It’s such a confusing time to be a parent, isn’t it? Actually, I probably could have made that assertion any time over the last 6000 years and nearly every parent would have agreed with me. The truth is, it has never really been easy being a parent. But it’s especially confusing now with so much conflicting health and parenting information and advice appearing on an almost daily basis.
Take, for example, the very constant problem of what a parent of a young child is supposed to do when the child gets a cold. It used to be very straight-forward: the parent bathed the child with love, dosed her with fluids, kept the child warm and dry, and then let nature take its course. And, what will undoubtedly surprise many of today’s parents is that those tactics actually worked. By which I mean that the vast majority of young children with a cold or the flu got over their illness within 7-14 days (often sooner, sometimes longer), and, all returned to being well with the world, although a few kids developed cold and flu complications – ear infections, even pneumonia – which again, were simply waited out.
The point I want drive home, though, is that none of these children were treated with medications, mainly because there were no medications to offer them (with the exception of a few “natural†remedies, all of which are still being promoted by true believers, but none of which have ever been scientifically proven to be effective).
The situation changed dramatically, though, in the post-war era when antibiotics became readily available. Although antibiotics were – still are – intended only to treat bacterial infections, they somehow started being commonly prescribed for viral infections as well, because “well, you know, just in case this turns into a bacterial infection, and besides, there’s no real harm from using these drugs.â€
How wrong they – we? – were, eh.
Now, I could write reams about the many deleterious health consequences raised by the improper (over)use of antibiotics, but I want to focus here on just one: my theory that the ready availability of powerful and effective antibiotics was a major reason that we became de-sensitized to the use of all medications, which has led naturally, and inevitably, to the nearly religious belief that decongestants and cough suppressants actually work in helping deal with a cold or the flu.
If you do any digging at all, you will quickly ascertain that “cold and flu remedies†were approved for use with only scant evidence of being more effective than placebos. Worse, because at the time these drugs first came on the market, children were thought to be merely small versions of adults very few of these drugs were ever tested in children – they were simply approved for sale in children by adjusting adult dosages downwards.
Yet what a success story these drugs became, for the drug makers in large part, because parents want to be proactive in nursing their children back to health, and because doctors get frustrated telling worried parents that the only thing they can do is give a sick child some fluids and wait. Drugs make everyone feel better that they are actually doing something to get a child back to being well.
But now the tide has turned, because health authorities are finally acknowledging that 1) “cough and cold†remedies have not been adequately tested in kids, 2) these drugs are pretty useless anyway, and 3) most important, in some situations, these drugs can even be dangerous. So parents who were convinced to give their children a decongestant, a chest rub, an antihistamine, or a cough suppressant (even better, all of them mixed together) with the first cold symptom, are now being told “unh, unh, don’t do that.â€
This new approach undoubtedly scares many parents because we’re back to an era when we treat the vast majority of colds and flu with love, rest, fluids, and tincture of time (and perhaps something for fever). But, I think it’s actually a good thing. Why? Because it’s a start in teaching parents – all of us – that we have become far too reliant on drugs for many conditions that can be treated just as well with non-medication interventions. Not only is this approach a whole lot cheaper, it’s also a whole lot safer, and often way more comfortable to boot.
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Reviewed December 3, 2007.