Empowering Women in Chiropractic -National Sensory Processing Awareness Month!

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Hello everybody. It's Dr. B and Elizabeth here. Happy Halloween. Okay, almost Halloween, not quite Halloween, but it is October and October is Chiropractic Wellness Awareness Month. Woo. Lot of words there. And sensory processing awareness month. Holy hbos, those two they're hand in hand. They go hand in hand.

And that's what we are gonna show you today and give you some fun tools and tips for the first thousand days of life. So with that said, Elizabeth, you're gonna go take a nap. And we are gonna flip onto some slides and we're gonna get rocking and rolling and have some fun. So let's do this.

Chiropractors out there. You need to understand our role in the sensory world. So here's the funny part. I've been digging on this work for, I've been in practice going on 33 years. Yes, 33. And I am only 24 years old. So you guys out there can do the math. So here's the deal. When I first started digging into this work, there wasn't a lot in our profession going on.

So I would tend attend conferences from the medical world, from the OT world, the PT world, you name it. Because of my background, my undergrad work, so I would always be the only chiropractor there. And I'll remember one time I was at a big conference and of course the only chiropractor got my name badge on chiropractor underneath it.

And I won one of the grand prizes. So I went up. To claim my prize. And they looked at my name and my name tag and they're like, chiropractor, what are you doing here? And in my naive batt, I was like chiropractors, we work with the nervous system. And when we talk about sensory processing work, we're talking so much about vestibular and proprioceptive processing and chiropractic adjustments can influence that.

And they just were like but fast forward 25 plus years later, now we have the research behind us and that's exactly what we're doing. So we're gonna dive into that a little bit more. So again, ChiroSecure, you're amazing. Thank you so much for giving us this opportunity to spread the word and really to get our message about neurologically focused chiropractic out there to the masses.

So how we perceive our world. Shapes our world. It shapes everything in our world. It shapes how we interact with ourselves, with our own sense of self, how we interact with others, how we interact with our environment. Everything about how we work or don't work well within our world. So this is so incredibly critical, and this is, I think why or I know why chiropractic care has been so fundamentally profound.

Across all ages and stages and so many quote unquote disorders or diseases. So let's start out with a little tribute to Halloween. May we rest in peace? So what is sensory reprocessing disorder and why do I have it with a graphic to rest in peace with these beautiful blooming flowers at the base?

Here's the deal, here's the easy explanation. R i p. How well the brain receives our, receives information from its environment, external environment, and internal environment. We'll visit that again in a minute. Okay. So it's gotta, it's how well is it receiving enough the information to be able to integrate it?

Okay. Now inter. Integrated appropriately. So the great neural integrator is the prefrontal cortex. Oh my. So if you've been following the neuroscience, the chiropractic neuroscience research, you know that's one thing that the adjustment is found to been to effect is somatosensory processing in the prefrontal cortex, i e the great neural integrator.

So we got our i r I and our p. How well the brain perceives or processes this information coming in, and does it perceive it in the appropriate manner that we need to respond to it? Okay, so there's our R I P. Now, if this is happening in a. If there's not too much allostatic load on the nervous system, we've got homeostasis going on.

The brain will receive, integrate, and perceive the information appropriately, and we respond appropriately. The body is at ease. The system is at ease. It's at peace. So we can rest in peace and then we can bloom these beautiful flowers and blossom. Our brains can blossom and bloom and really live a life of optimal health and wellness.

So in order to feel safe and comfortable and secure in our environment, we have to take in. Organize process, integrate information from our world, our external and our internal world so that we feel safe and comfortable and we can respond to the given demands and commands in that particular situation.

This is the law of neuro adaptability, right? That's what we as chiropractors can add to this picture, and that's why I love that these two awareness months. Go together. Okay. They're in the same month because we're able to help the brain process the information from our environment so that we can narrowly adapt appropriately and respond in appropriate fashion.

And then we are able, our nervous system is able to rest and breathe. So what I want you to remember, and I've gone over this before in previous, but I just in previous episodes, but I just wanna revisit this so we understand. It's sensory input in afer input into the brain. This is the 21st century model of chi, the chiropractic, safety pen cycle.

We've got sensory input coming into the brain. It's got a r I p it so that we can have appropriate motor output coming out, but here's a clincher we need to. Understand that there's external information, sight, smell, town sound, taste, touch. Touch or tactile information is crossing the border between external sensory input and internal.

So it straddles the fence there, but our internal awareness vestibular. Proprioception. Oh my gosh. That is so much what we need to own in our wheelhouse as far as affecting that information, sensory information into the brain. If we have vertebral subluxations and there's spinal instability, those two sensory mechanisms, vestibular and proprioceptive in particular, it's disinformation in.

That's another word to use to explain what we do, because everybody knows about disinformation these days, right? That word's thrown around. So disinformation in. This function out. So I want you to be mindful of our internal awareness, vestibular proprioception. Our hormones are visceral organs huge in this sensory world.

We've got immune cells, we've got blood. There are so many internal sensations going on. That also is part of our sensory processing paradigm. So if we can alter the perception.

Our altered perception, I should say, it adds to stress epigenetic stressors. If we change our perceptions, we can change our genetic expression, our epigenetic expression. So all of the sensory dysregulation yes, has a role in how well our genes run and how well they function. If we change our epigenetic expression, we can change the perception of future generations because.

The way we perceive our world actually gets handed down from generation to generation. So if we can break the cycle and foster optimum sensory integration, sensory modulation, sensory perception, you are alternating stress responses and sensory perceptions for generations to come. The E, basically the roots.

Of most diseases. So what I wanna dig into here is the first thousand days of life. Thir first thousand days of life. Fetal development in the first two years, postnatally. Why is this so important? Because again, this is gonna lay so much of the foundation for our sensory motor loop and our sensory motorcycle and how we process information.

So here's the daily a lot of research is going into the prenatal preterm infant. World because we know that the immature brain hasn't laid down a lot of the neural networks that we need for optimum neural development and sensory motor development. So I want you to think of regions of the brain, like power stations.

Okay, so you've got multiple power stations, multiple regions of the brain, and then the wires between them. There's neural circuits that connect all those power stations, and what they found is what we're seeing with a full term little fiddle fart. Those connections obviously are gonna be more mature, and these are very important connections for a sensory motor development in that for especially in the first year of life.

Preterm infants aren't those substations, those regions of the brain and the connectivity between them are immature. And so therefore, what can happen, and that's why we tend to see preterm babies have more of an association with neurodevelopmental challenges down the road, which can be learning attention, behavior, or autism or A D H D or one of those kind of labels.

But what we also see is that preterm little ones if they're given the right sensory environment within that first thousand days, they can play catch up. Their brains can play catch up to the full term baby with better functional connectivity. Okay. So I wanna just throw out a couple key things I want you to be mindful of as far as developmental milestones go.

Obviously tummy time, but why? We've talked about tummy time and it's so important for brain development and neuro development, but why?

Because that cervical extension fires so much interceptive input to the brain, the developing brain, particularly vestibular and proprioceptive input. And so you're basically pushing and connecting those neural circuits. So I'm gonna simplify this very easily. In our Academy of Neurodevelopmental practices, we have a foundations of development course that is phenomenal.

So we dive into it more. But this is one of the key things we need to look at. We need to also look at not just are they doing tummy time, are they doing it properly? And are they are they going through stages that we wanna see in tummy time? So for instance, The little dude on the far right with the angry face.

He is perfect for the Halloween skit, right? . He looks like he's got Halloween costume. Little, what's that little guy from Star Wars? Anyway, that's what he looks like. So he is in tummy time. His head is up to 90 degrees. That's where we wanna see it. About three to four months-ish that had urine stuck, an extension and up.

About 90 degrees. Okay. And they wanna be up about 90 degrees and be able to look around. But then as we go through our developmental tummy time, we wanna start being able to weight shift or pivot through our core access. So you're gonna see the little middle guy there, right? He starts to weight shift on his arms, which is incredibly important that we go through these stages.

And then the little one on the far left is in what I call the pull, push fly position. He's in the fly position up right arms to the side, like a airplane. So we wanna see that this is happening through different ages and stages. So by 6, 5, 6 months-ish, we wanna make sure that they've gone through regular tummy time.

Pivoting and weight shifting, and then to the fly position because this is enhancing neurological input into the brain and it's maturing, helping to mature and foster more of those neural circuits. Okay, so bottom line is especially your preterm baby, you wanna make sure that they play catch up and go through these developmental milestones.

There's a lot of reasons kiddos don't like tummy time. We won't get into it here, but we need to be mindful of some of those other things. Okay? So I just want you to be able to look, are they doing that before? Three to four months-ish. 90 degrees, extension of the head about two months-ish. They should be in tummy time and bringing their head up about 45 degrees.

So look at those progressive developments. This is huge for neural development and for associated, it's associated with things later on, on the road, like during attention, behavior and A D H D. Okay? Lack of input. Floor time is core time. And it's brain building time. The other key milestone I want you to be mindful of these two are so huge is toes to the nose.

'cause it's helping you build. It's helping little fiddle fart build their transverse abdom muscles and their pelvic floor region for core stability, because lack of core stability, pastoral stability is very much associated with a number of . Diseases or disorders, including things like A D A D H D, including retention of primitive reflexes.

So we need to make sure they're able to get in these neuro movement patterns in order to help foster integration of these primary reflexes in order to help foster maturation of those neuro circuits. And later on it core stability. So for right now, I want you to focus on appropriate tummy time and these specific neuro movement patterns.

And five to six months-ish toes to the nose. Both toes to the nose. Then one foot cross. One arm, like a crossover pattern. One arm is reaching to grab the other. Toe and vice versa. These are two pivotal points we need to be mindful of to make sure our little fiddle farts are reaching those, especially your preterm babies.

Okay, so tying this in to chiropractic health awareness month, the law of neuroplasticity, the neuroplastic model of subluxation. Essentially, if we are not feeding the brain, if the brain cannot see the status of the body, In our case of the spinal joints and surrounding muscles and soft tissues and et cetera, it can't interpret what it needs to do.

And long story short, key regions of the brain that we find with the adjustment can are associated with processing this information. Can these key regions can be affected, like the cerebellum, the prefrontal cortex cingulate, gyrus, percu areas. So via the law of nurse plasticity, if we adjust vertebral subluxations, make sure that these kiddos can get into these movement patterns, and we're feeding the brain the sensory input it needs to receive, interpret.

Process and perceive the status of the body. In turn, we will have a body at rest and growth and development. So there you have it. That's our fun for the day. And again, , you're amazing. Thank you for giving us this opportunity. Elizabeth, what you got for us? What? What's that? Ah, she cannot wait to see all of you next month before Turkey time.

And until then, keeping being amazing, keep enlightening the world about neurologically focused chiropractic, especially for the little fiddle farts. And together, let's get in there and turn the tide and we'll see you in November.

Today's pediatric show, Look to the children brought by ChiroSecure..