have to do anything to earn it, it’s already ours. However what we do have is the ability to get in its way, in fact we can be remarkably good at doing just that. A poor diet, lack of healthy movement, negative emotions, not enough sleep… those are some of the typical big ones that get in the way, physical tension is another one that I find affects a lot of people. In fact I consistently notice that the more people learn to relax the faster they seem to be able to heal. Many a time when I have worked with a child that is not healing well I have just had to find the part of them that is too tense, work out a way to help them to relax, and then they fly back to health.
The two subjects, allergies and infections, that come up in my work with young children more than anything else have the same basic root, namely the immune system. Babies are born without any immune system of their own. This is quite an extraordinary fact when you think about it. It goes a long way to demonstrate just how remarkably vulnerable our children are when they are little. A breast-fed baby borrows its mother’s immune system to get at least some help during their first exposures to bugs in their early months. Formula fed babies have to catch up quickly. All baby’s bodies are born with the capability to start making white blood cells but this is not an easy task to learn how to do. In fact it takes many years to really get the hang of it.
In modern life we have a remarkably weird phenomenon called ‘cleanliness’. At no time in human history have we ever been anywhere near as clean as we are now. Most scientists who work in this area share some agreement that all this sanitised living is the prime reason why the number of allergies has exploded in modern times. Just like a baby has to grow teeth, our immune systems evolve to grow a ferocious army of formidable fighters with names like ‘Natural killer T cells’. White blood cells can be very nasty to you if you get on their bad side; some of them literally reach arms out of their walls to swallow in bits of foreign matter or microbes and then set about dissolving them in a cauldron of enzymes. Others just practice chemical warfare by squirting out poisonous substances on things that don’t pass the grade as being ‘self’ i.e. safe. So what do you think might happen when this powerful, ‘wanting to work‘ army has nothing to do? What happens if there aren’t anywhere near so many bugs, germs, parasites, worms etc. around for it to fight because our homes, cars, clothes, hands, even our pets, are all so clean? A rapidly increasing number of children get allergies and a host of health problems come along as a result; eczema and asthma being the two that come up the most in my work. You can read more detail about all this in my article on allergy and intolerance.
Some children go down a different route, also to do with the immune system not developing as it should but this time, instead of becoming a misdirected and trigger-happy army, it just struggles to keep up with the many varieties of different microorganisms that are still around no matter how much we clean and disinfect. These children are the ones who keep GPs in business. They get repeated ear, nose, throat and lung infections and take repeated courses of antibiotics. In the majority of such children I have worked with you get to see how just how great herbal immune tonics can be. They break the cycle of sickness and most children start to thrive soon into their treatment, so long as they take their treatment! You can read more about this in my article on immunity as well as colds and flu’s.
Another problem that I have often worked with is where children have very little appetite and are not thriving, or growing well. This is an old problem and the old herbal texts speak of it very clearly. I think anyone can understand how much this would have worried any parent throughout history. What to do about failure to thrive speaks directly to by far the biggest potential obstacle in treating children with any kind of problem; taking the medicine. The herbs that work to stimulate appetite and growth are famously bitter to take. And yes that can seem like an insurmountable obstacle to some parents. I tell parents when they want to bring in their children that I have an excellent success rate in treating children so long as they take their medicine! I do put flavouring extracts like licorice root, peppermint or aniseed into just about every tonic I ever give children, but the bitter herbs in a digestive and appetite tonic will still linger under the surface. The only way to get really comfortable with taking a herbal tonic is to start doing it. People, and children, always get better at it and more used to it with time. When a child who is not thriving starts to take a small and regular dose of a bitter tonic they rather wonderfully and predictably start to eat more. Perhaps the most famous of the bitter tonics is the best one to give as an example, so have a read about Gentian if you would like some more detail on the ‘how to’.
Is there anything else that could be worse in this world? I truly hope you are not reading this part because you have to. Please do whatever it takes to find a good herbalist to help you in this hardest of times. As general supports for the immune system the things I rate the highest are :
This is another really gnarly area. I am increasingly asked by parents if I can help with problems such as attention deficit disorder (ADD) and attention deficit hyperactive disorder (ADHD). I tell them that I am happy to try but they need to know that I have things like microscopes and fibre optic examination lights worth 10s of thousands of dollars in my consulting room so if their child has a skill for breaking things then consider bringing dad or some other support person into the visit that can take them out to the garden once we have done the initial exam. An initial visit with me can take up to an hour so they generally get the picture. I also want to make it known that I am deeply wary of accepting all the ADD, ADHD labels that are being handed out to children right, left and centre in the last decade or so. Boys in particular have always been boys and if they don’t get that physical energy dissipated on a daily basis you can only expect trouble, and plenty of it. I am sure my city of Christchurch is not the exception when I say that the playgrounds and beaches are frequently deserted whilst the classrooms and malls are always full. Is giving children daily doses of amphetamines (Ritalin) a good long term idea? I do not pretend to have the answer to this one, nor do I think I know what is wrong and what should be done with children on the Aspergers or Autism spectrum though I am aware of the many strong views and opinions in the natural health world on these gnarly subjects as well.
If your child has chronic stomach aches then you have probably been to your GP and been told they cannot find any obvious reason. Nevertheless you may well have been given a prescription all the same. Please think very hard about the wisdom of giving children a drug like losec, omeprazole (or any kind of medication that reduces stomach acid). It may well alleviate the discomfort, especially at first, but at what cost? Why do we make something as dangerous sounding as ‘acid’ in our stomachs in the first place? Is it some kind of evolutionary mistake that modern medicine is fortunately able to help correct? People, and children, need to make this intensely powerful stuff because that is what it takes to break down proteins into small enough bits that your blood can absorb, and use. Many children get stomach aches but there is always a reason. Physical reasons such as liver congestion, constipation or food intolerances or it can also be how your children are telling you that they are stressed. Try using Chamomile tea, one of the best herbs in the world for a sore stomach, If the Chamomile does not work a charm then you should find a good herbalist to help you if your child is regularly getting stomach aches. Even if it is not immediately obvious as to what it is happening it may still be possible to successfully treat the problem in a way that does no harm and simply helps the body to fix itself. Digestive herbs are a huge part of every herbalist’s daily work and have been used for thousands of years to help such things. |
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