When we started publishing cases in the Journal of Applied Naturopathic Medicine (formerly NDNR), the bulk of pediatric cases were mild: ear infections, upper respiratory infections, rashes, food allergies.
Parents who brought their kids to an ND were considered ‘fringe’ by most communities. Largely they already espoused natural living and sought gentle, nontoxic but effective care for primarily acute conditions.
Now, not so much.
In the post-pandemic era, children have now joined the cohort of “please help us, we’re running out of options” that usually belonged to complex adult patients. Parents are arriving feeling afraid, overlooked, unheard. Children are presenting more chronically ill than ever before.
It’s not that simple acute cases don’t exist. It’s that the submissions have grown to include an influx of complex cases from parents who are no longer merely seeking simple acute care.
In the early years, a typical pediatric case study looked like this: a 22-month-old boy with recurrent ear infections, treated successfully with homeopathy. Parents wanted to avoid antibiotics and ear tubes. The child improved, stopped getting infections, and incidentally his speech and walking also got better.
More recent cases are more like this one: a 7-year-old boy with anxiety and obsessive-compulsive behaviors so debilitating the family had run out of options. The pediatrician tried SSRIs. The psychiatrist added a second medication. The parents tried therapy. By the time they tried naturopathic medicine, the child couldn’t attend school, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function.
The case report documents complete remission through targeted microbiome interventions and addressing gut-brain axis dysfunction.
These cases became more common. Recent submissions include two siblings with pediatric PTSD and oppositional defiant disorder requiring careful herbal protocols. A 5-year-old with chronic antibiotic-resistant strep infections and profound immune dysregulation.
A teenager whose mental health has deteriorated severely. A
case of CIRS-induced brain atrophy that was reversed through environmental medicine protocols.
These are different in acuity, complexity and the level of parental desperation than seen in the prior years. These kids are sick.
That 7-year-old’s OCD? Resolved. The neuro inflammation from mold? Mitigated. The chronic infections? Cleared. The PTSD? Improved.
The pediatric cases we publish in the Journal of Applied Naturopathic Medicine in 2025 look different indeed than cases from 2005, all of which are in our archives.
But the cases also show this: when naturopathic medicine is applied through the Therapeutic Order with the rigor these cases demand, it works.
We catalogue these individual cases as a grand rounds of sorts, a body of evidence we curate for all practitioners to learn from.
Our children deserve it. That’s what keeps us publishing.