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She sent me to an ENT, who found the root cause (allergies). Now, I keep the dust mites down in the house, take a nose spray daily, take Zyrtec and/or Sudafed when heavy allergy season hits, and have been ear-infection-free for a few years.

I'm glad that you've found something to keep the ear infections away (they suck!), but it seems to me that, since you're still taking a daily nasal spray and allergy drugs during part of the year, you haven't yet hit the core of the issue.

Allergies can be successfully resolved. Perhaps there's something in your diet - many children's ear infections can be traced back to a milk (pasteurized/homogenized) allergy. Hypnosis is one way of getting to the core of the allergy - for example, suppressed trauma from parents fighting on a picnic could've triggered an allergic response to grass; Donna Eden tells how she's dealt with allergic responses in her book. I don't recall offhand if Harold Reilly's The Edgar Cayce Handbook For Health Through Drugless Therapy mentions allergies specifically, but it's a gold-mine of natural solutions to many health problems.

Another of favorite modalities is Cranial Osteopathy/CranioSacral Therapy.

If you like being on the drugs that's fine, but there are other options too. :)

Osteopathy is the knowledge of the structure, relation and function of each part of the human body applied to the adjustment or correction of whatever interferes with the harmonious operation of the same.

George V. Webster, D.O. 1921 (source)

Neurofascial release works essentially at the level of one type of connective tissue which is called the "fascia". The connective tissue is the glue which holds us together by connecting one part of the body to another. In addition, it makes up the compartments and coverings of other tissues and organs, and it is even connected to itself, all in a very complex and organized way. Therefore, the connective tissue structurally unifies the body, giving it much of its strength and support. This is a unique function which is not performed by any of the other body tissues.

Experts tell us that we "live in our fascia" as though it was a body suit. One indication of the quality of our health is how well this "body suit" functions. Injuries can affect many of our tissues, but especially our fascia. The site of the injury usually causes a local problem, but there is a great deal of truth to the expression, "When my toe hurts, my whole body hurts". A pull or twist in the fascia can also be transmitted along all of its connections, making it possible to produce distant problems as well. When our "body suit" fails to function properly, we can experience pain, headaches, restricted range of motion, and many other problems affecting our general health.

-http://healthabounds2.com/neurofasc.htm

I have to take special care of my upper back and neck since a car accident a few years ago.

this one's simple. Car accident induces "trauma" in the body's fascial (connective) tissue. If the body's stored trauma level is low, the new trauma is simply absorbed without any other symptoms. Every body has a carrying capacity for "trauma", and as long as that cup is less than full there are no problems. But as soon as the body's trauma carrying capacity is exceeded, symptoms will result.

The solution is simply to "empty the cup". All the crutches in the world (you mention mattress, pillow, MSM/glucosamine chondrotin, getting up every once in a while) are ineffective so long as the body is "stiffened" from traumas previously incurred. Cranial manipulation is the best method I've found... Either Cranial Osteopathy or Cranio-Sacral Therapy (from a Registered Cranio-Sacral Therapist [RCST]).

See The Nature of Trauma and Osteopathic Treatment Questions. (Both these doctors use an advanced form of cranial manipulation known as the Biodynamic model...)

I've some comments on osteopathy in my comment history, so you might want to subscribe and browse the older ones (surely #'s 24-48 will have at least one, and the first one you find will link to even older comments...) for more on my experience thereof.

Couldn't get more than 20-30 pages into it.

Tried to read Moby Dick for my 10th grade honors English class... Had something to do with a whale, but that was just the picture on the cover.

Tried to read The Hobbit several times. Another 20-30 pages...

Tried to read The Lord of the Rings before I saw the movies. 10 pages before I gave up.

I couldn't even read Harry Potter.

I did really well on all those standardized reading tests they make you take in government schools, and I do just fine on magazine article-length pieces, or technical stuff... I never really did any reading for my B.S. degree - went to class, skim-read the texts.

Finally, a year after finishing my 16.5 years of schooling, I picked up a copy of John Taylor Gatto's A Different Kind of Teacher. In the first chapter, Mr. Gatto talks about how he found that his 7th graders ("at some of Manhattan's best schools, and at some of the worst") were unable to read, beyond for a standardized test. To prove it for his readers, he said to read the first 20 pages of All Quiet on the Western Front (available at just about any library), and then he'd have a question. Well, I read the question first, so I knew the answer. But I didn't read the second question, and even after I had, I still had NO IDEA WHAT WAS TAKING PLACE. I could pass my eyes over the words, but I was incapable of extracting the story from them.

Mr. Gatto says that the way reading is taught in schools today & for the last 60+ years actually discourages children from visualizing the story as they read it. Which is certainly my problem, and the reason why I couldn't read all those books I gave above.

While I can't blame school for my inability to visualize, I do resent how they led me to believe that I knew how to read, when that certainly wasn't the case. They wasted 13 years of my life in Elementary, Middle and High schools, and I wasted 3.5 years and a whole lotta $$$ in College. I could've learned so much more if I'd been able to read beyond the level of standardized test.

(My problem with visualization was due to a medical problem that I am only now resolving, with the assitance of a capable Osteopathic physician in the Cranial Field.)

So anyways, back to the subject at hand: It's nice that Movie Studios are putting these classic novels on film. This way, since so many of us are incapable of reading complex stories due to our miseducation by the government (ref: books by John Taylor Gatto & others), we can still enjoy the stories our ancestors got from reading the books.

I suggest taking charge of your own health. You've probably been to a conventionally-trained M.D. for most of your "health care". M.D.s are trained to use drugs and surgery. For everything else they either have to refer to someone else (i.e., physical therapist, nutritionist, etc).

Doctors never, ever "fix" their patients. The body always repairs itself. Doctors might "set the stage" to allow healing to take place, but all too often they do more harm than good. For example, adverse reactions to drugs are about 5th-leading "cause of death".

Historically, Medical Doctors have been quite dismissive of anything that isn't covered in their training, though this is slowly beginning to change. For generations monopolist doctors dismissed the idea that what you eat affects your health. Now they'll acknowledge the imporance of proper nutrition, but fall back on their training when deciding what to do.

For example, when my grandmother first began cancer treatment, the doctor sent her to a nutritionist. Grandma said, "she wanted me to eat five servings of vegetables a day. She's crazy!" Grandma stuck with her microwave meals and token amounts of vegetables, and was dead in six months. Her doctor never said anything about her diet again, afaik.

There are plenty of options in the so-called "alternative" (that is, not drugs and surgery) field for your condition.

Donna Eden(Author of Energy Medicine has had some success assisting Multiple Schlerosis patients.

Also look into finding yourself a Cranial Osteopath. If your body has ever suffered any sort of trauma (car accidents, falls, unresolved birth trauma, etc.), that's probably still with you. And this kind of osteopath can help your body release whatever it's still holding onto.

You can also take up meditation/self-hypnosis/skilled-relaxation. This is especially important when you have a condition such as MS.

Pray tell, what great scientific achievements did Edgar Cayce contribute to the world? ... I just want to know how he contributed to our understanding of consciousness.

An egomaniac doesn't really deserve a response, but for the other people who'll read this:

Edgar Cayce's health advice really is priceless. I've used it, so I know how valuable it is. Cayce frequently recommended castor oil. Recently I had a couple of boils on my face (a result of consuming too much sugar, combined with my crooked spine [which prevents proper lymphatic drainage through the thoracic outlet]). Once I started putting castor oil on them, they started going down.

Last summer sometime I developed a rash. It disappeared soon after applying castor oil.

Cayce frequently recommended osteopathic adjustments when they would help. Nowadays he'd recommend Osteopathy in the Cranial Field, or maybe craniosacral therapy. My new cranial osteopath has done more to straighten me out than any of the MDs I've been to. If it weren't for Cayce, I'd probably be on perscription painkillers and scheduled for a worthless surgery.

Before you trash someone (having only read the so-called "skeptical" propaganda), you should really read up on what that person really said. The Cayce organization followed up on as many of his health readings as they could get feedback on, and as long as the person did as they were instructed, they did get better, as good as Cayce told them they could expect.

For example, common sense dictates that if the lungs are impeded by ribs, a diaphragm or a spine that is not moving well, breathing will be hindered. If breathing is hindered, the body's immune functions such as lymphatic drainage will not be working well, and healing will be delayed. This observation led Dr. Still to manipulate his patients daily during influenza epidemics.

It is recorded in literature that 21,000,000 people died worldwide in the flu epidemic of 1917-18. Medical hospitals in America reported a 30 to 40 percent mortality rate. However, osteopathic patients had a mortality rate of less than one percent. (emphasis added)

Now imagine you're in a profession that's just been made obsolete. Is it easier to start over and learn to become effective, or to lobby the legislatures to make "licensed" members of your profession the only group who can do certain procedures ("diagnose", "perscribe", perform surgery, etc)? Guess which one won out.

And so, I agree with you - Doctors really are like help desk technicians. They're fine doing what they're trained to do (perscribe drugs), but if a problem comes up that's outside the scope of their training, they're worthless, and you'll get put onto the magical medical rollercoaster, going from specialist to specialist to specialist, never getting satisfactory result. It's like going to the helpdesk with a problem, and all they ever tell you to do is "reboot the computer".

I've gotten off the rollercoaster and have taken charge of my own health. I seek out qualified consultants when neede

From the article...

he also states that your skull "contracts and expands a dozen times or so each minute to push the [cerebrospinal] fluid round" your brain, along with various other amusing misunderstandings of basic medicine.

This is actually a pretty controversial area of medicine-- known as cranial osteopathy, there have been numerous studies that claim to show that the skull does have movement due to cerebrospinal pressure. Actual doctors do believe this, although as I say, it's not commonly accepted.

If anyone's interested, I'll dig up some research..