Who do you turn to for health advice?
Even if it’s your pediatrician, with the rise of holistic pediatricians, that doesn’t mean that you are getting good advice.
In general, if the advice you are getting lacks evidence that it is safe and effective, relies on anecdotes and testimonials, and is labeled as ‘alternative,’ then it is a safe bet that it is bad advice.
Learn the Risks of Following Bad Advice
Some folks seem to be drawn to this type of advice though.
As long as they think it is natural, holistic, and is the opposite of what mainstream health experts say to do, some parents will jump at the chance of trying the latest fad, even if it has no benefits and lots of extra risks.
Take giving your kids raw milk for example. Health experts have been warning about the dangers of drinking raw milk for years and even work to keep selling it outlawed in most communities, but some parents still give it to their young children. This is despite the fact that it has no health benefits and isn’t even fortified with vitamin D!
What’s worse than giving your kids raw milk? How about skipping your baby’s vitamin K shot? Although it has no major risks, parents of many anti-vaccine and holistic type Facebook groups on the internet are often encouraged to skip this shot.
How come they never warn folks that their baby might die in agony if they skip the shot? After all, there is a very good reason that we started to give all babies vitamin K shots – to stop vitamin K deficiency bleeding.
Just like there is a reason that we started to pasteurize milk – to keep us all from getting critically ill from contaminated milk.
And why we take antibiotics for severe infections, and not essential oils.
“If one gets a cancer diagnosis, they need to detox the toxins that have accumulated in the body, minimize further exposure and boost the immune system to fight the cancer. This is done NATURALLY. Traditional medical approaches (drugs, chemo, radiation) only FURTHER damage the body and immune system.”
Brandy Vaughan for Learn the Risk
And why we take chemotherapy for cancer, and not coffee enemas.
And why most of us don’t think to try chiropractic, acupuncture, Ayurveda, homeopathy, Reiki, reflexology, or other non-evidenced based therapies when our kids are sick.
Why don’t people get rabies very often any more? It’s not because folks are no longer at risk, although the risk is less because dogs and cats are now vaccinated. It is because the vast majority of people get treated if they are exposed to an animal that might have rabies.
Remember when the six-year-old boy in Florida didn’t after touching a rabid bat? He died.
It’s just like the reason kids don’t get stuck by lightning very often. It’s not because lightning doesn’t happen anymore. It’s because we get a lot of warnings about thunderstorms and we know to go inside at the first sign of lightning in the area. Lightning strikes are rare because we take steps to reduce our risk of getting hit.
Why don’t folks get tetanus that much anymore? Again, most people are vaccinated, and they get boosters if they have wounds that puts them at extra risk. While we know what happens when unvaccinated kids are exposed to tetanus and don’t get treated, that isn’t a risk that you will read about on anti-vaccine websites or Facebook groups.
They also don’t tell you that kids in the US still die of diseases like Hib and rotavirus. And there are still measles deaths in the US.
That’s why the great majority of us get vaccinated, because we understand that vaccines are safe and necessary, and that skipping or delaying any vaccines simply puts our kids at risk to catch one of the diseases the vaccines are designed to prevent.
What to Know About the Risks of Following Bad Advice
You might get lucky and have a good outcome when you follow bad advice, but you should at least understand the risks of what might go wrong if you truly think you are making an informed decision.
More on the Risks of Following Bad Advice
- What’s The Harm?
- what’s the harm
- Here be Dragons: Caring for Children in a Dangerous Sea of sCAM
- A Mother I Never Met Changed My Mind About Vaccines
- Beware of Non-Evidence-Based Treatments
- Vitamin K Refusal – The New Anti-Vax
- The terrifying result of refusing newborn Vitamin K
- The American Academy of Pediatrics has an Integrative Medicine Problem
- Quackery for Kids
- Six signs you are being treated by a quack
- No matter how often I read about treatments like this, I still can’t believe parents actually subject their children to them
- No, torturing colicky infants by sticking them with acupuncture needles won’t calm them
- A Brief Look at Homeopathy for the Children
- FDA Warns Parents Against Using Homeopathic Teething Tablets
- Cranio-sacral therapy: misleading? dishonest? unethical?
- Another Child Harmed by Pseudomedicine: Lead Poisoning from a “Homeopathic Healing” Bracelet
- Acupuncture for Infant Colic Part 2: Acupuncture Boogaloo
- Reflexology for Babies?
- “Magic Socks?” Alternative Medicine’s Obsession With Your Feet.
- How Pseudoscientific Quacks Defend Child Abuse
- Conviction Upheld For Parents Who Let Their Toddler Die of Meningitis
- When alternative medicine cancer cures fail, it’s always the patient’s fault. Always.
- Woman With Treatable Breast Cancer Picks Quackery Over Medicine
- The Astonishing Quackery of the Natural Birth Movement
- The Worst of the Autism Biomed Movement: Bleach, Castration and Death
- Exposing Chiropractors Who Use Spinal Manipulation on Newborns
- Homeopathy for Ebola: The Quackery That Knows No Limits
- Alternative medicine–the risks of untested and unregulated remedies.
- What Are the Risks of Not Using Mainstream Cancer Treatment?
- Choosing alternative cancer treatment doubles your risk of death
- The Quackish Cult of Alternative Medicine
Last Updated on June 18, 2018