Millions of children wake up in the morning with wet pajamas and wet sheets from undeveloped bladder control. Bed-wetting, officially known as enuresis, presents as a condition in a child age 5 or older who wet the bed at least one time each week. Most cases involve children who continue to wet the bed after infancy, but some do involve children who appeared to develop bladder control but regress back to regular wetting. Children do not generally wet the bed on purpose and a few sources and causes prove to be the general culprit. Chaotic emotions contribute to bedwetting at times, but most cases involve issues with the nervous system and sensory control of bladder function.

What are the causes?

Children learn bladder control at different ages. Toddlers under the age of four often wet the beds or clothing because they cannot yet control their bladder. These control issues tend to resolve by age five or six and allow children to stay dry through the night. A healthy brain to body communication system provides a child with the best opportunity to control and coordinate proper bladder control. Chiropractic spinal adjustments empower children to improve and overcome enuresis. The spine and nervous system maintain responsibility for alerting a person when the bladder reaches capacity. Without this advanced warning within the body’s communication system, children find themselves compromised in repeated cases of bed wetting.

How does chiropractic help?

Numerous studies prove the influence of Chiropractic care on bed-wetting in children. Research published in 1994 and again in 2012 proved a significant link between bed-wetting and nervous system function. Children receiving regular Chiropractic adjustments to correct areas of spinal subluxation experienced a substantially higher rate of overcoming enuresis than children who did not get adjusted. A subluxation represents an alteration in the alignment and movement of a spinal vertebra. A subluxation creates imbalances in autonomic nervous system function, leading to interference between the brain and the nervous system. One outcome of interference in a child’s communication system manifests in an inability to fully control the bladder. The autonomic nervous system directs all involuntary vital functions such as breathing, immunity, impulse control, and digestion.

An imbalance in the autonomic nervous system leads to altered physiology. This leads to a wide variety of symptoms and conditions, including bed-wetting. Science and research clearly prove that most babies and children risk acquiring subluxations through natural physical stressors like birth trauma, falls, and accidents. Children suffering from bed-wetting often feel ashamed or embarrassed. These emotions tend to lead to further mental and emotional problems as they develop. Parental frustration may even match that of the child. The solution begins with getting to the root cause of a condition like bed-wetting. A child needs to be empowered to control their body before they take ownership of resolving the issue. Chiropractic provides unique solutions backed by evidence-based research. Before seeking drug therapy or medicinal interventions, families and children deserve the chance to conquer bed-wetting naturally by empowering the body’s natural ability to heal and overcome at the source. Chiropractic works.

The post Bed-Wetting Helped by Chiropractic… Research Evaluated Chiropractic for Kids first appeared on Chiropractor Broken Arrow.

In this issue, we will take a look at the reasons why chiropractors have been able to correct this problem when other treatments have failed. We will also look at the conflicting evidence presented in the scientific literature relating to the effectiveness of the chiropractor adjusting the child’s spine to correct this problem.

Most children wet the bed for the first few years of life, but by the age of 4 to 5 years old, most children should be able to establish proper bladder control. Enuresis refers to the inability of a child to establish this proper bladder control resulting in either daytime or nocturnal involuntary urination.

Primary enuresis occurs in a child over five years of age, who has never been able to establish proper bladder control. Secondary enuresis is the diagnosis for the child who has been able to establish proper bladder control, but who has since lapsed back to wetting the bed. Occasionally a pathological mechanism such as neurogenic bladder may be responsible, but usually, no such cause can be identified.

In most cases, bed-wetting is considered as just an unfortunate childhood problem, and no outside treatment is sought. The parents are frequently prepared to simply wait until the child grows out of it, and in most cases, these problems go untreated.  The thing that many outsiders do not realize is that it is taxing on the parents and very embarrassing to the child.

The traditional chiropractic approach to treating the child who is a bed-wetter is to adjust the spine, usually in the area of the lumbar spine or sacrum. A review of the anatomy and physiology of the bladder may help us understand why these areas are chosen as the prime target.

Bladder Anatomy and Physiology

Emptying of the urinary bladder is controlled by the detrusor and trigone muscles. The nerve supply to these muscles is via the sacral parasympathetic nerves from S2 to S4.

Appropriate bladder function is also controlled by the urogenital diaphragm which derives its nerve supply from the L2 spinal nerve.

Development of the Sacrum

The sacrum (or tailbone) develops as five separate segments. These segments remain separated until a child reaches puberty, at which time fusion of one sacral segment to another commences. Eventually, the sacrum will be one single bone with all five segments fused together, but this does not occur until the mid-20s.

Because the sacrum consists of separate segments during the early years of life, it is possible that misalignment of these segments can cause nerve irritation or facilitation. This nerve facilitation, especially to the area of the bladder, maybe the cause of the inappropriate bladder function associated with bed-wetting.

As we have seen, the developing sacrum in the early childhood years remains highly mobile, existing as separate spinal segments. During this period, the sacrum can be subjected to repeated trauma from childhood falls and early attempts at walking. This early trauma to the sacrum may be the major reason why bed-wetting in some patients ceases after the spine is adjusted.

Is the Spine the Cause of all Enuresis?

Adjustment of the sacral segments in the bed-wetter has an anecdotal history of effectiveness throughout the years. Recent studies, however, would appear to disagree with such claims. One such study from Australia concluded that spinal adjusting offered little help for enuresis, while another study suggested that good results could be obtained. This apparent disagreement may suggest nothing more than bed-wetting is due to several causes, one of which is spine related. Children with a spinal cause respond while those with other causes of bed-wetting do not.

The conclusion would therefore appear to be to have all children who are bed-wetters evaluated for the possibility of spinal problems as the underlying cause.  Coming from experience, the solution may not always be the most obvious but it is important to exhaust all efforts when caring for your children.

If you have any questions regarding your children, please give us a call at 918-940-4630 and Dr Ring would be happy to sit down to discuss the options of your particular case.  This is a condition that is very difficult to handle as a parent and a child, but it is one that often has a solution rooted in the spine.  Thank you for allowing us to be your chiropractor.

The post Is there anything chiropractic can do for bed-wetting? first appeared on Chiropractor Broken Arrow.

All children function better with 100% nerve function. All kids deserve the right to express their fullest potential. Chiropractic care is safe, gentle, and effective. It allows for the opportunity for maximum potential for well-being and immune system function.  The first subluxations occur at birth as an infant!!!

A chiropractor’s purpose is to remove interference to the natural healing power running through the body. When that power has unleashed the healing the results may be profound.  Our pediatric patients typically respond quickly once the low-force adjustments are administered.  We see great results with our kid chiropractic patients.

Today we find more parents bringing their children to chiropractors for day-to-day health concerns we’re all familiar with: colds, sore throats, ear infections, fevers, colic, asthma, tonsillitis, allergies, bed-wetting, infections, pains, falls, stomach-aches, and the hundred and one little and big things children go through as they grow up.

Earache & Ear Infections:

Earache is the most common reason for office visits to pediatricians. By the age of three years, more than 70 percent of children will have had at least one episode of earache, and about a third will have had more than three episodes. It is not surprising, therefore, that earache is also the most common reason for children under the age of five years presenting to the chiropractor’s office.

When a child with earache is diagnosed with a middle ear infection by the pediatrician, the usual treatment involves a course of antibiotics. New research has determined that this is often misguided. The cause of the child’s middle ear infection may not be due to bacteria, and since antibiotics are only effective against bacterial pathogens, frequently there will be no response. Since numerous cases of middle ear infection can be caused by a virus, and viruses do not respond to antibiotics, this may be the reason why children develop chronic ear infections.

The chiropractor’s task is to ascertain if the reason for the body’s inability to combat the earache/ear infection is caused by irritation of the small nerves in the spine (called free nerve endings). When these nerve endings are irritated, an abnormal tension is produced in the small muscles of the neck. This muscle tension can place pressure on the lymphatic drainage ducts resulting in inadequate drainage from inside the ear, thus preventing the body from being able to naturally correct the problem.

Identification of such a problem is made by detecting increased tension in the neck and paraspinal muscles, usually more tension is felt on the side of the earache. The chiropractor also looks for spinal vertebrae which are either slightly out of alignment or are not moving within their normal range. This problem may have been due to any one of the numbers of bangs, jolts, and falls that most children experience in the early years of their life. Often, a short course of spinal adjustment and manipulation of the neck muscles can help restore normal lymph drainage.

Birth Trauma:

Chiropractors have been stressing for years the importance of having a newborn checked for vertebral subluxations. The importance of a developing child is free from nerve interference from subluxation cannot be understated.

Trauma during birth is associated with physical injury to an infant during the birth process. Health consequences to the newborn from birth trauma range from immediate and severe to hidden problems that may take years to surface. Some of the more immediate and tragic results that have been documented are spinal cord and brain stem injuries, brain bleeding and swelling, neurological deficits, breathing problems, and even sudden infant death syndrome.

The long-term consequences are as varied as the nerve system itself. Some of the more commonly mentioned problems that have been linked to traumatic birth are learning disabilities, headaches, visual and hearing problems, certain palsies, and a host of immune functional problems.

Many studies have relayed scientific documentation of damage that occurs to the nervous system in the neck of newborns during the common birth process. This damage ranges from mild subluxations in the upper neck to more serious subluxations involving spinal cord damage and central nervous system problems.

Many studies suggest the position of the mother coupled with the pulling from the delivering physician has a lot to do with the creation of these subluxation problems. When the delivering mother is lying on her back, she is not only working partially against gravity, but she has reduced the pelvic opening size. These two factors then require the attending physician to pull harder on the head of the child. This increased pulling and twisting during the birth process, coupled with a decrease in the pelvic opening and a non-alignment with gravity often set the stage for birth trauma, subluxation, and the resulting problems.  The less force used, if any, the better.

Colic:

Infantile colic was first described as indigestion. While different diagnostic criteria have emerged since then, there has never been complete agreement on what colic is, what causes it, or how to treat it. The most widely accepted definition of colic today is “unexplainable and uncontrollable crying in babies from 0 to 3 months old, more than 3 hours a day, more than 3 days a week for 3 weeks or more, usually in the afternoon and evening hours.”

As your child is born, the neck and back vertebrae can become misaligned due to the stretching and compressing of the body as it emerges into the world. If your delivery included a prolonged pushing stage, forceps or vacuum extraction, or other forms of assisted delivery, the chances of a misalignment are great.

If the subluxations (misaligned vertebrae) are severe, the functioning of major systems in the body can be compromised. The digestive system can be affected and ineffective digestion of breast milk and formula can cause major discomfort in your baby, leading to colic episodes. Studies have not only shown that chiropractic adjustments were effective in reducing colic symptoms, most notably the average hours per day spent crying, but also that the use of drugs was not particularly effective, and certainly less effective than chiropractic care. Your chiropractor can evaluate your child’s condition and recommend the best approach for maximizing health and wellness.

Bed Wetting:

Bed-wetting or enuresis is the involuntary passage of urine. Bedwetting is an issue that affects millions of kids every night. It is very common among kids who are 6 years old or younger. About 15% of 6-year-olds wet the bed, while about 5% of 10-year-olds do.  Commonly, bedwetting is blamed on immature sleeping patterns or small urinary bladder capacity. One of the common causative factors involved in nocturnal enuresis is categorized as bladder innervation disorder.

Chiropractic studies have indicated that bed-wetting has been resolved when vertebral subluxations (nerve interferences) are corrected. When nerve supply or communication is disrupted from the brain to the spinal column, ultimately to all other parts of the body, one or more parts of the body begin to fail. By minimizing nerve interference through chiropractic adjustments, the natural strengths of the human body are maximized increasing the body’s capacity to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery.

The post Why Children NEED Chiropractic Adjustments For Their Well-Being first appeared on Chiropractor Broken Arrow.