Treat Your Kids to Pediatric Acupuncture
By Sarah Hayes, LAc, Acupuncture Northwest Portland
People are very familiar with using acupuncture as adults, but many people don’t realize how beneficial acupuncture can be for their kids.
Acupuncture can treat a multitude of conditions for children, and kids can start getting treatment as young as a couple weeks old. Because children are considered to be very yang (active, dynamic, energetic), they respond very quickly to treatment methods, and often recover faster than adults.
Needles can be a part of the treatment….but they don’t have to be. Most often, kids enjoy the idea of using tiny needles to help heal their body. They get excited about learning how acupuncture works and how to take control of their own health. We also have many other tools we use in practice that effectively treat pediatric conditions. Acupressure is great for kids, and pressing on specific acupuncture points is a technique we often teach parents to use at home. Pediatric massage or qigong can be used as well, and helps treat children who are especially sensitive to stimulus and their environments. In some cases, we use a line of pediatric herbal formulas, and they add enormous benefit to the treatment plan.
No two treatments look the same when treating children. It is always about meeting the child where they’re at that day, and we all know that when it comes to kids, you don’t always know what you’re going to get. We can treat kids on the treatment table, in a chair, on the floor, or in their parent’s lap. Books or toys provide great distractions, and we often make a game out how we are treating that day.
For children, just like adults, you can use acupuncture and Western medicine together, in fact they are very complimentary. We often use acupuncture in combination with other conventional treatments, each method reinforcing the other. For example, we will treat a child for an ear infection or upper respiratory tract infection in conjunction with the child taking antibiotics. Kids see faster healing times, and parents see happier children.
If you have questions about how acupuncture can help your kids, call us anytime. We understand how important health care is for your little ones!
