Empowering Women in Chiropractic - The 2nd Most Googled Health Topic - Cognition!

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Hello everybody!, Dr. B and Elizabeth here. Hello guys. Hopefully, you're having a fabulous summer and enjoying what time is left before it's back to school. Woo! We are here to share with you our part three in our series of In The Know, Dr. Googling It. So we are going to jimmy jam on some really cool stuff on cognition, chiropractic, and a bunch, and posture and a bunch more.

Elizabeth, she's going to go take a nap and we're going to throw on some slides for you. And we are going to rock and roll and give you some in the know. Woo hoo. And again, ChiroSecure, thank you so much for always giving us this platform and getting our messages out there. If you haven't listened in on some of our programs, please go back and check them out.

I just got pinged on some social media sites. On previous episodes that we did, like even way back when and how much content they enjoyed and how they got some great pearls for a little fiddle fart that they were working on it working with in practice. So go back and listen to some of our old shows and let's spread the word on chiropractic for kiddos across the world.

All right, so our doctor, Google Health Consumer part three. So last month I'm tying this all together, which is really fun. So last. Two months ago, we covered the top three Googled health topics in 2022. And then last month we covered number one of that topic. We're talking about mood. And this month we are going to focus in on cognition.

That was another. Three topic. One of the top three topics. Yes. You guys know what I'm talking about. So let's dive in and dig in and give you some pearls to think about when it comes to cognition and building cognition and kiddos. So Oxford Dictionary, the definition of cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge or information.

Okay, cool beans. But it's also about understanding through thought and experiences. Go back to previous episodes where we've talked about experiences and the senses. The experiences we have in our world create in, through our senses, create a feeling which creates So go back to the last episode and listen to that.

So cognition, it's so much about building our experiences through our senses. So remember, we've talked about inside, outside, our inside senses or introceptive awareness. So huge with cognition. So huge because our inside senses vestibular and proprioceptive for you chiropractors are so incredibly important to understand But we're talking about the microbiome and immune system and hormones and a bunch of cytokines and everything That happens neurophysiologically inside that creates again a sense of self and this is so incredibly important to build on higher levels of cortical functioning that is going to be involved with cognition.

All right. And then of course our outside senses, sight, smell, sound, taste, touch. So I just always want to refresh those to you and hit home that we're not just talking about sensory processing from the outside world, but we really got to look at interoception. And this is where chiropractic can be phenomenally key in our process.

So let's tie some things together. We set our experiences. Create a feeling and those feelings affect our mood. Now we're going to tie on the next piece when we're going to jimmy jam into cognition and posture. So our mood is associated with our posture. Think about it. When you're feeling happy and confident and powerful and feeling good about yourself, you're more expert.

Your posture is more expressive and you're more upright and you're just. You have that wits about you to move through space with confidence and certainty. This is what we really want to create for everybody, especially our little fiddle farts. This is going to affect, and again, I'm bringing to you a bunch of information from neuroscience literature.

Okay. So from neurodevelopment. To metabolic disorders, to neuropsychiatric illnesses. I tie it all together, but I'm just paring it down for you. Our mood affects our posture. Makes sense, right? But now, we know that from the literature, our posture is basically body feedback to the brain. It is...

internal awareness, internal sensory information, interoception, that is fed to the brain. Our whole goal is to feed our brain optimum sensory experiences. So that the brain can then grab it and take it and interpret it in a healthy manner. This affects our mood. Cool. But what we know from the science is that now mood is also associated with cognition and in this particular diagram, increased processing speed.

What does that mean? It means I'm able to take in, organize, interpret information from my world, my external senses, and my internal senses, and I can process it quickly. Input equals output, quick return on your money. So it's like a processor on your computer, right? In this day and age, everybody's about getting things done in a millisecond, right?

So we're frustrated if we put a question or want data from our phone or from our computer and it doesn't spit it out in return very quickly. The brain's the same thing. So being able to process our world takes place in that prefrontal cortex, that frontal lobe. Our cognition center that processes multi sensory information.

And when we can do that, we can better be aware of what we need to spit out or what we need to return from that sensory information, how we need to respond to it. And processing speed is incredibly important and it allows us to take that information and process it adequately in a quick amount of time.

So posture feedback information from my muscles and joints, It's important to feed that to the brain, which affects our mood, and then our mood further affects our posture. Boom. And this dynamic is going to affect our processing speed and our cognitive ability to learn, learning, attention, behavior. Okay.

But here's the deal. What do we need to look at for our little fiddle farts? Floor time is core time. Floor time is going to build our postural control and our postural feedback to the brain. So that means that little fiddle farts need to be on the floor. Okay. If we're not seeing them go through specific neuromotor movement patterns, Tummy time is one of the first ones we talk about, right?

From a developmental standpoint, a developmental milestone standpoint, being able to not just lay on their tummies, but bring their head up and bring their head up, by three months to a 90 degree angle. And turn and look at their world. That is a ton of feed forward into the information, into the brain.

If, and then they roll on their side and roll over and all those developmental milestones, a lot of what we've talked about in past series here on this incredible show. If we have poor developmental milestones, they take a, what I refer to as a pivot and a pothole approach to development because of.

Neuro restrictions, mechanical restrictions throughout the body. For us, that would be vertebral subluxations. It might be fascial restrictions. It might be visceral fascial restrictions. There's a lot of things we've got to talk about and we'll talk about that in a minute. That can lead to poor developmental milestones, maladaptive mood, motor movement patterns.

Maybe they're asymmetrical. Maybe they are not bringing both hands equally and accurately to midline. So these are things I want you to have a keen eye on when you. See those little guys in your office, take them out of their plastic buckets, lay them on the floor, lay them on your pelvic adjusting bench, whatever.

Give them free rein and watch their movement patterns. One of the key movement patterns that I want you to keep an eye out on is five to six months ish. They should be taking their toes to their nose. Realizing they have toes, bringing them up, right? Because that is going to start building the transverse abdominus muscle, which is so incredibly important for postural control and core postural control.

Because again, we're going back down to posture affects mood affects cognition, mood affects posture. So watch for these developmental milestones. If they don't happen, we can have partial deficits. The other thing we got to keep in mind is the technology age. Kiddos, adults on their phones. hunched over, right?

Tech, not just tech neck, but tech core, tech body. When this happens, the diaphragm, when we have poor postural control, poor core stability, the diaphragm now starts to take over as a muscle stabilizer and we lose its function when it comes to the movement it needs to have. The up and down movement in diaphragmatic breathing, which that's another story for another time, but there's a lot of consequences with that when it takes over and it pivots to become a muscle stabilizer.

What I need you to look for is floor time, tummy time, symmetrical movements of arms and legs, bringing both hands to the midline. Rolling over in a corkscrew fashion and bringing the toes to the nose. That is going to set up your pelvic floor stability, okay? And that's going to start building on cognition.

The other thing that's really important is what I refer to as brain building and bonding. To bring a board cognition that is social engagement with caregivers and the little fiddle farts, especially in that first month of life. Three key points, and I've, I know I've gone over this before in past episodes, but I'm going to reiterate them.

Three key points that we need to be aware of for social engagement and bringing a board of cognition on the developing little ones. Social engagement, eye to eye contact. So mom, caregiver, when feeding should, if mom's breastfeeding, preferably she is, but if she can't, we understand, but no brexting, no breastfeeding and texting or being on the computer or whatever at the same time.

We want. Hi! We want mom here and we want eye to eye contact. That's prime time for key bonding, right? Baby here, breastfeeding, eye to eye contact. So number one, eye to eye contact key for building cognition in a little one. Number two, infantile directed speech, engaging with the little one with infantile tones and talking to them.

Number three, tactile input. All three of these have been found in the literature to help with bonding and brain activation of the, of cognition. Tactile input, soft, soothing, tactile strokes with the hand. Taking an infantile hairbrush a paintbrush, a makeup brush, tactile input. Baby, nudie, or in a diaper, while breastfeeding, while having eye contact.

while socially engaging with infantile speech, while doing some tactile input, boom, you're building cognition. All right. Now from a vertebral subluxation chiropractic standpoint, any mechanical restrictions in the body, These are going to lead to what I call tethers, ties, torsion, and tension on the nervous system.

Tethering of any fascial input, any fascial restrictions. The fascial system is so intertwined with muscles and ligaments and nerves and bone, and it's this fascia that breeds through the entire body from cranium to toes. Any vertebral subluxations is going to tether on that fascial tissue. Any oral, lip ties, tongue ties, etc.

are going to tether on that fascial tissue. These can create torsion patterns within the body because it's like a marionette puppet. You don't just pull, you pull the string on one, on the right hand on the marionette puppet and it might affect and move the left leg or the left little toe, right? So it creates these torsion patterns.

These restrictive patterns will then lead to lack of good movement developmental milestones. They become asymmetrical

movements. baby creeping on their belly, but just pulling with one side. That's asymmetrical input to the brain. You are doing asymmetrical brain building. I want you to think of these things, have a keen eye when you're looking at this mover patterns, not just what's going on with the body, but what's happening with the brain.

and leading to higher, more sophisticated centers for cognition. All of these neuromechanical restrictions can lead to tension on the nervous system and can leave us what I refer to as stuck in the stem, stuck in the brainstem. You're going to see primitive reflexes chronically active. You're going to see sensory motor systems not mature.

And The last phase to develop the higher, more sophisticated center of the brain coming on board that frontal lobe, that prefrontal cortex is going to be our executive functioning and our cognition area. I want you to think tethers, ties, torsion, tension. Look at key movement patterns. Are they achieving them?

Are they symmetrical? Are they easy? Do they look in distress when they're doing it? Do they not want to hold that position for very long because it's not comfortable? And ultimately, how down the road that can affect their mood, their posture, and cognition. Boom, way to turn the tide, way to create healthier generations, way to show chiropractic to the world.

Okay, we're going to wrap that up. We will see you next month in September where we're going to do our final one in the series where we're going to talk about sleep. And again, ChiroSecure, you're amazing for giving us this platform and helping us to enlighten the world about chiropractic for kids.

Until then you guys have a great rest of the summer and we, me and Miss Elizabeth here, we'll see you in September.

Today's pediatrics show to you by ChiroSecure.