Empowering Women in Chiropractic - 6 Common Prenatal Symptoms - A Natural Approach

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Hello, my fellow chiropractors. I'm so excited to be a part of this presentation here, and I am, I'm just elated for the fact that because of ChiroSecure I'm gonna be able to share with you a lot of wonderful things about pregnancy later on about kids and how to raise a healthy family wellness practice.

My name is Dr. Claudia Anrig, and I'm actually the leader in this particular category. Over 35 years ago, I created the category. Family wellness, chiropractic, because I've been teaching it for decades all over the world. I am so glad that you're joining me on this particular moment to hear about common disorders with women.

Now, many of you know me because you followed me through the textbook. Textbook One, pediatric Chiropractic, the Second Edition, or the third edition, which is brand new right here, our third edit. And you can get that on amazon.com. Very wonderful. Some great new authors in this area. One of the areas that I believe is so important to learn is about common disorders and how to help our pregnant women.

And so docs, I'm gonna take you through some just common sense stuff, some common disorders, and so forth. But also how you can maybe communicate this in your adjusting room and maybe I'll give you a few tips if I was adjusting your patient where I would go to maybe help this area out. And so what I'd like to do is go to my slides at this time and so that I can present to you the six common prenatal symptoms and a natural approach.

Pregnancy, not that we wanna be, if we're a holistic wellness family, wellness chiropractor, do we want to be symptomatic? But a lot of our pregnant women do have symptoms. Just as a side note too if you're having a preconception chiropractic practice, and we'll talk about that at a later show we want to realize that many of those women, because they've been adjusted by you on a regular.

That these particular women have a tendency to have less of these signs of symptoms, but we wanna cover them top six in how we wanna try these women do more natural things like chiropractic, nutrition, managed stress, and of course that powerful chiropractic adjustment. So one area that is very common for the pregnant is headaches.

As a matter of fact, you'd be really super surprised, statist. These moms are are about 40%. That's a lot. And if you could see here, hormonal changes. Some of it's triggered on by depression sinus allergies exhaustion, fatigue, eye strain increased hunger during the pregnancy. Another cause for these particular headaches is maybe dehydration in their last trimester.

And so again, when in doubt one of the things that we should ask our women to do is always carry. healthy amounts of water wherever they go, and even if they have a career job that they can't always drink a lot of water. Yeah, because they can't stop and basically tinkle. It, we want to have them hydrate then first thing in the morning.

Sometimes with my flight attendants, my pilots, my teachers often they, in their world, they can't even stop to use the restroom because if their job's, even busy chiropractors they can't leave to use the restroom. So I always recommend when in doubt, hydrate just glasses and glasses of water before they start their day.

So at least they're hydrated up and then they can urinate through the day and maybe decrease that likelihood of headaches. Also to one of the areas that we have to, as we see screen time going up for these women. A lot of 'em, as their chin is down and when the chin is dropped down, depending to who statistically you're reading, that's about 60 pounds of weight on the head and on the neck area.

And so we need to get what we call chin up. One thing that you could do if their headaches are being triggered by biomechanical thing I instruct my women to or men to bring their technology, let's say not a tablet, but their handheld device, bring it up to their. and then bring the device to their up top so they're looking eyeball to eyeball, no chin down.

When I was in practice 20, 25, 30 years ago, I never had to give them that kind of instruction, but now, which is the changes culturally as a chiropractor, we just have to stay contemporary with them and what best we can do for them. Of course, getting them under a regular chiropractic care would be so helpful.

This is a particular woman need to see you weekly. Every other week so that they can keep their alignment. So the nervous system is functioning well. Most of you, because you're just so good at palpating and finding the subluxation pattern, I'm gonna guess that you're gonna be somewhere in the cervical, but also many of you might be looking in the upper thoracic area, that T one to T six, because if that I, if she's got a rolling shoulder forward and then she's jutting her, Ford or anterior as much as you can adjust the cervicals until the cows come home you're gonna have a problem.

There's no stabilization because of upper thoracic area. So another thing that you can do for head posturing and again, we have to be practical. These people who have careers or they're maybe home raising their family. What if you suggest for thoracic posturing, I'm doing some really quick, what we call wall pushups.

Now, I don't recommend going, although you can do fingers up the wall. My suggestion to get a really good, a good expansion to the chest, go finger to finger. and then they're doing the wall pushups like this and that'll help them engage better thoracic posture. Just a simple tip on helping out from the chiropractic pers perspective, cuz we know there are three causes of subluxation, physical, chemical, and emotional.

And as a chiropractor, who better than us to give them these kind of advice? What's really sad is The average individual, they think if I can buy, over the counter at my grocery store or cvs or a Walmart or wherever it is, these medications should be safe. The Tylenol Risa Autism, A D H D to the unborn child fertility problems.

So this is something we should avoid. anything over the counter. And then the Motrin, Advils. I look at the side effects doctors here, risk of birth defects heart damage, particularly in blood vessels. And so we wanna avoid that even though it's so odd. And the me medical community, the opiates, they just or the nurse practitioners, nobody warns these women that they shouldn't be taking something over the counter of something like they could be their own doctor, mom, and this so and so forth that is just uncalled for.

So we have to, again, Find out what their triggers are, get 'em on regular adjusting bases. And then also two, what if you could come up with something more natural? Do you have a natural product that you like to take? If they're gonna be treating pain with any of these drugs, what about recommending maybe over the count ordering like the tablet homeopathic for AA pain control.

So just some thoughts as we wanna cleverly give our patients some good ideas. Migraines are, A part of our patient's problems and the migraine sometimes at a level where, it's about 10% of the population know their triggers. Find out too, if they say, doc, I'm having migraines.

My question to them is did you have these migraines? Before a pregnancy, was it ever related? Two year periods right before, during, or after. Did you have a pattern of migraines? And if so note that because then she has a pattern there that you need to start looking for maybe something differently in adjusting.

I know when it comes to my classical training of Gonstead, Dr. Clarence Gonstead would talk about to the docs when he was training that often how. Help somebody physiologically with the migraines was he always says, docs go look at the lumbar spine, lumbar vertebrae three, four, or five. It's a hormonal issue, migraines.

And so if you're doing some really great work in the cervical spine, but you don't seem to be able to nip the migraine, go the other end of the nervous system and look for hormonal changes with the fact of lumbar three. Four or five and see if you palpate that, you might find a subluxation pattern there and just change your adjusting.

One of the things that we have to really work. With them too, is to have 'em maybe write down a journal what they're eating what they're drinking. Over a period of a few days, you might find that they have a pattern. With this is also true for headache or migraines. They eat a certain way Monday through Thursday and then starting Friday through Sunday their pattern changes.

So always know that over a weekend if that pa pattern changes with increase, maybe sugar increase chemicals and foods cuz they're going. Find out how they're living their lifestyle because part of our responsibility, we know that there are three causes of subluxation and one of them is chemical.

We need to know what their intake is of fluid. And what their intakes docs are on the foods that they eat and maybe restaurants they go to. One of the areas that we can help 'em out to is avoid the triggers, and that comes to journaling. So a journal is always something wonderful and easy to do.

How are we gonna manage their stress? Right now, anymore you could between YouTube and an app, maybe they can get a a breath. Meditational app that helps 'em to guide 'em into gentle breathing. So even at a busy schedule at work I even have my, my patients who are always at the desk hardly can get up and move from their workplace and so forth.

I have 'em do a little pop up that, every 50 minutes, get up. Walk and breathe. And so just something simple as that, your suggestion and show. See, when we give our patients, this is one of the things I, I do with my generations members is one of the things that we can do is sometimes we give an idea, but we don't teach 'em how to fit it into their lifestyle.

And if we have a really great relationship with this patient, we, who better than us is just show it how we can fit it into their life. Make it a positive, not just a command pointing a finger. You better do it this way. Rather show them open up the door in a way that makes it easier for them to make this kind of choice.

And. Also, let's get get that straight, make sure they're avoiding not skipping any meals. Make sure another one too is eating a lot of protein whether it and fat. So the protein coming, again, whether it's a meat protein. They're so busy. I'm having the protein of having an egg, a hard boiled egg, something extra in a refrigerator so they can go really quickly and do them.

And I'm a big fan anywhere in a pregnancy whether it's migraines, headaches, and other symptoms you can never go wrong with beef bone broth. Beef bone broth. Preferably they would make that themselves, but anywhere that they could source it for organic, that would be great as. And then also don't steal your sleep.

I'm a firm believer, again, of moving away from technology. Honestly, I think when people walk into their homes, other than maybe watching a show or this or that, technology down. Let's put that thing away because the more stimulate you are looking, at all your social media stuff, then you're stimulating the brain or they're looking on something or they're, oh, I gotta order.

When did they ever get their brain to quiet down? And so we need to quiet them. And the best place is shut down their, shut it all down. Because if you do it's gonna push away. And why I can say that is, look, I've been practicing for decades now, and so when I, there was a time in my passage of my season, my life as a chiropractor, nobody had technology.

And, yes, there were television programs in all dresa, but it wasn't the technology that's at their fingertips all the time. And so that's a part of our problem is that people have higher stress, all these things. And this doesn't help with the headaches or migraines. We need to suggest some going in a different direction.

Another one, it's a watch out for Caffeine. Boy, is that a big one? I. Women will be sneak it in into their lifestyle, whether it's a soda that they just can't give up to the coffees or to the teas. So we don't want it. Sometimes sometimes women will say know, I'm gonna increase my caffeine or go the opposite.

Withdrawing from it too quickly. So either way, caffeine has to be in fine balance. Ideally, if you were doing preconception, we talk about eliminating caffeine altogether. But that's for another another show that will present for you, another area of subluxation. Pattern number two is low back pain, pubic pain, or even pelvic floor issues.

These women just come to expect that I'm gonna have some lower back issues because I'm pregnant. Oh, all women have to have that. But again, because I have a preconception prenatal wellness practice, I never talk about low back pain. I never, ever once had a woman with. Severe symptoms, pubic pain nor pelvic floor pain.

And I believe that's because, number one, we were under wellness care before conceiving number two. I was giving them really great ideas for exercises and stretches and so forth that they needed some help and so forth. But I just wanted to share with you there are so many things that women are doing wrong with their pregnancy.

Let's talk about the subluxation pattern number two, when it's lower back. If we look in the medical community, this is one of those things that they'll say is a trigger. It's weight. , they're gonna blame it on posture changes. Who better than a chiropractor to help with that third hormonal changes?

As a chiropractor we could help with adapt. If we're adjusting the lumbar spine the muscle separation, they'll say that's gonna create some low back pain. That one, if she's more fit has stronger a abdominal core, she's probably less likely to do that. And the third or the last one would be, And again, that's something as you can encourage, find out what are her main triggers are.

I always ask women if you could give me your top three or five. Stressors, are they short or long term? I'm going to try then to make a recommendation, how can we shift that stress and decrease it for them? Docs if we go to web md they, their suggestion is exercise and ice pack.

Improve your posture, acupuncture, and guess what? On WebMD. They say, go see a chiropractor. So that's not so bad we're on the map, but if you could say probably not. But anyway it is guiding people to come in and seek in chiropractic. So a lot of times what they'll do is they'll try exercise and they'll try the cold.

And after everything else has failed often they'll show up in a chiropractor's office because they know as the, in our social world that's out there, more and more people are talking about seeing the chiropractor during their pregnancy. So that's the good news. We are seeing more people coming out to see us when it comes to syphilis, pupus, pain.

And that's at the very bottom, doctor, imagine when the it's not related to separation, but majority of the time it's they say it's one out of 300 women may have this diagnosis. But basically many experts say they think it's up to 25% have a pube as paint. Because I a practice that does X-ray not during pregnancy obviously, but postnatally I'll if I have somebody who comes in that has severe syphilis, pubs, pain or a pain intercourse and it, whether they're pregnant or not pregnant, what I have found.

Postnatally for the severe pus pain women, when I did an A to p film and a lateral on an A to p x-ray film and I did a a measurement of the pelvis, I've always have founds significant doctors sac rotation, not one to four, five degrees, but if you're doing a classical gonstead analysis, I'm talking like 12.

15 rotational. It's unbelievable. So I want you to think about it. If you're not getting results on it, double check on your palpation on sac rotation and let's do a more specific contact point. Are you getting right on the ala of the sacrum? That's between the second Sacra cubicle and the P S I S. You gotta get your pisiform right on there.

Or if you do drop work, you know you have to, whether pisiform or thumb and thumb move. . What you wanna do is you really want to get that rotation diminished. And again, if you're not getting these kind of results postnatally is with the women. I'd recommend even if you don't do x-ray, refer out, let's just do some measurements and see if that's something that you could correct.

But SIVs, psp is something very helpful. Also, at a later show, we'll talk about it too. Another reason why a woman could have syphilis pubis pain. If the baby in the last trimester has gone down in a face or brow presentation because now the weight of the baby's head shouldn't be in that position is weighing on above the sys puba.

So just a little tidbits for my chiropractors. So sys pubs pain. Avoid the triggers, if there were certain positions, chairs, couches, things that are not helpful. For someone, maybe they'll wear a support belt do the pelvic tilts, the kele exercises, and of course they need to have chiropractic care.

So when it comes to pelvic floor docs this is an area that has become an area of interest and so forth. I think we're talking more about pelvic floor dysfunction. It's interesting if you were in countries like in France, majority of women who have a pregnancy. Right after pregnancy, all of them go see a pelvic floor physical therapist and make sure that everything is taken care of because of the birth process.

But for us, when it comes to physical, because of pelvic floor, it can cause urinary fecal. Issue or prolapse and so forth. And so what one of the areas, again, is the key would be a preconception chiropractic practice. So you're getting them in a healthier position, but the key is also then education.

One of the areas that we also found is that, And this was a a paper done by Dr. Heidi Hak. She's a p PhD chiropractor. Dr. Dr. Heidi did a paper and she took a group of pregnant women, and then she did a group of non-pregnant women. And all of them got a short lever adjustment, Cy posture adjustment.

Short, short leave with a, just a high velocity adjustment there. And what she found was, is that the women who received in their pregnancy a short lever, Adjustment that the pelvic floor actually relaxed and if the pelvic floor was relaxed. Her theory and her paper basically says that if more women were receiving chiropractic care, there might be actually less obstetrical intervention.

The number one cause of pelvic floor injury, doctors is related to. Unfortunately, the use of the hand, the the hands of the ob delivering the baby forceps, vacuum extractor, it's them getting involved. Dr. Heidi's paper suggests, oh gosh, if more chiropractic could, could be used, maybe there'd be less use for obstetrical intervention, which is, would be a really great thing.

And so this would be a tool to use. So again, the Hi Heidi Havoc paper and the specific adjusting wasn't iliums, it wasn't the lumbar, but it was a sacrum adjustment. So we wanna. Palpate better there and. Whether you do drop or side posture, which by the way all of them have been known to be safe for our adjusting chiropractors out there.

So there's not a technique that one needs to use just using the technique that you get the best results. So sometimes it might be in your population group of adults or in pediatrics you use a certain kind of technique. But if a woman is pregnant and you're not getting the results in. You're not getting the pregnancy results, it might be that you need to add another tool in your toolbox in adjusting so that we can get better results up for the woman.

Docs. Again, going back to Heidi's paper pregnant women getting their sacrum adjusted very specifically and ended up relaxing the pelvic floor. And so that means we'd be less likely to have pelvic floor issues. However, as a side. . I do believe that every chiropractor just for the results, for your pregnant moms, you want to have a physical therapy pelvic floor specialist, somebody you could refer to if your patients are not getting the kind of results and so forth.

They just need that field of specialty so that we work like a tribe. We work as a team on the benefit of our patients. What's also interesting when it comes to. Low back pain, sys pubic pain, and all the rest. There have been more studies done on the effectiveness of chiropractic adjustments with medical community, the OB community.

As a matter of fact, mo more published papers are in the benefits of chiropractic care, helping with low back pain, sys pubic pain, all the rests than any other papers that have been published. So I there could be really a big openness. Doctors to ops may be referring to your practice because of these papers.

And then the last thing areas here to look at is knowing that pelvic floor exercises are important. You can just google up those kind of information. What's out there for the exercises affirm and committed to the areas of pelvic tilt squat. Keel exercises, even the butterfly and so forth.

If you have our if you have our third edition of the textbook here, docs if you'll go to the pregnancy, the prenatal exercise chapter, oh, we have a ton of just that chapter alone. You'll have a ton of information in regards to all the exercises in pregnancy for pelvis, for upper body and so forth.

So you certainly. To look at that and look at that chapter and so forth, that'll help you get some more tools so that maybe you can show them. So that's again, a good offset on helping them and just checking 'em, whether you're checking 'em twice a month and so forth. I think that's more of a prenatal wellness adjusting schedule is at least every two weeks.

I think if women go once a month, that's too far out and some women may not need to be over adjusted like once a week. So you have to find that happy medium with their. Your technique and what's best for that mom and so forth. And as we're winding down our show right here, one of the things that we're recommending is again, get the third edition of the textbook.

It's unbelievable. We've added so many wonderful chapters in there. We've have tongue tie we have breastfeeding. We've added Heidi Havoc on subluxation and contemporary. Look at that. For those of you have the second edition, we've also added on from second to third. Toggle there, you're gonna we've added toggle to our work.

And so we extremities and so we're very excited. So there's just a wealth of information for you to go back and have a reference. And then also, last but not least, come check me out. I've been at this for decades and I'd love to show you my stuff that I have out there. So if you go to my website, Dr.

Enig where you can go is you can find out my homepage, find out about generations. I mentor doctors for the last 20 years, and I literally taken people from zero. Patients are seeing a couple hundred patients a week to getting associates to creating just a hundred percent cash practices.

With just pregnant women and children. I have done it all. Big cities, little cities check me out on generations. And then of course I have a seminar series called First Adjustments. I do about three or four of those a year. All over the United States. And so just check it out where I might be at in that particular year and so forth.

And if you have any questions, just email me. I'd be happy as you being my colleague. If there's any questions, I can help you on a case, don't hesitate. I love figuring out the art of a chiropractic adjustment. And again, I wanna thank so much for the bottom of my heart for ChiroSecure, an amazing company that has been serving our chiropractic profession for decades.

Thank you so much.