British researchers have now proven that surgically removing a child's adenoids does not at all help to reduce middle ear infections. What a shocking surprise. Not really, the real surprise is that physicians have clung on so long to the surgical model to treat this common infection of childhood. Over one-third of children wind up with these infections so this is not a small issue.
The tragedy is that this is one of the easiest problems in medicine to treat. All it requires is an understanding of basic nutritional medicine. The key is to remove the child from all pasteurized dairy. Raw dairy products are usually well tolerated. Removal of sugars and grains that easily convert to sugars, such as wheat, is also typically required. Adding cod liver oil usually dramatically improves the immune response and including fermented foods also increases the beneficial bacteria in the gut to fight infections. There are only a small handful of cases of many thousands of these infections that I treated over the past 20 years that haven't responded to these simple measures.
For acute ear infections adding some fresh breast milk into the ear canal is typically a very effective method to bring quick relief to the problem.
British Medical Journal February 28, 2004;328:487 Full Text Medical Journal