How can chiropractic add comfort?

Chiropractic care in pregnancy is an essential ingredient to your prenatal care choices. A large percent of all pregnant women experience back discomfort/pain during pregnancy. This is due to the rapid growth of the baby and interference to your body’s normal structural adaptations to that growth.

Pre-existing unnoticed imbalances in your spine and pelvis become overtaxed during these times. The added stresses lead to discomfort and difficulty while performing routine, daily activities.

Chiropractic care throughout pregnancy can relieve and even prevent the common discomforts experienced in pregnancy. Specific adjustments often help eliminate these stresses in your spine, restore balance to your pelvis and may result in greater comfort and lifestyle improvements.

The epidural epidemic

Epidurals during birthing have become so routine, as mothers are being convinced that pain during labor is unnatural. Convinced that they should not endure pain during the birth process, mothers are set up to believe in a drug instead of their bodies’ own natural capabilities. Sixty four percent of certified nurse midwives reported concern over the increased number of their clients who desire epidural anesthesia, and a majority of certified nursemidwives surveyed (52%) reported a negative attitude toward the increased use of epidurals.

We started including questions about births years ago on our children’s case history and 9 times out of 10 mothers will check off that they had a “natural childbirth” and in the next question, they check off that they had an epidural. In other words, if they delivered vaginally, and their eyes were open, they are being led to believe that they delivered naturally.

What are not being provided to the parents are the increased complications, which are a result of epidural usage. The PDR cautions that “local anesthesia rapidly crosses the placenta…and when used for epidural blocks, anesthesia can cause varying degrees of maternal, fetal and neonatal toxicity.” It continues, “this toxicity can result in the following side effects: hypotension, urinary retention, fecal and urinary incontinence, paralysis of lower extremities, loss of feeling in the limbs headache, backache, septic meningitis, slowing of labor, increased need for forceps and vacuum deliveries, cranial nerve palsies, allergic reactions, respiratory depression, nausea, vomiting and seizures.” Many of these side effects result in multiple complications. For example, maternal hypotension causes bradycardia (decreased heart rate) in the fetus. This altered heart rate can lead to fetal distress and therefore an increase in operative deliveries. This had led doctors to warn that high concentration anesthetics and epinephrine should be avoided because they may influence labor and may lead to birth trauma.

8 THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT EPIDURALS

  1. Causes longer labors with slower progress.
  2. Can cause fevers in mothers during childbirth.
  3. Increase use of pitocin by as much as 3 ½ times, which causes slow and irregular contractions.
  4. Increase use of antibiotics in your baby by as much as 4 times.
  5. Increases use of forceps by as much as 4 ½ -20 times.
  6. Causes neonatal jaundice due to altered red blood cells.
  7. Increases the incidence of birth trauma due to the use of mechanically assisted deliveries.
  8. Causes adverse behavioral effects of the neonate.

In order to bring about a reversal in epidural usage, mothers must become educated not only on its potential side effects, but on their bodies own ability to give birth naturally. The overwhelming fear associated with birth has become a learned behavior in our culture. Fear causes additional muscular tension in the body, resulting in decreased blood supply to organs and therefore impaired uterine function. It is our privilege and obligation as Chiropractors to care for these women throughout their pregnancies, offering them encouragement and educating about choices for their upcoming experience, I have been told their pregnancies, offering them encouragement and educating about choices for their upcoming experience. I have been told by many chiropractors (and have heard it in our own practice) how women look forward to their visit with us because we treat the process of pregnancy with respect, and we enhance the mothers confidence in her own innate abilities.

INTERNATIONAL CHIROPRACTIC PEDIATRIC ASSOCIATION

-January/February 2000 (Jeanne Ohm D.C.)

Chiropractic care and children

Children benefit from chiropractic care for the same problems for which adults are treated, which are predominantly musculo-skeletal disorders. For example, children have a fairly high incidence of back pain and other musculo-skeletal problems caused by participation in sports, sitting in desks at school, computer activities, and the frequent tumbles and falls active children experience.

Chiropractic care is widely recognized as one of the safest, drug-free, surgery-free therapies available for the treatment of spinal pain syndromes. Few other therapies can demonstrate a better safety record. Provincial governments across Canada recognize that the chiropractic profession’s scope of practice includes treating patients of all ages.

Are chiropractors trained to treat children?

Yes. Chiropractors have seven to nine years of university level education and training including 756 hours of training exclusively in adjustment techniques. Treatment for children is adapted to the age and smaller frame of the child and is delivered in a gentle manner to which children respond well.

Do chiropractors support immunization?

The Canadian Chiropractic Association supports childhood immunization as an effective means of controlling communicable diseases. At the same time, the profession respects an individual’s right to choose.

Can chiropractic treatment replace medical care?

No. Depending on the patient’s condition, chiropractic care may be the primary treatment for the symptoms. In other situations, chiropractic care may be one aspect of treatment. Chiropractors frequently work in partnership with other health professionals where the skills of both apply to enhancing a patient’s well being.

As well, chiropractors will refer patients to other health professionals when appropriate. The profession has a very cooperative relationship with family physicians that are a major source of referral to chiropractors.

Do Canadian paediatricians support chiropractic care for children?

The chiropractic profession supports an integrative and collaborative approach to children’s health care and welcomes both jointly managed patient care and cooperative research into children’s health with the paediatric profession. The Canadian Paediatric Society’s position statement on chiropractic care encourages physicians to co-manage care when patients are also receiving treatment from a chiropractor.

The chiropractic profession supports an integrative and collaborative approach to children’s health care and welcomes both jointly managed patient care and cooperative research into children’s health with the paediatric profession. The Canadian Paediatric Society’s position statement on chiropractic care encourages physicians to co-manage care when patients are also receiving treatment from a chiropractor.

Mechanical (spine)

Some of the mechanical manifestations of the VCSC have been previously discussed. With respect to the VCSC, it is important to examine such occurrences as birth malposition. Children born in malposition such as breech presentation, brow and occiput posterior, often have disruption of the normal vertebral motion segments of the cervical spine as well as those of the cranium. Children born with the aid of forceps and/or vacuum extraction often experience contusions of the scalp and facial bones, and alteration of the normal cranial juxtaposition may be involved. In children with craniofacial defects it is well documented that they have an increased incidence of otitis media (OM). Lewit, in his work describing cranial-cervical joint restriction in his study of 76 children with chronic tonsillitis, said that the most consistent finding among the children was a joint restriction at the C0-C1 junction of 98 percent.

Another aspect of mechanical change is represented in trauma to the cranium and spine. The child’s spine and cranium is significantly cartilaginous and therefore maintains a great ability to approximate its normal range of motion even with fixation and postural dyskinesia (decrease mobility). This would reduce the child’s exposure to the pain often associated with dyskinesia and it may also reduce the visualization of positional dyskinesia on X-ray examination. Any child who sustains repeated trauma to an area either from the birthing process or by some other means might likely have a hypermobile articulation.

Myologic (muscles)

The myologic (muscle) component of the VCSC plays a significant role in the pathogenesis of OM with respect to the dilatation mechanism of the cartilaginous Eustachian tube (ET). When one adds to this to the presence of muscle spasticity and altered reflex pathways due to increases in muscle spindle activity, the myologic effect is quite significant

Lymphatic

The lymphatic component of the VCSC as it pertains to the pathogenesis of OM is generally assumed to be a secondary or tertiary component. While alterations in lymphatic flow are generally not thought to be a primary component of the VCSC, it can be a direct result of the formation of the VCSC. Lymphatic flows are directly dependent on the movement of the organism; restriction of muscle movement may result in lymphatic congestion. When the VCSC occurs at the C0-C1 articulation (upper neck), post-auricular, pre-auricular and suboccipital lymph swelling may be present. Lymphatic flow in the anterior and posterior cervical chain lymph nodes may be slowed. This lymph congestion may play a significant role in the Eustachian tube (ET) inability to drain middle ear fluids completely. Allopathic remedies for recurrent otitis media have revolved around the removal of lymph tissue, specifically the tonsils and adenoids. Dr. Peter Fysh outlined the fact that lymphatic effects may alter the course of phagocytic activity in the child precluding the continued impact on the immune system of the child.

Inflammation (swelling/edema)

OM may be the culmination of various etiologies including the VCSC, and central to many of these etiologies is an inflammatory process. The literature is replete with examples of chronic inflammation altering the structure and composition of connective tissue. Chronic inflammatory changes also may lead to fibrotic changes, which in the case of OM may preclude the drainage of the middle ear and Eustachian tube (ET). In neurologic inflammationit has been noted that changes in nerve transmission may occur, producing aberrant transmission.

The VCSC may result from localized trauma applied to a spinal or cranial area or from a visceromotor reflex set up by a condition elsewhere. The inflammation set up by the VCSC can be a reactive phase of an acute inflammatory process due to such etiologies as an allergic response. This allergic response may promote multiple succeeding bouts of OM or chronic serious OM.