If you are curious about my own private practice in Vancouver, Washington, our clinic website has more details, and it is called Points of Origin, PLLC.

Please leave your comments and feedback below. And stay tuned for more video episodes coming up on this topic and others.

Childhood Bedwetting

Childhood bedwetting is a common and distressing situation for both kids and their parents. This condition is also known as nocturnal enuresis which means nighttime urination.

If the child is fairly young, a diagnostic evaluation is done, including seeing medical specialists when needed. If there are physical problems or inherited disorders of the urinary tract then these should be treated right away.

In most cases, however, a child with bedwetting has no physical problems and often parents are told to just wait it out.

While this approach is understandable, I believe it does not give us the whole picture.

By using the very valuable information readily obtained through evaluating your child with a Chinese medicine or energy medicine perspective, we can find those contributing factors that may not be obvious and the treatment or focusing measures that will help accelerate the resolution of the bedwetting.

In many cases it is true that if you wait long enough, the child will “outgrow” bedwetting. However, I have yet to find a child or a parent who is willing to accept that approach without trying anything and everything to alleviate this persistent problem.

In my experience, some of the most common precursors to bedwetting are a history of having had immune system challenges like serious infections or severe allergies. These conditions require energy from your child’s kidney and bladder energy circuits, both when they are actively occurring and in some cases for years afterwards.

Other situations that can take up more of a child’s kidney and bladder energy are fearful or traumatic events like suffering from a bike or car accident, head injury, or even just having elective surgery for things like ear tubes and having tonsils taken out.

It is not that these events are causative in and of themselves, but it is the redistribution of the energy that is required by the child’s system to deal with them in the moment and in the aftermath that can lead to an imbalance in the kidney and bladder energy circuit.

This is such a common situation in kids that I have incorporated asking these specific questions with every new patient I see in my practice. In this way, we are able to get a more holistic picture of what’s going on with the child from the very beginning.

The usefulness of this information and the fact that it can be correlated and given back to the child and family as part of a coherent energy explanation for bedwetting, makes this a key component of my strategy with kids and parents.

The energy medicine way of looking at your child’s kidney and bladder energy evaluates the historical experiences that may be related to current symptoms, and recognizes that the body as a system is called upon to make energy distribution decisions based on priority and the need to maintain vital functions.

In addition, the ability to prevent or anticipate the possibility of new symptoms appearing in the future is something I want all parents to know is possible using this type of energy medicine approach.

You can read more about the energy medicine and Chinese medicine approaches that I use in my practice on my website, where I delve into more discussions on this and many other topics and concepts.

In addition, if you are the type of parent that likes all the details, you may be interested in my book called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents which is available in softcover, ebook and audio formats.

Constipation in Children

Constipation is another common digestive system condition that affects many children. As parents, your job is to try and alleviate this frustrating situation and I want to help you to accomplish this. I have a different perspective on childhood problems compared to other practitioners. This comes from my clinical experience as a pediatrician and from my current private practice in alternative/energy medicine.

I rely heavily on the Chinese medicine system to help explain conditions and particularly the timing of when and under what circumstances symptoms develop. In the case of constipation occurring in childhood, parents often ask why is this happening to my child? I think this is a very valid question, especially because most kids have had normal bowel movement habits at some time in their lives.

For example, babies whether they are breast fed or bottle fed, generally have multiple stools per day. The question should be asked then, as to why constipation develops in a child who previously had no problems with bowel regularity. I have learned that the Chinese medicine system of organ and meridian energy pathways can explain much of these changes that happen, using energy as the term used to describe what is going on.

The large intestine or colon is the organ responsible for passing stools and eliminating wastes from the digestive process. If we only focus on the physical organ itself, we will miss a significant proportion of the causative factors at play in the child with constipation. There are very few cases which are attributable to physical problems like blockage, abnormal formation of the digestive tract, or inherited disorders like Cystic Fibrosis or Hirschprung’s Disease. These conditions generally present early in life and fortunately can be diagnosed and treated when found. However, in the vast majority of cases, children develop constipation with no known obvious cause and then we are left to recommend symptomatic care.

There is nothing wrong with treating the symptoms of constipation to provide relief, but we should not mistake the temporary alleviation of symptoms with actual resolution of the problem. It goes without saying, that prune juice or mineral oil is not the “cure” for constipation, although they can be helpful along with other measures like keeping well hydrated with fluids or avoiding too much dairy products. My point is that no child is “destined” to have constipation as part of their natural pattern of existence. We must be much more diligent in looking for and uncovering the cause, not limiting ourselves to a few diagnosable conditions only.

This graphic depicts the inter-relationship between the large intestine, the spleen, the stomach and the lungs in the Chinese medicine system.

I have found that in the Chinese medicine system there are multiple correspondences with the large intestine energy circuit that can readily explain many of these cases of constipation in children. For example, if your child has had any respiratory illness in the past like a pneumonia, bronchitis, upper respiratory infections, ear infections, etc., this will predispose them to preferentially send more of their available energy to the lung circuit instead of the large intestine. You can ask yourself the question, which do you think your child’s system deems as more important to take care of, the lungs and breathing or the large intestine and regularity of bowel habits?

As they say, this is a “no brainer”. There would be no problem with this energy redistribution if it was just temporary. However, in young children especially, these energy changes can become a set pattern which is difficult to unwind. Fortunately, kids are very amenable to energy inputs like the BodyTalk system which I use extensively in my clinical practice. Often it only takes gentle energetic encouragement, focus and awareness to help your child’s system to revert back to its more normal and balanced settings.

You can read more about the large intestine energy circuit on my website and more general information about how I use the Chinese medicine system and the energy medicine paradigm as part of my practice. As always, I encourage you to find the approach and modalities that fit with your child’s individual needs, not some ready-made formula. And finally, be open to new ideas and new information. This strategy has worked well for me as a doctor and I’m sure it can work for you, too.

Stomachaches in Children

Stomachaches occur in children quite commonly and over the years I have seen many kids with this condition. I have a different perspective on the causative factors that need to be taken into account and I feel this is an important topic to discuss with parents.

In my practice I like to use the saying, “The more information, the better”. What I mean is that we can gain a lot more ground by being open to different systems, interpretations, and models of explanation, rather than just relying on one single description.

If we are evaluating a child with stomachaches, we must address the symptom and condition and try to elucidate the likely causes. However, often there is no discernible cause from a physiologic or anatomic standpoint. Then what do we do? I have stated in other places how I am in agreement with doing testing to make sure there are no obvious or hidden physical problems, like blockages, ulcers, growths, appendicitis, inflammatory bowel disease, etc. In the vast majority of cases, however, none of these are identified as the cause and we are left with no answers.

This is the situation where I believe a broader more holistic and energy derived description and evaluation comes in very handy. On my website I have given more information about the Chinese medicine system and how it addresses conditions found commonly in kids. There are specific groupings which bring together body organs and energy pathways in a coherent and clinically significant way, which I find extremely useful as a physician and I think can be very insightful information for parents to know.

In the Chinese medicine system, the stomach organ and channel are grouped with the large intestine, the lungs and the spleen. These four organs and channels essentially work together on the same circuit, and your child’s energy system must distribute or parcel out its energy in the most efficient and beneficial manner that it can in the context of your child’s daily life and experience.

I have found that when we open up the breadth and scope of our questioning and increase the potential topics of inquiry, our chances of finding the right causative explanation for something like stomachaches goes up dramatically.

So, the bottom line is this: Get an evaluation done to look for treatable and serious problems that could be going on with your child. But don’t stop there if those lab tests and procedures don’t reveal anything. It is important to keep looking for the causes, even if it takes you beyond the physical realm and into the arena where energy becomes the more useful explanation.

In my practice, I use a consciousness based system called BodyTalk which allows us to have access to those things which are only accessible through the energy medicine or consciousness based paradigm. I discuss these concepts in more detail in my ebook called Energy Medicine Principles for Parents and you can read more about the Chinese medicine system and your child on my website called Principles for Parents.

Childhood Worry: Uncovering the Cause

As a pediatrician with a holistic medicine practice, I see kids of all age groups for various reasons and at various stages of development. Seeing kids with excessive worry or anxiety has become commonplace and I’d like to explore the possible reasons why.

Back in the 1990’s, I recall seeing children in my practice who had nervousness or anxiety in certain situations, or who would worry about their parents or other family members seemingly over and above what would be considered “normal”.  Over the last 5 to 10 years the picture has changed to where now it is extremely common for kids to show up in my office with all sorts of symptoms related to undue worry and anxiety. Is it just the times we are living in or are kids just under more stress nowadays?

The answer to these questions requires an attention to individual details and the circumstances relevant to each child and family. If we as doctors are willing to look, using a broad energy medicine based approach, I believe we can get much closer to uncovering the causative factors and defining the solutions to overcome childhood worry.

As I have mentioned in several other places, I rely on the Chinese medicine approach quite a bit in my evaluations with kids and their parents. It turns out that the spleen energy circuit is often responsible for the excessive worry, thinking, rumination and obsessive thought formation which affects many children without an obvious external cause. By carefully going through proper questioning and history taking, we are often able to see where and when the pattern started which resulted in the symptoms being brought to our attention.

Another very important contributing factor which deserves mentioning is the degree of sensitivity that many kids exhibit both outwardly in how they respond to environmental influences and triggers like noise levels, and internally in so far as their emotions, mood and self esteem are reflected and perceived by themselves.

Things make more sense when we see that the spleen energy circuit in the Chinese medicine system is responsible for the digestive system, clarity of thinking, food cravings especially sweets, and the emotional component of worry, among many other functions.  The common concurrent finding of stomachaches, nausea, decreased appetite and other problems related to eating come as no surprise when excessive worry is dominating the clinical picture.  Obtaining this added information is crucial to differentiate the individual child’s pattern from what may be expected or assumed.

Further details that might be obtained from the child’s history are the timing of events and related historical features. For example, a child who develops anxiety and worry after the family moves to a new house or a new town will need to be differentiated from an energy perspective from another child who might be in a stable home situation but who may have experienced pneumonia or some other lung related illness in the recent or distant past. The spleen and the lung circuits are very closely aligned in the Chinese medicine system. If this relationship remains unknown, the connection between them will not come to light and the energy distribution implications will not receive proper attention.

By far and away, I find the most useful aspect of this whole exercise is informing parents of the relationship between worry as an emotional state that requires energy, and the demands and needs of the child’s system as a whole. Of course, there needs to be balance maintained and a sense of order and priority, which fortunately a child’s system takes care of automatically through the function of the nervous system (brain and spinal cord) which includes the autonomic part of the nervous system.

One last bit of information I’d like to share is that the spleen energy circuit is very closely associated with the parent’s role of “nourishing” the child, both physically providing food, as well as other forms of nourishment like encouragement, positive reinforcement, security, a stable home life, etc. If you’d like to learn more about how this topic is important to your child and how I use this strategy to evaluate kids in my practice, you may read more details on this page on my Principles for Parents website called spleen energy and your child.

Childhood Asthma Allergy and Eczema

I have seen many kids over the course of my career who have this combination of asthma, allergies, and eczema occurring at the same time or at different time periods in the child’s life. Any one of these conditions is enough to cause frustration and concern for parents, but the additive effect of all three can be overwhelming and a challenge to the child’s system and energy threshold.

Asking the Question Why?

One of the strategies I like to use in the evaluation of kids, is to stretch out the framework of investigation to include not just what is happening now, but what has come before. Essentially, I think it is important to ask the question “why?”. Why this child, at this time, in this family, in this environment? Because this is such a difficult question to answer, it is almost never raised in the context of a practitioner’s office evaluation. The emphasis tends to be on treatment and management with medications, which is appropriate but in my opinion, incomplete. I am quite certain that every parent wants to know the answer to this “why” question for their own child, but it never reaches the point where it is possible to answer it because it is so nebulous and unclear, not to mention the fact that the possible contributing variables are too numerous to count.

I have learned to tackle this from an energy medicine perspective, which means we focus on the energetics of your child’s system which includes factors both inside and outside of their physical body, as well as time frames going all the way back to birth, prenatal and family history influences. When this is done, the reasons for the common scenario where asthma, allergies and eczema are coexisting in the same child have the chance to come to light. This awareness on your part as a parent is key to helping your child as I have mentioned previously in another post.

Your Child’s Lung Energy

In the Chinese medicine system, the lung energy, as a subdivision of your child’s overall energy allotment, is in charge of the process of breathing, the immune system especially on the surface of the body and on mucous membranes like the nose, mouth, respiratory and digestive tract, and finally the health of the skin (the largest organ of the body). By noting that this one sub-system is energetically in charge of all three of these categories (among many others), it is readily apparent that this triad of involvement in a child is likely to be caused by a weakness or imbalance on this one sub-circuit.

It is not that simple, however, because your child’s life experiences, events, environmental influences, inherited predispositions, and emotional contributing factors all can have a large or small impact on how your child’s system responds and seeks to balance itself. Therefore, the reasons and the answer to the question of why my child, why now, and so forth will always be individual to the child, there can never be a set answer that will cover every child with this triad of conditions.

It took me a long time to recognize this because this is not the way our current scientific investigation model works. Studies are done to look for the one explanation that tries to explain all, like a causative organism, an allergen, a toxin or a food or environmental sensitivity. I am not saying this is wrong, all I am saying is that it represents too narrow a view.

When every child with asthma, allergies and eczema has a different set of reasons for having those three conditions together, it is a problem trying to reduce the answer to the why question to a one size fits all response. I think we all know this intuitively, and certainly parents know that their own child has unique characteristics that differentiate them from everyone else in the world. To me, this is the main reason to use a more holistic approach to childhood issues and in my opinion, an energy based evaluation must be a part of the overall strategy.

Reality Based Approach

My final point to make is that your child does have a reason as to why they have or have had this triad of asthma, allergies and eczema but the answer will not be found in some textbook, or by a specialist, or on the next drug commercial. It will be found by the investigation of your child’s own history, predisposing factors, timing of events and experiences, and the awareness of their own energy based system functioning in real time.

My proposal to parents is to take a reality based approach which takes into account the necessity of medications if that is required, but not to the exclusion of all other investigations. Your child’s system is way too complex for us to logically reduce things to one answer only. Be open to all possibilities and systems of reasoning. Your child already does this naturally. I think we should do the same.

Energy: A New Term to Help Your Child

Energy is the new “common currency”

Along with this new time that we are living in, it is apparent that we need a new language or new terminology to describe what is happening in as close to realistic terms as possible. Only in this way can we have a meaningful and productive discussion. I propose that we use the term “energy” as our common currency of information exchange.

The previous method of using physical components like chemicals, hormones, anatomical and physiological words to describe what is happening in our physical systems including your child’s body and mind; they have simply become obsolete. Even in the rigorous halls of academia, the descriptions of what is actually going on in our bodies has had to undergo a radical shift in perspective and consequently nomenclature.

I believe we are in a profound period of transition, and it will not be easy to reconcile or even understand the meaning of this change in real time. This is even more compounded by the fact that your child is changing on a daily basis, and the methods and strategies that may have worked yesterday will no longer work or even apply today. In my experience, simply changing to “energy” as our common denominator can make a huge difference in how we evaluate, describe, and come up with strategies to treat your child.

I see kids in my practice for varied reasons and at varying times in their development. I have learned over the years, that the energy medicine system provides a wonderful and comprehensive framework to work within and to better describe what’s happening with your child. Let’s look at an example.

A child presents with new onset allergies to grass and pollens at age 10. This is not that unusual, but the circumstances reveal that this child has not had any major changes in living situation, routine, school, relationships, etc., so the question that must be asked is, “Why is this happening to this child now?”.

I think this is a legitimate question, given the fact that he did not have allergies in the first ten years of life. This is where the energy medicine system comes in very handy. This child experienced a fearful event in the winter, just prior to developing these springtime allergies. What was that event? He needed to have surgery and stayed in the hospital for 5 days.

From an energy perspective, this has tremendous meaning. Do we think this child’s energy system is more likely to pay attention to an event like having surgery and being away from home for 5 days, or is it more likely to keep the immune system in balance so as not to over-react to environmental allergens like grass and pollens as he had done for the previous 10 years?

It turns out that in the Chinese medicine system, the same reservoir of energy required to deal with fear and fear-provoking events is responsible for the health and maintenance of your child’s immune system. In accordance with the principle of balance, a disturbance in the immune system or any other body subsystem can take the form of over-reaction or excess (like allergic responses) or under-performance and deficiency (like having a weakened constitution and predisposition to getting sick and catching colds frequently).

Again, I just want to emphasize the framework and the context which this perspective and viewpoint provides both to the practitioner trying to help the child and family, and to the parent who can appreciate and understand the activity of their child’s system in a new way.

Perhaps the most valuable result of this way of looking at any child’s situation, is that it shows how logical and conservation and preservation oriented the body and energy system really is, as opposed to a random series of events and misfortunes that a child has to endure.

Once we switch to using the child’s energy system and describing energy related functions, now we have moved into the territory of energy medicine and the term “energy” being used in the context of distribution and decision-making by the child’s own intelligent underlying system.

Do you see how the onset of allergies is much easier to comprehend and explain in this context? This allows us to not only address the new symptoms that have appeared for this child, but we can simultaneously focus on the underlying part of his energy system that could use some re-balancing or strengthening right now. It is much easier and better to tackle certain issues sooner rather than later. I think everyone can identify with this concept, once it is put into terms we can understand and agree on.

I believe it is extremely useful to use “energy” as a new medical term and as a systematic way to explain what otherwise would likely never come to the awareness of parents, practitioners, or children themselves. I have been amazed at how useful this way of thinking about symptoms, disorders and diseases is for me as a doctor who works with kids and their families. I encourage parents to learn more about this approach to evaluating what’s going on with their children.

Energy Medicine Principles for Parents Radio Interview

A few days ago I had the honor of being interviewed by Andrea Tannouri on her blog talk radio show. We spent about one hour talking about my new book, the history of how I came to be a holistic physician using alternative medicine when I started out as a conventionally trained pediatrician and practiced that way for several years. We also touched on various topics relevant to the choices parents are called upon to make when it comes to their child’s health care and the navigation required to choose among all of the sources of information out there.

As I have reflected on our conversation over the last few days, a new question has surfaced with regards to what I like to call “the middle ground” which is in between the conventional medical establishment and the alternative medicine wing of our society which includes a number of physicians in the mix besides myself. I believe we have become stuck on semantics and statistics and rules to the detriment of our understanding and seeking of common ground.

For example, it dawned on me after the interview that what I refer to as energy includes the conventional definition as well as the alternative. The only difference seems to be in what is focused on and named, and what receives the bulk of our investigation and quite frankly our belief. Energy in the conventional physical viewpoint of the body involves something called ATP, or adenosine triphosphate which is produced at the cellular level by the powerhouse of our cells, the mitochondria. Now, every physician has learned this and knows what ATP and mitochondria are. However, when it comes to our patients, parents and their kids, I have never been asked by them about this. Is it because mitochondria and ATP are not important? No. It is simply because nobody thinks or speaks using these terms except doctors and researchers.

When we use the term ‘energy’ in the alternative or holistic medicine viewpoint, we are referring to a concept that everyone can relate to, even though technically it is not measured. If someone is low on energy, we say they are tired out or exhausted. We don’t say their mitochondria are low on ATP production. This doesn’t mean we are right and everyone else is wrong, it just means that the description of energy is more understandable and useful for families looking for answers and explanations for their kids.

I believe that we can use both strategies to give parents the best information possible, depending on the situation at hand. In the realm of physical disorders and imbalances, there is no question that a hormone like insulin for diabetes is necessary and is an example of matching a physical deficiency with a physical or chemical/hormonal/substance replacement. In the category of energy imbalances, we must use energy inputs to match and correct the energy patterns that lead to problems and not assume that drugs or surgical interventions are the only valid choices. The BodyTalk System and the Chinese Medicine and acupuncture systems are examples of modalities whose intervention is largely energy based. As a physician, I have no problem accepting this as a concept because it makes sense, and I have seen the energy medicine approach work time after time with all age groups for many different energy associated conditions.

We owe it to ourselves, our families, our colleagues, and especially our succeeding generations, to find common ground and creative solutions, rather than prolonging the competitive stances that keep us in grid lock over who has the right answer for everyone and everything.

That’s more than enough of my ramblings, how about I give you a link to the audio file on my website where you can listen to the interview I did with Andrea Tannouri on Energy Medicine Principles for Parents.

This may be the first of many interviews where we explore topics that are important to you and your kids. Be sure to send me your feedback after listening to the interview.

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