Chiropractic and Earaches

Ask the Chiropractor- Did you know some people visit the chiropractor for relief from earaches?  Chiropractic does not have an earache adjustments but Dr Hulsebus will discuss why some people get relief at the chiropractor.  #healthy815 #icachiropractor #palmerproud

www.rockforddc.com

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- Hi, Dr. Brant Hulsebus the chiropractor here with another edition of"Ask the Chiropractor.""Ask the Chiropractor" is our little podcast vlog that we do every week about chiropractic care. A lot of times, people have questions about chiropractic care or going to the chiropractor, and they're not 100% sure where to get the information from. Well, I have to challenge you, if you have a question about chiropractic, maybe the best person to ask is a chiropractor and not your family doctor or your dentist or your podiatrist or the person that cuts your hair. Just straight up ask a chiropractor. And so what we have here is my podcast where people submit us questions, either over the internet, they direct message me, or they go on my website, or maybe they just come in the office and ask me a question. And so one question that we were asked recently was a lot to do with the ear infections that kids get. A lot of kids get ear infections, and there's stories about chiropractors that help kids with ear infections. And I wanna try to explain a little bit of this to you how this works and how it doesn't work and what's really happening at the chiropractic clinic. Have people come to the chiropractor clinic with ear infections? Absolutely, have people left the chiropractic with earaches being resolved after getting chiropractic care? Absolutely, does chiropractic offer a adjustment that's designed and specifically made to fix ear infections? No, so let me tell you what happens is inside your ear you have a tube, and that tube drains into your throat. And it's called the eustachian tube. And it moves fluid from the ear into the throat. And what happens, a lot of times, when you have an ear infection, the fluid gets trapped. It gets built, up and it puts pressure against the eardrum because the fluid in there is trapped. Some people even describe, like hear this sloshing sound from the fluid being built up behind the eardrum. So, as chiropractors, what we've found is that, when we adjust the upper neck, the upper two bones in the neck, we can actually physically move things or free things up, is what I should say, free them up and allow things to go back into where they're supposed to be and then allow things like mechanical problems, like a clogged tube, being reopened and draining. One of the other things that we'll do is we'll do what we call a cranial adjustment. Cranial adjustments, every time you breathe in, your head gets a little bit bigger. Then when you exhale, it shrinks. So breathe in, (inhales) go out, and it opens and closes, opens and closes. As chiropractors, we know a couple of points where we can stabilize while you breathe and hold it still, and that can do the same thing inside the skull. Now, why do children get more ear infections than adults? Well, as children, our faces are still growing. Our heads are still getting bigger, and so, with that, there's bones inside your skull that we can't see that are way inside and these bones can shift laterally left or right, forwards or backwards. A lot of times, when they shift forwards, they can block the tear ducts and that's why you see lots of little babies that get that yellow junk in their eyes. You kind of have to like massage it out as a parent to get it all that yellow junk on their eyes. And the pediatrician will tell you that, in time, this will go away. And they're right, because, in time, the skull will continue to grow and that bone will fall into place and it'll stop putting pressure up there. Well, the same thing happens when it deviates left or right. You can put pressure on the eustachian tubes. And that bone itself sits on top of some of the upper neck bones that could heavily influence that. So we adjust those areas. We physically move those bones out of the way. We free them up. We don't say we move them, we free them up and allow them to move, glide better which should allow things to function and drain better. So that's kind of what we do. And by doing that, does that make the eardrums drain and does that make the fluid go away? And when the fluid goes away, does the pressure that gets to the eardrum go away and then does the quote, unquote ear infection go away? Absolutely, we've seen it here lots of times over the years. So that's something we do as chiropractors to help out. So, again, chiropractic does not have a adjustment for an ear infection, but when you tell us you have an ear infection, it makes us wonder what's going on with the cranial adjusting and the top two bones in your neck. Maybe they're out of alignment. We view this a lot as the same thing as like, let's say I have sciatica going down my leg causing me leg pain. But everyone knows there's been study after study that shows, if you adjust the lower back and take the pressure off the sciatic nerve, the leg pain can go away. So if you came in and you weren't talking about your sciatic nerve but you were talking about your ears, well you giving me the same kind of clues'cause I know that the top two bones in the neck and the cranial bones definitely affect the ear and how the eustachian tube works. So you're giving us a clue to take a look there. Now, a lot of times we can just look at you and say, "You know what? These two bones aren't moving. Your child has a really, really high grade fever. This is probably a bigger case than chiropractic. We should probably get you to somebody that can help you out." And that's the role, that's part of our education is knowing when we need to refer you to somebody else and when we can actually continue to treat you in office. So if you have a chiropractor that you're going to that says never go to the medical doctor, it's time to find a new chiropractor. Also, if you have a medical doctor that tells you never go to the chiropractor, it's time to find a new medical doctor, right? Because we do two different things and we fit in two different realms. So we're not the same thing. So if you have a child that has reoccurring ear infections over and over again, it's probably not from a lack of medicine, right? It's probably from something else going on. So, as a chiropractor, we might be able to look and see, find the contributing factor to what's going on and help them out. Now, along the way, I did a lot of pediatric classes and taking care of newborns and babies, and one of the things that we learned, and I've talked to a couple dentists about this too and they said this is very true, that when a child is cutting molars and getting the teeth in the back, what happens is, as they come up, there's lots of inflammation and pain. So you'll see the child a lot of times rub their jaw because they're having pain there from the tooth coming in. Also, when the tooth comes in, a lot of blood will rush in there and cause a lot more swelling and a lot more warmth. And at the same time, all the swelling and stuff could cause the eardrum to swell up. So the signs tell of a child grabbing their cheek or their ear or rubbing their hand and having a little swollen eardrum sometimes can mean there's a molar coming in. And so I always encourage mom to kind of reach back in there and see if she can feel some teeth popping out. Or just like ask the chiropractor, ask your dentist. Check with the dentist and see what's going on. Maybe the dentist can see that there's something coming up there and work with a dentist on this. It's something we all go through, and most of us don't remember growing our first molars or cutting our first ones'cause we were babies. But that can also a lot of times mimic an ear infection. And then some of my research and studies have shown me from a holistic stance that, whenever we're getting fluid built up, like either it's behind our ears or in our nose or our sinuses, that one of the things that can irritate that or make that worse are dairy products. So whenever somebody comes in and tells me they're dealing with reoccurring sinus issues, whether it's the nose, the sinuses themselves, or the ears, I usually try to challenge them to eliminate dairy for a while and see if that helps speed up the healing process. So that's one of the dietary supplemental ideas that we do. And like always, when you're not feeling good, you should double your vitamin D. You should always have vitamin C. You should have vitamin C at every meal. It should come from a nice, colorful piece of produce. We do not need vitamin C capsules, and most of those vitamin C capsules are full of sugar. When you increase your sugar intake, you turn off your immune system. So the idea of drinking orange juice when you have an ear infection or other problems, this is a bad idea because orange juice has high, high levels of sugar. You know, eating an orange is a little bit different. But in reality, we don't need any oranges or fruits at all in our diet, but we need our vegetables. And vegetables are full of our vitamins. So I would push you more towards eating colorful vegetables to get your vitamin C. As a human species, we were really good at making vitamin C. So any good produce would have it, but we do not store vitamin C. So it's very important for us to have vitamin C at every meal and several times a day. I know right now I have a bag full of rainbow carrots so I'm eating those from my snack today. Very good stuff. So there you go. So how does a chiropractor deal with ear infections? Well, we'll give you some dietary recommendations. We'll give you some vitamin information. We'll make sure that you're not having a crisis where you need to go see the medical doctor or get medical help. Maybe it is a rare case that it actually is an infection. With a bacterial infection, antibiotics with the best choice. One other thing we'll do is we'll look in your ears a lot of times to see what we see. And, lastly, we'll make sure it's not part of a dental issue. And if we can adjust the upper two bones and do a cranial adjustment to give you some relief, of course we'll do that. Hopefully that works and hopefully everybody feels better. But I kinda hope that answered your question about do chiropractors treat ear infections. We do not treat ear infections, we adjust the upper bones in your neck. And if that's a side effect, so be it. But that's how we go about it. Me as a chiropractor here in town and where I live, I know several ENTs that I work with, sending patients back and forth to, because sometimes it's not a chiropractic issue and we do need help. So make sure that your doctor or chiropractor that you see also has the same attitude. All right, everybody, I'm Dr. Brant Hulsebus. This has been "Ask the Chiropractor." If you have a question that you'd like to submit to me or get back ahold of me, please check me out at rockforddc.com, R-O-C-K-F-O-R-D-D-C dot com, and submit your question there, and maybe next time you'll be the question of the week. Also if you go there, you'll see all of our previous episodes. And there is a search button'cause we've done lots of these. You can type in what you're looking for and you should be able to find it with the search. Thank you.