Colorado Springs Functional Medicine

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I’ve Tried Everything

When speaking in public, I often have a few people hang around after the talk to ask about their specific health ailments.  One phrase I hear in common is, “I’ve tried everything.”  I often defer to, “have you tried chiropractic?”  Their response is either, “I used to go after a car accident,” or “you think that would help?”

Yes, I do think it would help.  That’s not just because I’m a chiropractor.  On September 11, 2001, the day I started chiropractic college, I had never been adjusted.  Like these people at my workshops, I too never associated chiropractic with anything other a treatment for neck and back pain.  The more I researched, I chose to go to chiropractic college because as a profession, the principles and philosophy were the closest match to how I wanted to help change people’s lives.  It had the scope that allowed me to gear my clinic towards lifestyle interventions.

What left the biggest impact on my life was how my own personal health changed as a result of being a chiropractic patient.  I struggled with eczema through college so bad that if I opened my hand, it would crack and often times bleed.  Even with cleaning up my diet, the more stressed I got, the more the eczema would flare.

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The Gut

I like to think the readers of this blog are very savvy.  You read, you research, and you make informed decisions when it comes to your healthcare avenues.

Because you fall into that category, than you have probably heard and researched many conditions that can relate to problems in ‘the gut.’  Your digestive tract has huge implications into virtually every chronic illness, not just the ones that seem digestive related.

What’s funny is that I often get challenged that there’s no way the gut can have impact on behavior and that changing diet won’t affect ADHD, Autism, and other behavioral conditions.  To those people, I simply reply, ‘let’s go have a few beers and talk about it.’  Most of the time I get blank stares.

The Gut

For the ones that do get it, it’s like a light bulb just went on.  They put 2 and 2 together that if we drink alcohol, we have the potential to act stupid.  BINGO!  But you know this.  You’ve done your research.  The gut affects behavior, no big whoop.

With lots of sources pointing back to poor gut health, it’s rare to find any that say why?  There are just remedies and protocols to help you fix secondary and tertiary problem.  When you understand the why, the how, what, where, and when fall into place easier and you address more than just the gut.  You address you, not just a symptom.

You were born with a leaky gut.

In the world of gut health, everyone is quick to jump on your leaky gut as a cause of you illness, ailment, or dysfunction.  The reality is that if you didn’t have a leaky gut, you probably wouldn’t have made it alive past 6 months.  A leaky gut as an adult is an effect, not a direct cause.

We are born with a very weak and immature immune system.  We genetically require a leaky gut to allow for mom’s antibodies to pass through our gut and into our blood stream.  Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant.

Your leaky gut saved your life as an infant. Click To Tweet

Calling leaky gut a bad thing is like calling high blood pressure and an elevated heart rate bad.  It all has to do with context.  Symptoms are neither good nor bad.  Your symptoms are not a moral or ethical dilemma.  Your symptoms happen for a reason.  That reason is the context of your life.

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Fever

As a parent, seeing your kid with a fever sucks and they can be very scary.  Once you have context of the fever, you’re able to take some of the emotion out of the issue and use some logic.  Hopefully this gives you a bit of insight to assess the situation.

Why does my child have a fever?

A fever is your child’s intelligent genetic natural ability to fight off bacteria and/or a virus.  We use heat to kill off pathogens that might be lurking in our food.  Your child’s body does the exact same thing.  The cool thing is that your child’s body doesn’t have to get to 120+ degrees to kill everything.

Most bacteria do not live above 120°F, and as you increase the temperature you kill more of them. At 102°F most bacteria can no longer reproduce, which is the protective nature of human fevers. – Dr. Terry Simpson MD

A fever is an aspect of inflammation.  Inflammation is a function of your immune system.  In an acute phase, inflammation is great because it’s signaling your body to fight.  Be thankful that your child has a fever.  It means that his or her body is capable of fighting. Long term is where problems arise and this is why I think so many parents quickly jump to a fever reducer.  We hear scary stories of brain swelling and think the child’s head is going to explode.

FeverSince 102°F will drastically limit the ability of a bacteria to reproduce, let the fever ride.  With my own kids, I plan on letting it ride for 2-3 days.  If after 3 days it hasn’t come down then I look for an intervention to bring it down.  But having that game plan going into this time helps me not screw up the intelligent design of their body.

Ultimately the fever is trying to slow your kid down to conserve energy.  The immune system uses a lot of energy.  Your kid will be lethargic, that’s ok.  Being active takes a lot of energy.  Digestion takes a lot of energy.  Your kid won’t have an appetite, that’s ok.

NOTE: My kids at age 3 ½ and 1 ½ have never had a fever above 102°F last for more than a day.  They also have never had an antibiotic, Aspirin, Tylenol, or Advil.  I will detail why I think our kids have been fever less at the end of this post.  This isn’t to brag but to give hope and possibly take some fear out of parenting.

Why does a fever yo-yo?

Your child’s fever will yo-yo because your child’s body is intelligent.  A fever, much less one that goes up and down is your kid’s internal genius expressing.

You’ve probably noticed that the fever is best in the morning when your child wakes up and will be highest at night after dinner. You get frustrated because you thought your child was getting better.  You immediately think things are taking a turn for the worse and you break initial plan of letting it ride for 3 days and start easing the fever with fever reducers.

The next morning comes and the fever is better.  You back off on the fever reducers and to your dismay, the fever is worse again at night.  Panic starts, even though the fever hasn’t broken a high threshold for more than a couple hours.  When I say I plan on letting the fever ride for 3 days at 102° to 104°, I mean there’s no change.  If it’s dipping down to 101° in the morning and then back to 103° at night, I’m ok.

It sucks for the child and for the parent watching, but it’s ok.

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