Scabies is a skin ailment that is caused by a scabies mite that burrows itself under your skin. Typically they will burrow undernearth your outside layers of your skin, and then they will proceed to lay eggs and feed off of your blood.

A good sign of scabies is a very pimply type rash that mite present itself on both your hands or arms within the same spots. You can not visibly see the mites which makes them pretty hard to identify at first, but you will start noticing itching during the evening when they are most active, this is how most people will typically diagnose they have scabies. Scabies are usually spread by skin-to-skin contact or by touching things such as bedding, clothing, towels etc which have been used by a person infected by the scabies mite.

The most common places that the scabies mite affects are between fingers and toes, around skinfolds, around your waist, around your wrist, elbows, genital areas, and even the bottom of your feet.

Scabies can usually be associated with intense itching after about two to four weeks following being infested, which tends to be more intense during the evening. Once infected you need to be treated immediately as you can affect people around you, in most cases scabies is passed around to family members or roomates. If you think you have scabies you should treat everyone who lives within the household to prevent further spreading of the mite. You can be successfully treated then get reinfected by a family member who does not even know they have it. So be sure to treat the whole household at the same time.

A good way to help prevent getting Scabies is to use tea tree oil. Tea tree oil is a antiseptic that can help keep aways scabies and help the skin fight off infections. You can add up to ten drops of tea tree oil to a hot bath and soak in it for thirty minutes, this can help fight scabies and will help you sleep at night if you have them.

If you have scabies you should treat everyone in your household together and be sure to wash all your clothing and bedding in temparatures that exceed fifty degrees. Any other items around the house should be sealed in a air tight bag for 72 hours to prevent getting reinfected from them.

When my 14-year-old daughter was still in her single-digits, she repeatedly got ear infections. The pain in the ear led to crying (who could blame her?), and we would take her to the pediatrician, who would dutifully write a prescription for an antibiotic like amoxicillin. After treatment, her symptoms would go away and she’d feel fine for a few weeks. Then, the pain and infection would come back and the whole cycle would begin again. The repeated doctor visits and treatments were expensive, time consuming and inconvenient. The antibiotics also killed the normal bacteria in her ear, and selected the worst bacteria that were even harder to treat the next time. We repeated this useless cycle for several years, but my daughter actually just grew out of getting ear infections.

For years doctors in Holland have been using the “wait and see” approach with much success. It turns out that antibiotics have minimal impact on ear infections, and that, unless a child is toxic (very visibly ill and unresponsive), that simple ear infections are best treated with ibuprofen, a local pain killer for the ear, and otherwise left alone. If the child does not show improvement after three days, then it is time to go to the doctor. In years of treating children this way there have been no adverse outcomes. I wish they followed the wait and see approach when my daughter was a child.

Children treated with antibiotics for ear infections have a three-fold increase in re-infection. This is related to the fact that normal bacteria in the ear are killed off by antibiotics, creating an environment where pathogenic bacteria can grab a foothold. In spite of the fact that guidelines state not to treat some types of ear infections with antibiotics, many doctors do it anyway. A type of ear infection where there is fluid discharge from the ear, without evidence of acute infection (bulging ear drum, extreme pain, high fever) is often treated with antibiotics, although it increases the risk of re-infection.

What is the worst thing that could happen if your child got an ear infection? Well, the infection could possibly spread to her brain, causing meningitis (which can be fatal, or cause brain damage). It could cause hearing loss, or infection of the mastoid sinus. However none of these things have happened where treatment was delayed for no more than three days. In other words, if you adopt the wait and see approach, and wait until three days are up (assuming your child does not look like she is about to die or in other ways looks really sick, such as extremely high fever or repetitive vomiting) you will be fine. Just give her pain medications like Tylenol, or if you have them local medications to reduce ear pain.

Research studies bear out the advantages of the wait and see approach. One study of 240 children age 6 months to 2 years showed that treatment with amoxicillin compared to placebo reduced duration of fever from 3 to 2 days and symptoms at day 4 by 13%, with no difference in pain on ear examination. The authors concluded that “this modest effect does not justify prescription of antibiotics at the first visit, provided close surveillance can be guaranteed.” (3)

Another study of 315 children age 6 months to 10 years showed that unless there was high fever, more than 37.5 C, or vomiting, the antibiotics had no effect on pain. And they did not help the children sleep through the night – even three days after the start of the treatment (1). A meta analysis of all studies showed that 60% of children treated with a placebo have no pain after 24 hours. Early use of antibiotics reduced pain by 41% compared to placebo at 2-7 days. Antibiotics doubled the risk of vomiting, diarrhea, or rash. Seventeen children had to be treated to reduce pain in one child. Based on these studies I recommend waiting two days before treatment unless the child has high fever, is vomiting, or is in a lot of pain.

Talk to your doctor about waiting for three days and using local pain relief during your child’s next ear infection unless your child looks toxic, is vomiting, or has very high fever.

1. Little, P., Gould, C., Moore, M., Warner, G., Dunleavey, J., Williamson, I. Predictors of poor outcome and benefit from antibiotics in children with acute otitis media: Pragmatic randomised trial. British Medical Journal. July 6, 2002 2002;325(7354):22.

2. Little, P., Gould, C., Williamson, I., Moore, M., Warner, G., Dunleavey, J. Pragmatic randomised controlled trial of two prescribing strategies for childhood acute otitis media. British Medical Journal. February 10, 2001 2001;322:336-342.

3. Damoiseaux, R.A.M.J., van Balen, F.A.M., Hoes, A.W., Verheij, T.J.M., de Melker, R.A. Primary care based randomised, double blind trial of amoxicillin versus placebo for acute otitis media in children aged under 2 years. British Medical Journal. February 5, 2000 2000;320(7231):350-354.

4. Spiro, D.M., Tay, K.Y., Arnold, D.H., Dziura, J.D., Baker, M.D., Shapiro, E.D. Wait-and-see prescription for the treatment of acute otitis media: a randomized controlled trial. Journal of the American Medical Association. Sep 13 2006;296(10):1235-1241.

Would you believe you have a one in five chance of having parasites? Parasites are more common than you, and the majority of physicians out there, realize. Studies show it is quite possible that the majority of gastrointestinal complaints are a result of undiagnosed, unrecognized parasitic infections.

In a report of the American college of gastroenterology, Doctors said that among 197 consecutive patients with a variety of gastrointestinal symptoms, over half were found to have Giardia Lambia, a microscopic organism introduced to water supplies by animals via mountain streams and by human sewage entering public water supplies. Symptoms included diarrhea, stomach bloating, chronic fatigue, food intolerance, stomach pain and constipation.

Martin Lee, Ph.D., biochemist, microbiologist and director of the Great Smokies Laboratory in North Carolina, conducted a study on the presence of parasites in very sick people. In one group of lower income immigrants, 70 percent were found to be infected. More surprising, when he examined a group of more well to do Americans, he found 20 percent had parasites. The centers for Disease Control in Atlanta got the same results in their tests. What does this mean? In the past we took certain comfort in the belief that parasites occurred mostly in Third World countries and that in our sterile, government-inspected industrialized society, we were immune.

The fact is, we can have parasites and not have symptoms, and we can get them a lot easier than we ever realized.

Do you swim in the summer? Certain parasites are not killed by chlorine and all it takes is an undetected or neglected pool filter to infect many people. In 1990 a La Times article reported on the case of a child infected with cryptosporidium who infected others through the local swimming pool. The pool managers treated the water with chemicals, not realizing that because one of the three pool filters was not working their efforts were in vain. The parasite infected swimmers for about a month before the broken filter was discovered (los Angeles Times, September 23, 1990.

California recommends that public pools be inspected three times a year. In one-report health officials estimated that 44 percent of the pools in Los Angeles County had not been inspected for three of more years.

The tapeworm Diphyllobothrium latum can cause pernicious anemia because it blocks vitamin B12 from being absorbed in the intestine. Blood loss from hookworm, trichuris and chistosoma infections may cause iron-deficiency anemia. Ascaris lumbricoides infection may reduce fat absorption and interfere with the absorption of vitamin A, compromising eyesight.

Because parasites cause the cilia in the intestine to become flattened and basically ineffective, any nutrients, including the B vitamins and many minerals, cannot be absorbed into the body. This catch-22 causes deficiencies, which impair the immune system resulting in secondary health problems that cannot be traced to the parasite.