So I frequently get the question, why do you adjust babies? I thought babies were perfect, just as they are. If you come to my office on any given day, there are dozens and dozens of kids running around. It's mayhem sometimes. Fingerprints all over the windows, pen marks on the adjusting tables, like that's exactly how we want it. Now don't give them the Sharpie. If your kids come in here, don't hand them the Sharpie. But there's a new mark on a special adjusting table. I was so happy when I saw it. When little Harlan drew that on there, he was so precious. That's just the way it is. We love kids, but why do we need to see kids if their spines are so healthy and so perfect?

First, I'm going to tell you about a study done in 2015 in a hospital in Washington. A group of osteopaths they're licensed as medical doctors in the US, but they also but some of them use their hands. So traditionally, osteopathy is kind of similar to chiropractic. So anyway, these doctors did a study on every single newborn who was born in the hospital on this one day. There were approximately 140 births during that day. If the babies had any respiratory distress or low Apgar scores or severe problems, they were left them out of the study, so they weren't even included. So they took, there were 100 births that they called healthy, normal births. Out of those 100, they assessed their spines and looked for subluxations. What a subluxation is, is a spinal vertebra out of alignment choking off life through the body. So out of a hundred babies that they assessed, guess how many had subluxated spines? It was 99 out of the 100 had subluxations from birth. So what causes these subluxations? God knows how to build babies. He knows how to build a birthing process.

Well, number one, we interfere a lot with that birthing process, but number two, inside the womb, especially if the mother was not under regular chiropractic care during her pregnancy, the womb, gosh, most all the ligaments of the uterus attached to the spine and the pelvis. So when the spine and pelvis in the mom are distorted, the baby is distorted in the womb, and if the baby is in a breech presentation, their precious, perfect little spines can be bent up and kinked into all sorts of unusual positions. And if that's not enough, when the baby's head is presenting, the doctors will pull or twist, often using forceps or vacuum extraction pull and twist on the spine very severely. We see this very regularly. C-sections are even worse. The doctors try to cut a small incision when they pull the baby out. It's a lot of force to pull a baby against those strong muscles. By the way, sorry guys, but do you know what the strongest muscle in the human body is? It's not your glutes or your pecs, or your quads. It's a woman's uterus. That's the strongest muscle in the human body.

Go, women! So anyway, babies get subluxated from birth. Multiple studies, some studies have said 80%, some 90, and some 99. There have been multiple studies on this but what we found is that these subluxations interfere with the normal development of a child. When the spine is misaligned, it chokes off life from the brain to the body. Traditional chiropractic it's been around for 128 years now, but what we used to think is that most of the subluxation, the problem is from the brain flow, the brain-to-body communication being cut off. That is a very true and very big problem, but what we're learning now more in newborns, but in all of us really, is that the problem is not just from the brain to body, okay? Which we call efferent but from the body to the brain, which we call afferent. So the biggest problem is that the brain is losing its normal input. So what happens to a child? Most movements of a baby are reflexes for the beginning. So one of the things we do when we examine a newborn, which we do very, very regularly, is we look for normal reflexes being present such as a rooting reflex. As you may know, we stimulate the cheek, and the baby turns the head.

Gallant reflexes, which is an early crawling reflex, stroke up the spine. The leg should pull up on that side. We do a lot of reflex checks. The brain does not control movements in the baby in the beginning because the brain hasn't developed the capacity yet to control those movements and regulate those movements. So what happens is normal reflex movements from being touched by parents as they begin to crawl and lie down in their crib. These reflex movements actually stimulate the brain to grow. So what happens is that most people think that the brain is just a blob up in the head, but it's not. It's actually a blob on a stick. Okay? So the blob on a stick, as these limbs move the lower limbs, I am not an artist, but I'm an awesome chiropractor, so as these limbs move, they send signals up into the brain. In the beginning, they developed this back part called the cerebellum. This is involved in the development of motion, motor coordination, and conscious proprioception of the body, so this part develops first. As more signals come up into here, the brain develops, responding to these signals from the movement of the body. The brain will develop normally only if the signals are getting from the properly moving limbs up into the brain. The brain develops from the bottom up and from the back forward.

So critical development of all brain functions comes from not just proper movement of the limbs but proper communication from these limbs up through the spinal cord into the brain. If these limbs don't move correctly or if something interferes with the communication from the limbs to the brain, the brain will not develop normally. There are tons of kids who have all sorts of health problems because of these misalignments, these subluxations in the spine again. 99 out of 100 born in a hospital on one day that were studied were subluxated from birth. That means they will never have a chance at normal breathing, emotional, digestive, and immunologic development.

Every cell, tissue, and organ in the body depends on communication from the body to the brain and then from the brain to the body. The brain is going to regulate the development of all those organs. So people wonder why? We've seen thousands of miracles in babies from simply adjusting the spine. How will popping the neck cause a miracle in the body? It won't. But restoring normal communication from the body to the brain and the brain to the body will create all sorts of miracles in that child. We believe here that every child deserves to live at 100% of their God-given life and potential. And with abnormal spinal motion and abnormal spinal alignment, they have no chance of it. So we check newborns because the vast majority of them are subluxated from birth and will not develop normally, and when we restore life, I have a... It's not here in this room. We have a testimonial book this thick many of which are babies. We stopped collecting them a while ago because there are so many who are now breathing normally, who now have normal digestive systems that can keep food down, who are suddenly thriving, growing developing normally, who have no more... Whining and crying, who are sleeping normally, who are normally crawling. Crawling is an incredibly important reflex for developing this brain-body communication.

So if you still need to check your infant, get your infant checked. If you don't live near us, call my office, message me, or do whatever. I'll find the best chiropractor in your town. It's worth traveling anywhere you need to go see a proper chiropractor. Most chiropractors are pretty good at adjusting newborns. Now, as they develop, they start to get older, they start to walk and crawl, and posture is going to be incredibly important. So if you did not have your child checked as a newborn, don't judge yourself. There's no condemnation; we do our best with what we know and have. So if your child's already 12 or 13 years old, let's check them as soon as possible, before puberty hits if possible, because once puberty hits, their spine starts to fuse, and we don't want them fused, kinked up or subluxated or with scoliosis. It is so much easier to treat abnormal posture and abnormal alignment the earlier we catch it.

And when I first started practice 25 years ago, kids had some pretty gnarly postures, pretty misaligned subluxated postures. Think of it now. Do you think now they're better or worse than they were 25 years ago? Hint hint, hint text neck, so much screen time. It is an epidemic. It is a pandemic. We recently had a pandemic of a germ that seems so so severe. We have a major pandemic of abnormal posture shutting down immune systems and every system in the body. If we can realign the earlier, the better. We need to check and x-ray most kids. It's critical that we get x-rays and do a thorough analysis of their posture because if we can train their bodies to grow correctly, they will be healthy when they get older. So that's why we check so many children. Again if you haven't had yours checked, it's time to get your grandkids checked. If you're watching this and you're a grandma or grandpa, tell your kids, even if they're in Timbuktu, to get little Donnie checked. Get them checked. It's so so so important. So if we can help you facilitate this in any way, call our office to get your child, your neighbor's child, your cousin, your grandchild, or whoever checked. And again, we'll help you find the best doc in your area if you need a good one that you know. So thank you so much for watching. I hope that answers why we check so many kids.