by Dr. Greg Loman

As parents, it is our vital role to become educated on all things related to our children. We must know the characters in cartoons, remember the foods that they enjoy, know how to make their boo-boos better, and how to care for them when they are sick. Sometimes the daunting task of helping your ailing child can seem easily fixed with a quick visit to the doctor and suppression of the symptoms with a magical pill. This manner of treating children is not healthy, nor is it helping to promote health and wellness in their future!

Understanding the true meaning of being "well" or "healthy" can help you gain a better understanding of the Maximized Living approach. Pharmaceutical companies and doctors have worked diligently to scare an entire nation into believing that the only treatment to obtain optimal health when you have an illness is dangerous and expensive drugs. According to the dictionary, health is "the condition of an organism or one of its parts in which it performs its vital functions normally or properly: the state of being sound in body or mind … freedom from physical disease and pain". Therefore, treating symptoms with antibiotic and prescription medication instead of freeing the body of disease does not make one "healthy"1.

The existence of symptoms, such as a fever, is physical manifestations that the body is performing its "vital functions", as mentioned above. The gravest mistake any parent could make is to believe that the existence of these symptoms means something is deathly wrong. One of the functions of the immune system is to fight invading bacteria or virus, resulting in symptoms such as fever. Our body was created to respond to this invasion with this response due to bacteria and viruses inability to live in the body above 102 degrees. Rarely is a child given the opportunity to combat this invasion naturally before they are rushed to the hospital or doctor.

Begin looking at your child's response to these invasions in a different light. A child with a fever is not sick, instead they are healthy due to their ability to not only register the bacteria or virus, but also their ability to fight it off. Response to the invasion by elevating body temperature is the body's way of getting rid of the icky bacteria. Therefore, giving your child medication to reduce a fever is not working to combat the bad bacteria, but instead suppressing the body's natural function!

There are some extenuating circumstances, of course. If your child's fever goes multiple days without breaking, or your child is in extreme discomfort, then and only then should you step in to assist the body with its natural function. For example, my own family recently had an incident concerning our eldest son Ki, who is only three years old. Early one Thursday morning he awoke from a sound sleep with a temperature of 103 degrees. At that point, we recognized that his body must have been fighting some form of bacteria or virus. As most three year olds do, Ki was experiencing a significant level of discomfort.

As a family that does not utilize medication to suppress symptoms, we made sure that instead he was hydrated, as well as made sure his body was well adjusted to allow him to fight the bacteria or virus on his own. Given that both his mother and myself are chiropractors, Ki has not had a single medication in his body and has been under wellness chiropractic care since birth.

After about a day, his temperature continued to spike to 104, a few times even rising to 105.5. These incidents of high fever continued on well into the third day and began to cause a distinct amount of fear within my wife and I. In some instances it does not matter how educated you are on the body and the purpose of a fever, instead, as a father or a mother, fear sets in watching your child in misery. Motherly instinct began to outweigh my wife's medical mindset, and I have to say I , too, started to evaluate the situation a little more closely.

By the fourth day, we were concerned with dehydration and began to think that this could possibly be a serious matter that required emergency care. We packed Ki up in the vehicle and went to the emergency room. At this point, we looked at this hospital visit as a means to seek an evaluation, not to ask for treatment. We knew that unless this was an emergency, his body was working exactly like it was designed to, and that he would recover when his body had finished fighting off the invading bacteria or virus.

As we entered the hospital the nurse immediately checked his rectal temperature, declaring it a dangerous 102 degrees. Shortly after, we were escorted to see the doctor. Almost immediately the doctor began to scald my wife and I for not medicating our child. I responded that we were here to evaluate if this was an emergency. I believed, at this point, an evaluation was needed to determine if my son had some form of meningitis or was in the danger of a serious health problem. She continued to question why we had not medicated young Ki, and I continued to respond that the fever was essentially a good sign that Ki's body was fighting off some form of invader. I further explained that if we reduced the temperature with medication that we would of stayed home with a very sick child thinking that he was well, when ultimately he needed some form of emergency treatment.

While I continued to attempt to communicate to her that we were there only for an evaluation, she continued to chastise me. I urged her to run the traditional precautionary tests (blood work or urine tests) that were necessary to evaluate my child. My comments and refusal to drug my child only made her stand there with a perplexed look, until she finally stormed out of the room furious. Over the next five hours we were left waiting, and I went back to giving Ki chiropractic adjustments every hour.

The nurse finally came in to collect blood and urine samples for testing. Sixty minutes later, the doctor came back with the results: blood and urine tests were normal. She proceeded to say that antibiotics were to be prescribed to Ki as a "precaution," even though their tests had proven that the fevers were due to natural causes! When I questioned "why" she became very frustrated, and even more so when I interjected that I was not going to medicate my child unless there was a diagnosis that necessitates a treatment. She continued to chastise me with procedure and protocol. When this did not work, she continued to use scare tactics with me. Finally realizing that I was not budging, she gave up. We thanked her and immediately left. After numerous hours waiting in the emergency room, Ki's fever had broken and began to recover just hours afterward.

There are a few points to this story that I want you to understand:

1) Do not allow a doctor in an emergency room do things to your child that you do not want done.

2) Do walk into an emergency room or doctor's office with knowledge.

3) Fever is good, but at times it should be diagnosed to make sure it is not a serious life threatening disease.

4) It is okay to question doctors.

5) Medication is not necessary with fever 90 percent of the time.

While this story is my own, there are countless other tales just like it!

1 "health." Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. Merriam-Webster, Inc. 25 Mar. 2008. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/health>.