Hello everybody, my name is Dr. Alex Coleman. I am the owner of Maximized Chiropractic in Bismarck, and I'm excited today to be talking to you about this stuff because this might be one of the most common things that I hear and what we see in our office. I'm very passionate about it because I truly believe that this could change the outcome of your kids' health, and it's stuff that I would love for every single parent to know and understand.

So, the main topic today that we're going to be talking about is ear infections, chronic colds, just the things that get your kids sick constantly. It seems like kids, especially around the holidays and the wintertime, it's like they have runny noses and are congested non-stop, and their ears are getting plugged every single week. So, if you're a parent who has been struggling with a kid with ear infections or with these chronic colds, this is going to be for you. This is going to be great insight into our version and our way of talking about these things. The chiropractic lifestyle and how it influences ear infections, chronic colds, and all the congestion that we see in our kids – this is what we're going to talk about tonight.

Ear infections in our country are so incredibly common. We're talking 20 to 30 million kids a year deal with these ear infections. That's like almost 10% of the total population of our country every single year getting an ear infection. That's not okay. Somewhere around a billion dollars a year is spent to treat this. Now, if we want to start talking about saving our country costs and saving costs to you as a parent, $4 billion dollars is a lot of money that we're talking about here. 80% of kids will get at least one of these in their life, and the most common reason for antibiotic use in kids is for ear infections. Antibiotics and the damages they can cause have been extremely popular this last decade. We're starting to see a lot of negative side effects to these drugs, and if there's a way that they can be avoided, how great would it be if we can minimize the use and the need for some of these antibiotics? I think some of our kids would be healthier.

My opinion is that if every child and every family lived the chiropractic lifestyle that ear infections and these chronic colds would virtually be eliminated. I know that's a big, big statement. It's a big claim that we could virtually eliminate these things, but hear me out. I want you to understand and see how these things are actually happening inside of your child's body, and then you might understand for yourself how this could help.

So, the first graphic I want to show you here, this is a graphic of an ear. This is an artificial view of the inside of your child's ear or your ear. So, we're going to kind of break it down into different parts so you can kind of see what we're dealing with in our office and what we're looking at with your child and how we can help. So here on the outside, you can see this is the actual ear. This is the stuff that you see on the outside of your head, obviously. And then we have the ear canal that's right here. This ear canal, this is kind of where, like if you put a Q-tip into your ear and it would start to hurt, you'd get about right here. About halfway farther in, we've got this little thin piece of skin. This is called the tympanic membrane or the eardrum. When sound comes in here, it vibrates off that guy, and then it has kind of a ripple effect in here that allows you to hear. So, this is kind of what's responsible for hearing.

We have this big cavity inside of here. It's like, kind of looks like a big shriveled up grape, like a raisin or something. And this cavity, it normally fills up with fluid when your child is congested. So just like your nose, when you get congested and sick and your body is trying to prevent you from getting really sick, it makes mucus, and that mucus normally gets in our sinuses, and it comes out through our nose. It's very normal for this to happen in our ears also. It comes inside this little canal and it drains out this tube right here. So, this is a huge key to these ear infections. When the fluid is coming in too much, and this canal going out is not… the fluid is not going out enough, that's when we get ear infections. Or "ear infections," I use that in quotations because that's something we'll talk about in a minute. Ear infections are very, very, very commonly mislabeled as infections.

So, when fluid is coming inside of your child's ear and gets stuck in this little pocket, this little canal that's supposed to drain the ears out is plugged, then this fills up with fluid and it starts to hurt. This is very sensitive. There's a lot of nerves in this area. This little eardrum here can start to push out and bulge, which can cause inflammation and pain. None of it feels good. This is excruciating. For if you're an adult, and if you've ever been on an airplane and your ears just aren't popping right and you start to get pressure built up in your ears, that's kind of what it feels like. It does not feel good. So when your child is saying their ear hurts, believe them! This is something that does not feel good.

So, here is a picture of kind of what happens when that big canal, that middle ear, gets filled with fluid. You can see that, and this one right here, this tube… I don't know if I said before, this is called the Eustachian tube. This is a normal, natural drain for your child's ear. This is how it should look, this picture on the left. It should be nice and open, the eardrum should be nice and relaxed, it should have a nice little recess right here where it attaches to the little ear bones, and this should be empty and dry, and this tube should be completely open. But when more fluid comes in than can go out, you can see in this case where that canal is blocked, it starts to fill up with this gross, yucky… basically snot. And it starts to push out on this eardrum, and it hurts. It does not feel good.

One of the main differences between chiropractic care for ear infections and traditional medical care for ear infections… this is a perfect explanation of the differences. If you look at this picture of a sink, you have the faucet turned on, there's water flowing in, and if you look down this drain, there's a bunch of green sludge plugging this drain. What happens when the drain is plugged and the kitchen sink is on? Obviously, it overflows. Water flows out the top, and it's never going to stop flowing out the top until you do one of two things: either you shut the water off, or you call the plumber and have them come in and remove that big clot in the drain, the big clog in the drain, so it doesn't stop the water going out.

If this was your child, antibiotics are the equivalent of trying to turn the faucet off. Now, when I say trying, less than half of the time, somewhere around like 20 to 30% of the time it actually shuts the water off. So most of the time, it doesn't even shut the water off. But if they were successful, we shut the water off, which means that the infection is stopped. But the drain is still there. If you don't address the drain in your child's ear, the next time they get a cold, the next time they go out and they smell smoke, the next time that they have any type of runny nose or congestion, the water's going to get turned right back on. And when the water's turned back on, guess what happens? The drain is still plugged, water's going to start pouring over the top of that sink, and your child's going to end up with another ear infection, and the cycle continues.

So, my perspective… let's look at this picture, it's really simple. If you had the choice between shutting the water off and opening up that drain, which would you pick? To me, it's obvious. Let's just get in there and open up that drain! Why are we ignoring the drain? This drain is a normal part of your child's body. Let's make sure that that drain is functioning very well.

One really important point to understand is that your child has an innate ability to heal and regulate themselves naturally. They don't need drugs for most things. Their body is able to fix itself with given the right circumstances. And at the center of your child's ability to heal is their brain. Seeing how well it can do its job when given the right tools is a pretty cool thing. This is where Chiropractic comes in. My job is to assess your child's nervous system, see where there's dysfunction, see where there are spots that need our help. And the adjustments that we make, specifically to the upper part of their neck, addresses that drain. The Eustachian tubes in your child's ears are directly connected to muscles and nerves that come from the top of your neck. When those spots are irritated, it causes that tube to close and to block and to stop allowing fluid to drain through. So, my job is to adjust those bones to allow the nerves and the muscles around it to relax. When the nerves are firing properly, when the Eustachian tube is draining nicely, we get this picture on the right, when the tube is completely clear and draining beautifully. You could have that water running all day, every single day, and you know what? Nothing would happen to your kid. Fluid would go in, and fluid would go out.

If you could picture your kid had a runny nose, and if your kid walked around with Kleenexes shoved up their nose all day long, and they came home that night and said, "Mommy, my nose and face are killing me! I don't understand why it hurts so much. There's tons of pressure right here, I just don't get it. It hurts so bad. What do I do?" If you go to the doctor and the doctor says, "Take antibiotics," that's the exact same thing as going in for an ear infection. Instead of giving drugs to kill the stuff that's inside of your kids' heads, if we were just to take out the Kleenexes and allow that fluid to drain out, it probably would get better on its own.

So, one thing that I have learned in my office, I have seen that ear infections are most commonly not actually ear infections. They are… they should be, and they actually used to be, called ear pain. But somewhere in the 90s, when antibiotics started to be dished out even more and even more, we started labeling everything that was seen in a kid's ears as an actual infection. Now, an infection is only an actual infection when there's bacteria or viruses going crazy and festering inside of your child's ear. Now, the snot that comes out of your kids' noses, that does not mean that they have a sinus infection. That is a normal substance that their body makes to try to prevent them from actually getting infected. So, if your kid has a runny nose, that does not mean they have a sinus infection. If your kid has fluid in their ears, that does not necessarily mean they have an infection. It can take days and weeks, and sometimes a very long time to actually get infected. And the amount of times that ear pain or fluid in the ear is actually infected is incredibly low.

I went on the American Academy of Pediatrics website today to read all the current guidelines and how they are treating ear infections, and what I learned is it's very unknown. It sounds like after all these years of trying and trying, they still don't have a perfect recommendation for what they're doing. I have seen recommendations over my career change from "wait two weeks before you start antibiotics," to "use antibiotics right away," to "antibiotics help," to "antibiotics don't." Currently, what I read, and this is verbatim, they said, "The favorable natural history of acute otitis media," which is ear infections, "makes it difficult to demonstrate significant differences in efficacy between placebo and antibiotic use." So basically, that's saying on the AAP guidelines, they're not sure if using antibiotics at all is a good idea. They also said that education of parents should include an explanation of the self-limited nature of most ear infections, and especially in kids that are under two years old, about the potential adverse effects of antibiotics. Doing so could substantially decrease antibiotic use in kids. The amount of antibiotics that are being used in our kids is insane. Obviously, if you're watching this, you probably have some uneasiness about the chronic and constant use of antibiotics for every sniffle that a kid has. A lot of parents that I see are wanting to minimize their use. This is not me saying that antibiotics have no place in healthcare. They absolutely do. But most people have seen that this has gotten to be very out of hand. The amount of antibiotic-resistant bugs that we're seeing are killing somewhere around 30 to 40,000 people a year just because these strains of bugs are becoming super powerful because antibiotics are being dished out left and right.

This is a very good explanation from their website, verbatim, saying parents should be educated that this might go away on its own without anything, and they should be educated on the adverse effects of antibiotics. And doing so could substantially decrease how much they're used. So, this is a great argument for, "Hey, let's step back for a second and re-evaluate what we're currently doing." So again, all of this is from the AAP website. This is the current guidelines for ear infection treatment in our kids. To me, what I learned, the take-home message from all that, is that they are not sure if antibiotics are a good idea. And it is not my place to say whether antibiotics are effective for your child. My job is to present the information that's available to you so you can make an informed decision. And from what I'm understanding, and from how I view ear infections, there are other ways that might be able to make huge differences in your child.

So, it's really important to take home that if your child says, "Ouch, my ear hurts," that does not necessarily mean there's an infection. If somebody looks in their ears and says, "Oh my gosh, there's fluid in your kid's ears," and you as a parent say, "Oh my gosh, I had no idea," they might not have an ear infection. Fluid in the ear, ear pain, does not necessarily mean ear infection. It likely means that there's a drainage issue. So, let's shift the conversation now to how can we get this drain open.

So, the next big conversation I want to have with you, talking about your child's nervous system and how they heal, is the premise of autonomics. There are these two branches of your child's nervous system called sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic nervous system is something that's needed in your child when they're in danger. If you could picture what would happen to you if right now, wherever you're listening to this, if a tiger walked in next to you and started growling at you and looking at you like you're its next meal… picture what would happen to your heart. Your heart's going to start to beat really fast, your blood vessels are going to dilate, your pupils are going to open up, your body is going to get into a mode that's designed to run away from that tiger or fight it. When we're in this mode, our body is designed to protect itself. It's trying to survive. It wants to run away, jump, fight, kick, scream. Only the immediate survival things. Your body, or your child's body, when you're stuck in the sympathetic mode, does not care about digestion, or sleep, or hormone production, or its immune system, or draining your kids' ears.

The other half of our autonomic nervous system is called the parasympathetics. Now, this is where all the magic happens for our kids. This is where most of our kids should be stuck in, 24/7, because this is where they're going to be calm and happy and stress-free and digesting and doing all the things that I said doesn't happen in the sympathetic mode. Their digestive tract is going to go crazy and work super well, their immune system is going to be fighting super hard, their ears are going to be draining really nicely, and your kid's going to be calm and healthy. The problem is, a lot of our kids face stress. And stress can come in the form of many different things. But when our nervous system is stressed, it can have a huge impact on our child's health, and our own health for that matter.

So, when we've ignored our nervous system for too long, understanding that it is the foundation of our health, controlling our autonomics, controlling the central core part of our bodies… is an important thing for you as a parent to understand. I think of our nervous system kind of as a bucket. When your child has a healthy, well-functioning nervous system, their bucket has tons of room for more water. And I couldn't get a picture online, I couldn't find anything with a drain, but if you could picture me popping a drain in the bottom of this bucket right here, having water coming out as fast as it's going in, that is what a healthy nervous system should look like. The bucket should be half full or less. The water's coming in, and this water signifies the stress that your child is facing. Now, this can be physical stress. Every kid goes through physical stress, from being born by a C-section, to being pulled out the vaginal canal and turned and twisted on their way out, to learning how to crawl and walk, falling and bumping their heads a few times a day when they are toddlers, when they're at the playground. I mean, seeing all the physical things that kids do to themselves is pretty easy. Most of you guys can see that kids have a lot of physical stressors in their life.

Emotional stress is the one that we think of when we think of stress. We think of adult stress. "I've got bills to pay, I've got kids to take care of, I'm exhausted because I haven't slept." That's all emotional stress that we face. But kids face a lot of this too. Even all the way back to being a baby, kids have emotional stressors that their brain is trying to process, and that can contribute to the health of their nervous system. Chemical stressors are the last one that can cause a big weight on their nervous system and cause it to get overly stressed out. So, chemical stressors means the stuff that's in our air that we breathe that isn't air, stuff in our food that isn't food, the stuff that we get injected with, the stuff that we take as medications. All of these chemicals are overloading our child's nervous systems and causing it to start to overflow.

So, this is what happens when a nervous system gets overwhelmed. The water coming out of the bottom gets plugged, there's no room for the water anymore, and any drop that goes into your child's bucket and they overflow. So, this can cause a whole host of things. I'll talk about this more in-depth at a later date about how this impacts ADHD and autism in children, but for right now, let's talk about your kid's immune system. If your child's nervous system is overwhelmed and stressed out like this, their immune system is not firing as well because they're stuck in the sympathetic mode. When they're stuck in the sympathetic mode, their brain thinks that they're in danger, that they need to survive, that they're in trouble. So, it shuts down their immune system, and they can't thrive, and they can't fight off these bugs as well. So, we get kids that are having runny noses and a cough and plugged ears and ear pain and a tummy bug, whatever, constantly, because their immune system is not fighting as hard as it could.

So, my job as a chiropractor is to allow your child's nervous system to have more adaptability, which means we're going to make that bucket bigger. We're going to pop that drain out in the bottom so the stress can come out as fast as it came in. We're going to allow their brain and their nervous system to function beautifully because the little tiny stressors that are stopping the normal healthy flow of information have been removed.

So, if you are a parent who has been struggling for a long time with their child, if your child has been sick and congested and dealing with round after round of ear infections and bouncing between one round, two rounds, let's try a different drug, let's try a different approach, and you're still at the same outcome in the end… If you're being threatened with tube surgery and something that makes you uncomfortable, something that your gut instinct is saying no to, it's time to make a change. I would love to help your child find a way to get into a calm state and find those plugged up ears and open up that drain and allow their ears to work beautifully. In our office, this is something that I've been seeing for over a decade. We have so many kids that started with me years ago because they had ear infections, and since then, they've been living vibrant, healthy, ear-infection-free lives. If you're a parent that's looking for that help, we'd love to make a change.