Question - Ear Infection

[Guest guest]

Hi,

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to treat a pretty severe ear

infection?

My daughter has suffered all weekend after going to the Doctor and being

prescribed Amoxicillian which is not helping so far and is making her sick.

She is in alot of pain and has some drainage.

Thanks,

Kathy

 

 

[Guest guest]

Regarding the ear infection. I'm not sure of the age

of your daughter. For an older child or adult, it's

often a good bet that the ear canal is slightly

plugged with wax or dead skin. If you can get a water

pick (for cleaning your teeth- fairly easy to find at

a thrift store) and fill it with warm water. Then

place the tip of the water pick in the ear with the

water pressure on low. Point the water stream towards

the back of the ear and hold the ear over the sink.

If there is a big clump of wax, it could take 5-10

minutes to loosen it free.

In the future, rinse the ears each time they feel a

bit itchy or needing to be cleaned. This will

generally avoid future problems.

If it were me, I would put a bit of peroxide in the

ear, too. This will kill bacteria and yeast and also

help loosen any wax.

Often the infection will not clear up until the canal

is open from debris. It could be a little piece of

dead skin.

Doctors can prescribe drops with hydrocortisone and

antibiotics to help sooth an ear infection.

Also,Hospitals have sophisticated vacuum cleaners to

clean out ears, but this takes a referral to a

specialist.

Often with children the problem is related to bottle

feeding formula which seems to introduce bacteria into

the ear canal. Try to cut out the habit of putting

the child to sleep with a bottle and constantly

sucking on a bottle of formula. Give plain water as a

beverage-not formula or juice. A little plastic bottle

with a straw from a juice box is easy for a small

child to drink water from and doesn't spill as easily.

 

There could be dietary allergies, particularly

problems with dairy products, or problems with

Candida. Sometimes children live on cheese, crackers,

juice--all kinds of basically bad eating habits. You

might need to consider a back-to-health diet with the

help of child nutrition cookbooks from the library.

Sometimes going off of heavily eaten foods for a

while, such as no dairy for week or no wheat can help

identify problem foods and also give the intestinal

lining a rest. Particularly if the child was sick, the

intestinal wall could need to heal and repair itself,

something hard to do when one is eating cheese several

times a day, for example. The weakened intestinal wall

could lead to large protein molecules getting into the

blood stream undigested and resulting allergies. Goat

milk is much easier to digest than cow's milk.

For more info on children and ear infections,

you might want to go to http://www.mercola.com and use

his Google search engine to search for advice on ear

infections. Dr. Mercola is incredible.

Two examples:

http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/28/ear_aches.htm

http://www.mercola.com/nutritionplan/index.htm