Healthy at Any Age: Chiropractic Care for Children

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More and more parents are now resorting to chiropractic care not just to cure their own back pain, but also to improve spinal function in their children. Often, cranial and spinal misalignment is the central cause affecting the infant’s nervous system, resulting in nursing difficulties, sleep disorders and breathing problems immediately after the birth.

As the child develops, he starts learning how to control himself to sit, hold his head up, walk and crawl – all activities that impact spinal alignment. Once the child starts participating in typical childhood activities, such as riding a bike or running, subluxations (dysfunctional segments of the spine) may occur, leading to more serious disorders later in life. Chronic back pain is, for example, the most common problem in adults that originates in subluxations occurred during childhood.

Nerve irritations, responsible in most part for numerous childhood disabilities, occur aspart of normal life. Some may be the result of physical stressors, such as bad posture, slip and falls, sleeping on the stomach, while others may be a consequence of chemical and emotional factors of stress, such as dehydration, bad diet, exposure to toxic substances, stress and anxiety.

Benefits of Chiropractic Care for Children

Although conclusive research is underway, many parents are seeing tremendous improvements in the child’s health state after a visit to the chiropractor’s. Recent studies conducted by the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association have discovered significant health benefits of chiropractic care for children of all ages. Here’s what chiropractic care can do for your child:

1.    Encourage good posture
2.    Improve overall health
3.    Treat acute infections and digestive disorders
4.    Relieve muscle pain, scoliosis and neck pain
5.    To assist with sleep difficulties, especially in infants
6.    To strengthen the child’s immune system and increase his resistance to colds   and viruses
7.    To support good brain development
8.    To mitigate the effects of cognitive and learning disorders


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Chiropractic institutions offer courses all across North America allowing a chiropractor to become specialized in pediatric care. After receiving certification as Fellow of the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (FICPA), pediatric chiropractors are specialized to treat conditions in children of all ages. Many times, ailments such as sleep disorders, infantile colic, infections of the ear (otitis media), allergies, asthma, enuresis and several learning disorders are caused by spinal dysfunctions.

Chiropractors address the cause of the problem, focusing on the pressure or dysfunction existent in the spine, in order to restore the health of the child’s spine and cure additional problems. Physicians encourage parents to use chiropractic care in combination with pediatric treatment, but research has shown that chiropractors alone are able to diagnose, treat and prevent numerous childhood diseases completely.

Natural Treatment for Cognitive Disorders

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The preliminary findings of a recent study, conducted by a team of Swiss researchers and published in the Annals of Vertebral Subluxation Research, showed how chiropractic care may be beneficial in treating various cognitive disorders essential to the learning process such as reading, writing, thinking, spelling and computing. Scientists who examined the 160 children participating in the studybelieve chiropractic treatment can improve the functioning of the spine and “stimulate nerve pathways to the cerebellum” and to different parts of the brain. In the long run, such treatment can help stimulate the brain functions involved in learning and mitigate the effects of learning disorders.

Although not conclusive, the findings of the study bring hope to the 3%-10% of school-aged children in America suffering from learning disabilities and dyslexia. At the moment, nearly half of them perform three levels below their peers in basic academic skills and a significantly higher percent drop out of high-school (20 percent compared to 8 percent of students in the general population).
As a parent, you should consider bringing your child to a chiropractor as soon as possible (first month of life) and schedule a visit every three months for the first year and every six months for the following years. That way, you can be sure to catch minor spinal dysfunctions in time and prevent them from impacting the life of the future adult.

About the Author

Dr. Ernest Caruso is a Chiropractic Physician at Boca Health & Wellness Center, which provides chiropractic, physical therapy, massage therapy, a full rehab program with instructive supervision, nutritional counselling, and other wellness and chiropractic offerings.