How to raise a Healthy Child #1

HOW TO RAISE A HEALTHY CHILD -

In Spite of your Doctor

From the book by the same name by the late

Robert S. Mendelsohn M.D.

　

GUIDELINES FOR DIAGNOSIS

If your child doesn't feel sick, look sick, and act sick, the odds are that he isn't sick, or certainly not sick enough to require medical attention. How many times have you been tempted to call the doctor when your child complained of a stomachache or headache and then were glad that you didn't when you found him roughhousing with his brothers and sisters within an hour or two?

I have just given you the first of three rules that you can use to guide you in diagnosis, but I'll repeat it because it is the most important:

Rule No. 1: If your child doesn't feel sick, look sick, and act sick, he probably isn't sick.

Role No. 2: Give Mother Nature ample time to work her magic before you expose your child to the potential physical and emotional side effects of treatments that your doctor may administer. The human body has a remarkable capacity to heal itself-a capacity that in most cases surpasses anything that medical science can do-and it doesn't produce unwanted side effects.

Rule No. 3: Common sense is the most useful tool in dealing with illness. Your doctor is less likely to employ it than you are, and certainly no more able, because that's not what they taught him in medical school!

Granted, there are infrequent illnesses of critical nature for which competent medical treatment is essential, but in the case of children they are the exception rather than the rule. The obvious question is "How can parents tell which ones are serious and which are not?"

The answer is that you can't always tell, and for that matter, neither can your doctor. However, when you have finished reading this book you will be able to determine the seriousness of most of your child's ailments and will need to consult a doctor only in the limited number of instances when you are in doubt.

I have observed, in both the teaching and the practice of medicine, that most doctors do a competent job of treating patients who are very sick and a miserable job of caring for those who are well. This is the major flaw in medical education. The medical student and the pediatric resident, for that matter, learn precious little about how to keep children well, because their education begins with the premise that everyone who comes to their office will require treatment.

In medical school the student gets about three months of pediatric instruction, devoted largely to the discussion of childhood diseases that had importance decades ago when the curriculum was written but now have virtually disappeared. He absorbs a lot of biased information about immunizations but is taught very little about pharmacology, despite the fact that as a practicing physician he'll hook more kids on drugs than the most diligent pusher in town.

Only about 60 hours are devoted specifically to pharmacology during four years in the typical medical school, and most of that time is spent absorbing irrelevant information about abstract pharmacological theory. Ultimately, most of what doctors know about the drugs they administer to their patients is taught them by an army of pharmaceutical salesmen/promoters euphemistically known as "detail men." If you were to equate this relationship to the distribution of street drugs, the detail man would be the supplier and the doctor the pusher.

　

DOCTORS AREN'T TAUGHT THE IMPORTANCE OF NUTRITION

Virtually nothing is done in medical school to teach students that nutrition may often be the most important element of diagnosis and treatment. Consequently, they begin their practice unaware that food allergies are the primary cause of many childhood ailments and that adequate nutrition is the basis of good health. This ignorance compels them to use drugs in the treatment of diseases that could have been cured with a simple change in diet.

If the medical student has the opportunity to get some brief hands-on experience in a well-baby clinic, he won't learn very much about the real world of medicine he is soon to enter. Virtually all of his time will be spent administering immunizations, dispensing vitamins, and passing out samples of infant formula supplied by the manufacturer's detail man. The patients he sees have come to the clinic for routine, periodic physical examinations, so he'll rarely see a patient who is really sick and isn't taught how to recognize one who is.

Fledgling doctors are taught to scoff at the holistic health practitioners, at nutritional therapy, and at any other form of health care that does not require an M.D. They learn to rail at "quackery," yet no one points out to them the abundance of quackery that exists within conventional medicine itself. How can any doctor rationalize condemning those who treat patients with Laetrile when he has been guilty of feeding his own patients Bendectin, Oraflex, Zomax, or thalidomide, until they were removed from the market because of the damage attributed to them?

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YOU NEED TO BUY AND READ THIS BOOK BY DR. MENDELSOHN

IT IS EDUCATIONAL, INFORMATIVE, AND WILL OPEN YOUR EYES TO THE SIDE OF THE MEDICAL WORLD YOU ARE NOT TOLD!

To be continued