How to Care for Chronic Constipation Naturally
YOU’VE TRIED EVERYTHING
That exhausted, haven’t slept in weeks look is a hard one for parents to hide. There isn’t enough Starbucks or sugar to keep a new parent energized when their infant or child is up all night struggling with stomach pain and chronic constipation.
In the same way, most parents we meet whose child is struggling with chronic constipation report there isn’t enough prune juice, probiotics, magnesium, or Miralax out there to get things going for their child. Nearly every single time parents have tried everything before they give Pediatric Chiropractic a try for their child with chronic constipation. And in countless cases like Juniper, it turns out that’s the exact thing they were looking for and missing to get the results they want – a healthy, relaxed child.
What parents of children with chronic constipation know all too well is that the challenges that come along with this health challenge don’t just stay in the digestive system.
As a neurologically focused pediatric chiropractor, we want to share with you the number one missing link found in more than 80% of kids with constipation who come to our practice. Please share this with other parents who may be struggling with constipation in their kids, as the information we'll discuss could help their little ones as well.
CHRONIC CONSTIPATION – SIGNS, SYMPTOMS, AND DIAGNOSIS
Chronic constipation is infrequent bowel movements or difficulty passing stools that persists for several weeks or longer, with some children suffering for years. Generally, constipation is described as having less than three bowel movements per week.
While occasional constipation is a more common health condition in kids, chronic constipation can significantly reduce the quality of life that a child is able to experience. Most of the time children with this condition suffer from near-daily bouts of fatigue, malaise, nausea, exhaustion, emotional dysregulation, and even focus or behavior problems.
What’s more is that the most common medication prescribed to treat children with chronic constipation, Miralax, has a host of nasty side effects with behavior challenges and mood swings being commonly reported.
Traditional signs and symptoms of chronic constipation include:
Passing fewer than three stools a week
Having lumpy, hard, difficult to pass stools
Straining and feeling pain during bowel movements
Feeling like there is a blockage or restriction in your rectum
Needing help emptying your rectum
WHAT ARE THE COMMON CAUSES OF CHRONIC CONSTIPATION
As with any digestive problem, the first place parents tend to turn is to diet and nutrition. Most parents and even providers assume that there are some foods that their child is allergic or intolerant (has difficulty digesting) to, and some nutrients or key physiological elements they are missing.
Therefore the first things that get the blame for chronic constipation are things like:
Gluten and dairy intolerance
Not enough fiber or magnesium
Lack of probiotics and digestive enzymes
But the fact that over 90% of the parents we meet whose children have chronic constipation have already tried every diet change, added magnesium and probiotics, tried essential oils, and more. But yet their child still struggles.
That leads us to understand that there is something more, or something different at play – a neurological problem.
The single most important element of our digestive health is actually not a diet, it’s motility (movement). No matter what foods are going in, our digestive system is made up of nerves and muscles that work in coordination to move things along and provide what we call “primary functions” in chiropractic.
The first role the nervous system plays in digestion is recognizing what nutrients are wanted and needed, and it assimilates and absorbs those. From there, it then also recognizes what are toxic and potentially harmful components of the food, and it eliminates and excretes those. However, that final crucial step to digestive health and well-being can’t happen if the neurological control of the smooth muscles that make up the digestive tract are interfered with and motility is slowed down or stopped altogether.
That is the #1 most common finding we see as the primary cause of constipation in our patients is that the motility (known as peristalsis) is interfered with and malfunctioning. In chiropractic, interference and dysfunction are known as subluxation.
HOW TO CARE FOR KIDS WITH CHRONIC CONSTIPATION
This is where the awesome simplicity of Pediatric Chiropractic comes into play! We simply focus entirely on first finding the exact cause(s) of a child’s chronic constipation, and address it first.
This is first done by taking a thorough case history, and really looking at all the stressors a child may have been exposed to early in life, as well as all the various treatments and care options a family has tried already. We frequently find things like birth trauma and intervention (C-section, forceps, vacuum extraction, induction, long labor times, etc.) as well as reflux, colic, and indigestion in the early stages of the case history.
Then from there, the most important thing is to run a set of INSiGHT Subluxation Scans on the child, to find exactly how that autonomic and central nervous system “control center” is functioning. Below is an example of the most common Insight Scan finding we see correlated with chronic constipation.
The red bars at the very bottom of the scan, in the lumbosacral region of the NeuroSpinal System, indicate a significant subluxation in that area. That exact region is the most commonly correlated area of subluxation in chronic constipation cases, so much so that Pediatric Chiropractors have come to call it the “poop button” and it’s the first place we look upon examination!
SCHEDULE YOUR CONSULTATION AND EXAM TODAY
We are trained to not only look for the nutritional imbalances and other challenges that everyone knows to look for with chronic constipation but even more importantly, they know to look deeper into the function of the nervous system.
They’ll help you find the exact cause of your child’s challenge, and immediately formulate a care plan to help get both the nervous system and digestive system restored to full function, full health, and to the other side of these chronic constipation challenges!
Your child was made to heal and be healthy. Don’t give up hope, just get a new direction by booking an appointment with us. If you aren’t in the San Diego area, search the PX Docs Directory today to find a trained and ready Pediatric Chiropractor near you!
This article appeared in on PX Docs.