Avoiding Back Surgery, Fibromyalgia Mismanagement and New Guidelines for Ear Infections

Hi Everybody

Here are a few new tidbits for you…

AVOIDING BACK SURGERY- The medical journal SPINE MAGAZINE recently conducted research which was designed to study the earliest indicators of back problems that would eventually lead to surgery. (Spine Magazine, Dec 12, 20012)

What they found was that patients who went to Chiropractors for the initial beginnings of back pain had the lowest odds of having to undergo back surgery- only 1.5% of them ended up needing surgery. On the contrary, 43% of patients who saw a surgeon first had back surgery.

FIBROMYALGIA- THE APPROACH IS THE PROBLEM- Dr Don Goldenberg, the noted Rheumatologist who first introduced Fibromylagia with an article in the 1997 Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), once said “We should concentrate on treating the symptoms of chronic illness, not searching for a cure”.

His comment points out what is so wrong with so much of medicine these days – treat each individual symptom with one drug after another instead of looking for the underlying cause of the problem. Treating is much more profitable than curing.

NEW GUIDELINES FOR TREATING EAR INFECTIONS- The medical researchers and policy makers have been trying for years to get medics to change their methods of treating ear infection, but with little effect.

Recently, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released their newest recommendations for treating ear infections. Since most physicians seem to be slow to change, you may want to know these guidelines yourself, and only take your child in when they meet the criteria:

1. Pediatricians should only diagnose acute ear infections if the child’s eardrum is at least moderately to severely bulging, or if there is discharge leaking from the ear.

2. Pediatricians should only prescribe antibiotics in children 6 months or older, and only if there is a fever of 102.2 or higher or if the pain is severe, or if the infection is in both ears.

3. Give the child 72 hours of watchful waiting if they do not qualify for antibiotics. If they are not better at that time, reassess.

The goal of these guidelines is to use antibiotics only when necessary, and only when they actually seem to help. Otherwise, the infections recur more often and become resistant later on.

Before yet another round of “maybe-they’ll-work-and-maybe-they-won’t” antibiotics or the drastic step of surgery, more parents are considering chiropractic to help children with chronic ear infections. Dr. Joan Fallon, a chiropractor who practices in Yonkers, New York, has published research showing that, after receiving a series of chiropractic adjustments, nearly 80 percent of the children treated were free of ear infections for at least the six-month period following their initial visits (a period that also included maintenance treatments every four to six weeks).

“Chiropractic mobilizes drainage of the ear in children, and if they can continue to drain without a buildup of fluid and subsequent infection, they build up their own antibodies and recover more quickly,” explains Dr. Fallon. She’d like to see her pilot study used as a basis for larger-scale trials of chiropractic as a therapeutic modality for otitis media (middle ear infections).

Hope this helps,

Dr Matt and Dr Robin

mattandrobin@yahoo.com (email)

This week’s bit of Useless Information:  In Jasmine, Saskatchewan, it is illegal for a cow to moo within three hundred kilometers of a private home. 

This email is courtesy of Matthew Barnes, D.C. and Robin Barnes, D.C.  Neither this nor any of our emails are intended to be medical advice and should not be taken as such.  They are opinion and are for informational purposes only.  None of the nutrients discussed here are meant to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease.

Call Us Text Us
Skip to content