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Hello everyone and welcome to look to the Children’s Show where we are going to talk about ticks. And I want to thank ChiroSecure for giving us this platform to enlighten the world about kiddos and chiropractic. I’m Monica Berger. This is my pal, Elizabeth, who is going to join me today, but she is going to take a brief nap.
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We hang out and she’ll be back at the end, so we’ll get at it here in a minute. So one of the questions I get thrown at me so often is why are kiddos having tics and why is there an uptick? Intakes in the school aged child, especially since COVID. That is where our six pillars of foundations for neurodevelopment come into play because I lay it all out for you there.
If you don’t know the foundations, especially the first years of neurodevelopment. Then you’re not going to know the how, the where, the why, when these older kids present to your offices. So what I always say is current presentation, the answers often lie in the past. And that is in our six pillars of foundation of neurodevelopment.
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So let’s get rocking and rolling as to what are ticks and why are they there? So about 24 percent of school aged kiddos. Are said to have a, some sort of tic, either a motor tic or a vocal tic. And the average onset age that we’re seeing those is about five or six years of age. So that’s kindergarten, first grade, years.
So why is that happening? One, first of all, a tic is considered an overflow type of movement. And the reason that happens is from neurological deficits. So if they don’t have good neurological foundations, especially in the first two years of life, postnatally, we’re going to see an immature nervous system that when it becomes under stress.
Which often happens, kindergarten, first grade, right? They start getting to school, the demands on their nervous system is a lot more. They start to present with either a motor or vocal type tick. And that is considered an overflow movement. What that means is the brain, areas of the brain that should be suppressing movement.
are not mature. They’re not able to handle the commands, the demands, especially the sensory demands in their environment. So now, the area of the brain, often that’s the area called the basal ganglia. We’ll talk a little bit more about that. But it’s not able to put the brakes on certain kind of movement.
And thus, they end up with either a motor tic common motor tics are blinks mouth, often they do things with their mouth. They might, switch, titch their head. Vocal tick is oftentimes clearing the throat or a kind of thing. So that kiddos will also just like seizure patients will tell you that they almost feel like this prodromal.
sensation in their body that’s building up like this cascade that’s building up. And it’s this need for this movement to release. It’s like a release valve. When they do that tick movement or that vocalization, it relieves pressure. So to speak. in the brain and allows them to relax after the tick.
So about again, it comes out about age five to six, and then there tends to be a uptick in resurgence in the late adolescent years. So oftentimes ticks are associated with. Excessive sensory information input, a sensory storm into that, into the brain that they can’t navigate all the sensory input coming in.
And so that is that dysregulation in sensory processing areas of the brain. So it stands to reason again, they enter school the commands demands from a sensory mode of perspective increase, and thus their brain is basically needed to reset. When it becomes too stressed out and again, if they didn’t go through proper development of motor milestones Yeah, And Yeah.
And, So what I wanted to talk about is the importance of Bye. Why are we seeing an uptick? I hate to say we, we go back to the thing that so many of us are saying these days, post COVID really has increased what we’re seeing in kiddos, especially with regards to different areas of brain development that are not maturing like they should due to stress.
We know that prenatal stress, The stress on mom is going to have an impact of brain development in the offspring. So if we have these weaker connectomes in the brain, they’re not developing and maturing when they need to be used these pathways later in life, they’re not there. And so we’re seeing this increased rise in the presentation of tics.
In the school age population. The other thing we need to consider with COVID is we need to consider the immune system integrity. of the kiddos and we need to understand that the nervous system is the immune system. The nervous system regulates the immune system. So when the immune system slash nervous system is weak, individuals might not be able to handle a infectious load and that chronic infectious load or chronic inflammatory load might linger, which we’re seeing.
Post COVID in adults and in kiddos. And so certain areas of the brain stay chronically inflamed. And one of the areas can be the basal ganglia. And again, that’s the area that is suppressing, that helps to suppress motor movement. So if it’s not working, it can’t suppress the these motor ticks that we’re seeing.
And the other the other infectious disease that is highly linked to basal ganglia and ticks is pandas, is strep. And we’re seeing again, post COVID. A lot of other infectious loads are ramping up and having much more impact on the brain. So that’s one of the reasons we may be seeing an increase in school age presentation of ticks.
Now, the other really interesting thing to take into consideration as a mouthful is Tourette’s syndrome. Tourette’s syndrome. is very much associated with poor sensory processing. And so again, if that sensory input is coming in and it’s scrambled in the brain and that child can’t process that sensory input it’s overload in the brain and thus it can result in an appearance of a tic.
But Tourette’s syndrome is associated with poor postural control. This is where it gets really fun, poor postural stability. And again, the foundations of neurodevelopment, especially that first year, those developmental neuromotor patterns are incredibly important in order to build, start to build stable.
Postural stability. So things like tummy time, specific progressive positions or progressive movements of tummy time, which lead into proper rolling techniques. which lead into proper cross crawl patterns. Those are all essential elements that are needed for good postural stability to develop. So if they don’t have good postural control, we can see these overflow movements.
of which can be a tick. So again, it’s going back to the basics and especially that first year postnatally. The microbiome. The microbiome, surprise, right? The microbiome is pretty much involved in everything. The microbiome has is It’s starting to be a big role player or something to look to with regard to overall brain development, neural development, and in associated with tics especially especially areas of the microbiome and the development of the cerebellum and the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex and all these key areas that are involved in sensory motor development.
So those are some things that I want you to take into consideration. So why chiropractic? Where’s chiropractic fit into our kiddos with tics? We know that in our adult studies from the neuroscience, chiropractic neuroscience literature that we have now is that the chiropractic adjustment, the specific adjustment, as long as it’s a subluxated segment.
which is very key. Being able to find and detect that key subluxation, any subluxations along the entire vertebral column. Addressing those with a specific adjustment has been shown to help foster sensory integration. So matter of sensory integration in the sensory process processing area of the brain.
So if we can help regulate the sensory input coming into the brain from our joints, our muscle spindles from the spine, from the extremities that input coming into the brain can better organize it, process it, detect it, and have a proper motor response. Rather than an improper motor response, and that’s the key to chiropractic.
Hopefully those are key pearls that you can digest and apply. And start helping those kiddos that are struggling with an overload on their brain and their overt presentation. It ends up in a tick. Until next time, me and Miss Elizabeth wish you an incredible spring, beginning of spring, hopefully.
And we will see you then next month with more incredible information. And again, ChiroSecure Thank you for giving us this platform to enlighten the world about chiropractic and kiddos. The Children was brought to you by ChiroSecure.
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