17 Jul Why Children NEED Chiropractic Adjustments For Their Well-Being
Why Children NEED Chiropractic Adjustments
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.