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Hi, Dr. Greg Malakoff here, sharing some life experience hoping that it will make your experience of life a little more hopeful and pleasant.
One of the most controversial of topics I know of is Chiropractic and children or even younger, infants, dare I say newborns.
A woman’s newborn had a severe neck dysfunction which was causing the newborns head to be damaged because it was lying on one side of it all the time. The medical doctors decided that the best way to treat this was to make the infant wear a helmet all the time. It did’t make sense to me, why not just fix the neck?
Most people don’t realize that an adult has muscles and ligaments to protect their neck from injury and newborns do not. The amount of force delivered to a infant’s neck during the birthing procedure is enough to decapitate the infant and in the old days the event was recorded as a still born.
Is it Safe?
This is what the Mayo Clinic has to say on the subject. Chiropractic adjustment is safe when it’s performed by someone trained and licensed to deliver chiropractic care. Serious complications associated with chiropractic adjustment are overall rare.
How common are Back and Neck Issues for Newborns?
I’d like for everyone to step into my common sense corner. Considering that I mentioned above that newborns are pulled out by their heads that are attached to their necks with considerable force and that they have not yet developed ligament or muscle protection, the probability of your infant having a neck injury whether detectable by medical diagnosis or not is rather high.
Since the brain stem at this point in time is much more part of the spinal cord than when we are adults although it doesn’t matter all that much since every part of the nervous system effects other parts, there is a very good chance that your infant is having difficulties that would be greatly reduced by a chiropractic adjustment. Most people don’t utilize chiropractic care for their newborns and that is why meaningful statistics are not readily available.
What is often available are papers written almost as an opinion piece urging you not to try it. In my video titled Life Saving Secrets, located at my videos page, I speak about how the medical doctors told my parents that I would die at the age of 2 and that there was nothing they could do for me. I had reoccurring high fevers and no bacterial infection. After the final trip to the emergency room they took me to a chiropractor and after one adjustment, the fever went away and never returned. There are thousands of stories such as these. The critics will say it is anecdotal evidence. That was the excused used for decades to stop adults from receiving chiropractic care. It is now considered the safest form of treatment known to medical science and I predict in the future, the experts will also agree how beneficial it is for children. It’s actually better for children because unlike my adult patients, their nervous system hasn’t had 40 years give or take of maladaption to it’s environment.
How to Tell if an Infant May Need a Chiropractic Adjustment
Science has not yet developed a thermometer or some other type of device that would indicate that your infant needs an adjustment. Years ago, we did not have a device to tell you that your blood pressure was high, however, that didn’t mean that you were not on your way to having a stroke. Medicine uses clinical judgement even in this age of advanced technology to decide what treatment is reasonable and should be considered. While most pediatricians are not on board yet with pediatric chiropractic adjustments, common sense would dictate that children in general distress, could benefit from having a better functioning nervous system. Tens of thousands of chiropractic adjustments have been safely and successfully delivered to newborns and the parents will tell you they were glad that they made that decision.
Common symptoms like seizures can be an indication that your infant needs to have a chiropractic adjustment. 20% of the nervous system is in the neck and when the neck is damaged, newborns are not going to complain about a low back pain. They are not going to tell you anything, they are just going to cry and have symptoms such as seizures, or high temperatures or colic. Or just about anything because the brain does control everything.
Medical doctors are not going to recommend that you visit a chiropractor. They’ll treat the situation with medication. One such medication for seizures is Depakote, a medication that used to be just for adults that have severe bipolar syndromes. They had to be severe because the drug had such severe side effects that the adult needed to have their blood checked monthly for the liver damage that it caused. It also caused your skin to become severely damaged, but given to a kid with seizures it could work.
Children with seizures have also gotten over them without toxic medications. Their parents decided not to listen to their doctor and took the infant to the chiropractor.
Am I saying chiropractors treat seizures? No, in fact we don’t treat anything. We adjust the spine because of the tremendous effect it has on our nervous systems. It’s not scary at all, but when compared to the incredible damage that could be caused from very strong medications, I just wonder if people have a proper concept of what is scary.
I have seen people suffer needlessly their entire lives, because they think having a chiropractic adjustment, the safest known therapy to medical science is scary and that taking medicine, the number three cause of death in America is not scary at all. That is very scary to me.
If you live in the Los Angeles region and find yourself wondering if I could possibly make a tremendous change for good in your child’s life feel free to call me at (310) 663-9975.
