Chiropractic
and Children
Is chiropractic safe for my children? Why should my child
get checked, she feels fine? You have your children’s teeth
checked, and most schools do an eye and hearing exam yearly, so why
don’t you have regular health check ups? Children’s bodies
are physically weaker than adults, so they have a better chance of
experiencing spinal subluxations (a vertebrae out of place that is
pinching a nerve and causing problems) while doing every day activities.
Why wait till your child is sick to bring them into the chiropractor?
Subluxations can exist for a long time without causing any pain, but
deficiencies in other areas, while they may not be noticeable, may
be present the entire time.
Let’s start from the beginning. The very beginning, before your
child is even born. You should be receiving spinal checkups as often
as weight check ups. Subluxations cause uneven blood flow to parts
of your body, including the uterus. If your baby isn’t getting
enough blood, they may not be getting enough oxygen, which is more
important during the development process than you think. Lack of oxygen
to the uterus can cause several complications early in infancy, which
could lead to such tragic events as SIDS. Next we’ll look at
when the baby is born.
A newborn’s spine can be twisted and turned from birth. As hard
as labor is on the mother, think of how hard it is on the baby! Abraham
Towbin, MD states: “The birth process…is potentially a
traumatic, crippling event… mechanical stress imposed on obstetrical
manipulation—even the application of standard orthodox procedures
may prove intolerable to the fetus…most signs of neonatal injury
observed in the delivery room are neurological…” Now,
we’ll look at the infants first week.
Research is ongoing, and with each study done, more and more credit
is being given to chiropractic health care in the importance of the
health of children. In a study done on 1,250 infants who were examined
five days after birth, 211 of them were experiencing vomiting, hyperactivity,
and sleeplessness, and subluxations were found in 95% of them. The
researchers in this study were all Medical Doctors (MD’s) and
they all recognized the power of chiropractic. The babies were given
the spinal care they needed, and it worked. The researchers (remember,
these are MD’s we’re talking about) noted that the spinal
adjustment resulted in “immediate quieting, cessation of crying,
and muscular relaxation and sleepiness.” Now, the first few
years.
The study also discussed and 18-month-old boy suffering from
tonsillitis, recurrent enteritis (pain of the small intestine), pink
eye, recurrent colds, and increasing problems sleeping. After a chiropractic
adjustment, the child demanded to be put to sleep and slept peacefully
until morning. When he awoke, his health had returned to normal. The
parents of this child could have opted to go the medical route, giving
the child pain medicine for the tonsillitis, cold medicine to get
rid of the cold, and sleeping medicine to help him sleep. Instead
of drugging their child up to suppress the symptoms, they brought
him to get chiropractic care, naturally taking care of the cause of
the problems.
The late chiropractic pediatric specialist Larry Webster, D.C., said
there are six times in a baby’s first year of life when spinal
examinations are especially important: After the birth process, when
the baby starts to hold his/her head up, when the baby sits up, when
the baby starts to crawl, when the baby starts to stand, and when
the baby starts to walk. Each of these milestones bring about new
physical stress on the child’s body, and each milestone can
bring about spinal subluxations that can cause problems in the child’s
immune function, muscular function, and neurological function. Don’t
wait until it’s too late, bring your child in to get checked
today!
Chiropractic
and ADD/ADHD
He won’t sit still. She just doesn’t pay attention in
class. He can’t focus on one subject and is disruptive to other
students. Does your child have ADD or ADHD? Many teachers might say
that your child has ADD/ADHD, but don’t let them diagnose your
child of a disorder he or she may not even have. Teachers have as
much authority to diagnose your child with ADD/ADHD as a plumber has
to diagnose your car’s engine. Teachers, medical doctors, and
even government officials will tell you that if you don’t medicate
your child who has ADD/ADHD now, they will “self medicate”
themselves later in life with cocaine or other illegal drugs. What
they don’t tell you is that many drugs for ADD/ADHD, such as
Ritalin, produce effects very similar to cocaine or amphetamines.
What’s even worse is that some kids may have to take it their
entire lives, increasing dose sizes as they grow.
Ritalin is the medical doctor’s first choice when it comes to
ADD/ADHD. What’s scary is that in 2000, Ritalin prescription
rates worldwide were five times higher than in 1990, only a decade
earlier. And even worse, 90% of those prescriptions were in the US.
We don’t have five times the birthrate, children, or population
as any other country in the world, so what is the reason our kids
all of the sudden have ADD/ADHD? Today’s society is more impulsive,
demand quicker gratification, and have a shorter attention span, and
children are the most affected by it. So why are we medicating our
children when they are simply moving in the direction of society?
When a child starts having difficulty in class or starts behaving
badly, teachers make a preliminary ADHD “diagnosis” and
inform the parents. The parents then bring their child to their family
doctor who does a few tests and usually ends up prescribing a medication
like Ritalin to their child. There are several things wrong with this
situation. First off, TEACHERS CAN’T PRESCRIBE OR DIAGNOSE ANYTHING.
Their advice should be taken in the right context, merely as someone
who sees a problem that needs to be discovered and dealt with. Second,
there are several other treatments for your child that are much safer,
and oftimes more effective and longer lasting than drugging them up
right away.
There are several factors that are more likely than ADHD and they
should be tested before medicating, because some more serious neurological
disorders may be present, and can be worsened by adding “kiddie
cocaine” into the mix. Ritalin is called “kiddie cocaine”
because the long term developmental brain irregularities are often
compared to those of long term cocaine users. Ritalin is not a cure
for ADHD, it doesn’t correct the disorder nor does it help the
patient with their individual issues. The drug merely controls the
symptoms to help the child concentrate better.
After their teacher tells you that there is something wrong with your
child, take them to a healthcare professional that specializes in
ADHD or neurology. Their “ADHD” as “prescribed”
by their teacher, could actually be obsessive-compulsive disorder
(OCD) or Tourettes. Also, observe the child at home. If they aren’t
acting like the teacher is reporting, it may be something wrong with
the teacher, school, or something in the school such as an allergen.
For it to be classified as ADHD the behaviors have to be excessive,
occur before the age of seven, cause problems in social environments
(such as school or home), and last for at least six months. Many children
don’t meet these requirements, yet are still “diagnosed”
with ADHD.
ADHD has been observed since 1938. It is caused by a problem with
the reticular activating system, or the activity center of the brain.
The use of a PET (positron emission tomography) scan researchers can
look at the brains of non-ADHD patients and those with ADHD. In patients
with ADHD certain parts of the brain are underfunctioning. This can
be caused by two things – under stimulation of the brain, or
the biochemical substrates to the brain. That translates into “some
children have problems with the environment they’re in, some
have biological problems, and some have both. Medical treatments play
the “one-size-fits-all” approach by simply prescribing
medicine. This affects the biological aspect of ADHD which, as discussed
before, may not be the cause.
Taking drugs should never be taken lightly. For example, a child died
suddenly because of a reaction between a Ritalin-like drug and clonidine,
a drug taken to regulate high blood pressure. Drugs can react with
each other in deadly ways, and what should worry you is that medical
doctors and pharmacologists find out the hard way at the expense of
innocent human lives.
Chiropractic can help. It can help brain stimulation by opening up
pathways so that as much stimulation can get to the brain from sight,
smell, touch and taste. In many cases it can correct long-standing
brain imbalances responsible for many of the deficits that lead to
ADD. It can help the biochemical substrates by identifying specific
subluxations (vertebra that are misaligned causing poor nerve function)
and different sensory stimuli that specifically affect the deficient
hemisphere and thus help normalize brain function.
To
complement your child’s chiropractic care, have them do some
exercises at home to help their brain develop like it is supposed
to. Exercises like clapping a hand or tapping a foot using the hand
or foot they would use to play a certain instrument helps them to
concentrate on one task at a time, throwing darts at a board to help
with hand-eye coordination, and timed cognitive tasks such as crosswords
and mazes to help them practice figuring things out in a certain period
of time all help develop your child’s brain safely and effectively
without the use of drugs.
Here
are a few links to content aimed at furthering your understanding
of how chiropractic can help ADD and ADHD. Enjoy!
ADD/ADHD
on YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQjTz2MEJP8&NR=1
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAB9-HS7IEk&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksNp_Jh8gyM
ADD/ADHD
Articles
http://www.chiro.org/pediatrics/FULL/adhd_part1.shtml
http://www.chiro.org/pediatrics/FULL/adhd_part2.shtml
Chiropractic
and Bedwetting
Bedwetting, or nocturnal enuresis, effects all kids sometime, but
it’s always embarrassing. It isn’t a big issue if the
child has just been potty trained, as conscious bladder control is
much easier than bladder control while sleeping. In fact, if both
of the parents were bedwetters, the child has an 80% better chance
of wetting the bed after being toilet trained. Bedwetting can affect
anyone, but it’s more common in boys. Also, if your child has
ADHD it is more common for them to have problems. The factors that
define it as an actual problem is if your child still wets the bed
after age 5-6, if they wet the bed after a long period of dry nights,
and if the experiences painful urination, is unusually thirsty, snoring,
or has pink urine.
There are several factors that cause bedwetting, and most of them
can be helped greatly with chiropractic. Here is a list of some of
the factors that can cause bedwetting, and how chiropractic can help
them:
• Inability to recognize a full bladder. This indicates that
the nerves that travel from your childs bladder to their brain aren’t
fully developed or are blocked by a subluxation. To help, bring your
child into the chiropractor so they can set the subluxation straight
and help to ensure that your childs nerve flow developes and communicates
the right way. It also may be a problem with how deeply your child
sleeps. Some messages, such as the ears hearing a loud noise or the
eyes sensing a bright light, are supposed to wake us up, so if your
child isn’t effected by these external sensations, he or she
may have a problem with internal signals as well.
• A hormone imbalance. Your child is still developing inside
and out, but the outside development may be easier to spot. Sometimes,
your childs body doesn’t produce enough anti-diuretic hormone
(ADH), which slows nighttime urine production. Bring them into a chiropractor,
because a hormone imbalance could be a cause of poor nerve signals
to the organs that produce ADH.
• Stress. Stressful events may cause bedwetting. “What
does a child have to be stressed about?” you ask? Well, sometimes
becoming a big brother or sister, the first nights away from home,
or starting in a new school can be extremely stressful to a young
one. Make sure your child is completely comfortable with something
before doing it if he or she is wetting the bed. Chiropractic can
help reduce physical and emotional stress that the child may be dealing
with that he or she doesn’t tell the parents, such as if they
fell off of the jungle gym at school and their back hurts a little,
but not enough to tell mom and dad.
• Urinary Tract Infection. Your child may have difficulty controlling
urination if they have a UTI. Signs that they may have a UTI can be
daytime accidents, frequent urination, and painful urination. Chiropractic
helps the immune system work at peak performance, and has no harmful
side effects such as a UTI antibiotic. For example, the commonly used
antibiotics sulfamethoxazole and trimethoprim have side effects such
as diarrhea that is watery or bloody, feeling restless or irritable,
confusion, hallucinations, seizures, slow heart rate, weak pulse,
severe tingling, numbness, and muscle pain or weakness. Do you want
to put your child at risk of these side effects for simple bed wetting?
• Sleep apnea. Bed wetting can also be a sign that there is
something wrong with your childs sleep patterns. When learning bladder
control while awake, they usually have no trouble concentrating on
just that, but if they are asleep and having trouble breathing, or
have ear or sinus infections, the pain and trouble breathing may be
enough to distract them from noticing that they have a full bladder
and waking up to go to the bathroom. Chiropractic can help with sleep
apnea by clearing the neural pathway from the brain to the lungs.
If the child can breathe right then they shouldn’t have any
problems recognizing a full bladder. And if the immune system is working
well, they shouldn’t have any annoying ear or sinus infection
to distract them from noticing they have to go to the bathroom.
• Diabetes. If your child has had a long period of dryness,
but now seems to be wetting the bed frequently, it can be an early
sign of diabetes. If this happens, look for other signs before getting
worried. Other signs it can be diabetes is passing large amounts of
urine at one time, increased thirst, fatigue, and weight loss despite
a healthy diet. If it is diabetes, chiropractic can actually help.
There is no solid evidence of how it helps, but there are many instances
recorded of where a person suffering from diabetes feels better, has
their sugar levels drop, and their quality of life improves.
• Chronic constipation. Even though your child may have perfectly
functioning nerves between their brain and their bladder, and may
be healthy otherwise regarding their urinary tract, chronic constipation
can cause bedwetting. If their colon is full, then their bladder doesn’t
have as much room. Shifts in sleeping position at night can put too
much pressure on the bladder, causing it to empty without them knowing.
Chiropractic can help communication between the bowels and brain,
relieving your child of constipation and help stop bedwetting at the
same time.
• Anatomical Defect. This is a very rare cause of bedwetting,
but it may apply to your child. An anatomical defect is something
that formed wrong in your childs body. When talking about bedwetting,
the anatomical defect would have to occur in the neurological or urinary
systems. While chiropractic can’t cure your child of these defects,
it can help take advantage of what they do have, and help keep the
defects from getting worse by guiding them in the right direction
as your child continues to grow and develop.
To complement chiropractic care and natural healing, caffeine intake
should be stopped completely until the problem has been resolved.
It is not the child’s fault for wetting the bed, so they should
not be scolded or made to feel bad about what happened. Make sure
to let the child know, and make sure they understand, that this is
just another problem that will pass, just like potty training or learning
to walk. Going to the bathroom right before bed is always a good idea,
but make sure you suggest it so they don’t feel pressure to
perform, which may add stress and make the situation worse. Also,
stretching the bladder may help by allowing the child to hold more
urine. When the child has to go to the bathroom, have him or her hold
it for five more minutes every time. Don’t forget to praise
your child when they do it, because praise can go a long way in a
situation where neither party wants bed wetting to continue.
No matter what the underlying cause is, bedwetting can be helped through
chiropractic care. At Burtis Chiropractic, we have helped many children
and their families move beyond the embarrassment of bedwetting. Chiropractic
has no side effects like some medications do and is a cause-fixing,
not symptom-suppressing, treatment that gets real results, and leads
to total body wellness. Don’t just feel healthy, be healthy!
Here
are some videos that may help you decide on chiropractic to treat
your child:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QmCMtFCbivM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtABne0YCrY
Chiropractic
and Colic
Colic. One of the worst words a parent of a newborn can hear. Your
baby cries for hours on end and there is nothing you can do about
it. What’s worse than the disturbing, high pitched screaming
that doesn’t stop and has no apparent cause, is the fact that
there is nothing you can do to help your child when it sounds like
they need help the most. It’s heartbreaking to hear your baby
screaming like it’s in pain, and being able to do nothing about
it. Well, almost nothing. This is where chiropractic comes in.
If your baby experienced a longer pushing stage, or any type of assisted
delivery (i.e. – forceps, vacuum, etc.) there is a good chance
that they have subluxations. Babies with significant enough subluxations,
or subluxations in certain areas, may have big problems, and they
can’t tell you about them. Because of these subluxations, major
systems in the body may not function correctly, such as the digestive
system, and your baby may not be able to digest breast milk like he
or she should, possibly causing gas and bloating. The flexed legs,
clenched fists, and tensed abdominal muscles point to a pain in the
abdominal region, but that hasn’t been proven.
What has been proven, however, is that chiropractic adjustments can
work. Medical doctors (those you would find at a hospital) may prescribe
dimethicone drops, or gas drops, that are the standard, and vastly
ineffective treatment. Others may say it’s a sensitivity to
breast milk and may advise providing a lactose-free milk, which has
also proven to be ineffective.
Studies done at the University of Southern Denmark have reported that
colicky babies who received chiropractic care cried far less than
those receiving the standard gas drops prescribed by medical doctors.
This study was done on behalf of the National Health Service, and
found chiropractic to have no negative side effects on infants, which
is “standard” for chiropractic! Another study was done
in South Africa, by Mercer and Cook. In this study, 30 infants who
were medically diagnosed as having colic, were randomly divided into
two groups. One group received chiropractic care while the other did
not. Each infant in the study was 0-8 weeks old and diagnosed with
colic by a pediatrician. For this study, the group who received chiropractic
care received it for two weeks with a six adjustment maximum. The
results were impressive. In the group who received chiropractic care,
93% had completely resolved symptoms in just the two week period.
A little shorter than the “wait 3 months for it to run its course”
plan that most medical doctors will tell you. Something even more
impressive was the one month follow up assessment. The infants who
received chiropractic care had seen no symptoms one month after receiving
chiropractic care.
For those of you who don’t feel comfortable relying on studies
done in different countries (although much medical research comes
from other countries), here is one from the Journal of Manipulative
and Physiological Therapeutics. It is a randomized clinical trial
published in 1999, and in this study, researchers assigned infants
diagnosed with colic into two groups, one to receive chiropractic
care for two weeks and the other to receive the popular (and basically
ineffective) anti-gas medication dimethicone for two weeks. The babies
receiving chiropractic treatment showed a decrease of 68% in crying,
while the other group only showed a decrease of 38%.
Chiropractic care is a conservative, gentle, and very successful option
for treating infants with colic. Chiropractic adjustments for infants
are specific, gentle, and safe. In the hands of an experienced chiropractor,
many infants sleep right through the adjustment. An infant adjustment
utilizes no more pressure than someone applying make up to their face.
Next time you are told “there is nothing you can do except wait
it out,” just smile, nod, and bring your child right to the
chiropractor, because a healthy baby makes a happy home.
Chiropractic and Ear Infections
Ear infections can be extremely painful, and nothing is worse than
hearing your child cry out in pain and not being able to do anything
about it. Ear infections, or otitis media, account for more than 35%
of pediatric visits per year. About half of all children will have
an ear infection by the time they are 12 months old, and two-thirds
will have had one by the time they are three years old. It can be
caused by either bacteria or a virus, and is a common after-effect
of having a cold or other illness. If the culprit of the infection
is bacteria, an antibiotic might help (of course, it won’t help
if the cause is a virus, which most are), but studies have shown antibiotics
to be little more effective than the natural immune system, and could
lead to drug-resistant bacteria that can’t be touched by antibiotics.
Even if the antibiotics kill all of the bacteria causing the infection,
they do nothing for the fluid buildup (which is needed for the bacteria
that cause the pain to grow), and leave a perfect breeding ground
for the next batch of bacteria to settle in and cause problems.
For many kids, it can become a yearly problem, resulting in numerous
doctor visits to get the same medication that probably didn’t
work last time, and might not work this time. It can lead to getting
ear tubes, a costly procedure that sometimes fall out and needs to
be repeated in about 1 of every 4 children. The natural Eustachian
tubes should do this, but for some reason they’re not. Aside
from the surgery, getting ear tubes requires a general anesthetic,
never a small matter when used on a child. Frequent ear infections
are the second most common cause for surgery in children under 2 years
of age. Too much fluid in the ears can lead to impaired hearing, which
may lead to impaired speech as their speech develops.
Chiropractic can help your child fight these annoying and painful
infections the natural way. Upper cervical adjustments can help the
flow of this fluid buildup out of the ear through the Eustachian tubes,
clearing it out of any breeding grounds for new bacteria or virus.
They also help the body’s immune system to function at the highest
level, making it better able to fight the infection naturally. The
child usually needs to get through one ear infection to produce the
immune response necessary to fight off further infections, but you
should still bring them in so they can get better as soon as possible,
and stay better as long as possible.
Here
are a few videos of how chiropractic helps children with ear infections:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpgxqfDECP4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouv3GGMYuFw
