The Experience Miracles Podcast

Q&A: Why do Speech & Other Big Symptoms Come and Go During Care?

Oct 17, 2025

Why Do Speech and Symptoms Come and Go During Healing? The Nervous System Rollercoaster Explained

Episode 148, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: October 17, 2024 | Duration: ~29 min

Key Takeaways

  • Growth spurts are the #1 reason brain-based symptoms like speech, seizures, and behavior regress during healing, they physically stress the neurospinal system, allowing Subluxation and Vagus Nerve Dysfunction to return even when care has been working.
  • The nervous system operates on a strict priority hierarchy: it always directs resources to survival functions (digestion, immune response, motor function) first and thrival functions (speech, socialization, emotional regulation) last, so immune challenges and gut disruptions will temporarily sideline speech gains.
  • Weather changes, seasonal shifts, and daylight savings can derail neurological progress because the Autonomic Nervous System has to regulate body temperature and pressure sensitivity, distracting the Vagus Nerve from higher-level functions.
  • Co-regulation, the parent’s own nervous system state, is one of the most overlooked factors in a child’s healing consistency. A dysregulated, Sympathetic Dominant parent directly affects the child’s nervous system environment.
  • The primary clinical solution to symptom regression is to increase adjustment frequency (“boost adjustments”) proactively during the three highest-stress seasons: back to school, the holiday season (October–December), and the school-to-summer transition.

Why Do Children’s Symptoms Come and Go During Healing?

Children’s nervous systems are fundamentally different from adults’, they are still growing at a rate that makes neurological stability nearly impossible to maintain without active support. When a child is going through Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care and begins showing gains in speech, seizure reduction, or behavioral regulation, those gains can stall or reverse because the nervous system is constantly being pulled by competing demands: growth, immune challenges, weather changes, family stress, and external interventions.

Dr. Tony Ebel explains this through what he calls the “healing rollercoaster”, not as a failure of the care plan, but as a predictable consequence of how children’s nervous systems are wired. The Autonomic Nervous System and Vagus Nerve operate on a strict resource hierarchy: survival functions always come first. When the body is managing a growth spurt, fighting a virus, or responding to barometric pressure changes, it redirects neurological energy away from the advanced functions like speech, socialization, and emotional regulation, the very areas parents most want to see improve.

For parents, understanding which triggers are controllable and which aren’t is the key to getting through regression periods without panic. Some factors, like adjustment frequency during high-stress seasons, can be managed proactively. Others, like growth spurts and weather, cannot be avoided but can be understood well enough to respond rather than react.

Why Brain-Based Symptoms Heal Last (and Why Kids Are Different from Adults) [00:01:00 – 00:08:30]

Dr. Tony Ebel: This question ranks second only to “why does healing take so long?”, and they’re really the same question at the root. Parents watch their child say their first words, reduce seizure frequency, or come out of behavioral shutdown. And then weeks or months later, it fades. Speech falls back off the shelf. Seizures tick back up. Sleep falls apart again. Why?

The short answer is that kids are not small adults. For adults going through neurologically-focused care, once they get to the other side of healing, seizures resolved, anxiety stabilized, they tend to stick there. Adults have reached neurological stability.

Kids? They haven’t. They’re still growing and developing at a pace that means their neurological system is in constant flux. The generation of children we’re working with today is the most neurologically exhausted, toxic-exposed, dysregulated generation ever. Getting them to heal is harder than it’s ever been. And getting healing to stick is harder still, because the moment we clear Subluxation and nervous system stress through chiropractic adjustments, life presses back in.

This isn’t a failure of the process. It’s the nature of what we’re working against. And once parents understand the specific triggers, the rollercoaster becomes far less frightening.

“Turns out what God has called us to do is the toughest work in the world, to fly into the face of all the false truths, absolutely antiquated, inaccurate, borderline criminal conversations that conventional pediatricians and the medical system have said.”

Reason #1: Growth Spurts and the Neurospinal System [00:09:00 – 00:13:30]

The number one cause of symptom regression during healing is a growth spurt, and most parents are surprised to hear that. But here’s the neuroscience:

The brain, brainstem, Autonomic Nervous System, and Vagus Nerve are physically housed and protected by the skull and the entire neurospinal system, every vertebra, from the occiput down to the sacrum. Think of it not as dozens of separate bones but as one long, continuous structure. This is the most important communication conduit in the body, more fundamental, even, than blood flow.

When we clear Subluxation from this system through chiropractic adjustments, we restore neurological communication. But when a child hits a growth spurt, that entire neurospinal structure is physically stretched and stressed. Subluxation, Vagus Nerve Dysfunction, and Sympathetic Dominance can sneak back in. We cannot prevent growth spurts. If care started in infancy, a child has dozens left. Even a grade schooler may have several.

Physical trauma, a fall on the playground, an injury at recess, prolonged poor posture from staring at screens all day, stresses the same system. The cervical spine and brainstem are the top third of the neurospinal highway, and they’re taking the most abuse from the forward-head posture kids hold all day in school.

“The spine and the skull are essential foundationally. Medicine has no clue, but now you do.”

The solution: Increase adjustment frequency. When a child is going through more physical stress, a known growth period, a return to school, an injury, more frequent chiropractic care is needed to stay ahead of subluxation. Stress coming into the nervous system is variable, not static. When stress increases, support needs to increase too.

PX Docs offices proactively schedule boost adjustments around three predictable high-stress windows each year:

  1. Back to school (August–September)
  2. Holiday season (October–December, Halloween through Christmas)
  3. School-to-summer transition (May–June)

Reason #2: Immune Challenges, Gut Disruption, and the Survival Hierarchy [00:15:00 – 00:18:30]

Think of the Autonomic Nervous System like a parent managing 47 full-time jobs simultaneously. It has to coordinate digestion, immune response, inflammation modulation, motor function, sleep, respiration, all at once, constantly.

And here’s the fundamental law it operates by: survival functions first, thrival functions last.

Survival functions: digestion, immune response, motor function, sleep.

Thrival functions: speech, socialization, emotional regulation, cognition.

When a virus comes in, when bacteria need to be cleared, when the gut is disrupted, the nervous system and vagus nerve turn their full attention to that. Not because something went wrong, but because that’s the design. Those survival jobs are genuinely more urgent than speech or socialization.

So when a child who has been speaking more words suddenly goes quiet after teething, a stomach bug, or a round of antibiotics, the nervous system hasn’t failed. It’s doing exactly what it’s designed to do: redirect resources to the foundational layer while the immune challenge is handled.

The practical implication: when parents see speech regression or increased behaviors after their child gets sick, they’re not seeing the care plan fail. They’re seeing the body prioritize correctly. Once the immune challenge resolves and the adjustment plan responds, those thrival functions typically come back online.

“There’s a foundational hierarchy of primacy to how the nervous system functions. It will always send resources to survival functions first, thrival functions last.”

Common immune and gut triggers that can temporarily sideline speech and other brain-based gains:

  • Teething
  • Viral illness
  • Bacterial infection
  • Gut microbiome disruption from diet changes, antibiotics, or stress

Reason #3: Weather Changes, Seasonal Shifts, and Environmental Stressors [00:19:00 – 00:22:00]

This one surprises parents, but it’s one Dr. Tony has observed consistently across 17+ years of clinical practice.

The Vagus Nerve is responsible for regulating body temperature and pressure sensitivity. When barometric pressure shifts, when temperatures swing dramatically, when storm systems move in, the vagus nerve is busy. Circadian rhythms are disrupted by seasonal changes, by daylight savings, by the constant fluctuation in light and dark that comes with winter.

That vagus nerve, distracted by temperature regulation and pressure sensitivity, has less bandwidth for speech, socialization, and emotional regulation. It’s enough. It doesn’t take much. A few degrees of distraction from the vagus nerve is enough to set progress back temporarily.

For families in consistently mild climates, San Diego, for example, this is less of an issue. For families in the Midwest and most of the rest of the country, this is a real, recurring trigger.

Controllable factors that help smooth these environmental transitions:

  • Boost adjustments during seasonal shifts
  • Consistent sleep schedules (especially during daylight savings transitions)
  • Dialing in nutrition and diet during stressful seasons
  • Adding nervous system regulation practices at home

Full moons are also mentioned here, the autonomic nervous system is genuinely affected by circadian and environmental inputs in ways that science is still working to fully understand, but the clinical pattern is real.

Reason #4: Co-Regulation, How the Parent’s Nervous System Affects the Child’s [00:23:00 – 00:26:30]

This is the most overlooked piece of the puzzle, and it’s about to get a lot more attention in the PX Docs platform.

Co-regulation is the direct neurological influence that one person’s nervous system has on another’s, especially between parent and child. When a parent is stressed, Sympathetic Dominant, dysregulated, or depleted, that state is transmitted directly into the family’s nervous system environment. Children with hypersensitive nervous systems, the very children going through neurologically focused care, are especially susceptible.

Dr. Tony puts it plainly: one of the most hidden-in-plain-sight root causes of a child stalling or regressing during healing is that the parent is on the fritz. A dysregulated parent is throwing kerosene on an already-sensitive system.

This isn’t blame, it’s neuroscience. And it points to one of the most powerful interventions available to families: the parent’s own healing work. If a child needs three to six months of intensive care to reach neurological stability, and for severe cases, three to five years, and the parent is chronically dysregulated throughout that period, the ceiling on the child’s healing is artificially lowered.

“So often one of the most hidden-in-plain-sight root causes of our kids getting better and then maybe falling off the better wagon a little bit is we’re on the fritz, we’re stressed out, we’re dysregulated, we’re sympathetic dominant, and we’re super wound up, and we’re bringing that into our family’s nervous system environment.”

Reason #5: Medical Interventions and Adding Too Much at Once [00:27:00 – 00:28:30]

The final major trigger is intervention overload, from any direction.

Dr. Tony Ebel: Medications, vaccinations, and other medical interventions can throw healing sideways. But so can well-intentioned functional medicine additions: detoxification protocols, elimination diets, allergy testing, additional therapies. When too many changes hit the child’s system at once, things can go sideways, even when each individual change is theoretically beneficial.

Sometimes a new intervention helps one area while setting another back. The nervous system and gut microbiome are not static, they respond to everything going into the system. When the load is high, the system gets overwhelmed.

The PX Docs philosophy here is: foundations first, then layer in sequences. Get the neurological foundation stable through chiropractic care, then add functional interventions in a deliberate order. Gut microbiome healing, nutrition work, detoxification, speech therapy, OT, these work best when the nervous system is stable enough to actually integrate them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does my child’s speech come and go during chiropractic care?

Speech and other brain-based functions are controlled by the Autonomic Nervous System, which always prioritizes survival functions, digestion, immune response, motor control, over advanced functions like speech and socialization. When a child experiences a growth spurt, immune challenge, or environmental stressor, the nervous system redirects resources away from speech temporarily. This is not a treatment failure; it’s how the nervous system is designed to work. Increasing adjustment frequency during these periods helps the system recover faster.

What are the most common reasons a child’s neurological healing stalls or regresses?

According to Dr. Tony Ebel, the top reasons are: (1) growth spurts, which physically stress the neurospinal system and allow Subluxation to return; (2) immune and gut challenges, which activate the nervous system’s survival hierarchy; (3) weather changes and seasonal shifts, which tax the Vagus Nerve; (4) parental stress and co-regulation effects; and (5) adding too many interventions simultaneously. Most regression episodes involve a combination of these factors.

Can weather changes really affect my child’s speech or seizures?

Yes, and it’s not an old wives’ tale. The Vagus Nerve regulates body temperature and pressure sensitivity. When barometric pressure shifts, temperatures swing, or circadian rhythms are disrupted by daylight savings or seasonal changes, the vagus nerve is occupied with environmental regulation. That leaves less neurological bandwidth for speech, socialization, and emotional control. Families in regions with frequent weather variability, the Midwest, for example, see this pattern consistently in clinical practice.

What is co-regulation and how does it affect my child’s healing?

Co-regulation is the direct neurological influence that a parent’s nervous system state has on their child’s. When a parent is chronically stressed, Sympathetic Dominant, or emotionally depleted, that state is transmitted into the family’s nervous system environment. Children with sensitive or dysregulated nervous systems, particularly those going through healing plans for autism, ADHD, anxiety, or seizures, are especially affected by this. The parent’s own nervous system health is one of the most powerful, and most overlooked, factors in a child’s healing trajectory.

When should we schedule boost adjustments to prevent symptom regression?

The three highest-risk windows for neurological regression are: back to school (August–September), the holiday season (October–December), and the school-to-summer transition (May–June). PX Docs providers are trained to proactively schedule boost adjustments around these windows. Any time a child is going through a growth spurt, recovering from illness, or experiencing a significant increase in family stress, increasing adjustment frequency is the primary recommended response.

How do I find a PX Docs provider near me?

You can search the full PX Docs practitioner directory. PX Docs offices specialize in Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care for children with complex neurological and developmental conditions and are trained in the care sequencing and boost adjustment protocols discussed in this episode.

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