Few issues are as emotive or as important as that of our smallest practice members – our kids. While caring for children is a great honour to a chiropractor, it is also usually quite different to caring for adults. Not only are we dealing with different tensile strengths and gentler adjusting methods, but different presenting concerns. High on parents’ lists of concerns can be things like digestion, sleep and supporting normal development. For chiropractors though, there is a strong appreciation for the potential power of supporting the brain and nervous system during the years that set a child up for life.
That’s what makes a recent paper so fascinating. In a retrospective analytical study looking at 37 children who were receiving subluxation-based chiropractic care, the focus fell on a group of presentations the authors termed to be neuro-deflective disorders.
What is this though? “If a child’s developmental trajectory is altered during early life, this may impact the tools they develop to engage, learn, and connect with their world that leads to less efficient tools being used, which we refer to as a Neuro-Deflective Disorder™,” the authors explained. They went on to state that “We know that subluxation can alter input, increasing afferent input to the nervous system, lowering adaptive thresholds, and creating hypersensitivity to ‘normal’ stimuli. [1]”
Put plainly, subluxation can alter input going from the body back to the brain, and change the way the brain processes these, thus lowering our ability to adapt to the world around us. The nervous system may handle this by developing hypersensitivity to things we would usually deem normal.
This essentially explains the heart of why chiropractic is so important for young nervous systems. All of our output – things like movement, cognition, the way we experience life as well as process and integrate stimuli from inside and outside of our bodies – is dependent on our input and its processing and integration. It logically follows that we can infer the functionality of the nervous system and the relationship between our internal and external environments from measuring our output. Therefore, it makes sense why supporting burgeoning nervous systems is such a passion for so many chiropractors.
But let’s talk about the present study and the issue of Neuro-Deflective Disorders.
The study took a cohort of 37 paediatric patients, all of whom were under chiropractic care for subluxation. It was a retrospective analysis, meaning it looked at the patients, their presentations and their results after the fact. The results of the study were derived from wholly paediatric patients with neuro-deflective disorders seen at one chiropractic office. All patients received chiropractic care for vertebral subluxations found through clinical findings. Multiple objective and subjective measures were utilised to monitor their outcomes.
Average care plan lengths were four months for the first and second care plans, and three months for the third. For those that completed a fourth care plan, two months was the average. Each care plan was individualised for the patient, so not every patient went through all four reviews. The majority of the 37 made it through two care plans.
While the full study (which includes significant discussion points and is well worth a full read) can be found at the reference below, here are some key takeaways in terms of results:
- All patients showed improvement in autonomic nervous system balance and subluxation patterns following the correction of subluxation. The use of clinical and educational tools to support a healthy development was emphasised.
- The researchers noted improved efficiency in processing, engagement, learning and connection to the patients’ surroundings.
- The findings were recorded through clinical outcomes, as well as parent surveys which provided insight into the daily activities of the participants.
- Some of the exam outcomes included the presence of primitive reflexes, gross and fine motor skills, auditory verbal skills, eye movement and visual cognitive skills. These were all gauged according to the participants’ age and where their development was expected to be for their age.
Notable results included the following:
- 33% of participants showed improvement in the measure of primitive reflexes.
- 46% of participants showed improvement in the measure of gross motor skills.
- 15% of participants showed improvement in the measure of fine motor skills. While this is still a high percentage for improved fine motor skills, it is the lowest outcome of all reported outcomes in the study.
- 37% of participants showed improvement in the measure of auditory/verbal outcomes.
- 67% of participants showed improvement in the measure of eye movements.
- 25% of participants showed improvement in the measure of visual cognition.
- There was a steady improvement in learning outcomes across the four consecutive care plans, with the overall average improvement for all plans of care being 64.8%.
- The overall average improvement for intra/interpersonal skills outcomes was 74.12%
- Sensory outcomes’ overall average improvement was 62.60%
- General health outcomes’ overall average improvement was 47.92%
What do the authors have to say about the outcomes?
As each child grows and develops, they gain skills that act as tools to help them process, engage, learn, and communicate with the world. Each skill added to the artillery allows them to integrate information more efficiently and allows the progressive sophistication of those skills. When interference was removed, through correcting subluxation, improvements were seen in each of the categories of interest as more undistorted information was collected, processed, and contributed to further development.
The authors remarked that “It is assumed that children involved in this study suffer from neurological interference caused by subluxation that may contribute to their Neuro-Deflective Disorders™. This neurological interference has hindered the development of the child/adult, interfering with their body’s ability to process, engage, learn, and connect with the world around them. Chiropractors correct vertebral subluxations in an attempt to remove neurological interference. It can be hypothesised that allowing unaltered nerve impulse information up and down the spinal cord to the brain, thus creating more neurological integration, permits the body to better process, engage, learn, and communicate with the world around it, thus, moving children more efficiently through developmental trajectories.”
Put more simply, this goes to the heart of chiropractic and applies it to the young, developing nervous systems whose progress during these pivotal years may affect the for the rest of their lives.
Every study has limitations, which in the world of research simply means “things for subsequent studies to look at.” In this case, only 6% of participants made it through to the fourth re-evaluation, meaning the results from this final group are less reliable and representative of the original sample population than previous re-evaluations. Additionally, it wasn’t a controlled study, meaning it is difficult to account for ‘normal’ changes that may have occurred within that timeframe. This is something captured in the authors’ remark, “Although some of these improvements could be attributed to normal developmental trajectory changes over the plan of care, as a whole body of change, the results from the chiropractic care removing neurological interference are remarkable for these participants. The changes in developmental tools and quality of life cannot be discounted.”
This study is a step towards better understanding the role neurological interference plays in neuro-deflective disorders and development, and of course the potential benefits of subluxation-based care for children. We look forward to seeing what else emerges in literature when it comes to neuro-deflective disorders and to paediatric neurodevelopment under chiropractic care.
Reference:
- Hock, S. & Spoelstra, A. Improved Brain Development in 37 Children Undergoing Chiropractic Care for Correction of Vertebral Subluxation: A Retrospective Analysis of Health Outcomes. J. Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health. 2022;86-94.
