A mother’s level of stress determines her baby’s neurodevelopment according to a recent study published in Jama Pediatrics. Researchers at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles looked at the relationship of maternal stress on an infant’s brain development. They found that the more stress mothers experienced, the less their babies showed healthy EEG patterns of neurodevelopment. The mothers in the study “shared similar demographics, such as ethnicity, age and family income,” says lead researcher Pat Levitt, “Yet, babies whose mothers reported to be stressed appeared to be less neurologically developed.”
One of the purposes of this study was to detect signs of neurodevelopmental delay and to “provide an opportunity to intervene early by minimizing maternal stress.”
The researchers of this study may come to recommend chiropractic care once they realize that it can detect neurological stress and minimize it, through tried and tested methods that go back many decades. Indeed, many mothers have already experienced this for themselves. They are seeing the changes that chiropractic care has on the well-being of their family, just as the study above would suggest when we improve the body’s ability to adapt to stress.
Chiropractic minimizes stress by improving the function of the nervous system; by removing interferences that delay, alter, or obstruct nervous system communication. Chiropractors have long maintained an important link between the nervous system, maternal stress, and a child’s healthy development. Creating a healthy beginning during pregnancy has been the focus of ICPA chiropractors for many years. The ICPA is the leading organization for chiropractic care during pregnancy because they maintain the principle in their practice that children’s health always begins in pregnancy.
ICPA chiropractors know to honor and support maternal health as early as possible to allow for a greater, easier transition into motherhood, and to assure that children’s health is considered right from the start of perinatal life.
There’s a term utilized in Pathways Magazine, a publication dedicated to greater family well-being through chiropractic care, which beautifully describes the mother-baby bond. It’s called Mamatoto, which literally means “motherbaby.” In this word, we see the recognition that a mother and her baby are not separate individuals, but are in fact a cohesive unit. This cohesion begins in the womb, and carries itself forward well into childhood.
The mother’s nervous system, which processes all her mental, emotional, and physical experiences including stress, provides a baseline resonance for the child to connect with throughout his development. The child learns how to experience his sensory impressions through an imitation of his mother’s nervous system expression.
Chiropractic care is a way to honor the power and intelligence of the body’s nervous system, making sure that no obstructions or inhibitions physically alter or disturb it, so that the vital communication between mom and baby are full of healthy signals that include trust, patience, love, and confidence. This is possible because chiropractic care can change the way we process stress, thereby changing the way we think and feel, and this has global effects on the way our children will grow and develop in the womb and in early life.
—Pathways Magazine.
