By Dr. Stanton Hom
I remember being ridiculously fear ridden and anxious as a kid. I could not speak in restaurants and order a simple meal for myself.
You can asked my cousin about this… she and I were like best friends and she would speak for me.
When asked to read out loud in class, I would tell the teacher I could not read my writing to avoid the task. Interestingly, I had significant issues reading–words would get turned around in my head, I would have to reread paragraphs and sentences over and over again.
You can ask my sister about this… she could read so incredibly well and being two years younger than me, it was super embarrassing.
I can remember distinctly the brush I used to bring to my mom whenever I needed to be soothed. She would take the brush and slowing scratch my back and my whole system would simply relax.
Looking back, (and hindsight is always way closer to 20/20 than realtime life) I must have had some sort of combination of sensory processing disorder and dyslexia.
I knew no other kids like me.
I remember one kid in all of middle and high school who had a peanut allergy, another with asthma and one with Asperger’s – conditions we know are affecting kids at epidemic proportions today.
I was talking with an early childhood educator recently about the exploding trend of Neurodevelopmental Disorders. Specifically we were talking about the statistics: the growing number of these problems that are leading to 25% of our kids in school requiring special education.
I’ve written about this before.
- Neurodevelopmental Disabilities are affecting 1 in 6 kids
- ADHD: 1 in 9
- Autism: 1 in 36
- Anxiety: 8.0% (or 4.4 million children in the US)
- Dyslexia is the largest language based disability of which 20% of the pedaitric population is affected by.
- 55.9% of children currently experience Sensory Processing Difficulties
- Epilepsy is the most frequent chronic neurological condition affecting 1 in 100 children.
Not only are these numbers and trends an issue, but so is the fact that convention healthcare does not have solutions to heal these challenges at the root cause. A recent study that looked at 3 different psychotropic drugs: olanzapine, risperidone or aripiprazole, found:
“At the conclusion of the twelve-week study, all three groups showed behavioral change. However, all three groups also showed significant negative side effects. Subjects showed an increased resistance to insulin, putting them at higher risk for early onset diabetes. They also showed an increase in body fat with specific increases deep within the abdomen around the organs. It may seem trivial to include this specific bit of information.”
Why is this important?
The drugging of our children has become more common than ever. And many of these drugs are considered off-label (aka they have not been studied for safety in a specific population).
Yes, there are amazing OTs, PTs and Speech Pathologists out there feverishly serving in an amazing way this population of kids who require special care.
The root cause, however, is central and deeper physiologically.
And chiropractic, with our focus on optimizing the central nervous system, is one of the best suited to help in a deep way.
If you have been following this blog for enough time, you know it can. We’ve explained it in many ways:
- With our patient stories: family, kiddo, and adults stories
- Our because chiropractic theme and testimonials
- We’ve had other experts share
- We’ve explained the physiology: here, here and here
And we talked about why you NEVER hear about the benefits for chiropractic publicly…
Chiropractic has helped the public heal naturally for over 123 years.
But maybe more importantly, chiropractic NEVER harms.
Seeing kids heal is one of the biggest blessings of my life. It is one of the most tangible ways that I KNOW we are changing the trajectory of our future generations.
Look at this chart from Georgetown University.
53% of adults age 18-34 are on at least one prescription drug with the average number of prescriptions being 3. Look at the chart for the elderly… 65 and up are on an average of 21 different prescriptions!!!
You better believe the pharmaceutical industry is shooting for 100% of the population to be on multiple prescriptions for life!
In the end, we know kids heal and we know they do at a very efficient rate– especially when given not only the right lifestyle environment, but also an optimized ability to adapt to that environment like chiropractic adjustments allow.
Tune in to our live videos this month on Instagram. And if not live, we always post them to our Facebook.