If you’ve noticed that you’re often sick, feel fatigued or have other nagging symptoms you can’t figure out, it may mean your immune system is weakened. If you’re wondering how chiropractic care can boost your immune system, you’ve come to the right place!

Before seeing how chiropractic care can boost the immune system, let’s first have a look at how your immune system functions to keep you healthy.

What is the importance of a healthy immune system?

A strong immune system is essential for a healthy life. It allows the body to release antibodies quickly and effectively when it perceives a threat. In a body in which the immune system is functioning at its peak, most bacteria and viruses can be destroyed before they replicate significantly in the body. Taking care of your immune system, in turn, helps you take care of your entire body. But, if the system gets compromised, you might end up becoming sick. That’s why you should strive to boost and maintain your immune system.

Some of the benefits of a healthy immune system are:

• Feeling Healthy
• Wounds Heal Fast
• Less Fatigue
• Fewer Infections

 These benefits are for adults and children alike! 

Boost your immune system with chiropractic care

When people think of chiropractic care, they imagine patients suffering from back pain or neck pain. Chiropractic care certainly helps with those issues but can benefit your health in so many additional ways. Regular chiropractic adjustments improve the overall health and wellness of patients, including the immune system.

When your spine is misaligned, it disrupts the connections travelling between the nervous system to all of the other body systems. When this is corrected using chiropractic care, the nervous system is able to restore these critical connections. And, when your nervous system is functioning properly, you are able to increase the number of immune cells and their response rate to ensure you are able to fight off any infection you may encounter.

What are some other tips to strengthen your immune system apart from chiropractic care?

Your first line of defense is to choose a healthy lifestyle. There are some things you can add to your normal routine to give your immune system a little boost:

• Get enough sleep: Getting adequate rest may strengthen your natural immunity. It’s a natural reboot to your system. Inadequate sleep may increase your risk of getting sick. 
• Stay hydrated: Water plays many important roles in your body, including supporting your immune system.
• Exercise regularly; Regular exercise is one of the pillars of healthy living. Mild to moderate exercise helps boost your immune system.  It promotes good blood circulation, which helps your immune system do its job more efficiently.
• Eat well: Eating well provides multiple nutrients that support optimal immune function.
• Minimize stress: Stress can potentially have a secondary impact on how well your immune system functions if it leads to sleep disturbances, a tendency to eat less healthy food, reduced water intake, less frequent exercise and more.

Make these lifestyle changes today to strengthen your immune system. These habits will also help you to live a happy, healthy life.

Conclusion

If you’re interested in boosting your immune system function, chiropractic care is a powerful way of helping to revitalize the body. At Blossom Family Chiropractic, we aim to help you have the best chance to optimize your health and well-being. We’re here to help you boost your immune system. We would love the opportunity to help you and your family achieve optimal health.

As one of St. Petersburg’s leading Pediatric and Family chiropractors, we’re always striving to provide you and your family with the best care and experience. If you are looking for prenatal, infant, or family chiropractic care – contact us to schedule an appointment, we can’t wait to help your family!

How do you know how your nervous system in functioning?

As we know, our nervous system controls every cell, tissue, muscle, and organ system within the body. But how do you know how yours is functioning? In the same way that you use a blood test to determine your blood sugar, we TEST to objectively determine how your nervous system is working so that our doctors can provide the best care possible.

Our office uses a series of objective tests that allow us to see what is going on, and determine the frequency and length of chiropractic care needed.

The thermal scan is the first objective scan that we utilize in the office. It is a non-invasive scan that looks for inflammation or stress on the individual spinal nerves. The thermal scan identifies where the problem area occurs, and how severe the problem is. When looking at the scan, we want to see white. This indicates normal nervous system function. Green indicates a mild amount of stress on those nerves, blue indicates a moderate amount of stress, and red indicates a severe amount of stress.

We recently had a patient come in with headaches, allergies, difficulty sleeping, low energy, and anxiety. When we scanned the patient, we saw a severe amount of stress in the top portion of the neck. We explained to the patient that there was a significant amount of stress on the nerves going into C1, C2, and C3 areas. These nerves innervate the the head, eyes, ears and sinuses. When we see a severe amount of stress sustained in that area, we often see headaches and sinus/allergy issues.

In addition, this top part of the neck is also a crucial area that impacts the parasympathetic nervous system, the portion of our nervous system that controls sleep, relaxation, and healing. When we see stress locked into the upper cervical area (as shown on the thermal scan), it interferes with the parasympathetic part of our nervous system, and ramps the person into a fight or flight stressed state. When the patient is in that sympathetic state, we typically see symptoms like trouble sleeping, low energy, anxiety, and increased stress levels.

The thermal scan gives us a window into the nervous system to see exactly WHY the person is experiencing symptoms, and address the underlying root cause. These scans give us the information we need so we can restore normal nervous system function and significantly improve the person’s health.

If you are in the St. Petersburg area and looking for a chiropractor who can address the underlying root cause of your health concerns, please reach out to us at 727-498-5643.

 Have you noticed your child seems extra clumsy? Do they freak out about certain clothes? Do they react negatively to loud noise and bright lights? It’s not unusual for your child to be sensitive from time to time, but if these behaviors impact your child’s life at home, school and the world, your child may exhibit signs of sensory processing disorder (SPD). You may be wondering, what is SPD, how to identify it and if there is any way to manage it. Here is what you need to know about SPD.

What is sensory processing disorder?

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) in simple terms is a misinterpretation of sensory information. Sensory information includes things you see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. SPD can affect all of your senses, or just one. Children with sensory disorders are incapable of processing, integrating, coordinating, and adapting to their sensory environment optimally. Many children with sensory processing disorders can become overwhelmed, anxious, and stressed.

Living with SPD can be hard. Parents of children with SPD can feel alone. They may avoid taking their child out in public to avoid sensory overload. Parents may also feel like they need to make excuses for their child’s behavior. The parents may be in a constant battle to figure out how to help their children in settings that change daily. 

 

What can you look for to know if your child has a Sensory Processing Disorder?

Symptoms of sensory processing disorder are hard to identify because they are so diverse. They can range from hypersensitivity or being overly sensitive to sounds, textures, tastes, smells, sights, and feelings. 

Here are a few common symptoms to look out for:

•   Dislikes foods with certain textures 
•   Is clumsy or constantly bumps into walls or objects
•   Is constantly in motion
•   Running away from things they do not like
•   Difficulty transitioning from one activity to another
•   Not handling things such as loud noises, being dirty, getting wet, wearing structured clothing, bright light, crowded spaces, walking barefoot
•   Often struggles with speech
•   Is excessively cautious and afraid to try new things
•   Difficulty learning new things

Having these symptoms can make a child feel different from his peers, which may lead to social isolation, frustration, tantrums, and other behavior problems.

 

Help Sensory Processing Disorder with Chiropractic Care

Children with SPD have a difficult time adapting to the environment. The nervous system is what controls how we process our environment. Its function is to respond and adapt to internal and external environments. Any stress in the nervous system hinders the processing and flow of information.

When a child is overly stressed, their body remains in a fight/flight mode. If a child stays in fight or flight mode, they can’t handle everyday stressors and they continue to be overstimulated. Chiropractic adjustments can help ease neural stress and allow  better brain and body functioning and may greatly help neurodevelopmental conditions such as SPD. As a result, children with sensory challenges are able to adapt to their world and process it better because their nervous system is able to communicate with their brains. Many sensory-challenged children enjoy the adjustments, as touch is calming and gets better input into the nervous system. 

 

Conclusion

At Blossom Family Chiropractic, our goal is to keep your kiddo’s nervous system balanced and favor “rest and digest” so that they are not fighting their way through big feelings. By measuring the difference in temperature between the two sides of the base of their skull, we’re able to get some key clues about how their nervous system is functioning.

As one of St. Petersburg’s top pediatric chiropractors, we’re always striving to provide you and your kids with the best care and experience. If you are in the Tampa or St. Pete area and are looking for a pediatric chiropractor, contact us to schedule an appointment to see how we can help your kiddos!

While ear infections are very common to see in children, they’re NOT normal to have! Let’s talk a little bit about why babies and kids actually develop ear infections early in life…

One of the most common reasons that ear infections occur is because of birth trauma. In 90% of cases, the stress of a vaginal or cesarian birth creates a subluxation or misalignment in the top part of the child’s neck. This misalignment places stress on the C1 nerve that innervates the tensor veli palatini muscle (the muscle surrounding the eustachian tube). When this misalignment occurs, it places stress on the nerve and impairs it’s normal function. This causes the muscle to constantly contract, and doesn’t allow for the fluid to exit or drain the ear.

When your child comes home from daycare with that new snotty nose, or is congested from the new tooth coming in, the mucous pools together like a pond and becomes a breeding ground for viruses and bacteria.

Even if the child is given an antibiotic (which only work on bacterial infections),  the antibiotic will only wipe out the bacteria, and leave the same underlying issue.  Too often, we see that since the fluid was not able to drain and was left there, the virus or bacteria will re-develop, and will lead to recurrent ear infections.

Chiropractic adjustments are the only solution to actually help the ear to drain. By taking stress off the C1 nerve, the muscle is able to open up, and allow the fluid to drain out. This not only helps the current active ear infection but also prevents future ear infections from occurring.

If you are in the St. Petersburg or Tampa area, and are looking for a natural solution to battle chronic ear infections in your child, check out the leading pediatric chiropractors at Blossom Family Chiropractic.

Wondering if your body is prepared for labor and delivery? We measure the “stress” in your body to find out. 

Our bodies are well equipped to handle stress in small doses, but when that stress becomes long-term or chronic, it can have serious effects on your body and its ability to innately give birth. 

Why is it important for your body to be prepared for delivery? 

Bringing your baby into the world is like a marathon. You wouldn’t try to run a marathon without preparation. Right? Then, how could you bring your baby into this world without any preparation? Childbirth requires endurance, strength, flexibility, and the right mindset. And all of this is only possible if your body is ready for it, and is not in a constant state of stress.

The bad news is that stress during pregnancy is more than just an inconvenience, it’s actually unhealthy for you and your baby. Don’t let the desire to “get it all right” cause you to feel stressed instead of relaxed.

How to measure if your body is ready for labor and delivery?

Most pregnant mamas wish there were a magic way to check in with their bodies to see if they are “ready” for labor! Wouldn’t be great if there was a quick and easy way to do just that? There is! It’s called a Heart Rate Variability (HRV) scan that tells how adaptable your nervous system is. And that adaptability gives us huge insight into how your labor and delivery will go! 

This scan reflects how adaptable your body is to stress, and how your nervous system is currently adapting to stress and gives us insight and a goal to prepare your body for birth. If your heart rate is highly variable (green zone), this is usually evidence that your body can adapt to many kinds of changes and your nervous system is ready to respond appropriately to labor and delivery. As your body moves through stages of labor, your nervous system is able to guide those innate abilities that the body has to birth an entire human. 

On the other hand, low heart rate variability (red zone) shows your body is less resilient and struggles to adapt to stress as it encounters it. When you go into labor, your nervous system’s going to stay in “stress” mode so your body is focused on survival. When your body is in survival mode, you aren’t able to tune into those innate abilities for labor and delivery.

Calculating a person’s heart rate variability is a great way to analyze and measure their autonomic nervous system! So, regulating your HRV to maintain a healthy functioning autonomic nervous system is crucial through your pregnancy and heading into delivery!

How can chiropractic care improve heart rate variability? 

Chiropractic adjustments directly influence the autonomic nervous system, improving heart rate variability and increasing the heart’s ability to recognize and adapt to stressors. Subluxations produce interference in the central nervous system, altering the information sent from the brain to the body. The primary objective of chiropractic care is to detect and correct these subluxations, enhancing the nervous system function in order to improve overall health and wellness. 

As a result, when your heart rate variability is monitored throughout your pregnancy, chiropractic care can help your results move from “the red zone” into the “green zone” and you shift from a constant state of stress to being a happy and healthy mama, exactly the way you are supposed to be!

 

Conclusion

The Heart Rate Variability Scan is something that we do for all of our Blossom mommas throughout their pregnancy. And we expect to see their results move from “the red zone” into the “green zone“. When you’re ready to give your body the ability to adapt during pregnancy through chiropractic care, we’re here to hold your hand every step of the way.

As St. Petersburg’s top Prenatal chiropractors, we’re always striving to provide you and your baby with the best care and experience. If you are in the Tampa or St. Pete area and are looking for a prenatal chiropractor, contact us to schedule an appointment to see how we can help during your pregnancy!