Why Does a Child Need Chiropractic Care?

Take a moment and visualize with me. Visualize a time when your child was happy and smiling. He or she was vibrant and full of energy, healthy, laughed, and gave you hugs that made your heart soar. If you have an infant at home, remember the first few weeks after they were born and how cuddly they were and how peaceful they looked when they slept.  Remember those adorable newborn pictures that you still love to look at and say remember when… Fast forward to today. Maybe your child is healthy and active, and as a parent you want to know what you can do to keep them that way or maybe your child isn’t the same and is suffering from something. Maybe your child is colicky, gets ear infections, runny noses, and doesn’t sleep well.  Maybe your child has asthma or allergies and can’t concentrate in school. Hold on to that memory of who your child used to be and let’s talk about how we can get that back.

As a pediatric and family chiropractor, parents ask me many questions, and the biggest one tends to be “why would my child need a chiropractor?” This is a great question with, believe it or not, a rather simple answer: Each and every one of us is born with an inborn intelligence and inborn ability to heal.

What. What?

Let’s talk more about this. Your body is a self-healing, self-regulating organism. For example, I’m sure you’ve had a paper cut at one point, and it may have even bled a bit. Cover it with a band-aid, give it a couple days, and take the band-aid off, what do you notice? Your finger healed. Can you even see the cut anymore? Probably not…so what happened? You healed right? Yes. And you did it all on your own! You didn’t need someone telling you what to do. You didn’t need to think about it, take a pill for it, put a cream on it, etc. Your body just did it. You can self-heal!

Now, imagine you are going outside for a run and it’s very hot outside. You go the first block and start feeling warm, then you start to sweat. Your body is regulating its temperature by making you sweat. You are self-regulating! You don’t need to think about it, you just do it.

How it works.

Chiropractic facilitates and strengthens your inborn intelligence through gentle adjustments and the removal of subluxations or stress to the nerve system. We are used to chiropractors being known for back and neck pain, but as parents see and hear of more and more children going to chiropractors, they are wondering why.

I’m going to tell you something that might surprise you…chiropractors aren’t back and neck pain doctors. They are nerve system doctors. Now, what does that mean? Let’s discuss some basic anatomy. Your spine runs down the middle of your back and is made of 27 vertebrae (bones). These bones have a tunnel through the middle of which the spinal cord runs. From the spinal cord, branches off nerves. These nerves are like communication lines between the brain and the body. The brain needs to send a signal to your body. As the messages leave the brain, they travel down the spinal cord and out the various nerves. The nerves are like a super highway, sending information back and forth to every cell, tissue and organ in your body.

We live our lives through our nerve system.

The nerve system is responsible for all major functions within your body (i.e. digestion, breathing, and even your heart beat). We literally live our lives through our nerve system. Now, what happens when we put our body through too much stress and one of the bones in our spine moves out of place and starts to interfere with the messages that are being sent through the nerves? Nerve impulses will slow, and vital body functions can be disrupted. This is called a subluxation. A subluxation can have detrimental effects to a child’s health and development.

It starts at birth.

Why would an infant or child need to see a chiropractor? The answer often starts with the birth process. The birth process can often be very traumatic for babies, setting the stage for future issues if not addressed and corrected. Babies then grow into busy toddlers that are learning to crawl and walk, falling many times per day. Then they are playing, rolling, jumping, sliding, and just being a kid. It is crucial to their development to ensure your child’s spine and nerve system are functioning the best possible way so they may grow healthy and strong.

Pediatric chiropractors see children with various concerns such as:

BUT. It’s not a cure.

It’s important to realize chiropractic doesn’t “cure” these things, your child’s body does, as long as there is no interference to his/her nervous system. Pediatric and Family Chiropractors are experts in finding and correcting subluxations, removing interference from the nervous system, allowing your child’s body to self-heal and self-regulate. Your child was born with the ability to heal themselves. They don’t need pills, lotions or potions to do so, they just need no interference to their nervous system.

What to do next.

If your child has a health issue you can ask us a question or find a pediatric chiropractor near you.