April 16, 2012
By Saleem Rana
Interview by Allen Cardoza
When you, as a concerned parent, take your sick child to the doctor for something minor, like a sore throat, or for something severe, like asthma, the doctor usually prescribes a treatment. However, behind this routine process, something quite common to parents in our busy 21st Century lives, we miss appreciating a miracle taking place—the body’s ability to heal.
In “How Your Child heals,” Dr. Chris Johnson takes concerned parents into the many healing responses the body provides, with or without medical interventions, when faced with an illness. Speaking with Allen Cardoza and Dr. Melody on L.A. Talk Radio about what parents should know about how their child’s body works, ranging from an ear ache to a broken bone or even more serious conditions, Dr. Johnson went into great detail about the child’s healing response.
During the conversation, the guest talked about viral infections, the healing process, environmental changes, allergic sensitivities and autoimmune disorders. He also talked about how his book is written in language accessible to a lay persona and set up to illustrate an imaginative journey into the child’s body. With asthma, for example, the book narrates a journey into the body in a small hovercraft, first entering through the nose, going into the trachea, and then journeying into a tree of air pipes that eventually lead to air sacs. This imaginative trip first introduces the healthy lung systems and then one compromised by all the conditions associated with asthma.
The discussion ranged across a variety of topics from how studies done on children with major heart surgery showed that children healed better when they were comforted and made to feel wanted and loved to how neurotransmitters in the brain affect moods and how moods, in turn, affect the immune system.
Dr. Johnson received his undergraduate education in history and religion at Haverford College in Haverford, Pennsylvania and he earned his Doctor of Medicine degree in 1978 from Mayo Medical School in Rochester, Minnesota. He subsequently trained in general pediatrics at Vanderbilt University Children’s Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, followed by training in pediatric infectious diseases, hematology research, and pediatric critical care medicine at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine.
Dr. Johnson is certified by the American Board of Pediatrics in general pediatrics and in pediatric critical care medicine, and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
