This little fellow was
angry. There were tears, kicking out, screaming at the top of his lungs -
the whole show. Pretty impressive stuff; I was watching an infant have
his nappy changed on video - footage a colleague had filmed in his children’s acupuncture
clinic in Seattle.
The next shot was of the
same baby having some acupuncture: was this really the same child? He was
gurgling, interested, looking around and making all the experienced treating
children, I wouldn’t have believed it. But there he was, chirruping away
as my colleague gently inserted a few tiny needles and then after a few seconds
removed them. A few words of what we call ‘lifestyle’ advice – usually
diet – and he and his mum were on their way.
Increasingly in this
country and around the western world the above is becoming a more common
occurrence. Acupuncture
has an enormous amount to offer in the paediatric health arena. It does
not by any means take the place of a mother/child:doctor relationship, but at
times there is little a GP can offer and this is where medical techniques
passed on down the millennia have a part to play.
For instance Theresa - names
changed - brought little Karen (13 months) into the clinic as she’d been
vomiting a lot for the past five days and was a wee bit out of sorts. On
examination, Karen had some extra redness in her cheeks and a slightly swollen
abdomen. Her sleep had been disrupted and she had diarrhoea which was
pretty smelly. I asked about her diet and it transpired they had just
returned from a family holiday in Italy two days ago. They had taken a
villa which had an abundance of fruit growing all over the place – edible
grapes and figs especially. An infant’s digestive system is a very
sensitive apparatus and takes a while to develop from processing nothing
(foetus), to mother's milk - ‘babe in arms phase’ - to soft solids, and
beyond. And so when faced with something it’s not used to and in this
case lots of it, food can get a bit stuck in the system.
This causes something of
a blockage, what we call ‘Accumulation Disorder’ - where the food stays too
long in the digestive tract, “over-rotting and ripening” as the Chinese would
say; the normal downward flow of energy in the system is prevented and so it
‘rebels’ back up causing vomiting!
In little Karen’s case,
my job therefore was to clear the blockage to allow the resumption of a normal
flow of energy. This entailed pricking four points on the hand and
telling Theresa to give her plenty of water and stick to simple food if she was
hungry.
I had a call the next
day, “Karen’s not been sick again, and a couple of hours after getting home,
after one massive poo, her diarrhoea completely disappeared and she sat up,
crawled and began laughing again!”
Children can respond very
quickly to energy medicine sucha as acupuncture but sadly not all complaints
can be cleared as quickly as Karen’s. However, straightforward Accumulation
Disorder, is very simple to treat and can be the root cause of many infant
complaints: insomnia, learning difficulties, vaccination complications,
recurrent colds, coughs and more.
I appreciate the thought
of allowing a relative stranger to gently insert needles into your child is
counter-intuitive to a mother’s sense of protection. But when you begin
to weigh up the possible short-lived discomfort against the sleepless nights,
or recurrent cough and so on, intuition can begin to tip the scales.
Besides, it may be less of an ordeal than changing a nappy!
If you’d like to find out
more about how acupuncture can help you or your child, please go to www.graceful-change.co.uk or contact me here.
