The Experience Miracles Podcast

Overcoming Anxiety, A Drug-Free Approach in the Digital Age

Apr 30, 2024

Childhood Anxiety: Nervous System Root Causes, Warning Signs, and Drug-Free Solutions

Episode 18, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: April 30, 2024 | Duration: 95 min

Key Takeaways

  • Anxiety among children and teens has surged since 2010, major depressive disorder is up 145% in girls and 161% in boys, and a 2023 study found that 37% of college students report feeling anxious always or most of the time.
  • The root cause of childhood anxiety is nervous system dysregulation, not a chemical imbalance or genetic predetermination. Anxiety begins in the body, travels through the brainstem and vagus nerve, and ends up in the brain, meaning treating only the brain misses where it starts.
  • Three early triggers build toward anxiety long before symptoms appear: maternal distress during pregnancy, birth trauma (forceps, vacuum, C-section, cord wrapped, breach position), and toxin exposure, all of which injure the brainstem and lock the nervous system into Sympathetic Dominance.
  • In over 90% of Dr. Ebel’s anxiety patients, chronic gut issues and immune or autoimmune conditions are also present, because the same sympathetic overload driving anxiety simultaneously shuts down the digestive and immune systems.
  • Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care works by targeting subluxation and dysautonomia directly, using specific neurological adjustments to stimulate the vagus nerve and restore parasympathetic function, producing lasting results rather than symptom management.

What Is Really Causing Childhood and Teen Anxiety?

Childhood anxiety is not a chemical imbalance to be corrected with medication, it is a nervous system disorder rooted in the body, driven upward into the brain. The sympathetic nervous system (fight-or-flight) is the first component to develop in the womb and is the default wiring in humans. When it becomes chronically overstimulated through The Perfect Storm of prenatal stress, birth trauma, and early toxin exposure, it gets locked in the “on” position, producing anxiety that may not surface as a diagnosis until years later.

The conventional model looks at anxiety from the middle: chemical neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. But those chemicals are messengers. The nervous system is the sender. When the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and vagus nerve are physically disrupted, through birth interventions, abnormal motor development, or chronic sympathetic stress, the nervous system’s perception of threat becomes altered at step one. Every downstream chemical and emotional response follows from that distorted signal. No amount of medication, supplements, or talk therapy fully corrects what’s broken at the foundation.

The most overlooked pathway involves the cerebellum and vagus nerve at the back of the brain. The cerebellum accounts for only 20% of brain volume but contains over 50% of its neurons because it is the primary relay center for sensory information traveling bottom-up into the brain. When subluxation disrupts this pathway, the amygdala (the brain’s fear and anxiety center) becomes overstimulated, the prefrontal cortex (rational decision-making) gets suppressed, and the child gets stuck in a neurological loop they cannot think their way out of. The solution is physical and neurological, restoring the movement, signaling, and vagal tone that allows the brain to regulate itself.

The Anxiety Epidemic: A Generation in Crisis [00:01:05 – 00:10:33]

Dr. Tony Ebel: We cannot relegate the anxiety conversation just to kids. We’re going to go really deep into a specific age group, teenagers and young adults, who are being absolutely run over by this anxiety epidemic. But it’s all of us. I’ve never seen a generation of parents so anxious. Anxiety is exploding in the elderly as well. There’s just anxiety everywhere you look.

I’ve been in practice for 16 years as of recording this. We’ve always served kids, young adults, and college students. That was the age group where you’d start to expect anxiety, depression, and emotional dysregulation. But now we see it with three-year-olds. Now we see it with preschoolers, with kindergartners, anxiety taking over kids before they even begin their school journey.

Here are the stats, and they are sobering:

  • Major depression among teens since 2010: 145% increase in girls, 161% increase in boys
  • Mental illness among college students since 2010: anxiety up 134%, depression up 106%
  • Anxiety prevalence is up in all ages but is highest, 139%, in ages 18 to 25
  • A 2023 study of American college students found that 37% reported feeling anxious always or most of the time, and 31% felt anxious half the time, meaning only one-third of college students said they feel anxiety half the time or less

These were already exploding before COVID. Then the lockdowns came and took away what little social development remained for kids’ still-developing brains. The trajectory since 2012 is not a mystery once you understand what changed: smartphones gained access to the internet, then social media, and the inside became the new outside.

“What I despise about anxiety and these neurological challenges for kids is it’s not just the bad that comes from them, it’s the good that the child misses out on. It’s the good that the world misses out on, because what anxiety causes is withdrawal.”

The Technology Factor: How Smartphones Rewired a Generation [00:10:34 – 00:26:30]

Dr. Tony Ebel: I recently went to career day at a local high school, kids who had signed up specifically for a session on chiropractic and healthcare. When I got in there, trying to get any Q&A going was literally like talking to a wall. I walked out completely perplexed. A teacher pulled me aside and explained: because of smartphones and constant access at school, these kids don’t know how to interact socially with other humans. They only know how to interact on social media.

I didn’t leave feeling bad for me. I left heartbroken for them.

Jonathan Haidt’s book The Anxious Generation documents clearly that smartphone access is not just correlated with this epidemic, it’s causative, especially since 2012. Here’s the double-edged problem: first, we moved kids inside for “safety,” pulling them away from the outdoor, social, movement-based brain development that God designed their nervous systems to need. Then we handed them a device with 24/7 access to every website, every algorithm, every predator, and every social comparison platform imaginable.

Movement is calming. Movement organizes the brain. Movement regulates the brain. When kids are sedentary, indoors, and screen-dependent, they lose the proprioceptive and vestibular input that the developing nervous system needs to stay regulated. That alone is a pathway to sympathetic dominance.

But there’s more. This episode goes beyond technology. It goes beyond nutrition, gut health, and chemical imbalances, because all of those are part of the picture, but none of them are the whole picture. There are three triggers, starting before birth, that nobody is talking about. Those are what we’re here to address.

Preparing Kids for Adversity: Resilience Over Avoidance [00:22:24 – 00:35:49]

Dr. Tony Ebel: My wife Kristina and I have been doing something differently with our four kids: preparing them for the best even if the worst came. We’ve never told them the best path is the easy one. We’ve never said, get a phone at 10 and live on it forever. We’ve walked the path of building character and resilience because we knew stress was coming.

I don’t love the word prevention. What we’re talking about is preparation.

Here’s the most important reframe: your child’s anxiety did not just start when they were a teenager. The nervous system was being loaded toward it long before any symptom appeared. There are three scientifically proven early triggers that build a child toward what’s called the sympathetic cliff, where the nervous system gets so wound up, stuck in a fight-or-flight state, that it trips over into anxiety and depression in grade school, teenage years, and young adulthood.

Understanding what anxiety actually is starts here. Anxiety is an intense and excessive feeling of worry or fear of the future. In the short term, an anxious response to a real threat is healthy, that’s your nervous system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do. What becomes a chronic mental and emotional health condition is when the anxious response never turns off. When the sympathetic nervous system never gets the signal to stand down. That’s the root we need to address.

One thing most people miss: there are significant physical manifestations of anxiety. Nervous stomach. Tight neck and shoulders. Trouble sleeping. GI problems. Immune and autoimmune conditions. These aren’t separate from the anxiety, they come from the same sympathetic overload. The chicken-and-egg question of whether anxiety causes the physical symptoms or the physical symptoms trigger the anxiety? The answer is both.

“The sympathetic fight-or-flight response is a protective, survival, life-sustaining mechanism that God put into our neurophysiology. It only becomes the bad guy when it’s out of balance, excessive, and stuck on 24/7.”

Hannah’s Story: When Anxiety Has Physical Roots [00:35:50 – 00:53:50]

Dr. Tony Ebel: I want to introduce you to Hannah. When you see Hannah today, her smile will blow you away. Her resilience, her social and emotional regulation, her ability to carry conversation and look forward at her life, she’s already chosen to become a Neurologically-Focused Chiropractor and at 16 is already picking chiropractic schools.

She did not start that way when we met her a few months ago.

Hannah lived what looked like a healthy childhood. But when you dig all the way back, the picture changes. Hannah’s mother had a lot of stress and loss leading up to her pregnancy. That matters enormously, because the nervous system is the very first thing to form in utero. The brainstem and neural tube develop first. And the first component of the nervous system to form is the sympathetic fight-or-flight protective system.

When there is high prenatal stress, high cortisol, high inflammation from the mother’s neurophysiological system shared with baby’s during that critical period of neurodevelopment, the sympathetic side gets overstimulated from the very beginning. Nerves that fire together wire together. That early wiring becomes the baseline the child’s entire nervous system is built on.

Hannah eventually developed not only anxiety and depression, but significant physical inflammation and arthritis. The medical response was heavy immunosuppressant medication. But when you suppress the immune system without addressing the nervous system driving it into overdrive, you haven’t touched the root cause.

This is what medicine cannot see: the nervous system, immune system, gastrointestinal system, hormonal system, and physical motor system all work in concert, and the nervous system is the foundation from which the other four are coordinated. When the nervous system is dysregulated, each of those other systems pays the price, in different distributions, different dosages. Some kids get gut problems. Some get immune issues. Some get anxiety. Some, like Hannah, get all of it. That’s The Perfect Storm.

What medicine does is send each of these to a separate specialist, a rheumatologist here, a gastroenterologist there, a psychiatrist for the anxiety. They live in silos with no windows. They can’t see the connected picture we’re painting here.

The Three Overlooked Triggers of Childhood Anxiety [00:53:51 – 01:07:13]

Dr. Tony Ebel: I went into genetics, I went into chemical imbalance theory, I went into technology. Those are all real. But the one place I need to take you, and Hannah’s story takes us there, is back to preconception and pregnancy.

Trigger 1: Maternal Distress

High stress during pregnancy, elevated cortisol, inflammation, anxiety, high-intervention medical management, is shared through the mother’s neurophysiological system with the developing baby. Because the sympathetic nervous system is the first component of the autonomic nervous system to form in utero, overstimulation of that system during fetal development sets the child’s nervous system toward fight-or-flight dominance from birth.

Trigger 2: Birth Trauma

Forceps, vacuum extraction, emergency C-section, induction, cord wrapped, breach position, these are physical traumatic events that directly injure the brainstem and upper cervical spine. The brainstem is the primal brain. It sits at the junction of the brain and the neuro-spinal system, right where the vagus nerve originates. Physical injury there doesn’t show up immediately as anxiety. It shows up first as colic, constipation, chronic ear infections, asthma, allergies, and pediatricians tell parents, “Don’t worry, they’ll grow out of it.” They don’t grow out of it. They grow into chronic neurological issues.

Research shows a direct clinical connection between birth induction and anxiety later in life. In over 90% of Dr. Ebel’s anxiety cases, reviewing the case history all the way back to pregnancy, labor, and delivery reveals one or both of these first two factors.

Trigger 3: Toxins (and a Fourth T, Technology)

The original Three T’s in chiropractic, thoughts, traumas, and toxins, are well established. Toxins come injected, ingested, or inhaled; travel through the gut, bloodstream, and cerebrospinal fluid; and reach the brain to trigger inflammatory cascades. The world talks about this. It’s real and it matters.

In today’s world, there’s a fourth T: technology. The movement-based, socially-engaged, outdoor brain development that children need is being replaced by sedentary, screen-based stimulation. This isn’t just a behavioral problem. It’s a neurological deficit.

“Anxiety is not caused directly and foundationally by an imbalance of chemicals. It’s caused directly and foundationally by an imbalance of the nervous system first.”

How the Developing Brain Builds Anxiety from the Bottom Up [01:07:14 – 01:19:55]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Here’s what you need to understand about how brains are built: bottom up, back forward, over time.

The brain is a massive sensory processing center. Researchers have shown it takes in 300 trillion bits of information per minute. The developing brain processes even more. Bottom-up development means sensory information comes in from the environment, travels up through the nervous system, and builds brain function from the most primal structures upward.

We have seven senses, not five. The sixth and seventh are the most important for neurological development: proprioception (movement and mechanical reception) and vestibular function (balance and coordination). If a child’s gross motor milestones are disrupted, abnormal rolling, crawling, standing sequences, it creates a much higher risk of autism, ADHD, anxiety, and neurological challenges later on. Movement done in the right order and sequence is essential to building a regulated nervous system.

The back of the brain is where this process centers. The cerebellum comprises only 20% of the brain’s volume but contains 50% or more of its neurons, because it is the primary relay and air-traffic-control center of the brain. Sensory information from the body has to pass through the cerebellum before reaching the higher cortical areas that handle emotion, cognition, and decision-making.

When that pathway is disrupted, by subluxation in the brainstem and upper cervical spine, the relay system breaks down. The amygdala and hippocampus, the emotional processing centers of the brain, receive distorted signals. They can’t tell the difference between a real threat and a perceived one. The nervous system stays stuck in high alert.

This is why no amount of positive self-talk or cognitive behavioral therapy fully resolves the anxiety in many kids. The prefrontal cortex, the rational, decision-making brain, is being shut down and suppressed by the sympathetic cascade coming from below. The conscious mind knows there’s anxiety. It just can’t get to the switch.

Subluxation, Birth Trauma, and the Vagus Nerve [01:19:56 – 01:25:50]

Dr. Tony Ebel: Let me bring this all the way down to the most granular, foundational level. This is the core of everything.

Subluxation is a misalignment and physical tension in the neuro-spinal system, specifically the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and the cranial system near the cerebellum and vagus nerve. The very first thing subluxation does after creating physical tension is reduce range of motion, reduce proprioception, and reduce movement. This is the single most important thing to understand:

Subluxation is a lack of movement in the most important structures of the movement-dependent nervous system.

When there’s no movement, there’s no proprioceptive input traveling bottom-up into the brain. When there’s no proprioceptive input, the cerebellum can’t do its relay job. When the cerebellum is offline, calming, regulating signals don’t reach the amygdala and hippocampus. Instead, the amygdala gets stuck in fear-and-threat mode, the hippocampus feeds the stress response loop, and the HPA axis keeps the cortisol and adrenaline coming.

The vagus nerve is the critical counterpart here. It originates at the brainstem, travels through the neck, and controls the parasympathetic, anti-anxiety, calming, digestive, anti-inflammatory, side of the nervous system. When the brainstem and upper cervical spine are subluxated from birth trauma, the vagus nerve cannot function properly. The brake pedal of the nervous system stops working. And once the gas pedal has no brake, anxiety runs on autopilot.

This is the physical, neurological reason why someone who’s been through The Perfect Storm, high-stress pregnancy, birth trauma, early neurological disruption, can try every supplement, every diet change, every meditation app, every medication on the market and not get all the way better. The step-one perception problem is still there. The nervous system is still running the same broken program.

“Subluxation creates body-to-brain interference first. That interference then triggers the entire cascade that gets felt emotionally as anxiety, and physically, downstream, because it’s all connected.”

Dysautonomia and the Drug-Free Path to Lasting Relief [01:25:51 – end]

Dr. Tony Ebel: If there is one catch-all neurological term that describes the root cause of anxiety, it’s dysautonomia.

Dysautonomia is not just sympathetic overdrive. The real problem is what it shuts down: the calming, regulating, sleep-generating, anti-inflammatory, digestive, parasympathetic side of the nervous system. When a child is subluxated and stuck in dysautonomia, the good side of the nervous system can’t do its job. It can’t get into the brain because the noise of sympathetic dominance has taken over the pathway. Nerves that fire together wire together. Anxiety, once it gets going long enough, becomes the brain’s default program.

The exciting thing is this: we now know we can change brain function through the body. Neurologically-focused chiropractic adjustments work by sending specific neurological input from the bottom and back of the brain, through the brainstem, upper cervical spine, and vagus nerve, forward to the amygdala, hippocampus, and prefrontal cortex. This is not back-pain chiropractic. This is not general wellness chiropractic. This is a very specific type of care, trained in nervous system restoration and regulation.

The adjustments do two things:

First, they find and release the stuck sympathetic subluxations, gentle tonal adjustments that reduce the physical tension and interference in the neuro-spinal system.

Second, and most importantly, they directly stimulate the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic system. This is how you activate the brake pedal when the gas has been stuck on. This is how you shift the nervous system, through time and repetition, from a chronically anxious baseline to a regulated, adaptable one.

INSiGHT Scans are the diagnostic technology that makes this precise. They identify and quantify exactly where the dysregulation is, what pattern it’s following, and what’s triggering a child’s specific challenges. No guessing. No treating symptoms and hoping.

The key word is time. If a child has been through the perfect storm, high-stress pregnancy, traumatic birth, years of sympathetic overload, it took time to build that pattern. It takes time and repetition to repattern it. But here’s the part that matters most: it lasts. This is not a band-aid. This is not symptomatic relief. Neurologically-focused chiropractic care addresses the root cause, and root-cause care produces the long-term neurophysiological change that gets kids all the way to the other side.

Hannah is proof. She went from chronic anxiety, depression, physical inflammation, and social withdrawal to being a thriving, resilient teenager who already has a plan for her life. The path is there. Every kid is ready to heal.

“The brain doesn’t want to live in anxiety. As God designed it, the brain knows that’s a very unhealthy place to stay stuck. It’s trying to get itself unstuck. What we need to do is find where those subluxations are, find that dysautonomia, find that vagus nerve dysfunction, and address the root cause.”

Frequently Asked Questions

What is actually causing my child’s anxiety?

The root cause of childhood anxiety is nervous system dysregulation, not a chemical imbalance and not genetics alone. The sympathetic (fight-or-flight) nervous system gets locked into overdrive through a combination of prenatal stress, birth trauma, and early childhood neurological disruption. This creates a condition called dysautonomia, where the calming side of the nervous system is suppressed and the child’s brain stays stuck in a chronic anxiety loop.

Can birth trauma cause anxiety years later?

Yes. Physical injury to the brainstem and upper cervical spine during birth, from forceps, vacuum extraction, emergency C-section, induction, or cord-wrapped delivery, disrupts the neurological pathways that regulate the nervous system. Dr. Tony Ebel reports that in over 90% of his anxiety cases, reviewing the case history back to pregnancy and delivery reveals one or both of these early trauma factors. Symptoms may not appear as anxiety until years later, but the nervous system was building toward it from the start.

Why does my anxious child also have gut problems or immune issues?

Because sympathetic dominance, the nervous system state that drives anxiety, simultaneously shuts down the digestive system and creates immune hypersensitivity. The same root cause produces both. Dr. Ebel’s clinical experience shows that 90%+ of patients with anxiety also have chronic gut issues and autoimmune or inflammatory conditions. These are not separate problems to be treated by separate specialists. They share a single neurological root.

What is dysautonomia and how does it relate to anxiety?

Dysautonomia is dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system, specifically an imbalance where the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) system is chronically overactive and the parasympathetic (rest-and-regulate) system, including the vagus nerve, is suppressed. Dr. Ebel describes dysautonomia as the catch-all neurological term that best describes the true root cause of anxiety. When dysautonomia sets in, supplements, medications, and lifestyle interventions alone are often not potent enough to produce lasting relief, because none of them address the underlying nervous system dysfunction.

What does neurologically-focused chiropractic do for anxiety?

Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care targets the physical root cause of anxiety, subluxation in the brainstem and upper cervical spine, through specific neurological adjustments designed to reduce sympathetic overload and directly stimulate the vagus nerve and parasympathetic system. Unlike medications or supplements that work on neurotransmitters (the middleman), this approach works at step one: the nervous system’s perception and signaling. INSiGHT Scans are used to identify the exact pattern of nervous system dysfunction before and throughout care.

How do I find a chiropractor trained in this approach?

Find a PX Docs-trained practitioner in your area through the PX Docs directory. These chiropractors are specifically trained in neurologically-focused pediatric and family care and use INSiGHT scanning technology to guide care.

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