I'm down with Hippocrates

Ok- I am MORE than frustrated again. I have friends being led down the wrong path and it makes me feel so helpless. I SEE in them, what I once was. A mom that thought the medical community at large had the answers.

My experience has been that the MD community does not embrace eating nutritionally correctly or testing for biochemical imbalances as a way to determine what might be medically wrong. If your pediatrician doesn't know about something, it doesn't necessarily make it less real, it might mean they haven't become knowledgable about it. These days almost all pediaticians belong to a hospital medical system and some of their practice of medicine is directed by that hospital and the medical directors. There are standards of practice that individual pediatricians don't generally stray outside of because they don't work for themselves, they work for a hospital system so they are required to conform. Thats good for some things but bad for people who need to think outside the box to find solutions. Sometimes what passes for "scientific evidence" could barely pass a test for being confirmed, its just what they've always done.

The training that MD's receive does not focus on what used to be called holistic health - which has become a term that sounds like granola crunching but actually just means looking at the whole person. The focus today is on symptom ID, and treating separate symptoms. Specialty areas have arisen so that the whole person is no longer examined or taken into account. Your pediatrician is acting independently from the pediatric neurologist, who is acting independently from the person treating asthma (pediatric allergist) who is acting independently from the person treating behavioral disorders( psychiatrist, psychologist) who is acting independently from the OT and the ST and the list goes on and on. How in the world can everyone get on the smae page? It is unreal.

My experience has been that the current MD community addresses medical issues with either pharmaceutical or surgical methods, or refers out for mood, psychiatric, or emotional issues. What I think is still fuzzy to many out there is that with the last issue of the DSM - Autism was reclassified from being a psychiatric illness to being a medical illness. But because it is diagnosed from symptoms and not a definitive blood test, it still has that voodoo aura around it.

My theory has always been Hippocrates first tenet: First, Do No Harm. If I want to try something and it won't hurt my child then what the heck. Its only time and money but what if it helped. Some people really have benefitted from all the voodoo I have heard so I don't want to blow it up entirely. I think it really does depend on the child and the family's willingness to do various things.

I wish I could say to everyone to develop a healthy skepticism that what you're being told is the only answer or even the correct answer for your child. You're the mom and you know that child better than anybody who sees them for a 15 minute appt.. I have my own little scientific study going on and he should be up from his nap any minute.