Empowering Women in Chiropractic - ASYMMETRICAL TONIC NECK REFLEX

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Hello everybody. It's Dr. B and Elizabeth too. How you doing Elizabeth? Fine we are fabulous. We are here today to share with you the A T N R. Again, I want to thank ChiroSecure for giving us this platform and the amazing opportunity to share with you and to give you tools for your trade. So we're going to hit the slides right now.

Elizabeth, you're going to taking that permanent and we are going to go and rock and roll a T N R reflects. So that's asymmetrical tonic, neck reflex. And of course it's chiropractors. We are concerned about the neck in this whole thing. So again, Kara superior. Amazing. Thank you for giving us this opportunity.

We are going to dive in. We have done so much already go back and listen to previous classes. You are, they are giving you. I am happy to give you an opportunity to learn these reflexes for free, so go back hit ChiroSecure's Facebook page, or our intersect for life Facebook page and listen to previous classes and you get them off all the reflexes.

Boom. So we, are at ATNR, we did spinal gallant already, we did tonic labyrinthine, but then already we are working our way to the symmetrical tonic neck reflex and then the babinski. And then after that, I've got I couldn't tell you what but incredible surprise for our next incredible series coming up. Before we dig into the ATNR just recently was released that one and every 30 little fiddle farts in this country, one in 30 is now said to have autism.

I've been teaching this work for over 25 years. This is my biggest nightmare. And so much of what I've dedicated to try to stop the. So we have got to expand. We don't have to, but understanding the underlying, tell of what's happening with some of these kids in this country. And that's why I'm going to move on to after I finished the reflexes and incredible new series to help you understand the Undertale, the roots of what's going on and how we can step in to help this chain.

So of course, when we're dealing with primitive reflex, There is a lot. Anytime these reflexes stay active, it is basically showing us there's immaturity of the autonomic nervous system and of the trajectory of development. And we're seeing that the higher centers of the brain, primarily that prefrontal cortex is not maturing and not online to help keep these reflexes.

Okay to help them. We, the term has been integrate for so many years, but but we know in the chiropractic round that one of the areas that we can influence is the processing, the sensory processing within that prefrontal cortex. So when we type in these primitive reflexes and seeing that they're at.

We know that those higher, more sophisticated parts of the brain, I'm not on board. And that's what we see in the realm of autism. But I did want to bring you that sad and scary statistics. So reflexes and research. I wanted to bring this into you. Boys diagnosis is a a study from back in 2004.

We're getting more and more studies slowly trickling out with regards to primitive reflexes and what we see, this is dealing with ADHD. They had significantly higher levels of reflex retention or active primitive reflexes on. And they showed primarily between Morrow ATNR STNR and tonic labyrinthine reflexes.

So the way that it reflects is the more of them that are still active, the less mature the autonomic nervous system is. And you usually don't just have one reflex that is persistently active. You have a couple or a grouping of reflexes. Okay. Mauro is one of the first ones we've covered and if Marel stays active, it can really tie up the integration of the other reflexes.

And it's specifically related to ATNR. The ATNR has been very much associated with quote unquote dyslexia with reading, spelling immaturity difficulties. This particular study found that the 18 ARD was persistent in case. That was that had reading a math struggles, the ATN, our reflux is going to it's that fencer pose and the little fiddle hearts.

So again, we want to see these primitive reflexes active in infant town months. We don't want to see them active past the age of one year in infant. We simply can turn their head and we see if they engage into that flood the pimps, the fencer posts. So always remember that the side that we turn our head to is the side of extension.

So the eyes follow that outreached hand. Okay. So when you turn the baby's head. They should come into the Spencer extent their eyes are looking at that extended arm. This is going to do a lot with hand eye coordination. So later in the later years, they might have difficulty with hand eye coordination even catching and throwing anything again, and crossing the midline activities in our country.

Crossing the midline activities are going to two key academic skills. There are going to be reading and writing. So it stands to reason we saw that study that showed that kiddos with an active persistent 18 are struggled with mathematics skills and then with reading skills. So reading, writing, we cross the midline from left to right in this country.

If this wreck reflects phase active, we may see academic struggles in those routes. Okay. And not knowing right from left. And so this is a case often with our dyslexic individuals. Okay. Again, our refluxes represent the maturation of our sensory systems, our sensory motor systems. The ATNR in particular represents auditory.

This stipular visual and proprialceptive maturation. So this reflex is active. Those sensory systems may not be mature. So we see struggles in the sensory motor component with with regards to those four sensory systems and the 80 and RV and active. All right. So again, if they're persistently at the 18 honors persistent in the active, we might see dyslexia reading struggles, handwriting, visual processing, math scoliosis.

So this is the second reflex that we've talked about that is associated with a scoliosis. Last month, we talked about the spinal go on these two reflexes. If active can lend themselves to that individual having a lateral curve or scoliosis. So it's funny in your practice is if you have the older child coming in, that has a scoliosis, you may not want to examine a check for all of these reflexes that they present with a scoliosis.

You may want to check at least the spinal block and the ATM. And you start seeing these these associations, which is quite fun. So you might just want to check those two reflexes and start doing some work with those reflexes, with your scoliosis patients. Likewise, if you do want to scan the primitive reflexes as part of your examination, you might not want to do the integrative work, but it might be part of your examination.

And then as you get them under pair, you can show the parents. Look, when we started care, these primitive reflexes were still active. Meaning your child's neurological integrity. Wasn't maturing. Now they've been under chiropractic care. We're seeing these reflexes integrate. They're not staying active.

That is, can be part of your re-evaluation and showing the. Some objective measures of how your care is helping. You might want to check these reflexes and let's say you see a spine of the launch and 18 are active. You may be a little bit more holding in on lateral pers and watching that child for progressive possible scoliosis.

So this is the way you can use this work. Alright Let's look at. Okay. So this step is as mark, mark integrates before spider upper, before 18 on if Morrow is active, it might hold up the maturation and integration of many refluxes, including the 80 dock. So always go back and say, okay, is Morrow hanging this one up at ATNR?

May hang up the integration of STNR. Okay. So look at kind of those stepping stones. Of development again. Oh, I doubled that, that slide. So scoliosis, poor handwriting, eye tracking issues have eye coordination, again, crossing the midline. This is incredibly important because we need to, now we have two sides of our brain and two sides of our.

For whole brain, whole body learning and performance bilateral coordination, being able to use our extremely symmetrically and asymmetrically. What you might see is they have an ape walk. They don't have an arm swing when they walk. Okay. So these are little signs we can look for. Every time they turn their head.

There are arm, their arm extends and their fingers open. This can make it very difficult for writing tasks. That's why you see the writing issues with this reflex driving your adults or your teenagers learning how to drive when they turn their head to look for crossing traffic or so forth that are might want to extend and pull the steering wheel and then go off and veer off.

It's going to be a very scary reflex to be active when you are at a driver, a new driver. So these are the things we're concerned about. And it's fun to put these pieces together for parents and to see, to validate your work and how these reflexes can help integrate mature at that time. You're adults and you're, you might even see it in your little.

That the chronic neck tightness, you just can't get those muscles to relax. And the other thing you might have is chronic one sided Fluxions you might see your scalings, your traps, your quadratus, everything on that one side be constantly contracted. So they might have chronic neck pain on that.

Quite shoulder pain, chronic hip pain, because that one side is constantly contracted. And then what can happen if you want to look from a musculoskeletal bashal standpoint is that one side stays contracted all the time. You may get tethering on the opposite side. So I'm turning my head to my right and my right arm always wants to extend that.

Persistently active on that side. Okay. So we can have a chronic flection on one side and it tethers its tension on the other side. So what you might see in your little bit of arts or your adults, you might see that let's say crawling pattern. They will be able to bring that, that right hip.

So I'm positive on the right for the 18. I can might bring that hip deflection, but the left leg stays in extension. It's this contraction on one side, basically tethering the opposite side and causing tethered tension on the opposite side. In the adults, you might see even a tethering all the way down that left side.

So you get a plantar fasciitis on the other side. So it's all this ch the body in a check and balance system. So those are the things to look at as we're looking at ATNR. So how are we going to screen it? Okay. And our babies, we set live in supine, turn their head, look for that fencer pose in the older child, again, age four and a half-ish up.

We can do a call Childers test. I call it the floppy monster. Okay. I don't like to use the word test with my little fiddle parts because. Thank you. No, it can stress them out. I say we're going to do floppy monster. Okay. In fact, I tell the parents, I consult with the parents before they bring a child in. I say, we're not going to tell a child that we're going to test them for the different things.

I say, we're going to see this, go see this crazy lady. She's. She likes to do some exercises and have fun and goof around. It's no big deal. No stress. Okay. So we're going to do the floppy monster arms are. The sprayed out the side, the arms, the hands flex and flex position. Okay. And I'd say, let's just try to keep your arms, if you can.

We're going to be like a floppy monster. Like how we eyes are closed. You are simply going to take their head and turn it from side to side. You're going to turn it one way. First. I say close hold for countdown. Bring the head back to midline. Eyes are still closed. Hold for count of 10. I was so closed during the head and opposite direction.

Okay. And you'll do two passes like that. What you're looking for is Kiana. Keep the arms straight out in that position or do the arms tire and they start to draw and splay out. Like this, child's kind of doing look for the facial expressions or, and it really under stress mode do their arms move with the head position.

If they move like about a 30 degree rotation within the direction of the head, that's a mildly active, persistent 18. If you go up to about 60 degrees, that's a little bit more, that's a moderate. If you go beyond that, if these aren't, we just swing over with that head rotation, that is a marked, persistently active ATNR.

Again, the more, every flex mimics infant towel pose, the more active. But again, look for, do they just simply tire and fatigue and the arms start to drop out and splay out. That is still a mildly active ATNR. So we do those two slow passes. And then what I do, you also can look, if we'll just one arm drops, I turn my head to the left and that arm slightly drops on that side.

So look for these little cues again, facial stuff. And then what I do is do one quick pass. You've done the slow passes, 10 seconds each side, and then you turn ahead quickly and see if you can basically activate that a little bit more, especially if you just are seeing mild signs, it might come out more when you do it that quick pass.

I want to show a little bit another way to test. The two that was shielded as you can do also what we call it. Quadruped test. I want to show you that in action. And I am going to show you a modified version of integrating this. You have to remember sensory work, sensory exercises, reflex integration.

It's not a one size fits all. It's not like shoe size, right? You need to sometimes modify it depending on their functional capacity. Because you don't want to give a child an activity that they can't do. So I'm going to show you that in this video clip and then show fabulous. Okay. Another way to test the ATNR. Okay. Can you turn your head and look towards the wall and what we're going to look for that bend in the elbow? Can they keep the elbow straight mice? You can pretend the walls. My shore. Okay, I'm cross the legs here. Can you turn and look at me now? Can you turn your head this way and look at me.

Fabulous. Look at my nose. Can you turn the walk? Can you turn to look at the mice on the wall again? Okay. And she has, it's hard for her to keep those elbows straight. Can you turn and look at my. Oh job. And we wore her out. So good job Harley. Okay. So we're going to do an exercise for the ATNR. All right.

And what we're gonna do is, again, the ATNR is a fencer pose in the bait. So we're going to bend this side. Okay. We'll put this side now. Can you turn your head and look at it? Okay, ready? When I say three, when I count to three, we're going to switch up 1, 2, 3. This Ben's good girl, that bed and that straightens and your head goes this way.

Can you turn your head this way? Straight arm. Okay. 1, 2, 3. Can you switch it?

Those are some star motors. So look at this. Awesome. 1, 2, 3 switch and the side pins. So I call her star flowers. I have her in a beanbag because proprioception, I can help us feel grounded and be able to feel our body to move it properly. So sometimes you have to modify things and give them that, that sensory component that they're lacking.

I do like to adjust them. And then we do the exercises. Sometimes you have to have the parents move all the extremities, that child can't participate at all to begin with. I didn't work them up to this. Okay. And then you can work them up to something that's even more sophisticated. This is a child sitting in a chair.

You can have them supine even have an in a beanbag seated. You can have a minute chair seated and basically you're having them do the star flowers in that position. Then you can add a metronome to it. And so you can add an auditory input that S the ATN art is again, representing the auditory system, the vestibular, proprioceptive, and visual.

So you can add those sensory components to help foster integration of the ATNR. So you would do an at the beat of the metronome is when they would switch their positions. So some fun steps and ways to modify. Again, ATNR is the ATNR shot. 18 doc star flowers will be your helpful integration exercise.

So hopefully that helps you all Elizabeth, you're done with your map. I am done. I'm ready to party. All right. I'm out. We all enjoyed this again. sifter. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity. I will see. The third Thursday in August, right? Elizabeth. You're on, I'm on Erik Kowalke the first Thursday. And until then we'll have a fabulous summer. We'll see you next month. Today's pediatric show to the children was brought to you by ChiroSecure. .