The utilization of chiropractic care for children (birth to 17 years of age) is not often enough considered by parents despite the fact that the health and well being of hundreds of thousands of infants, children and adolescents has been improved through chiropractic care. According to a January 19, 2009 article in USA Today, 3%, or about 2.2 million, of American children were treated with chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation in 2007.
Because chiropractic is a holistic approach to the treatment and management of health conditions, it encompasses a wide-ranging variety of natural, safe and non-invasive procedures. Surprisingly for parents though is the fact that besides providing traditional spinal adjustments for back and neck problems for their children, chiropractic can also provide effective care for many other common childhood ailments and conditions which are not usually associated as deriving benefit from chiropractic treatments.
These include, among others, middle ear infections, asthma, bedwetting, Scoliosis, headaches, lower back pain and colic. Let’s discuss three of the most common complaints that hurt children and deeply and repeatedly frustrate and even scare parents.
For example, studies suggest that misalignment of the neck (cervical spine) may affect the functions of the eustachian tube in the middle ear causing otitis media, or middle ear infection, which is characterized by fever, ear and nasal discharge, poor sleep, decreased appetite, crying and irritability. Chiropractic manipulation, which in all instances must be very carefully adjusted for age, size and weight of the child, has in many cases been proven to alleviate this vertebral misalignment and thus improve function of the eustachian tube to promote proper drainage. Research also suggests that a majority of middle ear infection cases treated with spinal adjustments appear to be resolved within 10 days, the majority of those resolving with 5 or fewer adjustments and a significant percentage requiring only one or two treatments.
Another example: few routine physical problems that affect their precious but helpless infants make parents feel as helpless, frustrated and exhausted as does infantile colic. Symptoms of colic can manifest themselves with difficulty in nursing, a tendency for the baby to turn his or her head in only one direction, apparent discomfort when lying on its stomach, gastrointestinal distress, clenched fists, knees pulled up to the chest and, most distressing, unexplainable and uncontrollable crying for hours daily over many days or even weeks. Some medical professionals theorize that the trauma of birth, especially a difficult one, may also negatively impact an infant’s spinal health right from the start and contribute to onset of colic.
Current non-chiropractic treatments include over the counter medications (quite mild, but still chemicals and very often not effective or only temporarily so) and advice to the parents to let their child cry and simply “wait it out”. But this almost casual-sounding advice to extremely frustrated, anxious and sleep-deprived parents falls far short of what can be accomplished in many cases by very gentle and very concise application of spinal manipulation to their infants. Specifically, the adjustments work by either eliminating or reducing significantly the symptoms of colic, but most importantly by reducing the duration of both the number of hours of crying each day and the duration of the colic itself.
A third surprisingly common ailment among children is low back pain which is estimated to occur in about 50% of children with nearly 15% of kids reporting frequent pain. Although much of this pain is minor and temporary and eventually resolves itself, a large enough percentage of children have serious pain that may be the result of undetected scoliosis, sport or play-related trauma or even trauma incurred at birth which remained dormant and thus unnoticed until the child’s spine began to grow along with the child.
Active children’s bodies take a beating with routine play and minor accidents that we don’t even think about but that none the less take their toll. In a given month or year how often has your child jumped from a swing or a slide or over a fence, fallen off a bike, been tackled to the ground, run into another player, slipped and fallen on skates or skis, wrestled and rough-housed with other, especially older and heavier kids? These are all normal childhood occurrences, but they can and do lead to cervical spine (neck) and lumbar spine (lower back) injuries that if left untreated allow the nervous system to silently deteriorate until one fine day serious intervention is required. And even then, chiropractic is one of the tools available that may be able to do just that.
But the time to address potentially devastating future problems is now, not in 10, 20 or 30 years when childhood damage to your son’s or daughter’s musculoskeletal or nervous systems has deteriorated their health to the degree where repair is much more difficult if not impossible.
Chiropractic management of pediatric conditions begins with an extensive physical examination and health history and may proceed to various adjustment techniques as well as other treatment modalities like electrical stimulation, hot and cold applications, massage or acupuncture. Having two precious children under the age of five of his own, Dr. Alex is even more acutely aware of the extra gentle care that must be applied to small, developing bodies. Please call for an appointment, and if my examination reveals that my menu of treatments cannot help your child this first consultation will be free.
