Have you ever had a sore throat or a chronic strep throat?
This video talks about what you can do about it, the effect of your tonsils on your health
and some natural treatment considerations for strep throat.
We're going to talk about strep throat treatments and what this video is about is about strep
throat, what happens in the throat, how it's related to the tonsils, is it affected by
the sinuses, and what natural treatment alternatives there are to antibiotic therapy for strep
throat.
Strep throat is a bacterial infection that causes inflammation and pain in the throat.
This is a common condition that's caused by group A strep bacterium.
Strep throat can affect children and adults of all ages, however, it's especially common
in children between the ages of about 5 and 15.
Sneezing and coughing can spread the infection from one person to another.
And the severity of the strep throat can vary from person to person, some people experience
mild symptoms like a sore throat or otherwise, people have more severe symptoms including
fever, difficulty swallowing, and sometimes if it drink lemonade or orange juice, it feels
like you're drinking rusty razor blades.
Now that common symptoms with strep throat include a sudden fever, especially if it's
over about 101 degrees, a sore red throat with white patches, headaches, chills, loss
of appetite, swollen lymph nodes in the neck or trouble swallowing.
The symptoms of strep throat typically develop within about 5 days to exposure to the bacterium.
Now there's this special immune system tissues in the throat called tonsils and tonsils health,
basically what they do is they filter infection in the throat region.
The tonsils are in the back of the throat, one on each side and if they haven't been
removed, you can see them peeking at you when you open your mouth and you say "ahh" if you
open your mouth wide open in front of the mirror.
Now if ever possible, we like to save tonsils.
This isn't different when it used to be in the 70's and the 80's when we took them out
all the time but both are part of the immune system, both of those glands and they're similar
to lymph nodes and the glands that you can feel in the front of your neck.
Now as part of the immune system, the tonsils fight infection.
They're the first line in defense in the throat and when they're doing their job fighting
infections, you get a sore throat.
The tonsils usually swell a bit and get red and that's what's happening.
Now the connection between the tonsils doing their job and strep throat is it's the common
cause on tonsillitis in patients, it's the strep infection and before we had the antibiotic,
removing tonsils was one way to combat reoccurring strep infection.
Now as soon as Penicillin started it, one of the first antibiotics came along, we instantly
had an effective non surgical treatment for strep tonsillitis but antibiotics can be overused,
over prescribed and there are some natural considerations.
We haven't seen the antibiotic resistant that our ability to treat other bacterial infection.
Children who get a lot of strep infection and some children have recurrent strep, sometimes
multiple times each and that's because their immune system isn't healthy and sometimes
they can get tonsillar crypts or tonsillar abscesses or chronic places for the bacteria
to logged in, and for those children, doctors often recommend taking the tonsils out.
Now that one common thing with strep infection is that they're almost recoverable and this
makes tonsillectomy something that we used to do, there's certainly a time and a place
for them but if we can get the body healthy, we can reduce the strep infections and the
natural history of the illness is to improve.
Now the important thing to remember about a tonsil removable or tonsillectomy, it's
like any surgery, it's not without risk.
So whenever possible, you want to save those glands and it's just not like a routine where
it's like getting a B12 shot or something, compared to other surgical procedures, the
risk is low but it's not 0.
Now a consideration for a tonsillectomy can be very helpful for persons that have tonsils
that are so large that they block the airway or they're touching at the back of the throat.
Here's some considerations on what to do for chronic strep infections.
Number one, drink lots and lots of water, avoid your sugar intake because that seems
to decrease the ability of the immune system to respond and some natural treatments, some
of the neatest things to do or combinition of miosotas which is a lymphatic drainer,
echinacea either in the orthomolecular form or the pill form or as a tincture, I think
it works better as a tincture.
Increasing your calcium levels, an herb called Lomatium is really effective for that and
also something called Immune Power from Natures NX.
There's lots of different things you could do upregulate your immune system and if your
immune system is healthy, you are healthy.Some of the advance natural medical ways to take
care of chronic strep infections, there is something neat that you can do for chronic
tonsils called neural therapy where you take a syringe and a fine needle and you can actually
inject the upper pole and the lower pole of each tonsils with a B Vitamin, you can get
those to flush, there's also a way where you can put a little suction cup on the tonsils
and you can pump on it, it actually sucks the infection out, gargling with honey and
cayenne pepper is a really effective thing, I also recommend people do some gargling with
dilute hydrogen peroxide, 3% dilution, you can gargle it in the mouth, hydrogen peroxide
is really really effective for chronic strep infections and then there's also something
called endonasal technique where you could adjust the cranial sutures of the skull, it's
a chiropractic therapy that my great grandfather taught my grandfather, my grandfather taught
my dad and my dad taught me, where you can actually improve the function and the structure
of the skull.
So water, sleep, immune system, some natural stimulating things like lomatium, miosotas,
echinacea, immune power are all effective ways to upregulate the immune system and help
it to be healthy.
Now everything that's done in medicine, it's really important we can save those tonsils
as much as possible.
If we make your immune system healthy, we can reduce the onset, the inset and severity
of chronic strep infections.
It's not an antibiotic deficiency disease, you don't always have to get your tonsils
out.
We just covered the video on what to do about sore throat and strep throat, how to make
your tonsils healthier and what you can do to prevent recurrent infections.
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This is Dr. West and we'll see you tomorrow.