Ding Ma said: Recently, it was found that [pediatric massage] is quite popular. Some advertisements even said: [Instead of waiting in line for half a day in the children’s hospital, it is better to take the children to the traditional Chinese medicine massage parlor for a try, and there will be unexpected surprises.] I think this marketing method can capture the hearts of parents.
As you know, Ding Ma has always been unable to bear this [treatment] method used to comfort parents. Let’s take a look at Dr. Pei Honggang’s interpretation of this phenomenon.
About two years ago, a friend came to me for treatment.
His child has inguinal hernia, which is a congenital disease. Simply put, a duct from the stomach to the scrotum is not closed, and the intestines in the stomach can run into the groin or scrotum along the duct.
This kind of disease basically relies on surgery to fill the gap, Only in this way can the child be cured. However, the mother of the child thought that the operation [too harmful to the body] would not be operated on, and she believed in traditional Chinese medicine very much, so she took the child to eat traditional Chinese medicine for several months, and at the same time gave the child massage, several hundred yuan at a time, for half a year-yes, half a year-without finding any improvement, and finally she had no choice but to do the operation.
I was very angry after hearing this process, but I thought that his family’s financial conditions were too good to take money seriously, so I went to do such treatment.
It turns out that you are such a pediatric massage!
Later, some people asked me one after another that [pediatric massage] was unreliable, and they also said that it was especially prosperous now. I tried to understand it before I realized that there was no reason why my friends and families were treated like this, because [pediatric massage] was really popular at present.
Taking [pediatric massage] as the key word Baidu, I found that there were as many as 6,190,000 related links, and there were a lot of books to close. The slogan mainly looked like [simple and easy to learn, with magical effect] [without injection or medicine, pinching and pressing can eliminate all diseases].
From constipation to diarrhea, from fever to cough to abdominal pain, asthma, enuresis, anorexia, dyspepsia, etc., [infantile massage] is omnipotent and omnipotent, and [there are no side effects], which is too destructive for many parents.
Ding Ma said: Looking at it, I thought [ha ha].
However, after further searching, we can find that at present there is no special qualification for pediatric masseurs in China, only masseurs are the major category. However, some organizations claim that they can take up their posts only after a simple training of as little as 15 days and obtaining certificates issued by the organizations.
However, this certificate country does not recognize it, and according to our country’s laws, even if one has the qualification of a masseur recognized by the country, individuals or institutions cannot carry out massage business with [therapeutic effect].
Anyway, we surgeons don’t believe this
Infantile massage is based on the traditional Chinese medicine theories of meridians and acupoints, but our surgeons will disagree with this set.
Surgical incision and anatomy are always based on anatomy, regardless of what [meridians] [acupuncture points]-I have never heard of any patient recovering poorly because the acupuncture points or meridians are damaged.
On the other hand, if there are acupuncture points and meridians, and the disease can be cured by pinching and pressing, are so many people without foundation who buy a book and pinch it at home, not afraid to pinch the disease?
To cure diseases, one must pursue [maximizing the ratio of benefits to risks], so regular treatment will clearly explain the curative effect and side effects.
However, some businesses have used this calculation method, Let people subconsciously choose unreliable [treatment methods]: for example, some regular treatments may have nine points of curative effect and one point of side effects, but such treatment methods may not be as good as those methods with half points of curative effect and zero points of side effects. In this way, the income-risk ratio of regular treatment is 9: 1, while the income-risk ratio of methods advertised by merchants is infinite.
People have a natural fear of [side effects]. Many health care products are to seize people’s fear of side effects and publicize their [magical effects] in the absence of supervision, selling some useless things more expensive than gold.
Infantile massage is similar to health care products, but many people just don’t understand and refuse to take regular treatment. In this way, although there is no side effect of treatment, it also loses the therapeutic effect of regular programs on diseases, which is equivalent to [giving up treatment].
How does infantile massage [cure diseases]?
There are hundreds of diseases, the symptoms of the same disease are likely to be different, and the same symptoms may also be caused by different diseases.
Infection, inflammation, tumor, and metabolic immune problems may all cause fever. Different diseases will definitely lead to different treatment plans. Inflammatory stimulation, chemical stimulation and foreign body stimulation may also cause cough, and their treatment plans are certainly different.
Without a medical basis, even the disease and symptoms cannot be clearly distinguished, and it is definitely deceiving to expect to use one method to cure all diseases.
Many people publicize that children can learn massage as soon as they learn it, and it is good to push it as soon as they push it. Without any threshold, people with sound upper limbs can do it. If the treatment is so simple, the hospital can close down.
However, it is certain that many people will say that massage has cured what’s what. How can this be explained?
In fact, many diseases could have healed themselves.
- For example, fever caused by respiratory virus infection, many of them will recover after two or three days of fever. Another example is diarrhea caused by rotavirus, which will be cured for a week. Another example is the cough caused by a cold, which can mostly heal itself for a week or two.
If the child does massage in this process, many parents will think it is effective.
For example, I saw such an example on Weibo: after 20 days, chalazion broke itself and then recovered, which is not surprising at all; However, it is strange that this parent thinks that massage has been done well. What is even more strange is that this massage [teacher] even forwarded this example to show the magic of this method.
As for some musculoskeletal diseases, such as children’s muscular torticollis, massage may help improve muscle tension and limb function rehabilitation, but it also needs the guidance of professional rehabilitation doctors, not according to what meridians and acupoints.
Rehabilitation massage, and those who claim that massage meridians and acupoints can treat fever and cough, are two different things.
Massage, be careful to delay the regular treatment
Massage is mainly used for entertainment for adults, but somehow it has become a [magic therapy] for children.
Many parents may think: Massage is no harm even if it is useless anyway. What if you try it?
If parents touch healthy children themselves, they can increase their parent-child relationship, which is not a bad thing. However, they are afraid that when their children are ill, many people really hope to cure the disease through this method and delay formal treatment, and some Chinese medicine practitioners [teachers] also publicize it in this way.
For example, the following constipation treatment method forwarded tens of thousands of times on Weibo.
In fact, there are many reasons for constipation. Functional constipation may also promote the movement of intestinal contents by abdominal massage, regardless of what’s acupoints and meridians, and simply squeezing the intestinal canal, which may have a little improvement effect. However, for constipation caused by pathological problems, such as hypothyroidism and constipation caused by Hirschsprung’s disease, blindly trying crooked methods such as massage will only delay treatment.
Another example is cough. If you can get well for those coughs caused by colds and those coughs caused by foreign bodies in the trachea, you still take massage every day, which may kill people.
If a doctor does not have a correct understanding of the disease itself and promotes the treatment of “all diseases”, it will only harm the patient.
Massage, cure parents’ heart disease
Some parents who go to massage their children may not believe it is really effective, but when their children are ill, they are worried, and there are some problems in our regular medical institutions, and drug abuse is indeed common.
Parents are worried that they will be indiscriminately injected, prescribed and taken medicine when going to the hospital. They will not do some what and will always feel anxious.
Then, let the child go to massage, somehow feel that they have done some what, let their hearts feel more comfortable, big deal will spend some money.
Therefore, pediatric massage is not to treat children, but parents spend money to treat their anxiety.
Infantile massage is different from baby touching, nor is it a formal rehabilitation massage, nor is it a physical compression of abdomen that does not speak of meridians. Parents take their babies to massage, and what they encounter is a disease that can heal themselves. If there is a bad result in delayed treatment, it is too late to cry.