My 18 month-old son has been getting ear infections every couple of weeks to a month for the past 5 months in the row. About 2 months ago we’ve been given a referral to the pediatric ear, nose and throat (ENT) specialist for placing tubes in his ears. We were very reluctant to doing this due to both, the effectiveness of this treatment and the cost of the procedure itself. We have a high deductable insurance plan, so unfortunately we would have to flip the bill for his treatment.  After calling the ENT specialist and learning that just the consultation alone will be $300-$500, I decided to try something different.  After pondering numerous advices from family and friends, we ended up trying three very cheap suggestions that made the most sense to us.

First, we decided to eliminate as much sugar as possible from Nathan’s diet, since sugar breeds bacteria if not fully metabolized. I started with the snacks he gets at the daycare. Three times a day, he’s being provided snacks, in the form or crackers, sugary cereal, a cereal bar or cookies. Though most crackers, such as Goldfish or Ritz may not be bad on sugar from the first glance, they still easily metabolize to sugar.  Plus they contain a bunch of other crap (check out the ingredients list) that’s really not helping. And the crazy thing is, the daycare would not let me bring my own snacks unless I provide the slip from Nathan’s doctor that he has allergies. Well, that’s just what I had to do.  Now I pack very plain snacks for him in form of fruits, like the bananas and grapes and either plain pretzels or rice crackers.  By the way, we did not cut his intake of fruits, since they actually have favorable nutritional value, like the vitamins which strengthen the immune system and help fight sicknesses.

Second, we bought powdered vitamin C and started adding just a tad to his juice in the morning. You really don’t need much. The type that we bought contains 5 grams, which is the same as 5,000 milligrams in one steaspoon.  We only add about one third of the quarter of a teaspoon, which is approximately 400 mg. Vitamin C is a water soluble vitamin, so one can’t really overdose on it unless they’re taking insane quantities of it.

Third, we started putting few drops of half white vinegar (5% acidity) and half water solution in each of his ears about three times per day. If we see that he’s starting to develop snot or cough, we increase the frequency to 5-6 times per day.  When I do the drops, I put him flat on his side and after I’m done administering drops, I lightly move my finger around the area of his ear and lightly tug on his ear to help the liquid go down. I weight for at least 30 seconds for him to get back up.

And this is it!

So far it’s been 0ver two months without the ear infection. We just had a well visit with the doctor. At the time of the check up Nathan had a cold with runny nose and some cough, but no fever. I asked the doc to check his ears for possible ear infection. She said she hadn’t seen his ears to be this clear in quite a while.  Yay!!