Blog, Chirosecure Live Event October 22, 2021

Make Sense Out of Chiropractic Care for Kiddos!

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Well, hello, everybody happy October 21st. I am Monika Buerger from Intersect4Life. And I have my sidekick Elizabeth say hi to the world. Um, she’s a little bit upset with me today because I did not have her in our Halloween costume dagnabbit. Anyway, we are here to do an, a very exciting show for you. Since October is national sensory awareness month, we are going to make you more aware of your senses and how to make help you help your patients understand what it’s like to be aware of their senses. Yeah, sounds pretty cool. Anyway, I want to, um, they ChiroSecure for giving us this platform and always having the backs of chiropractors, uh, to give us the, um, most sound information and help for us to be as successful as possible out there. So I am going to Dodge over and we’re going to see a few slides today.

So this is my wild and crazy. Um, what sixties kind of vibe we got going on here. Um, so did you know, this is where chiropractic care is so phenomenal. Did you know that postural instability or postural stability either way you wanna look at it is associated with sensory processing disorders? So for us, that’s a huge piece of the puzzle because if we see individuals across all ages and stages, meaning our little fiddle parts with low tone, and we’ll notice that with the little kiddos, when they start it, particularly when they start, they should start to be sitting independently about six months or so. Um, and if they have poor core tone, poor stability, they’re having to have a hard time sitting independently. And that goes all the way up to our older kiddos that might have a hard time balancing. Um, we put them on a balance pad or a wobble board.

They have a hard time maintaining their posture, or maybe just balancing on one leg. Um, and at two are adults. Okay. So postural instability, if we see that in our clinics, that is a sign of poor sensory regulation. It’s a sensory motor loop. So sensory input comes in. A motor response comes out in this case. Our motor response is our core postural tone. Okay. So we can use simple messages like these to educate our practice community and our community as a whole, as to why chiropractic is so important when it comes to processing our sensory environment. So again, ChiroSecure, you’re amazing. You’re awesome. You’re putting forth some incredible information and platforms for us to share a message. So on behalf of me, we thank you very, very much. So I have a saying how we perceive our world shapes our world and it shapes our response to our world and everything and everybody within our world.

So let’s break this down and, and really kind of dive into what this means and what it looks like in your opposites. We have basically inside internal senses and extra or outside Sensus. So our outside senses are our sight smell, sound, taste, touch. They come from the outside world in, and those are very well known when you talk to teachers and parents, they get that, they understand that, but we have our internal world, our interoceptive senses amongst those are things like distibular our sense of balance of where we are in space, where our head is in space. Being able to be upright against gravity and maneuver through our space against gravity that comes into play after birth. And after that little fiddle fart as an infant experiences, gravity against them appropriate reception information from our deep joints and our muscle spindles, huge for chiropractors, right?

But there’s other internal senses that we should be aware of. Um, sensations that from our hormones, from neurochemicals, from neuro-transmitters, from our microbiome is a huge one. Um, our immune systems, uh, what we call site, okay. W when immune cells spit out, um, anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory chemicals, all of these give, um, give information to our brain about what’s going on in our, outside, in our inner world, so we can respond properly. So it’s the ability to take in organize, integrate, and adapt, and respond to our sensory world. And that’s really how we’re going to behave and respond to people and places in our environment. So from the neurodevelopmental world, especially from the neuropsychiatric world and from the world of, uh, metabolic disorders, this is the fundamental basis of disease. So we should be mindful of our inner and outer senses.

It is one analogy that I give, um, I just did this this morning actually to somebody. So we respond to our senses academically, socially, emotionally motor skills and metabolically or physiologically. So let’s give you an example. Um, academically, when I have, if I cannot organize, interpret information coming from my eyes, let’s say, um, into my brain, coming to where my head is in space, because all these systems are happening at once. It’s like, um, it’s like a computer. Um, we’re all into, we’re all hear about artificial intelligence now. So I just did this this morning. So artificial intelligence, a computer is about collecting data. It’s all about collecting data and information and putting this data together and creating a big picture and, um, and getting a, uh, integrating all this information in order to give who’s ever using this information, um, the appropriate information to respond to.

So we know this with regards to things like Facebook, like some of these social media platforms, where they clapped off as data and that’s data that is used to, to create a response to the data, sensory motor, so to speak. If we’re talking about the brain in order to target certain markets in our brains, as humans, we collect this data, the sensory data, it’s a, it’s a subconscious thing going on all the time, just by sitting here, listening to me or me sitting here talking to you, my brain is collecting all this data about the status of my body and my environment. And it’s on a subconscious level. It’s bringing in this information just like we would into a computer into this matrix, this neural matrix, collecting the status. It’s split seconds in order to respond appropriately. So back to the ways we, we look at this in our clinics or in our environment and our school setting in a developmental setting, whatever, academically I’m sitting in school and collecting my brains, collecting all this data about my sensory environment, and I should perform a proper motor output response.

Let’s say I’m doing math. Okay. So sensory input in I’m able to compute this problem. My eyes are working my visual systems working properly, my head, my vestibular systems, I’m working properly to hold my head upright and space so I can interpret what my eyes are taking in my, um, I’m using, I had good proprioception for my hand, uh, to hold a pencil and write and respond and work out this math problem. All this is going on. So academically, what we might see is a poor and ability to respond to an academic task that is poor processing of our environment. Socially. It might mean that I am not socially responding to people appropriately. I can’t read cues for people, their facial expressions, et cetera, and masking, believe me. We are starting to see the data now from this last 20 months of chaos about masking and about this, um, inability, especially with kiddos to read social cues.

So socially, if I’m not, if my brain isn’t able to collect this data, this sensory data from all these sensory systems, I might not respond to a person one-on-one in appropriate social manner, but I might not respond to my social environment. Meaning I might not collect cues from my environment to socially respond in a proper way when, uh, there is a threat and that I need to get out of the way of that threat. Emotionally, I may not be able to collect the sensory data, organize it, interpret it, respond to it in a proper emotional fashion. I E I might continue to have meltdowns when it’s not necessary for me as a child or as an adult to have a, have a fit or our temper tantrum or lose my temper motor. Skill-wise what may, what might see when my brain can’t interpret all this sensory data is not knowing how to use my body in space of prop appropriately to move my hands together at the same rate and timing to catch them up.

Um, I might not be good at sports or like to be on the playground and playing during recess. I, um, might not be able to move my tongue of prop appropriately. And I have difficulty with speech or handwriting. This is poor, um, processing of my environment in order to make the proper motor response, and then physiologically. This is a big one that gets missed a lot physiologically. It might be my body is not interpreting my own internal status, uh, through, uh, thermal regulation. I don’t know. I need to sweat in order to detox. My brain is not getting that information. Uh, I don’t know. I have debt. Peristyle assists to have a bowel movement. Thus, I get constipated impacted, and now I have all these toxins in my body. I might not know I have to have a, uh, urinate. Okay. So these are all things that we should be able to collect this data on a subconscious level.

And they, my autonomic nervous system automatically adapts to what it needs to do. Um, and again, that physiological one is a big thing that gets missed. So these are the little fiddle farts that maybe constipated a lot that, um, they’re immune. They don’t spike a fever because your immune system is not communicating properly and they don’t spike the fever to thwart off whatever the pathogen is. So it’s all about data collecting sensory awareness into the brain so that it gets organized, interpreted. Um, it’s integrated one system, dysfunctional, all systems are thrown off. It’s a circuitry, and therefore they can’t respond appropriately. So using this a graphic like this in your office, or even talking to parents like this, that it is data collecting from our external and internal environments where the brain interprets the status of the body and its environment. So it responds appropriately that isn’t happening.

We might see X, Y, and Z on the little fiddle parts. Now, the cool thing about chiropractic care, I can’t even remember what slide I had next is that, and these are means that I have associated with my intersect for life program, but they’re very simple and they bring the message home to how we as chiropractors fit into this picture. The cool thing is that we know that there is solid scientific evidence that chiropractic adjustments change the way the CEO of the brain, the executive functioning part of the brain interprets sensory input so that we can better acknowledge and interpret the needs of our body, where our body is in space, how to respond to that information. If it’s coming in too fast and furious and too much sensory chaos, it’s like a sensory storm. It’s just, these are hyper sensory individuals. It’s too much. They want to just shut down and hide. If the input isn’t coming in enough, I just had a patient. That’s another patient that just left here a few minutes ago. Let’s face it. The last 20 months has been a little bit chaotic.

And what you said was I don’t even, I’m not even aware when I have to urinate or did I even have a bowel movement or urinate because of the stress load. When the stress load comes too high, this prefrontal cortex area, it flips off it’s offline. It’s the computer is gone, okay. The computer’s off flood control and be aware, and that consciousness of, of our body and its needs. And so we might not get pinned, so to speak, get the message that we have to go to the bathroom. Think of the kiddos who have chronic enuresis issues, bedwetting past the age of five, it’s becoming more and more common when there are stress sores on the system that overwhelm the system, the CEO of the brain, the master control of the computer shuts off and dysregulation of all this information and sues. So the cool thing is we know that that adjustment brings back online, that executive functioning and that part of the brain is responsible for impulse control, um, reasonable abilities, rational abilities, motor responses.

So the kiddos, especially the kids with fine motor issues. By the age of one year, those little fiddle parts should be able to have what we call pincer grip, okay. Getting their thumb and their index finger and pinching, pinching things like Cheerios, and be able to pick them up and put them in their mouth. If we don’t see that happening, if we don’t see some of these fine motor skills coming on board, we have to think there’s a miscommunication between the information coming in. It’s not getting organized, interpreted so that that proper motors response of the brain can drive information to the hand, to properly move these digits, to pick up that Cheerio. If we’re not seeing these things, we know that there’s a, a mismatch of what’s going on from the brain to the body and the body of the brain, which leads me to one of the key ways that I explain this to older fiddle farts, that I work with kids that are 6, 7, 8 years old and older, and they get this and they will tell me, check my spine, okay.

Check my spine. I just me, because I want my brand to talk to my body and my body to talk to my brain. So when they asked me, why are you checking me? I say, because I want your brain to talk to your body and your body to talk the brain, just like a computer. So it works as healthy as, so you can feel happy. You can, um, you can learn, you can pay attention. And these are the things that kiddos that can’t do. Those things are thriving for. So they’re all about coming in, getting checked, connecting their body, the brain and the brain, the body. So, one way that I explain this, I use this graphic pretty simple. It’s an airport. I’ve spent a lot of time in airports. So that analogy worked for me. This is based off of a true story. And what year are we in January, 2020 before all this chaos started, JFK and airplane was coming in for landing.

Now let’s send some of you may have heard this analogy before, but it’s great to hear it again because the more you hear things, the more syllabi syllabis in your brain, the more you can repeat it to your patient base. So this brain’s coming in, this plane is coming in. I E we’re going to refer to that as the body in this, in this scenario, it’s going to land at JFK. Let’s say it’s flight number 5 22. That’s a flight number. So the brain needs to talk to the brain up here, the cell tower and the brain needs to talk to the body. It’s a two way communication. So the brain in this scenario tells the body of the airplane flight 5 22, you’re cleared for landing. However, stay short of runway seven. Cool. The brain is directing that message to the body. The body needs to respond appropriately.

It needs to, um, to receive this information and respond appropriately. In this case, the body of the airplane, the pilot said, Roger, like 5 22 Claire for landing left off, did not interpret, did not hear, did not register a very key point that it was to stay short of runway seven. The reason for that was because there was a plane getting ready to take off and barreling down that runway, which could have caused a total catastrophe. Hundreds of lives would have been at stake here at risk. So thank goodness in this scenario, the brain picked up that the body lacked, interpreting getting this information, uh, and, and halted the plane from taking off, which Holton’s catastrophe. Here’s your take-home message for your PA your practice community. If we don’t have a connection, a good connection from the brain to the body and the body of the brain, some type of catastrophe, this miscommunication result in various type of consequences.

In this case, we diverted potential hundreds of lives being at risk here. And that’s what the adjustment is able to do. We’re better to connect the messages coming from the body, to the brain and the brain, to the body, to respond more appropriately to its external and internal environment. And that my friends is huge. That is hands down the fundamentals of proper neuro development for physical health, mental health, and emotional wellbeing. Cobain’s right. So feel free to use these scenarios because they’re very easy to understand and put it into play in your practice community. I want to end with a cool video that will help kind of, um, summarize this and give you some key talking points for your practice.

Sensory processing disorder is a complex disorder of the brain in which the brain has trouble receiving and responding to information that comes in from your environment, both your external and internal environment, some of your internal interoceptive senses include proprioception. The internal sense of awareness of the position and movement of your body. The proprioceptive system sends messages to the brain, through the joints of the legs, arms and spine, the stipular, the inner ear spacial recognition, and what keeps you balanced and coordinated. The vestibular system is regulated by functions and the upper cervical spine neck, the inner ear, and the base of the brain or cerebellum. Neurovisceral the sense of what is happening to your body, including the feeling of being hot or cold, as well as feeling an emotion. The neurovisceral system sends messages to the brain about the state of internal organs in order for proper physiological responses to take place your five external senses, sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste.

Sensory processing problems are usually identified in children, but they can also affect adults. Sensory processing disorder often presents as an over sensitivity to things in the environment. Common sounds may be overwhelming. The touch of clothing may cause discomfort to the skin. Some other signs of sensory processing disorder include being uncoordinated, unable to sit still bumping into things, inability to tell where your limbs are in space, difficulty, engaging in conversation or play healthy functioning. The stipular and proprioceptive systems are essential. Developing a healthy sensory processing system. Since these two sensory systems have functions regulated by input from spinal areas, it is important children and adults with signs of sensory processing disorder, be evaluated by a family chiropractor for vertebral subluxations, misalignment of the spine that may be causing interference within the brain and sensory systems. Brain health depends on a healthy spine, thus making spine health, a priority, make chiropractic a regular health habit for the whole family to ensure your spines and brains are working the best they can to learn more connect with us.

So again, a very simple message, um, of helping your, your community understand that connection. So I’m gonna wrap this tie this right back round to that first slide by you recognizing that simple things like pastoral issues, poor posture, slumped posture, technic, posture, babies, not being able to be on tummy time and get up into extension babies, not being able at six months to sit independently. All these are signature signs that that individual has difficulty processing their, their environment and input is not leading to the proper motor output. So simple thing you can do is look at their motor skills, um, and, and being able to understand that and understanding that the adjustment is critical for bringing online the ability to process our world. In fact, one, um, amazing study by Heidi Haavik out of New Zealand, um, chiropractic college looked at the spinal or showed the spinal adjustment, had an increase of 45%, uh, brain cortical to body, to the lower limb affect it, basically affected and had an increase of 45% increase of strength in that lower limb that is telling us that we can help the brain and the body connect so that the body can better proceed and work in space.

So this is what is exciting. This is the, this is where chiropractic is going. It’s going to this brain-based model of care. So hopefully you enjoyed that. Um, and again, ChiroSecure. You’re amazing. Thank you for all the work you’ve done for us. Um, and giving us this platform to bring you, um, cutting edge information for, to, for you guys to share in your communities. Um, and until next time I look forward to seeing you all the third Thursday of November, I’ll have to check my dates for Thanksgiving there. And third, Thursday of November, and you will see Erik Kowalke the first Thursday of November for more incredible information. And until then me and Elizabeth wish you all a happy Halloween and, um, stay away from that spooky candy and look for alternatives for your little fiddle farts to give them, um, you know, Amazon’s got great toys, uh, to give out as treats. Um, lots of times the dollar bin at target at Walmart. Those places are great places to get things other than those sugary, uh, dilated and substances to get a little healthier spin to, to Halloween. Um, again, thank you all and enjoy the rest of your week.

Today’s pediatric show to the children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.