The Experience Miracles Podcast

From Wits’ End to Watching Her Son Heal: How Co-Regulation Became the Key w/ Lucia Silver

Oct 28, 2025

Tics, PANS, and the Birth Trauma Connection: How to Heal Your Child’s Nervous System in the Right Order

Episode 151, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: October 28, 2024 | Duration: ~65 min Guest: Lucia Silver, Founder of the Brain Health Movement, Creator of The Whole Child Course, Oxford Scholar, and mother of “Mighty Quinn”

Key Takeaways

  • Tics and PANS hide under the radar more than almost any other childhood condition, often not surfacing until ages seven to fourteen, which is exactly why conventional medicine dismisses them as transient or genetic, rather than tracing them back to birth trauma and nervous system dysregulation.
  • Eighty percent of the children Lucia Silver works with through the Brain Health Movement have a birth story involving intervention, cesarean, Ventouse, forceps, yet no provider ever asked about that story when the symptoms appeared years later.
  • The correct healing sequence always starts with mom’s nervous system first: a dysregulated caregiver cannot co-regulate a dysregulated child, no matter how many protocols or therapies are layered on top.
  • PANS (Pediatric Acute-onset Neuropsychiatric Syndrome) can paradoxically produce heightened immunity, meaning a child may appear unusually healthy, never sick, rarely on antibiotics, while the Perfect Storm builds silently beneath the surface until a mold exposure or environmental trigger causes a full-blown flare.
  • Lucia describes the three words she feels immediately after a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic adjustment: “Free. Held. Safe.”, three words that capture the shift from sympathetic dominance to parasympathetic regulation that conventional self-care (yoga, meditation apps, cold plunges) cannot replicate for deeply stored structural stress.

Why Birth Trauma Is the Missing Piece in Childhood Neurological Healing

Birth trauma is the most consistently overlooked root cause in childhood conditions like tics, PANS, ADHD, anxiety, and sensory processing challenges. Lucia Silver’s son Quinn had a traumatic delivery involving Ventouse and forceps, a resulting pneumothorax (hole in the lung), and an early course of antibiotics administered out of sepsis concern, yet none of the OTs, educational psychologists, neurologists, or GPs Quinn saw over the following years ever asked about his birth.

This gap is not incidental. Conventional medicine is trained to see these conditions as genetic or transient. If a child didn’t show dramatic symptoms immediately after birth, the thinking goes, the birth couldn’t be the cause. But as Dr. Tony Ebel explains, the brainstem and upper cervical spine absorb enormous mechanical force during instrumental deliveries. That structural compromise doesn’t always express immediately, especially when a mother has built strong prenatal foundations through nutrition, calm, and breastfeeding, which can offset the storm for years before a secondary trigger (mold exposure, illness, environmental toxin) tips the system into a full flare.

Quinn’s story is a clear example: a healthy-appearing child who breastfed for eighteen months, slept well, and rarely got sick, while the Perfect Storm quietly accumulated until age nine, when 350 symptoms appeared seemingly overnight. The tic that preceded it, dismissed by neurologists as “probably transient,” was the nervous system’s signal all along.

The takeaway for parents is actionable: if your child has tics, PANS, motor delays, sensory issues, or chronic gut problems, and no provider has ever asked what happened at birth, ask for the birth records yourself, and find someone trained to address what those records reveal.

Quinn’s Story: From Extraordinary Tic to Full PANS Flare [00:06:00 – 00:20:00]

Lucia Silver: It started really with a little bit of a tic. And then I realized we were dealing with an accrued level of symptoms, gut not working quite right, a bit of dysregulation, but principally this extraordinary tic that caused Quinn to invert himself fully, put his head down to his feet, kick his hands out behind him, and kick his leg out behind him and flap. It was the most extraordinary movement. And this little guy was becoming more and more alienated at school as the tic was taking over everything.

I was being told by everybody, the OT, the educational psychologist, the GP, “Oh, don’t worry. It’ll probably just go away.” Or, “If it doesn’t, there’s probably some medication further down the road.” I wasn’t about to join that camp. If a child is struggling, that’s not something you just pass off as “embrace the difference.” This was affecting his back, his mind, his confidence, his social engagement. There was nothing good about it.

I then hit mainstream neurology because I wanted to check there was nothing going on with his brain. It took a further eight months on the NHS to even get seen by a pediatric consultant, who looked at him and said, “So he’s just sort of got this tic.” I had to force the referral for a QEEG, which came back with nothing, because there wasn’t anything wrong at that level with his brain. So I was told it was a neurotypical tic and to come back if anything became more serious.

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: Tics hide under the rug, fly under the radar, more so than any other condition I have found, until these kids get to seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old. And that’s exactly why it’s so easy for conventional neurology to dismiss them as transient. They’re trained to think: if there were no signs at birth, it must not be there forever. And mom’s gut just knows: this brain and body are disconnected. Something’s going on.

Lucia Silver: Around that time, I started to see more aggravation, and then we had what we realized was a fully-fledged flare. Quinn started to run away at school. He had four or five seizures. Motor tics and other types of tics appeared. The whole thing was going completely off the rails.

At that point, I’d already been doing my own research. I’d done a little primitive reflex work, three times a week, and started to understand how to calm his nervous system with vagus tone. I took him off gluten. And the tic dissipated for about four or five months.

Then we saw this massive flare in the summer, and we found out there had been mold exposure. A functional neurologist said, “I think he’s been exposed to something that’s turned his system fully. This looks like PANS.” And that’s when I had to get everything from the States, nobody in the UK knew what it was.

“Tics hide under the rug, fly under the radar, more so than any other condition I have found, until these kiddos get to that, sometimes not until seven, eight, nine, ten, twelve, thirteen, fourteen years old.”, Dr. Tony Ebel

With PANS, another tricky thing is that affected children often have a heightened immunity because everything is on high alert. I was almost showing off for years: “My kid never gets ill.” But unbeknownst to me, the Perfect Storm was going on under the surface. Then suddenly this massive explosion at age nine, with 350 symptoms, and my kid went right off the chart.

The Birth Trauma Story: Ventouse, Forceps, and a Hole in the Lung [00:21:00 – 00:34:00]

Lucia Silver: At no stage in any of these proceedings was I asked about what happened during pregnancy or at birth. And I know I’d had a traumatic birth, but I didn’t know it was going to have an impact.

We arrived at the hospital and were put in a triage room. We ended up sort of forgotten about, me bleeding in the triage room, Quinn’s dad having to rush out to get someone. They slung me into a wheelchair and rushed me into the delivery room. Baby was in distress. Mom was in distress. They couldn’t get Quinn out. They applied Ventouse and forceps, pulling and pulling. Started to talk about a cesarean. Eventually they did get him out, and they discovered he had a pneumothorax, a hole in his lung. He was taken away because he couldn’t breathe properly.

He was on an incubator. We were both in the hospital. And I only found out about the antibiotics he received, administered out of sepsis concern, about six months ago, from the birth records.

I stayed in the hospital with Quinn for two weeks. I sat by his little incubator, kept taking him out, and got him feeding. He was limp, but I got him on and continued to feed him for eighteen months.

Dr. Tony Ebel: The reason it makes perfect neuroscience sense that Quinn’s tics hit under the radar, that his immune challenges hit under the radar, is because on the front side, you took such great care of him during pregnancy. You built the foundation for Quinn’s health to be strong. Then birth came in and rocked his brainstem.

But when you fought to latch and breastfeed in that NICU, what that did for Quinn’s nervous system was kick in healing that only mom can do. It’s about nutrition, yes. But it’s about neurological co-regulation and bonding. And that’s why his storm didn’t show up until nine. And that’s why he’s healing so well through it now, because he had healing interventions from you, mama, first, before anyone like us could step in.

“The very interventions that might have saved him at birth also set up the perfect storm.”, Lucia Silver

Finding the Right Sequence: Birth Trauma and Mom’s Nervous System First [00:35:00 – 00:48:00]

Lucia Silver: The order wasn’t necessarily correct in how I approached healing, and I know now where we needed to start: with the birth trauma. My ideal scenario would have been to take Quinn in to see a neurologically-focused chiropractor, and myself, at that point, because we were both suffering from the trauma of this birth. That would have been our first stop.

When I understood what PANS was, this aggravated system that was in sympathetic dominance, over-alert, struggling to calm down, I started to look at his stimming, his self-regulatory movements, as entirely a nervous system issue. I thought, if these are still here, that is a nervous system that’s unhappy.

When I started to put two and two together with the birth, that’s when I found Dr. Tony. And I also thought: this speaks to my nervous system too, and my nervous system needs to go even before Quinn’s.

I’ve got two pieces here. I’ve got to wake up moms to: where are you at in your nervous system? You cannot co-regulate a child, and I explain what that means, if you are yourself dysregulated. So first, the primary caregiver. Once you are in a position to understand your accountability, and you’re approaching this healing journey from a place of calm connection and hopefulness, then we work on your child.

Dr. Tony Ebel: The question should have come first: “How are you?” Because if we skip you, we limit your child. That’s just neuroscience.

“If you’ve ever made a recipe, it doesn’t taste good if you go in the wrong order. You have to start with the foundational ingredients and the sequence first.”, Dr. Tony Ebel

Dr. Tony’s Personal Story: Parenting Under Pressure [00:42:00 – 00:48:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Just recently here in the United States, there was an assassination attempt, and I have teenagers, sixteen and seventeen, who saw it. Nobody is prepared to see something like that. There’s no parent prepared to know your kid saw that, and then to parent through it.

That day, I barely remember that shift because it was so hard. My kids were so dysregulated, so unlike themselves. And I was so unlike myself. I reacted at a level I’ve never reacted before. It was the most difficult weekend of my life as a parent. I was dysregulated, trying to bring my kids back to health, and I failed. And that mark will stay with me.

All of that to say: what we’re going to do through the Brain Health Movement and the PX Docs platform, we’re going to serve your whole family, including your nervous system, moms and dads, at a level we never have.

Lucia Silver: That story proves we’re never really fully prepared for what may come. All we can do is understand how to enlarge our window of tolerance. How to be more present, more elastic, more able to contain as the stress bucket fills. The invisible load for mom, the appointments, the school calls, the meltdowns, the late nights, the Googling, the financial strain, we’re told to be the backbone, but no one asks how broken that back already feels. We have to support mom. We have to help her help them.

Lucia’s Self-Care Playbook and How Stress Stores in Women’s Bodies [00:49:00 – 00:54:00]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Moms and women especially store their stress in their neuro-spinal, neuro-structural system. They store it severely at the top: suboccipital, base of the skull, neck, and shoulders. That can be brain fog, exhaustion, anxiety, headaches, everything. They store it between the shoulder blades, just locked. There’s no stretch, no massage, no yoga, no foam roller that can put a dent in that locked-in stress. And you store it in your pelvis, your digestion, your adrenals, your hormones. The trauma of emotions trapped physically, females get stuck there more.

Lucia Silver: My real treat is to go and have neurologically-focused chiropractic. I’ve never done anything so committed for me in my life, ever. The act of committing to it, financially, emotionally, physically, for me, before I even get there is itself a change in consciousness. I know I was drowning, and until I found my own regulation, Quinn couldn’t find his.

Those moms who have felt that midnight spiral, the cries in the car, I don’t believe stress just takes itself away. There’s a level of trauma that stores in our bodies. We’re in a state of apprehensive worry twenty-four-seven, and that is chronic stress. That is the same as eating sugar. It is inflammatory, sympathetic, and very unsustainable.

Dr. Tony Ebel: I’ve never seen moms fight harder to get better, cold plunges and yoga and breathing and meditation apps and everything else. But son of a bee, when they get on the table and they get adjusted, and it only takes three minutes, what they experience in the moments after is one of my favorite things to witness. What do you feel right after an adjustment, Lucia?

Lucia Silver: Free. Held. Safe.

“I know I was drowning, and until I found my own regulation, Quinn couldn’t find his.”, Lucia Silver

The Whole Child Course: Everything in the Right Order [00:55:00 – 01:00:00]

Lucia Silver: I didn’t want other mothers to waste the years in the dark the way I did. It’s as simple as that. So I spent a lot of time speaking, listening, reading, meeting world-leading experts, not all doctors, some neurodevelopmental specialists, who have spent fifteen to twenty years working with children. I wasn’t interested in research that would take another twenty years to prove. I was interested in what’s working now, what’s getting results.

The course covers everything from birth trauma to begin with, mom’s state to begin with, the vagus nerve and how it develops, the autonomic nervous system, eating, lifestyle, toxins, toxic load, co-regulatory parenting, technology and sleep, jaw and breathing, mold and environment, all the stressors explained, and then the protocols, in sequence. Some work on primitive reflex integration further down for parents who need to address that from home.

By bringing each of these experts together in a way that a mom at her kitchen table can actually understand and use, that was the important thing. Parents don’t need another protocol. They’re already overwhelmed. They need a roadmap, and they need to be gently taken through it. And we’ve added community calls so we can support mama to keep going, because it is tough.

Dr. Tony Ebel: It doesn’t exist anywhere else. Most courses and platforms and conferences are missing the foundational conversation about birth trauma, the Perfect Storm, subluxation, and nervous system dysregulation. And even when they have all the pieces, it’s a random assortment. If you’ve ever made a recipe, it doesn’t taste good when you go in the wrong order. You have to start with the foundational ingredients and the sequence first. That’s what this course does.

Closing Message to Overwhelmed Moms [00:59:00 – 01:03:00]

Lucia Silver: To those overwhelmed moms who are listening: transformation and healing is possible. Sometimes the biggest miracle is a mom feeling seen and supported for the first time. Everything PX Docs and the Brain Health Movement are doing, it’s not another thing for you to do alone. It is someone to do it with. Our role is to help you know where to start, in the right order, with the right people. Please lean in.

We have free resources. We have a free masterclass, “From Burnout to Breakthrough”, where Dr. Tony also features. We have the community. Help us help you. If we’re not strong, the whole ship sinks. We get it. We know you feel overwhelmed. But we’re here to make you feel safe, understood, guided, and roadmapped toward healing.

Dr. Tony Ebel: We got ourselves to save. We got our babies to save. And we’ve got a whole lot of countries and a whole lot of chronic illness to reverse. Let’s make the loudest miracles the ones that never needed to be a miracle in terms of transformation.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can a traumatic birth cause tics and PANS years later?

Yes, according to Dr. Tony Ebel and Lucia Silver’s clinical and lived experience. Birth interventions like Ventouse and forceps place significant mechanical force on the brainstem and upper cervical spine. This structural compression affects the autonomic nervous system at its root. Symptoms may not appear immediately, especially if the child has strong nutritional foundations, but the nervous system compromise accumulates until a secondary trigger (mold, illness, toxin) tips the system into a full flare. Lucia Silver’s son Quinn had a severe Ventouse and forceps delivery with a resulting pneumothorax, yet his tics and PANS didn’t become apparent until age nine.

Why do tics get missed for so many years?

Tics hide under the radar more than almost any other childhood condition, often not surfacing until ages seven to fourteen. Dr. Tony Ebel explains that conventional medicine is trained to view these conditions as genetic, so if there were no dramatic early symptoms, providers assume the condition is transient. Children with strong nervous system foundations (good prenatal care, breastfeeding, co-regulation) may compensate for years before the nervous system dysregulation from birth trauma becomes visible as a tic or behavioral change.

Why does healing need to start with mom’s nervous system?

Co-regulation, the process by which a regulated caregiver helps regulate a child’s nervous system, is a neurobiological requirement for healing, not a parenting philosophy. A child whose nervous system is stuck in sympathetic dominance cannot regulate themselves out of that state alone. If the primary caregiver is also dysregulated, there is no calm, co-regulating nervous system available for the child to sync with. Lucia Silver and Dr. Tony Ebel both emphasize that addressing mom’s nervous system first, including through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, is the correct clinical and practical sequence.

What is The Whole Child course, and who is it for?

The Whole Child is an online course created by Lucia Silver, founder of the Brain Health Movement. It is designed for parents of children with neurological and chronic health challenges, ADHD, autism, anxiety, PANS/PANDAS, tics, gut issues, and sensory processing difficulties. The course sequences all relevant interventions in the correct order, starting with birth trauma, mom’s nervous system state, vagus nerve development, and autonomic nervous system function before moving into diet, lifestyle, toxins, and therapeutic protocols. It brings together world-leading experts in a format accessible to a non-clinical parent audience.

How does chiropractic care help kids with tics or PANS?

Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, the approach used in PX Docs offices, targets subluxation in the upper cervical spine and brainstem, the area most directly affected by birth trauma. INSiGHT Scans measure nervous system function and help guide care. When the structural compression from birth trauma is addressed through neuro-tonal adjustments, the autonomic nervous system can begin shifting out of chronic sympathetic dominance toward a more regulated, parasympathetic state. This affects tic expression, immune reactivity (relevant in PANS), sleep, digestion, and emotional regulation.

How do I find a chiropractor trained in this approach?

Find a PX Docs-trained practitioner through the searchable directory at PX Docs Directory. All listed practitioners are trained in the neurologically-focused approach Dr. Tony Ebel teaches, including care for children with tics, PANS, and other neurodevelopmental conditions.

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