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Ep. 124 – Poor Latch? Let’s Talk Chiropractic Cranial Adjusting

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This is Maureen Farrell and Heather ONeal and this is The Milk Minute. We’re midwives and lactation professionals bringing you the most up-to-date evidence for all things lactation. So you can feel more confident about feeding your baby, body positivity, relationships, and mental health. Plus, we laugh a little or a lot along the way. So join us for another episode. 

Heather: Welcome to the Milk Minute podcast, everybody. Today, we have a very exciting interview with Dr. Martin Rosen from the Peak Potential Institute, and he has been a pediatric chiropractor for 40 years guys. So this is somebody that has really seen all of these patterns of babies coming through his office with these interesting issues and latch issues and digestion issues.

Yeah. And crooked head issues and colic issues and all of the things that Maureen and I see in our private consults all the time.

Maureen: Yeah. And, and we get questions a lot about the appropriateness or effectiveness of chiropractic care for infants. So we are like let’s just ask an expert. 

Heather: Yeah. And you know, some of the stuff that we talk about in this interview is a little bit controversial. You know? Sure. Of course, anytime I recommend chiropractic care for any of my babies, there’s always a little bit of hesitancy in the parents because of the things that they’ve heard about chiropractic care from maybe other medical professionals, maybe they are actually medical professionals themselves.

So we’re gonna address some of that in the interview today, and really we have a ton of fun because yes, he’s from New York. So of course you’re gonna get that delicious New York accent. 

Maureen: You might forget, but so am I. 

Heather: So am I. There’s, there’s a lot of really fast talking. So try to buckle up. 

Maureen: You can like adjust it to like half speed, you know, or if you’re one of those listeners who usually does this double time, you might wanna put it back to normal.

Heather: Hilarious. Yes. So we actually ask him a ton of questions and we don’t hold back. So I hope you all enjoy this and we would love to hear your stories. Absolutely. And you can email them. Email. Yeah. Yeah. Email them to MilkMinutePodcast@gmail.com. Do we have patrons to thank before we get into it? We do, but we also wanna do a quick reminder, like we do at the top of every show now that Maureen and I both do private lactation consults and those links are always in the show notes to schedule with us.

So please don’t be at home struggling when you could be letting us help you solve your problems. Yes. Let’s thank some patrons today. Okay. You wanna thank them? I do. Thank you. So first we have Emily Hannaman, who is an IBCLC from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Nice. Emily high five to you. We also have Mandi Parrish from Suwanee, Georgia, Tara Y from Texas and Janie C. 

Maureen: Yay Emily, Mandi, Tara, Janie! Thank you so much for your support. We deeply appreciate. 

Heather: All right now we’re gonna do a quick question. Okay. 

Maureen: Should I read this one? I’ll read this one for you. You read the question. Okay. So this question says, Hi, Heather and Maureen. I’m pregnant with my second and loving your podcast as I prepare for my second nursing journey. Wish I had discovered you with my first. 

Anyway, is there any part of any episode where you address how to, or whether you should switch breasts during a single feed? I never understood this with my first, as she tended to feed for quite a while on one breast, which might have been due to the nipple shield and flat nipples, but I’m hopeful to get off it with this baby.

A 30 to 50 minute feed was typical for her during my maternity leave and I didn’t know when the right time to switch was to the other breast. Like, is it okay for her to stay latched to the whole feed and then fall asleep when she was done? Is it normal? And then is it okay to wait to feed from the other breast with the next feeding or does that damage my supply? For context, I made enough milk for her when pumping at work and had extra to spare despite not pumping or feeding since she slept through the night.

So I don’t feel I had a supply issue. I just wanna learn how to breast feed more efficiently with my second. Maybe it was the nipple shield causing long feeds. I’m currently working on filling out the form to see if you accept my insurance for a consult, Heather. Haha. Yay! Thank you so much, Justine.

Heather: Justine. I love this question and I think the root of the issue with this is because at the hospital, everyone says feed 15 minutes on both sides and people get it in their head that they’re supposed to feed on both sides. And then they go home and they continue to do that. But then sometimes their baby falls asleep and their baby is not acting as if they fit within that 15 minute block on both boobs.

So anyway, couple things happening here. Number one. Is your baby actively transferring milk for the entirety of that 50 minute feed? On the one breast, maybe not. Yeah. So I usually can tell, first of all, that baby’s transferring, number one sign is you can hear them swallowing. If they’re still swallowing, they’re still nursing.

Mm-hmm. They will also have this jaw rocking motion where they’re kind their ears kind of wiggle a little bit. 

Maureen: Yeah. And you see like their temple, like kind of go in and out a little bit, or like sometimes you even see the soft spot, like, yeah. Move a little bit. 

Heather: Right. So if you’re seeing those signs and you know, you’re 30 minutes in, what I typically do, especially if they seem like they’re slowing down a little bit and it’s more of like a suck, suck, suck, suck, suck swallow.

Instead of a suck, suck swallow. I’ll do some deep breast compressions to see if I can reactivate them and kind of get it good to the last drop. And then I pop ’em off of there and I burp ’em and if they wake up and they look like they’re still hungry, I offer the other boob. 

Maureen: You’re like, would you like second helping boob? 

Heather: Or dessert boob? Yeah. As I like to call it sometimes. And you know, sometimes they take it and sometimes they don’t. Yeah. If they don’t it’s cuz they’re full. If they do it’s cuz they want more and they probably won’t eat a full meal on that side. So we usually say start on the side, you finish on. But if your baby is cashed out after 20 minutes on one boob and there ain’t nothing waking ’em up, no problems.

They’re full. Don’t worry about it. Your other boob probably won’t have a huge supply issue because this is a scenario where we typically have a higher milk storage capacity. Mm-hmm. 

Maureen: So I was just gonna say, like, this comes down to storage capacity, refill rate, whatever episode we talked about that in. But also those long, long feeds definitely can have something to do with the nipple shield and baby’s effectiveness.

And sometimes if we have oral restrictions. Mm-hmm. You know, not saying that’s what’s going on, but when I hear that immediately, my brain is like, oh, let’s check for that stuff. Just in case. 

Heather: Yep. So if you, we kind of like have this loose guideline that if any baby is feeding consistently longer than 45 minutes, they need an evaluation.

Yeah. Just to make sure. But as long as weight is good, we’re probably okay. But we will see this start to affect your life and your mental health long term. It’s just not really sustainable to have 45 minute feeds all the time. So that’s obviously going to lead to some suffering on your part. So it’s better to just get in with an IBCLC or an LC, a CLC, any lactation professional that you know, like and trust and just to see if there’s anything going on.

Maureen: Yeah, for sure. Well, I hope that answered your question. Hopefully I see you soon. And I, I hope we can help you with baby number two. 

Heather: Yeah. Yay. Okay. Before we get into our interview with Dr. Rosen, let’s take a minute to thank one of our sponsors and friendly reminder that our $5 a month and up patrons get early and ad free episodes.

And you can find that link to become a patron in the show notes.

You guys! Breastfeeding for Busy Moms, my little breastfeeding clinic, isn’t so little anymore. 

Maureen: I’m so excited that not only can people book with you in person here or virtually, but they can book with the other IBCLC’s in your clinic. 

Heather: We also do accept some insurance directly. A lot of insurance will actually pre-approve you for a certain amount of visits, even prenatally.

So please head on over to breastfeedingforbusymoms.com and check out the services tab to see if your insurance is approved book with me or one of my IBCLCs and we would love to work with you. 

Maureen: You can do prenatal consults. What else can they do, Heather? 

Heather: Well, I often work with people who have supply issues. We’ve got pumping troubleshooting. We’ve got preparing to go back to work, weaning, starting solids. We really cover the entire journey. So if you’re struggling, stop struggling and just schedule with me or somebody on my team at breastfeedingforbusymoms.com. Dot com. 

Maureen: All right, welcome back everybody. I am so pleased to introduce Dr. Rosen. Dr. Rosen is a graduate of the Life Chiropractic College, and over the past four decades, he’s taught pediatrics, craniopathy, primary healthcare management, and much more both nationally and internationally to thousands of chiropractors and students. He is certified SOT, advanced practitioner and craniopath.

He is certified as a pediatric chiropractic practitioner. He was the president of the SOTO-USA and was on the SORSI research board. He instructed at the ICPA and he’s developed a bunch of seminars and written several books for both healthcare providers and parents. He and his wife run the Peak Potential Institute, which offers educational programs for healthcare professionals.

And their most recent book, “It’s All in the Head,” was written to help bring awareness of the implications of growth and developmental challenges in the early stages of development. 

Heather: I’m actually really excited to read that book and we’re gonna put the link to it in the show notes. Absolutely. 

Maureen: Dr. Rosen is a really incredible person who’s dedicated his whole life at this point to giving chiropractors, healthcare providers, and parents just a new perspective about their children’s health. He has children of his own as well. And one of his daughters is a chiropractor. 

Heather: Oh, he’s obviously very passionate about what he does and we really hope you enjoy this interview.

So let’s go ahead and meet our very special guest, Dr. Martin Rosen of Peak Potential Institute. Dr Rosen. Thank you so much for coming on the Milk Minute podcast today. We are really wanting to dig into your expertise in chiropractic care for babies, and specifically how musculoskeletal dysfunction negatively affects the latch in breastfed babies.

Absolutely. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Awesome. Great. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. And Looking forward to the interview. 

Heather: Yeah. Well, you know, more and more, I have patients that I’m sending to chiropractors because of just these weird latches that I am like, we’re doing all the work we possibly can do from a lactation standpoint.

And it’s like, we’re really getting stuck. So I’ve seen some great, great things from that, but I do get some pushback in the community about chiropractic care. So I really appreciate you coming. So could you please start with you just telling us why you’re so passionate about working with pediatric clients as a chiropractor?

Dr. Martin Rosen: Well, the easy answer to that is I went to chiropractic school in 1978. I first went, I met my wife in chiropractic school and we got married and then we had a baby. And when we graduated chiropractic school, she was seven and a half months pregnant. We moved to Massachusetts from Georgia where we went to school and then we had, I was working for somebody.

And then we had this amazing little being come into our life and we looked at it and we said, wow, we just spent four years in chiropractic school talking about human potential you know, distortion patterns and helping people stay well. And now we have this baby and they didn’t really teach us what to do with it.

Not only to raise it, which of course, no one knows when you first have your first child, but really how to take care of it. And so that literally started our journey. Started it together. And I was an instructor actually from the time I graduated, we were teaching seminars. And so I went to some of my mentors and the people I was teaching with and they all recognized the importance of pediatric chiropractic care, but there was so little that taught, especially back then that we really had to just kind of extrapolate the information we had, take the anatomy and physiology and modify the technique.

So literally from the get-go, I started as a pediatric and family oriented practice. And as our kids were growing up, we had a second child about four and a half years later. And we got involved in everything parents do with taking care of their babies and kids. We were, we did some homeschooling. Also we were in a homeschooling community.

We had a home birth. My wife nursed, which I thought was probably gonna go all the way through college but thank God it stopped before high school. No. So we were just very tuned into that world, you know, we’re involved with the Le Leche League. Well, like I said, we’re involved with homeschooling people we’re involved in natural birth.

Even from the eighties where, you know, working with midwives and trying to keep them able to basically give home birth, cuz Massachusetts was giving a lot of pushback in the eighties for that. And so that was our whole paradigm. Given that there needed to be some kind of support for these people besides the medical support, especially as I said, cuz they were getting pushback.

So we felt like we were then given, kind of passed the torch, to help these people walk through the processes of these more natural ways of being parents, raising kids, feeding kids and keeping him healthy. And so it was really, and cause you know, you have children I’m sure. And when you have your own children and it’s something that you want to do to help and support them, the passion is pretty much built into that prospect.

Maureen: Yeah. What a really inspiring holistic vision, you know? 

Heather: Yeah. And you know, we do so many episodes on the history of issues with lactation and there’s a lot of weird stuff happening in the eighties. So it’s really cool to hear you say that and just like echo all of the drama around birth and feeding babies during that time.

Dr. Martin Rosen: Yeah. Do, do you know my, my daughter, just a quick story on that. My, so when my first daughter was born at home, I couldn’t sign the birth certificate because there was a lot of flak about chiropractors delivering babies, and they were coming after people who practicing, you know, obstetric of medicine, without a license.

I had to call a dozen pediatricians for them, someone to come to check my baby and sign the birth certificate. I would call and would say, Hi my name’s Dr. Rosen and I’m a chiropractor at a homebirth click. Hi, my name is Dr. Rosen and I’m a chiropractor at homebirth, click. And it took me literally a dozen pediatricians before some said, I’ll make you a deal.

I’ll be happy to sign it if you’ll bring the baby in for its first checkup into my office. And I said, done deal. Yeah. You know, I went and I brought him in and guy was great. You know, he’s no longer practicing cuz it was 40 years ago, but he was great. You know, he did the evaluation. He gave me some feedback about what he thought.

I gave him some feedback about what I thought. He signed the birth certificate and that was it. 

Maureen: Well, yeah, that’s awesome. You know, unfortunately at least here in West Virginia, it’s still really hard to find healthcare practitioners who are home birth friendly. Yeah, yeah. I’m a home birth midwife, you know, so, but when people are like, what pediatrician should I bring my baby to? I’m like, well, I, you know, maybe try this person cuz they’re not gonna be mean. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Right. That’s what, yeah. That’s what it comes down to now. I mean we, in the eighties, it was like that. There were a couple of supportive docs and most of them would just, they wouldn’t berate you. Yeah. That was it. Like you’re vulnerable enough. You just had a baby. Let’s see if we could find someone who won’t make you feel bad about the process.

Heather: Mm-hmm. Well, and I think people like you and Maureen and I, because of those experiences, we’re really big on using our expertise to change it at a system level. Exactly. And so you are also training other chiropractors to work with our little kiddos. Yes. So tell us a little bit about that and what your big vision is.

Dr. Martin Rosen: So, oh, the big vision is to put enough pediatric chiropractors who are actually skilled in pediatric chiropractic, not just say that they can do it. To help as many people as possible. We think the pediatric population, so I’ve been in practice 40 years. So examples. When I started practice, the rate of autism was one in 2,500.

Now it’s one in 38. The HSA, Health and Human Services just came out two years ago saying that 54% of our children have chronic illnesses. One in six kids are on the spectrum. Kids have allergies. When I was growing up, peanuts were not a deadly issue. Now kids get anaphylactic reactions from peanuts, from strawberries.

So in my world, and in my view, the health of our children is deteriorating within the standard medical practice. And so we need some other health, really a healthcare field to stop this onslaught of neurological diseases, autoimmune diseases, allergic reaction. And there’s no reason given what we have technologically that this should be going on and on and on.

And what seems to be happening is people are just accepting these things as normal, like, oh, your kid is on the spectrum. Oh, your kid has allergies to, you know, X, Y, and Z. Oh, your kid has, you know, chronic ear infections. They just accept it and use the standard treatment protocols to deal with it like colic. You know, two years ago, Prilosec and Zantec were the number one prescribed drugs for infants. Not for adults, for infants, because of reflux, you know, and you being lactation consultants and nursing and doulas, as you know that often the reflux is assigned that the baby’s not being able to nurse correctly.

Is sucking in air and it’s blowing up the stomach and it’s opening up the, the valves and acid is leaking back. You know, we know these type of things. So instead of accepting normalcy, we wanna train as many people as we can to understand that this is not normal, cuz it’s common and how they can deal with this on a way that actually helps the child heal, not just mitigate the symptoms by giving ’em some kind of medication or something to override what their body’s already telling them something’s wrong. 

Maureen: Yeah. And, and I think as our awareness of just how much can go wrong in a human body expands. It makes a lot of sense to then expand what kind of healthcare we’re providing to meet that need, you know, we’re, we’re finding out all these new things that we just had no idea. Were, you know, were happening in our bodies.

And I think a lot of people might not even realize just how much structure and function of their baby’s body, even in a very normal state, just relates to the quality of their latch and how they’re feeding. Sure. You know, not just for breastfeeding, but for bottle feeding as well. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Anything eating, talking swallowing.

Maureen: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, I, I think there’s some cognitive dissonance here between the understanding that babies are like these very bouncy, flexible cartilage filled creatures. And then how can they also be tight or asymmetrical or have like over tensioned muscles? You know, it, it it’s, it feels 

Dr. Martin Rosen: It’s antithetical to standardized. Yeah, it is. It is. Cuz you think about it people well, one of the things we teach and when we teach about adjusting babies is that we’re often dealing with hypermobility issues, not fixation issues. And it’s the hypermobility of the spine that causes traction on the nerve. So one of the first things I teach my, my students to talk to parents and one of the things I talk to parents is I say, look.

When you come to a chiropractor, you think of a pinch nerve, you know, putting pressure on the nerve, a bone moving outta place. That’s what a lot of people think in the lay world. And I said that has nothing to do with pediatric practice. The bones don’t move outta place. They don’t pinch the nerves. What we’re talking about is abnormal tension in the system, which is often caused by traction on the nerves.

And, you know, there’s a, a man named Alf Breig who wrote a book called Adverse Mechanical Tension in the Central Nervous System. And he talked about traction, subluxation, detraction issues that immediately changed the nerves ability to transmit impulses. So think of about a birth, think about an assisted birth with forceps or vacuum delivery.

How much traction is put on the infant’s cervical spine and cranium during that process. So what we’re dealing with is two things that are very different in the adult population. We’re dealing with much more hypomobility and we’re talking about much more traction on the system. And it’s often the soft tissue that surrounds the nerves and attaches the bone that’s the issue. 

And that’s what we call the dural meninges system. So if you think of a tube that attaches all the way to the tailbone comes all the way up the spine wraps around the spinal cord, attaches to the nerves as an exit between the bones, comes up into the cranium, into the brain, through the frame and Magnum, the hole in the back of the skull, and then comes up into the skull and attaches around what we call the sutures or the periosteum or the cranium.

And that dural system has to have a specific amount of tension. If it’s too tight or too loose, it affects two things. The way the nerves function. Well, three things actually, the way the nerves function, the way the bones move and the amount of cerebral spinal fluid, which is basically the life blood of the central nervous system that is available to the brain and the central nervous system.

So that’s what it’s about. It’s about too much tension. If you think of playing a string instrument, like a guitar or violin, you have a tuning fork on the top, and then you have the, the, you know, the fretboard and then the string is attached to the bottom of the base of the instrument. If you turn the tuning fork too loose or too tight, you change the tone on that string.

Well, the same thing happens if you traction or put too much tension in a baby’s spine or pull too much on the dura, it affects the structure and it affects the function of the nerve and the way the bones actually not only move but can grow. 

Heather: So can I interrupt you for just a second? Sure. When you’re talking about traction, I just wanna clarify for some of the listeners that might not know what you’re meaning by that. 

That’s a constant pulling and pressure. A pulling. Absolutely. Okay. And when you’re saying like soft tissue is involved in that, that continues that tension. Are you talking about, like, if we were in a car accident as an adult and we get whiplash right. Where our muscles start to tighten around those structures?

Right. Is that what you’re meaning? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Well, so it’s two things. One is so there’s connective tissue and there’s fascia, which is fascia is the stuff that wraps around the muscles. And we have two planes of it that some run long way down the body. So a fascia plane that people might understand is a diaphragm. That occurs across the, the rib cage and it, every time you breathe in and out it moves.

So if you’ve ever had tightness in your diaphragm, if you ever felt really tight and you had trouble breathing, that’s a restriction in the fascia. And because the fascia itself is restricted, it attaches to the bones, which then affects the nerve. So often muscle tension that you are talking about, so is a guarding mechanism.

So for example, perfect example, whiplash. If you go get in car accident and a whiplash is called a hyperflexion, hyperextension injury, which means your head whips back and forth. What actually gets damaged underneath is the ligaments. And the joint gets too hyper mobile. And so what the body does is it tightens the muscles around it as a protective mechanism.

So what we deal with in the pediatric population is that underlying issue. So if I touch a baby spine or even an adult spine, and I feel an area of tension, very often, that’s a muscle guarding issue. And the muscle is protecting the area underneath that is, that is damaged. So that’s what we are looking for more often in babies, because they don’t have the kind of muscle tone, like they don’t pull a muscle weightlifting, you know, they don’t pull a muscle taking the groceries out of the car.

What happens is muscles are what’s called under positive muscle control, which means somewhere in the spine there’s irritation and the body is in its own wisdom, trying to protect that by creating a tightness in the muscle so that that loose joint or that damaged joint doesn’t get damaged anymore. And so what we wanna do is find out where that hyper mobility and that tension is to release that and the muscle itself will be able to relax. 

Heather: So when babies are in utero, are they hyper mobile and just real bendy at that point and it’s the delivery that does it, or can babies experience some of this tightness and guarding and, and structural issue before they’re even born?

Dr. Martin Rosen: Yeah, absolutely. So we all know how, how much the birth not, I mean, the pregnancy affects the babies too. We’re talking about the amount, you know, how you eat, how, what you exercise, the position of the baby inside the uterus, the external forces and environment. So yeah, babies are developing at a rapid, rapid rate, more rapid than you’ll ever develop in life.

They’re creating neurologic connections; they’re creating compensatory patterns. And so whatever happens in utero often also affects the whole process also, including the birth process. So I was talking to a doula a couple of weeks ago, and one of the things she said, which I thought was really brilliant, I was talking to her about primal reflexes.

You know, the things that you have when a baby first comes out, blink reflex, rooting reflex, startle all those. And she said to her, the first primal reflex is the ability of the baby to turn, head down. Mm-hmm. So in other words, she thinks ideally when your baby is functioning neurologically and all the systems around it are good that the baby automatically reflexively will turn head down.

So you’re talking about a baby that’s like, so you breach or transverse position. They can be put up against a pubic bone. We’ve had three babies in the last month that were all born with the cord wrapped around their neck. The worst was, it was wrapped four times around the baby’s neck and it took 10 seconds for the baby to breathe.

So that’s a stress that’s happening in utero. If you’re growing and there’s a cord wrapped around your neck, that’s gonna affect you. So yeah, the original insults can occur in utero. And then of course, add that to the birth process and going down the birth canal and the amount of pressure on a baby’s spine and cranium from leaving the uterus to exiting the birth canal increases tenfold.

Yeah, those are, yeah so that’s intense. 

Maureen: Right. I’ve definitely wondered about the reflex for babies to tuck their chin to their chest and get in that optimal delivery position. Because then when they’re going, you know, when they’re descending without that head flexion, right, then I imagine that the forces put on their head just don’t distribute correctly.

Dr. Martin Rosen: Absolutely. There was a, a osteopathic study done. I think it was 2015. And what they did is they evaluated within 72 hours after birth a hundred babies. And these are all vaginal deliveries, no forceps, no C-section, no vacuum deliveries, just vaginal deliveries. And they evaluated what they call an osteopathic world, somatic dysfunction. Mm-hmm. Which is basically the inability of the joints to move correctly.

And literally they found out of the babies, 100 that they evaluated, 95% of them had some kind of structural distortion, what would they call somatic dysfunction, and it was all dependent on how long they had spent going down the birth canal and how intense the process was. That was the contributing factor. 

If they spent too long or too short and there was, it was a lot of trauma going down the birth canal, these babies who are more prone to different types of structural stresses. Just again, within 72 hours after birth, they were all evaluated. Right. 

Maureen: There’s a lot of different factors that play in really, even the most normal birth. Right.

But I, I wanna kind of think on the other end then of things on our C-sections, you know yes. When you hear about somebody who’s had a C-section, is that do, do you just automatically kind of think, okay, that baby is gonna need some help, you know, why would that be different than from, you know, a, a vaginal delivery?

Is it because of the malpositioning or because of the way that they’re pulled from the womb, like?

Dr. Martin Rosen: Well, I have, I have experience with that cuz I was a C-section birth. I don’t remember it very well. There are pieces of it, but I was a C-section and I have seen C-section deliveries. So the difference is, so think about this, as the baby is coming down the birth canal, there are contractions, those contractions do several things.

One obviously they help push the baby down the birth canal. The second thing they do is they compress the cranium. If you look at a baby’s head, the cranium isn’t solid bones. It’s a whole bunch of bones and catatonic plates. And that compression allows the cranium to collapse basically on itself. And that pumps what starts to prime, the cerebral spinal fluid mechanism.

So when the baby comes out of the birth canal, the first thing they do is take a deep breath in and then that system starts to expand. So that’s number one. And you also have forces pushing the baby out to deliver it. In a C-section you have none of that. You have no compression on the cranium. You have no pushing out.

So you literally have someone yanking, a baby out of the mom’s womb. And so the amount of force that they use to do that is significantly more than a normal birth. There was a study done way back in the sixties, 69, I think it was a guy named Abraham Talbot. He was an MD at Harvard and he did a study on tractioning.

And he said that during a normal birth, they use about 50 to 60 foot pounds of pressure to remove a baby from a mother’s womb and in a C-section or assisted birth, they can use as much as 90 to 120 foot pounds. And that up to somewhere above 75 to 80 foot pounds of pressure, you can actually cause tearing in the tissue around the base of the skull.

He was doing work with SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome, and he found that assisted births, the amount of traction, whether it be C-section, forceps, or vacuum, had a much higher percentage of sudden infant death syndrome, cuz it damaged the mechanism of the base of the brain stem, which is where the primary breathing mechanism is.

Maureen: Yeah. And I, I imagine at that time, there were very few, what we would think of as natural deliveries. And even the vaginal births were pretty assisted and yanked and lots of pressure being on babies. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: But you, but you know, what was unique about that time I bet so in the sixties, the average C-section rate in the United States was 6 to 8%.

Right. Now it’s somewhere around 38, depending on where you are, 38%. It it’s really high here. yeah, yeah, exactly. And in Massachusetts, it’s high too. I mean, we’re a medical Mecca. People think C-sections are like, oh, I think I’ll just have the baby as a C-section. Right. You know, and a lot of people who try and do VBACs are chastised. 

Heather: Yeah. They are here as well. I think what people don’t realize also like when they think about a C-section they think, oh, thank goodness my baby didn’t have that head squeezed. Right. You know, they’re like, it must be more gentle because they just cut me open and they just pull the baby out.

But from anyone that’s actually seen one it’s like, whoa, that’s actually really intense. And their heads can still get stuck in there. And then also the way that they’re pulling the baby out, often they have them under their chin, like with their hand under the chin and they’re pulling. And baby get super bruised and you know, it’s not simple.

Dr. Martin Rosen: I think we can decrease a C-section rate by half, if people would actually see what a C-section delivery looks like. 

Maureen: I mean, and I think there really could be a lot of work done to make cesarean sections a little bit gentler and to really be cautious of how we’re pulling babies out and to guard against more, you know, there’s a lot of injuries that happen and I think that’s another podcast. Right. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Right. Again. And you know, I’m not a surgeon, but I am assuming that when I was the C-section baby, the, the cut was much grosser that was done into my mother’s uterus, which actually in my, for me was probably better off than, I mean, the smaller, the cut, the more you have to pull the baby out, you know what I mean?

So there’s, I think you’re right. There are a lot of ways or other options that we can do a surgical procedure like that, that is less invasive both to the mother and also to the infant. Yeah. Like I said, that’s not my expertise, but I would assume at this point in time, we should have the technology to do that.

Heather: Well, I have a question about pounds of pressure on the baby’s head. So right. You’re not getting out of a womb without some pressure on your head, right. So like, is there a certain amount that’s okay? At what point is the poundage too much? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Well, so my, I don’t know. I don’t know what the, the tipping point is.

I can tell you that it’s, it’s not foot pounds. We took a millimeters of mercury. Mm-hmm. Cause that that’s, I don’t know how to translate that to foot pounds, but whoever’s listening if they have a calculator, a math propensity, they can do that. But it starts at 10 millimeters of mercury in utero and increases to a hundred millimeters of mercury during transition.

So that’s pretty much a hundred milliliters, now where this tipping point is for that? I honestly don’t know. You know, is it 120 is it 140? I think there are a lot of aspects that we have taken account. Number one, what you just talked about a minute ago, what’s the baby’s position when they’re coming in through transition? Is their head tucked?

Are they ready for standard presentation? Mm-hmm. Are they in, you know, reverse position as the mom’s going through back labor? So there’s, there’s position. The, you know, baby’s position, uterine position and, and pounds of pressure. But again, normal birth, a hundred millimeters of pressure. I don’t know what the tipping point is, honestly.

Maureen: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think we have that research. 

Heather: Well, Dr. Rosen, we’re gonna take a quick break. And when we come back, we’re gonna chat more about obvious signs and symptoms that your baby’s weird latch might be from a misalignment. Awesome.

There’s nothing more stressful than having a baby that is crying incessantly and having everybody around you trying to tell you it’s your breast milk, or you have to just use gas drops. Yeah. Or maybe it’s something you ate. 

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All right, everybody. Let’s talk about some signs and symptoms that your baby might not be in alignment. So, Dr. Rosen, what are we looking for as parents and as providers that work tangentially with these patients? Who are we going to be sending to a pediatric chiropractor like you? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Okay. So two things. One, I have to preface it by saying which I say to everybody, if your baby was once in a uterus and then is out of that uterus, they should be checked by a chiropractor, a pediatric chiropractor. And the reason for that is what we just talked about. There are normal things that happen. During the natural childbirth, there are assisted things that are, or more things happen during assisted birth. But again, so that aside, my paradigm is you had a baby, bring it in, get it checked, maybe fine.

May not. You bring it to the pediatrician to get checked. Then why wouldn’t you bring to someone who’s a specialist in spinal and cranial and neurological dynamics? So with that aside, the other thing we look at is common things is when a friend of mine kind of coined the term JET and she talked about jaw eye and tongue. 

So if you look at a baby and you start to see that your baby’s jaw deviates to one side, either when opens or closed, that’s not normal. The jaw should open and close, you know, evenly down the middle. If you look at your baby’s face and one eye looks significantly smaller or bigger than the other, or it doesn’t track correctly, it doesn’t move correctly.

The baby turns their head. That’s another problem. And then the third thing is the tongue. Not just for tongue tie, if it can’t come out, but does the tongue deviate to one side or does the baby have trouble latching on one breast more than the other? Okay. 

That’s a very common sign of distortion. If the baby latches or likes one breast more than the other, that usually means there’s some kind of functional distortion making it easier. One side, it could be as simple as something called torticollis and torticollis you would notice if your baby’s head turns easier to one side or they always like to tilt their head in one direction when you put ’em in the car seat, or when you lay ’em down, their head is always tilted in one direction.

They like to look in one direction. If your baby doesn’t like tummy time, that’s an issue. They should like tummy time. They should be able to start to hold their head up in the first month and therefore they should start to be able to do tummy time. So those are some of the big factors. You know, again, structural looking or structural looking distortions. One ear looks flat out to side the other.

If you see any major flat spots in the baby’s head and again, nursing, especially if they’re nursing better on one breast, more than the other. And again colic, difficulty nursing, or if they pull their head off where they start to bite the nipple to try and hang on, that’s usually a functional issue something’s going on with the jaw and they can’t suck as well as latch.

So they’re actually using their jaw muscles to actually hold onto the nipple, which is not what they should normally be doing during nursing. Also if they start to pull themselves up a lot in the middle of the night, waking up and they pull their legs up, that’s a sign of cramping. And that usually is cuz they have too much air in their stomach.

Probably like I said, if they’ve done a nighttime nursing, it causes bloating and that’s painful. So those are some of the main signs that we tend to see people bring their kids in. They start to notice these type of dysfunctions. The other one that’s really common is bowel movement issues. We get kids coming in here all the time who don’t have regular bowel movements.

The, the longest I’ve had anybody go was a woman brought a baby in that was 20, 21 days without a normal bowel movement. But we see. Yeah. And what was sad about that is she went to the pediatrician and the pediatrician said, don’t worry, that’ll work its way out. Oh. And my first thought to her is, I said, why don’t you go tell the pediatrician to not have a bowel movement in three weeks?

Heather: Oh my gosh, Lord have mercy. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: But we see a lot of them. Five, seven days, you know, mm-hmm, like some people feel that nursing moms or nursing babies may have less bowel movements cuz they assimilate more of the nutrition from the food that may be true or not. But if your baby’s not having a bowel movement, you know, it’s having one bowel movement a week, that’s a problem as well. 

So those are the kind of things when you start to look at your baby and you start to notice you know, those weird little patterns, like head tilts, not able to turn to one side, not liking tummy time or one eye is not tracking or looks big or smaller. Those are the kind of things that a lot of parents start to notice and bring kids in for.

Heather: What about rolling from tummy to back when they do tummy time. Right? And it’s, and they’re doing it really soon. I often get like little comments from parents where they say, oh my gosh, my baby’s so advanced. They just rolled and they’re only two weeks old. And my brain I’m like, that feels.

Dr. Martin Rosen: So milestones are important. And you know, the CDC just came out with new milestones guidelines, which are horrible, by the way. Just wanna put that preface in. And one of the things they left out was creeping and crawling. Mm-hmm. So we get the same thing. We’ll get a mom who says, oh, my baby’s so bright.

You know, they went from sitting to walking and never creeped and crawled. So milestones and all that, what you’re talking about are pre-programmed. They’re in the base of this brain center, the cerebellum. They’re pre-programmed, they’re called pre-programmed proprioceptive feedback loops, and they’re supposed to fire off at specific times.

So if they fire off too early, too late, that is a sign of an issue. So if you have a baby that is rolling, I’m not so concerned. There’s a para you know, there’s a parameter. Most of the main milestones should be hit within the first 18 months. Mm-hmm okay. So there’s a window of opportunity where some, a little early, some little, but within the first 18 months, the nervous system should be integrated.

So the thing that I’m more worried about, what you talked about. If the baby rolls to one side and can’t either roll back or only rolls to one side, that’s an issue. But if they can do it symmetrically and can actually go from back to front and front to back, I’m not as concerned. But I am concerned of, you said, said, oh, two months, my babies, you know, I put my baby on their belly and they roll to their back where I put it on the back and they roll and they only roll one side and they do it immediately all the time.

That’s usually an issue. Okay. Usually babies will do it for functional issues, not just because they can. 

Maureen: Right. I, I think the biggest question on most of our listeners’ minds and certainly all of the clients Heather and I see are what does a chiropractic adjustment on a baby look like? You know, there’s a lot of skepticism from parents and other healthcare professionals.

And understandably too, because you, I think the public idea of chiropractor, chiropractic adjustments is like the big cracks and giant body movement. Right? Exactly. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Yeah. Please stay off of YouTube. Please stay off of YouTube. Certainly do not watch chiropractors on YouTube. 

Maureen: And we would not want to do that to a baby. So what, what should that look like? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: So what it should like is first of all, and I tell parents that. So when I started practicing, most of the time we got families in, the parents came in, they got educated, they brought their babies in. So it was a process and people understood trusted and, you know, came in. 

Now because of the internet and social media people tend to come in, bring their babies in, and they’ve never even been to a chiropractor and they’ve never been adjusted so they don’t know. So the first thing I tell ’em is this. Number one, to make an adjustment to a baby we use about four to six ounces of pressure. There’s no twisting, there’s no torquing.

There’s usually no popping noises, but we use four to six ounces of pressure. We’re very specific. And in all honesty, it is actually safer given the amount of force in what we use to adjust an infant than it is to adjust an adult. There is less chance of causing trauma or damage to an infant than there is to adult if you use the right techniques and procedures. 

The other thing I do, if any patient of mine comes in and brings their baby in, has never been under chiropractic care, I show them on themselves like on their leg or their arm, how much pressure I’m going to use. So again, we’re using about four to six ounces of pressure, the context of very specific, there’s no twisting or jerking.

They’re not, you know what we call high velocity or low ample too, which is what the popping adjustments are. Those are different, which is why we have spent the last 39 and a half years training people specifically in pediatric chiropractic adjusting because it’s a different skill set. We don’t get enough of it in school.

And it’s really like an elective course. And it’s a specialty, not every. I have patients, friends of mine who are chiropractors, who I take care of their kids and I’m taking care of their kids cause they don’t do pediatrics and they won’t adjust. They don’t adjust kids under 10. Right. So, right. So, so it’s very specific.

It’s extremely safe. There have been research studies on it, the efficacy and the safety of chiropractic care. A company called the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association has done a, done an a nationwide study on it. And there is very, very, very, very little chance of any damage. And if there is a problem, it’s usually because there was an underlying condition that no one knew about.

Maureen: Yeah. And, you know, I think that in kind of every case of the human existence, we tend to be more vocal about negative experiences. Right. And then the worst case scenario is what makes the news. And, and that’s of course then what colors people’s perception of this practice. Yeah. And so I wonder, you know, in light of that like what are we looking for in a chiropractor to know that they’re like trained and safe and all of that? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: So number one thing is you can ask them. Mm-hmm. I, I tell people, so first of all, we have a referral directory.

So in our organization, we teach, we have a referral directory and people can go on that. The other thing I ask people is if you call somebody and they say, oh yeah, I take care of kids, I would ask them. The first thing I would ask them is what percentage of your practice is pediatrics? They say, well, I take care of a couple of kids then no. You know, if they say, oh, you know, 30% of my practice of pediatrics, then that’s someone you should go to.

There are trainings, organizations, including, you know, my, my company, the Peak Potential Institute. There’s the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association. Then there’s the International Chiropractic Association has a pediatric program. There’s a bunch of pediatric programs out there that you can find people’s credentials out on and you can, you can Google those.

But the main thing is when you walk into a chiropractor’s office that takes care of pediatric patients, there is gonna be some sign that they take care of kids. There’s gonna be pictures on the wall. So like, if there’s gonna be toys in the waiting room. In my office, when you walk in and you open the front door, there’s a wall and it says Our Chiropractic Kids.

And we have about 200 or so pictures of the different kids that we take care of. And then we also have a little video screen that flashes the kids and kids will love to have their pictures taken. Mm-hmm. So we do that friends of mine, when you walk into the corner, you’ll see a table and chairs and books for kids.

So if you don’t see any sign that this is a kid friendly place, then there’s a good chance that that’s not a specialty that they really focus on. So those are the kind of things. And I would ask them straight out, you know you can, and ask people, you know, do you have any specific training in pediatrics when you call.

And they’ll say, yeah, I took classes from, and they’ll give you the answer for that’s. 

Heather: So what is your in like a chiropractic desert? And there’s only one and they don’t really work with kids, but they’re willing to give it a go. Is anybody better than nobody?

Maureen: That was the question, Heather. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: No, no, I don’t think that’s true. I, I, I, I mean, my thing, my. My professional life has been about excellence. Yeah. I mean, that’s what it is striving for excellence. And so, you know, if I’m in a car, if I’m in a dental desert and there’s only one dentist and I have a toothache and the only option maybe is there, and I know he is gonna pull the tooth out, could be saved by somebody else.

I’m gonna weigh that choice, you know, depending on how much pain or how long it’s gonna take me. But if you’re in a place where there’s one person and doesn’t know, yeah. I, I, my thought would be no. So you’re gonna say travel. I mean, I won’t go to a chiropractor that I don’t, I mean, as an adult, you know, there are, you know, there’s certain yeah.

As an adult, I would feel the same way. It’s the same thing. You know, doctors, I I’m just kind of I’m picky that way. Yeah. I just, yeah. 

Heather: That’s good though, because I think a lot of people do live in a chiropractic desert. And so yeah, it’s a problem. That’s why we do, it’s good to know to get in the car and drive, you know. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: It’s where I have people who drive to me. So one of the things, so now that we’ve been, you know, training a lot of people, but I have people who drive to me, I’ve had people drive up from New York. I took care of, you know, and they said, I said, look, we knew people in New York, no, I want to come to you. I wanna come to you. And so after about four to five visits that they’ve driven three hours each way I say you know, your baby’s doing better.

You know, don’t you think it’s a good idea I refer you to one of the people we know in New York? And they’re like, after, you know, 40 hours of driving. They’re like, yeah, that’s a good idea. So, and we have, you know, but some people will travel an hour and that’s not uncommon to have people travel. 

Cuz where we live there’s a lot of chiropractors in Boston, but in Western Massachusetts, there’s not a lot of pediatric chiropractors. So we’ll get people from Western Mass coming to us for care for their kids. I mean, the question I ask you is how far would you drive to make sure that your kid is healthy, safe, and functioning at their optimum level?

Heather: I would take him to China. Exactly. Exactly. Not really. I mean, exactly. I don’t think I’d have to. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Yeah, but you would, but you would. It’s a, you know, and it’s a matter of being able to do that. It’s a matter of, you know, availability. It’s a matter of monetary issue. It’s a matter of travel time. I, it’s not uncommon though for, for us to send people and they’ll call me up, you know, I’ll send somebody to, let’s say Indiana.

I know people there and they’ll say, oh, that’s a 45 minute drive. I said, I don’t know anybody else in Indiana I would trust it’s worth the drive. 

Maureen: I dude, the, the, the grocery store’s 45 minutes for me. Yeah, exactly. I’ll go that far for the chiropractor. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Exactly. I mean, it’s, it’s your healthcare. It it’s your healthcare. How far do you wanna drive for being healthy and having someone that you could trust? 

Maureen: Yeah. Also shout out to Sherri Collett, our local chiropractor in Elkins who’s I CPA certified and absolutely love her. 

Heather: Awesome. All right, Dr. Rosen, I, I wanna do a quick, true or false segment of the show because, okay. I feel like you could keep up with your quick talking New York accent.

Dr. Martin Rosen: I could, I have the ability to talk endlessly. 

Heather: Oh, good. That’s why we called you today. Okay. You ready for this? I’m gonna just throw ’em at you. So true or false? Babies that are crooked will grow out of it eventually. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: False. 

Maureen: Oh, why? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Because they create compensatory patterns so they don’t grow out of it.

They grow into it. We are fault tolerant human beings. And so you, they will able to adapt to that distortion, but it will become a primary source of stimulus from which they go compensate for the rest of the life if it goes uncorrected. Okay. 

Heather: All right. True or false? Babies can have TMJ.

Dr. Martin Rosen: Absolutely true. How do you know you? I kind of what I talked about again, when they open and close their mouth, you will see the jaw deviate to one side or when it’s closed, it will deviate to one side, or if you find that often. So if a baby has a TMJ problem, one of the things that’s common is that one side of the jaw will have a stronger bite than the other.

And not only a stronger bite, cuz obviously the teeth haven’t come in babies, but we’ll have a stronger suck and that’s another sign. So if your baby sucks harder on one side than the other, that’s often a TMJ problem. If they drool too often or if the jaw is crooked when they open or close it. 

Heather: Okay. True or false? Babies with tongue ties are often restricted in other places in the body.

Dr. Martin Rosen: True. That is a fascia issue. And again, so in the tongue, the frenulum is part of the fascia system. So it’s not uncommon that if they have one congenital anomaly, they might have another, I mean, the simple one, you may have tongue tie, lip tie and buccal ties. They also may have cranial tension distortion patterns because there is fascial systems in the cranium and both transverse and our horizonal fascial systems work together. 

So if you have a distortion in one plane, for example, I talk about the diaphragm. If your diaphragm is twisted in one side, cuz it attaches to the ribs, it’ll pull the ribs down on one side compared to the other and the next fascia plane above that, which is the thoracic fascia plane will have to compensate.

So that’ll create a distortion in the other direction. So it’s the same thing with tongue tie. 

Heather: All right. I feel like I still feel some of my restrictions in my body today that I probably had as a baby that was never corrected. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: So I was a C-section baby. So I didn’t get my first adjustment until I was 19. So I’m sure there’s a few things. 

Heather: Okay. True or false? Babies are colicky for no reason. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: False. There’s always a reason for it. Do we always find the reason? No, but colic is not a norm. Again, this is that whole common versus normal. Because a lot of babies have it and it’s common does not make it normal.

Yeah. So it’s not normal for baby not to be able to digest their mother’s milk. It’s also not normal for kids or babies to be allergic to everything on the planet. It’s just not normal. It’s just like, why is Johnny gonna die if he eats a peanut and his sister doesn’t, it doesn’t affect her at all.

That’s not normal. There’s a reason for why his nerve, his immune system is so hypersensitive and there’s often a cure for it as well. 

Heather: Yeah, we definitely have on our episode list colic in the period of purple crying and why it may or may not be bullshit. Right. Yeah. Stay tuned, we might call you in for a guest appearance for that one.

Dr. Martin Rosen: I like that, especially if I can keep talking like that. 

Heather: Listen. You’re with fellow new Yorkers. It’s fine. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: I know. Well, now I know that. I didn’t know that before. 

Heather: Okay. So two more true or false. Babies often only need one or two adjustments. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: False. Hmm. More often than not it’s an underlying pattern that needs to be changed.

So an adjustment, doesn’t move a bone or a joint or a ligament or a muscle from point A to point to B on one stop. What adjustments do is they facilitate the body and making the correction. So it’s about changing a pattern. So if you think of a subluxation, which is what we call those distortions as a habit that the body created to protect itself, we have to change that habit.

So if you wanted to break a habit, biting your nails, it’s not like you learn once, oh, don’t bite your nails or do one thing. You have to create it. So adjustments build on each other. They create a new pattern and they help facilitate the removal of the old pattern. So it’s not just putting something from point A to point B, it’s creating a new neurological we’re called neuroplastic input.

So that usually takes time. Less time in, in babies and kids than it does in adults. Certainly, but takes time. 

Heather: Yeah, cuz we’re more, the babies are more neuroplastic. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: So that makes right. And we’ve compensated more. You have levels and you’re, I mean, adults are like, you know, the person who bends over in their car to pick up a grocery bag and then all of a sudden can’t move or people call their “back goes out”, which is something we had.

But it wasn’t the grocery bag that did it. It was a compensatory pattern that it developed over time. And that was the literal straw that broke the camel’s back. So you’ve had years to compensate. Babies don’t have that much time to compensate so it’s a quicker process. Mm 

Heather: Fascinating. All right. Last one. True or false? It’s always the baby’s neck that’s the issue. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: No, it’s more often than not the most vulnerable area in the baby’s spine is the upper cervical area, which where is the first two vertebrae and the base of the brain stem or the SP or the occipital. The top vertebrae are involved. It is the most vulnerable area.

It’s also the one that gets the most stress, not only coming down the birth canal, but during assisted deliveries. But there can be other issues with the other part of the spine, especially the sacrum. There is a specific again, when we talked about that dural system, it has some very strong attachment points in different places.

And another very strong point is at the tailbone, which is what we call the sacrum. And so there can be stresses in that area. So it’s not always the upper cervical on the neck. It’s more often that than other areas, but other areas can get traumatized. Right. 

Heather: You know, we have about 25% of our listeners that are medical providers.

They’re either pediatricians, family practice. Awesome. Very, yeah. So what do you have to say to them, if you could talk directly to them about chiropractic adjustments for babies? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: So I do that all the time. I actually spoke to Children’s Hospital. They asked me to come down and I spoke to a, a symposium of doctors, PTs, nurses, and everything was basically on pediatric chiropractic care.

And I simply say that this is. A trained pediatric chiropractor is going to evaluate a baby or a child’s spine and nervous system in, within the chiropractic paradigm. And if they find something, they’re gonna report that to the parent and they’re gonna make gentle adjustments or care to help remove that interference so that the body can function normally.

So we’re not competing with you as far as treating disease or symptoms. It’s like, I don’t care if the child has asthma, colic, ear infections, you know, a limp, a scoliosis, whatever it is, we’re gonna evaluate the spine to optimize the way it functions as best as it can. And we’re gonna monitor that and continue to monitor that.

And it’s not uncommon for us to be dealing with them on one level while they’re also dealing with a pediatrician or a PT on the other level. It’s a different ladder, I guess to say. It’s a different ladder that we’re looking at. We’re looking at different parameters and our parameters are designed to help increase their functional capabilities.

And one of the things we find very often is if someone is under care with another healthcare provider and is chiropractic care, one of the first things the other healthcare provider says to us is that I don’t really know what you’re doing, but what I know is that this child or this person has made leaps and bounds and improvement in what we’ve been doing over the last few weeks.

And they about the care that the last six months we’ve been taking care of them. And that happens all the time, whether it be neurological issues, processing issues, Function, structural functional issues or organic issues. It changes the way the body’s able to adapt and deal with the environment and it facilitates their healing capabilities.

Heather: That’s been my experience as well. Sorry, that’s been my experience as well with chiropractic care for babies and for myself is that it’s a, it’s a great compliment to any other healthcare. It’s not like chiropractic or physical therapy. It’s like both. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Right? No, it’s not that all. Yeah. We have tons of babies who have, you know, kids who have, so I used to work with a one of my staff, people used to work.

I don’t know if you know, know the Institute for Achievement of Human Potential in Philadelphia. Yeah, it’s a, it’s a great place was actually started by a PT. They work a lot with brain injured kids and neurological challenges. And so I had people in my office who used to work there. So we used to take care of a lot of brain, you know, kids with different types of brain injury processing issues.

And I would do the adjustments and they would put ’em on rehabilitative programs. Mm-hmm and that’s still the case. My office, we don’t do the rehabilitative programs, but if I have someone who needs OT, I will first clear out the parameters, the nervous system, and then send ’em to the OT so they can work on what a clearer system.

It’s no different if you dislocate a shoulder, right? You tear up the ligaments, you damage the internal joint of the shoulder. You don’t go out and start exercising the shoulder joint right away. You wait until the underlying system is healed and then you correct the problem. And that’s what chiropractic is dealing with.

We’re dealing with the underlying system, how that underlying system functions, and then all else follows from that. 

Heather: Right? So Dr. Rosen, where can people find you if they wanna learn with you? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Okay. If they wanna learn with me, they can find me at peakpotentialprogram.com. That’s where all our courses and our books are located.

I do need to put in a plug from the newest book that my wife and I wrote. It’s called, “It’s All in the Head,” and you can get it on itsallintheheadbook.com. It’s also on Amazon, but you know, Jeff Bezos is doing fine by himself. We hear that. I’d rather not give him the other percentage of, but anyhow, regardless.

And so you can find us at thepeakpotentialprogram.com also for professionals, DrMartinRosen.com is another way to find me. That’s also where our classes and all our professional stuff is. If you are a lay person or a patient who wants information about chiropractic, you could find me at Wellesley W E L L E S L E Y chiro C H I R O.com. That is our lay layperson or patient website. And if you wanna email us with any questions, the best email will be DrMartinRosen@gmail.com and that’s how you can find us and also on Facebook and Instagram and all those other stuff. 

Heather: Oh, all that jazz. We will, we will link all of that in the show notes.

Yeah, absolutely. But is the peak potential programs that you have just for chiropractors? 

Dr. Martin Rosen: Yes, I, I, yeah. I only teach chiropractors. Well, I shouldn’t say that. We are doing lay programs. We are starting a new part of our school, which will be lay programs on things like, you know, that we find flag athlete, tongue tie.

But right now all our courses are for chiropractors and chiropractic students, but that will be changing in the next couple of months. We are gonna have some lay courses also. 

Maureen: Well, let us know when you have something we can take. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: All right. Definitely. I will do that. 

Heather: All right. This has been beautiful.

And I so enjoyed myself and I know everybody is gonna get so much value from this. Absolutely. So I appreciate you coming on the show today. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: I appreciate you having me. I had a great time I really did. It was a lot of fun. Yeah. And I got dressed too. I was all nice. I had had a pretty pink shirt on and everything cause my wife, you know, my wife thought pink would be a good, soft color for me.

Maureen: Well, for everybody out there in audio land, just create that mental image for yourself. Brushed hair, pink shirt. We’re all looking fabulous today. There we go. 

Heather: All right, Dr. Rosen, thank you so much. And we’ll definitely be in touch. 

Dr. Martin Rosen: All right. Thanks. Take care of yourself. Thank you again. Okay.

Heather: Okay. What a great conversation with Dr. Rosen. First of all, I feel like I might be related to him because he sounds like my grandma. Like all of my uncles. And you know, he’s obviously so passionate. And like the one thing that I can tell is at his core is that he truly wants everyone to be healthy from the earliest age possible. 

Maureen: Yeah. And, and I think that I really appreciated a lot of the way that he explained the sort of chiropractic approach to healthcare in that, you know, the spine and the musculoskeletal system are not isolated from other things and how really we can use chiropractic care in conjunction with all the other kinds of healthcare we have.

Heather: Right. Our bodies don’t really work in segments that are isolated, you know? And so, and neither, should we go to one person for an issue. Yeah, it really it’s multifaceted, you know, lactation is just one piece, but I’ve had so many people say I come to a lactation appointment and I leave with some occupational therapy, some psychotherapy, you know, some parenting coaching.

And like also, thanks for showing me how to actually do the diaper correctly. And it’s like, no problem. Absolutely. I feel the same way about chiropractic care. It’s like a big old, why not? You know? Yeah. Like any other set of eyeballs with someone who’s trained in an area different than mine is only gonna add to like the kaleidoscope of awesome healthcare for people.

So I’m not gonna ever tell someone not to go. 

Maureen: Yeah. And I definitely understand this is not for everyone and that’s fine, but I hope that listening to this interview maybe helps to empower you and other parents to you know, notice what’s going on with your kids and to seek out appropriate care with a healthcare provider who feels confident in helping you.

Heather: All right. Well I hope you all enjoyed that. We hope that if you go seek out chiropractic care for a baby that had any of the things that we talked about today that you follow up and let us know how it went. You know, like, did it make a difference for you? Did it change your life? Was it like a Mensa Menzo, whatever, or, you know, you could take it or leave it.

We wanna hear all about that. Yeah. So let’s thank our last sponsor. And then we’re gonna jump out of this episode with an awesome award in the alcove and a sweet review. Yeah. Stick around. Cuz you might be getting the award.

Maureen: Heather, have I told you about my new favorite place to get nursing bras? Ooh, tell me. It’s called the Dairy Fairy. The Dairy Fairy offers bras and tanks that try to solve the challenges that come with nursing and pumping. They’re ingenious intimates are beautiful, supportive, and can be worn all day long. 

Oh, you’re allowed to look good and feel good about yourself while wearing a nursing bra? Absolutely. And they offer sizes up to a 52 G. Oh, amazing. I’m so glad a company has finally realized that a D cup is not a large. 

Absolutely. And it’s so affirming to feel included in sizing and not feel like I’m asking for too much that clothing fits my body. Well, what else do we get? 

Well, if you guys follow the link in our show notes, you can use the code MILKMINUTE at checkout for free shipping on all domestic orders. Oh, thank you so much, Dairy Fairy. 

Absolutely. Once again, that’s the link in our show notes and use the code MILKMINUTE for free shipping on all domestic orders.

Heather: Okay. We’re back. Okay. All right. Today’s award in the alcove goes to one of our amazing patrons, Julie from upstate New York. Julie says my win: day 11 exclusively breastfeeding with baby girl and going strong. 

Maureen: Oh, love that. Congratulations on your baby. Congratulations on successful breastfeeding. It’s not easy.

Heather: No. And if you’ve made it 11 days, I would say you’re probably over some engorgement, some initial engorgement. Yeah. The poops have changed, you know, we’re like over that initial hump of terror of just like so much going on. 

Maureen: The first two weeks are truly chaotic. 

Heather: Yeah. So you’re all, you’re not quite at like the clouds parting at six to eight weeks, but you’re definitely looking at more sunshine.

Yes. And maybe some positives and some hard stuff in the rear view mirror. So congratulations, Julie. 

Maureen: I think I would like to give you the Strong Start award. 

Heather: Ooh, I like that one. Julie gets the Strong Start award. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, Julie, we’re super, super proud of you and 11 days down and however many more, you feel comfortable breastfeeding to go.

Maureen: Yeah. Okay. Should we pull a view from apple? We should. All right. Okay. This one is from Love r slash and they say they title it, Absolutely Amazing. So nice. And they say, thank you so much for making this. I feel so informed about breastfeeding and you guys are hilarious. I enjoy listening to you guys while I pump. 

Well, we love that you listen.

Heather: Yes, Love r slash thank you so much for that awesome review. We feel very warm and cuddly inside when we read these and we read every single one. 

Maureen: Absolutely. Well, thank you guys so much for listening to another episode of the Milk Minute. 

Heather: The way we change this big system that is not set up for lactating. Parents is by educating ourselves are loved ones. Sometimes our healthcare providers and our children. 

Maureen: If you guys liked this episode or any other episode we’ve ever produced please consider becoming one of our patrons. You know, for $5 a month, you can get ad free listening and for $20 a month, you can get live Q and A sessions with us. Really we’ve got a tier for everyone. Yep. 

Heather: It’s true. All right, everybody have a great day and we’ll see you next week. Bye. 

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