We get parents coming into our office all the time with major concerns about their kiddos getting one too many ear infections – which results in antibiotics, or dealing with constipation one too many times – resulting in having to give them MIRALAX.
We could also upgrade this to a perfect storm pathway when kiddos experience one too many sensory meltdowns, panic, and anxiety challenges. You’re done with the traditional approach of hoping and waiting for them to grow out of it or trying to medicate their way through it.
You’re likely here because you want to take the natural, drug-free approach.
As soon as you make that mental decision as a mom or a dad, it’s exciting, exhilarating, but also nerve wracking and overwhelming. It usually means you get on the internet, on Facebook groups, on Google and you ask, where do I start? What should I do first? Here is a scientific explanation that will set you up for the answer as to where to start first.
The first thing to keep in mind is that medicine doesn’t focus on the cause, it focuses on symptoms, treatments, and conditions.
As chiropractors, we focus on cause, not conditions and labels.
When you know exactly what causes a child to get so sick, you then also understand in what order or sequence. I call it the “batting order”, the order you need to work on to get them to heal, because that’s how God made them, and your kiddo can and will heal.
They just need the healing to be in right order. I want parents to think of this like project management. You are absolutely doing the right things – you’re amazing, whatever you’re doing to get your child to heal is phenomenal. I’m simply here to help you get it done even better. So if you’re already doing what we’re about to talk about, (diet, detoxes, and nutrition) and you still haven’t got there, you may need to back up to go forward.
Is Diet the Answer?
Recently I was doing a webinar with an awesome team at epidemic answers and they admitted they have always told parents for over a decade the place you need to start to get your kid better is diet.
I don’t disagree. I just don’t agree.
Here’s why.
I don’t exactly agree because something comes first – your child’s nervous system, digestive system and immune system. What we’re going to talk about here is priming the pump for healing and getting it to work best. What we know is causing the most amount of stress, where the illness, chronic immune challenges, chronic digestive challenges, chronic sensory spectrum, emotional, behavioral challenges are really rooted, is in the central nervous system.
The central and autonomic nervous system runs everything on autopilot.
What is the Autonomic Nervous System?
This is the nervous system that controls the gut or GI and it also controls the immune system. What a lot of parents have learned as they go into this natural world, is the importance of improving gut health, since 60-70% of the core components of our immune system are in the gut.
By improving the health of the gut, we will boost and improve the function of the immune system. It’s also very important to know that the brain does not stop where the skull stops.
What do I mean by that?
The brain has the brain stem, spinal cord, spinal nerves, and the central nervous system and controls and modulates everything. Before there was ever a gut brain connection, there was first a brain gut connection.
First, there’s a brain immune system connection, so the brain and the central nervous system actually primarily controls and regulates the gut and the immune system. Our endocrine system, our respiratory system, all the different systems are controlled through the central and autonomic nervous system, especially through the massively important Vagus Nerve.
We figured out about 15 years ago, when God put us on this journey, how to build a fully integrated clinic where we tried every diet and detox. I’m not just giving you this lesson from research and textbooks – it’s coming from working my butt off for 15 years to do all we can, to get kids to heal through autism, ADHD, chronic allergies, asthma, all of it.
One Thing at a Time
What we figured out is we can’t just do all the things at once. What we really need to do is devise the right batting order or what we call a care plan inside a Pediatric Experience office.
Doing the right things first not only creates and activates the most amount of healing in the most important system, but they set up the success of everything else, like diet changes. I bet a lot of you have tried to get your sensory, emotional, high-strung kiddo to eat gluten-free, casein-free and red dye number 40 free. And I bet all they want is craft mac and cheese, more sugar, donuts, red bull, and more crap. You’re probably asking yourself why this is so hard!
Make it easier on yourself, by getting stress off the central nervous system, which is what neurologically focused subluxation-based chiropractic adjustments do.
The answer to getting this one better is getting to one of our PX Docs. What’s so cool about making that your first step in the drug-free natural healing process is the one thing we do – neurologically tuned, focused vagus nerve, boosting adjustments – does so much good on its own that you would see an immense amount of healing immediately.
God bless, be well, high five, hug your kiddos and just know that inside every one of your kiddos, no matter how much of a struggle, no matter how long it’s been there, no matter how many doctors and diagnoses, they are meant to heal. They can and they will so keep moving forward. We got you, you got them. They got this.
