PARENTS BELIEVE IN NEEDLING THE BABY HELPED BY ACUPUNCTURE, THEY TRUST IT FOR THEIR KIDS.Byline: BARBARA CORREA Staff Writer While most moms and dads cringe watching their baby get an inoculation inoculation, in medicine, introduction of a preparation into the tissues or fluids of the body for the purpose of preventing or curing certain diseases. The preparation is usually a weakened culture of the agent causing the disease, as in vaccination against or a shot of antibiotics, other parents have embraced the use of needles to treat everything from their infant's colic colic, intense pain caused by spasmodic contractions of one of the hollow organs, e.g., the stomach, intestine, gall bladder, ureter, or oviduct. The cause of colic is irritation and/or obstruction, and the irritant and/or obstruction may be a stone (as in the gall to their toddler's chronic ear infections. They swear by alternative practices such as massage, herbs and acupuncture, in which ultra-thin needles are inserted at specific points to treat maladies and pain. A frustrated Colleen Kelly of Playa playa or pan or flat or dry lake Flat-bottomed depression that is periodically covered by water. Playas occur in interior desert basins and adjacent to coasts in arid and semiarid regions. del Rey Del Rey may refer to:
"I was at my wit's end," Kelly recalled. "Maeve had been on two courses of antibiotics. It had been going on for months, and everyone had it. "(The practitioner) did baby cupping and acupuncture and herbs, and in a day it was gone. I thought it might help, but I didn't expect it to get better." Mothers have long used home remedies to soothe common ailments. But as children of 1960s-era parents become parents themselves, they are more skeptical of traditional medicine and more accepting of alternative practices to treat health problems for themselves and their kids. When Mohammed Jafer Gulam-Hussain, a sixth-generation healer from India, prescribed homeopathic Homeopathic A holistic and natural approach to healthcare. Mentioned in: Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome homeopathic, adj cell salts to cure 18-month-old Noor Amery's chronic ear infections, her mother, Nadia, did not object. The toddler had developed nausea and diarrhea because all the "good" intestinal bacteria had been destroyed by all the antibiotics she'd taken. Dissolved in a drink, the salts worked, Amery said, and Noor's ear infections disappeared. "These are the best-kept secrets in medicine," said the Calabasas mother. "She has never since gotten an ear infection, and they have cut her colds by a third. They used to last for 10 days, and now it's a few days." Crystal Chen, a Westchester mother with a doctorate in environmental science and engineering, didn't give it a second thought when her naturopath naturopath a practitioner of naturopathy. naturopath A person who practices naturopathy, a drugless system of therapy using physical forces–eg, heat, water, light, air and massage suggested acupuncture to help ease 1-year-old son Milo's painful bouts of gas. "I've been doing acupuncture for a long time, so I really wasn't concerned," she said. Actually, inserting needles into babies is much easier than treating older children or adults, said Naomi Richman, founder of Bee Well Kidz, a pediatric pediatric /pe·di·at·ric/ (pe?de-at´rik) pertaining to the health of children. pe·di·at·ric adj. Of or relating to pediatrics. practice near the University of California, Los Angeles UCLA comprises the College of Letters and Science (the primary undergraduate college), seven professional schools, and five professional Health Science schools. Since 2001, UCLA has enrolled over 33,000 total students, and that number is steadily rising. , that uses natural and homeopathic therapies, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, among other remedies. "Infants are infinitely easier. There's no needle retention, because they are so pure that they get enough stimulation with the insertion." Heather Cabot Khemlani, whose 18-month-old son is one of Richman's patients, said pain was not an issue. "She's done acupuncture on him, but he literally didn't even know," Khemlani said. "I was afraid he was going to freak out freak out Substance abuse A verb, popularized in the US in the '60s–to experience nightmarish hallucinations including by LSD or a similar drug. See 'Bad trip.', Flashback. , and he didn't even notice." In addition to some occasional acupuncture, little Ian Khemlani gets massage therapy Massage Therapy Definition Massage therapy is the scientific manipulation of the soft tissues of the body for the purpose of normalizing those tissues and consists of manual techniques that include applying fixed or movable pressure, holding, and/or to relieve a stiff neck that he was born with because his twin was crunching him in the womb. While baby acupuncture, massage and Chinese herbs for tots may go down as normal in much of California, the use of alternative medicine in pediatrics has plenty of local skeptics, too. Dr. Wallace Sampson, a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University and editor in chief of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, calls alternative medicine "a concoction and a combination of good salesmanship, lawyering, lobbying and propaganda." He discounts Chinese herbs and acupuncture as simply a placebo. "It's what I call the Junipero Serra effect," he said. "A cloistered nun had an autoimmune disease autoimmune disease, any of a number of abnormal conditions caused when the body produces antibodies to its own substances. In rheumatoid arthritis, a group of antibody molecules called collectively RF, or rheumatoid factor, is complexed to the individual's own gamma , and it was treated with a number of drugs. Then she prayed to four different saints for a month. After four or five months, she started praying to Serra, and she got better. Whoever does the last therapy gets the credit." Parents have doubts, too. For every mother or father lining up to give their child Chinese herbs, there are many more who have major concerns about safety and insurance coverage. Chen said she has tried unsuccessfully to persuade several of her friends to try alternative medicine, rather than the surgical insertion of drainage tubes, for their kids' chronic ear infections. "Mainstream moms are just like, 'I'm going to follow what the doctor has to order,'" she said. "I think that we as a society tend to put our faith 100 percent in doctors because that's how we grew up, and we don't look for second or third opinions. It's also a matter of: 'How much time do I have to devote to this problem?"' Richman said that when she mentions acupuncture or herbs to mothers who bring their children into the Bee Well Kidz clinic, some say they need to check with their husbands first. "They never come back," said Richman. Despite the skeptics, the medical establishment has become much more open to the nontraditional methods. Last year, the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics The American Academy of Pediatrics ("AAP") is an organization of pediatricians, physicians trained to deal with the medical care of infants, children, and adolescents. Its motto is: "Dedicated to the Health of All Children. formed a new section on alternative care. "The scene is changing," said Dr. Richard Walls, a California chapter member who serves on a national steering committee for complementary alternative medicine. He said certain areas of alternative medicine are being embraced more easily than others. For instance, there is solid information showing that self-hypnosis is extremely effective in pediatrics, and research is finding that kids with chronic ear infections might be better off taking probiotics Probiotics Bacteria that are beneficial to a person's health, either through protecting the body against pathogenic bacteria or assisting in recovery from an illness. Mentioned in: Colonic Irrigation, Dysentery, Gastroenteritis -- bacteria introduced into the system to heal -- instead of antibiotics, which kill bacteria. On the other hand, skepticism among pediatricians about chiropractic chiropractic (kīrəprăk`tĭk) [Gr.,=doing by hand], medical practice based on the theory that all disease results from a disruption of the functions of the nerves. is still strong, he said, and there is widespread concern over the lack of regulation of herbal remedies. The biggest barrier to the integration of alternative medicine into a Western society, he said, is that most physicians just aren't trained in these areas, so they don't feel qualified to answer patients' questions about biofeedback biofeedback, method for learning to increase one's ability to control biological responses, such as blood pressure, muscle tension, and heart rate. Sophisticated instruments are often used to measure physiological responses and make them apparent to the patient, who or homeopathy homeopathy (hōmēŏp`əthē), system of medicine whose fundamental principle is the law of similars—that like is cured by like. , for example. "It is certainly a changing field," Walls said, but "it takes time to turn that iceberg." barbara.correa(at)dailynews.com (818) 713-3662 CAPTION(S): 2 photos Photo: (1 -- color) Ian Khemlani, 18 months, gets acupuncture from Naomi Richman at Bee Well Kidz Clinic, a pediatric practice in West Los Angeles
(2) While getting a head and neck massage from Naomi Richman at Bee Well Kidz Clinic in West Los Angeles, 18-month-old patient Ian Khemlani has a snack while cuddling with Elmo. Tina Burch/Staff Photographer |
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