Otitis Media Treatment for Children

Is your child suffering from frequent ear infections? Have you tried all kinds of treatment and preventive methods but have not been successful in protecting your child? Are you looking for a holistic option instead of having tubes placed in the ears? Osteopathic Manipulative Treatment (OMT), an all-natural alternative, may be the answer for you.

Hi,

Payel Banik DO here, guest on the whole mother radio show, and one of 20 physicians in the state of Texas that specializes in this type of manual medicine, as I have two different board certifications to practice this type of care.

I am in the enviable position of my peers for having a private practice where I can spend a full hour with new patients every day to provide proactive holistic healthcare. Every week I treat many newborns and children and hear about the joys of parenthood — and more often — parents and other physicians that never knew viable scientific evidenced based holistic manual medicine existed to treat patients.

As an Osteopathic Physician I’ve seen the full gamut of newborns and children: patients that were treated with osteopathy as a child, wonderful people that have no idea what osteopathy is, and others that were referred by another physician, friend or family member (sometimes with a limited understanding).

I’ve treated the skeptics, believers, and everything in between. Thankfully the treatments can work even if the person is skeptical! You can check out the reviews on Facebook or Yelp.

As a physician and a parent I have seen it all when it comes to treating and handling our most precious gifts in this world, our children.

Not very long ago, many of our patients were in the same place you may be right now. They had no idea where to start finding credible holistic care, and use mainstream medicine as a last resort. Most of them didn’t even know what osteopathy was!

These people are no different than you. They felt skeptical, overwhelmed by options that promised the moon, and had no idea what to do next.

How many of us have gotten stuck searching for what we believe is the best holistic healthcare for our child?

The search will start with something like this:

• “I was always told that these ear complications are normal, and that they should get better soon.”
• “I am desperate to find a holistic alternative to having my E.N.T. put tubes in my childs ears.”
• “My child is up all night screaming and tugging on her ear, and I want something asides from antibiotics to make her feel better.”

We all know that WIFI can’t be seen; however, it allows us to connect, learn from, and communicate with the outside world. Osteopaths in the United States are like MD’s, classically trained physicians; however, we also get training starting in medical school using our hands. The goal is to find the health in the patients based upon a deep and continual understanding of anatomy and physiology.

Like WIFI, This deep understanding of the human functioning can be seen by trained osteopaths. While the normal person might not be aware of the laws behind it, rest assured the “human wifi” is always on and our specialty is trained to notice the subtleties. Like a foreign language, this skill must continually be practiced or else it gets forgotten.

I personally have 20,000 hours of direct patient care prior to opening my practice, delivered over 100 babies while in training, and have a unique perspective as a mom as well.

Studies have shown:

• Osteopathic treatment may be a good adjuvant therapy for recurrent acute otitis media, and may decrease the need for surgery and overuse of antibiotics.

Essentially the ear tubes in a child are horizontal and flat. As we become adults the tubes slowly start to increase to a “ski sloped” angle. If you can imagine the water in the flat tube combined with humidity makes it a perfect breeding ground for bacteria to grow. My focus is to help gently manipulate the bones, muscles and nerves around and connected to the ear, nose, and throat.

Imagine there’s a house with a leaky pipe. You know it’s important to fix blocked and clogged pipes, because they can cause big problems with plumbing down the road. Think of the work I do as the plumber that can help proactively keep your pipes running as smoothly as possible freeing up blockages. This plumbing in the human body is known as the lymphatic system, and helping remove the blockages can naturally drain the fluid out of the body and has been shown to prevent surgery.

Otitis media is an inflammatory condition of the middle ear space, the part of the ear between the outer and inner ear. It may also involve the mastoid air cell system (a honey comb like bony structure present in the back portion of the ear) owing to its direct linkage to the middle ear. Otitis Media can be classified as:

• Acute: When the duration lasts from 0 to 3 weeks.
• Sub-acute: When the duration is for 3 to 12 weeks.
• Chronic: When the duration is greater than 12 weeks.