The Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics has often featured articles about the chiropractic care of children. Here are three cases that might surprise you. I find that even the most devoted chiropractic adults don’t think about getting their kids checked. Obviously this is not out of a lack of concern or neglect it’s simply that many people believe you need to have back pain or headaches to benefit from chiropractic care. Here are a few published cases that might change how you look at things.
The first case was from England and focused on chiropractic care for infantile colic. Colic is also known as inconsolable crying syndrome and it affects up to 25% of newborns. The cause is unknown but is thought to be secondary to gastric reflux, migraines or another undetectable problem. In essence, the baby is crying for hours at a time for no clear reason. In the study, they looked at 100 infants and compared results from those being treated with chiropractic versus those treated medically with different drugs. They found that most cases resolved with both treatments but that the cost of the medical care was nearly 20 times greater than that of the chiropractic care. The average number of visits to get results under chiropractic was just four adjustments.
Another case looked at pediatric cough and chiropractic care. The researchers were looking to see if there was a connection to the nervous system and something as common as a cough. Not only did they find a connection, but they recognized an unusual pattern. They found that a wet (mucus) cough was associated with nerve irritation and spinal levels in the upper neck while a dry cough is associated with nerve irritation and spinal levels in the upper back. While this information is more important to the chiropractor, it should be noted that nerve pressure at a spinal level can be related to mucus production (from the neck) and constriction of the bronchioles in the lungs (from the upper back) and conversely that reduction of that nerve pressure can be helpful to resolve such conditions.
A final case involved a 14-year-old ballet dancer with hip pain on both sides and restriction of movement that was keeping her from performing. The pain came without warning or cause and was not responding to other treatment. Full-spine chiropractic adjustments were applied following an exam to identify misalignments to the spine. The result with ten adjustments was complete resolution of pain and restricted hip movement and the young girl was able to return to ballet without complication.
If you talk to any chiropractor about these cases, you will find that they all have similar stories and results. As for myself, I’ve seen miraculous results with pediatric asthma and constipation. The reason it’s so much easier to get rapid results with kids is that they are still developing and their systems are very adaptive. Furthermore, they haven’t had the time and opportunity to accumulate all the physical, chemical, and emotional stresses that cause distress and dis-ease in the body to begin with. This is precisely why the standard pediatric guidelines to chiropractic care is on average around 6-10 adjustments. The most important take-home from these cases is to realize that chiropractic care is more than just back pain. When you restore the spine back to its normal alignment and movement to reduce pressure off the nervous system, the body adapts better and performs more efficiently.
