Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question1 What should be done when a child has a fever?
Traditional Chinese Medicine Parenting: Question1
What should be done when a child has a fever?
Question: What should be done when a child has a fever?
Answer: There are three main reasons why people get sick.
External Causes: In traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), these are referred to as the "six external factors," namely wind, cold, heat, dampness, dryness, and fire.
Internal Causes: These relate to emotions, which TCM categorizes as joy, anger, worry, contemplation, sorrow, fear, and shock.
Neither Internal nor External Causes: These include injuries from knives and swords, car accidents, insect bites, and harm from sexual activity.
Children are primarily affected by the first cause, meaning they are most often sick due to external pathogens attacking the body's surface.
The human body has six defensive systems, known in TCM as Taiyang, Yangming, Shaoyang, Taiyin, Shaoyin, and Jueyin. For those unfamiliar with these terms, it's helpful to think of the body's immune system as having six lines of defense. When a child is exposed to cold (or wind, heat, dampness, dryness, etc.), the body's outermost defensive system immediately detects it, and the body's yang energy is quickly mobilized to expel the external pathogen. The fever results from the yang energy's effort to push the external pathogen out of the body. Therefore, the correct approach is to assist the body's yang energy in expelling the pathogen. The appropriate treatment for a child with a fever due to cold exposure is to expel the pathogen, not to use antibiotics that force the pathogen deeper into the body. This is known in TCM as "leading the pathogen inward," which turns an external symptom into an internal problem. You can determine if a child’s fever is due to cold exposure by checking if they are afraid of cold, wind, or have headaches.
General Treatment: For such external symptoms, the "Treatise on Cold Damage Diseases" (Shang Han Za Bing Lun) prescribes inducing sweat as a treatment method. Without discussing medicinal methods (to avoid parents making diagnostic errors and administering the wrong treatment), some general methods should be sufficient to treat the child.
Spinal Pinching: You can use the spinal pinching method, starting from the tailbone and pinching along the spine up to the large vertebrae, until the skin turns red. Pay extra attention to the lung area and stomach area on the back, where you should apply additional pinching. The child will generally sweat slightly (You can find instructional videos on youtube).
Ginger and Brown Sugar Water: Boil old ginger and brown sugar in water for the child to drink. If the child has a stuffy nose, add two sections of scallion with roots to the boiling water. After drinking, cover the child's back to induce sweating.
Bloodletting for High Fever: If the child has a high fever, use the Da Zhui, Shao Shang, and Shang Yang acupoints for bloodletting. You can find these acupoints in any acupoint chart. Use a blood lancet (such as those used for diabetics) for the procedure. First, disinfect the Da Zhui point with alcohol, then lift the skin at the Da Zhui and make a quick puncture to release a few drops of blood. Usually, bloodletting at the Shang Yang point isn't necessary; bleeding from the Shao Shang point is sufficient to induce sweating and reduce the fever.
