Dr. Shannon:

Hello, hello, Aligned Birth Podcast listeners and friends. Today, Dr. Shannon here, one of the hosts of the show, and we have an interview today. And today’s interview, the topic is going to be all about pediatric chiropractic care, pediatric craniopathy, common vs. normal, and we’re going to just talk about all of the good things there. So, today with our interview, we have Dr. Martin Rosen. So, he is a chiropractor.

 

He graduated in 1981, summa cum laude from Life Chiropractic College, and he currently lives in the New England area with his wife. He has two daughters. His wife is also a chiropractor as well. But he’s been teaching seminars, chiropractic-based seminars since 1979 and sharing the knowledge that he has and the gifts that he has and what he has seen, pediatric chiropractic care, its ability to do and impact people’s lives, so mainly looking at SOT Chiropractic. In the show, which before we’ve talked about; there’s over 200 different techniques in chiropractic world.

 

So, that’s one of the techniques there, but really looking at pediatrics, cranial adjusting, and the chiropractic philosophy as well. So, he’s the past president of a couple committees, lead instructor for ICPA for 15 years. So, you’ve heard this on the show, the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. That’s when I first met Dr. Rosen. I was able to take his seminar there.

 

And then, for now over 40 years, he’s been at the forefront of chiropractic pediatric care, specifically pediatric craniopathy. And so, we’re going to talk about one of his new books today and talk about how he is influencing the pediatric chiropractic world. Hello and welcome to the Aligned Birth Podcast. We are so glad you are here. I’m Dr. Shannon, a prenatal chiropractor.

 

Rachel:

And I’m Rachel, a birth doula and childbirth educator, and we are the team behind the Aligned Birth Podcast.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Between us, we have experienced a cesarean birth, at VBAC, hospital births, and home birth. Our personal experiences led us to where we are today. We share a lot in common.

 

Rachel:

We are friends from high school who reconnected through our work. We both changed career paths after the births of our own children. We light up when talking about health and birth, and we are both moms to two young boys.

 

Dr. Shannon:

This podcast was created to share conversations and interviews about topics from pregnancy and birth to motherhood and the importance of a healthy body and mind through it all. Our goal is to bring you fun, interesting and helpful conversations that excite you and make you want to learn more.

 

Rachel:

We believe that when you are aligned in body, mind and your intuition, you can conquer anything. We hope you enjoy the episode.

 

Dr. Shannon:

So, I’m so excited to have you on the show today, Dr. Martin.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Dr. Shannon, thank you so much for having me. I’m really excited to be here and to get to talk to your audience and to talk to you. And, yeah, it’s been a while since we’ve seen each other in-person, but I really appreciate you having me here and I’m ready to get started when you are.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yeah. So, the book that you have out recently, now you have a textbook that I remember I bought that when I took your class and that’s geared more towards chiropractic professionals as far as adjusting techniques and specifics. But the new one that you have out, it’s called It’s All in The Head: Common vs. Normal Cranial Distortions and What it All Means. So, that’s what we’re going to highlight today because this book is more for the layperson, I feel like.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. Well, it was written for two reasons. I wrote it with my wife, Dr. Nancy Watson, and it was written, yes, to give the general public an idea of what we do as chiropractors, but also to help chiropractors facilitate the process. I mean, we all spend hours in our office talking to people about what we do, why we do it, and how we do it. This book covers a lot of the why we do it and how we do it so that chiropractors can also use it to facilitate the conversation in their offices as well. But, yeah, it’s also mainly written for the general public to get an understanding, really, of the in-depth amount of work that goes into not only being a chiropractor but the importance of chiropractic care in the pediatric population.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yes, because when I was going through the book, I was like, “Oh, yeah, I say this in the office. Oh, I like how he explained this.” It gave me little tidbits of like, “This is how we can explain it.” So, we’re going to go into really how we live our lives through our nervous system and what that means, but then how birth impacts the infant cranium, why is cranial shape important, what is the dura mater, what are the parts of the nervous system, why is the first two years so important, milestones, reflexes, specific conditions, and then when to seek help. So, that’s our outline today, just going through the book a little bit.

 

But one of the first things I wrote down because at the beginning, you really highlight, it’s an overview of why is this important and what is the nervous system. And so, you say, “We live our lives through our nervous system,” so explain a little bit of what that means.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Sure. So, the only controlling system in your body is your central nervous system, your brain and spinal cord. It tells you everything that’s happening to you, everything that’s going on, everything you process, everything in your environment. So, it is the basis for how you live. Every other system, digestive system, immune system, respiratory system, elimination system, all that is connected directly to the nervous system. You shut down the nervous system and none of the other things work.

 

So, what I mean by we live our lives through our nervous system, the development of the nervous system, how we function or how we teach it to function or how it learns to function depending on nature vs. nurture, that is how you’re going to live the rest of your life. The nervous system is predicated on taking in input in the first two years of life, developing a foundation, and once that foundation is developed, you’re going to carry that foundation with you for the rest of your life. So, everything you do, think, say, breathe, get rid of in your body is mitigated by how well your nervous system is functioning. It’s really that simple.

 

Dr. Shannon:

It is. And you can see it in, I mean, adults that you work with because if we’ve got these learned behaviors and patterns and we’re always carrying a baby on that right side, well, then now you see what that means as far as that nervous system function, right? It’s those patterns, and so that’s how you’re functioning in the whole world-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

 

Dr. Shannon:

… is through that nervous system. Now, I want to… You then go into a little bit of how does birth impact the cranium and really looking at that infant chiropractic care and some of those differences there with the birthing process.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, it’s interesting. I had an epiphany a couple of weeks ago. I was doing another podcast, and I saw a doula who was on the podcast with me, and it was also another chiropractor, and we were talking about primal reflexes, and we’ll get into those probably a little bit later, but primal reflexes are survival reflexes. And she said to me that she feels one of the first primal reflexes is the ability of the baby to flip head down, like if the baby doesn’t even do that in utero, that there’s an issue right away. So, the birth process, obviously, is supposed to be a natural process in most cases, but the whole idea of the birth process from the moment the child is conceived through the entire development, you’re also forming the nervous system.

 

You know that in utero, the baby can actually distinguish pain and pleasure by the third trimester. So, even while the baby is in your uterus, it’s also developing its reaction to the world. And then, when the baby comes through the birth canal, so you’re changing, what you’re doing is you’re dealing with a molding process. As the baby comes down through the birth canal, the cranium starts to mold. That’s why the cranium is so pliable in the infant.

 

It molds, and that’s why babies also come out looking a little bit cone head, and that molding process is twofold. One, it sets up the structure of the dural meningeal system, but two, it helps prime what we call the primary respiratory mechanism, which is basically the mechanism that allows for movement of cerebrospinal fluid, and I’ll talk more about that in a little bit. So, when the baby comes out on the birth canal and goes through this molding process as it goes through the transition, it increases pressure from the uterus of 10 millimeters of mercury to literally 100 millimeters of mercury. So, the pressure increases are there to literally priming a baby’s pump. And when the baby comes out, they take their first breath.

 

All right? And in the first six to seven days, then the cranium starts to unwind again and open up. So, the whole process is designed to basically give the baby a jumpstart onto the planet. And so, the birth process is really important because not only is it giving the baby a jump start functionally, but structurally and also neurologically because as we said, the babies are already determining the difference between pain and pleasure, so they’re actually feeling and going through the birth process. That’s why the Apgar score is so interesting because the Apgar score is one of the things that gives you an idea of how the birth process affected the baby. Because if the baby comes out with a low Apgar score, then you can see that it was a stressful birth for the baby.

 

If they come out with a higher Apgar score, then it means that the baby adapted well. So, that is their first entry into the world. That’s when they’re going to take their first breath. That is when they prime the entire central nervous system, and they’re literally extremely vulnerable, extremely open to the world, and the whole process is basically designed to get them ready to exit the birth canal and to take their first breath.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Wow, there’s so many good nuggets in there. I was assuming we were going to go through that cranial molding aspect of things too. So now, when we can have babies sometimes that are born very quickly, so then you get a bit different of the cranial molding process, and then we also have C-section babies, which have something different too. So, can you comment on those different births?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Sure. So, when you talk about the nervous system and when you talk about adults, they go to a chiropractor, most time when adults go to a chiropractor, if they’re in pain, they think they have a pinched nerve, which basically the nerve is being compressed somewhere between the vertebral bodies, into the neck, somewhere the nerve got pinched. That’s what people think. I’m not going to spend the whole time on adults, but let’s just say that that’s the current paradigm. Well, infants, that doesn’t happen.

 

You don’t get pinched nerves because you don’t have degenerative disc disease, you don’t have compression of the foramen, you don’t even have joints that are completely solidified, you don’t have exostosis, you don’t have any of that degenerative stuff. So, what happens in infants, the number one thing that causes damage to their nervous system is traction. When a nerve root gets stretched or tractioned, it changes the way it can function. So, let’s take an example. Let’s say you play guitar and the guitar, you have tuning forks at the head of the guitar, and then you have the guitar attached down at the end of the fretboard.

 

When you turn the tuning fork, you change the tone of the guitar string either can be too high or too low or at the right tone. Well, nerves also function on tone. In other words, there’s supposed to be a certain tension in the system and that is mitigated by the nerve’s attachments to the fascia and to a thing called the dural meningeal system. But that aside, just think of a tube that attaches to the top of the cranium all the way down to the tailbone and then attaches to all the nerves as they exit between the vertebrae. And so, if that tube gets too tight or too loose, it affects the tension on the nerve.

 

So, during the birth process, the thing you mentioned is C-section, people always think, “Oh, C-section, they just cut a hole in the mom and pull the baby out.” Well, what happens in the C-section is that the baby misses all those contractions, so they miss the molding process. The mom’s not able to push the baby out. So, they’re literally tractioning baby’s head and neck out, and the most vulnerable area and the infant’s spine is the upper cervical where the head and the neck meet and that area gets traction. And that is the base of the brain stem where all your primal issues occur while your breathing mechanism, your life-sustaining mechanism occur.

 

So, anytime there’s tractioning in the birth, that is too much traction, it can actually damage the nerves. And that’s been proven by a man named Alf Breig who wrote in a book called Adverse Mechanical Tension in the Central Nervous System that he says that traction on a nerve actually causes immediate pathophysiological damage to that nerve and impedes the way it processes information or sends information to the rest of the body. So, when we’re talking about the molding process coming down the birth canal too fast or too long, either one of those processes can be a problem. Assisted deliveries forceps, vacuum deliveries, all that puts extra traction on the nervous system. Now, I’m not saying those are not necessary in some cases, I’m just saying that be aware when that happens, that is an additional stress to the child’s nervous system and can cause changes when the nervous system functions.

 

So, that’s why we look especially at those particular issues when kids come in, how was the birth process? Was it really long? Did they have to use assisted forceps, vacuum, C-section, any of those type of issues, it’s really important for us to double check, especially that upper cervical area because again, once that nerve gets tractioned, it changes the way it transmits impulses. And you don’t want to start a child on this planet with a compensatory pattern from the moment they exit the birth canal.

 

Dr. Shannon:

And that’s exactly what I wanted to hit home too because I am a C-section mama and then had a VBAC with my second. And so, having that differences, I’ve always in processing those birth stories really looked at, we can’t ignore the fact that a C-section birth is vastly different from a vaginal, not only for mom but for baby as well. But it’s also, that’s why we take those case histories and go through it.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Totally.

 

Dr. Shannon:

And then, we can set up that care plan and say, “Okay, this is what we’re seeing. What can we do and how can we help set that child up for the best start in life?” So, early on in the book, you talk about structure impacting function and why is that cranial shape important?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So, to reiterate a little bit more, so this system called the dural meningeal system, if you could see an infant skull, if you look at Google or look at an infant skull, you see all these soft spots and you see all these breaks between the bones. Those are what are going to form the sutures. And the soft spots are what we look at because in the first year of life, the whole job of the cranium is not really to protect the cranium, but is to allow the brain to grow and the first year of the brain is going to grow 101%.

 

So, the reason we have these soft spots or these openings in the cranium is for allowing the brain to grow, but around through those soft spots is what’s called the dural system. So, it comes up and forms the sutures, it covers the brain, it attaches very strongly right at the base of the neck of the upper cervical spine, then it attaches to every single nerve root and it exits the foramen or between the vertebral bodies attaches all the way down to the tailbone and the coccyx, and that is that dural meningeal system.

 

Anywhere along that course where there is a distortion, whether it’ll be in the tailbone or in the cranium, it changes tension in the dura. And besides the dura having to maintain a specific tension to keep the nerves to function, it has another very, very important function. It has a space in it that allows for the movement of cerebrospinal fluid. And cerebrospinal fluid is basically the lifeblood of the central nervous system.

 

So, we all know we have blood supply to all our organs in the rest of our body. We also know we have a lymphatic system that drains toxins from the rest of the body. Well, the CSF or the cerebrospinal fluid is the lymphatic system of the central nervous system. Not only does it bring nutrients to the system, it also protects it from damage, both chemical and physical, and it also removes toxins from that system. So, if you think of this tube with fluid running in it, if you have kinks or tightness or torque in that tube and it restricts the flow of that movement, it can restrict the amount of nutrients that comes to the central nervous system and the way toxins are reduced.

 

And just like if you have lymph glands that are swollen and they’re blocked, that can get you very, very sick. We all know that. Or if you have blood supply to an arm or a hand, or a leg, or a foot, or anything that’s being blocked that can cause damage. Well, the same thing can happen if this tube gets what we call torqued or twisted or too tight. It impedes the flow of cerebrospinal fluid as well.

 

And the cranium, it attaches into all the cranial bones. There are tents inside the cranium that cover the brain. One goes from the front to the back and one goes from the side to the side. Those are the two main tents. There’s also a smaller tent in the front.

 

And so, these tents, if you think of if you ever camp, if you have a tent and you have a tent pole in the middle and you pull one side of that tent too tight, the tent will start to lean towards one side. And if you think of the pole in the middle as the spinal cord or the tension on the nerves, you can see as you pull the pole, it tilts one side to the other and it’s more tense on the other side. And again, as we said, too much or too little tension on the nerve or on that tissue will cause that nerve to not fire to its optimal potential.

 

So, the structure that we look at things like today plagiocephaly, brachycephaly, or scaphocephaly, all those distortions in the cranium, they’re not only aesthetically involved, but they also affect the function of the underlying tissues. It’s no different if you look at somebody walking down the street with a crooked spine, right? Sometimes you see somebody really crooked spine or somebody, an older person very much bent over and you can just imagine how much pain and discomfort they’re in.

 

Well, that distortion in the spine affects not only the muscles and joint, but affects the nerves. The same thing happens with the cranium. There is a certain leeway, but past that leeway, once those distortion patterns happen, they change both the tension in that dural system and they change the movement of cerebrospinal fluid.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Well, there you go. There you have it. We can go home now. I know, so much good stuff. Now, I forgot to mention because I like what that doula had said too when I did the interview, because I remember in school we talked about the first subluxation, that first nervous system irritation really coming from the birthing process.

 

But now I feel like there’s a little bit of a shift in that pediatric chiropractic world and saying, “Well, what about in utero? What is going on there?” So, I guess too, looking at… Yeah, comment on that a little bit.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, I mean that’s been known for years. I mean, even know Dr. Jeanne Ohm, who was one of the head of the ICPA, who passed away several years ago, always talked about the birth process, always talked about the in-utero process.

And even when we were having kids in the ‘80s, my kids were both born in the ‘80s, there was a place called the Institute for the Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia that we used to go and take courses, and they talked about how important it was for the child to be safe and comfortable in utero, that the things you did externally affected them, whether it’d be the type of music you played, the amount of stress you’re under, the type of food you ate.

 

So, that’s all setting up that nervous system. We’ve known that for years, and I think, what was it, two or three years ago, I remember getting a call before Jeanne passed away and she was like, “Did you believe this, it’s some article came out?” The medical journal say, “Hey, while the child is in utero, what you do affects the child and how they develop.” It was like, “Really? No kidding, genius.”

 

So, right. So, we know that the effects… I mean, and again, we don’t want to put too much burden on the mom or the dad and parents. We still all have stresses even when we’re pregnant, when we’re not pregnant, when the children are out. But we just have to understand that the things we think, do and say affect the child because they’re basic, like a blank computer. And as they start to develop their nervous system, as the brain the central nervous system develops in the first even two years of life, they’re just a blank computer taking in information.

 

It’s like going to a store and buying a brand-new computer, taking it home and loading down the software. That’s basically what’s happening in the first two years of life is you’re putting in the software to your child, and that is happening in utero too. So, you’re putting in the software and just be aware of that. And sometimes the software has little glitches and sometimes it’s hard to put in certain software, a certain learning curve is harder. But all the time, that’s what’s happening those first two years, they’re developing a nervous system that’s growing so fast.

 

Matter of fact, the base of the brainstem, which is called the cerebellum, that area grows 240% in the first year of life.

So, think of that as your mainframe computer that you’re putting information in, and that’s what’s happening in utero. And those first two years of life, we are laying down that foundation. They’re taking in massive amounts of information, creating connections, creating foundation. So, that’s really what’s happening.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Now, I want to… You just talked too about those first two years of life and brain development and touching on to that. A lot of this is… It’s easy as that parent to be like, “Oh my gosh, my thoughts, everything is impacting my baby. This is stressing me out. I want to set up everything well and do a good job.” And so, it’s like, “No, we’re talking about these things to bring that awareness that these things do matter, but you’re just trying to mitigate some of that stress there too.”

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. Well, the bottom line is that stress is a good thing too. We have to have stresses. That’s how we develop strength and that’s how we develop our nervous system. So, again, you’re right, it’s really hard, and I know as chiropractors and I

see a lot of chiropractors and teach a lot of chiropractors. And sometimes I’ll see a chiropractic mom when they come in, if the birth didn’t go the way they had it planned, they feel very guilty about it.

 

And the first thing I tell them is, “Wait, it’s not just you during the birth process, there are at least two people there.” So, it’s part of what their lesson is to learn. But again, stresses are you’re not going to keep your child de-stressed for the rest of their life. You’re not going to be able to protect them. So, the difference between awareness and blame is huge.

 

So, having an awareness that you’re impacting your child is great. And a friend of mine, he was having a conversation with his child. His older child is now in his 30s, his child, and they were talking about some of the childhood stuff, and he basically said to me, he said, “There is no parent that I know that wakes up in the morning and says, ‘Well, today I’m going to screw up my child. This is the day I’m going to mess them up.’ No, we have bad days.

 

We have good days. That’s how we have to adapt. It’s not like life is all roses and unicorns. So, it’s not unnecessary a bad thing. It’s just again about the awareness.

 

You have a fight with your spouse or you have a fight with somebody. When you get to a certain point, you realize that there’s no reason to continue that fight or you apologize, you change it.” That is all part of the adaptation to life. So, yeah, I really want to be careful, and I think it’s a great point, Shannon, you said that. It’s not about feeling guilty if something didn’t go the way you want to go.

 

I was a C-section baby. I was born a C-section. So, as I learned more about it, I thought about certain things that probably happened to me in my childhood, but I know that my parents weren’t like, “Oh, let’s have a C-section. Let’s make this really difficult birth for this child.” None of that is the case.

 

The case is that once we know there’s certain levels of stress, we just want to help our children like we do in life, and to be able to adapt to those stresses. We don’t want to handicap them so that they can’t deal with stress either. So, it’s not, again, being guilty about it, feeling like you’ve done something wrong. There’s always a reason for stuff to happen. And again, it’s not just your job or you’re not the only part of that process.

 

So, again, guilt doesn’t help anybody. Angst doesn’t help anybody. It’s awareness that helps people and being able to accept whatever happens and to move through that and to help your child move through that too.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Exactly. I think that’s why I wanted to reiterate that because I love that you said that it’s like awareness of that situation. And awareness that there’s options and things out there like pediatric chiropractic care to help with that adaptability.

 

So, let’s touch on milestones and reflexes. So, why are milestones important? What are the reflexes? Let’s go down that rabbit hole.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Okay. All right. So, let’s start with primal reflexes. The primal reflexes are simple. They are fight or flight responses to protect you when you’re basically your prefrontal cortex. So, your brain can’t make rational decisions.

 

So, things like we call the Moro reflex, which is the startle reflex, or the blink reflex or the rooting reflex. Okay? A rooting is a reflex that allows you to be able to nurse. So, all of these reflexes are designed to protect you. And then, when you start to develop by age two, all the reflexes are pretty much gone. And by age two, the child is able from about 18 months on starting to able to delineate what’s good and bad for them to certain degrees, obviously not making rational decisions.

 

But they can delineate situations and they get used to certain situations that have enough neural pathways to be able to somewhat consciously adapt, and they no longer need those reflexes. So, if the reflexes stay, what we call retained primal reflexes, as you get older, what that means is you stay in a fight or flight state that your body or your brain, basically your prefrontal cortex, hasn’t been able to basically teach the rest of your brain what’s safe and what’s not. So, one of the most common reflexes that stay around is what they call the Moro response or the startle reflex.

 

So, these are the type of kids who are very hypersensitive or even hyperactive, and any noises or sounds, or touch, or taste, or things can irritate their nervous system because they still have that internal startle reflex. Okay, it’s a sensitivity reflex, and until that goes away, they’re going to stay in a fight or flight state. So, the idea is the primal reflexes, they arrive and disappear at specific age groups. And as I said a minute ago, by age two, all the primal reflexes are pretty much gone or integrated. If they’re not, then that can create neurological problems later on because again, you’re dealing in a primal state when you should be basically in an upper level.

 

The brain is divided into different levels. You have the forebrain or the primal state, you have the midbrain, and you have the frontal cortex. So, it’s like we have the primal state, that area called the cerebellum, which deals with your vital functions, fight or flight responses, breathing mechanisms, all the vital functions. Then, you move up to the midbrain, which starts to deal with your emotional responses to life, and then finally you go into the forebrain, which is making your conscious choices and that develops as you get older and older and older. So, the primal reflex is supposed to disappear, which is by around age three, your forebrain or your prefrontal… Sorry, your prefrontal cortex is actually starting to take more control of, put more input into the rest of your brain.

 

So, that’s a short version of how they work. But milestones are another thing that are extremely important, and they are pre-programmed into your nervous system. So, the milestones are in what we call pre-programmed proprioceptive feedback loops, which is basically they tell your body at certain points in time how you can start to develop so that eventually you can become an adult that is able to walk, talk, and move. So, the milestones start with you being able to, as I said about the other doula, the doula that I thought that was interesting, being able to turn head down in the uterus. But the actual when the baby comes out, the first milestone is being able to lift your head.

 

If you can’t lift your head up, then you can’t lie on your stomach, you can’t do tummy time, and then you can’t reach the second milestone, which is being able to turn over. And then, once you can able to flip from front to back and back to front, the next milestone is being able to sit up. And then, once you can sit up, you start to be able to create balance, and you stimulate different reflex areas in your brain, and each milestone develops a different amount of neurological input and develops the brain better and better. Then, the next milestone… Which I won’t talk about the CDC right now, maybe we’ll get to that if we need to, but the next milestone is creeping and crawling. And that’s extremely important because that starts to integrate your right and left brain.

 

So, the creeping and crawling are creating what we call cross-patterning, allows you to develop neurological integrity in your brain actually develop a right-handedness, a left-handedness, hemispheric balance. Integrating information is extremely important milestone. And from creeping and crawling, we go to the next one, which is standing and then walking in a balanced pose, walking made with your legs spread out and your hands in a balanced pose to finally a crosspatterning walking. And these milestones, like I said, are pre-programmed. So, if we want to start to take and change these milestones, all of a sudden what we’re changing is is generations and generations and generations of preprogrammed neurological developmental milestones.

 

It would be like if you were a baby in the wild or if you were an animal in the wild, certain animals, when they’re born, they can walk within the first couple hours. If they can’t do that, they will die because they will have to be left outside of the herd, or the mom will only stay and protect them and they will be then open to predators. So, these milestones are extremely important to develop your life skills and your ability to function in life. So, any change that we are seeing of these milestones is not a positive, it’s a negative. I was talking to a friend and I said to him, I said, “The CDC came out and basically lowered the milestones.

 

That’s the short version. They lowered the milestones and they took out creeping and crawling as a milestone.” I said, “Well, if you’re watching the Olympics, and every year they took the world records and made them slower and made people jump less high, and they made everything go not as fast. And every year we deteriorated the ability, the athletic ability, would we keep watching the Olympics and be like, ‘Oh, you don’t need to run an under 10 second 100, now you can run a 12 second 100.’” It’s like, “No.

 

The whole idea of humans and human potential is to be able to increase our potential and to at the very least, at the very least, maintain the same baseline that we’ve had for generations and generations. Otherwise, our neurological systems and our functional potentials decrease.”

 

Dr. Shannon:

I still focus on the importance of crawling in the office because it is such a major milestone. And I even have adults in the office where if we’re looking at functions and it’s we balances off and everything, it’s like, “Okay, let’s go back to some of these foundations.” And crawling is one of those foundations, and I know we’ve learned it in school and everything. So, I want to connect how the birth process, cranial shape and milestones and reflexes are connected as far as what messes up, what causes us to have retained reflexes or to not hit those milestones on time?

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, again, in our world as chiropractors, it’s neurological dysfunction. It’s compensatory patterns. So, there were studies done. It’s at the Barrow Institute, Neurological Institute, and this is what they discernment, if there is damage to basically the base of the brainstem and that area where the cerebellum is and the brainstem is, and where all these reflexes are predicated and where the baseline of input is taken into the brain that if this area is damaged, irritated, that the child will then develop compensatory patterns. And what will happen is they’ll develop certain compensatory patterns.

 

And as they get older and their nervous system needs to use more of its nervous system to function better, to be more optimally functioning, to be more connected, these symptoms will tend to increase until eventually you have a diagnosis. So, it’s very interesting to see that most kids when they get diagnosed, let’s say to be on the autism spectrum, they’re somewhere around three to four years of age. And if you ask the parent, “Hey, when did you notice something that’s wrong?” They’ll say, “Oh, I ain’t noticed something was wrong with my child before 18 months.” And the point around that is that what we call wear fault-tolerant individuals, which means we’re going to try and survive.

 

So, there’s damage to that lower area of the brainstem or interference to the transmission of impulses from the brain to the spinal cord and from the spinal cord back to the brain. The child is going to compensate for that. And so, you’ll see that over time, the child will make compensations, compensations and make sure they’ll get to the age where these compensations no longer hold up and they’ll break down. Let’s say a perfect example of that is a thing called selective mutism. So, selective mutism is an issue where a child can speak, has the ability, but in situations, especially when there’s more than one person there, they shut down, they don’t speak.

 

And so, selective mutism is something that has developed, but you don’t notice it in an infant. When the child becomes, let’s say three, four, five or six, and they’re put into a crowd or into a school, they start to shut down. And when the whole idea behind that is that this whole time while they were on a one-on-one relationship with their parents, the environment was very safe. They didn’t have to adapt very well. There wasn’t a lot of stress.

 

So, they can function in a compensatory state, but when they got into a situation where they had to use more of their nervous system, there was much more input. They had to process more input, they couldn’t do it, so they shut down. So, that’s one of those type of examples. It happens with a lot of different neurological, developmental issues. As you get to a certain point in life, if the brain is already compensated, it breaks down.

 

It’s like thinking if you’re running a marathon and you don’t train for it. Let’s say you’re a runner and you’ve been running 10K’s for years and years and years, and then a friend says to you, “Hey, let’s run a marathon.” And he go, “Sure, let’s do it. When is it?” “Two weeks.”

 

He go, “Okay, I’ll do it.” Somewhere around 18 to 20 miles, if you are only training for 10K’s, somewhere between 18, 20 miles, your system’s going to break down. It’s not going to have the bandwidth, it’s not going to have the reserves to do it, and you’ll break down. And that’s the same thing that happens to nervous systems. If enough neurological synapses, which are the interconnects between nerves have formed in those first two years of life, if they have too many adaptive patterns, at a certain point, the child will break down, and that’s when we give them a diagnosis or a symptom.

 

But us as chiropractors know that what we are looking for is maintaining that functional potential through those first two years of life. So, that symptom doesn’t show up when they’re three, four, and five. There’s one, there was a study done… Two studies, I think one was 2013 and 2015, and what they did is they studied the level of cerebrospinal fluid in kids’ brains. They used MRIs. And as I said, cerebrospinal fluid is the lifeblood of the central nervous system.

 

And they found that if they found too much cerebrospinal fluid in these kids’ brains in their cranium up by 6, at the most 12 months of age, there was a 70% increased chance that they would develop autism by the age of two or three. And this was a study that was published again, so too much cerebrospinal fluid in the brain by age six months to the most 12 months. If that system isn’t working right, then there’s a 70% increase in chance that that child will be autistic or have some neuro developmental issues by the time they’re age two.

 

So, there’s no symptoms those first six months to a year, but it develops later on because the child has already been handicapped by having basically an imbalance in the ability of the cerebrospinal fluid to flow correctly from the cranium through the spine, and then to be dumped out of the system and remove toxins.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Then, that’s directly related to why we’re looking at cranial shape and structure impact’s function.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Exactly.

 

Dr. Shannon:

So, yeah, I mean, that’s it. And I’ve had kids in the office too where we’re not writing on time as for school age things.

And so, we’ll look… And they do have retained palmar reflexes, and I have some kids with the oral fixation sucking on

the thumb, those type of things. So, all those little things, it’s all connected. We’ll talk about that in a minute because you also talked about that.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Now, you mentioned, I want to just touch a little bit on parts of the nervous system because you did mention those primitive, those primal reflexes are really that fight or flight. So, just briefly giving us an overview and outline of those parts of the nervous system.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, for reflexes, I’m not sure you’re talking about, so primary reflexes are base of the brain, and they’re basically mostly mitigated by when a reflex is a non-thinking process. So, in other words, when you go to a doctor, they hit your knee and your leg flares up or they hit your elbow and it flares up. Those are spinal cord reflex. They come from the extremity into the spine and right back. So, there’s no thinking.

 

They don’t go up to the brain and down. The same thing with primal reflexes, they don’t get processed. So, anytime you have a reflex, it is basically a non-processed or a non-cognitive action. And so, it doesn’t use the forebrain or the front of the brain. It’s not like if when someone hits your knee, you don’t think, “Oh, I should kick my leg out.”

 

Or like you talked about the palmer grasp reflex when you put your finger in a little baby’s palm and they grasp, but they don’t think, “Oh, I want to hold onto this.” Or when you stroke the baby’s cheek and they turn their head to nurse again, that’s called the rooting reflex. It’s a non-thinking process. So, it’s either mitigated through cranial nerves or specifically spinal nerves, and it doesn’t go up all the way through the brain into the prefrontal cortex. It’s reflex from whatever areas controlling that particular reflex.

 

And that’s why they’re so important is because again, they’re basically not using the prefrontal cortex. They’re basically stimulating lower brain centers so that when the prefrontal cortex kicks in, you have a well-developed lower brain center. And we know if you’re losing a reflex in your leg or your arm or your hand that that shows there’s a sign of nerve damage. Well, if you don’t have one of your primal reflexes, it’s also a sign of nerve damage.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yep. Exactly.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I guess that’s a simple version of it.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yeah, yeah. Now, you mentioned some… In the book, you mentioned some specific conditions. So, there’s plagiocephaly, torticollis and tongue-tie. So, I didn’t know if you wanted to briefly comment on why those are the three main ones that you put in the book here.

 

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. I did that because it’s so common in the ‘90s, the American Pediatric Association started really being afraid of SIDS or sudden infant death syndrome, and they were telling parents not to let babies lie on their stomach. And so, they started this whole process of, I’m doing air quotes here, “educating” people to put their babies on their back. And so, what had happened is now from in their 2000s when that occurred, what they came out with a study that said that 47% of children have cranial distortions.

 

So, cranium, this 47% that’s huge of children have basically distorted craniums. What we see in our offices, and I’ve been in practice now 40 years and every several years, five to seven years, there’s a new syndrome that comes up that people find a chiropractor can help with. When I first started practicing, everybody brought their kids in for ear infections. Then, when I started, then it switched to asthma and breathing issues. Then, it went to colic, and then it went to neurodevelopmental disorders, and now it’s tongue-tie and plagiocephaly.

 

So, I just felt like they were the more common issues that we see right now. I wanted to, and I think it’s a really good point here, is to not say that we treat the specific symptoms. It’s just that this is what people find us for. And what we do do is try and get the nervous system to work as best as possible regardless of the child’s symptoms. But things like plagiocephaly and tongue-tie are very visually obvious.

 

So, if you bring a baby in that has a distorted head and we start making adjustments and the head shake changes, parents go, “Wow, look at that.” I had a little kid brought in a couple of weeks ago that he had a 15-millimeter difference from one side of his head to the other, which is huge. And within two weeks we measured, it was down to 10. So, it was significantly changed, and you could see the changes. Tongue-tie is another big thing that pretty much it looks like every kid that’s born or every two out of kids has some kind-

 

Dr. Shannon:

Every kid. I’ve seen it all the time. Yeah.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

All the time. Now, but there are different types of tongue-tie and a lot of the things that, so there’s posterior, middle, and anterior tongue-tie. The one that always has to get treated or revised is an anterior tongue-tie. If the child can’t get their tongue out of the mouth and when they stick it out, the tongue bends over, it creates that little heart shake that’s a problem. But the other types of tongue-tie or the other types of where the frenula attach may just be variances.

 

And we don’t have the time to go into this, but we teach classes in how to determine if which tongue-ties need to be revised, and also how to check the function if the tongue-tie is impeding function. Because there is a thing that’s very important about the tongue is that the pressure of the tongue on the palate also helps shape the cranium. So, that sucking the ability of the child to suck, or to push their tongue up against their hard palate actually helps shape the cranium.

 

So, the only reason I cover those in the book now is because we wrote it now, and those are the things we often see in our practices a lot more. It’s also things that parents can see. If a child can’t nurse and they bring them to the chiropractor and we start to adjust the child, and all of a sudden the child’s nursing, that’s a huge change that they could easily see, and it changes the whole dynamics in their family. But we still see kids, well kids who come in after the birth just to get checked. I see kids… The other thing that was very prevalent that you see all the time is digestive issues, colic, reflux.

 

That’s another big thing that people bring chiropractor, babies to chiropractors for. And so, I just pointed those things out in the book just so parents could get an understanding and even a visual ideology of when we make adjustments, how much things actually change.

 

Dr. Shannon:

No, I mean, those are super, super what we see a lot coming into the office. But then, touching on again, that aspect of common versus normal, just because we’re seeing a lot doesn’t mean that it is normal. Right? And I like that you-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yes. That’s the scary part.

 

Dr. Shannon:

That’s the scary part.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Well, and there’s one thing I want to touch on with the tongue-tie in a minute too, because something else you say in the book, because I’m seeing a lot of with tongue-tie and then digestive issues. But I like that you touch on the fact that we’re really looking at nervous system function. So, two kids can have the same birth, super-fast labor, not get the same cranial molding, but yet they can have, one can have plagiocephaly and one can have tongue-tie. It can be totally different manifestations of that nervous system irritation. So, I think that’s an important thing to like to say.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

If anybody has more than one child, then you know that the genetic pool is very random, and my two daughters are completely the opposite of each other.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yeah, my two kids are.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right, exactly. So, that’s just the symptom that one kid has no reflection of the symptom than the other kid has. And even if they came… Even twins, I mean, I’ve had twins come out with completely different presentations, totally different presentations. I remember one time we had this family. They brought their twins in and one kid’s head because of the way they were in utero, and they came out, literally looked almost like a triangle, and at first they brought that kid in and they said, “This is the kid we want to bring in.”

 

And they originally were not going to have us check the second kid. And they said, “Well, no, just because this kid’s head doesn’t look like that, we still need to check them to make sure that everything was okay during birth. It took a while for them to understand that because, “Well, my one kid looks funny. The other kid looks what we consider normal.”

 

Dr. Shannon:

Normal. Mm-mm.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

But looking normal, and being normal, and functioning normal is a whole different thing. But I do want to-

 

Dr. Shannon:

It’s a whole different thing.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

But I want to back up on that common versus normal because that thing that scares me the most. And what scares me the most is when the American Pediatric Association says things like 47% of kids have cranial distortions. The piece I left out about that, they said that only 10% of them need to be treated. So, that’s insane. That would be saying that 70% of children have scoliosis, but only 10% of them need to be treated.

 

So, because a lot of people are having it, of course it’s prevalent in our society now. What we tend to do is accept it as opposed to find out why. So, let’s take autism because that’s always been a big one. So, the autism rate, depending on where you read, is somewhere between 1 and 38 to 1 and 42. So, every one child, out of every, let’s say 42 are somewhere on the autism spectrum, when I was in chiropractic school, that number was 1 in 2,500.

 

Okay? So, you got to think; now we’re starting to accept this as, “Oh, okay, well now you’re on the spectrum and it’s becoming common. Now, these are kids are on the spectrum. These are spectrum kids.” And the problem I have with that is instead of trying to find out why this is happening or how to stop this from happening, we’re just accepting it and making it a number where we’re quantifying it as, “Oh, great. This is the number now.”

 

Health and Human Services two years ago came out and said that 54% of our children have chronic illnesses. And we’re just like, “Oh, so more than half three children are chronically ill. That makes sense.” I said, “So, we’re just to accept things that are numbers.” It’s not a voting democracy, it’s like, “Oh, well, 51% kids are sick, so now we’re going to vote.

 

Every kid should be sick.” It’s not a democracy around that. It’s numbers that are scary. And what we need to be looking at is why this is happening and how to stop it from happening instead of just quantifying it, saying, “Oh, well, this is the number,” and being okay with that.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Or changing parameters around it and saying like, “Okay, well, this is-”

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah, even worse, so like the CDC did.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yes.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

You know what the CDC… You know why they did it? One of the reasons, if you read on the website, one of the reasons they did it is they said, because they found that only 50% of the kids were reaching these milestones, so they changed it. So now, 75% of the kids will be reaching milestones.

 

I’m like, “What? That’s like going to school and saying, okay, the passing grade is 65 and you find out that 70% or 50% of your kids are failing.” So, you think, “Well, now the passing grade is 55%, and now you have 75% of the kids passing, and that means you’re a better teacher.” It’s insane. That’s insane. That’s insane.

 

Dr. Shannon:

I know. I know. And I feel you on that too, but that’s why I love that the name of the book too is that common versus normal, because that is what a lot of pediatric chiropractors are seeing in the office. And parents are trying to deal with it too because you knew that parents coming in and they’re not… They’re smart.

 

They’re like, “Well, wait a minute…” And what I wanted to touch on is I have so many babies coming in that have tongue-ties, and they haven’t had a bowel movement in nine days. That goes together, and it’s like they know that this is… They’re like, “But that’s not normal. The pediatrician said, this can be common.” So, that’s a little… It’s just unsettling.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, my record for babies being brought in for constipation was 21 days. Pediatrician said it was okay, 21 days kid hadn’t had a bowel movement. So, yeah. I mean, nothing happens in isolation in our system. There’s nothing that goes on in our system with our nervous system, or our immune system, our digestive, that the rest of the body doesn’t know about.

 

I mean, you stub your toe, your whole body knows about it. So, there is nothing… Like you said, the whole idea of tongue-tie and digestive issues, they’re totally interrelated for a number of reasons. Part of it’s the fascia system. Part of it’s the inability to nurse efficiently. Part of it that they shot at sucking air if they’re not making a good seal with the tongue-tie.

 

I mean, there’s a whole plethora of reasons why that affects also the digestive system. And you’re right, there are certain things that become common interrelated instances, but honestly, nothing happens in isolation. So, their whole system is under stress. I think what we have to look at is how this dysfunction, or how much stress the dysfunction creates. It’s like you sprain your ankle, you have to limp for a while, and you create compensations.

 

And if you’re a healthy person, you create those compensations rehabilitated, and you get well. But the problem is that during that compensatory time, you’re also making compensatory changes. If you have a weakness somewhere else, let’s say you sprain your right ankle and you have a bad left hip or painful left hip. And now you have to put more weight on that left hip, then that starts to aggravate that and what I’m talking about in a child’s nervous system. So, if they compensate, they can’t nurse well and the sucking air, then it becomes a digestive issue and then, they start to get reflux.

 

And then, the reflux starts to make it uncomfortable to nurse, so they get aversion to nursing. And then, of course, if they don’t get enough fluid from the nursing, then their bowel movements get very dry and hard because they get dehydrated, then they’re constipated. And then, when they get constipated, they can’t remove toxins from their body.

 

So then, the toxins start to leak out through the skin. So then, they have eczema. And so, it becomes a ball that rolls downhill, one symptom following the other because the system has to keep compensating and compensating and compensating.

 

Dr. Shannon:

I want to read a quote from the book that touches on that because you say the misconception that the symptom stands alone, any neurological insult that affects the dural meningeal system or the nervous system is global, and the whole nervous system has to change and adapt to it.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. Absolutely.

 

Dr. Shannon:

I mean, that’s pretty much, and that’s going through the like, “Okay, why is the birth process important? What are these milestones? How is all of that connected?” I want to touch on why tummy time is important.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Sure. Simply, it’s just a really important neurological developmental stage. So, every milestone that you hit and every structural or physical milestone you hit also has a social and emotional component to it. So, think about this. If you’re a baby and someone puts you on your stomach and you can’t lift your head up and all you can do is look straight down, that’s how you see the world. That’s your world.

 

So, the first thing that happens, it’s called the visual proprioceptive righting reflex. As soon as the baby picks their head up, that reflex occurs. And the visual proprioceptive righting reflex lets the baby explore space and allows them to expand their horizons. Basically, it allows them to be able to start to move. So, tummy time is important because if you don’t have the child, neck is not strong enough to hold their head up or they can’t hold their head up, they get less input from their environment.

 

All they’re seeing is what’s right literally in front of them. So, the input from the environment helps develop what we call synapses, which are interrelations between the nerves and the peak synaptic development, the time you develop the most and the fastest is the first eight… is at eight months of age. So, what you’re doing is when you’re on your tummy time, you have to have the baby lift the head up. Several things are happening besides forming proper neck musculature so that they can then roll over and eventually sit up. They’re also taking in more information, developing a stronger nervous system with more input.

 

And they’re also triggering that visual proprioceptive righting reflex. And at the same time, it is expanding their world. So, their social-emotional development is then starting to expand. Each level of… As I said a minute ago, each milestone also has a social and emotional level component to it. And as a baby, you see that.

 

As babies get more independent, they start want more of their… they start to tell you more of what they want, specifically, not just base level functions, but more of what they want. And as they get more freedom, then they develop more social and emotional basically abilities to cope or to handle or to interact. So, it’s extremely important.

 

So, tummy time is that first really big one where the baby develops those posterior neck muscles, triggers a visual proprioceptive righting reflex, gets to see more of their world, and they can actually become somewhat independent in the fact that they can turn over. And that makes a big difference. It can flip from side to side, that changes how they can move and how they can start to get around. So, it’s an extremely important first stage of development.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yep. No, I love seeing. And there’s lots of different ways for parents to help with tummy time.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Just different ways put things in their line of sight and right side of the world and left side of the world. So, there’s lots of things to work on with that. Now, after talking about all the nervous system function and all of these issues, towards the end of the book, you talk about when to seek outside help and what that looks like.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

So, there’s number one, and I say this to moms all the time. First, trust your intuition. If you see something wrong, then you need to say something. If you think something’s not right, you need to say something. And so, what I mean by that is number one, that’s the first way that the mom can seek help and bring the child into somebody for that kind of help.

 

But when you need interventions, in my office what we do is when a new baby comes in or an adult, whatever it is, we do what we call progress and re-exams and the first exam. So, our initial exam, we set up a baseline. And basically, it’s a structural, functional and neurological baseline. This is what your child’s system is functioning on, this is what the structure looks like, and this is how the nervous system is responding. And then, after about three weeks of care, we do a progress exam.

 

And then, somewhere after six weeks of care, we do a re-exam. And what we’re looking for is for those baselines to change. So, let’s say you bring a child into me that’s having coordination issues. Let’s say it’s a two-year-old that’s not walking well, trips all the time, is having problem interacting with his brother, gets very anxious. And so, we set up a baseline for that child and let’s say somewhere about eight weeks into care, the baselines have changed, the neurological baselines have changed functionally, neurologically, the child seems better, but they’re still having problems interacting, let’s say when their environment or they’re still having some coordination issues.

 

So, at that point it may say, “Look, we need to do some type of rehabilitation.” And that may be the point where I would refer the child out for some OT or PT to help stimulate or create new pathways once we’ve cleared the pathways and got rid of the aberrant function. The same thing with something like tongue-tie. If a child comes into me with let’s say a middle to posterior tongue-tie, I’m not going to send them for revision right away. I’m going to start to start an adjusting protocol.

 

And let’s say that, well, the reason the child came in is because they’re not nursing well and they’re getting colicky and they get crampy at night and they wake up five or six times a night. So, while I’m making my adjustments, I’m also monitoring the symptoms of the child, but I’m also more monitoring how the baseline changes. And let’s say after six weeks, I say to the mom says, “Johnny’s doing much better. He’s sleeping really well at night. It doesn’t seem be as colicky, but he’s still really not nursing well.

 

It still seems to be a problem and it’s still a challenge and my nipples are really sore.” So, if I take all that information in account, I may say, “Well, you know what? This may be the time that we should probably do the revision because all those other neurological parameters are changing. A lot of the functional parameters are changing, but this is a very structural issue that’s not changing and you’re still having some symptoms that are not resolving around it. So, let’s take the next step.” So, again, for chiropractors, I think it’s important that we have a system that can track baseline changes and know that the work that we are doing, which is what we’re responsible for, is maintaining the function of the nervous system that’s changing.

 

If that’s changing, but the child’s reactivity or symptoms are not changing, that may be a time where you may need someone else to help basically reprogram the nervous system that you’ve cleared the pathway. And it’s important though that the pathway is cleared. And what I’ve always seen, whether someone’s doing speech therapy, or OT, or PT, whatever it is, the first thing that the other therapists will say if the child’s under chiropractic care, let’s say they started this OT beforehand, is they’ll say, “I don’t know what you’re doing now, but in the last couple of weeks I have seen this child make leaps and bounds that they have not made over the last couple of months.

 

And that’s because we’ve cleared out the nervous system and allowed it to then be able to accept those alternative or those other type of care program.” So, it can go both ways. Sometimes we’ll get referrals from PT and OTs because the child’s not progressing correctly.

 

And on the other end, if we hit a place where the child’s nervous system seems to be as best as we can get it, then they may need external input, whether it’d be an invasive procedure, like a tongue-tie revision or just other type of OT help or repatterning help to deal with the nervous system now that we’ve cleared it up and to create better pathways.

 

Dr. Shannon:

And I think it’s important to reiterate too, that you’re talking about, it’s that team effort.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Absolutely.

 

Dr. Shannon:

And sometimes it’s not just the one thing. We see it both ways, like you mentioned PT referral to us and saying like, “Oh gosh, leaps and bounds things have really happened.” And then, knowing when to say, “Okay, we do need to get some extra work in here.”

 

But that’s that dialogue with the parents. And I think that that’s one thing that’s really cool with chiropractic care is I feel like that dialogue is, it’s really like those goal settings and that what are we seeing? What do we want to see? And it’s that team effort too with the care provider.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

I think most chiropractors or the ones I know, pediatric chiropractors are open to having conversations with the parents and are already at a place where they trust what the parent has to say. I’m not saying all pediatricians or all medical doctors like that, but it tends to be more of a we’re in charge situation where the doctor wants to be in charge and telling the parent what the issue is. But if someone tells me that my child… It’s okay that my child doesn’t poop every 14 days, my first thought is, “Yeah, you try not going to the bathroom every 14 days and tell me how you feel.”

 

And then, that’s how my brain works. It’s like… So yeah. Right. So, I think we have… It’s right. If you have a bowel within 14 days you’d be worried, wouldn’t you?

 

Dr. Shannon:

Not cool.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah.

 

Dr. Shannon:

I would not be

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Yeah. So, yeah, it’s about having objective findings that you could… I do that… It’s interesting; because I just had a patient who I just did the re-exam on her little baby. And the baby had a whole bunch of symptoms, everything from nursing issues, nipple erosion, eczema, constipation, and a whole plethora of issues. And I just had a conversation with her mother after the re-exam, and I was telling her how the baby’s baseline size really changed. And I was asking about the baby’s symptoms. And she was telling me the ones that went away and the ones that were still prevalent.

 

And I was just talking. I said, “Look, your baby’s baselines have changed and the nervous system is changing. I actually reduced the kid’s visit frequency even though the symptoms were still… some of the symptoms were still there because my baseline said that his nervous system was healing.” And I said to mom, “Look, this is what I’ve seen. This is what your child had when they first came in.

 

You can see how all these parameters are changing.” And I said, “Let’s just trust that the body will start to heal and if the symptoms will start to change, even though some of them have, and I’m still going to reduce your child’s visit frequency once a week because that’s how the pattern is showing me that’s happening.” And the mom was like, “Okay, let’s just do it.”

 

And I just thought that that was a way that they understood better that I’m not just treating the child’s symptoms, but what I’m doing is treating their nervous system or adjusting them to better the function of their nervous system and that we need to trust in the ability of the body also to make those changes once that system is cleared out.

 

Dr. Shannon:

I know. Exactly. Give the body that time to heal and the time to show that.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. It needs to heal. Yeah. Not everybody’s going to heal on the same trajectory.

 

Dr. Shannon:

No, definitely not. So, I want you to touch just a little bit on what does pediatric craniopathy and cranial adjustments, what does it look like? Because I know a lot of times I have parents that ask that. What does it-

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Well, what I always do… That’s right. So, we’re not doing visual here, so it’s kind of hard. What I do with the parents, especially if they’ve not been under care before, is I actually show them on their head what is it going to feel like? So, we use about four to six ounces of pressure in the pediatric spine or cranium I should say. A lot of the work we do is from the palate. We use the palate as a lever.

 

So, we use, we’ll put a glove on or a finger cot on and we would put our finger in the child’s mouth. There are certain reflex points where there are strong attachments to the dura and where there are sutures that sometimes get restricted. And just by the child sucking on our finger, that pressure and our putting our pressure on those certain points on the palate, we can help release the pressure. We are not moving something from point A to point B. We’re doing really two things when make a cranial adjustment.

 

We’re changing dural tension and the dura is actually making the change, or we’re opening up or changing the flow of cerebrospinal fluid so that the increased pressure in certain areas can actually make the cranium change. So, again, you think of moving like a spinal bone. We think of moving from point A to point B, that’s not happening in the cranium. We’re really just trying to find the points that change the tension in the dura so that the dura will help shift the cranium or move cerebrospinal fluid to the point so that the internal pressure cerebrospinal fluid against the cranium will help move the cranial bones. So, it’s a very light touch.

 

The baby may cry only because we have to hold them in a specific position while we’re doing it, but once we stop, you’ll see that the baby doesn’t cry. It is not painful at all. And like I said, it’s probably four ounces of pressure at most when we’re doing the internal corrections. And the only other thing that happens externally is you got to remember, when you make an adjustment, you’re actually trying to facilitate a corrective measure that the body’s already doing. So, what I like to tell parents is if you have a car that’s stuck in the mud and you’re trying to rock it back and forth and you can’t get out of the mud and someone gets behind your car and gives it a push and all of a sudden there’s enough traction for you, get out of the mud.

 

Now, you know that person behind you could not push your car in a normal position from a standing position to movement position, but it was just enough force to help facilitate what the body or the car was already trying to do. And that’s what we do when we make an adjustment. We’re trying to facilitate the corrective process that the body’s already trying to make. So, we just have to put in a very gentle force in the correct direction to help the body facilitate that correction.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Yes, I know. I’m glad you use those analogies and stuff too, because I do want parents to understand it is different than our adult adjustments. So, I’m sure you’re getting these questions too.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Right. Very different.

 

 

Dr. Shannon:

Well, thank you so much for being on the show today. I want you to talk a little bit about where people can find you, some of the things that you offer because I know you’ve got the Peak Potential program and then you’re a chiropractic office. So, yeah, so just tell us a little bit about how we can get in touch with you.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

All right. So, to get in touch with our office, we’re in Wellesley Massachusetts and you can get, our website is wellesleychiro.com. You can get us there. The Gmail address or the email address that is wellesleychiro@gmail. So, that’s easy.

 

For chiropractors, as Shannon just said, we have the Peak Potential Institute and if you go to peakpotentialprogram.com, you’ll have… you’ll see all our courses, both our hands-on and our online courses, plus all the books that we have. And you can get there to contact us, whether if you’re a chiropractor professional contact is drmartinrosen@gmail.com. And that is also our third website, which is our professional website, and that is drmartinrosen.com.

 

And those are ways that either professionals or lay people can contact us and we’ll be happy to answer questions, handle anything you want to… any issues you may have that we can help you with. And of course, we are always still teaching. We are unloading courses pretty much every couple of months. We have, I think three going right now from the Peak Potential Institute. So, yeah, so Shannon, this was awesome.

 

I so appreciate you having me on and having this conversation. I think is an extremely important, valuable conversation with people. And again, I appreciate what you do. I know everybody thinks that everybody else does is easy. I notice a lot of work to maintain consistency and do these podcasts and run a practice and be a mom. So, I’m absolutely for that.

 

Dr. Shannon:

Hey, there we go. Yeah, it is. It is a lot of work. But this is so much fun. And I loved having you on so that people can hear it in your voice, in your words with all of the expertise that you have and the knowledge and the skills. And so, again, thank you so much for being on the show today.

 

Dr. Martin Rosen:

Oh, thank you, Shannon.

 

Dr. Shannon:

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