The Perfect Storm: Why So Many Kids Are Chronically Sick and What’s Really Causing It
Episode 1, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: January 9, 2023 | Duration: 32 min
Key Takeaways
- The Perfect Storm is a specific sequence of events, fertility challenges, pregnancy stress, and birth trauma, that compounds early in a child’s life and leads to chronic illness, sensory issues, ADHD, autism, and more.
- Maternal distress during pregnancy transmits stress signals through the umbilical cord’s nerve supply, hardwiring the baby’s developing autonomic nervous system for a fight-or-flight state before birth.
- Birth interventions (C-section, forceps, vacuum extraction, induction) physically injure the upper cervical spine and brainstem, the control center for digestion, sleep, immune function, motor development, and emotional regulation via the vagus nerve.
- Children don’t “grow out of” colic, they grow into sensory processing disorder, ADHD, autism, anxiety, and chronic illness when the underlying subluxation and nervous system dysfunction isn’t addressed.
- Neurologically-focused chiropractic care targets the root cause by restoring function to the central and autonomic nervous system, rather than chasing individual symptoms with individual specialists.
What Is the Perfect Storm in Children’s Health?
The Perfect Storm is a concept developed by Dr. Tony Ebel that explains why so many children today are chronically sick. It describes a specific, compounding sequence of stressors that begins before birth and accumulates through early childhood: fertility challenges and interventions, high-stress pregnancies (maternal distress), physically traumatic birth interventions, and the cascade of symptoms that follows, colic, constipation, ear infections, eczema, which are typically dismissed or medicated rather than traced back to their neurological root cause.
At the center of the Perfect Storm is injury to the brainstem and upper cervical spine during birth. This is where the autonomic nervous system, which controls digestion, sleep, immune response, motor tone, speech, behavior, and emotional regulation through the vagus nerve, operates from. When this area is injured by forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, or other interventions, the child’s nervous system gets locked into a chronic sympathetic fight-or-flight state, setting the stage for diagnoses like ADHD, autism, anxiety, sensory processing disorder, and epilepsy later in childhood.
Dr. Tony’s Journey to Pediatric Chiropractic [0:00 – 5:41]
Dr. Tony Ebel: Moms and dads, welcome to the Experience Miracles podcast. This one right here might go down as the most foundational and important episode out of the hundreds and thousands of episodes we plan to bring to families all over the world, delivering hope, answers, and drug-free help.
This is the answers episode. This is where we break down what we call the Perfect Storm. I’m going to give you the whole case study, the whole case history, where that phrase, that analogy and concept came from. What exactly it is. What each of the elements of the Perfect Storm are, in a very specific sequence and order that our kids go through way early in life. That is the exact reason, or reasons, when you see how they all add up early and often in our kids’ lives, that’s causing so much chronic illness, stress, anxiety, autism, ADHD, asthma, allergies, and more.
We’re going to give you the exact answers mixed and infused entirely with neurology and science as to the answer to this big question: Why are our kids so sick? Why are so many of our kids so sick? Why is it hitting so early, so often, and so many families and communities? That’s exactly what the Perfect Storm answers.
When I first started becoming interested in becoming a pediatric chiropractor, it was actually toward the very end of my chiropractic school journey. You go to school for almost eight years, seven and a half years to be exact, to become a Doctor of Chiropractic. We’re one of three licensed physicians alongside dentists and medical doctors.
There are three options you have for your family. You have the traditional pathway, blame genetics, take drugs, chase symptoms. You’ve got the natural and holistic pathway, gut health, supplements, diet changes, detoxes. And then you’ve got the third option, which we’ll be talking about every single episode of this podcast: the neurologically-focused chiropractic option in healthcare.
I found that third option late, literally right before I graduated. Two weeks before I graduated, our first daughter, Addison, was born. My wife Christina and I had started our family early. That beautiful brown-eyed baby girl showed up and transformed our world. The entire seven years prior, I had dedicated thousands upon thousands of hours learning how to be a standard chiropractor, musculoskeletal focused, back pain, neck pain, sports injuries. I didn’t know that my own challenges with 20 years of never being able to sleep, never being able to slow down and focus and pay attention in school, I didn’t know those all went away at the same time as my shoulder and neck pain.
Finding the Perfect Storm Pattern [5:56 – 14:50]
Addison’s birth, the opposite of the Perfect Storm, as ideal and perfect as you could get, inspired me to shift my entire career into pediatric and prenatal chiropractic. The day after I graduated, I began my post-doctorate certification in pediatric chiropractic. And God put an incredible mentor in my life: Dr. Mike Cody, truly a pioneer in pediatric chiropractic, one of the first ever certified pediatric chiropractors. He happened to be practicing 10 miles from where I was going to set up shop in Crystal Lake, Illinois.
I showed up day one of my internship working for Dr. Cody, not knowing a single thing about pediatric chiropractic, but wanting to know everything. During this time I’m doing my own research and I’m seeing what would now be known as obvious, but was not at all 15 or 16 years ago: autism was on the rise. Kids were getting sicker and sicker. You didn’t just have to find research, you could see it in the community. Little babies struggling and crying and colicky more than ever. Kids with bags under their eyes, sick and pale.
So I asked Dr. Cody: “What’s going on? What’s causing kids to get sick?” And he said something I’ll never forget: “Well Tony, if you really want to know that answer, then thank goodness you’re a chiropractor. Because for us, DC doesn’t stand for Doctor of Chiropractic, DC stands for Doctor of Cause. That’s your job. And the first step in your job is when you’re taking a case history, you don’t do it the standard mechanical way. You actually do this…”
“If you want to find exactly what caused and is causing a child to be so sick, you need to shut up and listen to their mom.”
That’s the entire foundation of this podcast and everything we do. You moms, you were there on the journey to get pregnant. You were there during the pregnancy. You were there at labor and delivery. You were there when the baby was trying to latch and nurse and grow and develop. You’ve been there physically, emotionally, every single way you can be there. So you have the answers. And that’s the difference with PX Docs: we aren’t going to steamroll you or minimize you. We’re going to shut up, lean in knee to knee, and listen to you.
Tracing the Perfect Storm in Real Case Histories [14:50 – 19:33]
So I took Dr. Cody’s training and got into practice. I went out and volunteered at Options and Advocacy, which handles early intervention and special needs in our community. I volunteered at the Mental Health Board where kids and families were struggling with ADHD and mental and emotional challenges. My whole first three years of practice were not with brand new babies, they were with the toughest patients possible. Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year olds on four, six, eight medications. ADHD, autism, Asperger’s, epilepsy.
These families were trying chiropractic as a last resort, as a last hope. They had been stuck in what you’re about to learn is called the sympathetic fight-or-flight Perfect Storm for almost two decades. They had exhausted medicine, exhausted detoxes and chelation and supplementation. But they hadn’t tried chiropractic yet.
When I went through these case histories for these 17 and 19 year olds, I did what Dr. Cody taught me: I went all the way back to fertility, pregnancy, labor, and delivery. I was looking for the triggers, looking for the signs, looking for these Perfect Storm elements I had started to piece together in my research. And I found them, again and again and again:
- In 20–40% of cases: IVF, fertility challenges, tons of stress and medication and interventions to get to the place where pregnancy could happen.
- In 50–60% of cases: The pregnancy was extremely stressful for mom. A job loss, a loved one lost, a medical diagnosis, tons of ultrasounds, high-risk OB visits, all of this stress on mom’s nervous system.
- In 80–90% of cases: Significant physical birth trauma, forceps, vacuum, emergency C-section, scheduled C-section, induction.
How Pregnancy Stress Gets Hardwired into Your Baby’s Nervous System [20:00 – 21:13]
That umbilical cord that connects mom to that developing baby, it doesn’t just bring nutrients and oxygen and blood flow. It brings nerve supply. It’s the electrical power cord between mom’s nervous system and baby’s nervous system.
In today’s world, we have stressed our beautiful moms to the max. They are filled with anxiety, constant tension and exhaustion. When they’re constantly stressed, that sets the stage for the baby’s neurology. The first thing to develop in utero is the spinal cord and brainstem, the autonomic and central nervous system. It’s already hardwired for stress in a lot of these cases of autism, ADHD, anxiety, and chronic illness in kids.
Birth Trauma: The Injury No One Talks About [21:21 – 22:58]
And then the big one, the real “moonwalking bear” that everyone misses. In 80–90% of the time, there is significant physical birth trauma: forceps, vacuum, emergency C-section, scheduled C-section, induction. We are literally grabbing ahold of our precious newborn babies during their birth process, when they cannot control their head and neck and muscles on their own because they’ve never been earthside with gravity, and we are yanking, twisting, and pulling on the most delicate tissues of their upper neck, cranium, and brainstem.
“Autism isn’t in the brain, it’s in the brainstem. ADHD isn’t in the brain, it’s in the brainstem. Anxiety isn’t in the brain, it’s in the brainstem. And we are physically injuring it at birth and expecting good outcomes.”
The brainstem and upper cervical spine is where the entire autonomic nervous system operates from, controlling digestion, sleep, the immune system, the respiratory system, motor tone and coordination, development, speech, behavior, and emotional regulation through the vagus nerve. All of that air traffic control for the entire central and autonomic nervous system is in the brainstem. It’s in the upper cervical spine.
Why Kids Don’t “Grow Out of” Colic [22:58 – 25:37]
So the completion of the Perfect Storm looks like this: babies with stressful pregnancies plus forceps, vacuum, or emergency C-sections who can’t soothe and sleep, who can’t latch and nurse and digest. They’re colicky, refluxy, constipated. They have chronic ear infections, eczema, skin challenges. They already have more stress and dysfunction in their neurophysiological system than we want.
And then we throw antibiotics. Then we throw steroid-based medications and toxins into their system and expect them to develop healthy and strong and resilient and on time. And they don’t. Not only do doctors not teach us any of this about the Perfect Storm triggers with fertility, pregnancy, and birth intervention, but they don’t help us get out of it. What they say to us as parents is: “Don’t worry, they’ll grow out of it. Some kids are just fussy and colicky. Here’s some MiraLAX, here’s some Nexium and Prevacid, medications that have never actually been tested and approved for kids.”
Then your child will be three years old and have struggled all the way through every bit of their neurological, physiological, gastroenterological development. They will be chronically sick, chronically stressed, and have sensory processing disorder, ADHD, autism, developmental delays, speech issues, behavioral and emotional challenges. The Perfect Storm may not get diagnosed officially until your child is two or three, but it began long before that, many times at the very beginning of neurological development in utero.
Oliver’s Story: Even the Expert Can’t Always Prevent the Storm [25:37 – 27:23]
Parent to parent, I need to tell you this: even though I spent two to three years studying the direct effects of birth trauma on children and how it leads to seizures, epilepsy, autism, and the worst neurological conditions, it doesn’t mean we can always prevent the storm. Even when we’re aware of it.
Our next child, Oliver, was born with a very physically traumatic birth, life-flighted from one hospital to another in a helicopter. Oliver was a medical miracle where multiple surgeries and medications saved his life. He wasn’t supposed to live until age one. He had a 20% chance of living past age one, and they said a 99% chance of cerebral palsy, autism, and epilepsy if he made it past that.
Oliver last night, ahead of recording this episode, won a cross country race as a 14-year-old, because of the power of neurologically-focused chiropractic care. Medicine is amazing at putting out fires. Medicine is amazing at crisis and emergency intervention. And they are awful at health restoration, prevention, and building resilience and health in our kids.
Taking Action: What You Can Do Now [27:23 – 32:00]
“I don’t think knowledge is power. I think the ability to take action upon knowledge is where the real power comes from.”
I needed to take you backwards into these core elements of the Perfect Storm, fertility and pregnancy stress, birth intervention and trauma, colic, constipation, recurrent ear infections, antibiotic after antibiotic, and tell you the truth: kids don’t grow out of colic. They grow into sensory issues, autism, ADHD, and anxiety. So that you know what caused it. So you can take the right action to get your child to restore, reorganize, repair, and heal.
The coolest thing about the nervous system is this: our children are designed to heal. The earlier we get started, the better. With neurologically-focused chiropractic, we know exactly how to tap into the nervous system and stimulate the healing, rest, recovery, digestion, and anti-inflammation side of neurology.
We know how to get your child’s sleep better. We know how to get their digestion and immune system better. Motor tone and coordination better. Every single part of their neurophysiological function working better. It’s not a missing puzzle piece, it’s the whole frame and the whole table that holds up the whole puzzle.
“God designed us so that the nervous system is the boss of the body. It knows everything. It controls everything. It coordinates everything.”
If your child is struggling with seemingly everything, gut stuff, immune stuff, behavior stuff, emotion stuff, seizure stuff, what you want to do is not continue chasing individual symptoms with individual specialists. Neurologically-focused chiropractic can more potently and effectively access and improve the function of the central and autonomic nervous system. That is the one thing you’re going to want to learn more about and get after as quickly as possible.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Perfect Storm in pediatric health?
The Perfect Storm is a framework developed by Dr. Tony Ebel that identifies a compounding sequence of early-life stressors, fertility challenges, maternal distress during pregnancy, and physical birth trauma from interventions like C-sections, forceps, and vacuum extraction, that injure the brainstem and upper cervical spine. This locks the child’s autonomic nervous system into a chronic fight-or-flight state, which leads to colic, digestive issues, sleep problems, and eventually conditions like ADHD, autism, anxiety, and sensory processing disorder.
Can birth trauma cause ADHD or autism?
According to Dr. Tony Ebel and the research he presents, physical birth trauma, especially from forceps, vacuum extraction, emergency C-sections, and induction, can injure the brainstem and upper cervical spine, which is where the autonomic nervous system that controls development, behavior, emotional regulation, and sensory processing operates from. In the case histories he reviewed, 80–90% of children with chronic neurological conditions had significant birth interventions. The resulting subluxation and nervous system dysfunction, if left unaddressed, can progress from colic and ear infections in infancy to ADHD, autism, and anxiety diagnoses in early childhood.
What does a neurologically-focused chiropractor do differently?
A neurologically-focused chiropractor specifically targets the function of the central and autonomic nervous system rather than just addressing musculoskeletal back and neck pain. They trace a child’s health challenges all the way back to fertility, pregnancy, and birth history to identify the root cause, typically subluxation (misalignment and dysfunction) in the brainstem and upper cervical spine. Their adjustments aim to shift the nervous system out of a chronic sympathetic fight-or-flight state and activate the vagus nerve and parasympathetic (rest, digest, heal) side of the nervous system.
Why don’t kids “grow out of” colic?
Dr. Tony Ebel explains that colic, reflux, constipation, chronic ear infections, and eczema in infancy are not standalone conditions a child outgrows. They are early symptoms of an underlying nervous system dysfunction caused by the Perfect Storm. When the root cause, injury and subluxation in the brainstem and upper cervical spine, isn’t addressed, the dysfunction doesn’t resolve. It compounds. The child doesn’t grow out of colic; they grow into sensory processing disorder, ADHD, autism, anxiety, developmental delays, and chronic illness.
Where can I find a PX Docs chiropractor near me?
You can find a neurologically-focused pediatric chiropractor trained in the PX Docs network through the PX Docs Directory. The directory includes offices across the country that specialize in the Perfect Storm assessment and neurologically-focused chiropractic care for children.
Resources & Related Content
- What Is the Perfect Storm?, Full article on PXDocs.com
- Understanding Birth Trauma, How C-sections, forceps, and vacuum extraction affect the nervous system
- Find a PX Docs Office Near You, PX Docs Directory
- Next Episode: A Prescription-Free Childhood: From Drugs First to Drugs Last