Chiropractic management of primary nocturnal enuresis. JMPT 1994
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7884329
In this paper linked above, a chiropractic study was done at the Palmer Chiropractic Institute in Davenport Iowa on the management of 46 children with Primary Nocturnal Enuresis for 10 weeks. Primary Nocturnal Enuresis means children with consistent bed wetting incidents more than 2 times per week after the age of five that has never gone away. Secondary Enuresis would be if it came on and then went away for 6 months and then came on again. In the 10 week study, 25% of the children achieved a 50% or greater reduction in bed wetting incidents. Statistics say that approximately 5-7 million children suffer from chronic bed wetting. At age 5, it’s approximately 10-15% of the population, by age 8 that number goes down to 6-8%, and by age 15 years old it goes down to 1-2% of the children. It tends to affect boys more than girls. So if your child is suffering from this problem Chiropractic care can be a gentle and safe treatment option to give children their lives back. The Craniocervical Foundation partners with Arete Chiropractic in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who are Upper Cervical specialists, to provide subsidized care to those in financial need, military veterans, or active duty military. Give us a CALL TODAY to set up an initial evaluation.
You may be wondering what chiropractic care has to do with bed wetting. Chiropractic is a safe gentle means to balance the Nervous System. The Nervous system can be broken down into two parts: #1 the CENTRAL NERVOUS SYSTEM or CNS, which is the brain and spinal cord; and #2 the PERIPHERAL NERVOUS SYSTEM or PNS, which is the rest of the nerves that come off the CNS and go to EVERY SINGLE ORGAN TISSUE AND CELL IN THE BODY. The PNS can be broken down into more parts. One of them is the Autonomic Nervous System or ANS, which consists of the PARASYMPATHETIC and SYMPATHETIC nervous system (also called the fight or flight), and the rest and digestive systems. The ANS is what regulates and controls homeostasis and normal organ function in the body like: DIGESTION, BLADDER CONTROL, REPRODUCTIVE SYSTEM CONTROL, HEART RATE, LUNG CAPACITY, BREATHING, and many more systems.
So how can chiropractic help? The centers for the sympathetic system are located along the spinal cord in the mid spine and the parasympathetic centers are located in the brainstem and sacral plexus of nerves in the low back and pelvis. So if a child has had spinal misalignment from a very early age, it can create abnormal nerve flow which can cause dysfunction of the balance and control of organs like the bladder. These spinal misalignments might be from a traumatic birth process, stress in the womb, or through accidents that may have happened while learning to walk and crawl. Chiropractic is a gentle and safe way to realign the spine to balance the nervous systems of children. To see if your child is a good candidate for care CALL US today.
What are the other treatment options for chronic bed wetting? The paper titled Management of Primary Nocturnal Enuresis (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2722619/ Pediatric Child Health 2005) talks about medications, behavioral therapy, and bed wetting alarms as the main treatment options. What the paper briefly mentions are the side effects of the medications which include things like headaches, constipation, and decline in mental health in children. All of those side effects are things all parents would want to avoid. There are some positive responses with the behavioral therapy along with the bed wetting alarm. Interestingly, chiropractic is not mentioned at all in the paper above, even though we see significant changes in bed wetting patterns in children quite often within the chiropractic profession. So if this is something your family is struggling with, give us a call at 802-441-5223 to find out more about how chiropractic can help.