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Children and Chinese Medicine
Chinese
Medicine is an approach to illness and health that has a specific indication
in children: it is highly effective in acute diseases, it allows to reduce
the taking of conventional drugs in serious chronic pathologies, it works
very well to prevent illness and to reinforce constitution when children
get easily sick.
Children correspond to spring, dawn, the rising of yang inside yin. Therefore
a characteristic of their energetic quality is the rapidity of movement,
including the movements in the state of health. They get sick very easily,
but they respond to therapeutic treatment just as easily. When they are
ill, it is often possible to modify their energetic system which turned
towards sickness, and move it towards a better balance using only “small”
actions, that do not interfere heavily and do not invade violently.
There are many cases in which conventional medicine has little to offer.
Chinese medicine recognizes these conditions as caused by a disharmony
and addresses them with good results. For instance there are children
that during winter time must take antibiotics for tonsillitis, otitis,
bronchitis. Or children who get easily tired, look always weary, do not
enjoy food and are all the time stuck to the mother. Or children who do
not go to sleep, wake up too often, want to sleep in the parents’
bed. Or restless children that can not maintain any concentration, get
into fits of terrible anger, seem to live in a condition of resentment
and hostility.
The
Chinese approach, without being invasive, can loosen some knots, free
accumulations, or tonify and reinforce, so that essential resources for
a richer life can be made available. This consolidation process is important
also with respect to the future: a good qi, a qi that flows well, tends
of its own accord towards a good energetic balance.
The main indications are: prevention and cure of recurrent respiratory
infections; infant acute abdominal pain, constipation, diarrhoea; poor
appetite, lassitude; common cold, cough, catarrh, asthma; poor sleep,
night crying, restlessness, agitation, hyperactivity; retarded psycho-physical
development.
Paediatric
tuina belongs to Chinese Medicine: it is based on the same physiology
and diagnosis principles, it is part of the training of traditional doctors,
it is widely used in today’s hospitals in China.
It shows some important differences from adult tuina, since the child’s
energetic system has specific characteristics, which involves differences
in physiology and pathology, as well as in semeiotics, diagnosis and treatment.
The tuina treatment for children is generally a sequence of 8-12 stimulations/methods-fa,
mainly pushing-tui and kneading-rou, on lines or points. Each fa is done
for 1-2 minutes, and the child can lay down or sit or stay in the lap
of the parent. At home the sequence is done once a day, more often in
case of an acute condition (e.g.fever).
As
for acupuncture, there is no contraindication about its use, and it is
simpler then in adults: clinical patterns are clearer since life had less
time to create confusion in the qi, and the response is faster since children
qi is more dynamic.
The needles are much thinner, the number of points is small, the stimulation
time is short. To use needles with children is easy. We can remember that
the needle goes through a passage: in Chinese the acupuncture point is
called xue, meaning “hole, lair”, that is a sort of a gallery
through which we reach the qi. If our technique is good enough, the insertion
is painless and it is not necessary to distract the child, but they get
actually involved by saying something like “now let’s see
if you feel a “zzz” inside, you tell me when it happens”
or “now we touch two points and we see if they talk to each-other”,
or “here there is a nice path, let’s go into the little house
and we clean it well”.
