Q. Dear Dr. Harvey,
A friend of mine takes her kids to a chiropractor once a week. They have no pain or symptoms and they're never sick. So why should they go to a chiropractor on such a regular basis?

A. There are currently a number of changes going on in the health care field today. One of the main shifts is away from crisis care and toward prevention and maintenance care. A term you will be hearing a lot in the near future is "wellness care." Wellness care is taking care of people while they have no symptoms so that they don't get sick.
The best people to get started with wellness care are kids. Children go through so many changes as they grow. All of the major systems go through countless developmental stages. The nervous system is the first to develop and controls all the others. It is therefore very important to have as little interference as possible with the nervous system in the growing child.

Research has shown that one of the worst interferences with the nervous system is a vertebral subluxation, a misalignment of the spine which results in pressure on the nervous system. Subluxations may occur very early in life. One of the most traumatic things to the spine is the birth process. Especially in a difficult delivery, the trauma to the cervical bones an be dramatic.

As children begin to walk, they take hundreds of falls. In the early years they are always falling off bikes, out of trees, etc. All of these small traumas add up and eventually start to affect the spine. How many of you have taken young children to have their teeth or their eyes checked? Most of you probably have. Now how many of you have taken your child to a chiropractor to have his or her spine checked? If you never have, I wonder why not? People will think nothing of having braces put on their kid's teeth and spending thousands of dollars just so they have straight teeth. But they will never have their spine checked to see if it is straight.

The research regarding the effect of chiropractic care on kids is amazing. A 1989 study which compared 200 children who had seen pediatricians with 200 children who had been under chiropractic care showed that the health of the children who had seen chiropractors was notably superior to that of children brought up under standard medical care. The chiropractic children, for example, had fewer ear infections, allergies, and cases of tonsillitis, and therefore required less medicine.

In an earlier article I addressed the question about children with scoliosis. The point was made that the earlier we start on a scoliosis case the better the results will be. This is true of most conditions: the sooner you start to treat, the better the results will be. That is why prevention or wellness care makes so much sense.

It has been proven that adjusting the spine to relieve nerve pressure has a direct effect on the immune system. It also makes sense that a better functioning nervous system makes for a better functioning body as a whole.

In conclusion, chiropractic has been shown through research to be an excellent choice for wellness care. Your children deserve to have their full potential utilized as they grow. Chiropractic care is a very important part of your children's health care. Please make an appointment to have your child's spine checked by a chiropractor on a regular basis.

©1999 Dr. Harvey / New Life Chiropractic Clinic