Chiropractic health care is extremely effective and useful for school aged children. School aged children are
subject to the normal bumps and tumbles of childhood, but there are other stresses that they’re subjected to that really affect their bodies. Things like heavy backpacks, using computers that are at stations designed for adults, constant use of hand held devices, sports injuries, and lack of sleep.
Chiropractic care is a holistic healing method that looks at the muscular skeletal system of the child, it’s so important for a child because they’re growing, and we can look for areas of restriction that aren’t moving properly, where there may be muscle imbalance, or imbalance or subluxation in the joints, and we can very gently adjust those areas. The kids at my practice love to get adjusted, they like the way it feels while we’re doing it and they like the way it feels afterwards, and in fact we have kids who ask their parents if they can come, they say I need to see Dr. Brent or Dr. Moe.
So we work on them very gently, we usually keep children clothed. We’ll adjust their full spine and check for areas that are restricted, we’ll also look at all the extremity joints, we’re very interested in hips, knees, ankles and feet in growing children, we want to make sure that there are no shoulder, elbow or wrist problems from hand held devices, from back packs, that can really start to cause asymmetries in the spine.
Children now are starting to wear back packs or shoulder bags on one shoulder and we found an increase in scoliosis from that, it pulls the muscles and the spine over, so if you do that for 5 or 6 years it can really increase your risk that there will be asymmetries in your spine. This is such a powerful time to adjust them.
Children are also developing a lot of repetitive stress injuries and a lot of sports injuries, and chiropractic is an extremely effective way of treating these children, so that we can get them back on the field and continue to be active, which is good for their emotional and mental health. I think one of the most powerful things about bringing school aged children to a chiropractor is that it’s an amazing way to teach children to take care of their bodies.
Children who go to chiropractors have an enormous sense of body awareness, they know when their body hurts, where it hurts, they have more awareness of how they injure their bodies and when they need to ask for help. They have more awareness of nutrition and diet, and how what they do, what they eat, how they sleep, how they rest can affect how they feel.