Monday, September 25, 2000
Alternative medicine for kids
Although some treatments provide relief for ailing children, experts urge caution
By Peggy O'Farrell
The Cincinnati Enquirer
When the surgery that was supposed to help her son walk freely failed, Sharron Johnson of Bethel began frantically searching for other options.
Her 9-year-old son, Taylor was in constant pain from the foot surgery to correct problems caused by a rare central nervous disorder called hypomyelination. He could barely stand, even with a walker, much less walk more than a few steps. Pain medication wasn't working. Neither was massage.
Ms. Johnson decided to try acupuncture in combination with energy healing. And it worked: By the end of the second treatment, Taylor was running “and doing little dances,” she says.
Ms. Johnson calls it a miracle. Proponents of alternative, or complementary, medicine call it proof that non-traditional treatments work on patients of all ages.
The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health, estimates that Americans use some form of complementary therapy. It's not much of a stretch to assume that many of those people use the remedies on their children, whether it's echinacea to ease cold symptoms or chiropractic to help clear up ear infections.
Physicians caution that parents have to be careful when shopping for non-traditional remedies for youngsters: Few complementary therapies have been subjected to extensive study. With herbal remedies, especially, experts say, there's little data and less quality control to help parents know exactly what they're getting.
Taylor's experience with alternative medicine began when he was about 5, his mother says. Ms. Johnson did some research and found a program of nutritional supplements that helped increase his energy levels.
But Taylor had little muscle or bone strength in his feet, and as he got older and heavier, the problem became worse. Ms. Johnson consulted an orthopedic surgeon, who suggested stapling the bones in the feet together to correct the problem.
She was told Taylor would be able to walk with casts “a couple of weeks” after the surgery, but that never happened. Eventually, he began developing stress fractures in his feet and the pain became bad enough that Taylor couldn't stand or walk. Constant rigidness in his heel tendon left him unable to put his foot flat on the floor.
Ms. Johnson was referred to Dr. Jim Leonard, a medical acupuncturist and former orthopedic surgeon at the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine.
Taylor began undergoing acupuncture combined with energy healing — the use of light touch or pressure to correct imbalances in the body's energy field — about two months ago. After the first treatment, he could put his foot flat the floor. After the second, he was dancing.
After that second visit, Taylor and his mom stopped at a video store to look for movies. He was able to walk up and down the aisles without his walker, just holding onto Ms. Johnson's hand.
Taylor can't explain why the treatment worked, except to tell his mother that he “felt Jesus” while the energy healer was doing her work, Ms. Johnson says. “Taylor's a very spiritual kid. I tried to instill that in him. I feel that what they're doing is a manifestation of God, anyway.”
Dr. Leonard can't really explain it, either. “I wish I could,” he says, adding he thinks the healing touch is doing the trick to help strengthen Taylor's central nervous system.
“Kids don't have pre-formed ideas about what's going to work and what's not,” he says. “They may be a little more susceptible to the placebo effect, but then, with a kid like Taylor, they may be a little less.”
Taylor is also using magnet therapy, with magnets connected to his arms and legs by electrodes. His muscle tone and control continue to improve, Ms. Johnson says.
Dr. Leonard doesn't claim the therapy will cure Taylor's hypomyelination, or the loss of the sheathing material that helps the nervous system conduct impulses. Muscular dystrophy is the best known form of hypomyelination, but there are many others.
But Taylor is on his feet, and he seems to be pain-free. “I don't know if it's going to make him better, but certainly it's made him functional,” Dr. Leonard says.
Research continues
Researchers at the University of Arizona, funded by grants from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, are studying several types of complementary therapies, including treating recurrent ear infections with either echinacea or spinal manipulation, using acupuncture and manipulation to alleviate seizures and muscle control problems in children with cerebral palsy and using visualization techniques, chamomile tea or both to treat children with recurrent stomach pain.
Dr. John Mark, a pediatric integrative medicine fellow at the University of Arizona, wants to explore the effectiveness of using guided imagery to alleviate or control asthma symptoms. His study for NCCAM should begin in the fall.
Guided imagery — teaching patients to mentally envision peaceful environments or to see their bodies functioning properly — has been used extensively by children and adults to decrease asthma, behavioral problems, pain and nausea, Dr. Mark says. Children with asthma, for example, might be taught to visualize air flowing freely in and out of their lungs, or to visualize a peaceful shore scene to help ease anxiety during an asthma attack.
“It demonstrates that the mind has a strong influence over the body — both in reaction to events, in healing, in fighting diseases, in the immune response and in giving the child the empowerment to deal with life, illness and sickness in their own way since it is their images they use,” he says.
Energy healers
Andrea Brady of Milford has been taking her daughter, Natalie, 3, to a chiropractor and an energy healer for most of the child's life. Natalie has allergies and a misalignment of the hip socket makes her knees and feet turn in.
Mrs. Brady started using complementary therapies herself several years ago after she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a syndrome characterized by joint inflammation and stiffness, fatigue and pain, and traditional medicine didn't help.
The chiropractic and energy work have made a huge difference for Natalie, but Mrs. Brady says parents need to do plenty of research before choosing a therapy for their children.
“You have to be careful. With a young child, you really have to be careful what kind of herbs you give them,” she says. “A lot of people want to jump right in and use herbal therapies and homeopathy and you have to know what you're working with.”
Mrs. Brady recommends using reference books and magazines, talking to doctors and chiropractors, other parents and the salespeople at the health food store.
“You have to weigh all the information you gather. It's not set in stone. It's not a regulated industry,” she says.
With the chiropractic treatments, Natalie walks normally and her back pain is eased. She hasn't needed allergy medicine at all this year, Mrs. Brady says.
But much as she believes in complementary therapies, when Natalie's sick with something Mrs. Brady doesn't recognize, it's time to go to the doctor. “You start with traditional medicine,” she says, and work from there.
Good prevention tool
Dr. Kendall Gearhart, a chiropractor in Columbia Township, says chiropractic is a good prevention tool. Correcting alignment problems in children means fewer problems in adults, he says.
Dr. Gearhart counts several children among his patients. “We're changing the direction and the focus of our practice more to include children,” he says.
In many ways, complementary therapies with proven results make sense for children, Dr. Mark says. They're often gentler than traditional remedies — fewer drugs and fewer invasive procedures. And using natural remedies to cure infections means writing fewer prescriptions for antibiotics, something that should make most practitioners happy, he says.
More and more practitioners are embracing the idea of using both traditional and non-traditional medicines, Dr. Mark says. “We use the term integrative medicine since we believe that things like osteopathy — which has been around as long as traditional medicine — homeopathy, traditional Chinese medicine, good nutrition, dietary supplements, exercise, mind/body medicine all have a part in healing, but not as an "alternative' or even as a "complement' but as a way of weaving together what is best for the patient,” he says.
Herbs unstudied
Dr. Steven Amoils, a medical acupuncturist and medical director of the Alliance Institute for Integrative Medicine in Sycamore Township, recommends a “cautious and conservative approach” in using complementary treatments for children, and using them in conjunction with, not in place of, traditional medicine.
“For me, if you give a child a proven homeopathic remedy, you're not going to do them harm. If they tolerate acupuncture, you're not going to do them harm,” Dr. Amoils says. “If you give someone an herbal remedy, you start getting into medicine.”
Dr. Mary Ann Barnes with the St. Elizabeth Family Practice Center in Edgewood agrees.
“I don't recommend herbal medicines for children because it is medicine,” she says, adding that many herbals have side effects that haven't been studied and that aren't listed on package labels.
For adults, Dr. Barnes says, “herbs work. A lot of our medicines are derived from plants. The problem with herbs is there's no quality control.”
Herbal remedy dosages can vary from brand to brand and even within the same manufacturer, she points out, and contaminants can get mixed in with the herbs.
The Food and Drug Administration doesn't regulate the manufacture or use of herbals. But the Federal Trade Commission has begun cracking down on some manufacturers for making unsubstantiated claims about the benefits their supplements have for children, such as alleviating attention deficit disorder or autism.
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