It's about time! About 10 million prescriptions each year are written for ear infections in children of all ages and now, finally, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Practice are getting ready to formally approve later this spring a recommendation that doctors stop treating most ear infections in children with antibiotics. The bulk of studies have found the antibiotics do very little for a child's ear infection pain and that most infections clear up without antibiotics.
Avoiding pasteurized milk is one of the best proactive solutions to prevent ear infections to begin with. It will be quite awhile before the "experts" figure this one out though. If a child does develop an ear infection a simple solution is to put a few drops of breast milk in the ear canal every few hours. This usually works to clear up the infection within 24 to 48 hours and is far safer, less expensive and a better solution than putting the child on antibiotics. If the mother is not breastfeeding, it is likely she knows someone who is. All that is required for the treatment is about one-half ounce of breast milk, so obtaining that from a friend will work just as well.
Yahoo! News March 2, 2004