In theory, pediatric diseases may be due to either external, internal, or neither external nor internal causes. External causes refers to the six environmental excesses and pestilential qi. Internal causes refers to damage by the seven affects or emotions. And neither external nor internal causes refers to a miscellaneous collection of disease causes, such as diet, lifestyle, sex, trauma, poisoning, drowning, etc. Although pediatric diseases may be due to any of these three groups of disease causes, in children under six years of age, diet is, the leading cause of the commonly encountered pediatric complaints with external and internal causes aggravating the ill effects of a faulty diet.
In particular, children under the age of five or six are believed to have immature or weak digestion and it is this fact which accounts for most of the commonly encountered pediatric diseases, including colic, earache, cough, swollen glands, allergies, and pediatric asthma and eczema.
The fact that weak or immature digestion is the root of most common pediatric diseases has three main implications. First and very obviously, if digestion plays such a pivotal role in the health and well-being of infants and young children, then diet is extremely important both in terms of preventing disease as well as treating it. Secondly, treatment for most children’s disease should also pivot around regulating and strengthening digestion. And third, because the spleen and stomach automatically mature around the age of six or so, most common pediatric diseases are self-limiting. This means that children automatically tend to outgrow them. This is an important point which laboring parents should keep in mind when they have lost sleep for the third night in a row due to a coughing son or a feverish, crying daughter with an earache.
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