Nature is a beautiful and awesome thing with healing properties just waiting to be unlocked. With a little study and care, there is a lot we can do to keep ourselves and our families healthy by using natural home remedies.
Going to the doctor for every scrape and cut is a relatively new phenomenon. There was a time when we were rather more independent than that. In fact, it was a little bit shameful to visit the doctor too frequently. It meant you were either very weak and sickly, or you simply didn’t know enough about natural healing that you could do on your own.
Even to this day, a doctor’s visit is a rare extravagance for many families that don’t have sufficient health insurance. So there are plenty of good reasons to hold off on visiting a doctor when you can.
But there are times when home remedies are not enough. Being without a doctor at a critical moment could be the difference between life and death. And in a land where doctors are plentiful, there is no need to go without one.
In the event of an emergency, you can be seen by an ER doctor even if you don’t have money to pay for the visit. Here is how you know when it is time to put down the big book of home remedies and make the next available appointment:
Infections
If your child has pinkeye, then you need a Pink Eye treatment with antibiotics. It is a disease we might take more seriously if we called it by its real name, conjunctivitis. While it can be caused by allergies and other irritants, infection is perhaps the main cause. And that infection can not only spread from one eye to the other but from person to person.
Infections require the kind of medicine you will not likely have lying about in a medicine cabinet. Even if you have some left over from previous treatments, you should not use it. Your child will need the proper variant, at the proper dose, in the proper quantity. That requires a doctor. So in the event of an infectious disease, see a doctor right away.
Fever
Fever is often associated with viral infection. That is because the way the body fights off a virus is to burn it out. It does that by turning up the heat. In short, fever is often the leading indicator that an infection may be present.
But not all fever is a cause for concern. We should, in fact, give the fever a chance to do its real job of fighting the infection. But at some point, the fever gets too high and represents a real danger to the body. That point is roughly 103.5 F for a 3-month-old and 105.8 for an adult.
The problem with the body’s method of fighting infection is that it is a rather kamikaze approach. The body will just keep turning up the heat indiscriminately. It will kill the virus or itself, whichever comes first. This approach works most of the time, but beyond a certain point, a doctor has to step in and lower the thermostat, fighting the infection some other way.
Extreme Pain
You need to see a doctor when the pain is severe. The problem is that it is hard to know when the pain is severe enough. Stomach pain can be particularly challenging to diagnose, even for doctors.
Chest pain is even harder to judge. It could be gas, or a heart attack, or anything in between. It could be everything or nothing. The safest thing to do is to see a doctor right away when pain is intense and persistent. Pain is an early warning system. We would do well never to ignore it.
You should not be so afraid of the world that you rush off to a doctor for every cough and sneeze. But put all of that aside in the event of infection, high fever, and extreme pain. Getting to a doctor on time could be the difference between life and death. Choose life.