Wasteful Expenditure On Child Health: Teething Aids

Teething is an important milestone in childhood and is thus a part of normal growth pattern. Unfortunately, it is often linked to many signs and symptoms , for which many medications are erroneously given to children.

Symptoms wrongly attributed to teething	Medicine/Intervention Commonly Used
Pain in the gums	Teethers/ teething gels
Headache	Hair oil and massages
Fever	Various antibiotics and analgesics
Diarrhoea	Ghutti/gripe water, anti diarrhoea medication
General, to ease teething	Calcium preparations (allopathic/homoeopathic)

Fact: Teething is a natural process. Medical textbooks do not mention any medical intervention for teething. Medical science interprets teething as a signal for the child being ready to eat solid food and it advocates initiation of “complimentary feeding”. A normal infant will usually have four to five episodes of viral diarrhoea and four to five episodes of viral respiratory infection, both associated with mild grade fever and headache. As teething is a long drawn process, so people misinterpret coincidence as correlation , but teething does not cause any of these symptoms. Oil massaged on head cannot in any way affect gums! Massages are enjoyable to all mammals, so it is no surprise that infants enjoy it too. I have seen infants developing scalp irritation because of excessive oil application. Expensive almond oil and fancy baby oils are both irrational.

Calcium preparations are heavily overprescribed and mostly irrational. Homoeopathic Calcium medicines for teething are labelled “Made in Germany” but are in fact not even licensed to be used in most of Europe! It is better to give children stainless steel home utensils (with smooth, rounded edges) in place of teethers.

Conclusions: Teethers, teething gels, expensive massage oils and calcium preparations for facilitating teething are all wasteful expenditure on child health.

To my mind, “tooth eruption” is a misleading term. Teeth do not erupt like volcanoes! They are gently unveiled out of gums as the jaw grows.