Ear Infections + Chiropractic

 Have you ever heard one of your friends and family talk about taking one of their kiddos to a Chiropractor for ear infections? Maybe you thought they were a little weird too? Well we're here to break the stigma on ear infections and being on what probably seems like a constant bout with antibiotics and recurring illness with these kiddos. 

Let's address the causative factor in many of these recurring ear infection cases. When we are in our infantile and toddler stage of life our Eustachian tubes are oriented in a horizontal manner and as we grow and develop they become slightly more vertical and able to drain fluid more efficiently/effectively. So from the get go, the orientation of our kiddos Eustachian tubes promote stagnation of fluid. What typically happens is first they get the sniffles, and the next thing we know we have a double inner ear infection. So whats another component...?  surrounding our Eustachian tubes we have a muscle called the Tensor Veli Palatini that actually controls movement of fluid out of our eustachian tubes. When we have stress and dysfunction in our upper cervical spine it greatly diminishes how our brain communicates with the muscles and systems that control the movement and drainage of mucous and fluid. As a whole what we are speaking is what we call subluxation as chiropractors, and what the global effects are. What we see often times in these patients when we dive deep into their story is that they were born with additional birth intervention such as C-sections, forcep delivery, vacuum extraction, or had some form of a traumatic birth such as cord wrapped/hypoxic birth, breech delivery, etc. Now we are not here to say anything good bad or indifferent about how babies are delivered, but it is important to acknowledge that this causes immense stress on our neuro-spinal system. This stress that we are talking about is what we call Subluxation, and this is what wreaks havoc on our nervous system as a whole... So lets peel back another layer. 

When subluxation is present in a childs nervous system it causes interference in how the body talks to the brain, and how the brain in-turn communicates with the body, systems, organs, tissues, etc. There are two pathways that we have neurologically when it comes to the flow of energy/communication and that is Efferent(motor, brain to body) and Afferent (sensory, body to brain). Subluxation in our neuro-spinal system is a MAJOR afferent interference into our nervous system. So what we get is a constant feed and drip of crappy, distorted, disorganized neurological input to our brain, synapse centers, etc. Leading to a crappy, distorted, disorganized output of from the Efferent pathways. Now onset can look different for everyone, and to make it clear we are not talking about disease, but we are talking about dis-ease in our nervous system which down the line can absolutely cause the latter. When we have a system functioning on stress, disorganization, and dysfunction that is often times what we see in reality, subjectively and symptomatically in patient presentation. 

Lets circle this topic back to ear infections, everything that is previously discussed is how these kiddos end up where they are, and really its such a simple concept that we believe it is just pushed off as impossible, but that is chiropractic as a whole. When we remove stress and interference from the systems controlling the brains innervation and communication with the systems that deal with fluid drainage of the eustachian tubes... We get no more ear infections! What we do has nothing to do with adjusting one bone somewhere ( sure it can be a vitally important piece of the pie) it is about restoring health and ease back into the neuro-spinal system. It is about restoring balance to the autonomic nervous system and clearing the neuro-spinal system of stress, interference, disorganization. This is why miracles happen inside of our office daily, and offices like ours all around the world. As we have said many times, chiropractic is not a bone thing and we are not "bone doctors" we however experts on the nervous system, and how it functions synergistically with all of our surroundings.