Understanding the Different Types of Chiropractic Care

As the world increasingly shifts towards natural, drug-free healthcare, many parents are seeking Pediatric Chiropractic Care for their children. However, since this approach to health and neurologically-focused healing is relatively new, parents often feel overwhelmed and confused when they discover the various specialties within chiropractic care and try to understand the differences.

We get asked all the time how parents can find a true Neurologically-Focused Pediatric Chiropractor and how this differs from:

1. Standard Spinal-Focused Chiropractic Care
2. Functional Neurology 
3. Functional or Integrative Medicine 

Each of these specific types of chiropractic care + natural healthcare is incredible, but it’s important to know the differences, their specific focuses, clinical protocols, and so forth, especially for the health of our kids. 

Additionally, since I began my career as a standard spinal + wellness focused chiropractor, then went deep down the road into functional neurology and the biomedical world as well and practiced in that way for 3 years, I personally know the differences well and can speak to them from real life practical experiences. 

Let’s start with what most people from previous generations would associate chiropractic care with: standard spinal + musculoskeletal focused care. Then from there, we’ll go into the complex and intricate world of functional neurology and functional medicine. 

Finally, we’ll finish up with my current specialty and the form of care that is transforming millions of kids’ + families’ lives all over the world as it grows rapidly to fill a need and major gap in the current healthcare system – Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care. 

Standard Spinal Chiropractic Care 

Standard Spinal-Focused Chiropractic Care primarily focuses on musculoskeletal issues, such as back pain, neck pain, and joint issues. Their approach is more biomechanical and generally centered around spinal adjustments to relieve pain and improve mobility. They may also likely incorporate things like rehab, massage, posture correction exercises, soft tissue work, and so forth. 

Many musculoskeletal-focused chiropractors may still speak about subluxation and focus their care on the “correction” of subluxation, and they may connect subluxation to the nervous system and nerve interference, but the primary goal of their care is to alleviate pain and biomechanical dysfunction. 

1. Musculoskeletal Focus: Concentrates on addressing musculoskeletal problems, particularly those related to the spine.
2. X-Ray + Posture Exam: The examination process primarily uses X-ray analysis to precisely identify misalignments and structural abnormalities in the spine. This detailed imaging allows them to assess the degree and location of spinal subluxations and biomechanical dysfunction, plan specific and effective treatment strategies, and monitor progress over time. 
3. Spinal Adjustments: Use spinal adjustments to correct misalignments, relieve pain, and improve range of motion.
4. Therapies and Modalities: Additional therapies and modalities, such as PT, massage, rehab, soft tissue work, decompression, shockwave, e-stim, and so forth, are used in conjunction with adjustments. 
5. Symptom Relief: The primary goal is to alleviate pain and discomfort, improve function, and enhance the quality of life through spinal adjustments and other physical modalities.

Many traditional chiropractors also have a passion for “family wellness” and will care for the whole family, including kids. However, the care they provide kids and families is still more spinal-focused, so they’ll see kids for sports injuries, maintenance care, and so forth but are not quite comfortable or fully trained to see children struggling with autism, sensory processing disorder, behavior issues, autoimmune challenges, seizures, and so forth. 

This form of chiropractic care is extremely important for communities, as back pain, neck pain, and musculoskeletal issues affect up to 80% of adults at one time or another. Chiropractic care presents a safe and effective option, helping patients avoid the dangers of surgery and medications, especially opioids. 

Functional Neurology

Functional Neurologists incorporate a broader range of brain-based and neuro-integrative therapies, and while some may still provide basic chiropractic adjustments, many do not adjust any longer. They focus on improving brain function and neurological pathways through various therapies, modalities, and integrative programs. 

1. Brain-Based Therapies: Utilize a range of therapies aimed at improving brain function, including specific exercises, sensory stimulation therapies, low level laser therapies, and cognitive training exercises.
2. Primitive Reflex Integration: A major component of functional neurology is working to address what are known as retained primitive reflexes, which are a sign of abnormal or delayed neurodevelopment that, if left untreated, can interfere with the development of more mature brain functions, leading to issues like poor motor control, coordination problems, sensory processing disorders, and learning difficulties. 
3. Comprehensive Assessments: Perform detailed assessments to understand the functioning of the nervous system and brain, creating tailored treatment plans.
4. Integrative Approach: Integrate a whole consortium of various therapies + modalities all at once using a “more is more” approach to healing. Therefore this form of care can be especially daunting, exhausting, and often overwhelming to the child and family due to its multifaceted nature and integrative “all at once” approach. 

Functional or Integrative Medicine 

Functional or integrative medicine is a holistic approach to healthcare that focuses on identifying and addressing the underlying triggers of diseases rather than just treating symptoms. It combines conventional medical practices with alternative therapies, such as nutrition, lifestyle changes, and mind-body techniques. 

This approach emphasizes personalized care, considering the unique genetic, environmental, and lifestyle factors that influence health. The goal is to promote optimal wellness through a comprehensive, patient-centered approach that integrates the best of both traditional and alternative medical practices.

Functional medicine practitioners often use a variety of tests to uncover underlying imbalances that may contribute to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). These tests can include:

1. Nutritional and Metabolic Testing: To identify deficiencies in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and fatty acids.
2. Gut Health Analysis: Including stool tests to assess microbiome composition, inflammation, and digestive function.
3. Food Sensitivity Testing: To detect adverse reactions to specific foods.
4. Toxicology Screening: For heavy metals, environmental toxins, and other contaminants.
5. Hormonal Testing: To evaluate endocrine function and imbalances.
6. Genetic Testing: To identify potential genetic factors affecting health and development.

These tests help tailor individualized treatment plans aimed at improving overall health and quality of life for patients seeking their care. 

Neurologically-Focused Pediatric + Family Chiropractic Care 

Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care focuses entirely on identifying and addressing subluxation, nervous system dysregulation + dysfunction, dysautonomia, and restoring optimal neurological health and function for kids and families. 

Their primary goal is to restore balance and function to the nervous system, which can positively impact various bodily functions and greatly improve quality of life, even for the toughest of neurological conditions and chronic health challenges. 

Neurologically-Focused Chiropractors who also have advanced training in Pediatric Chiropractic Care have a deep understanding of neurodevelopment, neurosensory function, brain health and function, and so much more. 

This specialized work allows them to provide advanced levels of care and deploy specific clinical protocols that help children struggling with more chronic conditions such as autism, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, anxiety, epilepsy, etc, have a greater quality of life and experience improvements that other forms of care are not quite able to access and generate. 

Breaking it down further, Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care provides: 

1. In-Depth Consultation: Parents often report this is the first doctor who actually took the time to listen to them, dive way deeper into the case history and root causes than anyone else has, and take the time to answer their questions and explain things thoroughly and completely. 
2. Neurological Exam + INSiGHT Scans: Rather than solely using X-rays and biomechanical analysis tools, Neurologically-Focused Chiropractors use INSiGHT Scans to gain a comprehensive understanding of a patient’s nervous system health. These scans include NeuroThermal, Electromyography (EMG), and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) testing, which help identify areas of nervous system interference, subluxations, dysfunction, dysregulation, and dysautonomia. 
3. Personalized Care Plans + Adjusting Techniques: Not only does each child and patient receive a very specific, customized care plan suited to their clinical needs and goals, but every single adjustment is gentle, precise, and tailored to the individual needs of each patient. Rather than deploying the same care plan and the same technique for each patient, every single patient gets their own specific customized care plan, and adjusting techniques proven to be most effective for their case. 
4. Neuro-Tonal Adjustments: These specific adjustments provided by Neurologically-Focused Chiropractors are specialized chiropractic techniques aimed at achieving the following (and more):
   1. Reducing stuck stress and tension that leads to sympathetic dominance and dysautonomia 
   2. Restoring balance and regulation to the nervous system 
   3. Stimulate or boost parasympathetic and vagus nerve function
   4. Enhance communication between the brain and body 
   5. Restore and improve neuromuscular tone, coordination, efficiency, and endurance (movement and motor development) 
   6. Optimize overall nervous system function and improve overall health and well-being 

While most still today associate chiropractic care with the spine and pain-based issues, as discussed above, the truth is since its inception in 1895 chiropractic care has always been primarily focused on the health and function of the nervous system. 

So while it may feel like this specialized form of chiropractic care is new, and while things have certainly been greatly advanced over the last 10-15 years with the development of the INSiGHT Scanning Technology, HRV, and Neuro-Tonal Clinical Protocols, this form of care is more congruent with what really sets chiropractic care apart and makes it entirely unique from everything else in healthcare. 

My Personal Practice Experience With Functional Neurology + Biomedical Interventions 

While no specific research studies compare Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, which addresses subluxation and neurospinal dysfunction, with Functional Neurology, which emphasizes brain-based therapies and primitive reflex integration, I have extensive clinical experience with both approaches. 

Additionally, we also went quite far down the biomedical road, which today would probably be referred to as functional medicine or integrative medicine. 

Add that all up, and what it means is that for many years we ran a fully integrated, multi-disciplinary clinic focused on helping kids with autism, ADHD, SPD, epilepsy, and so much more. The original premise we were working with was simply that “more is better” and that since we knew these chronic conditions had multifactorial causes and were what we term “multi-systems” issues, the best results would come from a multidisciplinary approach. 

As with all good scientific approaches, the only way to truly determine if your theory and hypothesis are correct is to fully test it out. And that is exactly what we did. 

Because this time coincided (sadly) with the explosion of autism and chronic health issues in our children, and because very few practitioners of any type were serving these families, word got out fast and we became very busy very quickly. Meaning, we had plenty of incredible cases to dive deep into and figure out what really works and get results, and what doesn’t. 

When I first developed The Perfect Storm concept and clinical protocols back in the 2008 to 2010 range, the only thing I knew to do was to provide Neuro-Tonal Chiropractic Adjustments and manage and track care progress via our INSiGHT Scans and parent reports on quality of life improvements. 

Back then, the field of functional neurology was just emerging, and therefore, of course, my passion and desire to help children struggling with “brain-based” challenges like autism and epilepsy led me to attend every seminar, training, and certification program in that world, front, and center. I didn’t just learn the material, I applied it instantly to my practice. 

Within just 2-3 years, we established a fully integrated functional neurology and biomedical center. While continuing to provide chiropractic adjustments and care, we also incorporated primitive reflex integration, neuro-integrative and movement-based therapies, and biomedical and functional medicine protocols such as diet changes, detoxes, supplements, and homeopathics.

It Turns Out More Is Not Always Better

Here’s what happened – the more “good things” we did, the worse our clinical results became. 

It was absolutely mind-blowing and, of course, wildly frustrating. Each new seminar I took and certification I received taught me promising new treatments and protocols, and I was so excited to expand my toolkit to help more kids get better, faster results. 

So when the absolute opposite happened, I honestly didn’t know what to do. 

I imagine back then I felt the exact same way that many of you as parents feel right now reading this. Perhaps you’re experiencing this feeling right now – the more you do, the less it works. 

Unfortunately, based on my own clinical experience and the reports of hundreds and thousands of parents who have “done it all” over the years, I didn’t just experience slowed-down or stalled-out clinical results—things actually often got worse. 

Specifically, what I found (and continue to hear from parents today) is that the more primitive reflex work and brain-based therapies we added in early to the initial phase of the child’s care plan, the more things like their sleep, behavior, movement patterns, coordination, digestion, and so forth would regress and actually get worse or the progress they were making would become stuck and plateau. 

The same occurred so often with biomedical interventions, especially detoxification. Here, however, the exacerbation or emergence of new symptoms wasn’t all that surprising, as it’s known that with detoxification and cleanses, things often need to get “worse” before better. 

But going back to functional neurology and integrative therapies, those were supposed to rebuild, restore, and reorganize functional neurological and brain-based pathways. I expected nothing but faster, smoother sailing with this approach, and I more commonly experienced the opposite. 

So next let’s dig into the exact science behind why that may happen, and often does. 

Primitive Reflexes, Subluxation, and Sympathetic Dominance 

While this is probably a whole other article for another day, what a lot of this difference in clinical approaches and results comes down to is where the specific focus of each specialty lies. 

Neurologically-Focused Pediatric Chiropractors have a deep and advanced understanding of the role that the Perfect Storm, subluxation, sympathetic dominance, and dysautonomia play in this entire clinical picture. When you look at things both chronologically (in sequence) and developmentally, we know that subluxation, sympathetic dominance, and dysautonomia set in first and foundationally. 

Put simply, if subluxation and sympathetic dominance (which also means there is parasympathetic and vagus nerve suppression or exhaustion) persist, then the primitive reflexes will continue to be retained and held onto by the intelligence of the nervous system, which keeps it in “protective” mode instead of growth and development mode. 

That means in this neurological and clinical reality, subluxation and dysautonomia are A, and retained primitive reflexes are B. You can’t fix and restore B before A and expect it to go smoothly. 

Neurological healing is no different from restoring an old home or making your favorite recipe. You must start with the foundation and the first ingredient or step in the process, or everything else after that is not going to work as well. 

Putting this all together, this simply means that the various treatments and therapies offered by brain-based functional neurologists and functional medicine practitioners are often wildly helpful and effective but require a strong neurological foundation and what we term “stability” first in order to work optimally (and smoothly). 

This is why we are such strong advocates for explaining the difference between these various specialties and seeking to really explain that in helping children with chronic neurological issues heal, it’s absolutely NOT a case of “more is better” at all. Instead, the most important thing for providers to explain to parents and deploy with their clinical protocols is actually a “less is more” approach, and to really understand that the sequence or “batting order” of how all this works is absolutely essential. 

Since this is both an extremely advanced and intricate conversation, and also shockingly simple and straightforward at the same time, and can be hard to explain using written word only, please check out this YouTube Video I made on this very specific topic of sequential neurological healing and doing things in the most effective order! 

Neurological Stability, Sequencing, and the Hierarchy of Optimal Healing 

Before we get to the final aspects of this important article and finish it up, it’s important to discuss two very important terms and clinical realities – sequencing and stability. 

Once you get a good understanding of what these mean and how to achieve them, you’ll then start to see how these different healing approaches can start to actually layer together and truly achieve optimal results! Meaning, there is absolutely a time and place for the intricacies of functional neurology and biomedical interventions to come into play, and many kids absolutely need them to achieve full and complete healing or recovery. 

But once again, so many of these things that parents are told to start with first or do all at once would actually get far better results if put into play later on down the road once neurological stability is achieved. So let’s break down what we mean by stability and sequencing in a more detailed and specific way. 

Neurological stability refers to the optimal state of balance, function, and regulation within the central and autonomic nervous systems. In this state, the nervous system can efficiently manage and respond to internal and external stimuli, maintaining optimal balance and regulation. This stability allows for the effective integration and processing of various therapies and interventions, ensuring that the body can adapt and heal without being overwhelmed. Achieving neurological stability is crucial for improving overall health outcomes and enhancing the effectiveness of functional, biomedical, and movement-based therapies and treatments later on down the road.

Sequencing or hierarchy in the context of neurodevelopmental and chronic health conditions refers to the strategic ordering and prioritization of various healing interventions and care programs to achieve optimal results. This approach ensures that foundational issues are addressed first, creating a stable baseline for more advanced therapies. By following a structured sequence, therapies build upon each other synergistically, enhancing the effectiveness of each intervention. This method prevents overwhelming the nervous system, promotes better adaptation, and maximizes the overall therapeutic outcomes.

When Do We Know Neurological Stability Has Been Achieved? 

One of the other things that really sets Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care apart is that we like to say, “We don’t just guess, we test.” Taking that one step further, the testing we do is not just done on the initial visit or beginning of care to use as our roadmap or guide to personalize and customize the care plan and clinical protocols, but we can actually continue to run these scans and tests on a very regular basis. 

Our Neurological INSiGHT Scans give us what we like to call Neuro-Metrics, which are seven (7) different markers or trackers of neurological function and regulation that improve as more adjustments are made and care progresses. 

Once at least 5 of these 7 Neuro-Metrics improve past a certain mark, we know that an optimal state of balance, function, and regulation within the central and autonomic nervous systems has been achieved and therefore everything is now stable enough to start to layer on any additional needed interventions, therapies, or modalities. 

This is an exciting milestone in the neurological healing process, as Neuro-Tonal Chiropractic Adjustments alone have likely already led to significant improvements in the patient’s goals and quality of life. Additionally, if any further therapies are needed, they now have a much better chance of being effectively sequenced and integrated at the optimal time for continued healing and the best possible results.

Putting It All Together 

Simply put this means that for many cases, there absolutely will be a time and a place for the whole host of interventions and therapies that functional neurology and integrative medicine bring to the table. However, if they are done too soon, out of order, or all at once, their effectiveness and benefit is often limited or shut down altogether. And in certain cases, it can actually lead to some unwanted side effects and regression. 

As parents, watching your child struggle with chronic neurological challenges like Autism Spectrum Disorder, ADHD, SPD, Epilepsy, PANDAS, and so forth is exhausting all by itself. Then you throw in the responsibility of wading through all the various traditional medical experts, holistic and biomedical care options, and now even the difference between Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and Functional Neurology, and the exhaustion and frustration mounts even more. 

Please know this. We get you. We hear you. We feel you. We got you. 

I firmly believe that God put me down all these various paths myself as a student, practitioner, and even parent so that I could help see the differences between them and help navigate and guide you on the best path for your family as well. 

We find again and again that in the very big picture, to get a child fully healed and recovered (which IS possible for so many kids!), we will, over time, need to incorporate and integrate all of these things – adjustments, biomedical interventions and detoxes, and movement-based integrative therapies. 

But the real “master key” that unlocks the most optimal healing and provides the smoothest, most effective path forward is NOT the one that attempts to get these ALL done at once. Instead, it’s most often the opposite. Doing things differently than what may feel right and putting these natural, neurological healing mechanisms in a very specific, sequential order makes all the difference in the world. 

Next Steps

While I went as far down this rabbit hole and delicate topic as I could here with this article, please continue to learn more about these intricate and important details and differences. To do that, please also dig into these additional learning assets: 

1. The Importance of Understanding Healing Order in Your Child’s Health Journey
2. When Nothing Works: What To Do When You’ve Tried Everything For Your Child

Lastly, contact your local PX Doctor’s office here and schedule a Phone Consultation with their Care Advocates and Doctors to have this conversation and learn the difference more one-on-one to really get a better understanding of how important this all is. 

Whatever it takes to help your child heal and whatever you need to get support and guidance, you’re on the right track to achieve optimal results for your child; we’re here to help! Send us a message here through the website, a DM on Facebook or Instagram, or however and whatever it takes to help – we’ll do it! 

Optimal results are just around the corner for your family, and for many of you, that just may mean doing less, not more, and making sure you’re doing things in the most effective sequence and order! 

God bless and be well, 

Dr. Tony Ebel + The PX Docs Network