Healing Childhood Ear Infections: Prevention, Home Care, and Alternative Treatment

My 4 year old daughter was diagnosed with reduced hearing 7 months ago; turned out she had fluid in both ears. The ENT (ears, nose, throat specialists) put her on antibiotics. Did nothing. Then we went away for a month and upon our return, we had her checked again. Fluid had decreased in 1 ear but was still strong in the other. ENT feared it would impact her learning (the decreased hearing) and lead to ear infections (they couldn't believe she hadn't had any, to my knowledge,since she was about 2). In the meantime, my 1.5 year old son also had 1 ear infection after the other, and when we returned from our trip he also was checked - fluid in both ears, plus a lingering infection they treated with antibiotics. They strongly urged me to get tubes in their ears. Our niece had them inserted and my sister as well as everyone else said it's no big deal, the worst part is seeing your child unconscious as it's general anaesthesia, but they bounce right back. I made the surgery appt and then my dad sent me an article from the Wall Street Journal citing studies that concluded the tube surgery is done way too often, and unnecessarily. Since this was coming from my very conservative dad, I thought I'd better question establishment. So I got this book, "Healing Childhood Ear Infections" by Dr. Schmidt. After 1 chapter I canceled the surgery. Instead, I got them into chiropractic care, removed dairy (cows milk) from their diets, and took them to a naturopath who put them on 3 supplements: minerals for their immune systems, and something to thin the mucous. Today I took my daughter to the ENT for a check-up (1 month after trying alternative treatments) and they were shocked - no more fluid, perfect hearing! You should have seen how proud she was when they told us. My son still remains to be checked, but knock on wood, has been infection-free since I started all this. The kids love the chiropractor - my son screams when his turn is over - and there are plenty of dairy alternatives out there (soy is also to be avoided or at least moderated but my son loves goats milk yoghurt). The supplements mix in with their juices so they don't even notice them. Anyway, I'm telling you this so that you question your own kids' treatments. According to this book, once a kid is on antibiotics it's very likely he'll develop another infection (ear) soon thereafter. In most countries, they're not even prescribed unless the baby is under 1 or has had a high fever (over 101) for 3 days. Plus, this book stated that most US children have a very nutrient-defficient diet and in particular lack minerals such as magnesium & zinc, which are very important for the immune system. Hopefully you can all benefit from this - and although I don't know which of my 3 forms of treatment did the trick with my daughter, I'm going to continue all 3. Thank goodness for this book, which gave me the tools and the courage to try safer alternatives.

This book reviews many different alternative medicines and therapies for healing ear infections. It covers the over all health and nutritional needs of children and how they relate to the healing process of ear infections. The homeopahtic information was a bit generic and left me needing more information on which medicines to choose from. Over all I found it to be a very good book.

By the time my son was 18 months old, he had had seven ear infections in the past six months and was scheduled to have surgery for tubes. My father suggested I research alternative medicine first, so I bought this book. What a wonderful source of information that most peditricians don't tell you. We tried a handful of rememdies recommended in this book, all with great success. It is now 9 months later and my son has only been diagnosed with one ear infection during this time, and to our surprise when we told the peditrician we didn't want to treat this ear infection with antibiotics, he agreed that it was best NOT to treat it, that his own immune system would fight it. And guess what? It did!

The authors maintain that boosting our immunity offers much better protection against illness than combatting each new virus or harmful bacteria strain. In an age where the effectiveness of antibiotics is quickly diminishing, the alternative approaches offered in this book make a lot of sense. Our family has already followed a few suggestions with positive results. Highly recommended.

This book is a must for any parent who is experiencing the endless rounds of doctor's visits and antibiotics to treat chronic ear infections. This book explains in layman's terms the reasons why traditional treatments for chronic ear infections don't work. Some doctors jump-the-gun and prescribe antibiotics when there is fluid in the ear, but not infection. This can harm rather than hurt the child and set them up for a lot of other problems down-the-road.