Whatever you call it, homeopathy, complementary, or alternative medicines, they have a certain amount of dangers associated with them when used for children. The dangers come from parents not knowing the side effects and problems of the combinations of medicines. Not only this, these parents do not communicate with doctors.
Two different articles describe what can happen and they do present both sides to a fair degree. The study only included 39 cases in Australia. The study stated that changes made by CAM (complementary alternative medicines) practitioners caused the adverse events.
The study group included all ages from birth to the age of 16. The study determined that the parents were the ones believing in CAM and the naturalness of the medications. They may have overdosed because of these medicines being natural. Most went against medical advice. They also assumed that “natural” meant “safe and harmless” which isn't always the case.
Most US pediatricians know that the types of complementary and alternative medicine varies greatly from country to country and feel that the US is better on most fronts. All agree that if CAM is used as a complement to conventional medications and not as an alternative, the outcomes are mostly positive. They also stressed that parents of children need to stay in contact with their pediatricians to get the best results and to be aware of drug interactions and how to avoid problems.
Please read this article from WebMD as it has some excellent thoughts. The other article is here. The BBC also has the article here.
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