That's what my mother would say after I had my first child, and now what I say to my children who want to hold an infant. I spazz out a little inside when that head isn't held correctly. The baby's head is disproportionately large compared to the tiny supporting structures in the neck, and the baby is prone to injury if mishandled.
Right? Or wrong? There is a viral video floating around the internet which, for a parent, is extremely difficult to watch. It features a female Russian yoga instructor who, believing that it is in the best interest of a baby to be stimulated by movement, literally swings a two-week-old infant around in wide circles. The instructor merely holds on to one leg or one hand at a time, casually swirling the baby in death-defying pendular movements. The yoga instructor has reportedly defended her baby-swinging actions by saying that such exercises are common in Russia. Nonetheless, some American outlets have been so astounded by the video that they claim the video must be fake. Let's just say this: Don't try this at home. The instructor confines herself mostly to, as I described before, pendular movements. This is very important. If any of her movements had been jerky or sudden, the baby would be at an almost-sure risk of injury. I'll explain in a moment. The physical aspect of yoga, to my understanding, is about simultaneous strength and control over your own body. A baby clearly has no power or coordination, which means that the baby has neither strength nor control. So whatever this video is, it certainly is not yoga. So what is the purpose of this passive "exercise"? An infant does get plenty of exercise, and, in fact, all it needs, simply by crying. Crying works the core abdominal muscles (the dominant muscles by mass in the infant's body), stimulates metabolism, and cleans the eyes with refreshing tears. Babies are hardy creatures, to be sure. But are they designed to be flung about by the shoulder joint? Or by the hip joint? These structures, none too sturdy if used incorrectly in the adult, are not designed to bear one's entire body weight extended on the axis. The pendular movements ensure that there is angular motion propelling those joints, which does alleviate a small portion of the health concerns about torn ligaments and tendons, but this swinging remains firmly contraindicated. Another interesting risk: what if someone (who is not a trained yoga instructor, though yoga instructors aren't trained for this) imitates this action and loses their grip on the baby? Horrifying. A chiropractor focuses specifically on the baby's upper neck. The top two bones in the vertebral column, called the atlas and the axis, are vital to the health of the baby. The spinal cord exits the cranial vault and passes directly through the atlas and the axis. If the atlas and axis are even slightly out of alignment (which they often tend to be after the semi-traumatic birth process), they can have a profound effect on the baby's nervous system. Chiropractically speaking, what I see in this video is a shearing stress on the occiput and atlas, a sideways flinging motion which threatens to shift the head on the spinal column. The baby does not have enough strength in its neck muscles to stop the head after the rest of the body has come to a halt. The head, being disproportionately heavy, also has a disproportionate amount of inertia. If the head's shearing motion were to continue, the spinal cord would be stretched between the shifted occiput and the atlas. Stretched nerves are always damaged nerves, and damaged nerves that close to the brainstem can have some very serious effects. Suffice it to say that I think this video was a very bad idea all the way around. Even if it is fake. Which it probably isn't.
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Here's a bit of free publicity for a local cause. I am in no way affiliated with the "Peoria Promise" organization. In fact, I first heard about them this morning. Apparently, they help financially-challenged students from local public schools with college tuition at Illinois Central College (ICC) right here in Peoria, which sounds like a worthy cause.
They are currently raffling off a 1974 Chevrolet Corvette, which is as good a reason as any to help local students go to college. The car was donated by Uftring Auto Group. The raffle is limited to 2000 tickets. More information can be found at their website. As mentioned earlier about cervicogenic headaches, many such headaches are actually nothing more than referred pain from overstressed neck muscles. These types of headaches are usually experienced in the temple region, over the top of the head, as a band above the eyes, and often creep "behind the eyes".
In this article, I'm going to give four never-fail tips on how to prevent cervicogenic headaches before (or just after) they start. 1) Sleep. It sounds simple, and almost like a cop-out, but nothing can beat eight straight hours of lying in a comfortable bed on a comfortable pillow. Since your head is quite heavy (all those brains!), your neck vertebrae and neck muscles have a lot of work to do during the day. Giving them a rest will almost always help calm down hypertensive muscles and recharge fatigued muscles. 2) Posture Break. If you're stuck for long periods of time at the computer, driving a car, or looking down at a kitchen counter, you need to periodically change your head position about every 12-15 minutes. This will allow other muscles to activate, preventing your head from becoming a burden on specific muscles. Also, the ligaments which support your neck muscles will stretch nicely for about 12 minutes at a time, but beyond that time frame they begin to reshape themselves according to your new position. So if you're looking down for a long time, the ligaments at the back of your neck stretch out too much, forcing the neck muscles in front to work too much in order to hold your head steady. 3) Neck Roll. This is a slow stretch, involving good breathing technique. Begin by depressing your shoulder blades (clasping your hands behind your back and "driving" your knuckles to the floor is a good way to accomplish this). Then let your head relax to the right side and inhale. You'll feel the stretch on the left side of your neck. Maintain that posture for a few seconds, then exhale and allow your head to droop forward and roll over to the left side, causing a right side stretch. Do this back-and-forth a couple times. Then let your head go forward, and then back, then forward, then back, as far as you can go. Great! (Bonus: by pulling your shoulders back, you've also stretched out your chest muscles, which tend to get overworked by the same motions which stress the neck muscles.) 4) Come in to your friendly local Peoria doctor for an Activator muscle treatment. Not only do I adjust spinal vertebrae with the Activator, the instrument is uniquely suited for relaxing muscles. The Activator's adjustive thrust is faster than the muscle can react, so the thrust tends to "stretch" the muscle (in much the same way that a stretched rubber band becomes "longer" when pressed in the middle). This sudden stretch initiates a normal relaxation reflex arc from the muscle to your spinal cord and back again, and often melts away the trigger points in the muscle. The key to the Activator's success in treating tight muscles is speed and placement of the instrument. Another favorite method to relax the neck is fantastic. It's free. It's easy. You can do it at home. It's called The Towel Roll. And it deserves its own article. Stay tuned! Ready for a bit of controversy? There's a breastfeeding debate that broke out in the UK this morning. Let's look at a Yahoo! article on it entitled Breastfeeding study raises doubts over guidelines: LONDON (AFP) – Breastfeeding exclusively for the first six months is not necessarily best for a baby's health, British researchers said Friday, calling into question advice given to new mothers. The team led by a paediatrician from University College London said babies fed only breast milk could suffer iron deficiency and may be more prone to allergies. The study says babies could start to be weaned on to solids as early as four months, although other experts advised sticking to the existing guidelines. Ten years ago, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended that infants should be exclusively breastfed for six months. "Many Western countries, including 65 percent of European member states and the United States, elected not to follow this recommendation fully, or at all," the authors said, although Britain did. The WHO recommendation "rested largely" on a review of 16 studies, including seven from developing countries. It concluded that babies given only breast milk for six months had fewer infections and experienced no growth problems. But another review of 33 studies found "no compelling evidence" not to introduce solids at four to six months, the experts said. Some studies have also shown that breastfeeding for six months fails to give babies all the nutrition they need. One US study from 2007 found that babies exclusively breastfed for six months were more likely to develop anaemia than those introduced to solids at four to six months. On the issue of allergies, the British study said researchers in Sweden found that the incidence of early onset coeliac disease increased after a recommendation to delay introduction of gluten until age six months, "and it fell to previous levels after the recommendation reverted to four months". Although a storm has broken over this story from breastfeeding advocates and nay-sayers, the article's crux is simply discussing whether to start a baby on solid foods at four months instead of six. The article does not attempt to say that exclusive breastfeeding for four months is bad. The key statement, buried in the article, is that "another review of 33 studies found 'no compelling evidence' not to introduce solids at four to six months". The article comes across, therefore, as more shocking than it really is, especially with the opening inflammatory statement. The article still affirms the need to exclusively breastfeed infants for the first four months of life. However, there are certainly competing interests at work here. The baby food industry has long claimed that their products of formula and solid baby food are "healthier" for the baby than natural breast milk. The original article from The Guardian also says that your baby may be "harmed" if not started on solid foods during a specific two month period of time. These statements are so... well... strong! But what about the article's claim that the recent rise of coeliac disease is a direct result of not feeding babies gluten between ages four months and six months? If this were the case, then coeliac disease would have been absolutely rampant all throughout human history, when "primitive" peoples were exclusively breastfeeding their infants for at least the first year. Besides, the authors mention specifically that many Western countries did not follow the WHO guidelines for exclusive breastfeeding anyway: so how does one explain the rise of gluten intolerance in the West? There are certainly other environmental and chemical factors at work besides this rather miniscule two month window in infant digestive behavior. There is an almost willful lack of logic here that makes me skeptical as to the article's intent. The authors said however that exclusively breastfeeding for six months remains the best recommendation for developing countries, which have higher death rates from infection. But in developed countries, it could lead to adverse health outcomes and may "reduce the window for introducing new tastes". "Bitter tastes, in particular, may be important in the later acceptance of green leafy vegetables, which may potentially affect later food preferences with influence on health outcomes such as obesity." Really? Giving a four-month-old rice cereal will decrease the incidence of obesity? But giving a six-month-old rice cereal will increase obesity? This stretches my credulity, and again shows the article's too-eager willingness to assign causality to one small factor. It's clear by now, if anything is, that the recent obesity epidemic is a result of many complex variables. But it seems as though the article is pulling out every possible recent buzzword (coeliac disease! obesity!) in order to cement the case against exclusive breastfeeding. Experts in Britain challenged the findings of the new study. Janet Fyle, professional policy adviser at the Royal College of Midwives, said: "I really must challenge the suggestion from the review that the UK should reconsider its current advice on exclusive breastfeeding for six months. "I believe that this is a retrograde step and plays into the hands of the baby food industry which has failed to support the six-month exclusive breastfeeding policy in the UK." Young parents can make themselves dizzy by going round and round, seeking the advice of "baby experts" who always seem to contradict each other. The wisest advice, it seems to me, is still the simplest: your baby has been intelligent enough to grow from conception to 0 months to 4 months without any sudden food interferences, and your baby is probably intelligent enough to ask for food when his/her body is capable of properly handling and digesting it. Introducing foods before your baby's gut is ready to handle it? I just fail to see the wisdom in that. It seems to me that we often don't give babies enough credit for being able to grow.
When your baby lunges off your lap for a headfirst dive into your pasta, it's about the right time for early simple foods. UPDATE: My original suspicions as to intent have been confirmed. Although Yahoo! neglected to report it, the original Guardian story contains the following quote: "The paper acknowledges that three of the four authors "have performed consultancy work and/or received research funding from companies manufacturing infant formulas and baby foods within the past three years.'" It's the old adage: follow the money. No one likes headaches. I don't like headaches. I'm sure there's no one in Peoria who, if given the choice, would ask for a headache. Once you've got one, it's hard to concentrate on anything else... that pounding in your head, that pressure behind your eyes... your eyelids go heavy and your productivity drops. Ugh!
If you could prevent these headaches from ever occurring, would you? (That's a rhetorical question.) What is a headache? It's the symptomatic expression of something gone wrong. Pinning down exactly what's the matter is quite tricky, and usually requires examination by a health professional. There are many different types of headaches, based upon the causative factors. The four main categories are migraine headaches, tension headaches, cervicogenic headaches, and cluster headaches. Headaches may be the sign of a serious underlying condition, as well, such as a stroke. However, in a great many cases, the "pain" of a headache doesn't come from the head at all. It comes from tense muscles or subluxations in the neck (cervicogenic headaches). When these muscles become tight or overused, they send pain signals to your brain. Your brain alerts you to the pain, and attempts to assign those pain signals to an area of the body near the muscles (since muscles don't actually "feel" pain). Unfortunately, in many instances, the part of the skin that the brain chooses to express the feeling of pain is in a different area of the body, usually in the head. Although you feel the pain in the head, the problem is actually in the neck muscles. This type of "referral" or "radiating" pain can be easily understood with an example of a heart attack. The classic symptom of a heart attack involves severe left arm pain. There's nothing actually wrong with the arm, because the problem is in the heart. But the brain cannot assign the pain feelings to an internal organ or muscle, so the sensation of that pain is perceived nearby, in the arm. So, with cervicogenic headaches, the question is how to keep those neck muscles relaxed. Stay tuned. |
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DisclaimerUnless otherwise attributed, all content is written by Kyle Johnson, DC, of Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria.
All images used are under Creative Commons license. Although every effort has been made to provide an accurate description of our chiropractic care and its benefits, the information given on this website and blog is not intended to be, nor should it be interpreted as, medical advice for any condition. If you have any questions regarding your condition, you should seek the help of Dr. Johnson in person, so that he may properly assess your condition. This blog is provided by Johnson Family Chiropractic of Peoria, S.C., proudly located in Peoria, IL. |