Prevention and care of common childhood diseases

More than 90% of common childhood diseases can be reduced through daily scientific prevention. After getting sick, it is more important to give priority to home care and avoid excessive medical treatment than to take random medicines and blindly go to the hospital. This is what I want to say to parents after working in a pediatric clinical nursing position for 8 years and seeing tens of thousands of cases.

Last week, I met a mother in the emergency department. She was squatting in the corridor crying with her 3-year-old baby in her arms. She said that her baby had a fever of 38.5 degrees Celsius and she was afraid of developing pneumonia. She had waited in line for 2 hours and still hadn’t seen her. However, I went over to take a look and saw that her baby was sitting in her arms, munching on a bun. Her eyes were rolling, and she was in good spirits. She didn’t look like she was seriously ill at all. When I asked her, I found out that she had just had a fever for 2 hours, and there was no other discomfort except high body temperature. I taught her how to rub warm water on her neck and armpits to dissipate heat, and how to give the baby warm water in small amounts and many times.

Many old people always say that when you have a fever, you should cover your body with sweat, and the fever will go away if you cover it up. Now people on the Internet are saying that covering up sweat will cause febrile convulsions, and the two sides are quarreling. In fact, there is really no need to be black and white. There are three stages of a baby's fever. During the period when the body temperature rises, the baby will feel cold or even shiver. At this time, it is okay to put a small coat on and cover the hands and feet. When the baby's fever reaches its peak, the face will be red, and the palms and soles of the feet will be hot. At this time, the baby will have to open the clothes to dissipate heat. If you cover it again, it is really easy to cause problems. You see, old experience is not entirely wrong, and new guidelines must be applied flexibly, right? By the way, there is another pitfall that everyone is most likely to step into, which is to give antibiotics such as cephalosporins and amoxicillin to children as soon as they have a fever. You must know that 90% of children's respiratory infections are caused by viruses. Antibiotics are completely useless against viruses. Taking too much will destroy the intestinal flora and reduce the child's resistance. Only when a blood draw confirms that it is a bacterial infection, antibiotics need to be taken according to the course of treatment. This must not be messed up.

In fact, many babies are sick because they were “raised”. A while ago, a grandma brought her baby to a follow-up consultation. She said that the baby used to catch a cold once a month and had to take medicine for a long time every time. Later, she listened to my suggestion and did not dress the baby in an extra layer than an adult. She would run downstairs for an hour after eating every day instead of being kept at home. She also gave her less snacks and only had a full meal with meat and vegetables. In the past six months, she only had one mild cold and she didn't even take medicine. You said those health care products that cost thousands of dollars to enhance immunity are not as useful as running two laps? Oh, yes, there is currently no unified conclusion in the academic community about whether to give children immunity-enhancing supplements. Western medicine believes that as long as the diet is balanced and the exercise is sufficient, there is no need for additional supplements. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that ingredients such as yam and hawthorn can be used appropriately to regulate the spleen and stomach. The spleen and stomach will naturally become more resistant. You can choose according to your own child's condition. There is no need to follow the trend and buy imported supplements. In fact, a child's immunity is like a boot camp. The occasional cold or virus is just to train the child's immunity. Every time he relies on medicine to suppress it, the immunity will never be trained to fight. Instead, he will get sick at the slightest breeze.

In addition to colds and fevers, the most common illnesses in babies are vomiting and diarrhea, such as rotavirus and norovirus. When my own baby got Noro last year, he suffered from vomiting and diarrhea. My mother was very anxious and asked me to give him antidiarrheal medicine. I refused to give him antidiarrheal medicine, so she fed her a small amount of oral rehydration salt multiple times, 5 ml each time, every 10 minutes to prevent him from vomiting. After feeding him like this for one day, he stopped vomiting the next day, and was bouncing around on the third day. Many parents rush to give antidiarrheal medicine to their babies as soon as they see them. In fact, diarrhea is the body expelling viruses. Forcibly stopping diarrhea will keep the virus in the body, which will make the recovery slower. Of course, if the baby is dehydrated and has a particularly bad spirit, he must go to the hospital quickly. The parents have to decide on this level. The key is to look at the mental state of the baby. Don’t scare yourself by staring at the frequency of bowel movements or body temperature numbers.

Another headache for many parents is eczema. Groups of mothers often argue over whether to use hormone ointments. One group says that hormone ointments have serious side effects and it is safe to use pure herbal medicines for babies. The other group says that hormone ointments are the first-line medicine recommended by evidence-based medicine. If not used, eczema will become more and more serious. In fact, objectively speaking, weak hormone ointments such as desonide should be used according to the doctor's instructions and for no more than two weeks. There will be no dependence or side effects at all. On the contrary, many internet celebrity herbal ointments that claim to be "hormone-free" secretly add powerful hormones, which will give quick results when applied. However, long-term use may harm the baby. Of course, if it is just a slight redness, as long as you apply moisturizer thickly every day, five or six times a day, most of it can go away, and there is no need to use medication right away.

In fact, there are really not so many standard answers about what to do when raising a baby. I have been doing pediatric nursing for so many years, but I think the most useful guideline is to "observe the baby more and focus less on the indicators." If the body temperature is high but holding a baby that can play, loves to eat and play, nothing will happen. If the body temperature is not high but is so wimpy that you don't even want to touch your favorite snacks, then you have to go to the hospital quickly. After all, a baby's body is much stronger than we think. Less anxiety and more patience would be better than anything else.