The Experience Miracles Podcast

Why is Birth Trauma Such a Big Deal for Children’s Health?

May 9, 2025

Birth Trauma in Children: The Overlooked Root Cause of ADHD, Autism, and Chronic Illness

Episode 102, Experience Miracles Podcast | Host: Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, Pediatric Chiropractor & Founder of PX Docs | Published: May 9, 2025 | Duration: ~21 min

Key Takeaways

  • Birth trauma, caused by interventions like forceps, vacuum extraction, C-section, and induction, is the initial trigger in 85–90% of case histories reviewed at PX Docs, making it the most overlooked root cause of chronic childhood illness.
  • Physical injury to a baby’s neck, brainstem, and upper cervical spine during birth locks the nervous system into Sympathetic Dominance (a chronic fight-or-flight state) that disrupts sleep, digestion, immune function, and normal development from day one.
  • Babies don’t grow out of birth trauma, they grow into it. Early signs like colic, reflux, and torticollis frequently progress into sensory processing disorder, ADHD, anxiety, and developmental delays when the root cause goes unaddressed.
  • Subluxation, the neurological consequence of birth trauma to the neck and brainstem, causes dysfunction, dysregulation, and dysautonomia that standard pediatric medicine neither looks for nor treats.
  • Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care, guided by INSiGHT neurological scans, can identify and correct birth trauma–related nervous system dysfunction at any age, giving the brain and nervous system the conditions it needs to heal.

What Does Birth Trauma Do to a Child’s Nervous System?

Birth trauma, the physical injury to a baby’s neck, brainstem, and upper cervical spine during forceps deliveries, vacuum extraction, C-sections, or complicated labors, is the most overlooked root cause of chronic illness in children. According to Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP, birth trauma appears as the initial trigger in 85–90% of the case histories reviewed at PX Docs, yet conventional medicine almost never identifies it as a contributing factor to conditions like autism, ADHD, sensory processing disorder, or anxiety.

When birth interventions force, twist, or compress a newborn’s neck, the resulting injury shifts the nervous system into Sympathetic Dominance, a chronic fight-or-flight state. The brainstem and vagus nerve, which regulate sleep, digestion, immune response, and autonomic function, are the most directly affected structures. The clinical terms for what follows are nervous system dysfunction, dysregulation, and dysautonomia. Neurologically-focused chiropractors call it subluxation, a physical and neurological disruption that does not resolve on its own without targeted care.

In infancy, birth trauma looks like colic, reflux, torticollis, and chronic ear infections. Left unaddressed, children don’t grow out of these problems, they grow into sensory meltdowns, developmental delays, and diagnoses like ADHD, autism, and anxiety. Dr. Ebel calls this compounding cycle The Perfect Storm: a cascade of nervous system dysfunction that, once triggered by birth trauma, keeps building until the root cause is identified and corrected.

Why Birth Trauma Is the Most Overlooked Factor in Child Health [00:00 – 00:06]

Dr. Tony Ebel, DC, CACCP: If there is one very big truth that I want to share with the world, one that no one else is talking about, it’s birth trauma.

Birth trauma has not gotten nearly the attention that genetics has. The conventional medical system still blames things like autism, ADHD, anxiety, seizures, and chronic illness on genetics, neurotransmitter imbalances, and bad luck. They’re still like Marty McFly in the DeLorean, decades behind, looking at childhood health through a lens that hasn’t kept up with the science.

You’ve probably moved past that. You know that lifestyle and environment matter far more than your conventional pediatrician lets on. You’ve researched dairy-free, gluten-free, glyphosate, toxins, and gut health. Maybe you’ve completely changed your child’s diet, spent thousands on supplements, homeopathics, and essential oils. Maybe you’ve gone into functional neurology, primitive reflexes, brain exercises. And still your child struggles. Still they’re chronically sick, still not speaking, still having seizures.

That’s because someone hasn’t yet told you the truth about a completely overlooked, but scientifically and research-proven, trigger of chronic illness in children: birth trauma and birth interventions.

I have a deeply personal reason for this conviction. My son Oliver experienced a traumatic birth brainstem injury. We didn’t plan for birth intervention. We didn’t plan for a hypoxic brain injury, for Oliver to be airlifted from one hospital to another, or for him to need three lifesaving surgeries and lifesaving medications. Medicine saved his life. But here’s what you need to understand: the same interventions that save lives can also be life-altering. And most parents are never told that.

“Birth trauma is not only affecting mom and baby’s health in the moment, we now know it’s a big deal for the rest of their life, because it shifts the nervous system into a sympathetic fight-or-flight response.”

The fact that 50% or more of births now involve some kind of intervention, C-sections, forceps, vacuum, induction, is a way bigger deal than most people are talking about. Genetics? Always at play. Gluten, toxins, gut health? Very big deal. But they are not the initial trigger in 85–90% of the case histories we take. Birth trauma is.

How Birth Interventions Physically Injure the Nervous System [00:06 – 00:09]

The physical injury is to the neck, and everything that depends on the neck.

Forceps, vacuum extractors, and hands go to the baby’s head and neck to pull and twist them into the world. Babies can’t protect their necks. They haven’t gone through motor development, haven’t dealt with gravity. The neck is the most easily injured area, which is why when you hand a newborn to someone, you say “hold the head, hold the neck.”

Nobody says the rest of it. But here’s what those words actually mean: hold their brainstem. Hold their autonomic nervous system. Hold their vagus nerve. Those are the nerd words, the ones parents need to know if their child had birth intervention, because those are exactly the structures that get thrown off track.

The neurological fallout has three names: nervous system dysfunction, nervous system dysregulation, and dysautonomia. There’s a fourth catchall term that neurologically-focused chiropractors use: subluxation.

Subluxation is physical, the injury to the neck, spine, and cranial system. But its biggest consequence is neurological. The three Ds, dysfunction, dysregulation, dysautonomia, are what happen when the sympathetic fight-or-flight system gets stuck in the on position, and the parasympathetic side and vagus nerve go offline. The vagus nerve controls rest, sleep, digestion, immune function, and overall nervous system regulation. It branches directly from the brainstem. And it is the nerve most easily, most often, and most significantly injured during birth interventions.

“The vagus nerve is the most important rest, soothe, sleep, relaxation, digestion, and immune function nerve in the body, and it is the nerve most directly and significantly injured during birth interventions.”

From Colic to Chronic Illness: How Birth Trauma Progresses [00:09 – 00:13]

What does a vagus nerve injury look like in a baby? It looks like a baby who can’t turn their head, latch, nurse, or digest well, colic, fussiness, reflux. A baby whose head and neck are stuck to one side, torticollis, plagiocephaly. A baby whose ears and sinuses don’t drain properly, so when teething starts or a sibling brings home a cold, they get congested, and they never clear it. They get chronic ear infections.

Then conventional medicine says: colic is mysterious, here’s some Prilosec (a medication studied in adults, not children), and they’ll grow out of it. And parents go home feeling dismissed, even though they know their baby shouldn’t be crying constantly and their toddler shouldn’t be melting down all the time.

Because they don’t grow out of it. They grow into it.

Children locked into Sympathetic Dominance from birth trauma grow into sensory overdrive, meltdowns, tantrums, and developmental delays, gross motor delays like late crawling and walking, speech delays, and delays in social, emotional, behavioral, and cognitive regulation. That’s where diagnoses like sensory processing disorder, ADHD, and even anxiety in very young children show up. Given enough time and severity, it can lead to an autism diagnosis.

“Our kids do not grow out of this physical birth trauma. They get locked into this sympathetic fight-or-flight storm. We call it the Perfect Storm because it just keeps brewing, and it has multiple factors that compound it.”

At PX Docs, the reason we found this isn’t because it’s taught in school, it isn’t taught in chiropractic school or medical school. We learned it by doing something no other doctor does: sitting down knee-to-knee with parents and actually listening. Going all the way back into the case history. Asking about fertility, pregnancy, labor and delivery. Asking how the baby slept, soothed, and digested. And then connecting those early signals to the current challenges, seizures, autism, sensory spectrum issues, anxiety, ADHD, asthma, allergies, PANDAS/PANS.

The nervous system is the one system that controls everything. The area that controls the nervous system more than any other part of the brain is the brainstem, the upper cervical spine, and the vagus nerve, the air traffic control for all primary functions. When those go dysfunctional and offline, that’s when The Perfect Storm begins to brew.

Why Conventional Medicine Misses Birth Trauma, and What You Can Do [00:13 – 00:16]

Conventional medicine won’t tell you any of this. Not because they’re malicious, because they’ve normalized birth intervention. They’ve systemized it. Your OB, your hospital, your pediatrician will say: “No big deal, we pulled your kid out with forceps”, and move on. They won’t connect it to your child’s health challenges five years later. They’re not trained to. And so you won’t get answers inside that system.

Here’s what you can do.

Step 1: Examine your child’s birth story honestly. Was pregnancy stressful? Was there intervention at birth, forceps, vacuum, C-section, induction, cord wrap, or decelerations? This isn’t about blame. It’s about finding the starting point.

Step 2: Do your research. The PX Docs platform, pxdocs.com, this podcast, social media, is built specifically to give parents the real, fully-informed picture of what’s triggering their child’s challenges and what can actually be done about it. There are articles, research summaries, and more episodes going deeper on every aspect of this topic.

Step 3: Get connected to a PX doctor. A PX doctor will do a deep-dive consultation into your child’s individual case history and connect the dots. We’ve trained a large network of nervous system-focused pediatric and family chiropractors specifically for this. The conventional system can’t help here. The doctor you need is one who understands the neurological consequences of birth trauma and knows how to find and address it.

INSiGHT Scans and Building a Care Plan [00:15 – 00:17]

Once you’re in a PX Docs office, here’s how the process works.

You’ll know you’re at the right kind of chiropractor if they use technology to find the dysfunction. The INSiGHT neurological scans are the primary assessment tool across all PX Docs offices. These scans produce what are called neurological patterns and neurometrics, visual, measurable data about your child’s nervous system function that tells us:

  • Is subluxation present? Is there nervous system dysfunction at the brainstem and upper cervical spine?
  • How severe and significant is it? The case history looks backward; the scan looks at the current state of the nervous system right now.
  • What does a care plan look like? Once we know what we’re dealing with and how significant it is, we can map out the level of care needed to get your child through the storm.

The case history alone gives us a strong working hypothesis. The INSiGHT scans confirm it with objective neurological data. Together, they tell us exactly what’s happening, how bad it is, and what to do about it.

“The most exciting news I can leave you with is this: birth trauma can be found, and it can be taken care of. The nervous system can heal the way God designed our children, no matter how old they are.”

The Brain Can Heal: Dr. Tony’s Own Story and Hope for Your Child [00:17 – 00:20]

Let me close with something personal and something I want every parent in the hardest situations to hold onto.

When I started chiropractic care myself at 21, I had a classic raging-bull brain stuck in fight-or-flight sympathetic overdrive. I was the kid who couldn’t sleep, full of sensory issues, full of impulsivity, hyperactivity, and inattentiveness. I fit every diagnostic criterion for sensory processing disorder and ADHD. I grew up in a small town a generation ago, so nobody medicated me. But chiropractic care balanced and regulated my dysregulated nervous system. Now my ADHD brain is a functional superpower, it’s how I dig into this information, take it to the world, and provide the care that actually moves the needle.

That’s what your child deserves. No matter how stuck in the storm they are, no matter how many things you’ve already tried, no matter how old they are, the brain and the nervous system can heal.

We specialize in the toughest cases. Whatever medicine and no one else can find, we do. Because we know where to look: the brainstem, the vagus nerve, the nervous system dysfunction and subluxation that birth trauma first triggered. We can’t go back and prevent what happened for Oliver, or for your child. But neurologically-focused adjustments can get that brain and nervous system to heal. For some kids it takes months. For others it takes years. The transformation is real.

The path starts with understanding that birth trauma is the real, overlooked, scientifically-supported root cause at the front of this story. And it ends with a nervous system that can finally function the way it was designed to.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can birth trauma cause autism or ADHD in children?

Yes, according to Dr. Tony Ebel, birth trauma, including forceps delivery, vacuum extraction, C-section, and complicated labor, is the initial trigger in 85–90% of case histories reviewed at PX Docs. Physical injury to the baby’s brainstem and upper cervical spine creates chronic nervous system dysfunction and Sympathetic Dominance that, over time, can manifest as ADHD, autism spectrum presentations, sensory processing disorder, and anxiety. Genetics and toxins contribute, but birth trauma is the most overlooked root factor.

What are the early signs that my baby was affected by birth trauma?

Early signs of birth trauma–related nervous system dysfunction include colic, chronic fussiness, difficulty latching or nursing, poor digestion, reflux, torticollis (neck stuck to one side), plagiocephaly (flattened head), and recurring ear infections. These are the nervous system’s way of signaling that the vagus nerve and autonomic nervous system are dysregulated. Without care, these signs typically evolve into sensory meltdowns, developmental delays, and behavioral or cognitive diagnoses.

My child had a C-section birth, does that automatically mean nervous system damage?

Not automatically, but C-section is one of the birth interventions most associated with nervous system stress in newborns. Even without a traumatic delivery, the surgical process, medications, and removal of the baby from the womb without the natural passage through the birth canal all affect the brainstem and upper cervical spine. The key is getting a thorough birth history review and INSiGHT neurological scan to determine whether subluxation and dysfunction are present in your specific child.

How old can a child be when birth trauma is identified and treated?

There is no age cutoff. Dr. Tony Ebel began his own chiropractic care at age 21 and saw significant nervous system regulation as a result. Neurologically-Focused Chiropractic Care can identify and address birth trauma–related subluxation and dysfunction at any stage of life. While earlier is better, because the nervous system has more developmental runway, children and even adults who went through difficult births can experience meaningful healing through targeted neurological care.

How do I find a chiropractor who understands birth trauma and the nervous system?

You need a nervous system-focused pediatric chiropractor trained in identifying and treating subluxation related to birth trauma, not a general chiropractor. The PX Docs network is a directory of practitioners specifically trained in this area by Dr. Tony Ebel. They use INSiGHT neurological scans to objectively assess your child’s nervous system function and build care plans based on the actual data. Find a PX Docs office.

Why does my pediatrician say birth interventions are “no big deal”?

Conventional medicine has normalized birth interventions because they’ve systematized labor and delivery. OBs, hospitals, and pediatricians aren’t trained to identify the neurological downstream consequences of forceps, vacuum, or C-section delivery. They see saving the baby’s life as the endpoint, not the starting point for a conversation about long-term nervous system health. The neurophysiological connection between birth trauma and chronic childhood conditions simply isn’t part of standard medical training.

Resources & Related Content

Find A PX Doc

Welcome to PX Docs. The place to find Hope. Answers. Hope. for you and your family.