Homeopathy & Chiropractic for babies

That's the scary non-science right there, bridgy: any claim that "subluxations" cause problems in other bodily systems like digestion is woo-freaking-woo. Claiming that babies are thrown out of 'alignment' during birth - well, they're full of cartilage at birth, so how does that make sense? Babies have how many bones that have yet to fuse together?

There are risks with chiropractic manipulation even for adults. Adjusting a baby's jellylike skeleton sounds even more dangerous to me.
 
Babies LOVE to be held and cuddled and warm and comfy. So nice warm baths and a gentle warm towelling are great for them. So is gentle stroking and quite possibly light massage. NOT for any physical benefit, but for the comfort it gives.

I would steer a long way clear of any "manipulation" of bones for babies, especially chiropractic. It is complete and utter bullsh!t that it is bad that their bones get misaligned during birth. It is in fact very good - it allows the child to be born more easily without breaking bones, especially those of the skull. That's why the have a soft spot on the head - where the skull bones have not knitted. But this condition will rectify itself perfectly naturally as the child grows, and without the need for "manipulation" - kids are rubber balls on springs anyway!

And there is no such thing as "subluxations" in a chiropractic sense. It's a complete and utter myth - really! If anyone's spine was sufficiently disrupted as to be "misaligned", massage would be the measure least likely process to help - bone surgery just might though... :eek:

Plenty of details of chiropractic here: www.quackwatch.com
 
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bridgy said:
OK, I have now managed to find some more info on the Chiropractic explanation of why it works. I can't post the link yet but it's at colichelp.com/colicandchiropractic. if you add the 3 w's at the start and put HTML at the end after the full stop. Anyway, it states:

"As your child is being born, the neck and back vertebrae can go out of alignment due to the stretching and compressing of the body as it emerges into the world. If your delivery included a prolonged pushing stage, forceps or vacuum extraction, or other form of assisted delivery, the chances of a misalignment are great.

If the misalignments, called vertebral subluxations, are big enough, the functioning of major systems in the body can be compromised. The digestive system can be affected and ineffective digestion of breastmilk and formula can cause major discomfort in your baby, leading to colic episodes."

On the basis that this claims the subluxations lead to problems in the digestive system, does this qualifty as the "quack" version as defined by TobiasTheCommie above? From what I'm starting to gather, it seems that the manipulation does help as a by-product of the massage relief/distraction but not for the reasons claimed by the Chiropractors...I think?
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This explanation is definitely in the BS category. The whole "subluxation" theory behind chiropractry is unproven BS. I would never allow a chiropractor near one of my children, but like BadlyShavedMonkey, I'm a little militant about it.

On the upside, most chiropractors I know aren't knowingly defrauding you. They really believe the BS they were taught.

As far as simethicone being of any benefit...Simethicone is for relief of foaming bloat in the stomach only. It lowers the surface tension of the fluid in the stomach, so that little, bitty, foamy bubbles coalesce into larger bubbles that can be burped out. It doesn't work anywhere else in the digestive tract, and even if it did, the gas would still be trapped there. My dad taught pediatrics in the US for decades, as well as being a pediatric practitioner until he retired. He tells me that he has never known of any study where simethicone was shown to be of significant benefit in the relief of colic.

It doesn't help in animals either, BTW.
 
All I can do is offer my anecdote. I had very gassy babies, breastfed gassy babies. My daughter had an xray, but had to get it redone due to gas. The Ovol helped them immensely. I do not consume milk products myself, being allergic, but the kids were still gas bags.

I would think it would be useless for colic if gas is not the culprit.
 
Eos of the Eons said:
All I can do is offer my anecdote. I had very gassy babies, breastfed gassy babies. My daughter had an xray, but had to get it redone due to gas. The Ovol helped them immensely. I do not consume milk products myself, being allergic, but the kids were still gas bags.

I would think it would be useless for colic if gas is not the culprit.
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Yeah, so were my kids. My wife could never put the first one down without him screeching until he was about a year old. I swear his muscles were atrophied!

Simethicone didn't help at all, despite the fact that they were bags of gas (and puke, don't forget the puke).
 
Nothing really seems to help but time.

http://www.webmd.com/content/article/36/1728_58801

I can see why parents will try nearly anything. It's horrible feeling helpless, and wondering if your baby is suffering terribly from some pain. The endless crying wears parents down too.

With my first, on whom I never used Ovol (I hadn't heard of it, and sounds like it may not have helped anyways), I finally resorted to dipping a soother in sugar. He never got attached to the soother though, unless it had sugar on it. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone though, for obvious reasons, but I was going crazy with lack of sleep, ringing ears, and worry about baby. Those darn gripe waters did nothing.

You can understand why I loved Ovol though, I didn't go through nearly as many hours of crying when I used it on the other two kids. Could be they just didn't have colic though, and it relieved whatever gas they had within minutes.
 
bridgy said:
OK, I have now managed to find some more info on the Chiropractic explanation of why it works. I can't post the link yet but it's at http://www.colichelp.com/colicandchiropractic.html if you add the 3 w's at the start and put HTML at the end after the full stop. Anyway, it states:
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Yeah, found that page meself, but didn't include it as a source since i don't feel comfortable having a chiropracter playing with a babys neck.

"As your child is being born, the neck and back vertebrae can go out of alignment due to the stretching and compressing of the body as it emerges into the world. If your delivery included a prolonged pushing stage, forceps or vacuum extraction, or other form of assisted delivery, the chances of a misalignment are great.
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Probably true. But it would fix itself overtime, nothing chronic will come from it if it is true. Just like babies with malformed skulls starts looking normal pretty fast, without chiropractic help.

If the misalignments, called vertebral subluxations, are big enough, the functioning of major systems in the body can be compromised. The digestive system can be affected and ineffective digestion of breastmilk and formula can cause major discomfort in your baby, leading to colic episodes."
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The only way i can affect that is if some of the bones is in the way. But since they don't descripe HOW it can affect the digestive system, i can't be certain if it is a simple matter of a bone being in the wrong place, or some woo stuff.
But so far, i would consider it woo.

On the basis that this claims the subluxations lead to problems in the digestive system, does this qualifty as the "quack" version as defined by TobiasTheCommie above? From what I'm starting to gather, it seems that the manipulation does help as a by-product of the massage relief/distraction but not for the reasons claimed by the Chiropractors...I think?
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I would say it is mostly woo

Can we get an MD in here???

Look at it this way, if the vertabrae WAS misalligned after birth, wouldn't the midwife find out and fix it?
We are talking about doctors who do this every day. They will notice if the vertabrae is misalligned, and you can be damn sure that you won't get the baby home before that is fixed.

and IF this is a problem with the vertabrae(which i think i unlikely), i would rather get a REAL MD to look at it, than a chiropractor. Even if your MD supports homeopathy.

I still think hot bath and a good massage in the morning for a week or two will have much the same effect as a chiropractor.

Again, this post is opinions of a layman, i'm not an MD, and i'm sure i've made mistakes, consult a real MD.


I know there are some here.. where are they :(
 
And now i see a lot of better replies than mine, heh :) missed page 3 before replying.

ysabella said:
That's the scary non-science right there, bridgy: any claim that "subluxations" cause problems in other bodily systems like digestion is woo-freaking-woo. Claiming that babies are thrown out of 'alignment' during birth - well, they're full of cartilage at birth, so how does that make sense? Babies have how many bones that have yet to fuse together?

There are risks with chiropractic manipulation even for adults. Adjusting a baby's jellylike skeleton sounds even more dangerous to me.
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Yes, exactly what i was going for in one of my first posts when i said it wasn't good for children.. exaclty that, just couldn't remember the specifics.
 
bridgy said:
Although she didn’t make the original recommendation, the Health Visitor has endorsed the Chiropractor as worth a visit.
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This "Health Visitor" should be drug out to the alley and have the crap beat out of her. And so should any parent who lets a chiropractor touch an infant. Manipulating an infants neck should be a criminal offense.

An Internet discussion board is not the place to find advice on proper infant care. If your child has a chronic or severe case of anything, you need to consult a qualified medical professional.

Consult a Medical Doctor and follow his/her advice. Anything less is negligence.
 
fishbait said:
This "Health Visitor" should be drug out to the alley and have the crap beat out of her. And so should any parent who lets a chiropractor touch an infant. Manipulating an infants neck should be a criminal offense.

An Internet discussion board is not the place to find advice on proper infant care. If your child has a chronic or severe case of anything, you need to consult a qualified medical professional.

Consult a Medical Doctor and follow his/her advice. Anything less is negligence.
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Let me be clear - I am NOT using this forum for advice on what to do with my child, and would always refer to our MD before giving ANY medicine or treatment.

As I said in my OP, I am opposed to sending my baby to a Chiropractor, but was interested to hear views of forum members particularly in order to help me dissuade my wife - which you can rest assured I now have (with your help)!

What you must remember though, is that the Health Visitor IS a "qualified medical proffessional" ( a qualified nurse or midwife with additional training)and is there for answering EXACTLY this type of query - if they can't answer the query or perceive a serious medical problem they should always immediately refer you to the MD. Most people (my wife included) do not stop to think how or why such treatments work and frankly don't have the time to do the research - but when the health proffessionals endorse such things they naturally assume it is safe and (potentially) effective. This is why I was keen for your views/comments, as I am up against an authority figure trusted by my wife, as well as positive feedback from trusted friends of hers who have taken their babies to the Chiropractor.

The Health Visitor is actually a very caring person who has given a great deal of good advice and support for my wife after the birth of both our first and second child - but I do agree that her support for the Chiropractic treatment in this case is wrong.

As many posts and links have suggested, I am actually of the opinion that we should ride it out and wait for teh colicky episodes to pass at around 3 months, whilst using natural, normal comforting techniques. This of course is easy for me to say as I'm not the particularly sleep deprived one looking after and breastfeeding him all day whilst managing a lively 2 year old!!

Anyway, if it helps I can reassure everyone at this point that our baby WILL NOT be seeing the Chiropractor. (The homeopathic remedies is of course another battle, but harder as there is no "danger" element and even our MD is a big fan - she lectures on Homeopathy at the local University)
 
bridgy said:
(The homeopathic remedies is of course another battle, but harder as there is no "danger" element and even our MD is a big fan - she lectures on Homeopathy at the local University)
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Oh dear! For sure I would change my doctor in this situation. Can you not do that? I mean, if a doctor can believe that nonsense, do you really trust her to make the right decisions across the board? I'd have serious doubts about the intellectual capacity of anyone who can swallow such garbage to be able to cope with rational decision-making.

This case is an interesting comparison.

Rolfe.
 
bridgy said:
As I said in my OP, I am opposed to sending my baby to a Chiropractor, but was interested to hear views of forum members particularly in order to help me dissuade my wife - which you can rest assured I now have (with your help)!
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So glad it worked out :)
 
Wow, thanks for the link Rolfe - I'd never heard of that case, but I will be showing it to my wife.

I take your point about our Doctor and tend to agree (I very rarely see a doctor myself but may have an interesting conversation if prescribed a homeopathic remedy by our doctor!)

To be fair I haven't seen any evidence of the type of extreme behaviour of the doctor in the article (I'm thinking dowsing, crystals etc), but ours tends to suggest homeopathic remedies for all the minor ailments for which there is probably nothing else she can suggest. Most recently it was a homeopathic hand cream for dry skin which I thought was a classic on the basis that the cream itself was probably doing everything that was required anyway, so why the added Homeopathic element!!??
 
bridgy said:
Most recently it was a homeopathic hand cream for dry skin which I thought was a classic on the basis that the cream itself was probably doing everything that was required anyway, so why the added Homeopathic element!!??
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Placebo, more revenue... Choose.

Yeah, i'm a cynic :/ sometimes at least :)
 
To be honest, prescribing a placebo for minor, self-limiting complaints may be preferable to prescribing active medication. Especially antibiotics. It's a big medical ethics argument, and in fact doctors aren't supposed to do it, but in practice many will admit to prescribing some things in that general spirit in those circumstances.

Personally, I'd be against using homoeopathy in that way if for no other reason than the legitimacy such prescribing gives to the nonsense that is homoeopathic practice. But I can see the logic of such use - after all, what can be more harmless than a sugar pill, and if it gets a patient with nothing really wrong with them off your back, and keeps them happy while the problem gets better on its own, well, it's not irrational.

However, it sounds as if your doctor isn't in this camp, if she's lecturing on homoeopathy at a university. Surely that implies that she really believes in all this quantum water memory like-cures-like idiocy. If that's the case, I wouldn't trust her to prescribe for an ingrowing toenail.

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
To be honest, prescribing a placebo for minor, self-limiting complaints may be preferable to prescribing active medication. Especially antibiotics. It's a big medical ethics argument, and in fact doctors aren't supposed to do it, but in practice many will admit to prescribing some things in that general spirit in those circumstances.

Personally, I'd be against using homoeopathy in that way if for no other reason than the legitimacy such prescribing gives to the nonsense that is homoeopathic practice. But I can see the logic of such use - after all, what can be more harmless than a sugar pill, and if it gets a patient with nothing really wrong with them off your back, and keeps them happy while the problem gets better on its own, well, it's not irrational.

However, it sounds as if your doctor isn't in this camp, if she's lecturing on homoeopathy at a university. Surely that implies that she really believes in all this quantum water memory like-cures-like idiocy. If that's the case, I wouldn't trust her to prescribe for an ingrowing toenail.

Rolfe.
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I think that's a really interesting point about whether Doctors should prescribe placebos Rolfe.

An example I immediately think of is of Homeopathic teething granules prescribed for our first child when he was teething. Giving him these DID appear to have an immediate soothing affect when he was crying his head off in the middle of the night. I suspect this was purely a kind of distraction effect from pouring sugar granules in his mouth (you could tell he enjoyed them!) but whatever the reason, it did have an effect. I suppose a skeptical Doctor could just suggest doing the same with plain sugar or something, but to many parents I suspect that would sound quite bizarre compared to using what appears to be a "real medicine" - and if Doctors are busy (which they are) it would be virtually impossible for them to spend the time to explain the full picture to every patient they see.

I suppose the bottom line is that many conditions don't have a straightforward, simple treatment or even explanation (colic as discussed above being a good example), and this is where the homeopaths, Chiropractors etc step in and confdentally offer their remedy, and sound much more appealing than a skeptical Doctor saying "well, its all a bit complicated, and there's not really anything guaranteed to work, but you could try rubbing it/having a bit of sugar..."
 
This is touching on the psychology of the hold that many quacks have on thier victims. People who are ill are frightened and insecure. They crave someone else to take charge, and tell them that it's all under control and it will all be all right. They really do need psychological support, and to feel that someone is doing something for them.

Real medicine may fail them here, either by lack of resources (there's nothing worse for an anxious patient than being told they are on a waiting list to see a specialist), or by failing to convey the reassurance that the situation really is being taken care of, or by being too honest in a situation where the doctors really don't know.

Ideally of course, real medicine would incorporate fulfilling the patents' psychological needs. However, resources are stretched, and the best surgeons sometimes have the worst bedside manner. Hence many people fall into the clutches of the charlatans, who have no real help to offer, but often play a blinder on psychological support.

This may be of little consequence if the illness is trivial, but it can be lethal when real treatment is essential. My own nightmare is of the patient who has been seduced into belief in homoeopathy by its apparent successful treatment of their minor ailments, and who then buys into it to the extent of believing all the "trust your homoeopath, allopaths will only poison you and rob you" propaganda, and then dies of something treatable while relying absolutely on the sugar pills.

Rolfe.
 
Slight derail: Have you tried a plain old pacifier for your crying baby? If sugar granules (or anything small and lumpy) being chewed make a helpful difference, it means the child has sore or perhaps itchy gums. So a pacifier (what we call a dummy here) might do the trick!
 
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