Autism Awareness Month! What you need to know

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Hey everybody, it’s Dr. B and Elizabeth here and thank you Chiropractic Care for giving us this opportunity to share our message. I’m Monica Berger and this is my pal Elizabeth and we are from the Academy of Neurodevelopmental Practices to talk to you today about chiropractic and autism. Elizabeth is going to take a short nap here while we hang out and we’re going to talk about Autism Awareness Month coming up in April.

Yes, we’re dressed in our Valentine’s Day clothes, but we’re giving you plenty of time to plan for Autism Awareness Month. What do you need to know? First of all, Elizabeth is going to take a short nap and she’ll come back with us at the end. Chiropractic and autism, what can we say? Can chiropractors treat autism?

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No, that’s not what we do. Can we potentially help the behavioral characteristics? That come with kiddos that they struggle with that may have a a diagnosis of autism. Yes. So let’s talk about those hammer that out. First of all, there one in 36 kiddos back in 2020 were said to have autism. That was based on eight year olds from just specific States within the United States, that number now is more reflective of one in 33.

From three year olds to eight year olds based off the 2022 statistics So we’ve got one in three kiddos one in 33 kiddos struggling On the autism spectrum, what is the number one predictor of interest, the number one marker, the number one thing that they’re looking at that might tell us early on the kiddo will struggle later on with a neural developmental disorder, like autism, that number one thing is poor motor patterns, fine and gross motor skills.

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Lack of these skills or poor motor skills. So as chiropractors, this is something that we should just. Red flag go up in our brains. Why are these kiddos struggling early on with development of poor motor skills? And that’s where we can shine when we work with these little kiddos that are struggling. So kiddos on the spectrum are known to be a more clumsy, have a harder time adapting and moving in their environment, have hard time holding pencils Buttoning clothes, et cetera, et cetera.

If they have vertebral subluxations, if there’s a lack of good information from the body coming up to the brain for the brain, basically to calculate what the body needs to adapt to their environment, to carry out these skills, then there’s a disconnect between the brain and the body and the brain.

That’s where we come in as chiropractors. We’re removing the interference. From the messages coming from the body so that the body can now better adapt to its environment. So autism, other neurodevelopment disorders, it’s their expressive, their behavioral expression that can change when that interference is removed, when the vertebral subluxations is moved.

So it takes you as a practitioner to understand and be able to have a keen eye. On these developmental motor patterns, what are we looking for? First of all, in the first few months of life, we’re looking for these reflexive jerky bilateral motor movement patterns. That means they’re not purposeful in the first few months.

They can be symmetrical or asymmetrical, right? They’re moving their arms and legs, but not with an intent, not within a purpose. As your nervous system starts to mature. And they’re getting out of that primitive blank brain and these movements are not reflexive in nature, like our primitive reflexes.

Higher areas of the brain start to take over and these motor movement patterns become more intentional, more purposeful, and that’s what we look for. And then they cruise on into proper tummy time and we’ve talked about it, many times before we talk about it in our academy these progressive motor tummy time patterns.

By the age of three months, they should be holding their head up in a 90 degree fashion and then they go into pushing up etc. Proper rolling patterns, proper sitting patterns, all these progressive motor patterns are should be in line with a developing, a proper healthy developing nervous system.

How do we take this and explain this to our parents? What does that look like? We’re going to talk about three buckets. Okay. How can chiropractic help a child with a neurodevelopmental struggle like autism? Three buckets. All three buckets have equal amount of weight in them. Okay. Bucket number one is our research bucket.

You can, this is basically to make your life easy, use the evidence based model of care. And these are the three buckets. Bucket what? Mom, dad, we know Jimmy is struggling with a diagnosis of autism and upon my evaluation, I noticed that he was unable to skip, jump whatever that motor command is that you were looking for.

We, in our profession, in, in the chiropractic profession, the research that we have, we basically, for the, for autism, for any disorder you’re dealing with, whether it’s ADD, autism low back pain, whatever, you’re going to use that first bucket and basically explain the research that we have to support chiropractic and that, whatever.

So in chiropractic, we don’t have. We don’t have enough research. We don’t have any research really saying that chiropractic can help with autism. Everybody take a deep breath. Hold on because we’re going to get to a second bucket. Hang on. But there is research that’s looking at poor motor ability, poor motor patterns.

As being a indicator that a child may later on struggle with autism and you can give them that research. You can give them the research on poor motor control, poor postural control, and the relationship to autism. Go look it up. There’s plenty of it out there. Now we overflow to bucket number 2. This is where everybody can take a deep breath as a chiropractor.

But what we, that bucket number two is basically your own experiences with dealing with that population group. So we don’t have any research to support that chiropractic helps with autism per se. However, bucket number two is in my experience, in my 34 years of clinical practice, I have worked with many of these children.

And what I have seen was. They can better adapt to their environment. They can move better through space. They can sit better in class. They can they know when to go to the bathroom. Okay, their body, their brain can register now when they have to go to the bathroom. What are all those great things that you see when these kiddos are under your care?

And then you can bring in, and we have case studies that also, or other practitioners have also seen the same thing. Here are some case studies. That were that kind of go along with what I’ve seen in my practice, go to the ICPA website. I believe they have plenty of studies out there, not plenty, but they have some studies out there supporting what practitioners have seen as a case study when they’re working with these kiddos, give them that information.

And then we flow into our third bucket. And our third bucket is mom, dad, grandma, grandpa, caregivers, whoever’s there. What are your wishes and wants? Okay, what are your wishes and wants for Johnny? Now, I know that you’ve been prescribed some Risperidone. Risperidone for sleep and anger issues or what have you.

Now, I’m sure that they have told you the benefits but also the risks with Risperidone. It is, a powerful drug and you give them the risk factors with that. Because there’s plenty with a lot of these medications and I know Johnny’s doing speech and OT and PT and those are all phenomenal. Those are great adjuncts.

They’re reinforcers for the chiropractic adjustment because what the chiropractic adjustment is doing it’s removing the interference from the body. And the brain so that Johnny can better adapt to his environment. So it’s like your cell phone, mom and dad. If you have a bad cell phone service and you need to have an important phone call between each other and the cell surfaces is spotty and you’re hearing every third word, you’re frustrated, you’re irritated.

You really need this information. But it’s not getting through because that poor connection, what we can do with the chiropractic adjustment is we can clear those roadblocks. We can open up those gateways of communication from the brain to the body and the body, the brain, and then all those other therapies that you’re doing, they can be in more impactful.

They can be reinforcers. When the brain knows what it needs to do with the information that they’re learning. So that’s where chiropractic is so phenomenal with the kids with neurodevelopmental challenges and on the autism spectrum. So listen to this message, get your lingo down, understand how chiropractic care is so empowering to families and those kids on the spectrum, but why it’s empowering.

We’re not treating autism. We’re helping open up the gateway. So the brain can write messages and adapt to their environment so that their behavioral expression, their neuro expressive behaviors Are conducive to the environment they’re in. So there you go. So start start reviewing this, getting ready for autism month, autism awareness month, boy, in April.

And we’ll be back in March with more amazing information until then me and Elizabeth are wishing you a happy rest of the. Love month of February, and we will see you in March. This is Monica Berger, signing off from the Academy of Neurodevelopmental Practices, and we’ll be back with more great information for you down the road.

Once again, I want to thank ChiroSecure for giving this opportunity. And until next month, me and Elizabeth are wishing you a great rest of the February.

This pediatric show to the children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.