Debunking Myth Part 3: Chiropractic Kids

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“Truth is only harsh if you’re unable to face it.” -Stewart Stafford

We are going to continue our journey of chiropractic myths! Most people think chiropractic is just for adults, but again, that could not be further from the truth. Infants/kids not needing chiropractic care is the next myth we will discuss. Chiropractic is publicly known as the profession which focuses on back pain, but that myth is such a disservice to the wellness of every citizen. When a child is born, the contact point is the head, but with that contact point, there comes the twisting and torqueing of the neck. So, none of us stood a chance since birth because we more than likely came out of the womb subluxated (misalignment of the spine). Most people don’t think babies or children need chiropractic care. I am here to tell you with the utmost confidence that your little ones should not only have chiropractic care, they need it! When it comes to adjusting babies or toddlers, there is no thrust involved, it is simply a sustained contact on their atlas (C1) or a vibratory contact. The baby stage is so crucial since they are so new to life and development.

Adjusting the atlas on your little one will help with immune function giving their body the best chance at combating illnesses, ear infections, calming colic, brain develop as it restores that communication from the brain to the body since the atlas contributes to 35% of vital organs, increasing blood supply, and improving behavior. “The power that made the body heals the body”- BJ Palmer. We have an innate intelligence that was built into us that is always operating at 100%. Just to show how crucial this miracle segment is, I know two different true stories where children were in comas for months to years and when the chiropractor on site adjusted their atlas’s (C1), both those children woke up in the chiropractor’s arms! “Nature needs no help, just no interference.”-BJ palmer

Give your little one the best chance at thriving and developing throughout their life. They will thank you!

https://www.drchrisharlan.com/5-benefits-of-infant-chiropractic/
https://wellhealthcenters.com/7-reasons-why-chiropractic-care-benefits-infants

Debunking Myths

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Debunking Myths!

“The truth is still truth, even if no one believes it. A lie is still a lie even if everyone believes it”. – unknown

What was your first thought when thinking of a chiropractor? It probably went one of two ways: Either you love chiropractors or dislike them immensely due to a poor experience. People have pre-conceived notions about everything new that enters their life. It’s okay to question things and their validity but sometimes “herd mentality” isn’t always the most effective method for legitimacy. We’re going to discuss a variety of myths associated with chiropractic that have had a hard time exiting the public mind.

The first myth we’ll cover is “self manipulation” . There is an epidemic of people who think “self-adjusting” is harmless and relieving, not realizing how detrimental it can be to their spine. That popping or cracking people hear or feel when they turn their neck or body a certain way is called a cavitation and what takes place is the release of nitrogen gas from the joint which provides temporary relief and sort of a euphoric feeling. The discomfort comes right back because the main cause of the issue is not corrected. When there is a subluxation or misalignment of the spine, that area is fixated decreasing the proper biomechanics. To compensate for that fixation, the body will make regions above or below that subluxation hypermobile to create more movement. When people “pop” or “self-manipulate”, they are not correcting the issue but instead are manipulating the compensation rather than the root of the cause. If that is continued and left unchecked, it can cause degeneration of the vertebral disc and arthritis in the joints involved. In other words, one is creating self-destruction without realizing it.

The next myth is “I’ll have to keep going forever”. Like all things, the body needs maintenance. We don’t stand a chance because we are constantly fighting the forces of gravity without realizing it. It does not take just a fall to become subluxated. We can acquire subluxations through the three T’s: Thoughts, Traumas, and Toxins. Thoughts are the emotional stress that most of us undergo daily whether it be financial stress or grieving the loss of a loved one. Traumas is the most obvious to the public because it is so sudden and easy to correlate where the issue initiated from. For instance, if you fall of a ladder and feel pain instantly or shortly afterwards, it’s a fair assumption the cause of pain was falling off the ladder. Toxins include medications we put in our body along with processed foods and preservatives we intake daily which are not meant to process and usually have difficulty processing.

Debunking myths will be continued! Be PROACTIVE, NOT REACTIVE! Get checked, stay healthy!

Digestive Health: Do you have that “Gut” feeling everything is functioning?

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Digestive Health: Do you have that “Gut” feeling everything is functioning?

“A healthy gut is the gateway to a healthy body and mind.” -Dr. Mark Hyman

What do you think of when pondering gut health? We’ve always been told garbage in, garbage out which is true because based on what you put in your body is how your body is going to utilize that food for energy and immune function. Making food our medicine is not so easy these days due to all the processed foods and preservatives.

So how else can we combat the battle of maintaining a healthy gut? Our nerve system controls every aspect of our body. Specifically, there are spinal nerves that come out from our spinal cord in our low back which innervates our stomach and intestines/colon so ensuring there is no interference of those nerves is pinnacle. If lack of communication is occurring to the stomach and intestines from the brain through the nerves, it can lead to constipation, gas build-up, cramps, heartburn, and diarrhea along with malfunction of other organs. Most of the nutrients from our food when it is broken down is absorbed in our small intestines, it then enters our bloodstream, and then it is carried by proteins to our cells, so we definitely want the function of our small intestines to be optimal.

 I’m going to share a scenario about how powerful the body can be when communication between the brain and the body is restored. I witnessed a patient who came in with severe constipation, so severe that this patient could only pass a bowel movement once a week for the last 18 years and experienced 4-6 kidney stones a year for the last 16 years. Other doctors could not figure out the issue and claimed this patient had to live with it. The patient’s L2, which is top of the low back, was adjusted three times. On the third adjustment, the patient went home, experienced immediate relief and has consistently had a bowel movement every day since then. Furthermore, the kidney stones ceased as well. Due to the build-up of feces in the colon, it began to put pressure on the kidneys which caused them to malfunction causing the kidney stones.

To the best of our ability, let thy food be thy medicine as well as getting checked so the body is functioning!

https://www.atlanticchirofl.com/blog/172877-chiropractic-and-gut-health

Children and Chiropractic

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Children and Chiropractic

“Chiropractors don’t just believe that your child has unlimited potential, our job is to unlock it.” -Nick Spano, DC

When the public thinks about chiropractic, it most often involves the idea of adults with low back pain. That ideology could not be further from the truth. The developing years of a child are crucial and that means the overall function of their body. We didn’t stand a chance since birth. What way do we usually enter the world? Head first. With the head being the contact point for leverage to pull the baby out, there is always twisting, yanking, and pulling on that fragile neck leading to atlas (C1) subluxations as well as subluxations of other cervical vertebra and spinal cord compression.

Unfortunately, birthing trauma is not taken seriously by most. The sooner the subluxations are corrected, the better chance that baby has at adapting to the stresses of life and not develop conditions such as decreased muscle tone, fine movement disorders, autonomic dysfunction, and cardiovascular disorders. Having cervical subluxations can affect a child’s behavior by making them hyperactive or inactive as well as lower mental performance.

Parents want the best for their children and chiropractic can keep them healthy allowing their body and more importantly the brain, to function and develop properly. There is a fear that chiropractors use the same amount force for an adjustment on a child compared to an adult. With small children and especially babies, chiropractors use a sustained contact or vibratory contact to make the adjustment utilizing the least amount of force possible for the correction. Adjustments on a baby are safe, effective, and absolutely necessary.

Aside from conditions developing in a child, having a child checked and adjusted allows them to live out 100% of their potential. There are many benefits to your child receiving chiropractic care such as improving their immune function allowing their bodies to have a better chance at combating seasonal bugs as well as preventing them in the first place. Our immune system mainly stems from our gut and chiropractic can help with improving digestion, acid reflux and constipation. Sleep is a major contributor to the proper development of a child so having their nerve system clear of interference allows them to have an undisrupted sleep pattern including resolving issues with bed-wetting. 

Help your little one be the best version of themselves! Get them checked, keep them healthy!

https://aica.com/5-incredible-benefits-of-pediatric-chiropractic-care/

Poor Posture

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Thee Social Condition-Poor Posture 

In this era, technology has taken over our lives and with it, poor posture. If you look anywhere in public nowadays, it’s almost a guarantee an individual is on their phone. They are also more than likely to be looking down at their phone rather than keeping it at eye level. We call this “text neck.”

The repetition of our neck in a flexed position is detrimental to our cervical (neck) curvature. With enough poor posture and time, our necks begin to create a reversed curve causing dysfunction in our biomechanics and training our muscles poorly to adapt to that negative change. This puts unnecessary stress on our spines, our spinal cord and therefore the rest of our nerve system. Pursuing correct posture improves your overall health. Our bodies are so efficient at adapting, pain does not surface until later when our bodies are desperate for correction. 

Subluxations or misalignments of the spine help contribute to poor posture. “An average person spends 2-4 hours a day with their heads tilted forward reading and texting on their smart phones and hand held devices, amassing 700-1400 hours of excess, abnormal cervical spine stress per year. A high school student may spend an extra 5,000 hours in poor posture per year” (Kenneth K. Hansraj, M.D.). With that said, “The weight of a dime can decrease the function of a nerve by 60%” (Chang Ha Suh, PH.D.). Subluxations contribute to poor posture and therefore decrease the integrity of the nerve system, it does not take much for the functionality of our bodies to be altered. 

There are many things in this world we cannot control but improving your posture is not one of them. Be the best version of yourself and give yourself the best chance at fighting the stresses of life by a simple correction. Train your mind to be self aware of your posture, it will take time to be cognizant of posture but your body will thank you in the end. 

No more excuses!  Make it happen! 

‘Tis The Season

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It’s that time of year where sicknesses begin affecting our lives! How are you going to combat the seasonal “bug”?

We take Vitamin C, Zinc, Quercetin, and other vitamin supplements to boost our immune system function, but an aspect of health we do not typically realize is the connection between the functionality of our nerve system and our immune system. 

The body can only do what the brain tells it to. The brain tells the body to release neurotransmitters through the nerves of your body that contribute to immune activity and when there is a misalignment of the spine, it decreases the function of where that nerve goes which disrupts the communication between the brain and the body. Our bodies are constantly adapting and that includes fighting off pathogens we encounter every day without knowing, so having a nerve system free of interference is crucial to overall health, not just dealing with pain. 

Dr. Pero with a PH.D. who is the chief of cancer prevention research at New York’s Preventive Medicine Institute performed a 3 year study with 107 individuals. He measured people who are under chiropractic care for 5 years or more compared to the general population who were not under chiropractic care as well as those with cancer and other serious diseases. He found that chiropractic patients had a 200% greater immune competence than those who had not received chiropractic care and 400% greater immune competence than cancer patients and others with serious diseases and immune system competency did not decrease with age. 

Get checked and stay healthy! 

Sports Performance With Chiropractic

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                Neuromuscular fatigue aka exercise-induced muscle weakness and reduced power are not only detrimental to athletic performance but also increases the risk of sports-related injuries. These factors are brought about by neuromuscular mechanisms in which our brain and spinal cord control how much our muscles contract and reflex responses or how fast our muscles respond to something. By optimizing these factors, athletic performance is likely to be improved.

                Lucky for athletes receiving chiropractic care it has been shown that chiropractic adjustments alters many of the brain functions that control muscle reflexes, muscle endurance, muscle strength, and “muscle memory” (creating muscle patterns). (Herzog et al. 1999; Niazi et al. 2015; Kelly et al. 2000; Lersch et al. 2005; Haavik Taylor and Murphy 2007; Hillermann et al. 2006; Botelho and Andrade 2012).

                In a study performed by Lykke et al., 11 elite Taekwondo athletes were evaluated on muscular strength. In the study, the force during the push-off phase of walking was evaluated and following an adjustment this force was increased. In the control intervention, in which the participants did not receive an adjustment, their force decreased over time. Following the adjustment intervention force increased!

                This study supports the growing research that indicates chiropractic adjustments impact motor control and training. Chiropractic care can benefit patients by improving muscle performance which then affects sports performance, strength training, and other activities.

Chiropractic Care for Babies with Colic

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Chiropractic Care for Babies with Colic

Aside from being stressful, tiring even heart-breaking for parents, infant colic can cause both physical and psychological symptoms in parents and can lead to marital tension, social disruption and child abuse.1 The causes of infantile colic are still unknown and traditional medical intervention is often ineffective.1

The traditional medical management for colic involves prescribing drugs such as simethicone drops or proton pump inhibitors. However, systematic reviews have consistently shown that these interventions are no more effective than placebo.2

What is colic? When a baby cries inconsolably for more than three hours per day, more than three days per week, for longer than three weeks this is known as ‘infantile colic’.2 Colic affects up to 40% of children worldwide.1,2

Why try chiropractic? Chiropractic is a safe and effective choice for even the smallest members of society.3-5 In one study researchers showed that babies who received chiropractic care cried significantly less than those who did not receive care.6 Because so many high-quality clinical trials have shown chiropractic care helps babies with colic cry less – up to 50% less – it’s worth giving it a go!

Over recent years the safety of chiropractic care for children and infants has been investigated by many researchers.3-5 The results of their studies suggest that chiropractic care can be safely provided to even the youngest members of our society. Adverse events in children after chiropractic care are rare and usually don’t require further care.3-5

It’s every parent’s nightmare – your beautiful newborn is in obvious distress, and you can’t figure out how to console your little monkey. The suffocating array of parental advice may be leaving you confused. So, what do you do when your baby has colic?  We have summarized some of the latest research on infants with colic. We hope to bust some myths and put your mind at ease.

A study conducted in the UK looked at the effectiveness of chiropractic care in affected children.6 The researchers observed 104 babies who were randomized into three groups. The first group of babies was given chiropractic care and their parents knew they were seeing a chiropractor. The second group also received chiropractic care, but their parents didn’t know whether their baby was receiving the care or the control intervention. And the third group didn’t get checked by the chiropractor; instead, they received the control intervention.

Parents were asked to complete a 10-day ‘crying diary’. The findings from this study suggest that even without chiropractic care crying time reduced. However, babies under chiropractic care cried up to 3 hours less compared to those who did not receive care.

Interestingly, the parent’s awareness of whether their baby was receiving chiropractic care, or the control did not matter. This confirms previous studies that have also shown babies with colic responding well to chiropractic care.4 It suggests that the child’s improvement is probably due to chiropractic and not parent bias or parent placebo effect.

Further, this study found that excessively crying babies were (at least!) 5 times less likely to cry if they received care, compared to not receiving care. So it’s very likely that chiropractic care really does help at least some babies who are suffering from colic.
Remember that the chiropractor isn’t directly trying to treat the colic. Instead, they’re trying to improve spinal function with the aim of improving your child’s brain’s ability to process what’s going on in their body. And for some kids, this seems to result in less crying time! This has to be a good thing for the whole family!

What is Maintenance Care?

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What is Maintenance Care?

People go to see a chiropractor for many different reasons.1 Some go because they’re in pain, some go because they want to perform better on the sporting field, and some want to sleep better.

But did you know that almost 50% of chiropractic patients go to their chiropractor because they simply want to maintain their health and well-being?

Maintenance care is when patients go to a chiropractor even when they are not in pain or discomfort. The idea with maintenance care is that regular adjustments will help maintain your spine and nervous system function at its optimal level and help you to be your best and to prevent new episodes of pain from developing.2

It makes sense to look after your health, so you don’t get sick, right? And that often you get sick because you have been pushing yourself too hard and you’ve become run down? The research tells us that your spine can get run down too, long before you feel pain. We know that if your brain doesn’t send appropriate protective messages to your core trunk muscles, you will have a higher risk of developing low back injuries.3 This makes sense because a lack of core stability means you’re creating mini whiplash injuries to your spine each time you move around or lift your arm or leg.

If you end up in pain after bending down to tie your shoelaces your pain hasn’t just come out of the blue, it’s usually been developing for some time without you knowing about it. It’s often the thousandth straw that breaks the camel’s back.

All of life’s stressors can build up and impact the way your brain is communicating with your trunk muscles and then all that is needed is one last minor thing to go wrong, and you end up with pain. The goal of maintenance care is to help take the straws off your camel’s back before they cause symptoms or have a big impact on your life. So, the research tells us that chiropractic maintenance care makes perfect sense.

A study published by researchers from Sweden in 20184 showed the benefits of maintenance care in a group of people who suffered from low back pain. In this study, the researchers followed 328 patients with low back pain who went to 40 different Swedish chiropractic clinics. If the patients responded well when they were first adjusted they joined the study and received chiropractic maintenance care over the next year or symptom-guided care. The maintenance care patients were seen every 1 to 3 months with the intention being that they were checked before substantial pain reoccurred. Patients in the control group were told to call if and when pain recurred. 

They were then adjusted until they got better,  and they were told to call again if the pain returned. What the researchers were most interested in was the number of days of bothersome back pain suffered by each group throughout the 1-year trial period.

What they found was that the maintenance care group experienced 13 fewer days of pain over the course of the study on average compared to the symptom-guided group. The amazing thing from this study was that the maintenance care group needed less than 2 extra visits to their chiropractor over the course of a year to have 13 fewer days of pain. This suggests that patients who have had low back pain, and who respond well to care, should see their chiropractor regularly, irrespective of whether their symptoms have returned or not. This study did have some limitations of course. One limitation was that chiropractors were told not to schedule their maintenance care patients more frequently than once a month. So some patients in this group may have benefited even more if the chiropractors had been able to schedule their visits more frequently if they thought that was a good idea.

This study shows that it’s important to keep your spine working well, even if you don’t have pain or symptoms.

So, if you want to function at your optimal potential consider chiropractic maintenance care because the research suggests your spine will love you for it!

References

  1. Adams J, et al. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2017;42(23):1810-16.
  2. Leboeuf-Yde C, Hestbæk L. Chiropractic & Osteopathy 2008;16:3-3.
  3. Cholewicki J, et al. Spine (Phila Pa 1976) 2005;30(23):2614-20.
  4. Eklund, et al. PLoS One 2018;13(9):e0203029.

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Heidi Haavik – BSc(Physiol) BSc(Chiro) PhD
  • Dr. Kelly Holt – BSc, BSc(Chiro), PGDipHSc, PhD
  • Dr. Jenna Duehr – BChiro, BHSC (Nursing), MHSc

Chiropractic Care & Reaction Times

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How quickly do you react when someone pulls in front of you when you’re driving, or when a ball comes your way on the sporting field, or when you have a slip and need to catch yourself before you fall?Are you accident prone or a ninja warrior? If you’re accident-prone, how can you bring out your inner ninja warrior?

We all react to these day-to-day challenges at different speeds. Some of us react slowly and some of us react really quickly. How quickly you react to a situation can actually be really important in many ways, from helping to prevent accidents on the road, to reaching your optimal potential on the sporting field.

How quickly we react to a stimulus or situation is called our reaction time, and will depend on how fast our brain can sense what’s happening around us, then process that information, come up with a reaction plan, and then perform the appropriate response.

As you can see from this description, your reaction time depends on how efficiently your brain and nervous system are working. So, what can you do to help improve the efficiency of your nervous system? This is a really interesting question that chiropractic researchers have been trying to help answer. The reason that chiropractors are interested in reaction time is that chiropractic care aims to improve the communication between your brain and your body so you are better able to react and respond to your environment.

When your brain can accurately perceive what is going on inside and out, it can better control your body for the situation at hand, and move your muscles in the right order and at the right speed.1-3

Researchers have now published a number of studies that have shown that chiropractic care can actually make a difference to your reaction time.

One of the first really good studies to look at how chiropractic care affects reaction time was published back in 2000.4 In this study, the researchers asked a group of students to look at a computer screen that had a letter ‘R’ on it and to hit a key on the keyboard to show whether they thought the ‘R’ was the right way around or back to front. To make it tricky, the researchers rotated the ‘R’ to lots of different angles, that way the student being tested had to mentally rotate it back in their head to really work out if it was the right way around or not.

The researchers then got a chiropractor to either adjust the person or have them lie down on a chiropractic table, without doing an adjustment, as a control intervention. What the researchers found was that after an adjustment the study subjects improved their reaction time much more than the subjects who were in the control group. They concluded that the chiropractic adjustments may have affected how quickly their brain processed the information they were seeing, which was a really interesting finding.

In 2016, another group of researchers published a study that looked at how quickly a group of older people could take a step on a platform that had 4 panels that could light up.3 When a panel lit up, they’d have to stand on it as quickly as they could.

Being able to take a fast step is really important because scientists have shown that people who are quicker at taking a step are less likely to fall.5-6 In this study, they tested the older people before, during, and after receiving 12 weeks of chiropractic care or receiving their usual medical care. What they found, was that after 12 weeks there was a dramatic, significant improvement in the chiropractic group’s step time. The improvement seen in reaction time in this study was actually 2 and a half times greater than a large clinical trial that looked at the effects of 6 months of exercise on the same stepping task.7 This might be really important when it comes to someone stopping themselves from having a fall if they trip or slip.

In another study that was published recently, what they found was that after 12 weeks there was a dramatic, significant improvement in the chiropractic group’s step time. The improvement seen in reaction time in this study was actually 2 and a half times greater than a large clinical trial that looked at the effects of 6 months of exercise on the same stepping task.8

Eight researchers tested a group of special operation forces military personnel to see whether chiropractic adjustments improved how quickly they could react and touch a set of panels on the wall in front of them that would light up at random. What they found in this study, was that when these elite soldiers were adjusted, they were quicker at reacting and responding to the lit panels than if they had no adjustment. This is a really significant finding because just imagine how important reaction time could be to a soldier!!

So, you can see that researchers are discovering that chiropractic care really does seem to have an impact on how efficiently your brain can accurately perceive what is going on around you and react to it. And maybe this could help you to move from being accident-prone to a ninja warrior.

If you want to get your ninja warrior on, why don’t you consider having your spine checked by your family chiropractor?

References

  1. Haavik & Murphy. J Electromyogr Kinesiol 2012;22(5):768-76.
  2. Haavik & Murphy. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2011;34(2):88-97.
  3. Holt et al. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2016. 39(4):267-78.
  4. Kelly et al. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 2000;23(4):246-51.
  5. Lord et al. Phys Ther 2003;83(3):237-52.
  6. Lord & Fitzpatrick. J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2001;56(10):M627-32.
  7. Lord et al. J Am Geriatr Soc 2003;51(12):1685-92.
  8. DeVocht et al. Trials 2019;20(1):5-5. doi: 10.1186/s13063-018-3133-2. © 2020 Haavik Research Limited

Acknowledgments

  • Dr. Heidi Haavik – BSc(Physiol) BSc(Chiro) PhD
  • Dr. Kelly Holt – BSc, BSc(Chiro), PGDipHSc, PhD
  • Dr. Jenna Duehr – BChiro, BHSC (Nursing), MHSc