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Hey everybody, it’s Dr. B and Elizabeth here. Happy September and hopefully you’re all cuddled in and back to school. Elizabeth and I are going to go into our final doctor, Google in the know, and we are going to drop some pearl bombs for our third most popular Googles. Subject searched. Whoa, that’s a mouthful.
So we are gonna dive into some in the know. Sleep we go. And speaking of sleep, Elizabeth is going to take a nap while we Jimmy Jam on some awesome information. So here we go. ChiroSecure, as always, thank you so much for giving us opportunity to spread our message to the masses and really get the word about chiropractic out there to the, to our communities.
So we talked about Professor Google’s health consumer, top three Google subjects. We covered mood, we covered cognition, and number three. We’re covering sleep. Sleep is a huge issue across the board, all ages and all stages in this country. In fact, it’s one of the most concerning health topics these days.
We gotta look at sleep. A lot of patients won’t understand that sleep is our time to repair. So during the day, we’re in a catabolic tear down state, right? Our cells are being used, all the energy’s being used. Sleep is our building blocks, it’s our time to build and repair. And it’s so important to get that message across to your community.
So it’s important for many reasons. So let’s dive into a couple things that we can help with our little fiddle farts and things we can keep in the back of our mind as to why sleep might be an issue. Couple things. We’re gonna talk about what I call refer to as the piston system, the gut.
Sensory regulation and chiropractic. So of course, there’s a lot, much more to that to sleep than this. But let’s cover some of that, the big hot topics that we can that we can wrap our minds around and give our communities. So first of all, the piston effect. All right, here we go. Think of the fascial system.
The fascial system is . A big one, big organism from cranium to toes that covers all our muscles, our joints, our ligaments, our blood vessels, our nerves, everything right? So it’s this one mesh of a system. So from cranium to toes, if there’s tethering tension anywhere in the system, it’s a neural. It’ll create a neural mechanical restriction, which will alter your autonomic nervous system.
Your regulation actually, The fascia has input in parts of the brain that are responsible for mood, cognition, anxiety, and a whole lot more. So when we tackle those restrictions, we can regulate the autonomic nervous system. Huh? When we do that, we can create more of a balance between that fight or flight zone and the calming and relaxing zone.
Metabolically, the more we’re level through a day. The more of our circadian rhythm becomes more in a good, healthy rhythm, and it allows us to wind down at night. So thinking about these fascial restrictions from the hyoid, the floor of the mouth, the. So if we have a tongue tie that can be an issue, ties into the hyoid.
The hyoid ties into the diaphragm, and the diaphragm ties into the pelvic floor. So we wanna look at vertebral subluxations anywhere in the spine that might be tethering and altering this piston effect. Now the hyoid bone is responsible for keeping the tongue in a proper position. Is associated with potential obstructive sleep apnea.
Boom pearl number one. Obstructive sleep apnea is becoming more and more prevalent as as a sleeping obstruction obviously, but of a reason that kiddos that might not be getting good sleep. So we wanna look at the hyoid. The hyoid ties into a lot of cervical muscles, so definitely we wanna look at the cervical spine, thoracic spine, and at the diaphragm.
Now the diaphragm, let me show you something here. The costal region of the diaphragm is responsible for breathing. All right, so if we have any vertebral subluxations in the thoracic spine, the rib cage, stress on the diaphragm on the costal region of the diaphragm, that can alter our ability for good breathing rhythm, and that can be associated with poor sleep.
The diaphragm is associated with the pelvic floor. Resis can be an issue. So those kiddos that have trouble at night and they’re still having bedwetting issues past the age of five or six, we might want to think the association between the diaphragm and the pelvic floor, the cruel region. This region right here of the diaphragm is associated with gerd, gastroesophageal reflux.
So another reason that kiddos have Nighttime awakening and restless sleep is very commonly tied with gut dysbiosis, gut issues. So that’s the next thing we wanna look at is the gut sleep connection. Number one, do we have a potentially obstructive airway issue? We wanna look at those mild fast restrictions.
We wanna look at tongue ties. We wanna look at the connection between the hyoid, the diaphragm, the pelvic floor. That’s that piston. Because they all tether and piston on each other, which can all lead to abnormal vagal tone and a sympathetic fight or flight, which shuts down the gut. So now we’re looking at gut.
Autos, autistic kiddos have a very high rate of sleep disturbances. They also are very much have a big correlation to gut issues. In fact, the American Academy of Pediatrics proposed, oh, several years ago that any kiddo on the autism spectrum be screened for potential gut issues because the correlation is so high.
Gut brain, gut connection, gut inflammation equals brain inflammation. Easy way to look at it. So oftentimes what you might see with kiddos that have inflammatory gut issues, gut dysbiosis, I. They might have very restless sleep. They might be head bangers. They might, you might see them pulling their hair out or pulling tension on their head.
They might be oftentimes sleeping on their belly and kind of in a in a child pose position, these are common patterns we might see. They wanna put pressure on their belly to try to relieve some of that issue. They might have reflux. So now we gotta go back to what you just talked about where we talked about a sleep, aseptic sleep apnea, the diaphragm connection, and GI reflux.
So these are things I want you to think about. Why is the potential restless sleep? These are kiddos that oftentimes they might fall asleep, but they have a very restless sleep pattern, or they wake up a lot during the night inconsolable crying, et cetera. So the gut is a big thing. We want to look at food sensitivities, food allergies, parasites can be a big one at nighttime.
Awakening and overall general gut issues. The other thing that we need to look at that I didn’t put in on here is technology. We definitely want to educate our our community, our patient community on the adverse effects of technology. The blue light, the blue light buzz is what I call it when we’re on computers, phones, et cetera, too late at night.
It messes with your sleep cycle. And we need to get those kids off devices. At least everybody should be off devices at least two hours before they want to try to get to sleep. So consider that in your repertoire. Sleep as well. Okay, so everything ties back now. Two sensory regulation. Another thing I want you to think about that can be helpful into in advocating a good sleep pattern is thinking those sensory systems.
Okay? We have our five outside senses. We’ve talked about several times, sight, smell, sound, taste, touch, and our inner senses. This is where the gut is gonna come into play, and this is where vestibular and proprioceptive input is gonna be huge. What we can do to help advocate good sensory regulation kiddos with poor vestibular input into the brain.
They might not wanna wind down because they, oftentimes, what they wanna do actually is they get spun up right before bedtime. They’re literally twirling in circles, okay? They’re trying to upregulate that vestibular input into the brain so they can be calm. So we can account for that by allowing them to do that.
But with, the other thing you can do is get mom and dad to do some slow linear rocking. Some linear rocking movements or maybe over a physio ball, some linear rocking movements and maybe some sideways rocking movements, more calming input before they go to bed. Vestibular input has about a four hour override window, meaning they’ll get four hours of bang for their buck.
For putting that input into their brain for a calming mechanism. Oftentimes those kiddos might be head bangers. They’re the little kiddos. If they’re still in cribs, they’re hang, they’re banging their heads against the crib, against the wall, et cetera. So give them some of the input before bedtime to get them to calm and soothe.
Then the other thing is proprioception, deep compression. Proprioception is calming. It screens out other unwanted sensory input that might be disturbing to the brain. So deep compression, deep pressure on the joints. Definitely if they’re in a chiropractic family, a good adjustment before bed, a weighted blanket.
Some of these kiddos you’re seeing now advertisings for Amazon and so forth, where kiddos are having a hard time sleeping, so they buy him a tent. Put sleeping bags and pillows and everything in there because a tent is a more womb, like it’s a smaller enclosed surface. They feel calmer, more secure.
Heavy blankets, heavy pillows, d weighted blankets. Those things are calming and soothing to the nervous system. You can get sensory brushes. This is a great thing to give to parents as well. Buy ’em on Amazon. They’re a little sensory brush. They’ve got like a little handle in, in indentation in the handle of it.
Put your office, put a sticker with your office information and logo in the handle, the brush. It’s great advertising. Okay. And teach parents to do some calm brushing of all the extremities before bedtime, and then do some deep joint pressure. That’ll calm, soothe the nervous system so they can get back to sleep.
Kiddos that tend to get up in the middle of the night and wanna go. Plop into mom and dad’s bed and snuggle, and parents say, I don’t get any sleep. I’m exhausted. Because Johnny’s constantly coming into our bed and just wants to snuggle right up to us. That’s often what they’re looking for. They’re looking for that proprioceptive deep pressure to calm their brain in order for them to be comfortable.
And stay asleep. So I want you to think of tethered restrictions, especially tongue ties that can lead to a malposition of the hyoid bone. So check the hyoid bone. Do hyoid releases along with a respiratory diaphragm release untether that area. The hyoid is highly associated with tongue position and obstructive sleep apnea.
Boom. Think of that one. I want you to think of sensory dysregulation and the need for sensory input to calm the brain and soothe the brain. And then I want you to think of gut issues. Gut dysbiosis in general. They may need to, some simple good, a good quality probiotic and digestive enzyme can go a long way in regulating that gut, especially during school season.
Now we’re getting, we’re back to school more parties in school, birthday parties Halloweens coming up. You’re getting all those chemicals. Dye is preservatives. Make the neurons in the brain go crazy brain. We talked about this earlier in this year about red dye and preservatives, how they make the neurons go crazy.
All these things can disturb sleep and definitely technology. We wanna get the technology off the docket at least two hours before they’re gonna go to bed. And save them The blue light buzz that comes with that. So the other thing is chiropractic, of course. We’ve seen in a lot of clinical, in a lot of surveys and so forth of lifestyle changes with chiropractic care and one of the highest reported side effects of chiropractic care is better sleep and regulation.
If we balance out the nervous system and we don’t keep people in this fight or flight again their circadian rhythm gets more normalized and that’s what we need to be able to wind down at night and get a good night’s sleep. So definitely get your kiddos. They might need a higher frequency of care as they’ve gone back to school and the stress load is a little bit more on them.
So you might get kiddos coming in and parents saying, Man, they’re having a harder time sleeping. They seem more anxious. That might mean we need to look at all the things we just talked about and upping the frequency of care to balance out their nervous system, for them to have more adaptability as the stress increases a bit that first month or two of school.
So get your little thinking caps on as to why you might see kiddos, behaviors, sleep, mood, go backwards just a little bit as they’re trying to adapt that increase. Load of stress as we, as they head back to school. So some pearls to think about. I cannot wait to see you next month because October is National Sensory Awareness Month.
We’re gonna dive in and dig into some of the new latest and greatest information. On chiropractic and regulation of sensory input to the brain. It is awesome. So we’ll see you there in October. And again, ChiroSecure, thank you so much for allowing us to have this platform and spread our word. And we will see you in October.
And until then, Elizabeth and I wish you an incredible early fall and we’ll see you next month.
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