Lisa Paladino:

You are listening to the Tongue-tie Experts Podcast, a weekly program providing information and support for those families impacted by tongue and lip tie and the professionals caring for them. I’m Lisa Palladino, a midwife and a lactation consultant with over 30 years of experience. If you are a parent looking for answers or a professional who is curious to learn more than what you learned in school on this topic, welcome. This podcast is for you.

A gentle disclaimer. Please do not consider anything discussed on this podcast by myself or any guest of the podcast to be medical advice. The information is provided for educational purposes only and does not take the place of your own medical or lactation provider. Thank you.

Welcome to the tongue-tie Experts podcast. I’m thrilled today to have with me Dr. Martin Rosen. Dr. Rosen has over the past four decades after graduating Life Chiropractic College summa cum laude, while maintaining a full-time private practice, he has traveled nationally and internationally teaching the SOT Chiropractic Pediatrics Cranial Adjusting Philosophy and Practice Management. He currently practices with his wife, Dr. Nancy Watson and his daughter Dr. Erin Rosen. In an attempt to make his teachings more available to the chiropractic profession, he has compiled many videos and online programs and manuals of his work. And we’ll talk about all of that today. From Wellesley, Massachusetts, I welcome today Dr. Martin Rosen. Thank you so much for being on the podcast today with me.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Thank you. I’m looking forward to this, Lisa, and thank you for having me. I think this is a great topic and this stuff you do is just so important that I’m really honored to be part of it.

Lisa Paladino:

Oh, thank you. Yes, it’s so important for us to be getting the message out to the world because I feel that mainstream medicine has given an injustice to the arts that are healing. And medicine itself isn’t actually healing, it’s more trying to, I don’t know what, I won’t go there. But anyway, thank you so much.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

We can leave it at it’s a different paradigm.

Lisa Paladino:

Yes,

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s a different paradigm. It’s a sickness paradigm. We are looking for a health paradigm.

Lisa Paladino:

Perfect. I love that. So Dr. Rosen, tell me a little bit more about yourself and what you do, because I gave a general introduction, but tell my listeners more about what you do.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So as you said, I did graduate chiropractor school in 1981. Got married to Dr. Nancy Watson, and we had our first child April of 1982. My oldest daughter just turned 40 yesterday, so I’m feeling a little bit nostalgic, old, a lot of things. But anyhow, we had that. So we started a pediatric family practice from the get go, we started taking care of kids and family members. As chiropractors our goal was to help people increase their functional potential regardless of their disease symptoms or problems. And we know that in the first two years of life, the brain will grow over a 101% in the first year and 15 the second. The cranium grows two and a half times its size. So we realized it set the foundation for the neurology of the person for the rest of their lives. So I continue to study and practice and I’ve been teaching, actually, I taught my first seminar with my wife, Dr. Watson, in 1979 when we were still students and we’ve been teaching ever since.

We have taught all over the world. We’ve been to Australia, New Zealand, Europe. We teach SOT and pediatrics. So SOT is a technique known as sacro occipital technique, and it was developed by a man named DeJarnette. And it has some very specific neurological indicator systems and its adjusting protocols are set so that we can adjust anything from infants to athletes to 90-year-olds. There’s a whole set of protocols. It has very different adjusting protocols and standard, what people think of standard chiropractic, though we can use those techniques. And over the years,

DeJarnette who actually graduated school even before me, 1924, he understood the importance of pediatrics, but he did not actually teach it from a number of reasons, probably given the time when he was also graduated school.

So I took on the role in the beginning, the SOT, and I wrote their first pediatric program, and that’s been my focus. I’ve written, as you said, manuals. We have a company called Peak Potential Institute, which runs online seminars as well as hands-on seminars for the chiropractic profession and chiropractic students. And we also have books and manuals. And as I said, the last book that my wife and I actually wrote together for laypeople to understand neurological development milestones and the importance of structure and function, is called It’s All in the Head.

Lisa Paladino:

I love that. Yeah. I was just about to ask you, what do you have for the lay population? Because I know I have listeners who are professionals, but I also have a lot of families that listen who are trying to get answers or trying to optimize their children’s development. And I love that you say that about increasing functional capacity and optimizing things because sometimes, especially for a new family, it’s very overwhelming to hear… They’re just overwhelmed in general, especially with what’s going on with the whole pandemic situation, and there’s less support for new families. And often the first time they hear of these therapies is when they come into my office for lactation support.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

And I get a deer in the headlights look and I get, chiropractor for my baby. Why? What do you mean? So maybe you can speak on the reason why families or parents shouldn’t be afraid of chiropractic for their babies.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

That’s a good question.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah, because I get that a lot. I know that half of the people that I suggested to are terrified when I say it.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely. So the first thing I ask somebody or patient or somebody who’ll come in and said, I talked to my pediatrician, I talked to my doctor, said I was bringing my kid to a chiropractor, and they said, oh my God, don’t do that. The first question I ask is, ask the pediatrician what we do. Because they don’t know because the stuff you see on YouTube and the stuff you hear and the cracking of the neck, that has nothing to do with pediatrics. Okay. Pediatric chiropractic care is a specialty, just like pediatrics is a specialty. You wouldn’t go to a gerontologist or you wouldn’t go to a proctologist with your baby, you would go to a pediatrician or a pediatric neurologist if there’s a problem. So pediatric chiropractic is very specialized. It’s so specialized that it’s actually even, and those may sound weird, safer to adjust an infant or a child than it is to adjust an adult because the amount of force that we’re using is so minimal that the chances of causing any damage are even less, which is very minimal in adult if done correctly as well, even less in a child.

So the actual techniques and protocols are designed specifically for the pediatric spine and cranium. And like I said, pediatric experts are chiropractors who have studied hours and hours and hours on special pediatrics. We have a program, a certificate program that is three 16-hour seminars that people can take. So they have to get certified, they have to take a test. There’s other companies like the ICPA or ICA, they’re chiropractic organizations that specialize in pediatric programs. Some of them are yearlong programs. Ours is a three month. We also have an online 10-month program. So you’re actually going to someone who is an expert in that particular area. And again, just to reiterate, the techniques that we use on pediatric are very specific, very specified, very what we call low force, very non-invasive and are actually safer than what we use on adult patients.

Lisa Paladino:

And I like to use the word gentle because that is something-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s extremely gentle.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s extremely, extremely gentle. Sometimes I would say the average pressure is maybe four to six ounces of pressure. So if you have a little postal scale, go put your finger on the postal scale or the scale and trying and press and you’ll see what four to six ounces of pressure feels like. It’s really nothing.

Lisa Paladino:

It’s almost nothing. Because I’ve observed adjustments on infants and I’ve been with a mom will be with me watching her baby get adjusted and she’ll say, wait, that was it.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah, exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

That was it.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

And sometimes the baby will cry and I’ll say to mom, I always want people to say, sometimes your baby’s going to cry. I have to hold them in a specific position for a couple of seconds. But what you’ll see is soon as I’m done, they’ll stop crying. And that’s almost always the case. They may cry, they may squirm a little because I have to hold them for a second, and then when I’m done, they’ll usually either start to cool or they’ll smile, but they’ll stop crying because it’s not hurting them. And in some adjustments, actually the crying is helpful because when you adjust an adult, and I’m sure if you’ve been under chiropractic care, sometimes when we’re adjusting, somebody will say, take a breath in and then take a breath out to relax. But you can’t tell a two-month old to do that. So honestly, when they’re crying, they’re breathing in and out, it actually sometimes helps facilitate the adjustment as well.

Lisa Paladino:

That’s interesting. What about the, I know sometimes if I am out of alignment and I have some aches or pains and I go for chiropractic treatment, sometimes I feel, not worse, but a little tender, a little sore before I feel better. And I’ve had some babies in my care that seem to have that reaction. They’re a little upset right after, but then they do that.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

They calm down.

Lisa Paladino:

Does that happen?

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So it’s actually, honestly, in my experience, that’s rare. Most of the time, kids and babies, one of the first things they’ll do after they get adjustment is sleep better. That’s some of the one thing that parents will say, they’re less irritable. But especially these days when you have kids with neurodevelopmental challenges or kids on the spectrum that are somewhat hypersensitive, the first one or two adjustments because you’re putting a different input into their system that they can’t actually assimilate as well. They may be a little bit more irritable, they may be a little bit more tense, but it’s very rare for that to happen, more than one or two adjustments. And it’s no different than you just, what I’ll tell an adult is sometimes if they’ve never been adjusted, let’s say a 40-year-old comes in my office, never been adjusted, has some pain or something, I’ll say, look, after the first adjustment or second, first and second adjustment, you may feel some soreness in your muscles, the stuff you feel like if you haven’t worked out for a while and go work out.

And the reason for that soreness is because when you make an adjustment, your body has already created a compensatory pattern that you’re used to. So when I’m trying to correct that pattern, your muscles are going to try and rebound back to that pattern and they’re going to fight that a little bit, and that’s going to cause some inflammation, less so than infants obviously because their muscle tone is decreased, especially non-ambulatory infants because they don’t have a lot of weight-bearing. So the other thing that you have to remember is when we’re making an adjustment, we’re affecting the nervous system and how it functions.

So in some cases, like I said, we’re putting more input into the nervous system that the body has to assimilate. For those of you who have kids you know that at certain points in your child’s life, they go through different growth and neurological developmental stages, it may be milestone development, it may be teething, it may be cognitive function. And sometimes during that period they’ll be more irritable. They won’t sleep as well, and all they’re doing is integrating what has happened to the nervous system. So that’s sometimes a piece of what’s happening is we’re affecting the nervous system and they’re trying to integrate that. So it may take them a couple of hours or maybe even a day to assimilate that, but once they get used to that input, just like once they get used to holding their head up and crawling or whatever the stimulus is, then their system can adapt to that and calm down. So it’s not really a negative.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah, I love that. And yeah, it’s all a normal part of development to have those times of irritability and-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

… and all that. And I’m going through that. Those who listen to me know I just became a grandma in January.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Congratulations.

Lisa Paladino:

My grandson’s a few months old and this week for the first time, well, he had a little fussiness in the beginning. We had some things we were going through, but this week was the first time he actually ever looked sad to me. He was integrating a new emotion.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

And even though it was hard to see that little pout, and I know he didn’t care as much before who was in the room, but this time he was looking around for his mommy already and she wasn’t there and he had a little pout on his face and understanding that it’s all normal helps to handle it. One of the other things that I see, and this is when you’re dealing with a newborn or infant population, I’m going to get a little on the yucky talk side. A lot of what we’re obsessed about is their diaper output.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yep. Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

And I am a big proponent of the fact that babies, breastfed or not, should not skip days of bowel movements because that is a sign that everything’s working well. And I often refer to chiropractic to help with that issue because the first sign that parents see that lets them know that something changed in their baby’s body is he pooped right after the adjustment.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly. I see that all the time.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah. So I thought that was something worth mentioning on the chiropractic side of things.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, I can talk to you… Yep, I’m sorry-

Lisa Paladino:

Go ahead if you want to talk a little bit on that, because I-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So throughout my career, I’ve been in practice 40 years. There are times when parents find out that chiropractic can help with a specific issue. When I first started, it was ear infections, then it could be asthma, then now it’s tongue-tie, then it could be plagiocephaly. But constipation is a big one and diarrhea. I cannot tell you how many parents have come in because they’ve gone to the pediatrician. The worst ever was a woman whose baby had not had a normal bowel movement for 21 days. And the pediatrician said, don’t worry about it, let’s just give him some more MiraLAX. But I’ve had people whose kids poop once every five days, seven days.

And the whole idea of sacral-occipital technique, SOT, is the reason it’s named after it’s named after is sacrum, which is the tailbone and the occiput, which is the top bone in the skull. And what’s interesting about that is we have two parts to our nervous system called the autonomic nervous system. So there’s the fight or flight, the sympathetic part, which is in the spine, and then there’s what we call the parasympathetic part, which is the rest and digest part that deals with digestion, rest. And that’s in the cranium and in the tailbone. So very often if that system isn’t working right, you will get changes in digestion and bowel movements. So how chiropractic impacts that is by balancing those two sides of that autonomic nervous system by making an adjustment. And then it allows the child to be able to have normal bowel movements.

I have a story. I had this little boy brought in, he was 18 months old at the time, and he had really bad bowel movements this year. He would only go to the bathroom once every seven to 10 days. So the parents brought him in, I did his first adjustment and exactly what happened. You said what happened? Mom came in the next visit and said he pooped that night, and now he’s been pooping for the next couple of days. So he stayed under care and he was doing really well. And then all of a sudden they disappeared from care. And about six months later they showed up again and mom said, oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Rosen. I wanted to continue care, but I got pregnant again and then just life got really busy, but I’m coming back under care.

And I said, well, how’s Johnny doing? Because I know he was having bowel movements troubles, his balancing. She goes, well, I got to say chiropractic is pretty amazing the way it stimulated his nervous system that sometimes when he would have a day or two where he wasn’t going to the bathroom and I knew I couldn’t get into your office, or I didn’t have the time, I’d put him in the car and drive by your office and by the time I drove by your office within 24 hours, he would’ve a bowel movement again. So we re-stimulated his nervous system.

Lisa Paladino:

That’s magical. I love that.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

We get a lot of kids who have those type of issues, digestive issues are really common.

Lisa Paladino:

So let’s go a little bit onto tongue-tie. And as I was explaining to you, because for those who are listening, Dr. Rosen and I just met this morning right before we started recording because he reached out to me and I saw his work and I was like, I have to get to know this man and introduce him to my audience because I love everything that he’s doing. And we were having a little bit of a talk about tongue-tie and how the reason that chiropractic is important in my practice and in the treatment of tongue-tie is because everything in the body is connected. And having a restriction in the mouth that is making breastfeeding difficult isn’t just about that frenulum under the tongue.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

No.

Lisa Paladino:

So let’s talk a little bit about how chiropractic can help the tongue-tie baby.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Okay. So tongue-tie, if you want to divide tongue-tie into three sections, an anterior tongue-tie, a middle tongue-tie, and a posterior tongue-tie. Now the anterior tongue-tie is the one where it’s tied to the tip of the tongue. The baby can’t get their tongue out past their lips. The tongue tends to curl down. They can’t point it up.

Lisa Paladino:

The typical heart shape that we see.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s a heart-shaped tongue. And that is a real functional issue. Now the reason for that is, so think about the tongue. There are what we call transverse fascial planes in the body, your diaphragm is the transverse. We have a pelvic diaphragm, we have a thoracic outlet. Well, the palate is also, which is a transverse fascial plane. So tension in those planes affect structure and they affect function. The other thing with the tongue-tie is one of the things that’s supposed to happen, and one of the reasons kids can’t nurse well is because they can’t take their lower jaw and push it forward, so they can’t latch. But the other thing, the worst part about that is if you can’t get your lower jaw pushed forward and it gets pushed back, it’ll change how it grows and how it develops. And I know we don’t have video here, but if you think of a baby’s head, you think of your head as, people think of their head as a solid bone. It’s not.

It’s made up of a number of 14 bones and they’re all interconnected, but in a baby, they’re not actually connected. There’s spaces between them and they’re a little bit like tectonic plates that float around based on how much what’s called cerebrospinal fluid is inside the cranium. And also what’s called the dura, which is soft tissue that attaches to the bones and to the nerves. When a baby sucks correctly or pushes their tongue against the roof of their mouth, it also helps to form the palate. So a kid who can’t nurse well or the tongue-tie revision isn’t really stimulate growth patterns, the palate may not grow right, and it’ll get very high and narrow. So when the kid’s six or seven, they’re going to go, oh, you need a palate spreader.

So it affects the entire development of the cranium. It also affects the way the baby sucks. And as I said to you a minute ago, that crying is a way that we can monitor baby’s breathing. Well sucking is also the way that the cranium expands and contracts when the baby is growing. So every time they suck in, it’s like inhalation and exhalation, sucking is the same thing. It’s like inhalation on a suck and exhalation. That stimulates movement of, again, that stuff we call cerebrospinal fluid, but it also stimulates growth of the cranium. And then there’s the emotional factor. There’s nothing that happens in a baby’s life that doesn’t have long-term consequences, that doesn’t affect their nervous system, especially in the first two years, the nervous system is developing so fast that you don’t want to miss that opportunity. So anterior tongue-tie always needs to be cut, it can’t function.

A middle tongue-tie. You have to be able to determine two things, how much the structure is determining function and how much compensation is occurring. Because in some cases, especially with a posterior tongue-tie, it actually shouldn’t be cut, because the posterior tongue-tie really is not affecting function. It’s just a slight anomaly. And in some cases, and I’ve had this happen, sadly, it gets cut and the child loses their ability to control their tongue and they have to retrain that. So the revision of a tongue-tie when necessary is part one. Part two is reestablishing normal function and normal cranial bone motion and normal growth patterns. So that’s extremely important. And also with the tongue-tie, of course, we have to look for buccal ties and lip ties as well because it’s not uncommon. The TAC syndrome, all those occur together.

So other signs that parents will see is if a child only likes to nurse on one side. If you look at the child’s jaw, you see a really deep, deep crease below the lips. That means that the mandible, which is the lower jaw, is pulled back. Or when they open their mouth, does the jaw deviate to one side more than the other? Or even things like if they can’t turn their head both sides equally, that can be what we talked about is that fascial system that’s restricted. And sometimes when you or if the child doesn’t like tummy time, it’s all about tension. That’s why sometimes kids get very irritable, because there’s too much tension in their nervous system and they don’t know how to deal with it, but to cry.

So you have to deal with those membranes that have also compensated for, it’s like if you think of the tongue and a ligament, that’s an attachment point. And think about a ligament in your knee. If you hurt a ligament in your knee, if it’s too tight or too loose, you’re going to start to compensate and it’s going to affect your structure all the way up. Well, the same thing with the tongue-tie. It’s going to affect the structure of the cranium, then into the neck, then into the spine, all the way down the tailbone. So it has a global effect, especially if the function is severely decreased.

Lisa Paladino:

That’s a beautiful explanation. I’m going to elaborate on your anterior, mid, and posterior. And I love that you use those terms instead of giving numbers to them because the number systems of the assessment tools that we have for tonguetie often contradict each other. And I don’t think they speak completely to the function. So I describe when I’m giving a report to a doctor about what I’ve seen in their infant, who’s my patient as well as theirs, I will describe the attachment and the function that’s impaired. There are posterior, if we’re looking at the tongue-tie and calling it those things, that’s one thing, but it doesn’t tell us the function. So you can have, I’ve seen anterior ties that function pretty well because they’re more elastic, but that’s rare. I’ve seen posterior ties where the function is not there because as you said about bringing the jaw forward, but then the baby also has to lift their tongue while keeping their jaw open.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah.

Lisa Paladino:

And that’s the trick. And those are the babies that the mom will say, he comes onto the breast and then pops on and off because they literally can’t stay on and keep their mouth open. And the compensation, I love that you used that word because we have so many stories about, Oh yeah, so-and-so had a tongue-tie, but they did fine.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

They did fine.

Lisa Paladino:

And then later on you have all these problems that as providers who have eyes open about these things, you can look back and say, oh, you may think he’s fine, but look, he’s got this, this and this. And my ultimate down the road seeing problems is all about airway issues and-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely. Airway issues-

Lisa Paladino:

… sleep apnea. So this isn’t just about breastfeeding, but breastfeeding is the first function. Suck, swallow, breathe-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

… exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

… that an infant has to perform in order biologically to survive. So yes, we can get them to be fed in other ways, but that’s not… The sign, it’s a red flag that their suck, swallow, breathe-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

… pattern didn’t work effectively.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, you made two great points. Well made a lot of great points, two of them in particular. So if you have a tongue-tie and the baby’s already compensating, when they get older, one of the things that makes it possible for you to speak correctly and enunciate is that you should be able to take your tongue, put it behind your upper front teeth and open your mouth at least three quarters of the way that you can without your tongue staying there.

So you may have a little baby, an infant that looks like they’re doing okay, and then when they start to speak at two or three, they end up with a lisp or they end up with problems with that. The second piece, which we’ve addressed, and my wife and I have talked about it, and it’s again, why we wrote this book, It’s All in the Head, is because we have then, and you’ve pointed it out beautifully, we have accepted common as normal. Oh, Johnny has this, my kid has this. Oh, my kid doesn’t… Oh. So if you could find five people that still have the same problem, you’re like, that’s cool, that’s common. But does it make it normal? So if you’re in healthy-

Lisa Paladino:

… healthy.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s like we all get attracted to people that work, help us or teach us lessons in our life or groups that we vacillate to. And especially during this time in the pandemic, it was really, people would really delineate. They really took sides and you found people who you were like-minded with and who you weren’t. But the point around that is, so if you’re in a group where there was a bunch of children who are maybe, so if you’re in a group, let’s say a kid likes gymnastics and you’re in a group where these kids are doing really, really well and your kid’s not, that may stand out for you. So what if instead of dealing with that, you find another group of kids are lower functioning and you put your kid in that group.

And then now, because there’s so many of those kids doing it, you figure, ah, it’s normal. So it’s common is not normal. And that is what is happening. And that, you mentioned the medical profession before. And like I said, they have a different paradigm. If they see a number you mentioned, they see a number of people with a specific issue that then becomes normal. Perfect example of that is the new CDC guidelines that they just put out around milestones. I don’t know if you’re sure of. But they lowered all the bars, not all of them. They lowered most of the bars including speech and ambulation. And also one of the worst things they did is they took out creeping and crawling.

And so what they determined and what they said is that the original milestones that they found that there was too many people basically not reaching them. And instead of realizing that these milestones are pre-programmed into our nervous system, they’ve been there for generations that instead of going, oh, these people we’re not going to, well, since they’re not reaching them, let’s lower the bar so more people can reach it. So instead of only 50% reaching these milestones, now we have 75 and now we’ve just made it normal. And that’s really dangerous.

Lisa Paladino:

I almost can’t digest that because it’s so disturbing.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s horrific.

Lisa Paladino:

And in other words, we’re going to accept less. We’re going to lower the standards.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

So less kids need help.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Less kids need help. There’s less early intervention. It would be like saying, okay, so you said about bowel movements it’s very empirical to see that. And so we started having an issue that where kids, for whatever reason, were now only having bowel movements every five days. And instead of looking at, well, why is that happening? Is it our food sources, is it whatever? We would just go, oh, so five days is now the normal for bowel health.

I was talking to a friend and I said, we talk about human potential, because that’s what chiropractic is about. That’s really what it’s about. It’s not just about symptoms. It’s about helping people express their potential. I said, well, a lot of people watch the Olympics, and I tend to like it. I like sports. If I was watching Olympics and every year people ran slower, didn’t jump as high and didn’t perform, and they perform worse and worse and worse, would we be concerned about that?

Lisa Paladino:

Oh yeah.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Of course we would. Every year they break world records. Every year we reach for a new bar. So if that’s okay with our athletes, how could it be okay for our children to not create functional development at higher levels? Why are we accepting lower levels? Why are we accepting that 54% of the kids, according to the Health and Human Services, have chronic diseases? Why are we accepting that one in 42 kids are on the spectrum? That makes no sense.

Lisa Paladino:

And growing. And growing.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

You know what the number was when I graduated chiropractic school, it was one in 2,500. So that’s the thing. So anyhow, and you said it perfectly. We need to determine not just what the tongue-tie is, but how does it affect function? And then once the tongue-tie is revised, it needs to be how do we restore back to that functional potential?

Lisa Paladino:

Exactly. Exactly. Because it’s not just about cutting the frenulum.

Are you a professional who feels like me that we didn’t learn enough about tongue-tie and breastfeeding in school? Do you want to have the confidence to know that you are giving families the best information? Whatever your role on the healthcare team, if you take care of breastfeeding parents or babies or pregnant families, you play an important part in supporting infant feeding goals. Join me on May 18th at 7:00 P.M. for a free webinar, The Five Things That Breastfeeding Babies Want You to Know About tongue-tie. Sorry, parents, we’ll chat another time. This is just for pros. The link to join is in the show notes and all the info about how to join and the date and time will be in there for you too. It’s a Bitly link. So if you’re familiar with bitlybit.ly/FreeTongueTie webinar, and the first letter in each of those words is capitalized. If you’ve been looking for factual tongue-tie education, this is a great place to start and it’s free. Hope to see you there.

For those who haven’t heard me say this, I’ll say it again because it bears repeating. I have the most concern for parents who get a quick diagnosis or a social media opinion of their infant’s mouth. I will not allow pictures of parents asking if this is a tie on any of my social media platforms.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

We don’t do that anymore.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah. And then go and get it released by a well-meaning even professional person who does the release and then nothing gets better because they didn’t address the underlying concerns. Maybe there was a tongue-tie, but maybe it wasn’t the tongue-tie causing the problems. Those are the cases that are contributing to the bad press around tonguetie. And it’s dangerous because those loud voices will prevent others from getting the care they need because the pediatricians and primary care, and I hate to always bad mouth a specific medical provider, but this is what I see. They hear from the parents. I thought it was a tongue-tie. We got the tongue-tie fixed. It didn’t help.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It didn’t help.

Lisa Paladino:

So without reaching out for lactation care, without getting any body work as we term it or chiropractic OT, PT, exercise for the mouth, whatever is needed for that individual child, which varies. Not every kid-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

… the same thing. And it’s not available. That’s the other thing is not all of these services are available to every child, whether it be economically or location.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Or just referral wise. I had a woman, she’s been a patient now for just about a month, her baby, she brought her baby in. Her baby wasn’t nursing, having a really hard time, wasn’t actually gaining weight. She really wanted her nurse. She really wanted to make that connection. So she was told that the baby had a tongue-tie. She went to a dentist who I actually know. Did the revision, and he listened to her. At least he did the revision. The baby didn’t still do a nurse.

And he in his world, well, we did the tongue-tie revision, went back to a pediatrician. Pediatrician said, look, maybe your baby just doesn’t have an affinity for nursing. Why don’t you try a bottle of formula? And so when she came into my office, and when I see a baby or any patient, I do an evaluation first. It’s an exam. I don’t even treat them on the first visit, I do a whole evaluation, I have them come back. So I did her evaluation and I saw she was very distressed. So instead of having her come back right away, I wanted to explain to her a little bit what I found. And she just started crying. But she was like, no one said this to me. They said, we did everything we could. If you tried the nursing, you’ve tried the positions, you’ve tried lactation, so you’ve had the tongue-tie revision, your baby should, should, the worst thing on you, should be fine. And if you can’t nurse, then you should just get a bottle of formula.

Now we’ve started treating her, and I’ve seen her probably maybe five times, and she’s nursing. And the mom’s much happier. The baby’s much happier. But yeah, it’s perfect example what you said. Well, we did what was supposed to be done. It’s like anything. Yeah. It’s like anything else.

Lisa Paladino:

Worse than that is the pediatrician that will say, first of all that advice about just give formula. First of all, the first choice would be, mom, you start pumping and save your milk supply. And pediatricians don’t go there. They don’t know to go there because the formula is free in their office. So it just makes sense for them. And the lactation support, because you may treat mom and baby because chiropractors can, but some of the providers that we’re sending to are just treating the baby and not looking at the mom.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

If mom has an insufficient milk-supply from a physical reason, then no matter how much we fix that baby, there’s not going to be milk to nurse. So that’s why I’m giving a plug for my profession. I’ve been CLC to the feeding experts for mothers and babies.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

No, I think it’s important.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

It’s like people have to understand. So it’s like if you have a kid who’s neurologically challenged. Let’s say you have three kids, one of them is severely neurologically challenged and have problems. And he says doctor, he said so if they bring this kid in who’s neurologically challenged and we help the kid, you also can see how that’s pervasive for the entire family. So everybody has to deal with it, and everybody has to get treated. Everybody has to heal around it. I’m not saying everybody has to go to a chiropractor, though, that’s my belief system that they should, but it’s like everybody has to have some way to deal with the fact that yes, we have this kid, we have to spend all this time and energy. Now the kid is getting better and how do we heal from all the stuff that happened before?

And it’s the same thing. So this mom, which one of the reasons, and I should have prefaced that, is the reasons they told her to give the kid formula is because she was having low milk output because baby wasn’t nursing, and it’d been three months already. So her milk output was basically drying up and no one for some reason didn’t tell her to pump. I don’t know why. It’s that. But anyhow, and so right. So it’s the same thing. So treating the mom or her getting care, or even her getting reconnected, because I’m sure I’ve never nursed. I don’t know what it’s like, but I’ve seen it and it looks like a very intimate experience.

And if it doesn’t happen, there’s a lot of frustration around it. And that frustration should also be something that needs to be dealt with so that the process becomes much more fluid and is much easier. And so both parties have to reacclimate. It’s like getting back together with somebody. You have to reform that relationship on a physical level, a structural level, an emotional level-

Lisa Paladino:

Absolutely. I love that. A whole body, whole person approach.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah.

Lisa Paladino:

And like you say, the intimate relationship, I liken it to dancing. So you might be a good dancer, but if somebody passes you a partner, you’re in a dance party and it’s like all of a sudden there’s a partner that has no idea how to dance or doesn’t have the capacity to dance the way you do, you’re not going to be able to dance well.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

And with each new partner, you have to learn to dance together. And it’s the same with breastfeeding, because I get a lot of repeat parents, this is their second or third baby. Everything has gone well in the past and all of a sudden this new baby is a challenge for them. So it’s about learning how to integrate this new dancer, this new partner together in the dance. Yeah. So a couple of conversations ago, you dropped the words, tummy time.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Ah.

Lisa Paladino:

Let’s touch on that because who’s better to address the importance of tummy time than somebody who’s such an expert on the development of the child?

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Tummy time is another one of my venues where I spend a lot of time talking to people about it because it’s such an important neurological, developmental issue.

Lisa Paladino:

Same.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So I was talking to a doula the other day who was actually on a podcast, and we were talking about milestones, developmental milestones, and what she said, which was really amazing, she considers the first developmental milestone, the ability of the baby to come out of the birth canal head down like that. So those kids who are breached and all that, she thinks that’s a missing milestone. But the point around that is each milestone piggybacks on the other. So one of the first things that happens with tummy time is the child has to have the ability to pick their head up comfortably. If they can’t, for whatever reason, if they have something like torticollis or the tissues are too tight or too loose, if they can’t pick their head up and they’re crying because they have tummy time, that’s going to interrupt the next developmental milestone, which is their ability to turn over.

And the other thing about tummy time also, if they have kids with colic that have a lot of bloating, that may be why they’re uncomfortable. So when you have a child who’s having trouble with tummy time, you have to determine and find out what the reasons are. Is it too much tension in the spine? Is it too weak musculature? Is it digestive issues? Because the other thing that happens, we keep thinking these milestones as neurological. They’re also social developmental milestones. If you can’t pick your head up, you can’t see the world around you. You can’t get input. So you need input. As we grow in our nervous system, we take in more input, and that’s what makes the nervous system grow. We create interconnections, which we call synapses in the nervous system. And the actual peak developmental time where they’re developing the fastest that they ever do in your life is at eight months of age.

So think about that. So you have tummy time, which helps create neurological development of holding their head up, seeing the world, setting the stage for them to roll over, which is then setting the stage to build muscle so they can sit up. And once they get to the seated position, if they haven’t gotten a lot of tummy time, their neck muscles are too weak so they can’t sit well. And think about it, when you’re lying on your belly, you have a very small world. When you sit up, your world opens up. So that changes your neurology, that changes the social interaction. From the seated position, then you want to start to creep and crawl. And what’s so important about creeping and crawling is that not only does it build muscle strength, but it integrates the nervous system. It integrates the right and left brain. It creates what we call cross patterning.

So when you’re able to then stand, you can actually walk normally. Very often if kids miss creeping and crawling, they’ll have a harder time walking. They’ll be less coordinated because they haven’t integrated in their system. And then we get to standing. And then of course, once a child gets to standing, then their social emotional development gets huge. So the first 18 months, which is the time, by 18 months, the child should be able to easily walk independently by themselves. They have then have the ability, as you pointed out, your grandson, to interact with people, to understand what makes people happy, to understand what makes them happy, and also the ability to then create some of their own happiness by some level of independence. And if those phases do not happen, including that tummy time, which again is that baseline phase, it’s the first thing that’s going to stimulate it, then you’re going to create compensatory changes.

And as human beings, we are very fault-tolerant, which means we can compensate. The problem is if we create compensations over those first 18 months, we reduce our threshold later on in life. So for example, at age three or four, all of a sudden your child is being diagnosed with reading issues or learning disability or behavior issues. And the reason for that is because their nervous system had compensated in the first 18 months, and now they’re having trouble integrating more information already in a compensatory state. So that’s why it’s so important for those foundations to be laid down correctly so that your child has a higher threshold to deal with stresses or adaptations later on in life.

Lisa Paladino:

I love it. Thank you for so eloquently explaining what I, in my heart and soul, understand, but can’t find the words. Because to me, it’s like an instinct to me that it should just work. It’s important for it to work. And I have a theory that some of our learning disabilities and more kids on the spectrum is related to the back to sleep campaign. Now-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

… in the nineties-

Lisa Paladino:

… I’m going to be very careful and say, I’m not saying that we shouldn’t listen to safety guidelines, however, we’ve gone too far when we put a fear in parents that babies should never be on their belly except for that two minutes of… And there’s all different kinds of prescriptions for when-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

10 minutes a day or-

Lisa Paladino:

… to integrate, in my layman’s professional, but not that professional view. It’s an integration of all the muscles and not being on their back all the time and development of being able to lift the head comfortably. It’s just something that we’re missing. And if what you just said is true, which I believe it is about how all that development is going on in the first 18 months and we’re thwarting that, then that could be a reason that our standards are dropping because-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely. So there’s a difference between cautious and couching people in fear.

Lisa Paladino:

Yes.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

And so in the nineties, what you’re talking about is the American Pediatric Association came out with statements saying that kids should not sleep on their stomachs because they have a higher propensity for sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS. In the chiropractic venue, and there have been studies, it was actually a study done in Harvard by a guy named Calvin that he actually found that a large percentage of the kids in his study, 90% of the kids who actually had SIDS who passed away, and he did autopsy, had actually had trauma to the upper cervical spine to the extent that there was actually bleeding in the tissue. So it had nothing to do with them sleeping on the stomach, there was damage there. And some of them, he found that the highest percentage was due to the birth process, assisted deliveries like C-section, vacuum and forceps, because it tractions it.

But that being aside, that being aside in the chiropractic paradigm or in a healthcare paradigm, it should not be a death sentence to sleep on your stomach. So there’s some underlying issue. And what happened when the American Pediatric Association did that, they had people sleeping on the head. So what they did is they increased because you can’t do one thing without it becoming a downward effect. They increased the propensity and then of kids who have what they call flat head syndrome or brachycephaly and plagiocephaly. Matter of fact, according to their last statistics, 47% of children born today or 47% of infants have cranial distortions. But in their world, only 10% of them need to be treated. The rest, you should leave alone. Now, in my world, that’s something, but again, and it’s because of that-

Lisa Paladino:

So for those who are listening who don’t know what we’re talking about, about treatment, those are the kids that you see that get prescribed a helmet for their head shape. And I’ve had reports because I’ve seen babies in my office and they go, is your pediatrician concerned about this baby’s head shape? And they’ll say, not yet. It’s too early for a helmet. My head wants to explode when I hear that because it’s not nothing or a helmet.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

Lisa Paladino:

There’s so much to be done. But we could go, we can do a whole episode on that.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, no, we can. But part of the chiropractic paradigm and the chiropractic evaluation, pediatric chiropractors, is checking the cranium, measuring the cranium, and actually treating the cranium as soon as possible if there are distortions caused by either what baby birth chart was, or sleeping positions or whatever it may be. That’s right. Keep wait, wait and see is, it’s different when you’re 40 years old or you want to see if your knee gets better by itself. But when you’re an infant and you’re laying down a foundation, wait and see is a horrible approach.

Lisa Paladino:

And to be fair, pediatricians know what they’ve learned. They know what they’ve learned and they’ve learned in a different paradigm than we’ve learned.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

And there are pediatricians that have a more global look and are more holistic and do that. So it’s who you find. What I always tell parents, and you actually said it a minute ago, if you’re a mom or a dad, but if you’re a mom, trust your intuition. If it doesn’t feel right, it’s probably not right. And find somebody who not will necessarily agree with you, because sometimes parents will come in and say, oh, I’m really worried about Johnny, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I’ll go, no, according to my evaluation, he’s fine. But you need to find someone who will at least listen to you and address the concerns and then either quantify what’s going on, send you to someone else to look at it, or assuage your fears by letting you know that, no, this is normal. It’s okay. He or she’s going to be okay. It’s getting it blown off.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah, that’s a great time, a great point to wrap on because I say that all the time, and I love that you brought that up, is the most important thing we can do for parents is to empower them to trust their instincts.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

Over any profession that they’re talking to. So if it doesn’t feel right to you, and I say that to people who sit right here in my office with me, if what I’m telling you does not feel right to you for your baby, then don’t listen to me. You have to do what feels right for you.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Lisa Paladino:

Yeah. So Dr. Rosen, how can our listeners find you? I’ll put some links in the show notes, but-

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I’ll let you know-

Lisa Paladino:

… for those who are just listening and can’t read right now, what’s the best way for them to find you and to find your new book, which I’m so excited to read.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So if you want to find more about my office and general chiropractic information, go to wellesleychiro.com. That’s my office website. If you are a professional, want to find more about our professional services, you can go to my other website, which is drmartinrosen.com, or if you want to look at our programs, you can go to peakpotentialprogram.com. And the last thing, if you want to get our book, you could go to the website, itsallintheheadbook.com, or you can buy it on Amazon if you want to help Jeff Bezos make some more money, he needs more rocket ships. That’s okay. And of course, if you want to contact us, our Gmail address is DrMartinRosen@gmail.com, and we’ll be happy to answer your questions and connect with you and help you find a practitioner if you need one that can help you with your child and your issues.

Lisa Paladino:

Excellent, excellent. Thank you so much. This conversation has been very valuable, both to myself and to our listeners, I’m sure. It was a pleasure to chat with you. And I hope to have you on again because I feel like there are so many channels that we can just keep chatting up in different directions. Thank you so much, Dr. Rosen.

Dr. Martin Rosen:

And thank you for having me, and I really appreciate again what you do, and I’d love to be back on and go down another path together. It was awesome, and it was great talking to you again, Lisa. Thank you.

Lisa Paladino:

Thank you.

Thank you so much for listening to this week’s episode of The Tongue-tie Experts podcast. Check out the show notes for useful links about the topics we discussed, and for ways to follow us on social media. Please subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app, and if you enjoyed listening, we’d love it if you’d rate, review and share with your friends and colleagues. Thanks so much. Bye-bye.