We’ll start off with number one, which is always utmost on parents’ mind, which is safety. Most people are concerned about safety. They look at their newborn that’s two or three weeks old, and one of the most heartwarming things that I find in my office is when a mom comes in with a two, three, or six-week-old infant and just hands the baby over to me and asks me to check them. It just melts my heart every time, because that level of trust when they don’t really know you is huge. It’s a big leap of faith, because if anyone’s ever been to a chiropractor and been adjusted and they’re like, “You’re going to do that to my six-week-old?” We don’t adjust children in the same manner that we adjust adults. They are very specific techniques.
I have a lot of extra training in pediatric, maternity and family care, and that’s the focus of my practice. But when we talk about safety, it’s actually safer to adjust infants and children than it is to adjust adults. The reason for that is kids’ tissues and bones haven’t ossified yet. They’re very soft, they’re very malleable, they’re designed to be compressed to come through the birth canal. A child’s spine is very resilient and very malleable. So, the techniques that we use require very little force. I use finger pressure, about the same amount of pressure that you would use to touch your own eye, to adjust a child of that age. When they’re very small, it doesn’t take a lot of pressure. They haven’t been on the planet very long, they haven’t been exposed to a lot of stress, tension and poor posture so they’re very easy to work with and very gentle.
If you start children when they’re in their infancy, as they grow their spines stay healthy, malleable, flexible, and they’re just easy to adjust through life. I’m in my 33rd year of practice, and there are some people in my practice that I’ve been adjusting since they were kids. I remember being able to hold them and pick them up, and now they’re taller than I am, and they could probably pick me up. So, safety is the main thing that most people are concerned about. Just know that there are very gentle, specific techniques used on infants and children. The kids don’t even know they’re getting adjusted. They’re just sitting there and they’re looking at a new face when they’re on their back looking at me. But we keep them on top of mom, and we keep them connected.
The primary misconception is that people think it’s unsafe or dangerous. To respond, I always quote my malpractice insurance. If it only costs me $2,300 a year to ensure my practice, what I’m doing must be safe, because insurance companies would charge a lot more if what I did was risky. Just like an OBGYN pays 250,000 a year for their malpractice insurance because the procedures that they do are very risky. Medical doctors are prescribing medications, what they do is risky. They pay much more in malpractice than a chiropractor would.
The other misconception is that people think, “Oh, he’s good. He doesn’t have any pain,” because everyone thinks chiropractic is about back pain and neck pain. You’ve heard me say this a million times, and I will say it a million more times. If you use chiropractic for just your back aches and neck aches, you’re only getting 10% of what we have to offer. Chiropractic truly is about enhancing nerve system function.
When you think about an infant, every stage of growth and development is regulated by that nerve system. So, a clear nerve system and a clean pathway from brain to body is really what’s going to keep that kid healthy, and allow their body to heal, run and regulate. Their own bodies heal. They develop themselves, they heal themselves, and they regulate themselves as long as that nerve system is in communication.
When the child subluxates, and that can be from the birth trauma, it can be from a fall, it can put pressure on those communication centers, and then that nerve system isn’t optimized, it’s not working at 100%. If that child’s nerve system is working at a 20% deficit over years, that can have a profound effect on that child’s health. I have so many people bringing kids in for colic relief, for kids that aren’t sleeping, fussiness, torticollis, all these different things, asthma, difficulty breathing, poor digestion. Remember all that is neuro-regulated, and that there’s not one specific adjustment. “Oh, if he has reflux, we’re going to adjust T-10.” You just clear the whole spine, optimize the nerve system, and let that kid flourish through every stage of growth and development.
So, the common perceptions are, “Oh, my kid doesn’t have pain, he doesn’t need it” and that chiropractic is really unsafe for kids. Those are the two biggest misconceptions. So, it’s very simple. Chiropractic is both safe and effective for infants, children and adults all the same. It’s all based on the same principle, that a healthy nerve system leads to a healthy body and a healthy child.
Photo Credit: Anna Om/Bigstock.com
Dr. Gregg D. Rubinstein, D.C., is a Midtown Manhattan chiropractor with over 30 years of experience providing customized chiropractic treatment services to a wide range of clients in the Midtown Manhattan/West New York City area. Dr. Gregg Rubinstein and 57th Street Chiropractic can be reached at (212) 977-7094 and is located at 119 West 57th St. in New York, NY.
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