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#92 Ear Infections

4/15/2014

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            The scourge of childhood, the ear infection.  It is a rare baby indeed that does not have an incident or two of this nightmare condition in which your baby is crying with inconsolable pain and you feel helpless to do anything other than to hug and hold and wonder what to do.  Complicating matters further, often the pain begins in the middle of the night making it even more difficult for every party involved.  In this article I will explain what an ear infection is and what your treatment options are. 

            Technically, there are several different types of ear infection depending upon which part of the ear is involved, but the one we are discussing here is otitis media, middle ear infection.  The middle ear is a chamber just on the other side of the ear drum.  The entire purpose of this chamber is to house the three tiniest bones in your body, called the hammer, anvil, and stirrup.  And the purpose of these three bones is that they connect the eardrum (tympanic membrane) to another very similar membrane in the cochlea (inner ear) where the sound waves are translated into a nerve signal for your brain.  Back to the chamber…this chamber actually has a small tube that connects it to the back of the throat called the Eustachian tube.  And the whole purpose of the Eustachian tube is to drain fluid from the middle ear chamber and to maintain the pressure in this chamber (when you pop your ears while flying/driving to a higher or lower elevation you are using this Eustachian tube to equalize the pressure in the middle ear chamber). 

            You have the anatomy.  Now the physiology.  Anybody’s Eustachian tube can get blocked off for any number of reasons, it’s just that in kids the Eustachian tube is shorter and more horizontal, making it more prone to clogging than when they get older.  But when it gets clogged then fluid, which is being made constantly by the mucus membranes inside the head and middle ear chamber, begins to build up in the chamber.  If the tube never opens then the fluid keeps building up and up and up until the chamber is full.  This can hurt incredibly and will impair hearing.  But remember that bacteria are a constant part of our life and grow everywhere in our body.  The bacteria in the middle ear chamber love this warm moist environment and grow very quickly.  Pretty soon, not only is there fluid in the ear, but the middle ear becomes infected.  There are grades of infection so not all ear infections are alike.  And due to pain thresholds some patients will experience severe pain, while others, like my daughter, can have their eardrum rupture from internal pressure without any pain at all.

            To fix an ear infection is simple, just get the Eustachian tube to open up so the junk can drain.  In medicine there are three tools for this.  The first, most common and least effective is antibiotics.  This just kills the bacteria without addressing the real cause, leading in most cases to re-infection.  The second is antihistamines and anti-inflammatory medication, but these methods are only mildly effective and subject to some nasty side-effects.  The last is ear tubes to bypass the Eustachian tubes altogether, but there are risks to any surgery and lots of side-effects as well. 

            But there is a simple chiropractic adjustment that quickly and painlessly opens the Eustachian tubes.  It is safe and very effective.  It was taught to me by Joan Fallon, D.C. when I attended the ICA diplomate program on chiropractic pediatrics over 20 years ago.  Dr. Fallon published findings that showed the procedure was effective in correcting 114 out of 116 clinical cases of otitis media.  I have done this hundreds of times very successfully.  If you want more information on this technique please just ask me.  I love helping kids.

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    Dr. Rick

    After writing an article per week for a year, I just kept going.  These are most of my collection.  They are written with my existing patients in mind, so some stuff may seem odd or unusual, but would make perfect sense to those who know chiropractic and who know me.  Enjoy and share!

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What Our Patients Have To Say

Yolanda wrote:
     
     I used to suffer severe headaches and migraines on a daily basis, usually all day.  I managed to work in an office because I had to.  When I went home at the end of the day I would often close the shades and go to bed.  I could not plan weekend events because I simply never knew how I was going to feel tomorrow.  If there were a special event such as a birthday or wedding, I would begin to medicate myself two weeks in advance to give myself the best chance of making the event.
     Friends and fellow church-goers had been trying to get me to see Dr. Rick for some time before I finally gave in.  Looking back, I don’t know why I waited.  Within a month, I was headache free.  I couldn’t remember what it was like to not feel pain.  I could do whatever I wanted and not live in fear of the headache.  This was a miracle for me, but the story does not end here.
     An opportunity came up for us to adopt a newborn baby girl not long after I began chiropractic care.  This baby was particularly important to me and my husband because her mother is a relative.  Tragically, her mother was also a drug user and did drugs during her pregnancy.  If we could not adopt the baby she would have been put into the foster system since the biological mother was incapable of raising her.
     To keep a long story short, we did adopt her and she is doing fantastically.  There is no sign of any effect of the drugs on her as of yet, and with God’s help, there never will be.  We think that is because of the vast amounts of love and attention she gets from us, her real mommy and daddy.
     What does this have to do with chiropractic?  The reality is that without chiropractic, I would still be nearly an invalid with headaches.  I COULD NOT HAVE TAKEN CARE OF AN INFANT OR RAISED A YOUNG CHILD.  THEREFORE, SHE WOULD NOT HAVE ANY OF THE OPPORTUNITIES IN LIFE THAT MY HUSBAND AND I WILL BE ABLE TO PROVIDE FOR HER.  MY DAUGHTER’S LIFE IS POSSIBLE BECAUSE SOMEBODY MADE ME GO TO A CHIROPRACTOR. 
     You need to tell everyone you know what you know about chiropractic.  Who knows who’s life you will change too.
Andrew's mother, Barbara, wrote:

     Hello, My name is Andrew and I am a happy, healthy one year old.  But I wasn’t so happy or healthy when I first met Dr. Rick a few months ago.  I had been having problems with my ears for four months, I couldn’t sleep at night and I was miserable.  We’d been to the doctor lots of times but nothing was helping.  In fact, all the medicines the doctor had tried seemed to make me worse instead of better!  Both the regular doctor and the Ear-Nose and Throat doctor said that if the antibiotics didn’t work, then they’d just have to put tubes in.  Now my Mom and dad weren’t about to let them do surgery on me, especially since they had been reading and learned that tubes can cause more problems than they solve.  My mom and dad did a lot of praying.  Then my mom heard that sometimes babies who have a traumatic birth like mine have ear trouble.  You see when I was born they used a vacuum extractor and forceps to pull me out.  I guess all that yanking on my head, hurt my neck.  She also heard that chiropractic care can be the answer.  Now she was skeptical because she couldn’t imagine a chiropractor helping ear infections!?!  But at that point she was willing to try anything!!  Happily, a few weeks of adjustments and my ears were all cleared up.  In addition, I no longer had a stiff neck or shoulders and my whole personality was happier.  I have to tell all babies who have ear troubles, don’t let them give you tubes until you at least try chiropractic care first.  After all, it can’t hurt and if you’re like me, you could be perfectly well with no drugs and no surgery.  In my family, we thank God for Dr. Rick, because I feel better, my mom and dad are happier and sometimes, I even sleep through the night.