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Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

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131–140 of 209 posts

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#131

Let me provide you an alternative perspective worth considering. Depending on the seriousness of your condition, having adenoids can result in having problems breathing normally( aka through the nose). Now obviously breathing is very important for your organism, and it will find ways to adapt, and you will find yourself breathing through your mouth. Breathing through the mouth will encourage the development of a long…

I had my tonsils removed when I was 19 because of sleep apnea. Even after reading this piece I'm reasonably confident, though not certain, that it was a net-positive.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#132
post #7

Is there a causal link between the surgery and the increase in long-term disease risk, or were patients who were more likely to get the surgery (because of more severe symptoms or more frequent occurrence of infections) at greater long-term disease risk (whether they had surgery or not)? Without some functional mechanism, I'd be very wary of these kinds of data analyses.

> "cases were no less healthy than controls presurgery in the first 9 years of life" Looks like they addressed that (heading: Testing for Biases in General Health Before Surgery)

> Participants in the case and control groups were selected such that their health did not differ significantly prior to surgery.

And yet some of them got the surgeries and some didn’t, so it’s unclear if the control was adequate.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#133
post #7

Is there a causal link between the surgery and the increase in long-term disease risk, or were patients who were more likely to get the surgery (because of more severe symptoms or more frequent occurrence of infections) at greater long-term disease risk (whether they had surgery or not)? Without some functional mechanism, I'd be very wary of these kinds of data analyses.

> "cases were no less healthy than controls presurgery in the first 9 years of life" Looks like they addressed that (heading: Testing for Biases in General Health Before Surgery)

And elsewhere, a bit more explicitly:

> Participants in the case and control groups were selected such that their health did not differ significantly prior to surgery.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#134
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We went to a really good Ear nose throat doctor in San Diego hospital because our son had a long lasting runny nose, and they also told us to remove his tonsils and adenoids. I did not want to have them removed because of the involvement of sleep drugs necessary for operation, so we tried multiple ways to find the issue of the running nose, turned out it was something to do with the oil vaporizer they used in his pre…

Cut carb intake right down and the levels of catarrh drop right off. Observational study in the 40's or 50's by a chap called Paton.

They already said it was due to an oil vaporizer, I don't think carbohydrates have anything to do with it.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#135
post #61

Thank you so much for posting this. Really, THANK YOU, kind stranger. Here in the Czech Republic we're always forced by doctors to do AE/TE to our son despite being mildly affected by strep as we are fighting PANDAS. The latest research converges on that AE/TE is not effective, and that we're doing the right thing by not doing the operation. It looks like doctors even in the most advanced medical institutions are bli…

From a personal experience, the public health care in Czech Republic is way much better than NHS or what you can afford as a middle-income family in US. The equation changes when you can afford private care.

A middle income family in the US usually has insurance that covers just about any specialist they want to see. MD Anderson, likely the best cancer institute in the world, accepts almost everyone's insurance (and also does about $100,000,000 of free work for those without).

The only people really limited in who they can see are those on public insurance like state coverage Medicaid for the poor or federal Medicare for the elderly. Those programs usually only pay a percentage of market value, and thus many doctors won't take them because they often lose money on the transaction.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#136
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Alternative" means "unproven or disproven", doesn't it?

To pro-alternative folks like myself it just means "not in the medical textbooks yet". Most 'alternative' approaches do have rigorous studies backing them up, just recent and ignored by a lot of people.

Homeopathy doesn't work. Acupunture doesn't work. Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn't work. Faith healing doesn't work. These rigorous studies you're mentioning do not exist.

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#137
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe you find this article interesting: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/11/upshot/labels-like-altern... "My friends who believe in homeopathy don’t really care. Those who favor conventional medicine, though, can be just as blinded. Too often, when confronted with evidence that advanced technology might not be providing benefits, the medical community refuses to change its behavior." He goes on to argue that the…

"By definition, Alternative Medicine has either not been proved to work, or been proved not to work. Do you know what they call Alternative medicine that's been proved to work? Medicine." --Tim Minchin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujUQn0HhGEk

And how would you call medicine that has been proven not to work? This is what the original discussion is about: the medical system can be too slow to recognize and stop harmful practices.

There are many examples: Thalidomide, operating on babies without anesthesia [0], intensive glucose control [1], adenoid removal (the topic here) etc.

[0] http://www.nocirc.org/symposia/second/chamberlain.html [1] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa0810625

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#138
I had my tonsils removed last year (so at age 33) due to having a peritonsillar abscess multiple times in a couple of years - which implies that the first time I was infected it likely became a "chronic" risk. So far no allergies, so I hope my immune system is already "properly trained" from before or something.

Anyway, if anyone ever needs to have their tonsils removed for health reasons: only drink isotonic water[0] when you're thirsty. For some reason my surgeon forgot to tell me that, but I discovered this on my own by accident. After the surgery I felt very dehydrated, so made some ORS at home. To my surprise, drinking it did not hurt at all, even though drinking plain water earlier had felt like getting thousands of paper-cuts in an open wound.

I was eating regular food within a week (it took a bit longer to fully heal up of course), and didn't even need to use the heavy duty painkillers that I was prescribed (only over-the-counter painkillers for sleeping, really). I suspect that instead of being a pain-killer, drinking isowater avoided the irritation that caused the pain in the first place, which means I also avoided inflammation and healed up faster than expected due to that.

[0] Take this recipe for home-made rehydration solution and tweak to your liking http://rehydrate.org/solutions/homemade.htm

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does any of this have to do with forcing an oil vaporizer on everyone? Are you arguing that teachers need essential oils in the air to get through the day; or is this just about the fact, that parents always have different ideas? In that case you should still err on the side of not putting random substances in the air everyone at the school has to breathe.

I think they're providing contrast against the hilarious suggestion that "a school is supposed to instruct kids in the truthful ways of life".

Are you trying to tell me that someone starting a post with "That is beyond retarded..." isn't a source I should be citing on what is/isn't proper human behavior?

That said, "Truthful way of life" and "Glad plugins don't eliminate the cause of odor, just mask it which has a value all its own" seem to both be able to exist in the same space right? I haven't been to this school, but it seems most teachers aren't actively indoctrinating children to believe the "Big Scent" lie that candles/oil diffusion/whatever actually fix the cause of their problem rather than addressing the symptoms

Re: Long-term health risks after having adenoids or tonsils removed in childhood

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To pro-alternative folks like myself it just means "not in the medical textbooks yet". Most 'alternative' approaches do have rigorous studies backing them up, just recent and ignored by a lot of people.

Homeopathy doesn't work. Acupunture doesn't work. Traditional Chinese Medicine doesn't work. Faith healing doesn't work. These rigorous studies you're mentioning do not exist.

This meta-study supports the use of acupuncture to treat chronic pain: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...
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