How Can Chiropractic Help?
HOW DO I GET MY CHILD’S HEALTH BACK?
It seems like every cold, fever, rash, or illness happens at the least convenient time for kids. You might even have the aisle number memorized having browsed aisles of Target or CVS on a Sunday night, right before they closed, trying to find the right over-the-counter medication to help your child feel better and just get to sleep.
Many parents are not new to that constant cycle of being sick — the runny nose, congestion, fussiness, and lack of sleep, all leading you to an over-the-counter remedy, and like most parents, you have tried what you think is the healthiest, dye-free, somewhat natural looking one first. When that doesn’t work, you go for the “strong stuff” and finally call the pediatrician first thing Monday morning and get prescribed something “more” to get you out of the struggle.
If you’ve been here it’s beyond frustrating and defeating, and while medicine may help in the moment temporarily, it often doesn’t actually stop the cycle of sickness that leads to many sleepless nights, medications, and so many medical bills.
Many parents reach this point and would try anything different to help and break the cycle. This is where a lot of parents are when they come to a chiropractor. You may have seen another mom on a Facebook group mention something like, “Have you tried Chiropractic care?” Or “My son/daughter got adjusted, and it helped everything….” If this is you and you thought to yourself, “Aren’t Chiropractors for back pain, neck pain, and headaches?” “Do they even see babies?” “What would care even look like?” “Is it safe?” “How does chiropractic care help my kids?” Well, you’re not alone. Many parents that come into Sprout Family Chiropractic have this same journey.
WHAT IS CHIROPRACTIC CARE?
Many of the most viewed health websites including WebMD, and the Mayo Clinic, define Chiropractic as a “treatment that is primarily used as a pain relief alternative to muscles, joints, and bones… The goal of the procedure is to improve spinal motion and improve physical function.” This sounds great if you’re an athlete or have been in an auto accident, but what about the friend who messaged, “Chiropractic helped everything with my kids.” How exactly did a muscle, bone, and joint treatment help a child?
What most parents we get to talking to when they first come in find is the most exciting aspect of chiropractic is that chiropractic works on the body’s communication and “Air Traffic Control” system, the central and autonomic nervous system. The number of times we’ve heard, “Why haven’t we heard this before?”… And it quickly makes perfect sense to them that any stress on the nerves could then lead to stress and dysfunction on not just joints and muscles within the body but different organs and other major systems as well.
While some haven’t heard of pediatric chiropractic, just like in traditional medicine, there are different specialties within chiropractic. And yes, it’s true that many chiropractors focus primarily on back pain and sports injuries. But an entire group of experts focus on the nervous system, pediatrics, prenatal and family care!
When the nervous system is struggling, chiropractors want to look back to find the root cause(s) of the distress and dysfunction, whereas medicine typically seeks to just cover things up with medication.
One of the most significant stressors that few parents are aware of yet for infants and children is birth trauma, which has unfortunately been normalized and thus, disregarded as a problem at all.
The amount of physical and chemical stress added to the birth process in the modern era is, in our opinion as PX Docs, the single biggest detriment to the health of our children. It is the single biggest hidden secret in health care, and we’ve got to let more parents know that their child’s cycle of sickness and stress likely started right at the very beginning!
Yes, things like gluten, dairy, and toxins are a detriment to our kid’s health and well-being, but birth trauma is genuinely something that can have lifelong negative consequences if not discovered and properly cared for.
WHAT MAKES NEUROLOGICALLY-FOCUSED PEDIATRIC CHIROPRACTORS DIFFERENT?
In order for a family chiropractor to really focus on the nervous system, they need to incorporate an incredible piece of technology called the INSiGHT. It’s not enough for a neurologically-focused family chiropractor to just talk about the nervous system, they need to actually measure and track its function as care progresses.
This wildly safe, effective, and accurate technology measures the exact amount of stress, tension, and dysfunction within the nervous system. It provides clear reports to parents and practitioners that help them form an exact customized care plan to take care of it!
This stress and tension within the nervous system is called subluxation, and again it is most commonly caused in the very early stages of life by things such as prenatal distress and birth trauma. Subluxation and its related dysfunction often build up for quite some time without the presence of symptoms, which is why our favorite INSiGHT scans to run are on brand-new infants and wellness patients, helping us catch any stress and dysfunction long before it starts to cause trouble!
WHAT CAN CHIROPRACTIC CARE HELP WITH?
Since the autonomic nervous system controls and modulates every single cell, tissue, and organ in the body, the benefits of chiropractic care become incredibly far-reaching! You can best understand the multiple benefits of chiropractic by looking at it through the lens of a condition called dysautonomia.
This is perhaps the most confusing part of chiropractic, honestly – how can it be so simple?
Most parents are so used to the current medical system, where there is a different specialist and kind of doctor for every system of the body (ENT, GI, neurologist, etc.)… and none of them seem to communicate or coordinate very well together (you know, sort of like subluxation haha)!
You may been to the pediatrician, visit after visits, and sent off to see all the medical specialists again and again only to leave you child with more long-term chronic immune and sleep struggles and leaving you with more confusion and unanswered questions. This is exactly what moms tell us, “We’ve seen specialist after specialist, and we’ve never gotten the answers we have like these scans give us.”
This was the case for Baby “B”. On the first visit, we spent tons of time unpacking Baby “B’s” story. Mom was induced during her 35th week, wasn’t nursing or pooping well, often arched his back, spit up constantly, and wasn’t happy or easy to settle after feeding. Essentially, he struggled with colic big time.
It turned out that Baby “B” had a significant subluxation in his upper neck region caused by his birth trauma, and it was impacting his autonomic function and immune system quite significantly. In fact, this is what his INSiGHT Scan looked like at one and a half years old – stressed out to the max!
While every case and scan is unique, this pattern of stress that Baby “B” had was so familiar to thousands of other cases we as PX Docs see everyday – birth trauma and vagus nerve dysfunction.
With more and more stressors happening so early in development, it is no surprise that symptoms follow. From nursing, sleeping, and pooping challenges in newborns, to ear infections and colic with babies, to sensory and behavioral challenges when children start grade school… all of these can be attributed to The Perfect Storm🌪, which is our term for the seemingly endless cycle of stress on a child’s nervous system that happens far too often these days.
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF CHIROPRACTIC CARE?
When families get stuck in this cycle of sickness and stress, it can be overwhelming and challenging to know what to do first. And unfortunately, for many, the question isn’t how can chiropractic care help.
Traditional medicine just offers more referrals to specialists and more medications. Then when parents get on the internet and join various Facebook Groups looking for help, it can be overwhelming with the litany of recommendations that come from that – diet changes, detoxes, supplements, essential oils, and so on.
This is where the simplicity of chiropractic comes in, and we look at the body as a whole, not just symptom by symptom or system by system. We focus entirely on removing neurological interference and imbalance safely and naturally, without drugs. Once we get that child’s nervous system calmed down, balanced, and regulated once again, it’s no wonder they start experiencing the following:
Sleeping better
Having better regularity with their digestive system
Being able to calm Sensory Processing storms easier
Overcoming more complex developmental or cognitive challenges
Who would not want to experience all these incredible real-life, long-term benefits of chiropractic care?!
After just a month into us “trying” chiropractic care, Baby “B” went from pooping max 2-3x/week to everyday, better head control and spitting up less. It wasn’t that chiropractic was “treating” the direct symptoms, it was simply allowing the body to do naturally what it wanted to do all along – function with ease. Then continue to grow, develop and thrive by being self-healing and self-regulating!
Like many parents, experiencing results like these not only allow a kid to heal but the entire family to thrive.
So, can chiropractic care help? It sure can! And we hope if you find yourself on a similar journey you find a doc that’s right for you!
FIND YOUR FAMILY CHIROPRACTOR!
Nothing is more powerful than parents looking for Hope, Answers, and Help for their children. Don’t ever stop doing just that, moms and dads, it’s always worth it.
For your next steps, please check out our incredible 3 Step Clinical Process that is unlike anything else in healthcare. And then, from there, be sure to book your appointment with us through our online scheduler.
Talk with one of our docs, get all your questions answered, and get your child scheduled for their INSiGHT Scans right away!
Ready to get to the root cause? Click the button below to get started!