Disclaimer for Shirley's Wellness Cafe

Holistic Pediatrics: Identifying Root Causes of Illness in Children

Holistic pediatrics promotes the use of natural options to treat ailments in infants and children. While the market is flooded with prescription and over-the-counter medications for children, the truth is that these medications treat the symptoms only. Holistic treatment however, means addressing the root causes of the most common and uncommon health problems that afflict infants and children.

Holistic Health
Healing Food
Immune System
Our Earth, Our Cure
Women
Holistic Pediatrics
Holistic Animal Wellness
Consumer Alert!
Detox for Optimum Health
Herbal Remedies
Homeopathic Remedies
Testimonials
Dangers of Routine Vaccinations
The Truth about Aids


Drug-free Wellness for Infants and Children

Children's Wellness and Holistic Pediatrics Education for ParentsThe study of holistic pediatrics can never be complete without telling parents about the causes of health problems in children and most importantly, what they can do to preempt the health issues.

Dr. Robert Mendelsohn MD urges parents to trust their own instincts when it comes to their child’s health and says that for minor illness, parents can often handle it better than a doctor could.

The current system of conventional health care can be enormously frustrating and lacking in real answers for children diagnosed with asthma, autism, multiple allergies, attention deficit disorder, recurring infections, or other chronic health problems. Visits to the doctor may result in drug prescriptions with which you may not feel comfortable. The medication may keep the symptoms in check, but what you really want is for your child to completely heal and reclaim health and vitality. Finding a holistic doctor can be important, but good health really begins home with breastfeeding, good nutrition, quality food, a non-toxic environment and natural remedies to strengthen immunity.

Treating Children's Allergies and Environmental Illness

Is this your child's world? In her breakthrough book, Is This Your Child's World?”, Dr. Rapp MD identifies the major symptoms of potentially unrecognized allergies in children and adults, suggesting possible sensitivities to foods or chemicals, and to dust, mold and pollen triggering asthma symptoms. Allergies are much more than high fever, and itchy skin. It is possible to identify allergies by simply looking at someone.

At times it is surprisingly easy to find and eliminate the cause. The typical clues of allergies and environmental illness can include any combination of the following: Rubbing Nose Upwards; Eye Wrinkles; Dark Eye Circles Sudden Aggression; Scarlet Earlobes A Spacey Look; Extreme Activity Changes Wiggly Legs; Red Cheeks A Mottled Tongue.

For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Doris Rapp, MD, has been treating children whose lives have been hampered sometimes critically by allergies and chemical sensitivities. Everyone knows about the role of allergies in problems such as asthma and hay fever , but very few people are aware of the staggering variety and extent of the illnesses triggered by allergic responses and sensitivities to substances of various kinds, natural and (increasingly) unnatural. Dr. Rapp knows, and has probably done more than any other person to make the general public more able to understand and cope with allergies of all kinds. She has stepped back for now from her incredibly demanding private practice, but is as active as ever in trying to spread understanding of and effective responses to allergies.

Doris Rapp offers a simple yet effective approach to handling "problem" children. She teaches shows parents how to identify the common foods, chemicals, or common allergic substances that could be the culprits that cause some children or adults to feel unwell or act inappropriately.

If your child is always sick, hyperactive, a slow learner, or cranky, the first question you should ask is not "What drug should be prescribed?" or "What have I done wrong as a parent?" Instead, find out the cause. Dr. Rapp gives sensible suggestions about how these reactions to foods and environmental factors can be recognized, prevented, and treated. With this information, many affected children should feel, act, behave, and learn better. If you can detect unsuspected environmental illness in your child--or yourself--you can change your lives so you're more content, happy, and free of illness.

Page Divider

Malnutrition Influence Children Behavioral Disorder

overweight eating at McDonalds In 1996, Laura J. Stevens, of the Department of Foods and Nutrition, Purdue University, and co-investigators published an extremely important paper in Physiology and Behavior. The researchers found that boys with lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids in their blood showed more problems with behavior, learning, and health than those with higher levels of total omega-3 fatty acids.

Conventional Drugs may impair immune function

Mark Stengler ND - "Conventional medicine seeks to reduce this inflammation by using anti-inflammatory medications, or use pharmaceutical inhalants to temporarily dilate the passageway. There are two limitations to this approach. Firstly, every drug has the risk of side effects. Secondly, the drug approach does not offer a long term solution. In my opinion, there are natural approaches that work to treat the cause of asthma and offer long term success."

Public Health Advisory for Antidepressants

FDA Issues Public Health Advisory on Cautions for Use of Antidepressants in Adults and Children.

Depressed child needs homeopathy There are literally tens of millions of American men, women and children that suffer from some level of emotional disturbance. Although day-to-day stress can be considered a precipitating factor, there are multiple studies in the medical literature indicating that proper nutrition is critical to maintaining emotional health. Stress, anxiety, tension and depression are intimately connected with most illness.

The Food and Drug Administration today issued a Public Health Advisory that provides further cautions to physicians, their patients, and families and caregivers of patients about the need to closely monitor both adults and children with depression. The drugs under review include bupropion, citalopram, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, mirtazapine, nefazodone, paroxetine, sertraline, escitalopram and venlafaxine. It should be noted that the only drug that has received approval for use in children with major depressive disorder is fluoxetine (Prozac).

According to the first comprehensive scientific review to include all available studies, including negative data that have long been withheld from public scrutiny by the pharmaceutical industry, four popular antidepressants being used to treat thousands of depressed American children are unsafe, ineffective or both. Those antidepressants are: Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Celexa.

This is damning evidence of the drug companies' patent disregard for the safety of humans and focus on profits. GlaxoSmithKline was found to be concealing evidence that shows that these drugs do not benefit children in any way and only increase their risk of killing themselves. This was confirmed in an article in the Canadian Medical Journal. Drug companies do the research and learn that the drugs don't work, yet are willing to sell and market them to children even when it is clear that they are causing many children to commit suicide.

Why Children and Teens Should Stay Away From Cell Phones

While years ago scientists were dismissive of any risks associated with cell phone use, the accumulated amounts of studies showing health risks for long-term users now paint an entirely different picture. In addition to the Toronto Department of Health advisory, the U.K., Belgium, Germany, France and Russia have already introduced precautionary policies regarding cell phone usage due to potential health risks. For example, one Swedish review of 11 studies found that using your cell phone for 10 years or longer will double your risk of getting a tumor on a nerve connecting your ear to your brain (acoustic neuroma). And because children have thinner skulls than adults, and their nervous systems are still developing, children are particularly vulnerable to this type of tumor and should not use cell phones at all.

Page Divider

Dealing with the fever Naturally

A fever is a helpful and necessary part of the process of healing in a childhood illness, in any illness for that matter. During a fever the healing reactions of the body are speeded up; the heart beats faster, carrying the blood more quickly to all the organs; respiration is quicker, increasing oxygen intake: and perspiration increases, helping the body to cool down naturally.

How to raise healthy children

A high temperature generally indicates that the body's defense mechanism is fighting an infection and temperature variations indicate how it is coping. Attempts to suppress or control a fever artificially with Tylenol, or even with homeopathic remedies, are likely to confuse the body’s natural efforts to heal itself.

Very high fevers - those above 106°F (41°C) - can harm the heart and brain. Some authorities, however, say that fever is unlikely to cause brain damage in a previously healthy child. During most infections, the brain keeps body temperature at or below 104°F (40°C). So in most - not all - cases, you don't need to be afraid that your child's temperature is going to continue to rise above that point.

Fever in Children may be beneficial

It may help parents to remember that fever is only one part of the picture of an illness. In fact, for children under eight years of age, and especially for infants, the severity of a fever is an unreliable indicator of the severity of the child's illness. For example, infants and toddlers can be very sick with a low or even subnormal temperature. Conversely, children three to eight years old can be running about quite cheerfully with a fairly impressive fever.

Fever increases the amount of interferon (a natural antiviral and anticancer substance) in the blood. A mild fever also increases the white blood cells that kill cells infected with viruses, fungi, and cancer, and improves the ability of certain white blood cells to destroy bacteria and infected cells. Fever also impairs the replication of many bacteria and viruses.

Need help? A moderate fever is a friend, but not one you want to spend a lot of time with. So it makes sense to avoid suppressing moderate fevers with drugs, while continuing to monitor your child for dramatic increases in temperature and worsening of any other of his symptoms.

Conventional doctors have been taught to treat every symptom that comes to their attention. For instance, medication is often prescribed to reduce childhood fever. Yet fever is the body's mechanism for destroying viruses and bacteria. "If we do no more than take the edge off the fever to make the child comfortable," says Dr. Smith, "we may be prolonging the illness."

According to Dr. Moskowitz, producing a fever is one of the signs of a healthy child. The remedies Dr.Moskowitz recommends do not take away fever, but rather help the immnue system to finish it's job of healing. These remedies may include Aconite, Belladonna, Ferrum Phosphate, Gelsemium, Pulsatilla and Bryonia.

Dr. Sodhi also considers a fever below 102 F to be beneficial in a child, and he does not like to give children medication such as aspirin or tylenol for it. He does recommend a light, nutritious diet, and cold sponging or homeopathic remedies such as Belladona, Aconite and Sulfur.

According to Dr. Ni, traditional Chinese medicine treats a fever by inducing sweating and treating the accompanying infection. A hot bath can be used to induce a fever.

David Hoffman believes that a fever may be beneficial in a young child, and that a low-grade fever does not need to be reduced. The child should be given a lot of support and comfort along with plenty of fluids. Herbal teas such as peppermint, elder flower and even yarrow will help the body cope with the fever, but will not suppress it the way aspirin does.

Page Divider
The ChildThe Child's Common Cold

Boost your child's immune systemBecause your child's immune system is in the process of developing, it is not unusual for a child to seem to catch a cold week after week. As your child grows, her immune defenses evolve from an uncoordinated series of safeguards to an intricate set of responses designed to defend the body against foreign substances. In the meantime, boosting your child's immune system with diet and herbs can lessen the frequency of illness.

An Encyclopedia of Natural Healing for Children and Infants user-friendly volume by one of the most highly trained medical herbalists in America has all the information parents need to safeguard and improve the health of their babies and children with proper diet, supplementation and herbs. Particular emphasis is placed on strengthening the young immune system, with chapters on managing allergies and avoiding the damaging overuse of antibiotics. The heart of the book features an A-to-Z compilation of more than 50 common childhood complaints from colic and cradle cap to warts and whooping cough, with remedies for easing discomfort and healing from the inside out.

Page Divider

Children with Cancer

In memory of our son, Alexander Horwin On August 10, 1998 at age two, our son Alexander Horwin was diagnosed with the most common pediatric brain tumor, medulloblastoma. After Alexander endured two brain surgeries, my husband and I located the best non-toxic therapy that had proven successful in treating brain cancer.

However, on September 21, 1998, the FDA denied Alexander access to this potentially life-saving treatment. The oncologists told us that without their "state-of-the-art" chemotherapy, the cancer would soon return. We knew nothing of the history, efficacy and actual danger of chemotherapy but instinctively knew it was a poor choice for therapy. Alexander completed his third month of chemotherapy in December 1998 and died on January 31, 1999. He was just two and a half years old.

Judges can constitutionally order controversial drugs to be given to a child over the opposition of his parents. Parents are medicating their children for fear of having them hauled away by Child Protective Services.

Related: Mom saved her 4 year old daughter from Childhood Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia with natural diet and natural supplement that boosts the immune system

Questioning Chemotherapy

Questioning children chemotherapy The "state-of-the-art" chemo protocol that the oncologists had administered to our son had proven its ineffectiveness in pediatric brain tumors many years before. In fact, in 1994, the exact same chemo drugs Alexander received in 1998 had been administered to children the same age with the same brain tumor (medulloblastoma) as Alexander. This experiment proved so unsuccessful that tumors spread within five months and the oncologists terminated the protocol. It was incredible to us to discover that chemotherapy that had already proven so ineffective that it required termination was being presented to parents as "state of the art" years later.

We were never informed about the failure of this therapy. We also discovered that we weren't the only parents being purposefully misinformed. Today, parents are still being misled and children with brain cancer are still getting these same toxic drugs that have proven their ineffectiveness in the past. But even if you are informed that orthodox therapy does not work you still may not have a choice. When we hesitated to bring Alexander in for chemo the oncologists were already gearing up to take him from us by court order. Learn more: read about the Horwin's story and their journey into research.

Page Divider

Breaking the Antibiotic Habit

Kids on Antibiotics and an 
obsession to sterilize our environments have resulted in sick children Lack of healthy bacteria in the intestines caused by antibiotics creates an environment in which pieces of partially digested proteins are able to penetrate the barrier of the intestinal lining.

When these abnormal proteins enter the blood the body properly reacts to them as foreign substances. The foreign proteins cause an antigen antibody reaction producing symptoms and setting the stage for a possible auto-immune illness to develop. Allergies can also appear along with impaired absorption of nutrients which may lead to poor health."

In a clinical study, a pediatrician reports an 84% reduction in antibiotic use when children used an Immune Booster natural immune enhancing substances. "Excessive antibiotics in children almost certainly stops normal maturation of a healthy immune system. - James Howenstine, MD.

"Antibiotics and ear tubes treat symptoms of a problem. They do not strengthen the organism so that it can fight the infection itself, nor do they make the organism less resistant to future infection."

Drug resistant bacteria

After 40 years of pushing antibiotics for any ailment, physicians are now confronting bacteria that have built defenses against those same drugs. Some infectious bacteria that were once treatable are stronger and often deadly. The reappearance of highly infectious bacteria is caused in part by the overuse and misuse of antibiotics, but the resilience of bacteria also stems from the ingenious biochemistry of the microorganisms themselves. To survive, microorganisms and fungi mutate into resistant strains.

Most Ear Infections Clear Up Without Antibiotics

Treat Ear and Respiratory Infections Without Antibiotics A newly released report from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) suggests that children may not always need antibiotics to treat a middle ear infection (otitis media).

Taking Out Adenoids Does NOT Help Ear Infections - Conclusions from a study showed that removal of the adenoids, often associated with swollen tonsils, as the first surgical treatment with children the ages of 10 to 24 months with recurrent middle ear infections, was not effective in preventing further episodes. British Medical Journal February 28, 2004; 328:487 (Free Full-Text Article)

Think twice before giving Steroids to your children. New research shows that permanent damage is immediate and devastating. Studies show that steroids cause permanent, debilitating effects after a single dosage. 'Steroids are probably the most sleazy of modern day medications,' says John Mills, former professor of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco and chief of infectious diseases at San Francisco General Hospital.

According to a Harvard study, Americans now pay more visits to alternative practitioners in a year than they do to primary care physicians.... They're spending $250 million a year on homeopathic remedies, and close to $4 billion on nutritional supplements.... But is this stuff safe for kids?" Yes, claim physicians Ditchek and Greenfield, practitioners of "integrative pediatrics" There is a lot you can do, inexpensively at home, to improve your children's health.

Page Divider

Contaminants In Childhood Vaccines

What your doctor may not tell you about children's vaccinations "Ever since mass vaccination of infants began, reports of serious brain, cardiovascular, metabolic and other injuries started filling pages of medical journals. In fact, pertussis vaccine has been used to induce encephalomyelitis, which is characterized by brain swelling and hemorrhaging" - Viera Scheibner, PhD

Bart Classen, a Maryland physician, published data showing that diabetes rates rose significantly in New Zealand following a massive hepatitis B vaccine campaign in young children, and that diabetes rates also went up sharply in Finland after three new childhood vaccines were introduced.

The FDA admits that the 12,000 reports it receives annually on pharmacologic side effects from vaccines represent only a fraction of what actually occurs. Congressman is calling for criminal penalties for any government agency that knew about the dangers of thimerosal in vaccines and did nothing to protect American children.

Congressman Dan Burton (R-Indiana) during Congressional Hearing: "You mean to tell me that since 1929, we've been using Thimerosal, and the only test that you know of is from 1929, and every one of those people had mennigitis, and they all died?" For nearly an hour, Burton repeatedly asked FDA and CDC officials what they knew and when they knew it. (Thimerosal contains a related mercury compound called ethyl mercury. Mercury is a toxic metal that can cause immune, sensory, neurological, motor, and behavioral dysfunctions.)

Do your children use sugar free products?

H. J. Roberts, M.D.: "I have observed severe intellectual deterioration associated with the use of aspartame products (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/Canderal/Benevia, etc.) It was usually manifest as great difficulty in reading and writing, obvious problems with memory and grossly impaired orientation to time, place and person."

James Bowen, M.D. told the FDA years ago "Every known metabolite of aspartame is of marked or questionable toxicity and patently unsafe for human use." In Aspartame Murders Infants he said: "At every point in the fertility process aspartame (NutraSweet/Equal/Spoonful/Canderal/Benevia, etc.) destroys. ....It ruins female sexual response and induces male sexual dysfunction. Beyond this, aspartame disrupts fetal development by aborting it or inducing defects. And if a live child is born aspartame may have heinously damaged the DNA of the baby cursing future generation." See his paper on Sperm Warfare. We are now taking case histories for class action on aspartame starting with seizures, brain tumors, eye deterioration and blindness, etc.

Infant Circumcision Shown to be Painful

circumcision exposed Studies have shown that circumcision, is far from being a harmless and painless procedure, is one of the most painful procedures that can be performed on an infant and has potentially far-reaching detrimental physical and psychological consequences.

Children at Risk for Dental Fluorisis

Have you seen children and young adults among your family and friends with those whitish spots or flecks on their teeth or, in more extreme cases, dark streaks that look like decay? This is the effect of dental fluorosis, the first visible sign of overexposure to fluoride. In some communities, the incidence of dental fluorosis is 30 to 60 percent or more. Fluoride ingestion from mouth rinses and dentifrices in children is extremely hazardous to biological development, life span and general health. Research from China has shown a correlation between exposure to low doses of fluoride and diminished IQ in children.

Research is beginning to show that the cavity-fighting power of fluoride may have been overstated. Recent studies in the Journal of Dental Research conclude that tooth decay rates in Western Europe, which is 98 percent unfluoridated, have declined as much as they have in the United States in recent decades. Indeed, it's only in the United States that fluoride is championed by the government.

Most European nations -- including Germany, France, Sweden and Holland -- prohibit fluoride on public health grounds.