Workshop #7 Natural Health Care

[JessicaS]

Workshop #7 - Natural Healthcare.

Welcome to our sixth Natural Family Living discussion: Feeding the Family; First Foods, Healthy Eating for the Whole Family. This discussion will key in on Part 3 – Feeding the Family; First Foods, Healthy Eating for the Whole Family from Peggy O’Mara’s book Natural Family Living.

Some of the topics we'll discuss are;

Chapter 12 - Alternative Medicine and Family Health

• What is Alternative Medicine?
  • Basic Principals of Alternative Medicine
    • Alternative medicine emphasizes "self-healing"
    • Alternative medicine takes into account the whole person
    • Alternative medicine focuses on prevention
    • Alternative remedies are relatively gentle
  • Not Really "Alternative" After All
  • How proven are alternative therapies?
• Herbal Medicine
• Homeopathy
• Naturopathy
• Chiropractic
• Aromatherapy
• Bach Flower Remedies
• Bodywork
• Massage
• Reflexology
• Shiatsu
• Craniosacral Therapy
• Ayurveda
• Anthroposophy
• Humor and Faith

Finding an Alternative Practitioner

• Recommendations/Referrals
• Licensing and education Requirements
• Questions to ask
• Things to look for

Chapter 13 The Natural Approach to Common Infant and Childhood Ailments
Keeping Your Children Healthy

• Supplement with vitamins
• Echinacea
• Garlic
• Keep sweets and processed foods to a minimum
• Consider avoiding dairy
• Humidifiers
• Slow Down
• Give your child a massage
• Hydrotherapy
• Eucalyptus steam inhalation
• Foot compresses

Fever

• herbs
• Homeotherapy
• Light foods and Fluids
• Comfort

Earaches

• Allergy
• Nutritional Deficiency
• Mechanical Obstruction
• Herbs
• Aromatherapy
• Homeotherapy

Colds and Flu

• Herbs
• Aromatherapy
• Hydrotherapy

Coughs and Sore Throats

• Liquids
• Herbs
• Aromatherapy
• Homeotherapy

First Aid

• Arnica
• Tiger Balm
• Calendula
• Aloe Vera
• Lavender Oil
• Tea Tree Oil
• Chamomile
• St. John's Wort
• Witch Hazel
• Rescue Remedy
• Tummy Tincture

Living With Asthma

• Diet
• Supplements
• Massage
• Eucapnic or Buteyko breathing
• Herbs
• Homeopathy
• Acupuncture
• Preventative measures, avoiding triggers
• Other natural remedies
  • Yoga
  • Chiropractic
  • Shiatsu
  • Relaxation Techniques

Helping Your Child Cope With a Medical Experience

• Insist on staying with your child
• Reassure your child in an honest way
• Become your child's advocate
• Know whom to go to with a concern
• Do not neglect your other children

After a Hospitalization

• Spend time processing the experience
• Be prepared for little hurts to become a big deal
• Relish and Share Support
• Encourage Laughter, the best medicine

When to Call Dr
If your Ill Child

• Fever of 104 or fever accompanied by chills or excessive sweating
• Appears to be unusually weak, limp, apathetic or difficult to waken
• Complains of severe pain
• Has a bulging fontanel (soft spot) with a very strong pulse (a sign of meningitis). A healthy fontanel should not sink in or or protrude, and the pulse should be regular but not especially strong
• Has had diarrhea or vomiting for more than a day and appears dehydrated (signs of dehydration include loss of skin elasticity, going either hours without urinating, dry lips, sunken eyes or a sunken fontanel).
• Has problems with balance or coordination, or numbness in any area.
• Has difficulty breathing.
• Loses consciousness
• Has not improved after three days of home treatment
• Is under two months old

Chapter 14: What Makes a Healthy Family?

• Healthy Families start with love
  • Love Yourself
• Communication
• Respect. Healthy families respect one another.
• Time
• Spirituality or Morality
• Resilience

Sharing Family Responsibilities

• Articulate your reasons
• Tailor the chores to the child
• Make rules about Make-work
• Make allowances for allowances
• Enlist the help of your partners

Easing Up On Housework

• Involve your Children
• Create a cleaning schedule that works for your family
• Do a "clean sweep" several times a day
• Relax Your Standards
• Forget about spring cleaning
• Hire Help

What Makes an Unhealthy Family?
Family "Unfriendly" Policies

• Toward a more family-friendly workplace
• The transformation power of parenting

Please join us in discussion on Natural Health Care. We welcome everyone to share their personal experiences, what works for your family, your struggles and your ideas. This is an open dialog and we ask that everyone be respectful of others' opinions. Take what feels right to you and leave the rest behind. Please be respectful to all our members so that the workshop can be a place of meaningful and respectful discussion for all our members. If you have a favorite quote from Natural Family Living, please share it.

We would like to invite everyone to join us no matter where you are in your thinking or feelings. These discussions are meant to be nonjudgmental so please keep in mind when reading members' responses that this is a true discussion based on Natural Family Living and not a place to debate or criticize. For more ideas and information, please see our Health and Healing forum.

We’re excited to offer this workshop and hope it will give our members a glimpse into the grassroots of Mothering magazine and Natural Family Living.

This workshop will be facilitated by our moderators QueenoftheMeadow, AutumnBreeze and Mamaverdi. They are here to guide the discussion and keep it on topic. They will occasionally post references or ask questions to keep the conversation flowing. Please feel free to contact them at any time with questions, suggestions or concerns. Please keep in mind our workshop guidelines and current user agreement at all times.

We are compiling a Natural Family Living Resources Sticky which we will update with each workshop. Please feel free to refer to it for more information.

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Hey everyone! Welcome to the new workshop! I'm so excited to hear about how everyone else uses or doesn't use alternative health care for themselves and their families.

I tend to use herbs, diet, homeopathy and supplements to help support my family. I just finished making my first batch of cold and cough syrup for the family last week. I really like the idea of being knowledgeable and involved in my families healthcare. There is something very empowering about that.

[purplegirl]

I use acupuncture often. It helped me with a freaky ailment that my doctor wanted to use meds on. I also use herbs. I had an issue with High blood pressure. One week on this herb compound--Carditone and my pressure has been perfect.

[frontierpsych]

I'm looking forward to learning a few things from reading this workshop. We're under Tricare, and they don't always cover everything (they didn't cover my homebirth or my chiropractor) but now that I'm a mom I want to learn things I can do for my son now and in the future to care for him naturally.

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

When people ask me what alternative medicine is I usually say that it's like the ecology of the body. The understanding that every part of us, our emotional state, our physical state, our environment are intertwined. Although there certainly is a part of alternative medicine that is about treating a symptom, there is also a very large part of it that goes beyone that to treat the cause.

For example, if one of my children gets an ear infection, we don't use antibiotics, because a huge majority of ear infections are caused by viruses. We use garlic mullien ear drops to help with the pain and to fight the infection. That treats the symptoms. I also give my kids vitamin C and immune supporting herbs to help their bodies heal themselves. Now if they had reaccuring ear infections, I'd start looking for underlying causes, like food allergies and sensitivities, environmental allergies, whether they are sticking peas in their ears when I'm not looking. I'd start on a regular system of immune support.

We are also lucky to have been able to find a doctor who supports and is very knowledgeable about alternative health care. It is great to have a practioner that can guide you also. I think if you can find a provider who is willing work with you, that you are headed down the right path as well.

[Bellabaz]

I grew up in a home where we turned to natural healing methods first before going to teh conventional doc for meds. I had ear infections prety often as a kids and my mother always used garlic for them. I know of someone else's mother who used their urine for ear infections. We went to the chiropractor and took vitamin C and when we were sick we took teas/herbs for immune support. We were also never vaxed.
With my dd, the first place I stop when the doc dives me a rx for her is the natural food store. The two or so times she has had an ear infection I have used ear drops that contain garlic and tea tree oils. There was no way I was giving my one year old the adult dose of antibiotics taht the doc claimed were necessary! FOr myself and dp, we use teas and herbs to help us as well when we feel it is necessary. We also use diet to maintain and support healthy bodies.

I agree that it is empowering knowing your body and how to heal it without chemicals. I do believe that there are circumstances when conventional methods are necessary and beneficial but many times simple, natural remedies with little side effects are overlooked as ineffective in favor of the latest medications. I also find it frustrating that many modern docs do not even consider looking to these modalities for healing and are so quick to write a rx for you.

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Originally Posted by Bellabaz

I grew up in a home where we turned to natural healing methods first before going to teh conventional doc for meds. I had ear infections prety often as a kids and my mother always used garlic for them. I know of someone else's mother who used their urine for ear infections. We went to the chiropractor and took vitamin C and when we were sick we took teas/herbs for immune support. We were also never vaxed.
With my dd, the first place I stop when the doc dives me a rx for her is the natural food store. The two or so times she has had an ear infection I have used ear drops that contain garlic and tea tree oils. There was no way I was giving my one year old the adult dose of antibiotics taht the doc claimed were necessary! FOr myself and dp, we use teas and herbs to help us as well when we feel it is necessary. We also use diet to maintain and support healthy bodies.

I agree that it is empowering knowing your body and how to heal it without chemicals. I do believe that there are circumstances when conventional methods are necessary and beneficial but many times simple, natural remedies with little side effects are overlooked as ineffective in favor of the latest medications. I also find it frustrating that many modern docs do not even consider looking to these modalities for healing and are so quick to write a rx for you.

Yes, there is definately a time for modern medical treatment. And there are definatley times when both work together. I'd be dead without modern medical treatment. I had a bleed in my brain and went into status epiliepticus. Without antiseizure meds, I would have seized to death. But not that the trauma is over, three years ago, I have been able to half my meds by using them in conjunction with herbs and supplements. So that works well together.

[mamaverdi]

One of the things I love about natural healing methods is that they can work hand-in-hand with other necessary technocratic type treatments.

For example: when my dh tore his rotator cuff, we ended up healing it with a combination of strong pain meds (at the beginning), Physical Therapy exercises, an Osteopath who does hands-on osteopathy, and homeopathy. The Osteopath said she was shocked by the ease of healing: quickly and completely b/c of the homeopathy.


We had the same success with healing urinary tract infections in our basset hound: switching her to a raw diet and using herbs and homeopathy, she went from an infection every two weeks to none at all.

What do others do if they cannot find alternative health practioners in their area? This is something I regularly run into in TX.

[purplegirl]

Originally Posted by mamaverdi

One of the things I love about natural healing methods is that they can work hand-in-hand with other necessary technocratic type treatments.

For example: when my dh tore his rotator cuff, we ended up healing it with a combination of strong pain meds (at the beginning), Physical Therapy exercises, an Osteopath who does hands-on osteopathy, and homeopathy. The Osteopath said she was shocked by the ease of healing: quickly and completely b/c of the homeopathy.


We had the same success with healing urinary tract infections in our basset hound: switching her to a raw diet and using herbs and homeopathy, she went from an infection every two weeks to none at all.

What do others do if they cannot find alternative health practioners in their area? This is something I regularly run into in TX.

I struggle with having access to good alternative health practitioners here in Delaware. Fortunately, I am close enough to Philly and Baltimore that if I had to, I could easy find someone skilled in one of those cities. I rely on the internet, MDC and friends to help me find resources too. My local coop has been enormously helpful when I needed to find practitioners as well.

[wrkngMAMA]

The biggest problem I have with my ds's diet (vitamins, etc.) and natural care is his father (whom I am not with). He watches DS during the weekdays while I work. Maybe this should be on another post, but are there any resources that I can give him (he's not much of a reader) that would help explain to him the importance of consistency and the effectiveness of natural care? He can be irresponsible and lazy, but overall he exibits an interest in natural care that I hope I can get him to act more consistently on...

[Bellabaz]

What do others do if they cannot find alternative health practioners in their area? This is something I regularly run into in TX. [/QUOTE]

We have an herbalist that lives in the area but other than that the closest alternative practicioner is 2 hours away. We have a great store that sells natural body products, organic/health food/vitamins, bulk herbs, homeopathic remedies, etc. It like a big general store. The staff there are really knowledgable about many remedies and there are reference books available for customers to llok up different uses of various herbs/remedies/tonics. Its a really great resource for us. I also rely on others whom I know who turn to these modalities for healing because often they have tried something that worked or vice versa.

[sunanthem]

I went to school for massage where I learned about aromatherapy, cranio sacral, kinesiology, reiki and more. I use herbal treatments and e.o.'s in my home often. I have made my own natural first aid kit as well.

I would suggest for those looking for therapy near them, try to find a school. Like massage schools regularly give clinic days where you can get a one hour massage for $25 (sometimes with 2 students working on you!) Also, metaphysical bookstores or unitarian churches and the like often have healing circles which are free and open to the public; often you may be able to get a free reiki treatment. We also have acupuncture offices here that have monthly clinic days where they do treatments for a discount. I cant imagine it being hard to find practioners; there are so many resources on the web that list practiioners and where they are.

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Originally Posted by wrkngMAMA

The biggest problem I have with my ds's diet (vitamins, etc.) and natural care is his father (whom I am not with). He watches DS during the weekdays while I work. Maybe this should be on another post, but are there any resources that I can give him (he's not much of a reader) that would help explain to him the importance of consistency and the effectiveness of natural care? He can be irresponsible and lazy, but overall he exibits an interest in natural care that I hope I can get him to act more consistently on...

Hmm, that's a rough one. How old is your ds?

[Mab]

Originally Posted by QueenOfTheMeadow

I just finished making my first batch of cold and cough syrup for the family last week.

would you share how you make those syrups? i'm really interested. thanks!

[isisreturning]

i'm really interested in expanding my knowledge of natural healing methods. i fear i'm a bit late in developing this interest, but then again, i guess anytime is a good time to start.

my ds had chronic ear infections which we treated numerous times with antibiotics, then finally with ear tubes. the ear infection issue is resolved for him now, but i do suspect allergies based on frequent puffiness/redness under his eyes and certain patterns of cranky/contrary behavior (above and beyond what's usual and normal).

my dd was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in dec 07 and went through conventional medical treatment for it - including surgery, 6 rounds of high-dose chemo and 6 weeks of radiation. during treatment she was given tons of other medicines - very strong broad-spectrum antibiotics, anti-nausea meds, anti-reflux meds, narcotic pain meds, antihistamines, and so on. she stopped eating and was on I.V. nutrition for many months. today, she is 99% tube-fed, with regular similac formula. it anguishes me so much to consider all the vile stuff that's gone into her body. but, for the time being, she is "no evidence of disease" and we are thankful she is still alive. nonetheless, i know there is a lot more we could be doing to supplement her continued wellness and recovery - from the cancer but also from the devastating effects of the "treatment" she endured. i'd love any ideas, and i'd specifically appreciate ideas on:
*high-calorie, nutritionally dense alternatives to gross commercial dairy-based formula (she doesn't show signs of eating orally anytime soon and her stomach seems very sensitive to changes - she got diarrhea when i tried switching dairy-based formula brands)
*general immune support
*specific ideas about cancer prevention/cancer recovery

thanks all -

isis

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Originally Posted by Mab

would you share how you make those syrups? i'm really interested. thanks!

I need to find out what I did with my book of my most recent recipies! I know it's under a pile of paper somewhere around here. I have a bunch of herbal books and recipies that I have changed and adapted to what I need at the moment.

But basically, it has in it cherry bark (good for coughs), rosehips (high in vit C), elecampagne (good for respiratory immune support),elderberry's (immune support, ginger and cinnamon (both for flavor and antiviral and antibacterial properties). You put those in water, simmer for a couple of hours and then you can mix the same amount of honey, maple syrup, or vegetable glycerin with your strong tea. You can actually double the sweetener, but I did that and it was way to sweet to have alone. I ended up putting two TBLS in hot water and a squeeze of lemon. That was yummy and got more fluids into the boys during the last colds!

[QueenOfTheMeadow]

Originally Posted by isisreturning

i'm really interested in expanding my knowledge of natural healing methods. i fear i'm a bit late in developing this interest, but then again, i guess anytime is a good time to start.

my ds had chronic ear infections which we treated numerous times with antibiotics, then finally with ear tubes. the ear infection issue is resolved for him now, but i do suspect allergies based on frequent puffiness/redness under his eyes and certain patterns of cranky/contrary behavior (above and beyond what's usual and normal).

my dd was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer in dec 07 and went through conventional medical treatment for it - including surgery, 6 rounds of high-dose chemo and 6 weeks of radiation. during treatment she was given tons of other medicines - very strong broad-spectrum antibiotics, anti-nausea meds, anti-reflux meds, narcotic pain meds, antihistamines, and so on. she stopped eating and was on I.V. nutrition for many months. today, she is 99% tube-fed, with regular similac formula. it anguishes me so much to consider all the vile stuff that's gone into her body. but, for the time being, she is "no evidence of disease" and we are thankful she is still alive. nonetheless, i know there is a lot more we could be doing to supplement her continued wellness and recovery - from the cancer but also from the devastating effects of the "treatment" she endured. i'd love any ideas, and i'd specifically appreciate ideas on:
*high-calorie, nutritionally dense alternatives to gross commercial dairy-based formula (she doesn't show signs of eating orally anytime soon and her stomach seems very sensitive to changes - she got diarrhea when i tried switching dairy-based formula brands)
*general immune support
*specific ideas about cancer prevention/cancer recovery

thanks all -

isis

Wow! That must have been so hard. Modern medical treatments can be very harsh, but very important when you are in extreme situations like your dd was in.

I am so glad to hear that she seems to be doing well. Could you add probiotics (they come in powder and liquid) to your dd's feedings. That might start healing her digestive system and then go from there. Her system is probably very sensitive right now, so whatever you do, do it gently and slowly.

You could check on the special needs forum about different formulas there. There are a lot of families that are dealing with tube feeding. They may have some good ideas.

I know there is a book about natural treatments and healing from cancer, but I can't think of the name off the top of my head. I know that medicinal mushrooms can be very supportive for people who have had their immune system compormised from cancer treatments, but I really don't know a lot about it in terms of children.

I think this is the one I was thinking of.

http://www.amazon.com/Alternative-Me...4623182&sr=8-3

Have you looked into an naturopaths, homeopaths, etc in your area that may be able to help?

[lillyfire]

Originally Posted by sunanthem

I went to school for massage where I learned about aromatherapy, cranio sacral, kinesiology, reiki and more. I use herbal treatments and e.o.'s in my home often. I have made my own natural first aid kit as well.

What's in your natural first aid kit? It would be so nice to have some of the essentials on hand instead of always running out to pick them up.

[JessicaS]

Originally Posted by lillyfire

What's in your natural first aid kit? It would be so nice to have some of the essentials on hand instead of always running out to pick them up.

It is the list under "First Aid" in the OP.

[lauren]

I don't have a lot of time to post right now, but wanted to mention one of my favorite books for a quick reference:

http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Medicine.../dp/0895295458

For each ailment/sickness, it gives Conventional approaches, CHinese Medicine, HOmeopathy, Herbs. It also says what symptoms to look for that warrant getting urgent medical attention. I have used it with all 3 children. When I need something more in-depth I use it as a jumping off point to do further research.