What is Pediatric feeding disorder (PFD)?

Pediatric feeding disorder (PFD) is impaired oral intake that is not age-appropriate and is associated with medical, nutritional, feeding skill, and/or psychosocial dysfunction (Goday, 2019) The incidence of children of children with problematic feeding is on the rise. It is estimated that 2.3 million children five years old and younger in the United States (Manikam, 1996) are affected by PFD. 

Primary care for these children generally includes...

Many of our patients, both adults and children, are dealing with stress daily. While stress is an adaptive response, repeated high-stress events and/or low-grade chronic stress can create inflammation, and if unchecked, lead to chronic illness. 

Patients suffering from ADHD, anxiety, asthma, digestive issues, emotional issues or ongoing stress are likely to have an imbalance in their vagus nerve tone. This keeps their sympathetic nervous system in an upregulated state and prevents...

The beginning of the school year is just around the corner and children are confronted with so many things: anxiety meeting new friends, germs starting preschool, overwhelm with all the homework and more!

Essential oils are an easy, fun and effective way to support children physically, mentally and emotionally.  Applying essential oils to acupuncture points activates the qi of the points and has the added therapeutic benefit of the oil itself.

I use these products every day in my home...

Millions of children have "steroid resistant" or difficult asthma that doesn't respond to inhaled corticosteroids on montelukast (Singulair).

These children suffer daily and have few options to control their illness! Chinese medicine offers safe, effective solutions when Western medicine isn't enough.

Cara and I will be discussing how Chinese herbal medicine can play in role in easing asthma symptoms and breaking the cycle of frequent illness and asthma.

The three formulas we cover...

Are you leery of using too few acupoints to get the desired outcome? Or too many and causing an adverse reaction?

How many acupoints should you treat? How many for infants vs. toddlers vs. young children?

If you can't assess tongue or pulse, how do you know which points to use?

 The asthma Unwellness Gap is growing and conventional medicine is failing kids. One size fits all treatments leave millions of children with few options to control their symptoms. Chinese medicine offers real solutions.  Let’s talk about what we can do to start helping kids with asthma.

Is pediatric acupuncture something totally new for most of your patients?

Have you ever had trouble explaining Chinese medicine to them? Have their eyes ever glazed because they’re confused?

Or maybe you're just looking for a simple system to explain what you do that instills confidence? 

That’s what this video all about. 

I'll teach you how to use the 5-Elements to give your patients the 30,000-foot view of Chinese medicine. They'll be able to see how everything...

Easy probably isn't the first word that comes to mind when practitioners think of pediatric acupuncture.

Do you ever find it challenging to work with kids? Is it difficult to manage family dynamics? What about interacting with the different personalities of the parents and their children? 

Are some kids bouncing off the walls while others barely talk to you? Do you have a hard time balancing getting the treatment done while also diagnosing, treating, and prescribing home care?

That's...

Did you know that every week I do a Facebook Live broadcast each week my Facebook Group, The Pediatric Acupuncturist Community?

Last week was our monthly Pediatric Q&A. This is a Facebook Live event where you can ask me anything about pediatrics!

Here are some questions we covered in the last Q&A session:

• How do you start a pediatric practice when you're mainly treating adults?
• What do you do when a child is embarrassed about their symptoms, and the parent doesn't want you to discuss...

NOTE: When I recorded this video live, the video was displaying in the vertical direction and not horizontal as it is here. We were able to fix it in post-production. Just keepin' it real! 

We know that day to day, there will be ups and downs in our practice of pediatric acupuncture.

Some days we have a big win, the child responds well to treatment and is feeling better by the end of the session. It's easy for us to want to hang our hat on those wins: This is going great, my patient is...