Chiropractic Adjustments for Kids: A Better Solution for Headaches | Podcast Ep. 271

Foreign. Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, we are talking all about kids and chiropractic. The effectiveness of chiropractic manipulation versus sham manipulation for recurrent headaches in children age 7 to 14. This is a randomized clinical trial that was released literally just this year in 2021 through chiropractic and manual therapies. I'll drop that link in the show notes so you can check it out. I'm gonna break down the study, showcase the results and emphasize how you can make it work for your practice. On today's episode, we're talking about kids in chiropractic. We're talking about headaches in adolescents or kids from 7 years old to 14 years old. We know headaches start to come on around that time. The question is, what do you do for it? Is medication a good idea? Is an adjustment a good idea? What's going on and what are the best care and treatment options? In this study aimed to look at exactly that. So you're not gonna believe how many headaches happen in a pediatric population each and every year. Authors suggest that recurrent pediatric headaches and happens with a prevalence rate about 5% among 3 year olds. 5% of 3 year olds get headaches and more than half of the population are getting headaches by puberty. That was staggering to me. I had no idea or concept that headaches occurred at that much frequency at that young age. So this is a big deal because we know, just like an adult, headaches can affect the life and quality of life of kids just as much as in adults. It can affect their ability to participate in sports, social activities, schooling, you name it. This is a big deal. So then the question becomes, okay, well, how does this start? And bottom line is headaches are complicated and complex. So pediatric headaches, they can be associated with comorbid conditions, they can be associated with familial disposition, with, with psychological factors, with nutritional factors, with socioeconomic factors, and much more. But one thing that stands out to me is previous trauma to the head or neck and prolonged static postures have both been associated with headaches in children. So I don't know too many kids that haven't had some neck or head trauma. Whether it's unfortunate car accident, whether it's a million falls, learning how to walk, whether it's sporting activities, you know, you name it. I know with my daughter, I see her around the house and the kids can play rough. So trauma to the head and neck is not uncommon. And there's no question with the advent of what's going on with tablets, phones, computers, you name it, prolonged static postures, they're a big deal with kids. And this seems to be an associated, or at least an associated, potentially a contributing factor to, to headaches. So the aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of chiropractic adjustments versus sham adjustments in children age 7 through 14 with recurrent headaches. So that's really what they were looking for. They also made an attempt to figure out against medication, but the results were inconclusive. You know, when they asked people about medication use, the frequency at people, how they responded, they were unable to draw any solid conclusions from the medication aspects. So this study ended up being manipulation versus sham manipulation, adjustment versus sham adjustment. And we went from there. So how did they identify the findings? Well, they identified the outcomes. This was cool. I thought through text messages. I read a lot of papers and I'm sure that it's been used before, but I'd never seen it and don't remember seeing it before that a lot of the information was gathered through text, which is really, really cool. And there were three primary questions that were asked of the participants in the study. Number one, how many days has the child had a headache this week? Choose a number between zero and seven. Question number two, how will you rate the pain on a scale from 0 to 10 where 0 is no pain and 10 is the worst pain you can imagine? Question number three, they asked, how many pills for headache has the child taken this week? Zero. None. One, one to four, two more than four pills. So question number three kind of went out the window because there just was. The data that they were receiving back wasn't enough and it was too diverse to draw any solid conclusions. But question number one and two drives to the heart of what this study was about, which is with the sham manipulation adjustment or with a real adjustment, did it affect the pain level and did it affect the pain prevalence or how many days per week that the child was experiencing pain? That's where they drawed a lot of data from. So where did it start? Well, there was a little bit. There was a few more girls in the study than boys. About 57% of the individuals in this study were females as opposed to males. And the average age was just shy of 11 years old. The mean pain intensity at the beginning was 6 out of 10. That's pretty substantial. And the vast majority of children had taken non prescriptive medication at some point, most often one to three times per Month again, this is staggering to me. Let's backtrack to where we started. 5% of kids 3 years old, barely probably know how to explain a headache, are dealing with headaches. And by puberty, you know, by around 12 years old, 13 years old, we end up seeing 50% of people having headaches. Then we say, okay, well what are people, how bad are those headaches? Well, we just discussed it. Average of 6 out of 10. So that's gonna affect the quality of life that's in that moderate territory. Maybe not severe on average, but moderate for sure, well above mild. That can affect quality of life and create a lot of challenges. And, and then we get down to, well, what are people doing for it? And when a vast majority of children are taking medication one to three times per month on the high end, that's nearly medication one time per week. They could be doing that potentially the rest of their lives if they don't find natural and holistic solutions, AKA what you do as a chiropractor, potentially to be able to help them get over these headaches. Imagine taking non prescriptive medication, basically, what does that mean? A lot of times it's gonna be aspirin and it's gonna be NSAIDs. We know long term NSAID use is bad. We know long term aspirin use is bad. Starting that at 10 years old and taking these medications potentially one time a week, one time a month, ad infinum is a super challenged position to put a child in as time goes on. And my point with that is there has to be a better way. This paper was trying to analyze it and that's where we're gonna go next. So what were some of the headache characteristics at baseline? Well, approximately half the children experienced recurrent headaches for one to three years, most often a few days a week. So again, average age of about 11. And most of these kids have been dealing with headaches since around 8, 8, 9 years old. They've been dealing with it and many of them were dealing with multiple headaches per week, which is substantial. 13% over 10% had headaches almost every single day. 13% headaches every single day, there's no question. Well, that's why they've looked towards medication. They need to get on with their life. But again, there has to be a better way. Neck pain and the use of computer and TV were some of the most activities that were most commonly thought to cause the headache based upon questions. Right. So 48% of the individuals in the study contributed or thought neck pain might be A cause of their headaches. And over 50%, 51% thought of computer or TV. Basically these digital devices, right? Tablets, phones, computer, TV were contributing and or a primary cause of the headache. So as we went through, what did these researchers find as we started to get towards the the analysis? Well, in both treatment groups, the sham adjustment and the real adjustment, they observed a substantial variation in the change of number of days with a tendency for more substantial improvements in the intervention group. So both groups, the control group, fake adjustments and real adjustments in the intervention group, both had a decrease in the number of days per week that headaches were occurring. And however, the actual intervention group, the kids that got the adjustments, they had better results, AKA less headaches on average per week. Now what did that equate to? The mean reduction in the number of days with headache was twice as high for children in the intervention group compared with the control group. And that is a statistically significant difference. So it was twice as high. Let me say that again. Those individuals, Those kids between 7 and 14 with recurrent headaches, majority of them getting headaches multiple times per week, about 15% getting headaches every single day. They were able to dramatically reduce the number of days per week with headache through getting an adjustment by getting chiropractic care. And not only that, let's step on the gas one level further. Those that received the active intervention had a, you know, twice as many days without headache as those who did, which is substantial. One third of the children displayed more than a 4,50% improvement with response being more frequent in the intervention group. So over 30% of the kids in this study received a 50% or more improvement. And that is life changing. I mean that is if you're going from seven days a week, six days a week, headaches to two or three days, that's a huge difference. If you're going from four or five days to one and a half or two days, even better. Right? So this is really has the opportunity to change lives. And when we pit that against the fact that an overwhelming majority were using medication at least monthly, many of them weekly, the opportunity to just even just to stop that alone, nevermind improve quality of life, nevermind be able to increase the number of days between headaches, or if you look at it the other way, decrease the number of days with headaches is absolutely substantial. It's important, it's meaningful and it's something that you can do to impact the people in your community in a positive way right now. And I'm guessing there's a lot of People in your community, parents and kids that have no idea that chiropractic care can make that big of an impact on their child's headaches. So the conclusions that these researchers found was they found that children with recurrent headaches who received chiropractic spinal manipulation experienced fewer days with headaches compared to children receiving sham manipulation. They also found, quote, children receiving chiropractic spinal manipulation also reported higher self rated improvement than children receiving sham manipulation. So the children that got the adjustments, they said, I think I'm doing better at a higher rate than those who didn't. And finally, the researchers found, quote, consequently, since the treatment is easily applicable, of low cost, and with no or only mild side effects, chiropractic spinal manipulation might be considered as a valuable treatment option for children with recurrent headache. So all of this points to the fact that if you are not getting out there and telling the story of how you can help kids with headaches in your community, you are missing out on an opportunity to connect with people and you're missing out on an opportunity to change people's lives. How do you think somebody's going to view chiropractic care when as a child they had a benefit of cutting their headaches in half, when they had the benefit of getting off, taking medications all of the time, when they had the benefit of getting a higher quality life? Do you think that person, at 40, 50, 60 years old is a skeptic of what we do? Absolutely not. These are gonna people that are gonna be the biggest advocates for who we are and what we do when we can make this huge changes in their quality of life early on in their life and they become accustomed to seeing a chiropractor, it's normal to see a chiropractor, not weird. If you can get out there, bridge the gap, build relationships with pediatricians, perhaps build the relationships with mom and dad groups, parent groups in your community, and ultimately get out there and clearly tell the story of the benefits you can provide. And through the care you deliver to the children in your community, you're going to be in fantastic shape as a provider. So as we get closing here, if you are looking to get factory direct pricing for your braces, tens, units and more, check out shield@super secretsales.com ebc super secretsales.com ebc I'll drop that in the show notes their founders, Dr. Steven Brown. He was on this podcast, great guy. And he is offering you complimentary Shield 10s and E STEM unit plus free shipping on your first order. So if you're looking for fast shipping, factory, direct pricing and a great selection of products that are available right now. For your practice, head over to supersecretsales.com ebc and I know Stephen will hook you up. Definitely head over and check it out. Also, thank you for tuning in to this podcast. I think this is the most widely listened podcast in the chiropractic profession. We have well over 11,000 listeners each and every week. Thank you for tuning in. 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