#20 "It's All In The Head"; How Chiropractic Can Help Your Child's Development? With Pediatric Chiropractic Expert Dr. Rosen

Did you ever think of taking your kid to chiropractic due to developmental delays?
So what's chiropractic has to do with the brain and child development?
How does a child's nervous system work?
How chiropractic can help your kid?

Dr. Rosen is an expert in pediatric chiropractic.  For over 40 years he has maintained a private practice and has traveled nationally and internationally teaching chiropractic techniques, pediatrics, cranial adjusting, chiropractic philosophy, and practice management.

In today's episode, we focused on the book “It’s All in the Head”, which was written by Dr.Rosen and his wife Dr. Nancy Watson. The book informs and brings awareness of the implications of growth and developmental challenges in the early stages of childhood development. Dr. Rosen and I discussed how chiropractic can empower parents with the ability to understand normal developmental milestones and to recognize problems in the earliest stages allowing them to seek appropriate care before problems become intrenched and create diagnosable di-ease processes.
For more information, check-in Dr. Rosen's website,  and connect by email.

Related episode:

• How To Form Healthy Habits And Raise Calmer Kids? With Michelle Cole
• How Can You Help Build Your Child's Resiliency? With Dr. Mortimer

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Transcript

Tammy Afriat: 0:00

Hello Martin. How are you today?

Martin Rosen: 0:02

Very well,Tammy, and I thank you for having me on your podcast. I appreciate it. Help me get the word out and talk to people.

Tammy Afriat: 0:08

thank you for coming. I think the topic we have today is so important cuz so many times we are waiting to see some symptoms and then we think, Oh, what's going on here? But I think what's special about your book is that it kind of gives you the signs before you even, think something is really happening. So before we dive in, I want to ask you and typically parents associate chiropractic with back, pains, , joint pains, but you actually focus on the neurological system and the abnormal. And I want to ask you, can you please explain to us what's the relationship between chiropractic and neurological system?

Martin Rosen: 0:51

Well, it's actually really simple when you think about it is the bones are protective. Mechanism cranium, the spine, the pelvis, it all protects. Us bones are basically protective and they help us move, and they help us stand against gravity, but underneath the bones, the system they're protecting is a nervous system. So yes, when a misalignment occurs or there's irritation of this trauma, there's pain at the localized spot, but that pain is also mitigated through the nervous system. If you didn't have nerves, you wouldn't feel. So even simple things like pain go through the entire nervous system. Your entire life is lived through your central nervous system. Everything you do, think, say, eat, speak, smell, taste, anything that happens to you is mitigated through the nervous system. So when we talk about the spine or the cranium moving outta place and causing pain, Pain is like the warnings light. You know, it's like in your car you have those warning lights that go off. You just starting to get low in oil and all of a sudden , we call 'em idiot lights go on. Well, pain is that idiot light. It's like, Hey. There's something wrong here. You're not paying attention to it. Which is why as chiropractors, especially pediatric chiropractors, our whole goal is to allow that system to function optimally regardless of symptoms or not. We want to keep sharing., it's like going to the dentist and having your teeth clean. Every time you go to the dentist you go, Oh, I hope I have a cavity today. You know, I hope he has to do a root. No, you keep up maintenance before the symptom occurs. Well, the same thing is true with your spine. You wanna make sure it's functioning right, because it's protecting the nervous system. And if the spine isn't functioning right, then the underlying system that it's protecting is not functioning right. And that's your central nervous system.

Tammy Afriat: 2:24

I get that it's all about prevention

Martin Rosen: 2:27

it's all about prevention and optimum function. And optimum function, not just prevention, but also maintaining optimum. It's no different when you exercise, right? People exercise for a variety of reasons, but one of the reasons we exercise is to keep healthy, keep our muscles toned., not because, you know, something may break down. Well, it's the same thing. We want to make sure, especially in the infant, that first two years of life, when the nervous system is developing more rapidly than it ever will before, that we're laying down a proper foundation for their growth and development. So we're literally laying down the foundation in the first two years of life for your central nervous system that you're gonna live with the rest of.

Tammy Afriat: 3:01

So can you please describe how does a child nerve system works?

Martin Rosen: 3:07

Well, it works exactly like an adult nervous system. The difference is in the first two years of life, it's. So everything, It's like if you take a computer, right? We have a computer and it has a certain amount of hard drive. It has a certain amount of memory, it has a graphic scar. You buy a computer, you take it home and you put the software in, and that's what makes it work. Like the program we're using now as opposed to another program online. Well, the same thing as with a child when they're born, they have all the raw materials that they need and what has happening in those first, actually six years, but more so in the first years, they're taking all the information and making connections, what we call synapses. The nerves are connecting to other nerves to make pathways., gray matter and white matter is growing, so the input that you give to the child, whatever the environmental input, all their internal inputs build that nervous system. So I happen to have here. How about this little baby's head? And the reason I use this is because people think of a skull as solid. So when we look at adult skull, what we have here, it's much more solid. But there's still movement in what we call these sutures. But in an infant skull, these soft spots that you feel and these sutures, the whole idea of this infant skull in the first year of life is to allow the brain to grow 101. That's it. Doubles in size and this very back part of the brain here called the cerebellum, which would be like your mainframe computer that processes all the information that comes from the environment in your. Grows 240% in the first year. So any interference to the way this system works or the way you're allowed the brain to develop the cranium itself to grow can affect the nervous system. It's no different that if you have a mainframe computer in your house or in your business, and then you have all these peripherals, if the mainframe computer, which happens to be this, Does it work? Then the peripherals are useless, and that's how the nervous system doing in the first two years. It's processing, processing, building, building those pathways called synapses. Their peak developmental period of time is eight months, so they're growing that fast and you're forming all these synapses. That you're gonna use for the rest of your life. So the nervous system is the input output system. In the beginning it's very reflexive and we talk about, in the book, we talk about, and we'll probably get the primary reflexes and the purpose of those reflexes. Cuz in the beginning, the child can't make cognitive decisions. So their whole being is reflexive and that puts what., just like animals in the wild, they have a protective mechanism. Reflexes. So if they hear a sound or if they hear a noise or something scares them, they can react to that. Well, the same thing happens with babies. And what happens is as you get older, those primary reflexes opposed to go away as your front of your brain develops. When you can start to make cognitive decisions like, Oh, that noise was a pot falling. Oh, that was my mom yelling. You know? It's like those kind of things start to integrate into your nervous system. So yeah, that's how, it's forming so fast in those first two years of life.

Tammy Afriat: 5:52

So what I'm getting is that. As soon as the baby born, the material is there, but the program is not fully updated. So that's what happening in the first two years, but then also until six years

Martin Rosen: 6:05

Yeah. It integrates up to about age six. You kind of have what I want to call, maybe you're an adult functioning nervous system, obviously not emotionally, intellectually, but how the system works, how it patterns itself, how it plays, how it reacts to environments. By age six, that is pretty much pre-programmed into.

Tammy Afriat: 6:23

Got it. So your book called, It's All in the Head and where you actually. Explaining what could be the abnormalities that points that there is a problem., So what could be the signs that point to have an abnormal

Martin Rosen: 6:41

Sure. So one, one of the things we see very often in our practice is, especially if parents have more than one kid, is they'll bring in their child You know, if moms are obviously very intuitive and they'll go, I just don't feel like Johnny's like acting right. He's not doing what his brother did. And it's not about comparing one kid to another, but there are certain pre-pro. Things that's supposed to happen, like there are certain milestones that you're supposed to go through. You're supposed to be able to pick your head up by one month, supposed to be able to roll over between three and four months. Then you're supposed to. Then crawl, then stand, then walk. These all build on each other. These milestones are developed cause they're pre-programmed into the nervous system and they all depend on each other. Not only are there motor skills involved in these, but actually sensory and emotional skills. So when you get to a different milestone, you open up your world. For example, when you're on your stomach and the first thing you do is pick your head up, you're world. Then when you can roll over by yourself, your world expands more, and then when you can sit up, you're, you know, and it keeps going. Then when you can walk. So kids develop their nervous system and they develop their emotional responses at the same time they're doing these milestones. So if parents start to notice that either milestones aren't being reached, They're skipping or, or during certain milestones, their kid is reacting very, Let's say they lose, they're not able to sleep. They're becoming very irritable. All of a sudden, let's say you had this perfect little baby at three, four months of age and you know they're eating well and they were sleeping well, and then all of a sudden around six months of age, they started to get very irritable. Their sleep patterns change., there might be some glitch in their nervous system that they're not able to adapt to. So that's one thing. The milestones. The other thing a refl. There are primal reflex that I just talked about that come when you're born. Then they change as you get older. And then by age two, all those reflexes are gone cuz by age two, the front part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex is starting to work better. So if you have a child that still has a very hyperactive starter reflex, you know, cries at , the smallest sound, and they're 18, 19 months, those reflexes should be gone. So hypersensitivity is one of the things obviously we see a lot of kids with, you know, digestive issues. That's a very common thing that you see that the nervous system isn't working correctly cuz it mitigates what's called the autonomic nervous system, your digestive system. So changes in behavior, changes in feeding patterns,, basically inability to reach certain miles , developmental delays that you see and just a whole change, especially if you see all of a sudden a change in your child's personality or attitudes. That's a sign that there could be something wrong and there could be something going on. On the physical level, on the outside level., things like head shape, it's very common. So if you see a head that is misshape in that one, we would call like flat head syndrome, where the back of the head is very wide or fla, cep, where the head is almost distorted, kind of looks like a, you know, one side is growing longer than the other. Those kind of signs tell you that there may be another underlying issue. Also, when your baby is creeping, crawling, or sitting up and they have issues balancing one way, or if they could only turn one way, or when you see them creep and crawl, they put one hip up. These are just physical signs. Like if you were walking down the street and you saw a person limping, you'd go, Oh, that person's hurting. Well, if you see a baby that can't crawl, or one hip is high and they're crawling awkward, There's probably a sign that there's some compensatory pattern. So as you're watching your child grow, it's obviously harder for people who've only had one, you know, their first child, cuz they don't see it. But if you start to see glitches, and I totally, totally trust mother's intuition. They know when something's wrong. One of the things that happens in our practice is moms will come in. and they'll say, you know, Johnny's four or five years old and he has a diagnosis, whatever it be, maybe on the spectrum, neurological, developmental, Liz, whatever the diagnosis is. When you ask the mom, you say, Well, did you ever notice anything wrong with Johnny's? Almost always the mom will say, you know, by the time he was 18 months, I had a sense. That there was something wrong, and it's not till the symptom or what we call the idiot light goes off that they get the diagnosis. So our job as pediatric chiropractors is to find out where those glitches are. So at four or five, there isn't a symptom, there isn't a diagnosis. That's our kind of purpose.

Tammy Afriat: 10:43

I get that. Yeah. Cuz sometimes, especially with the, for example, high functioning autism spectrum, you don't see the milestones as early on. But then your book is coming and it could be really helpful to support the child where he needs, because this, diagnosis could come before observe the delays. So that's great. I want to ask, in terms of timing, What is the latest age that you recommend for diagnosis? Like if I am a mom and I felt ever since my child was born that, you know, something was wrong, but now he's five years old, is it too late?

Martin Rosen: 11:20

not. So sooner is better, but I have people who are teenagers that come in., I had a little boy actually, he came in when he was very little., his little baby was having digestive issues. He got under care, he got better. His parents, whatever reason, stopped coming in., about seven years later, they came in because , he started to have really bad symptoms. He was a toe walker. He wasn't able to interact. He had had all his social issues. We had seen the patterns earlier. They just chose not to come in. So they came in at age seven. We took care of 'em. I have another little girl, similar. She was 18 months of age. She had a lot of issues and problems got bad. Her parents didn't come in. Now at age 13, they discovered she had a scoliosis and was having seizures. She came back in. She's under care right now. She just had her last EEG a little while ago. There's no more seizure activity. The curvature is getting better, so there's no time. I mean, I've taken care of. Literally on age 100 and I've taken care of people at the day they were born. So if you started learning a language at age two, It would be much easier than you start to learn language at age 22. And that's just the way it is. So there's no wrong time. There's no too late time. It's usually what'll happen is the treatment protocols and the intensity will be longer for, let's say a seven year old than for a three month old. I've had seven year olds on the spectrum that, you know, all their neurological things have changed, so there's no time that is too late. And it's also, if you miss it for some reason, it's really not your fault. You know, it's not, It's like I'm not a car mechanic. If something breaks in my car and I bring it in and the guy goes, Hey, that's been going on for three months. It's like, Oh, I'm not a mechanic. I drove my car. I'm sorry. You know, you're a parent. You trying to take care of your child. If someone helps you or tells you or you notice something, I get referrals from people who will, like patients of mine. One, I got this one referral once. This, it was a Halloween. This patient was trick or treating. Had her little baby who I had taken care of, had all kinds of neurologic issues. When the other parents came to the door, the mom , who was under care with her baby, noticed that the child who was 18 months was kind of not right, and she started talking to the mom and said, Oh yeah, we're having some child. And we brought him to the doctor and they said, Oh yeah, he is behind, but he'll catch up. She talked to them, had him come into my. And so , they were told that 18 months the kid wasn't rolling over, wasn't sitting up there, , they were told he'll catch up and the parent, because another parent had seen it and given her support, was able to come in and we could start to work on the child. So timeframe, whenever you can get there, we will help you. obviously soon is better, which is why what you talked about earlier, we're looking really at preventative and maintenance care. We'd love to get your child checked just to see if they're okay, regardless of the symptoms. And just like if you go to your dentist, you get your teeth cleaned and they say, Fine, your teeth are great. You go see you in six months. Well, the same thing. If I check your child and say their nervous system's doing great, why don't we see 'em at their next milestone, which will be three months from now? Bring 'em in in three months, You know? And if we find a problem, we can address. Then quicker and easier.

Tammy Afriat: 14:20

So, please tell me what's the process? What do you do in the clinic to diagnose?

Martin Rosen: 14:25

Right. So in chiropractic with pediatrics, it's a specialty. That's what we teach my wife and I, Dr. Nancy Watson. We run a company called Petite Peak Potential Institute, and we train chiropractors., we do adults as well, but our focus is pediatrics and we put a child through an entire. So part of the exam is a regular neurological exam. We check reflexes, we make sure the milestones are going okay. Then we do palpation., check the spine, check the muscles, check the cranium, and then we run 'em through some neurological tests depending on their age. The neurological tests are set for specific age groups. and then we have a whole set of specific chiropractic tests that are neurological indicators that tell us when they're imbalances in the spine and the nervous system is not responding. So on the first visit, it's an exam we take, probably depends on the child and the. Let's say somewhere around a half hour, we take a complete case history. Then we do our exam, and then what we do is we correlate the exam. We have the parent come back on the second visit, and on the second visit we sit down with them. Explain what the exam findings are, explain what we found, and then we help set up a treatment program with them that we wanna set up over either the next couple of weeks or months, depending on the condition. and then we make what we call adjustments. Now I want to talk one thing about adjustments. Adjustments to the pediatric practice. Are extremely, extremely safe. Matter of fact, if you go through the literature, it is one of the safest interventions that you could do because the adjustment is not like you see on YouTube with adults. We don't twist or crack little Davies, we use about four to six ounces of pressure to make the corrections. So it's actually, and I don't know if it's a good thing to say out loud, but it's actually safer to adjust an infant than it is to adjust an adult because the amount of force you're using is so much. But the trick between the pediatric practice is specificity. We try to be very specific, put as little input as possible because the nervous system is developing faster. So it's extremely safe, it's extremely comprehensive, and we have checkpoints along the way. So if you were to come into my office with your baby, and let's say I wanted to see you for three months during that period of time, I would do at least two, what we call progress. to check number one back with you to make sure this changes. But number two, to make sure the neurological patterns and the indicators that we found are changing in a positive way. So we're always checking along the way to make sure what we're doing is not causing harm, but is actually making a forward progress in the baby's nervous system and development

Tammy Afriat: 16:49

Well, this is. Mind blowing for me cuz I was aware of going to, you know, maybe behavioral therapist or OT or those kind of things. So I'm trying to understand the whole picture. How is your practice integrate? Do you do your work and that's it? Or do I as a parent needs to have some kind of a whole support system for my child?

Martin Rosen: 17:13

So the answer is maybe, , depending on how your child is developing. So in our office at different points of time. Right now I've in practice 40 years, so I'm what I would call semi-retired., so we have a much kind of smaller practice base, but in the past, if you had a child that was brought in, had neurological issues, I had other people in my office who actually could work with them. We used to work with a place called the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia, and they have programs, neurological programs, So I would have a person in my office that would help set them up. Now, I don't have those secondary people and I don't need them because there are so many people out there that we could refer to. So odd job as the. Is to open up the pathways. Their job with OTs, PTs, and, and you know, speech therapists and all that is, once the pathways are open is to retrain the nervous system. So the best way can I explain it is if you dislocate your shoulder, okay, and it's damaged first, the shoulder has to get back into place and heal, and then you can rehabilitate it. So what we do is we deal with the underlying. What I hear all the time from OTs and PTs and speech therapists is that once a child is under chiropractic care, they can't believe how much faster the child is going is progressing. Sometimes I'll say, Wow, in this last three weeks within child study care, I've made a leap of six months that I wasn't even doing before. So the idea behind chiropractic is to get the underlying system working. And then depending again, number one, let's say on a progress exam, I find that the pattern is changed, the neurological pattern change, but the symptoms aren't changing fast enough. Then I may address the parent, either one or two things. I may give 'em some simple exercises that I still use if I think that's enough. If not, then I'll refer them out, you know, to an ot, a PT, or a speech therapist or whatever it is, so that they can work to help rebuild the tissue, basically go rebuild the pathways. Once we open 'em up., you have to think about it, that we are creating neurological pathways, and those pathways then have to be, worked on health. So for example, if you take a little baby, right, and put that little baby in a dark room and you go in there, you know, four times a day, nurse the baby or feed the baby and just keep that baby in a dark room. What's gonna happen is that baby's nervous system would be very, very underdeveloped. Even if the pathways are clear, there's no input. So it's not gonna change. So what we do is once we've got the pathways clear, sometimes depending on the case, we need people to help put that input in so that the nervous system can then develop properly and can make those new pathways. So we're clearing the path and like I said, the answer is. Because depending on how the neurological development occurs, and depending on how the child's symptomatology change, sometimes we need other interventions, sometimes we don't, but we check that all the way so that we can help the parent facilitate that.

Tammy Afriat: 19:58

So It seems that your intervention just speeding up the process of,, achieving those milestones because you sort of taking care of, , paving the roads and then other, , treatment should kind

Martin Rosen: 20:11

Ys. What I'm

Tammy Afriat: 20:11

cars in there and so the

Martin Rosen: 20:14

about milestones

Tammy Afriat: 20:14

be fully develop.

Martin Rosen: 20:17

Right. Well, the idea is to help facilitate that neurological development. If there are skip milestones or delayed milestones, or retain reflexes, whatever they are, what we do underneath to that nervous system helps make the body more adaptable. And more easily retrained. It's kind of, that's the whole purpose. It's anything else. Even when you're talking about sports, you know, people talk about sports, chiropractic, you know, golf's a big thing. Or athletes, when they use chiropractic, they use chiropractic to help facilitate their nervous system working as best as possible. So when they train, they get the Optum usage out of their training. So a lot of pro athletes use car. In the same way increase the function of the nervous system so that when you do the other training, your system is vacuum more adaptable

Tammy Afriat: 21:00

So when do you think a parent should take the kids to see a

Martin Rosen: 21:05

Actually, ideally, depending on the birth or just because of the birth, the best time to get your child checked is the first seven to 10 days is just to see if the birth process itself was traumatic. So , again, it's one of those cases, it sooner or better, , I used to, when I was practicing full time, sometimes they'd go to people's houses if they had home births to check their. People bring their child into us, , right after the hospital, especially if it's been a traumatic birth, like a c-section delivery or vacuum or forceps., they'll bring the child in within the first week. So the sooner the better to get your child checked., if that is not something that you can do at that point in time, then like you said, two months, three months, it doesn't matter., we like to see it earlier than better, but we're checking the child. Just like when you go to the pediatrician, if the child is. They do a check, they check your child, they measure their height, they measure their head, they take their weight. You know, they do a pre-check to make sure that they don't see anything particularly that's a problem. Well, chiropractic is dealing with the spine and the nervous system, so we're doing kind of the same thing. We're trying to check to make sure there's no problem. Was,

Tammy Afriat: 22:10

I get that you are saying you better go and check your kid with a her practic as and the sooner is better cuz it could help to make sure your son is on the right track.

Martin Rosen: 22:41

Absolutely, yes. It's about maintaining function, heading off any particular problems that are going on, and creating an optimum nervous system so that the child, as they develop in those first couple years of life, has the best foundation they possibly can get.

Tammy Afriat: 22:55

That sounds awesome. Thank you so much for this mind blowing interview, We'll have on the show note all the links to your website and the book, so, . Thank you so much for being with us

Martin Rosen: 23:07

Thank you very much, Tammy