FaceBook Post by Dr. Palevsky



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/8241625/Giving-antibiotics-to-babies-could-increase-asthma-risk.html

We are way overzealous in prescribing antibiotics to infants and children. Most children receive antibiotics early on in life for a diagnosis of an ear infection, which rarely needs antibiotic treatment. These diagnoses are not really infections, and neither are most of the cold and cough symptoms that children develop early on for which they receive many antibiotics. (These develop usually in reaction to dietary and lifestyle choices made for children at an early age that don't serve them - cow milk products, soy, sugar, flour products, cereals, lots of fruit, overfeeding, overscheduling, overstimulating, injection of poisons through vaccines). The literature from the past 20 years shows that the signs and symptoms that children get when they have a cold, (painful ear, fever, fluid in their ears, red ear drum) are merely evidence of inflammation in their ear canals, adenoids, sinuses and noses, and NOT necessarily infections. Children and adults always have bacteria in their ear canals, which play a role in keeping our bodies strong and protected. The bacteria don't just appear magically when an infant or child gets a cold or fever. In fact, despite multiple study reviews showing that antibiotics are not needed for ear infections, http://children.webmd.com/news/20101115/ear-infections-antibiotics-often-not-needed  and despite recommendations from the AAP (American Academy of Pediatrics) and AAFP (American Association of Family Practitioners) for physicians to minimize the use of antibiotics and ear symptoms in children, most children are still getting antibiotics from physicians to treat their upper respiratory symptoms, and supposed "ear infections." Part of this is due to parent's demands to be given some form of treatment before leaving the office, and part of this is due to the fact that physicians don't have sufficient time to spend explaining to parents what might be going on, or they don't have the education to know other means to treat the children's symptoms. http://www.drpalevsky.com/mediacenter/Alt_to_Ear_Pain.pdf
Children develop upper respiratory symptoms to remove the accumulation of wastes that have made their way into their bodies due to the dietary, medical, and lifestyle choices that are made for them. We need to be more respectful about the colonies of bacteria that inhabit the linings of our children's bodies (and our bodies), and more mindful about the environments in which we feed them and raise them. These bacteria are responsible for protecting our children from the effects of harmful environmental exposures - on the skin, airway and intestines. If we wipe them out with consistent exposure to antibiotics, or threaten the integrity of the important colonies that are vital to early immune development, we diminish their immune system's strength to be able to withstand living in their own environments. After all, that's what allergies and asthma are a result of; the body's learned inability to live safely in response its own environment.