Why should my baby and kid receive chiropractic treatment?
Pre Infant in utero and Infant care:
Getting adjusted at birth is too late in my opinion. I was in my last year in chiropractic school and as students we didn’t know how to adjust very well. That is when I learned a lot about why people say they don’t need to go to a chiropractor because they had an experience where they got an amateur treatment either from a new doctor who was not very skilled or worse–they were cracking their own joints… UGH disgusting! I would never sprain my own ankle cracking it! Why people do that is a mystery to me, it never fixes the problem. But back to Infant care. :) I’m telling you my story, I’m now 9 months pregnant and had a ton of bad adjustments, needless to say my OB did the best he could pulling my son Liam out, but of coarse it was difficult due to my pelvis being crooked. Liam had shoulder dystocia from his shoulder being stuck under my pubic joint and the crooked pelvis closed the birth canal making it an oval instead of a wide circle. Now how would you like to show up to this world being crammed through a hole too crooked! Helping the infant requires properly adjusting the mother throughout pregnancy and I have proven this clinically with my work. The poor legs and arches of the prenatal mother need a lot of adjusting so the legs can be strengthened as the core has to expand for the baby and be strong for birth.
Birth trauma is unfortunate and almost guaranteed for 85% of infants. I have seen have had a mild restriction over stretch injury from C-section deliveries, and 90% of infants have a fontanelle overlap which is cranial bone restrictions. Now most of them can out grow this, but why bet on luck and hope your infant out grows a problem. Only 50% out grow this as you can see with most human skulls having funny formations, dents, and protrusions. Some infants have partial fused skulls and genetic defects. I have seen in my practice over 25% with palate, spheniod, and jaw and cranial problems due to the birthing process. Just ask the fathers most of the time they are watching the baby being born and they can see the Doctors pulling that baby out aren’t pulling lightly. On average, over 6 times the baby’s weight is the forced used to pull the baby out. That can force malalignments and put pressure on the skull depending on the baby’s position inside the mother. Even as adults, how we are sitting in the car before we are hit determines most of the type of biomechnaical injuries that we just hope we out grow; this is just ridiculous old medicine that has brain washed us. With the apgar score, the new borns are very thoroughly checked by their primary pediatrician in the delivery centers. However they’re not checked for genetic defects 0r cranial trouble. Biomechanically, there is no medical attention to the musculoskeletal, the brain, the central nervous system, or sprained muscles–so we start life crooked. Get your infant checked. One adjustment corrects this birth trauma because the pattern is new and they are so flexible. The nervous system is going to develop the next 3 years and as us parents know we have to teach them to go potty when nerves grow to the bladder and to walk as their brain cells and nerves are developing. DO you really want your new born developing problems?
Kids:
I get passionate about this subject. It is ridiculous that we know our spine is not mature until 28 years old and during the first 28 years of our life we mold our skeleton into a chair for more than 8 hours a day. This is detrimental to our entire society. If you look at the statistics in which is considered “Normal”, 80% of america has neck and lower back pain between 20-40 years of age. My patients in their 20’s only begin to feel that damage they created the last two decades eating macaroni and cheese and being crooked because as the child grows so fast they are regenerating the injured tissues fast as well, therefore not having much pain. Pain in kids is usually ignored by the parents whop hope it goes away!!!!! Injuries go away when they are properly aligned. All injuries no matter how small should have a chiropractic alignment immediately not the next day or after it hurts. We see children monthly and after each injury to ensure they are growing quickly and still aligned. We also make our children eat well so the body has what it needs to grow. Many kids are struggling in school because they are 80% undernourished and crooked. What I recommend for Toddlers is getting check ups quarterly until they play sports. Of course, if I find an aggressive scoliosis or injuries not known we put the toddler on the efficient appropriate treatment plan. However, most trouble I see is from parents grabbing kids by the arms.
In the last ten years I’ve seen a different pattern of kids being overweight and inactive. This is not ok, so I also put kids on a naturopathic treatment plan if things like constipation, rashes, joint pain, and growing pains don’t resolve with alignments. I also do rehabilitation if kids have abnormal development. Just think about how irresponsible procrastination is and how late we are in medicine when we have our school staff doing scoliosis checks. That is not ok! They are not trained certified nor do they understand biomechanics. I know, I treat a vast variety of teachers, principles, and students. They do not have proper biomechanics themselves. Would you have your teacher fix your plumbing, or your car, or do surgery on you? of course not. First of all parents, if your kids have the beginning of scoliosis, you cannot catch this with the bend over screen so many know called the Adams Test. Send them to a professional experienced in family practice or pediatric chiropractor or physiotherapist as most DO’s now do not practice or learn manual medicine and medications will not do nothing for bionmechanical problems. Only after they create damage is medicine then prescribed to deal with too much inflammation which could be a problem for a child with inflammatory diets including: wheat, sugar, night shade family veggies like potatoes, corn(yes corn syrups count) and soy.
Muscle relaxers are not a good idea for anyone! Your body is tight for a reason and to take muscle relaxers requires professional orthopedic and biomechanical assessments done by physiotherapists and very experienced and pattern recognizing chiropractors. So if you can understand why the body is tight, aka protecting a deeper problem. Taking muscle relaxers before knowing will ensure the body can no longer protect itself and the injury gets much worse.
Toddlers and elementary school kids when properly screened with small problems need to be taken care of before pain and bigger symptoms show up or your kids to will be late and procrastinate and look how well that strategy turned out for us. Our entire country is sick and in pain. Some parents skip chiropractic for toddlers due to being scared of going to the wrong one. Well dont worry about that, just email me I will send you to the best. As snobby as I am about my providers, I have been aligned by them personally for them to make my 5 star list. Some parents don’t take their kids to chiropractors due to the expense. With the typical ER visit being 10k on average, you cannot honestly tell me a 25.00-150.00 check up fee is expensive… give me a break. If you allow a problem to go unnoticed you will pay 100 times that price and what I usually see is a poor kid in my office at 25 years old telling me they have been telling their parents they hurt or something is just wrong and now I find that the problem is over 20 years old. Think about how frustrating that is for your kids in the future!!! If you go to your primary doctor today, they do emergency late care and minimal wellness and future care. So when you take your kids to the doctor, if you want to ensure their future is OK, then go to a wellness doctor. I have done wellness pediatrics for over 12 years now and a lot of the my kid patients are now off to college and in great shape, but they have the habit of coming back to me for regular check ups so nothing gets worse, not UNTIL it gets worse!
High School Kids
I hope I don’t need to repeat myself. Of course all the same principles are applied to a high school kid, however in high school real sports starts and real injuries show up. Why would you want a high school injury to determine what activities you do the rest of your life. When we meet patients who are 10 or 20 or 30 years old, many of their problems have momentum and their body has grown around the restriction or worse… all of the muscle are learning compensation patterns and the child grows up crooked with weak pulling muscles believing he will have trouble with this his whole life leading to america’s number one neck and lower back issue: degenerative spine (also known as bone spurring or osteoarthritis). This is completely avoidable with a balance in muscle movement, extremity work and a good diet. Inflammatory foods and crooked adjusted injuries over time make unnecessary repetitive pressures on developing skeletons. I truly believe the generations that are inactive– its not because of computers or games and sitting at all. I believe it came from the parents mentality. Most people don’t even know that being aligned means your body is available for you. Do you know how much work it is to keep you moving around? You can’t ask your cerebellum, but what you can do is check your function. Every person comes in this world with balance. The first signs of biomechanical trouble is your nerves not getting to your joints and your feet are farthest away form your brain so there are hundreds of interrupts from the information coming from your ankles and feet to your brain. Don’t take my word for it, test yourself and if you fail this test you and your kids need to come get alignments to get your ability to live back!
Stand next to a sink or counter and balance on one foot. Notice if you are struggling or if your doing well. If you’re doing OK, then stand there and close your eyes so you are only depending on your feet and cerebellum. If you cannot balance or really struggle, you have alignments to be made. Why would you say “nah, i’ll skip the chiropractic alignment and tough it out”. Do you want to keep driving with a bad tire or walk around with 100 extra points all day? That sounds like a mental problem to me! I don’t like to work that hard and my patients that tough it out pay the most in health care. They also make it impossible to live a great life in the future when their medical decisions play out 20-50 years later. Do you want to be in horrible shape in hospice or active and healthy in your 80’s? You’re making your decisions now. Parents, you’re training your kids to either be early or late. When you don’t care about them abusing themselves you wonder why teenagers are so difficult, we trained them that way and usually don’t even know it.
What are the benefits of receiving chiropractic treatment as a kid?
If I take an identical problem like a family in a car accident where they all have whiplash. If the kid gets adjusted immediately, I can restore them to nearly perfect condition in 6 months with very little care.
When I see that same child without care, 10 years later they have semi-permanent irreversible damage and doctors usually tell you they will have arthritis in the future. That is avoidable with alignments!
If I take the parent in the same accident and adjust them immediately, they take 9 months to 1.5 years to heal as they are not as bouncy and dehydrated–so brittle ligamental tearing is more than triple plus weakness from their old injuries in their body.
Almost everyone has seen a necklace. If you pull on the ends of a necklace where does it break? The weakest link. So if you get your kids adjusted, the probabilities of injury go down by 90% because there is no weak link so all the links can take the load and likely not cause ligamental tearing because of more teamwork in the joints of the skeleton.
Common childhood disorders that can be linked with spinal dysfunction:
Scoliosis (functional, trauma induced), thoracic outlet syndrome, SID, torticollis, constipation, non latching and breast feeding issues, osgood schlatters, growing pains, vision difficulties with cranial disorders, TMJ, balance problems, genu valgum, genu varus, knock knees, whiplash unresolved causing thyroid issues and weight gain or other hormonal issues, sway back and more.
Is chiropractic safe for my child?
It really isn’t safe not to get chiropractic. A good experienced family and pediatric specialized chiropractor is a must and will make sure they are safer not just this year in school, but safer their whole life by not having injuries due to them keeping their alignment the first 20 years of their life. If you see an unskilled chiropractor or try to adjust your kids yourself, that is not safe. However, the side effect of an ill adjusted joint has less consequences.
