This is a transcript from Dr. Echols’ video on Children and Chiropractic:
Hi, my name is Dr. Echols and this is my friend Raeley. Today we are going to talk a little bit about kids and chiropractic care. I’ve had many patients in the past be a little bit surprised when I talked with them about getting their kids under chiropractic care. They thought why would we need to have our kids under chiropractic care? Surely, they can’t have spinal problems as a kid. Well, often times that is true. A lot of times children don’t have spinal problems. In other words they don’t have any spinal pain at that time.
But often times, misalignments or subluxations in the spine actually have there origins in the traumas of childhood. According to OSHA, the Occupational Safe Health Administration, by the time a child is 11 years old they have had over 7,000 traumas to their spine already. And if you think about it the traumas actually start with birth.
Coming through that birth canal is quite an experience. Matter of fact it is so traumatic that most of us don’t even remember it, right? But, uh, we all have slips and falls as we are learning to walk, we fall hundreds if not thousands of times. We start to ride our tricycle and we have problems with that and we fall on our bicycle a lot. My oldest son ran into a tree and youngest one ran into a mailbox while learning to ride their bicycles. So all of these things impact the spine.
Now often times the child won’t have any immediate pain from something like that, but what it does do it will set up a misalignment somewhere in the spinal column and if that just sits there as the child gets older and older that will start to create a problem. So, my philosophy is why not fix it before if became a problem. Other than just waiting for it to sit there silently and get worse and worse and worse until finally it does become a problem. When I look at my patient’s x-rays and their in their twenties or even early thirties I see a lot of their problems in their spine actually started when they were children.
So, you have the option, you can just wait until it starts hurting or you can go ahead and get your children under chiropractic care and make some of these corrections so that they grow up as strong and healthy as they can be. Also, when you get a chiropractic adjustment your immune system is strengthen by that. So your immune system, they say the white blood cell count goes way up 15,000 when you get an adjustment. That helps make their little immune systems that much more resilient, much more resistant to the stressors that the environment places on it.
Miss Raeley has been a patient of mine actually since she was a little bitty baby. Since she was just born. And adjustments on children are very, very safe because they are very, very gentle. Now think we are going to be showing you how to do that hear in a few minutes. Kids in chiropractic, a good idea. A good alternative to keeping them out of the doctor’s office, where their only hope is antibiotics and even maybe more dangerous things.
Child Chiropractic Care
Today we are going to Raeley and adjustment so you can see how that looks. “Raeley are you ready for your adjustment? Alright. Very Good. Come on down here. Very Good.”
“Breathe out for me all the way out, thata girl. There we go. Good. Did that feel good. All right. No roll on your side facing me. Thata girl. You get to give yourself a big huge like that. Very good. All right. Miss Raeley I want you to, there you go, you got your feet uncrossed. Just relax. There we go. Very nice. Well done young lady. Perfect.” Ok, this is Wyatt. One of my best patients, we are going to give him an adjustment today too. “Go ahead and lay face down here for me.”
When I feel here their back and am actually feeling for areas of tension or areas where the spine maybe misaligned a little bit and then we just make a gentle little correction. Just like that. Alright. Perfect. “Wyatt your hips are in good shape today, no adjustment necessary down there. So, that will be it for today, thanks.”
Chiropractic & Ear Infections
I wanted to visit you a little bit about ear infections, especially how as they relate to children. A lot of times when a kid gets an ear infection it is very painful and the ear starts to get real angry and swollen, hurts to touch it. A lot of pressure starts to build up in the ear drum area.
Now the medical model approach to treating this kind of condition is to surgically go in and punch a hole into the ear drum and sew a tube into the tympanic membrane or the ear drum and that helps to balance the pressure there. But, in my experience and in our clinic, thats generally not really necessary. There is a lot more alternative things that can be done. That seem to work just as well, if not better. Those tubes can actually end up causing permanent scaring in the tympanic membrane or the ear drum. Often times they fall out just due to the fact the kids are out playing around and jumping around. They can fall and plus they are very, very expensive to put in as well.
So, one of the things we’ve done is to actually make an adjustment on the ear itself. When we do that you often times will here a popping sound as the eustachian tube, which is the tube that actually helps to drain the middle ear as it opens up. Because often times this tube gets swollen and clogged up and then the fluids in the middle ear start to collect in there and then there a breeding ground for bacteria and then you get an ear infections and then the kid has to go in and get antibiotics.
Most all the time this can be prevented. And some of the ways we do that is to through adjusting the cervical spine or neck area. But we can also do an adjustment with the ear. And the way we do that, is gently…”Wyatt I going to adjust your ear gently here.” We just gently pull down, out and up on the ear and often times it will go pop and with in several hours after that the ear will start to drain and the kid will actually feel so much better. So, there are safe, practical and good alternative means to taking care of ear infections other than surgery or antibiotics. Of course, antibiotics have there on set of problems associated with them as well.
So next time if you have any kids that have an ear infection, consider a little bit more alternative approach, something that may not be quiet so drastic as surgery or antibiotics.
Other Uses for Chiropractic
Some of the things that parents normally bring their children in for are things like ear infections, which are very common and they can be due to the kid getting a cold that didn’t resolve. Often times it is due to food allergies we’ve found, the kid is drinking a lot of milk or grains. Those can often times cause problems with the ears as well. Another thing is, real common problem with children is bed wetting. We’ve had very good results in helping children get rid of bed wetting problems. By simply taking the pressure off the nerves that go to the bladder. Child may simply not be able to control that due to pressure being built up in the lower portion of the spine there.
Also, of course, just regular aches and pains that kids get. Which isn’t too many, like I said, mainly, I think one of the main benefits to having a child under chiropractic is just having them grow up as strong and healthy and straight as they possibly can. I always think about it like a little sapling you plant, if you plant it there as it grows if you’ll stake it down and make sure it grows straight and tall the tree will turn out to be beautiful. But if you don’t do anything except just plant it and water it once in a while it can start to grow crooked and the dogs get after it, the winds starts to blow it. It can have different environmental stressors that can cause the tree to be kind of crooked and maybe weaker. Just not up to its full potential. So, chiropractic does help children to reach their full potential.
Raeley: “The chiropractor makes me feel good because when I get headaches and stuff like that, when I get sick, my mom takes be here and wants me to get an adjustment.
“Makes you feel better?” (Raeley shakes her head yes.)
For your chiropractic questions or concerns, call Dr. Echols at 512-447-2422, or schedule an appointment online here:
