When Colic Is Just The Surface
/Infantile Colic is often dismissed as a phase that infants grow out of, but this view overlooks the neurological underpinnings that contribute to the condition. While most people will look to the stomach or digestive system for the cause of colic, the root cause is often found even deeper within the nervous system and its control and coordination of digestive motility, absorption, and elimination. When this system is disrupted, typically due to birth trauma or maternal stress, infants may exhibit symptoms such as excessive crying, difficulty feeding, and poor sleep patterns.
Parents are naturally wired to care for crying babies, ensuring they are well-fed, changed, and soothed. But when intense crying persists for hours a day without consoling, it can leave both baby and parents exhausted. Experts define colic as crying that lasts over three hours per day, occurs more than three days per week, persists over three weeks, and resists soothing. These babies often clench their fists, arch their backs, and bear down, suggesting intestinal discomfort. The arching and stiffening of the neuro-spinal system is often a strong indication of the root cause of tension and dysfunction.
While colic isn’t dangerous, the nonstop crying significantly disrupts sleep, feeding, digestion, and comfort for both baby and parents. Babies who experience persistent distress and lack of sleep may encounter difficulties in physiological regulation, sensory integration, and overall growth and development. These disruptions can further affect their self-soothing abilities, behavior, relating, and learning in the long run. For most infants, the gut issues result from more disruption and dysfunction of the nervous system, often triggered by an overly stressful pregnancy or physically traumatic birth intervention.
Since the nervous system controls all physiological processes, restoring optimal signals and rhythm creates an environment for your baby to thrive. A colicky newborn can transform into a content baby with the help of neurologically focused chiropractic care that works with our natural capacities. Focusing on your baby’s natural health through a nervous system approach can lead to better results and greater confidence.
LOOK FURTHER THAN THE GUT
Many traditional medical professionals think colic is caused by digestive issues and buildup of gas, and indigestion. That can be accurate; it’s just incomplete.
Colicky babies are unable to move food through the esophagus, into the stomach and get it all through efficiently. They are not able to break apart the different nutrients, keeping what they need to grow and get rid of the bad stuff. All of this tension builds up in the digestive system, but it really first starts in the nervous system.
Birth intervention or birth trauma, things like c-sections, forceps, vacuum, and inductions, are what we find in the case histories of kiddos with colic nearly 100% of the time. That physical stress goes onto the neck and nervous system. There’s a very important nerve up there called the vagus nerve that travels down through the neck and it relaxes and opens up the esophagus. It stimulates and turns on the stomach and digestive motility.
