Posts tagged infant constipation
How Chiropractic helped my child’s colic
Mar 10th
I saw the article highlighted at the bottom of this post and immediately thought of how chiropractic has benefited my own children when they were infants and thought more people might be interested in this option.
When my son was only a few weeks old, he had a real difficult night…and so did his parents. He was having trouble getting to sleep and then staying asleep. By 2am, my wife was completely exhausted and sleep deprived…so she tagged me and said it’s your turn. After a few hours of doing all the things that normally put him asleep, I thought to myself, “something just doesn’t seem right.” I remembered back to my grad school classes of pediatric chiropractic and the topic of colic. The instructors related their clinical experience with babies with colic to small kinks or misalignments in the baby’s neck that was causing neck discomfort and the resulting baby’s only line of defense…uneasiness and crying.
With that thought in mind…and my own sense of fatigue and passionate desire for sleep, I decided to check the joints of my son’s neck. Sure enough, one side was more restricted and seemed to be irritated when turning that direction. With an extremely gentle adjustment, the joint restriction was relieved and my son was asleep in less then five minutes…and he slept the rest of the night without waking. Needless to say, that was one instance where I was extremely thankful to be a chiropractor. As I joke with my wife, sleep is one of my favorite things to do.
Many people think that back and neck problems are only for adults, but children and even babies can have joints that get irritated and jammed up. For infants, one common cause of this joint misalignment is sustained periods of poor neck posture that commonly occurs when they sleep in their car seat with their neck twisted to one side.
With two children now, I have found out first hand that one of the most common reasons for colic is literally a “kink” in the neck.
Article Highlights:
“Research is revealing that minor disturbances to spinal alignment and function may be a factor in a number of disorders. These disturbances lead to nerve interference and can result in a host of disorders such as colic, constipation and sleep disorders” stated Dr. Sean Batte the author of the study. Other chiropractic researchers have reported on similar results and reviews of the scientific research reveal numerous other studies that have shown a similar connection.
“It makes a lot of sense when you think about it” stated Dr. Matthew McCoy a chiropractor, public health researcher and editor of the journal that published the study, “If you damage or compress the neurological structures in the spine this can have far reaching implications on the functioning of the body… correcting the misalignments or abnormal motion associated with these spinal problems reduces the nerve compression and people improve. In this study it was an infant suffering from colic, constipation, sleep disturbance and excessive crying.”
History and examination of the child revealed that he had a difficult birth, cried regularly, was not sleeping during the day, and if he wasn’t eating or sleeping, he was crying. At night, his sleep was sporadic and irregular and his parents were not able to sleep or catch up on sleep during the day as he wasn’t napping at all. The mother’s general practitioner recommended anti-depressants and tranquilizers for the child. The infant was evaluated and cared for using chiropractic protocols to reduce vertebral subluxations in the child’s spine. Within five visits his mother reported his bowel movements had started to become more regular, he was belching normally after meals, started to sleep better and the crying abated.
To read the full article, click here…