Removing Children’s Tonsils and Adenoids Increases Risk for 28 Diseases, Study Finds
By
Arjun Walia
from Collective Evolution
Arjun Walia
from Collective Evolution In Brief
- The Facts:This article was written by Sayer Ji, Founder of Greenmedinfo LLC, where it originally
appeared. Posted here with permission. - Reflect On:While the conventional medical establishment calls for the removal of “broken” or “defective” body parts, a watershed study on the long-term effects of tonsillectomy and adenoid removal calls into question the propriety of this surgery.
If
you were a child born in the U.S. from the 1950s through the 1970s,
odds are high that either you or someone you know has undergone a
tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy. I was one of those children. When
I was in kindergarden, I had my adenoids removed. I was already
suffering from severe bronchial asthma, requiring emergency treatment at
the hospital several times a year, and somtimes as often as three times
a month. The adenoid surgery was performed ostensibly to ‘relieve’
sinus obstruction. But following the procedure, my symptoms worsened. By
the time I was sixteen I needed another sinus obstruction surgery, this
time for sinus polyps and a deviated septum.
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While instances have gone down in recent decades, tonsillectomies and adenoidectomies are still two of the most common surgeries performed
on children worldwide. Since the first documented instances of tonsil
and adenoid removal, the risks-versus-benefits of the procedures were
questionable at best, but a recently released Danish study may have
finally tipped the scales against this ‘standard of care.’
According to “A Brief History
of Tonsillectomy,” the tonsils are lymphoid organs located at the
entrance of the digestive and respiratory systems, the inflammation of
which has led to three thousand years of documented extraction
procedures. Tonsils are often removed in children when they become
inflamed or infected—a common occurrence before puberty—despite being an
instrument of immune system defense that can help the body ward-off
other types of infection. More than half-a-million tonsillectomies are
performed each year in the United States on children under the age of 15
years.
Indicated as a standard
treatment for children with a variety of ear, nose, and throat
complaints, it is an understatement to say that tonsillectomies are
over-prescribed. Tonsils are frequently removed as a prophylactic
measure to prevent recurrent infections, rather than as a last resort to
restore health in rare and extreme cases. The same is true for adenoid
removal. Doctors who blindly follow prevailing medical trends often fail
to render fully informed consent to parents, who then lack an accurate
understanding of both the risks and limitations of these “routine”
surgeries. This unquestioning climate presents still-unknown risks to
the long-term well-being of millions of kids around the globe.
A June 2018 study of over a
million Danish children has added a compelling argument against
tonsillectomies being performed so casually. In a first-ever study on
the long-term effects of tonsillectomy, researchers from the University
of Melbourne in Australia and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark,
accessed the health records of 1.2 million children from the years 1979
to 1999. Of the total number of children studied, 11,830 had underwent
tonsillectomy (removal of tonsils), 17,460 had an adenoidectomy (removal
of adenoids, lymph glands located up and behind the tonsils which
defend against infection), and 31, 377 had a combined procedure during
which both tonsils and adenoids were removed. No other serious health
issues were present among focus group children.
Data were analyzed from the
twenty-year period beginning when the children were <15 years of age,
spanning into their 30s, providing a range of data capable of
indicating development of a variety of long-term health conditions.
According to one of the lead authors of the study, Dr Sean Byars, “We
calculated disease risks depending on whether adenoids, tonsils, or both
were removed in the first 9 years of life because this is when these
tissues are most active in the developing immune system.”
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Published in the Journal of the American Medical Association Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery,
results have compelled scientists to call for “renewed evaluation of
alternatives” to this too-common procedure. The impact of tonsil and/or
adenoid removal surgery on future health outcomes was deemed
“considerable.” Children who had undergone tonsillectomies were
found to have a nearly three-fold increase in the risk of developing
certain diseases of the upper respiratory tract, including asthma, influenza, pneumonia,
chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. Removal of adenoids in addition to
tonsils more than quadrupled chances of developing allergies, inner-ear
inflammation, and sinusitis.
While researchers admit that a
tonsillectomy may aid in the short-term reduction of ENT (ear, nose,
and throat) infections and their associated discomforts, observation of
health trends over the long-term strongly suggest that these gains are
short-lived, producing no long-term reductions in abnormal breathing,
nor chronic sinusitis, two of the most common reasons for performing
tonsillectomies.
Instead, risks for
these problems were either significantly increased, or not significantly
different than for children on whom no tonsillectomy or adenoidectomy
were performed. Shockingly, unrelated health problems such as certain skin diseases,
eye and parasitic infections, were 78% more prevalent in adults who had
undergone one of these surgeries, as compared to adults who still had
their tonsils.
Researchers postulate that
these glands may form a protective barrier between invasive bacteria and
viruses seeking to take hold in the sensitive and receptive tissues of
the lungs and throat. The positioning of these glands may provide an
important filtering function in this vital intersection where our breath
collides with the detritus of the outside world. Considering the study found a sharp increase to risk factors for more than 28 diseases, do
results indicate that these seemingly innocuous glands play a larger
role in immune system functioning than has previously been credited?
It’s clear, according to Dr.
Byers, that these findings support, at minimum, delaying tonsil and
adenoid removal surgeries to allow for the complete development of a
child’s immune system. It is also clear that prevailing medical wisdom
needs to evolve beyond the viewpoint that our internal organs perform in
isolation, and malfunctioning body parts can simply be removed without
affecting the whole. “As we uncover more about the function of immune
tissues and the lifelong consequences of their removal, especially
during sensitive ages when the body is developing, this will hopefully
help guide treatment decisions for parents and doctors.” Dr. Byers
expressed. It is imperative that the medical establishment integrates
new findings such as these with immediacy, so that another generation of
young people don’t suffer due to rigid conformance with such misguided
traditions.
As far as my own experience
with adenoid removal at age six, I would go on to experience over a
decade of non-stop recurrent asthma attacks requiring emergency
intervention, and as I said, sinus surgery as a young adult to correct
worsening obstruction in my sinus passages. Clearly my own personal
experience with this procedure confirms what the study has discovered:
the procedure, generally speaking, makes one’s health worse over time.
It
is also worth noting that the conventional medical establishment
routinely recommends organ removal as a ‘standard of care.’ For
instance, in “Beware of Organ Removal for “Cancer Prevention”: Jolie’s Precautionary Tale,”
I deconstruct the media’s portrayal of Jolie’s decision to have her
breasts (and later ovaries) removed due to the perceived ‘death
sentence’ incurred by being identified as a BRCA1/2 gene ‘mutation’
bearer. Her subsequent decision to have her breasts removed was
not only considered advisable but heroic, as portrayed and amplifed
globally by the mainstream media. Organs such as the thyroid, breast,
and prostate, thanks to aggressive and misguided cancer screening
programs, are being routinely removed from millions under threat of
certain death by medical prognosticactors, who are unwitting, modern day
equivalents of fortune-tellers and witch doctors; yet, many of these so-called “cancers” are actually benign lesions of epithelial origin, according to the National Cancer Institute itself.
I hope studies like reported
on here contribute to countermanding this disturbing way of thinking
about the body and disease risk and that the precautionary principle and
the founding medical ethical principle of ‘do no harm’ be re-instated
as supervening guidance in determining the ‘standard of care.’
To learn more about natural remedies for sore throat and throat infections, check out the abstracts in the GreenMedInfo research database.
Sayer Ji is founder of Greenmedinfo.com, a reviewer at the International Journal of Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine, Co-founder and CEO of Systome Biomed, Vice Chairman of the Board of the National Health Federation, Steering Committee Member of the Global Non-GMO Foundation.
Want to learn more from Greenmedinfo? Sign up for their newsletter here.
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