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Now here’s, today’s host Dr. Monica Buerger.
Hello, everybody. And happy Tuesday. We’re halfway through October. Ooh. I am your host for this, um, for this time of this incredible look to the children’s show. Thank you, ChiroSecure for always being there for the chiropractic profession and for allowing, um, so many doctors to have this platform to, um, share incredible information about our incredible profession. So, um, today I’m going to talk about October being national sensory awareness month. So what does that mean for your practice for your patients, for you? A little fiddle parts and, um, for us as a profession. So let’s dive in, I’m going to show you a mini PowerPoint. We’re going to bring up that first slide and, um, let’s talk about sensory awareness month. All right. Um, this is a quote from our friend in our research arena, Dr. Heidi, Haavik out of, uh, New Zealand Chiropractic College. And if you don’t know her by now, you should get to know her or get to know her work anyway.
And what’s happening in our profession is absolutely mind blowing. It is so, so exciting because I started working in this realm, um, nearly 30 years ago. And it has now become this massive explosion of information. And what is so incredibly exciting is if you look at the neuroscience arena, not just a chiropractic neuroscience, but we’re going to get to that in a minute. But neuroscience in general, neuro development, neuro psychiatry, the world of neuropsychiatry, the world of sensory modulation disorders, the world of head trauma, whiplash injuries, they’re all looking at how the brain interprets information from its environment and how that is actually being termed as a developmental origins of disease or their neurobiology of disease. This is huge. Just take, just take that concept for two seconds and think about it. What we’re going to talk about today is considered in all these different arenas, these different specialties, the neurobiology of disease.
So Dr. Haavik has shown repeatedly that the chiropractic adjustment affects processing sensory input somatosensory input into the brain, into the part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. So why is this so important? Because the prefrontal cortex is that which makes us human, which makes us, um, conscious. It gives us a consciousness, which is our executive functioning part of our brain. So the executive functioning part of the brain, it controls impulse control. So I want you to think about this for a minute. This is particularly important when it comes to the label of ADHD. Oftentimes those little fiddle farts being given the label of ADHD have poor impulse control. That’s one of the criteria and, and, uh, and ADHD reasoning, a Billy rational decision making memory and attention. These are key things that we need to be able to do to interpret the sensory and put into our brain to navigate our environment and our personal response to our environment.
This is what’s so key. So years ago when I started venturing upon this work, um, again, nearly 30 years ago, this sensory, um, the sensory work was very much, um, the niche, uh, in the occupational therapy field. And we’re seeing this branch out again into other cat, other fields, including neuropsychiatry and definitely within the chiropractic realm. So let’s dive in a little bit and, um, and explore this a little bit further. What is sensory processing disorder? It really is the ability to take in organized process and integrate this information from our world, from our senses. And we’ll talk about our census here in just a little bit, when we’re able to do this appropriately. When these messages, this information comes into the brain and it talks to each other, it’s a network of systems that, um, that has to be interpreted. We can respond appropriately to our environment and to people within our environment.
This is the basis for all, all of our learning ability, our academic learning, our social learning, our emotional learning and our motor skill learning. Now, if you missed our show in August, I think it was August 17th, but our August show, we went over, um, postural control and postural stability. And those things that can be related with poor postural control, things like add ADHD, dyslexia, autism, scoliosis, go back to our website. We have it on the Cairo secure Facebook page and our intersect for life educational seminars, intersect for life educational seminars, scroll down. You will see the recording of that. That’s, it’s really important to type today’s lecture and that together on postural control. So when we feel safe and secure in our environment, we can respond appropriately. We can learn again, academically, socially, emotionally, and our motor skills. When our motor skills are down, that leads to poor core control, poor, fine, and gross motor movement.
Listen again to that previous section we did in August. So the way this disorganization can result, um, basically they consider three different pathways. The brain doesn’t receive the messages. There’s a disconnect between the body. There’s a disconnect between the brain and the body and the body of the brain. The brain is just not receiving these sensory messages that is going to be your lower functioning child, your lower functioning adult. Um, maybe even your low tone kiddos, the messages are received, but they’re inconsistent. And they can be inconsistent depending on the environment that that little fiddle fart is in at that particular time or on their stress level, the amount of trauma, toxins, thoughts, technology that they have been exposed to in a given time period. So what’s, what’s interesting about this is at sometimes they can appear to navigate their world with, with ease or easier, and they can respond to their environment is your, they can sit still is you’re in class for, at the dinner table.
They can respond when mom or dad asked them to clean their room, et cetera. But when their stress load is up, it can scramble those messages. So they can wax on wax and wane. The other way is sensory. Miss messages are received consistently, but they’re not connected to the other sensory systems. This is a network and all of these systems have to come into the brain land appropriately and talk to each other to make a systems wide network that, that, that results in proper motor output. So the way in which we perceive our world is a way in which we will respond to our world and everything and everybody within our world. Alright, so couple, we just throw a couple of research papers out there. Again, this is from the journal of neuroplasticity. What I want you to keep in mind is that these are high level journals that this, these research papers are getting published, and which is huge for our profession.
Huge. So I’m here, Dr. Haavik states that this is solid scientific evidence that adjusting the spine can change the way the prefrontal cortex of the brain is processing information from the arm. And then she goes on to talk about the prefrontal cortex and the importance of the prefrontal cortex. So in this particular paper, they talk about processing information from the arm and knowing where the arm is in space and how to use the arm, which you might think what’s, what’s the big deal about that. It’s huge because if we don’t know where our arm, our limbs, our core is in space, we cannot navigate ourselves through space. And that’s very scary. That’s very unsettling to the brain, little fiddle, farts, cat, tell you what I feel a little unsettled in my environment. And I’m out to feel a little unsteady on my feet, which kind of gives me the feeling, maybe some vertigo and dizziness, and therefore I’m acting out.
They can’t do that. They act out, and that’s how they’re expressing themselves. Their neuro expressive behavior is a window into their neurological integrity and how they’re processing and interpreting information. So in this paper, they talk about the arm. Well, just let’s just take the arm in and of itself in context. What can that mean? That can mean a poor hand, eye coordination. Being able to reach out and know how to put my hand in space to catch a ball. It may be, um, poor eating skills and maybe poor, fine motor skills for writing. We’re seeing many, many more kids being pulled out for handwriting. Um, an IEP, uh, four or five Oh four is an IEP, um, special education plans in the, in the school environment. We can send them to handwriting camp and writing class till the cows come home. If we don’t fix the connection between the body and the brain and the brain to the body, they it’s going to be so hard for them to interpret where their hand and fingers are in space.
Overcome these blocks. If chiropractic care can help modulate the information coming into the CNS, particularly prefrontal cortex, which is going to have a huge, um, bowl of prediction of movement, uh, fine motor control suppression of movement. So when we’re using one body part, another body part may need to be suppressed, not moving, or we may need to be able to sit still in space and not having to be able to move. This is the prefrontal cortex. So with the chiropractic adjustment, being able to affect processing of sensory of our sensory input into that part of the brain is phenomenal to huge. A more recent study that came out like within the last few weeks month was looking at connections. So all this information has to come into the brain and it has to connect there. They, um, found that this was a study on stroke patients, chronic stroke patients.
And after one chiropractic adjustment, they found increased processing of information within this it’s called the default mode network, a huge network that is being looked at in, um, prenatal development and in utero development. So go back to, um, I think it might’ve been July, June, or July, where we did a class on prenatal stress go on either one of our Facebook pages. You will see these recorded segments, and they’re phenomenal to put this all into context, but this paper showed that there was increased in, um, processing and communication, essentially within this default mode network, which is again, hugely being studied in the world of neuropsychiatric at night neuropsychiatry and the, to re to, um, region one was an area called the, um, the, um, posterior cingulate cortex, which essentially processes information from our internal awareness. We call our interoception our internal awareness between that area and what we call the pair of hippocampus.
Okay. What does that mean? These, these areas are going to be key in visual, spatial interpretation and, um, memory and, um, navigation within our environment. Again, making us more safe and secure within our environment. So we can respond appropriately within our, with given situations and commands. So chiropractically speaking, this is cutting edge phenomenal. Again, if we tie this into the world of neuroscience, neuro development, neuromodulation, neuropsychiatry, we, if we understand our role in a neurological based brain-based chiropractic paradigm, we can, um, commingle, we can connect with these other practitioners within our communities and it, the, the, the results, it can be profound. They will be profound on the future, uh, future generations. So I get a lot of referrals actually from counselors and psychiatrists, where a kiddos have maybe been admitted to psych wards because of, um, concerns about them harming themselves and committing suicide. And this is the context that I look in. So we have five far senses that come from the outside world. Those are called extra ception, and we have these key senses that come from within called interoception inner. And I just want to focus on a couple of key ones, cause we don’t have time to go over this in length, but from a chiropractic standpoint, we really need to look at our influence on the vestibular propioceptive systems. Of course we’re going to, so Maddow sensory input is, um, largely re associated with tactile and appropriately perception.
If we can, if one system is down all systems down. So if only one of these systems, sensory systems have skewed information coming into the CNS, it pulls down scrambles all of the sensory input. So you get the sensory chaos storm in your brain, okay? And you can’t make sense of your world. You can’t make sense if you have a full bladder and half to urinate, or if you’re hungry or not, this is largely regulated by bagel tone, by the way. So we have the outside senses, the inside senses. They come into the sensory portion of the thalamus. Let’s back that up a minute and they hit the amygdala. I call that your fearmonger because you’re middle is your rate limiting factor in life. If this information doesn’t make sense, you’re going to be stuck in a fight or flight or freeze mode. And that’s going to hold the person back.
It’s going to hold a kiddo back from adventuring out to try different things, to maybe play on the playground. And they will shut down when they get into sensory overload. So this regulates the HPA axis and the autonomic nervous system in particular, this is the world that’s being studied with regard to neuropsychiatry and developmental origins of disease. Because when the HPA axis is off, everything’s off hormones, neurotransmitters, you name it. So if we get stuck in this dysregulation, we can be stuck in what I call limbic lock and load mode. You just shut down. Then your prefrontal cortex shuts down. And, and that is our executive functioning. It controls the limbic system, really your limbic drive. Now we know with the chiropractic adjustment, we can affect processing in that cortex. If we can help keep that online and keep us out of this limbic drive and in a balanced autonomic drive again, that’s the motto that is going to, um, regulate pretty much all your systems.
So, um, if we don’t, if we’re stuck in this chronic sympathetic dominant shift, you’re not going to heal the gut. The gut is going to stay chronically inflamed. And we know now the huge, profound connection between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut. All right. So in order for this to make sense, literally our brain, we need to go through proper neural, developmental milestones and patterns, and we need to be able to integrate our primitive reflexes, build these pasture reflexes. Again, refer back to the August lecture. The talk that we did, the PA pastoral reflexes, our core control, which is huge regulated, hugely regulated by the visual vestibular and proprioceptive systems. And then higher order cognition comes on to board. So a couple of things I want to bring to you, communication is the key to life and in every aspect of life, right?
So if we’re in a relationship, let’s say we want to go out the super single and we want to look for a partner in life. Okay. We want to meet somebody. We might look for that chemistry between somebody does it. Do they give me chemists? Is there chemistry between me and that other person? Okay. The brain needs good chemistry, good neurotransmitters, okay. The body, we need good chemistry happening. And then we need a good chemistry between the brain and the body and the body and the brain that makes a connection. Once we have added chemistry, maybe we can make a connection with that person. And then over time, the relate when you’re in a relationship and it goes on over years, that relationship is going to rely on good communication. One person can’t have the high volume of communication and the other one would be squashed for healthy relationship. You’re equal. You both have this say, so in this relation, you both can communicate properly. And that makes a healthy relationship. It’s the same thing with sensory input.
Okay.
We have to have, for instance, the vestibular system is going to have some control over our auditory input. So if our vestibular function is down, let’s say we’ve got subluxations, especially of the upper cervical spine. Cause that’s going to be a huge area of input of a stimulator,
Their system subpar, the auditory information is going to sound bigger. It’s going to be recognized more so in the CNS. And there’s this gap in communication between these systems, one system down all systems down. So being able to help regulate the rate, the volume, the timing, the toning of information into the CNS is hands down. That’s critical. And it’s just like a relationship. You have to have good chemistry, good connection, good communication within the sensory systems and within the CNS cool beans. So what can we see? What might we see in our practices? How do we apply this? Let’s just take a quick, pick a peek at the visual vestibular and proprioceptive systems, visual systems. What we might see is our kiddos or adults, teens across the board, constant complaints of headaches, even maybe, um, stomach aches. It can be very creative, very anxious environment.
When this input is disorganized and we’re in sensory chaos. So the anxiety they might write rightfully say, I feeling anxious. I have anxiety, or they might have chronic stomach issues. Again. If sensory dysregulation and sues, the gut is going to shut down. So constipation diarrhea, um, your little fiddle, farts, aren’t expressive. They may not sleep well through the night when you have gut issues. Um, it’s often, often you’ll see that there’s trouble sleeping through the night. They are quote unquote colicky. They’re fussy babies again are older kiddos and adults, frequent headaches, stomach aches, especially after visual world work. The visual system accounts for about 70 to 80% of information we take in, in a given day comes through the eyes. So this is a huge system. They may be clumsy and getting hurt all the time cause they can’t navigate uneven surfaces or stairs. Um, reading, reading comprehension is difficult.
So these are things that they can either outright report to you upon their initial history. Or you might have to dig for this information a little bit to give you some insight as to how are they processing their world. The vestibular system is a big kahuna. He is considered, um, the modulator of all incoming sensory input. He said that like the air traffic controller, he modulates rate timing, tuning volume of sensory input and the CNS. So vestibular systems down, we’ve got a big, um, a big miscommunication within this whole sensory network. Your little fiddle fart say might have history of, um, chronic ear infections have tubes in their ears have hearing deficit. They have characteristics on the autism spectrum. They like to watch things spin. They, um, are tornado kids. I call them tornado kids, tornado alley. They’re just always on the move. They can’t sit still.
They can’t sit still at circle time in school. They can’t sit still at the dinner table. They’re on your, um, your, your exam stools and spinning around. By the way, if you see them draped over your exam, stool on their belly and trying to spin around think poor vestibular system functioning along with gut issues. Again, when they’re in sensory chaos, the gut shuts down, we can’t be in a rest and digest state. The gut is going to shut down and they’re going to have gut consequences. And by the way, the microbiome is one of the key sensory systems. So just keep that in mind, you see this whole rabbit hole that we ended up going down the vestibular system. I want you to think of, um, post traumatic, uh, definitely post traumatic stress disorder, but mechanisms of injury, whiplash falls a little fiddle fart couple of weeks ago was on the trampoline, fell off, slammed his head on the cement.
Okay. Those kind of situations, even falling off the changing tables and so forth. Um, sports injuries, concussions, mild traumatic brain injuries. Any of those is going to tend to distort your vestibular processing system. They might not like car seats being, I’m getting more and more that, um, hits on social media sites. Why these little fiddle farts don’t like being the car seat, think sensory dysregulation. If they have poor vestibular, um, integration and interpretation, they might have a thing called gravitational insecurity. Again, we talked about that in August, not being sure where they are in space, not like in their feet off the ground, they might not be able to jump. Um, they might not like laying inside posture on your table because they don’t like their feet off the ground. They, they are very insecure in those situations. They don’t like roller coasters or merry-go-round.
Now those will be the kiddos that are hypervascular a little bit of input goes a long way that avoid this kind of, these kind of maneuvers are hypo vestibular. They’re not getting enough input. Those are your tornado kids. Those are kids that can’t sit still. So this is key to understand, um, they get labeled a lot where they, where they get labeled as ADHD, oppositional, defiant, you name it. So a couple of key things. I just want you to know the vestibular system is hands down. One of the biggest areas studied with regard to psychiatric disorders, anxiety, depression, um, HPA axis, modulation, uh, direct input to the limbic system. So emotional profile, a lot of things that are associated with the Vista division, including scoliosis. So if we can, ModuLite the system in the younger years, think of all the potential things we can. Um, we can derail the potential labels and scoliosis is a big one.
In fact, scoliosis is associated with increased. Those individuals with scoliosis are, um, have been shown to have increased anxiety and depressive disorders. It all goes together. If we can interpretate our world, we can’t be comfortable in our world. We become anxious. And then the proprioceptive system, the propioceptive system is, um, considered the, um, it re it, it calms down. It helps us screen out other unwanted sensory chaos. It grounds us. These are oftentimes your, what I call your pull, push punch kiddos. They’re more aggressive. They want that deep impact. And that pressure, because you’re getting that proprioceptive input from your joints and muscle spindles, huge from the spine, especially the upper cervical spine. So they don’t like if they don’t have good proprioceptive awareness, they don’t like to do things with their eyes closed. So you may be doing an exam in your offices and have them March with their eyes closed or do activities with their eyes closed.
And they’re like, nah, ain’t going to happen because they don’t know where they are in this space. They don’t know how to use their body in space because they have poor proprioceptive processing. These are your kids that can be labeled as a bully. They oftentimes are really restless sleepers. They like to get out of bed and crawl into mom and dad’s bed and snuggle because they want to know where they are in space when we’re sleeping with more than likely asleep with our eyes closed. So this system needs to be processing our environment all the time and make a spill safe and secure. They don’t feel that when they’re asleep in their own bed. So they get out of bed and go snuggle with mom and dad and mom and dad don’t get a good night’s sleep. And they’re complaining to you because they’re all tired all the time. So these are some of the things that are clumsy. They trip over their own feet. Um, they just don’t know where they are on space.
So again, I’m just
From other journals. Here we go. The cervical spine receptors are important connections to vestibular and visual apparatuses and to the central nervous system, dysfunction of cervical receptors in neck disorders can alter a fair input, changing integrity, timing, and tuning of sensory motor control. This makes sense as to why we see then with the chiropractic adjustment, increased processing of somatosensory input. Cool beans. So very quick here, I want to tell you a story. It’s a true story. This happened, um, the beginning of the year, um, I believe a plane was coming into JFK airport in January when people were still flying. Um, I’m going to get my little pen here. Okay. So here’s how you can take this information and you can talk about it and your practices, and really get to understand it. It’s all about connecting our environment, external and internal body to brain and brain to body.
So this plane was coming in and we’re just gonna for kicks and giggles. I’m going to use some numbers flight seven 22. That’s this plane coming in. All right. So the brain is seeing, Oh, okay. On my radar, I got a plane coming in and radios down, sending information to the body, the brain, sending the information to the body so that it will perform a proper motor response sensory information in proper motor response out brain says flight seven 22, your clerical landing, but stay short of runway five 22. Okay. The body I E the pilot on this plane interprets that information, but interprets it all. Sleep perception, response, input interpretation equals proper output. This pilot says, Roger, that flight seven 22 cleared for landing left out a key important piece of information that he was supposed to stop short of runway five 22. So he lands his motor output. The body stops in the middle of this runway with another plane barreling, right towards him to take off.
This could have been a disaster of Epic proportions with hundreds of lives at stake, hundreds of lives injured or lost two huge planes. These, these were, this was a Delta plane by the way, the one that was landing. So thank goodness the brain picked up what happened and aborted this takeoff right here, but the, the brain, the cell tower, air traffic controller of all the sensory input into the CNS says, Hey, I told you you’re clear for landing, but stop short of runway five 22, and the body made the prizes, Oh, forgot that piece of information.
So essentially what we do, what we help do is we help clear the runway and help make proper connections. When we do an adjustment, we kind of give a cobwebs, so to speak and make a better connection, a communication between the brain and the body and the body and the brain. So that that motor output is prop is appropriate for the given situation. So that person feels safe and secure and comfortable in their environment. And they don’t have to act out. They don’t need to, um, self try to modulator in a maladaptive manner in order to fit into their environment. Meaning I’m not getting enough vestibular input into the brain. The brain can’t send me the right messages down the body. So I’m going to try to make, get some of that information and I’m going to be all over the place. And I’m going to spin it around like crazy.
That is a neuro expressive behavior for a lack of proper sensory input and sensory integration. So this is PR this is profound, profound information for our profession. And it’s exciting because this is what can take us to that next, that next phase and our ability to, to, to spread the word and to connect with these other entities and, and share with them the profound, um, the found effects of chiropractic care. So things you might want evaluate like guys like my fat cat right there. Okay. Let’s see if this is going to show up pair. Yes. Balance. Now it’s important to understand that the vestibular division can still be, um, weak or dysfunctional, even if balance is on track. So don’t just hang your head on balance. Okay. But you don’t have to add a lot of extra stuff to your practices. If you want to start dabbling in this world and screen things out, what core control do your little fiddle parts that have low tone, and they’re not sitting up by their, by the sales by six months, they’re not rolling over.
They’re not want to get up. Um, we’re seeing more, more kiddos wanting to walk on their knees, walk on their needs. These are all maladaptive responses. They’re telling you something. Okay. And that’s usually those things are usually poor core control, poor, low tone. Again, longterm effects are going to be postural instability, which is associated with things we’ve already talked about. Joint position sense. Okay. You can do joint position sense testing on them. You can look at, do they know how to use their hands to right. Do they know how to use their body in space? Okay. Um, eye tracking. Can they cross them in and can they visually track without moving their head? Very key, fast things. You can do take a few minutes. Um, just as a general screening, then those of you that want to learn more and get more into depth there’s programs out there that you can learn to hone in and get more into depth of this.
But these are core things that we should be mindful of. Um, as in a general chiropractic practice, does that little fiddle fart when they come in and they’re plastic bucket, okay. Their seats or whatever they’re called those car seats. Do they fixate on your eyes? If you have a puppet or some toy, can they visited cross the midline? Are you seeing this? When they get older, that’s largely going to be related to, um, the, the frontal lobe there. So some things just to start thinking about, because if you see these that are subpar, I need you to think poor processing of their world, poor processing of their environment. And then tie that into maybe some characteristics you’re seeing, are they labeled? Are they on meds for ADHD or so forth? Are they labeled as being on the spectrum? What is the root cause potentially of that label and start putting some of these together, then you’ll see.
That’s why you see when you do the adjustments and get them under care. You see these labels clearing up, but this is how you can understand, you know, what you’re doing. And you’ll see some of their, you know, their balance gets better. Um, and we need to challenge your balance. We need to be able to not just standing on one leg, but get them on different surfaces and see where they topple over. You know, how, how much can you push them until they can no longer have good core control? So hopefully this is helpful. Um, again, thank you ChhiroSecure. Um, because my practice is focused on treating those little fiddle farts, and ChiroSecure always has my back. And I want to thank ChioSecure for giving me this platform and so many others this platform and make sure you join the awesome Eric Eric Kawalke on the first Thursday of each month. And I will be back next month on the third Thursday. And, um, I think we’re going to talk a little bit about easy ways to understand the bagel tone and the polyvagal theory. So stay tuned again. Thank you very much. And you guys go out there and have an awesome week and save some more lives.
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