Bee Well Kidz

What's the Buzz       July 2008

The official E-Newsletter of Bee Well Kidz

Welcome to What's the Buzz?, the official E-Newsletter of Bee Well Kidz.  Every month  What's the Buzz? brings you news and information about holistic healthcare, tips about natural medical cures, recipes, nutritional advice, ancient wisdom for modern living and answers to your questions. You will also learn about what's new at Bee Well Kidz.

We wish you all a healthy and relaxing summer.

Enjoy this issue!

Naomi Richman, L.Ac. 
(CEO and founder Bee Well Kidz, Inc.)

In this Issue

* Welcome!
* We're in the News!
* Are Herbs Safe for Kids?
* Portobello Mushroom Sandwich

Naomi Richman and Ian Khemlani

Bee Well Kidz on the cover of the
LA Daily News 

 

August 6, 2007

Article by Barbara Correa

 

While most moms and dads cringe watching their baby get an inoculation or a shot of antibiotics, other parents have embraced the use of needles to treat everything from their infant's colic to their toddler's chronic ear infections.

They swear by alternative practices such as massage, herbs and acupuncture, in which ultra-thin needles are inserted at specific points to treat maladies and pain.

A frustrated Colleen Kelly of Playa del Rey took her younger daughter to Bee Well Kidz after antibiotics failed to cure the 3-year-old's persistent bronchitis. The youngster's treatment included acupuncture and the use of a suction cup to increase circulation, producing surprising results.

"I was at my wit's end," Kelly recalled. "Maeve had been on two courses of antibiotics. It had been going on for months, and everyone had it.

"Naomi did baby cupping and acupuncture and herbs, and in a day it was gone. I thought it might help, but I didn't expect it to get better so quickly!"

Mothers have long used home remedies to soothe common ailments.

But as children of 1960s-era parents become parents themselves, they are more skeptical of traditional medicine and more accepting of alternative practices to treat health problems for themselves and their kids.

When Mohammed Jafer Gulam-Hussain, a sixth-generation healer from India, prescribed homeopathic cell salts to cure 18-month-old Noor Amery's chronic ear infections, her mother, Nadia, did not object. The toddler had developed nausea and diarrhea because all the "good" intestinal bacteria had been destroyed by all the antibiotics she'd taken.

Dissolved in a drink, the salts worked, Amery said, and Noor's ear infections disappeared.

"These are the best-kept secrets in medicine," said the Calabasas mother. "She has never since gotten an ear infection, and they have cut her colds by a third. They used to last for 10 days, and now it's a few days."

Crystal Chen, a Westchester mother with a doctorate in environmental science and engineering, didn't give it a second thought when her naturopath suggested acupuncture to help ease 1-year-old son Milo's painful bouts of gas.

"I've been doing acupuncture for a long time, so I really wasn't concerned," she said.

Actually, inserting needles into babies is much easier than treating older children or adults, said Naomi Richman, founder of Bee Well Kidz, a pediatric practice near the University of California, Los Angeles, that uses natural and homeopathic therapies, acupuncture and Chinese herbs, among other remedies.

"Infants are infinitely easier. There's no needle retention, because they are so pure that they get enough stimulation with the insertion."

Heather Cabot Khemlani, whose 18-month-old son is one of Richman's patients, said pain was not an issue.

"She's done acupuncture on him, but he literally didn't even know," Khemlani said. "I was afraid he was going to freak out, and he didn't even notice."

In addition to some occasional acupuncture, little Ian Khemlani gets craniosacral therapy to relieve a stiff neck that he was born with because his twin was crunching him in the womb.

While baby acupuncture, massage and Chinese herbs for tots may go down as normal in much of California, the use of alternative medicine in pediatrics has plenty of local skeptics, too.

Dr. Wallace Sampson, a professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford University and editor in chief of the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, calls alternative medicine "a concoction and a combination of good salesmanship, lawyering, lobbying and propaganda."

He discounts Chinese herbs and acupuncture as simply a placebo.

"It's what I call the Junipero Serra effect," he said.

"A cloistered nun had an autoimmune disease, and it was treated with a number of drugs. Then she prayed to four different saints for a month. After four or five months, she started praying to Serra, and she got better. Whoever does the last therapy gets the credit."

Parents have doubts, too. For every mother or father lining up to give their child Chinese herbs, there are many more who have major concerns about safety and insurance coverage.

Chen said she has tried unsuccessfully to persuade several of her friends to try alternative medicine, rather than the surgical insertion of drainage tubes, for their kids' chronic ear infections.

"Mainstream moms are just like, `I'm going to follow what the doctor has to order,"' she said.

"I think that we as a society tend to put our faith 100 percent in doctors because that's how we grew up, and we don't look for second or third opinions. It's also a matter of: `How much time do I have to devote to this problem?"'

Richman said that when she mentions acupuncture or herbs to mothers who call the office for information, some say they need to check with their husbands first.

"They rarely come in," said Richman.

Despite the skeptics, the medical establishment has become much more open to the nontraditional methods.

Last year, the California chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics formed a new section on alternative care.

"The scene is changing," said Dr. Richard Walls, a California chapter member who serves on a national steering committee for complementary alternative medicine.

He said certain areas of alternative medicine are being embraced more easily than others.

For instance, there is solid information showing that self-hypnosis is extremely effective in pediatrics, and research is finding that kids with chronic ear infections might be better off taking probiotics - bacteria introduced into the system to heal - instead of antibiotics, which kill bacteria.

On the other hand, skepticism among pediatricians about chiropractic is still strong, he said, and there is widespread concern over the lack of regulation of herbal remedies.

The biggest barrier to the integration of alternative medicine into a Western society, he said, is that most physicians just aren't trained in these areas, so they don't feel qualified to answer patients' questions about biofeedback or homeopathy, for example.

"It is certainly a changing field," Walls said, but "it takes time to turn that iceberg."

Nature's Way

Are Herbs Safe for Kids?
by Naomi Richman

In the Pediatric Department of Kyung Hee University Hospital’s Oriental Medicine wing in Seoul, Korea, doctors see close to one hundred little patients each day.  Worried parents bring reluctant youngsters to the doctor for all types of ailments ranging from common colds and constipation to developmental delays and febrile seizures. Doctors observe and examine the children, question the parents, diagnose the illness and write a prescription. To an outsider, this scene appears no different than what you would see at any university hospital on a really busy day. But if you follow the parents to the pharmacy as they picked up their prescription, you would suddenly realize that you were not in Kansas any more.

The pharmacy in this wing of the hospital is not home to pharmaceutical grade pills and over-the-counter cold medicines. (These are found on the other side of the hospital in the Western Medical wing.) This pharmacy, rather, is filled with roots, leaves, flowers, salves, powders and teas. Pharmacists fill prescriptions according to doctor's specifications, parents pay for the office visit and herbs (usually the equivalent of $3 - $15 dollars because this type of medicine is heavily subsidized by the Korean government) and then head home to cook, brew or administer these herbal remedies to their children.

Thousands of children each day in Korea and tens of thousands across Asia and around the world take herbs each day. Spend one day in the Whole Foods herbal isle and you will see multitudes of parents searching out herbal remedies for their children. Yet we hear on a weekly basis from doctors and researchers in the US that herbs may be dangerous, ineffective or have unknown harmful side effects because there have not been enough studies conducted to prove their safety or that they actually work.

Interestingly, between 1997 and 1998 roughly 20 million patients took drugs that were approved and later recalled by the FDA. Their side effect? (Please read quickly) “Side effects may include dry mouth, dry eyes, irritability, stomach pain, bleeding gums, bleeding ulcers, skin rashes, constipation, diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, head aches, sleep walking , sleep driving, chest pain, difficulty breathing, blurry vision, hyperactivity, addiction and in rare instances sudden death. So ask your doctor…” 

The truth is that plants have been studied and used as medicine for most of our existence. And while today’s skeptics would have us believe that controlled studies are the only true science, Webster’s definition of the scientific method (principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses) discusses observation and experimentation. Certainly there are concerns about the purity and quality of herbal remedies and parents need to be cautious about which herbs to give to their children. Fortunately there are trained medical professionals with education and experience to help weed through the vast array of health claims and herb companies. There are also public websites run by nutritionists and scientists that analyze the purity and quality of herbal supplements. (www.ConsumerLab.com).

So, make sure your children eat their vegetables, get plenty of rest and take their herbs. And if you’re still not sure, ask your herbalist. 

mmmm...mushrooms!

Grilled Portobello Mushroom Sandwich

Ingredients:
Portobello Mushroom Caps (one per person)
Cucumber, Red Pepper, Sprouts
Leaf Lettuce, Avocado
Feta Cheese
Focaccia Bread
Olive Oil and Salt

Directions: Sprinkle Mushroom Caps with Olive Oil and salt (to taste)
Grill or Broil Mushroom caps until slightly soft.
Clean and thinly slice cucumber, avocado and red pepper.
Construct sandwich using mushrooms, lettuce, cucumber, red pepper, sprouts, avocado and feta cheese.

Feel free to play with the ingredients to suit your family's taste.
This sandwich goes great with a spring salad mix.
Enjoy!