In my previous article, I talked about how subluxations/misalignments in the spine leads to low tone in the nervous system and the impact it can have on your child’s development and behaviour.  These include symptoms such as poor reflexes, feeding difficulties, delayed speech and/or muscle weakness.

Here are three ways to test for low tone in your baby:

1) Spinal Tone – If your baby is unable to hold up their head by 3-6 months of age, they may be at risk of having low tone or developmental delay.

2) Head tilt – Observe to see if your baby favours turning or tilting their head to one side.  This is a sign that they may have low tone or developmental delay.

3) Head Lag – With your baby lying down, have them grasp both of your thumbs and pull them up into a sitting position.  If you notice their head lagging, and that they are unable to stabilize their head by 3 to 6 months of age while doing “pull-to-sit”, this may indicate low tone or developmental delay.

Other things to look for are:

Excessive Crying (Colic) – If your baby is constantly crying, common causes may be due to gassiness, abdominal pains and reflux.  Another cause that is often overlooked is low tone caused by spinal misalignment.  This is where Chiropractic can greatly help calm your baby so that they are able to sleep better, eat better and poop better :).  Recent studies have shown that spinal adjustments can decrease the amount of hours a baby is colic by 2.7 hours per day in contrast to babies given medications who only showed a decrease in colic by 1 hour per day.

Bulges, Plagiocephaly – If you notice your baby’s head has “bulges” on certain parts of their skull or flattening (Plagiocephaly), this can lead to low tone in your child’s nervous system. These types of deformity commonly happen with long labour vaginal births, instrument-assisted (forceps, vacuum), and Caesarean births.

If you think your baby might have low tone, we can help!

Your Etobicoke Chiropractor,

Dr. Clarise