Morgan Hill Family Wellness

The Great Pumpkin is Coming... Does the Great Pumpkin visit your house? Every year the Great Pumpkin sneaks into our house Halloween night and scoops up all the candy and leaves a present in its place. My boys can hardly wait to see what they'll get and quickly forget all about the candy. You can use any alternative to the Great Pumpkin like the Halloween Fairy -- whatever gets your child excited and full of anticipation will make it easier to say goodbye to their candy.

Hand Out Healthy Treats This Year...
Alternatives to candy:
Healthier Treats: pretzels, popcorn, cheese & crackers, trail mix or fruit leathers.

Non-edible Treats: stickers, pencils, Halloween toys, Mini Play-Doh or nickels.

Healthier Sweets: Yummy Earth has Certified Organic Halloween Gummies and Lollipops free of all the bad stuff and safe for kids with food allergies.

Avoid the Bad Stuff: Corn syrup, chemical colorings, artificial flavorings & preservative

Let family be the focus of the holiday
A time to share and grow...

Focus on traditions and maybe make some new ones! Spending more quality time together as a family is what the holidays are all about. Read Halloween books, decorate the house, do an art project, decorate each other up as mummies and then have a race. That's what your kids will remember most about Halloween!

We hope these tips help you have a healthy, safe & enjoyable Halloween.

Sincerely,
Robin
Robin Green, MTCM, L.Ac.
Morgan Hill Family Wellness

Childrens Hospital Los Angeles is paving the way for a new model of pediatric health care by providing Acupuncture to its patients. The program which started January 2009 provides pain management for children ages 13 – 18. The founder of the program, Jeffrey I. Gold, PhD, Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology and Pediatrics, and director of the Pediatric Pain Management Clinic at Childrens Hospital hopes to expand the program later this year to more departments in the hospital.

This is incredibly exciting news and I hope that we see programs like this at Childrens Hospitals throughout the country.

To read the full article, please click the link below:
http://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=31909

Many of my adult patients find it shocking that I treat children with acupuncture. They can’t believe that children will let me insert needles in their bodies, let alone enjoy their treatments. I think this view is common because they think I’m treating children the same as adults. Maybe they imagine their 5 year old laying on the table for a half hour with acupuncture needles. Not on your life! I usually spend a half hour with my pediatric patients, but most of that time is spent discussing the problem and offering solutions. The acupuncture portion of the treatment is painless and lasts between 2 - 10 minutes.

Pediatric treatments, especially for kids ages 6 and under are very different than treatment for adults.
From the moment children walk through my clinic, they are very aware that this will not be a typical doctor visit. The environment is relaxing and calm, soft music plays, lights are dim. When I meet my pediatric patients, I talk to them directly and make sure they understand that I’m here to help them and I respect them and their bodies. Trust begins as I proceed with their physical exam. Looking in ears and listening to lungs becomes a fun game. They are not forced to do acupuncture if they don’t want to. When children refuse acupuncture, I use other non-needle treatments that are very effective until the child is ready to try the needle. Eventually almost every child that walks through my clinic door will try acupuncture. To their amazement, they find it is painless!

Treatments for toddlers and young children typically takes place while they’re are playing. Most of the time, the needle insertion goes unnoticed by the child as they’re being entertained by their parent. I do routine examinations on children with their cooperation. I make it fun and we play games. In the typical toddler visit, after a thorough discussion of the child’s health the treatment will take about 2 minutes or so to complete since the needles are inserted and immediately removed. The insertion and removal takes about 1 second or so.

As kids get older and have memories of the hurt and pain from vaccinations, acupuncture is a harder sell for some. That’s when I start with non-needle techniques. Once kids are little more mature, around ages 8 - 12, the needles are retained while the child rests quietly for about 5 - 15 minutes.

Children respond rather quickly to both needle and non-needle treatments. They may experience a significant relief in symptoms immediately or shortly after their treatment. When they start to make the connection that treatments are helping, they gladly come back for more. Once the bond of trust is built, they allow stronger treatments, more needles and in some cases they become even braver than adults!

I see children for many of the same conditions as adult and most commonly treat allergies, sleeping problems, constipation, diarrhea, coughs and colds. I also treat a lot of chronic conditions such as asthma, eczema, bronchitis and sinusitis. I typically treat babies for sleeping problems, colic, acid reflux and failure to thrive.

Pediatric acupuncture treatments are very well tolerated by children and effective for treating a wide variety of common childhood ailments. It works with the child’s body to heal the underlying imbalances to prevent future illnesses. There are many studies coming out of China and Germany proving the effectiveness of acupuncture treatments for children. I believe it is only a matter of time before pediatric acupuncture becomes a mainstream treatment.

By Robin Green, L.Ac.
Morgan Hill Acupuncture & Family Wellness
www.morganhillwellness.com
(408) 852-9569 x 701

What are your favorite cough remedies? Especially something that works in the middle of the night?
What a great question since most pediatric cough & cold medicine has been recalled by the FDA for safety reasons. Honestly, I don't think the cough and cold medicines work all that well (at least in my personal experience.) Chinese herbs & European biological medicines are safe alternatives that work great. While Chinese herbal remedies are for very specific types of coughs (wet, dry, barking, etc), there are a few general remedies that work well with just about any child.
Windbreaker herbal remedy and/or SyImmune Homeopathic tablets are great remedies for head cold symptoms, fever and/or viral rash. The herbs in windbreaker will help reduce irritability and it works great for runny nose associated with teething.
If the child has any type of cough I recommend combining Windbreaker with Chest Relief herbal remedy and/or Apo-Pulm Homeopathic remedy to help soothe the cough & thin the mucus membranes. If the child is really congested and really stopped up, I use a stronger formula called Purge Phlegm instead. If the cough is waking the child in the middle of the night, Purge Phlegm is the BEST remedy! The last three remedies I mentioned work by thinning the mucus membranes enough to allow the child to either cough out or swallow the phlegm. The remedies usually last 3-4 hours before you notice the cough returning.
At night, I recommend giving the child a hot steamy bath with Essential oil of Eucalyptus right before bed. Essential oils are much more powerful at opening up the sinuses than diluted liquid soaps that use chemical fragrances. Baths are very effective at opening up the sinuses enough to allow the child to fall asleep before their sinuses start draining again. I also like to use Warming Vaporous Rub by Gaia Herbs which has organic highly concentrated herbs in a coconut oil base. It works better than Vicks Vapor rub which is petroleum based. Definitely try to keep the child elevated at night.
For kids that have a history of asthma, bronchitis or sinusitus I have more specific remedies that I prescribe that work well to prevent colds from turning into a more serious infection. Prevention and early intervention with herbs is essential for these kids.
Herbs must be given in a high enough dosage (1/4 - 1/3 tsp) and frequently (usually 3 - 5x/day) to work. Chinese herbs don't taste great, but they can be hidden in things like frozen grape juice concentrate, juice, nut butter, etc. Once kids get used to them, they'll usually take them without fuss. Sometimes a little sugar helps the medicine go down. ;-) In kids that are averse to taking Chinese herbs, I have used homeopathic remedies mentioned above with good results. I have found the a combination of herbal and homeopathic remedies works best. Herbs typically shorten the duration of a cough/cold by 3 - 4 days.

Author: Robin Green, L.Ac.
www.morganhillwellness.com
(408) 852-9659 Ext 701

The Vitamin D council has recently published the results of its study which showed that supplmenting with vitamin D at the beginning of the cold and flu season can prevent you from getting the flu!(1) The evidence is also suggestive that if you supplment with a high dose of vitamin D at the onset of the flu, the severity of the flu symptoms may be drastically reduced. To read the full paper click here. There is also a wonderful feature article on this topic in Medical News Today.

How Much Do You Need? For adults the recommended dosage is between 2000 and 5000 IU of vitamin D daily. The farther you live from the equator and the fairer your skin the more vitamin D you'll need. According to the Vitamin D council they recommend the following dosage for children:
Children over the age of 1 year, and less than 4 years of age, should take 1,500 IU vitamin D per day, depending on body weight, latitude or residence, skin pigmentation, and sun exposure.
Children over the age of 4, and less than 10 years of age, should take 2,000 IU per day, unless they get significant sun exposure. On the days they are outside in the sun, they do not need to take any; in the winter they will need to take 2,000 IU every day.
Sunlight, skin and vitamin D Facts (2):

* About 90 per cent of the body's supply of vitamin D comes from the action of sunlight on the skin, but grey skies and short days between October and March mean that 60 per cent of the UK population are deficient in the vitamin.

* Vitamin D is essential for healthy bones and skin and protects against rickets in children and osteoporosis in the elderly.

* The vitamin cuts the risk of pancreatic cancer by almost half (43 per cent) when taken at the recommended daily dose of 400IU (international units), according to a study of 46,000 men and 75,000 women by researchers from the University of Wisconsin that was published this week.

* A daily dose of Vitamin D could cut the risk of cancers of the breast, colon and ovary by up to half, a 40-year review of research concluded last year.

* Doctors writing in the American Journal of Public Health proposed a daily dose of 1,000 international units, two and a half times the current recommended dose in the UK.

* Countries around the world have begun to modify their warnings about the dangers of sunbathing, as a result of the growing research on vitamin D. The Cancer Council Australia said for the first time last year that some exposure to the sun was healthy.

* Vitamin D lowers insulin resistance which is one of the major factors leading to heart disease.

* The vitamin influences the growth of a variety of cell types and plays a role in the repair and remodelling of lung tissue.

* It acts as an immunosuppressant and may help protect against the development of type 1 diabetes.

* It influences production of a hormone that regulates calcium levels, in the body which in turn help to regulate blood pressure.

* Lack of vitamin D in the months before birth may affect the developing foetus in the womb and increase the risk of schizophrenia.

* Lack of the vitamin has been linked with the development of multiple sclerosis.

(1) Epidemic influenza and vitamin D. Epidemiology and Infection, Published online by Cambridge University Press doi:10.1017/S0950268806007175

(2) provided by the www.theindependent.co.uk

Author: Robin Green, MTCM, L.Ac.
Morgan Hill Family Wellness
www.morganhillwellness.com]
(408) 852-9659 x 701