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Health & Fitness

Take Control of Chronic Childhood Ear Infections (Part 1)

Numerous studies involving chiropractic care have shown remarkable results with ear infections in children. Resolution through chiropractic care reduces the risk of side effects from antibiotics.

It’s 3 am and the crying has only gotten progressively worse the past hour. You are pacing up and down the hallway trying anything to soothe your inconsolable 10-month old so that your 4 and 7 year-old kids can get some sleep upstairs. Your plan is to call the doctor’s office the moment they open – seven long hours from now!

Although your baby cannot tell you what is wrong, your intuition says it is yet another middle ear infection. The statistics would suggest that your hunch is probably right. Earaches are the #1 reason for visits to the pediatrician’s office. As a parent, that probably comes as no surprise.

But, you may be surprised to learn that both the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Academy of Family Physicians recommend a “watchful waiting” or “wait and see” approach to acute ear infections.

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Research published in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association(1) demonstrated that there was no difference in fever, otalgia (pain) or number of future visits between kids that were given an antibiotic prescription and those that were not. As it turns out, antibiotics only outperform the body’s own immune system in a handful of cases.

At the same time, numerous studies of manipulative therapies including chiropractic care have shown remarkable results without the side effects of antibiotics. A groundbreaking 1997 study(2) of 332 kids ages 27 days to 5 years indicated a strong correlation between chiropractic adjustments and the resolution of otitis media (the medical term for an earache). Just to highlight one finding – there were 104 kids in the group classified as having ‘chronic’ otitis media. This group of kids got 5 chiropractic adjustments each. Across the next six months the recurrence rate among this group was only 16%!

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Let’s put that data into more human terms. That means that 84% of these kids classified as having chronic ear infections went six months without having another one after just 5 adjustments. A full half-year devoid of screaming in the middle of the night, lost sleep and the anguish of watching your child suffer for 84% of the parents.

So if you have a child suffering from chronic ear infections - do not give up hope!  Have faith in your child's inborn ability to heal and remember there may be other solutions than antibiotics or inner ear tubes.

(Part 2 - Coming Soon...)


1. Spiro DM, Tay K, Arnold DH, et al. Wait-and-see prescription for the treatment of acute otitis media: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Association 2006; 296(10): 1235-1241.

2. Fallon, JM.   Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics Vol 2, No. 2 1997 p.167-183.


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