hi there my name is pat lawrence and welcome to my show mental health matters today i'm very pleased to have heidi who is a pediatric chiropractor and the age group what is the age of the kids that you take you near burns to eighteen well that's a big age group thank you and why in particular let's go to the youngest why would a newborn need a chiropractor is a great question because most of the time people can't perceive why a child it's not able to speak would be able to complain about pain which is why most people think that you would see a chiropractor but pediatric are practically completely different than corporate to care for an adult so most of the time newborns i'm being referred from the medical professionals within my community and lactation consultants because the newborns are having latch issues when they're trying to nurse and they're getting failure to thrive they're not able to get the nutrients that they need and a lot of times the lactation consultants can see that their jaw is not working properly and that the structure is not allowing them to nurse efficiently and their baby coupled with lip and tongue tie issues which would then be you know fixed with a pediatric dentist and so we kind of work together collaborative would dentist who are you what would you do well i can't answer what a dentistry do you know but myself what i do is i always evaluate the structure and the function of it being born so if i draw this imaginary line down the middle of a newborn's body i'm really comparing the right and left tabs structurally i'm looking to see if their eyebrows are level if their eyes are level if the nose is in the middle the mouth is in the middle of their belly button even when i can turn a newborn over i'm looking to see if their shoulder blades look level and their spine goes all the way down to become the crack of their bum the little fat folds on the back of their legs all of those look equal from side to side that i also want to feel so the functional part of a newborn i will compare the right shoulder movement to the left shoulder movement the right hip to the left hip gently turn the head to the right and compare it to how far they can go to the left and see if there's any grimace on their behalf also when they cry a look to see how wide open they can get their mouth if there's any deviation to one side or the other sometimes they kind of like a little elvis like their jobs off to one side they're not able to fully open their mouth so those are all clues that there's something that's up and that needs to be addressed i think you do more than a physician would do well i like to say that we look at something different so that's why it's really a collaborative effort so all of that is super interesting i actually have never heard of a pediatric chiropractor i've been to a lot of people have no nice to meet you too and so we have we have a new born here so has the umbilical cord in the placenta attached this allows me to demonstrate how a baby is structurally aligned inside the mother's polypus so if they're in a breech position where they're their head up and down maybe they're in a  position that would be right well that can all structurally affect the way the pressure points so sometimes you'll see a baby in their ears all folded up or maybe they have a little bruise above their eyes just from pressure marks from being in a certain position a lot of times moms will say i know my baby never moves to the squadron on my tummy like they're just i never feel any activity over there there's like no party on that side it's always so much movement on the other side so this allows me to really demonstrate how a baby would structurally align themselves in the mother's publice and then we can talk about the birthing process of how they're actually exit in the womb and why they're potentially might be something that we should structure check for structurally so if the baby has a very fast labor and they don't have time to kind of their their bodies so they me visibly look one way but then you'll start to notice their little signals like maybe there is a newborn and they always keep their head turned one direction and they're asleep in their car seat that way they look cute every picture you have of the newborn in their head is always bent a certain way and then yeah and then it's usually the grandparents will be like i knew it i didn't want to say anything i do want to in trouble but i notice that the baby after their newborn for you know one month to month three months old by the time they get to three months they're saying yeah you know what the back of their head is flat i'm noticing that they don't like to turn their head to the right i don't know why i had no idea and then it becomes a little bit of an issue so the there are structural reasons or something congenital torta collis where baby is born and their head is leaning off to one side so it can be leaning and bent and rotated or can go the opposite direction and they can be stuff that way and also friend who yes that's pretty common or thirty there you have it so a lot of times it can spin it started then there may be a deeper level of problem that's going on so we have to kind of again work lab or collaboratively with the pediatrician to see if there does need to be other medical tests that need to be performed because we can't just assume it's just kind of oh yes the baby just needs to be adjusted everything will be simple it may be more complicated however they are oftentimes referred for occupational therapy or physical therapy and in my neck of the woods a lot of the local physicians are referring the babies to me for ation and the treatment because they put in my time in my work to let them know that we're doing fabulous things for these babies what would you do you would go to college you know to call us so again there's we want to make sure that there's not you know like if there were something in the neck muscle that were shortening it so we rule out all of the big scary stuff then what we need to do is we need to make sure that the baby has full movement so kind of range of motion so i usually have a baby lying in a pellow and i have a special pellet has like a almost like a donut like a nice dip in the middle so they can be nestled right in cozy or in their nice and safe and everything that i do is extremely gentle and very slow and i show a parent everything about what i'm looking for and one hundred percent of the time they go ok i was nervous they didn't know but that with that's great like the that looks really simple and completely straightforward so i use my hands and my fingertips to do everything that i need to do and i will gently cradle the baby's head and what i'm looking for is motion where there skoal meets the neck and so i want to meet sure that they have that full range of motion can they turn their head all the way one side versus the other side so that that range of motion has to be restored and i can use gentle pressure i can use a small amount of vibration with my finger and do what's called a chiropractic adjustment big scary word to be called a manipulation but that is very very gentle and there can be something that's more traditional what part of car practic and can be bore some people would think of it as being aggressive so we can work anywhere along that kind of pathway of care not everyone is a cookie cutter we all really take into account what age they are what sort of medical issues that they have going on their perception of what you know needs to be done with them and we work with people so no matter what age they are we tailor it specifically to what happens when the little one is a little bit older and yeah so once they kind of work through the newborn stage i would say between the ages of about six months and eighteen months the number one reason that i'm seeing a child that age group come into my office is for an alternative evaluation of chronic infections so the parents have been given a diagnosis that the child needs to be because of repeat ear infections and i've had patients that have had twenty ear infections within that like one year of life so about six months on to eighteen months they'll have a twenty year infections and it's crazy there becomes a certain point where the n t is will say you know the the the ears are plugged and we need to drain them and so they want to put a tube in so people go home they'll google and they'll say number one thing pops up is pediatric are back in the think what in the world what is that and depending on their area then they will if they're locally though they'll pop up with my name and they'll say ok i'm going to just go and see what she has to say and see where it takes us and so we'll have a really in depth conversation about the things that they can do to keep their child healthy at home as well as what we can do structurally from a car practic standpoint to work on the anatomical issues that may be there a lot of times they have upper respiratory infection so the coughing it makes their neck muscles tight they either have just that chronic drippy nose or it doesn't drip at all that's the child that i worry about is that there's draining properly then that's a problem that's really going to become a breeding ground for things to grow so if we can get the you station tube to open up it's almost like there's a door that's close to being open that door and allow the tube to drain it drains down the back of the throat and that there's no fluid that's in the air how do you do magic but that's what people come to me so that's why i do a combination of specific pediatric care about to tailor to a young child as well as something called cranial sacral therapy so i'm doing some very gentle work on the structure of the bones of their head and also around the jaw area around the front part of their face as well as their as their spine so i do this really gentle combination of treatments to help now if a child's old enough to run around the room like crazy you can imagine me on my own is all right around the room so we have toys ducked out all over the room it's really really fun and i really have to get down on their level so i spend most of the day in my office on my hands and knees and you know or anybody do a box because i have to form a relationship with that child as well as the parents so they trust me but the child has to trust me they won't let me touch them or come into their personal space if they don't trust that i'm going to do something that's really helpful for them so that's the gentle part is they may be playing with toys well i'm doing my really effective but john to work on them  occasionally and they may look up at me or they may grab my hand and pull it away from their ears sometimes they kind of lean into it and i know that they're really you know their bodies like asking to be let out where they really enjoyed something animal kind of backs up and you know they want you to so that's the great part is really forming that relationship with the child getting a relationship with the families and my biggest goal is to help families know how to raise their children holistically naturally have those those healthy alternative children with cerebral palsy definitely yeah so most of the time they are in wheelchairs and they have spastic cerebral palsy so everything's very very tight they may have medications  installed and will take a complete look at their complete medical history and see because we're not wanting to cause any harm to the children reece want to be an advocate for their family as well as a team member helping that child so a of times the families will be all the men in their chairs sometimes the waiting room is filled with with wheelchairs and we're really looking again to form a relationship with the child and understand that in most of the time they'll have a and it's really hard for them to keep their head very neutral and upright so they may be wearing certain supports depends on what their chair offers them and i will do a lot of work on their head and neck while they're sitting and they will actually take them out of the chair and we'll put them onto a table or into the floor and do all the rest of the work to check them so it's very specific it's hard to very generalise what we do with a child that has cerebral palsy but just the fact that we work specifically with exactly what they need for their type of issues so gone where we where have these children i mean they're my age yeah right and i what could be done for these people now they may come in with ok so after about when they're learning how to walk though oftentimes fall in you know on their bomb a million times and so that can have an effect on their way the function of their body as well i see a lot of children who are not crawling a normal crawl pattern that cross lateral motion that you would expect so they may be but scooters and so those that are on the bottom and they'll drag their feet what i know right yeah and so they can get somewhere really quickly but there may be an anatomical reason that they choose to be about scooter and  really want to look at the structure and alignment of their hips and their pal this and see if there is something that we can do to restore normal movement patterns so that they can actually have that normal crawling experience if a child is old enough to talk they're actually really very spot on and they'll tell a parent when something's bother them they may wake up and say i get money or they'll be sitting in the back seat of the car complaining about how their back hurts and a lot of times parents think that it's just a one time thing or maybe they hear you know grandma or grandpa complaining about their back all the time and they just assume that they're just hearing a very good product of their environment when in actuality they're very very smart they're very tuned into their body and you have to listen to them and now you know that you aren't paediatric are back to becoming s much more prevalent parents will be able to have a place to go to and get answers like why is my child complaining about this what can i do about it and they may be jumping and flying off the back of the couch but they fall if i'm hit their head they may kind of knock their head off center so to speak so i try to put things into really basic terms and help parents like truly understand what has happened and then what they can do about it remember you did have a little child  and just go crazy with it it's very very gentle and very very specific that work that we do and so often times be holding a newborn and i'm a mom of three kids so i think i just about get that mom instinct that kind of comes in as well having raised my babies but what i'm really doing is i'm looking for the movement of their spine and so i have again my special pellow that i lie them in as well as holding them and then we'll do a little bit of tummy time as well so we're looking to see how they react are they able to lift their head up and once they're at a certain age we're checking and checking them the milestones that they're supposed to be meeting as they lift their head up are they able to look and turn their head both sides will have a little bit of a hard volleyball if they're doing it and what we're really looking for the milestones that they should be meeting are they rolling over when they should be rolling over are they rolling both ways are they using both arms of the reaching for toys so these are all huge clues for me to zero in on wow you know what they are not using their right arm as much as they are their left let's check up here at their shoulder complex and between the middle part of their back and see if everything is moving structurally the way we want it to so we can start them checking their milestones from the time that they're young child watching them crawl watching them learn how to walk and then when they get old enough to talk they'll be able to have that communication now that i've been a chiropractor for nineteen years i have a lot of what started out as babies and now they're heading off to college do you and that's what i say oh dear like my goodness but what an amazing relationship to form with a family and they will kids my parents tell me kids play doctor home late play a game so it's making a fact it's really it's been a very wonderful and powerful thing to have a positive influence on children and to give them a voice and say you know what i know what my body feels like when it's functioning normally and when it's not functioning normally i know where to go to have help fabulous stories and so many fabulous families that they had just made an impact in my life and one that i just will never forget i think the most like the quickest most rewarding thing that i can help a child with is the ones that struggle with  those kids it's a battle it's an emotional battle it's a fight at school it follows them on a daily basis and there are some profound life changing situations with these families where i've been able to introduce my care as well as my suggestions at home and sometimes for the teachers at school and change these children's lives in just a few short weeks that is incredibly rewarding because it has impacted not only their physical health but their emotional health as well and you being so strong in the mental health community you understand how the physical and the emotional really are married together very strongly and they both cannot be thought of as individual they have to be dealt with together to yeah really mind and body mind and yeah yeah and there's a lot of children too that will get the alphabet soup of a diagnosis and from it from a to z all kinds of letters thrown  i don't it doesn't matter to me what label they are given what i'm really looking for is to again form that relationship with that child and kind of help take the pressure off so if their spine and their nervous system which is kind of like their air traffic control center so if it's not if the air traffic control center is not functioning properly the communication the signals are not going to get through so your your nervous system really looks at the environment and kind of takes that all in and perceive what's going on and then it helps to spit out a communication so we want that process to be running smoothly and when it does not that's where there becomes an issue and then you start getting all kinds of labels thrown at you so that's really rewarding when we kind of take a dial back digest what's really going on and implement some simple solutions as well as my hands on care that i provide in my office some simple solutions for the families to do at home whether it's foods that they can do or avoid body movement that they want to incorporate there are different types of kind of brain exercises or brain gym work so don't matter what their label is if it's eighty eighty h d autism asperger's it doesn't minute just you don't do it go for oh gosh i have two boys so i think that level gets thrown around quite a bit but trust me i've seen my fair share of boys who are literally like a monkey in a cage inside my office inside those four walls and i think they feel like a monkey in a cage inside their own head as well but the one amazing thing that happens with the vast majority of and also a majority boys there's plenty of girls that get thrown that label as well as once they get to the point of where they can lie down and what i normally do is i put a use of such oils in my office or put that on my hands with their permission with mom's for mission as well and i put my hands on them and the vast majority of the time they're talking and they're moving to and literally they just stop flopping and they're still and the vast majority the times i'll look over at the parent and they're sitting there with their mouth gaped wide open staring at me wondering how in the world  not have a million messages coming in and make the output smooth and easy and let them have a happy thriving life you agree you disagree you just some reason you know how do people get in touch with you ok so you can call my office the phone number seventy one one three three five zero five one the name of the office is winchester hospital co practic center their website is winchester hospital cairo dot com i also have a personal website which is love your health and wellness dot com i do a lot of wellness education for families teaching a lot of tips about what to feed your children essential oil education how to move your body and what sort of milestones children should be meeting and how we can help you know coordinate that with holistic measures heidi thank you thank you very much but you've been a wonderful gift and you probably a lot of parents out there have wondered what's going on with their kids now you know yeah i say get them to you know and one throw one more website at you is a great website to find a pediatric certified chiropractor in your neck of the woods so the web site is i the letter i the letter c the letter p the letter a i c p a the number for kids dot org i c p a for kids dot org and you can do locate a doctor type in your zip code and it will  spit out chiropractors in your area that are pediatric certified so above and beyond just the average chiropractor you know that's great ok all you people out there you heard it and and we have an amazing