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Growing Pains in Children Herbal Treatment - McDowell's Herbal Treatments

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Herbs have traditionally been used to assist a person to come back to a healthy state of well being. Individual herbs, specifically prescribed for a particular situation may assist the body to come back into balance, thereby allowing a healthy homeostasis to be reinstated as nature intended. The herbalist looks to the whole person, their values and attitudes as well as their circumstances and physical condition along with other aspects of their individuality. This is in marked contrast to the allopathic medicine approach.

Below you will find an example of selected herbs for a particular condition. Herbal support can take a variety of forms and combinations, so it is vital that each person consult directly with a qualified holistic practitioner to gain the full benefit of immunity and health building support.

All of our bones are present when we are born and different ones grow at different rates. Growing pains, which are sharp pains in the long bones of the arms or legs or in and around the joints during our early teen years, can be a problem for some children. Especially I suggest, for those in modern western cultures with our addiction to high dairy content in our diets.

Bones increase in length from their ends rather than growing uniformly along their length and the ends and the joints mounted on the ends of bones are not properly hardened in children until they stop growing. Some so called growing pains are really a sign of joint damage due to inappropriate jarring exercise affecting the softer joints of the growing long bones.

This is the reason we should protect our children from overly heavy workouts as in weight lifting or sports which involve impact to the joints like long distance running or many contact sports until their bones have stopped growing and have matured.

It is true that Calcium is involved in bone growth but what we don't also stress enough is that it is really Calcium in balance with other major minerals like Silica and Magnesium and Phosphorous which is really what we need, and not Calcium on its own.

As bones grow longer they cause the ligaments supporting the joints and the movement of our limbs to stretch also. If the child's nutrition does not support sufficient flexibility in the ligaments they may also cause pain, as may the blood vessels in the muscles and the muscles themselves as they also stretch to keep up with the bones.

I suggest therefore that growing pains are more to do with deficits in our nutrition and signs that things are not as they should be rather than an annoying symptom to be dealt with.

Herbal/Nutritional support during growth and development to facilitate the rapid and healthy growth and maturity of the bones, ligaments, muscles, blood vessels and the nerves themselves are all required and growing pain should be seen in this light.

There are simple food substances, which support all these things including such grains as Millet, Linseed, Oats and Buckwheat. There are also simple herbs, which can provide specialist nutrition that will assist in cases where repeated episodes of growing pain make it clear that extra support is required.

The herbs I make up together to provide this additional support are; Oats, Equisetum, Rosehips, Elecampane, Yarrow, Nettle and Rue along with the Bach Flowers Honeysuckle, Wild Oats and Walnut, this can be taken added to water three times daily at a dose rate of 10 drops per dose.

Care should be taken to make sure the child has sufficient highly mineralised foods in the form of grains primarily in their diet. A blend of ground millet, linseed and oats sprinkled over any of the popular processed cereal will improve its nutritional value out of sight.

Nobody tracks these things, but I am sure that if they did, structural problems like arthritis would be much more common in middle age in those children who don't have adequate minerals in their diet and too much in the way of dairy products than those in other countries who have a high proportion of grain and little or no dairy products.

Maybe growing pains are trying to bring this fact to our attention.

Have a question? Contact McDowell's Herbal Treatments

McDowell's staff Herbalists can not diagnose your disease or illness. What they can do is offer a herbal program to assist with healing, after you have had advice from your doctor or specialist. If you have unexplained pain or symptoms, seek medical advice.

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