Episode 82
· 17:44
Welcome back to another episode of the Real Health Podcast. I am stoked that you decided to jump in on this podcast episode. It's gonna be so valuable for you as a parent because what we're gonna talk about is common childhood conditions or complaints. So your kid comes home and they're complaining of this symptom, what are you thinking about?
Dr. B:What? Siri is going off on me, Grant!
Grant:Is this a blooper?
Dr. B:No.
Grant:Okay.
Dr. B:We're live. We're straight. We're going.
Dr. B:Okay. So when we think about, this month, we've been talking about childhood conditions, we've been talking through how to boost immune health, nervous system health, we talked about sleep, nutrition, but today's all about, okay, they've got a complaint and it's like, hey. Do I take this seriously? When should I take it seriously?
Dr. B:And then what should my actions be? So we're gonna talk through tummy issues, sinus congestion issues, we're talking to joint pain, kids complaining of joint pain, and then like ear pain. So those are the big 4. Oh, and headaches. We're gonna talk to those 5.
Dr. B:Those are our big 5 today. So how do we navigate them? When should we take them seriously? And what are we thinking when we hear these common symptoms? The first thing I wanna say, don't ignore your child's symptoms.
Dr. B:They don't know how to frame out pain. So if they're complaining about something on a consistent basis, you have to consider it valid. Don't take your- also, don't take a doctor's, off -putting advice of saying, "hey, they'll grow out of it" or "this is normal" as bible. Okay? It doesn't matter what the doctor is, doesn't matter if it's chiropractor, medical doctor, naturopath, acupuncture, doesn't matter who the doctor or physician is.
Dr. B:One of the things that I have valued the most is a parent's intuition. I'll ask the parent in a consultation- I'll ask the parent, what does your gut tell you is wrong? Do you think there's a problem or is there something else going on? And I'll defer to the parent. If they believe that that child truly has something going on, then, hey, we're gonna we're gonna dig and we're gonna fight.
Dr. B:As a perfect example, consistently when kids come in with digestive symptoms and it's been more than a few days, I'll ask parent, what do you think is going on? Are you concerned? Do you wanna look into this? And when they do, we usually find something. Right? So we'll run a stool test or whatever and find a parasite or bacterial infection or something. So let's start there.
Dr. B:Let's start with the tummy, digestive symptoms. And this is honestly practical for everyone, so if you're listening and you're an adult, you don't have kids, honestly, you'll get some valuable information from this. And if you know someone with kids, send them this podcast, send them a link to it.
Dr. B:I really truly believe in the next 10 minutes, we're gonna unpack some really valuable information that can help you navigate your child's health and, and, even even your personal health journey. Okay. So kid comes home with tummy issues. So they're complaining about their digestive system. Their tummy hurts.
Dr. B:Their stomach hurts. One day, not a big deal. 2, 3 days, then you're asking the question, what are you asking? Hey, have you eaten anything different? Tell me what you ate.
Dr. B:So we're asking these types of questions. What are the questions you ask? What's your bowel movements look like? I don't know. That's typically gonna be the response.
Dr. B:So then you as a parent then have to look at, hey, what's your bowel movement look like? Did you go to the bathroom today? Okay. Give me the size. Size matters.
Dr. B:So how big? Are we talking about a little Hershey's, you know, tootsie roll? Are we talking about, a log? Because that matters. Are they fully excreting from their bowels?
Dr. B:Should they have a good solid bowel movement? And is it every day? A child should have bowel movement every day, should have a bowel movement every day. An adult should have bowel movement every day. It is not normal to not have a bowel movement every day.
Dr. B:No matter what a doctor says, a bowel movement should occur at least once a day, and sometimes even twice a day. Okay. So, tummy issues. They're complaining about their stomach. It's more than a few days.
Dr. B:And one of the first things that we're gonna see is, if they have tummy issues and let's just say they have, poor bowel movements, okay? So they're not pooping every day and they're not having long large bowel movements. This usually happens when school starts because they're scared to go poop at school. It's not a safe environment, it's not comfortable environment and they like to poop at home. And then they forget when they get home because they start playing again and they get out of a rhythm of bowel movement activity.
Dr. B:So this is a very simple question and if they aren't having a bowel movement every day then this is what we have to focus on. Fiber and probiotics, fiber and probiotics. Increase their fiber and give them Claire Labs probiotic kids 100,000,000,000 organisms a day, that's 2 tablets a day, and we can get them really on a road to healing and get some rhythm to their gut. If they're still not pooping after that, chiropractic care is essential to regulating bowel activity particularly what we call peristalsis which is contraction of the gut. By adjusting the tailbone and lower sacral segments, we can see amazing improvements in regularity.
Dr. B:If your child's been dealing with constipation, go see a chiropractor. Okay. So tummy issues, beyond constipation, let's say they have normal bowel movement activity and they're still complaining about their stomach hurts. Now it's a week, now it's 2 weeks, what do we do? Okay.
Dr. B:We look at food elimination first. So let's look at 2 things, gluten and dairy. Gluten and dairy. If you were to say, hey, just give me 1. Gluten is number 1.
Dr. B:Remove gluten from their diet. It doesn't take a day for your their gut to get better. You're not going to remove gluten from their diet for a week and expect a miracle. It could happen, but that gluten inflammatory response protein will stay in the body for over a month. So you really have to be gluten free for a month to see if there's any really tangible changes.
Dr. B:And so rather than,- and then besides gluten, dairy is also a common allergen that we see a lot and the number 3 for kids is eggs. So this could even be a baby with eczema, gluten, dairy, eggs. Those are the big three. We don't have time to go into why we can talk we can have a whole discussion on why those those are the big three. Those are the big 3 that I see when I test kids in the office.
Dr. B:What do they react to? Gluten, dairy, eggs. If you're looking at elimination, gluten first, 1st week, any change? No. Gluten and dairy, another week, no change.
Dr. B:Gluten, dairy, and now eggs and that should calm things down pretty pretty considerably. If you have removed those foods, what do we add back in? We add in healthy bacteria, healthy flora, probiotics. So make sure they're getting probiotics and then I love a colostrum powder. Colostrum powder is fantastic for the digestive system.
Dr. B:It is potent in its ability to regulate immune system of the digestive, the immune system of the digestive system helps reduce inflammation and helps bind actually acts like a chelator which is really cool and binding endotoxins which are like bacterial toxins. Okay. If your child, it's been a month and still complaining about their tummy, get a stool sample. Go to a go to a local doc and get a go see a functional medicine doctor, whether it's an MD, DC, doesn't matter, DO, go get a lab test and look at their stool and see if there's any parasites, bacterial loads. Keep in mind, parasites are really hard to ascertain from stool.
Dr. B:Three stool samples is required really to get you about 80% there. If you just do one stool sample, more than likely you'll miss a parasite, so it's hard to navigate parasites. But go get a stool analysis and see what's going on. Okay? So that's tummy issues as well. It's how we navigate it as well. It's how we should think about it okay?
Dr. B:Number 2 kid comes home and they are congested. Sinus congestion right? We don't just like hope it gets better, we take action on it.
Dr. B:Number 1, get your kid adjusted. Again, we're gonna come back to this over and over again. Why? Because the adjustment helps improve immune system function regulation, it also helps drain, helps the body literally drain and prevents secondary infections like ear infections, bronchial infections, and pneumonia. So chiropractic care can really help up regulate the immune system and we see it all the time.
Dr. B:And going back to even last week when I talked about Myla, my daughter being adjusted, feeling better the next day. 3 days later, she had apparently some inward congestion inside of her sinus system that we didn't really she didn't communicate. I'm sure I have an ear pain. Her ear was swollen, on otoscopic exam. So I adjusted her, did a lymph drainage.
Dr. B:By the next morning, I said, hey, how's your ear? She said, it's perfectly fine. We see that all the time when the tympanic membrane is swollen, the ear swollen, immediate chiropractic adjustment is massive at helping prevent antibiotics for ear infections. Okay. So sinus congestion, again, what do we think?
Dr. B:We think immediate elimination of dairy. Dairy is hyper congesting to the sinus mucosal membranes, so we remove dairy. What else do we do? Sinus congestion, what do we do? We do some type of nebulizing.
Dr. B:So if they're old enough, we wanna we wanna actually do an irrigation, like a sinus irrigation using a sinu gator with saline solution. If they're young, if they're like 6 months old, a year old, 3 years old, then we wanna nebulize saline solution and let them just breathe in into the nose, into the mouth, breathe in, nebulized salt solution. That's fantastic for it. We also wanna make sure that when we're looking at the sinus system, okay, and this even involves the back of the throat, ears, colloidal silver is a fantastic thing to have in your home. So spraying a few sprays of colloidal silver in the back of the throat is a great way to be antibacterial.
Dr. B:So as soon as they're congested, you just open their mouth, spray them down. Couple sprays, couple times a day, get that colloidal silver in and it's a great antibacterial and antiviral. Tons of good quality research on a company called Results RNAs which what we use, Results RNA, and their ACS 200 spray is fantastic. It kills strep, it kills staph, MRSA, it's antiviral, it's antifungal and so we use that all the time in our kids. If your child is chronically congested, so we call this chronic sinusitis, we have to think that they either have really bad food allergies but we're typically gonna see gut issues and eczema with that.
Dr. B:But we also have to consider mold. Mold is a common organism that creates chronic sinusitis, allergies and asthma. So this is an easy one. Use a company called Real Time Labs and do an at home mold test where you'll take a dust sample and you'll see if there's any mold biotoxins in that sample. Okay?
Dr. B:Joint pain. How do we know it's normal versus, you know, is it growing pains? Truth be told, most kids should not have chronic growing pains. So is it common to have a little tension at a certain spot? Yes.
Dr. B:But it should go away very quickly. If your child is complaining about any pain that's consistent over the course of days to weeks, go see a chiropractor, okay? They'll do a proper evaluation of the spine, hips, pelvis, knees, extremities and get to the root issue. When kids hit growth spurts, it is common for their, these tendons to become inflamed, especially if they're an athlete. So a common one in the knee is what we would call patellar tendonitis that could even result in a oskar schlauters.
Dr. B:And the back of the heel, like Achilles tendinitis, that can even be turned into a severs. And so these, like growing pains slash growing tendons combined with athletic, volume, so running, jumping, is a perfect storm for chronic tendin, tendinopathies or tendinitis issues. So again, what do we have to do here? We have to make sure we remove inflammatory foods from their diet, dairy, gluten. We have to promote anti inflammatory effects, so we wanna use omega 3 fatty acids.
Dr. B:Fish oil is fantastic to help resolve inflammation and be inflammatory mediators. And then we have to create healthy position alignment of the hips, pelvis, and spine and healthy nervous system to regulate adaptations and changes. Okay? So get them adjusted. Do some mobility work, okay, find out the source of the problem, create an anti inflammatory effect through nutrition modification and through omega 3 fatty acids.
Dr. B:That's our go to for joint pain. Headaches. If your child is having headaches, okay, chiropractic care. I'm a say it again and again, chiropractic care is massive in headaches. Chiropractic care can actually help the visual system, visual acuity and focus.
Dr. B:So it has so many neurological benefits that it can significantly help reduce eliminate headaches, especially in kids. Kids should not have headaches. Okay? We gotta look at their age and determine if it's potentially hormonal and there's too much estrogenic activity. We have to also consider if it's nutritionally related, which a lot of times ask these questions.
Dr. B:Do they have any artificial sweeteners in their in their diet? So artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame. Are there any artificial dyes? Red, blue, whatever. Artificial dyes, artificial sweeteners are neurotoxic to the brain, so they're gonna create inflammatory response.
Dr. B:Consider eliminating gluten. K? Common thread here. And then one thing to add in, magnesium. Magnesium through either an Epsom salt bath, which is fantastic.
Dr. B:You're gonna get magnesium sulfate through that. Or an actual supplement of magnesium is great. It's a couple 100 milligrams a day. 100 to 200 milligrams a day is probably all a child will need. Magnesium is a fantastic help, relaxation of muscles.
Dr. B:It helps promote energy systems of the brain. It can be really, really helpful. And if you're an adult and deal with migraines or headaches, creatine is a fantastic creatine monohydrate. There is tons of literature for creatine monohydrate on headaches and migraines. So it's another great thing to do for, headaches.
Dr. B:Alright. And then the last one which we already talked about with sinus congestion was ear pain. And again, here, we're looking at chiropractic care, sinus irrigation, colloidal silver. Okay? These are the big things we're gonna look at.
Dr. B:You can type in and look for, like, lymphatic massage and help open up the drainage systems of the head and neck. Rebounding is fantastic for the lymph system. So just jumping on a trampoline for 5, 10 minutes is a great way to drain the lymph system. Okay? So these are great little strategies to help you overcome some of these symptoms.
Dr. B:And it just goes back to, again, the idea here. If your child is complaining for symptoms more than a couple days, it's not normal. Okay? It may be common but it's not normal. Let's address these in a holistic perspective and let's consider there may be more than just, hey, they're gonna grow out of it.
Dr. B:Hope this was helpful for you. Next week, my wife is joining the show and we're gonna talk about how to use food and nutrition to help create a healthy home environment for your kids. Can't wait to have her on the show. It's been a long time coming. And thanks again for listening to another episode of The Real Health Podcast.
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