Amber anklet for teething?

[ThunderMum]

Anyone have any advice? Do these work?

far better than reaching for medication straight away.

But if you believe that the amber anklet works, and that your baby is absorbing oil from it which acts as an analgesic, then you ARE (in your own mind) reaching for medication straight away. But just an untested, unregulated “medication”, which has no safety data.

When something is classified as a true children’s medication, that generally means its effectiveness and safety for your child has been researched and verified. Parents should not assume that using “real” medication is bad.

Again, not having a go at anyone, just trying to help people understand how science works.

Sugar isn't effective in managing pain in babies. *

Actually it can be. I wrote my nursing dissertation on the use of sucrose as analgesia for babies undergoing painful procedures.

I found about 15 or 20 studies looking at use of sucrose or sucrose and dummies. They all found a positive effect from sucrose but in the end my conclusion was that sucrose and a dummy together were most effective.

Interesting. Which pain receptors does the sucrose act upon? How can you be sure that it is blocking pain rather than distracting from it?

That argument could be used for many things - watching tv can help distract an adult from something painful, but it wouldn’t be described as an analgesic.

Okay, just found this from a quick google, and so concede that there may be a mechanism for sucrose:

“Oral sucrose for procedural pain management is a sweet solution which reduces pain in neonates and infants. By providing taste stimulation to the cellular membrane receptors in the brain, in which the endogenous opioid system is located, the sweet solution may be effective in pain reduction.”

That is indeed interesting. But I would still always give Calpol for teething pain.

As far as I know (I studied this ten years ago) sucrose is only useful for brief pain - injections, cannula placement, heel prick tests etc. It wouldn't be useful for ongoing pain like teething causes. I use paracetamol, ibuprofen, or before there were too many teeth waiting to bite my finger, anbesol liquid.

I just wanted to point out that a PP wasn't incorrect in their statement about sugar having uses as an analgesic.

Yes, the source I looked at did refer only to brief pain situations. I guess the endogenous opioid production explains how we can all find sugar addictive.