Ep 158: Integration: The Missing Link In Your Child’s Development

Welcome and the idea of integration 0:00

Hi everybody, it's Dr. Laura with Connect My Brain. Welcome to the podcast. Well, this is our opportunity to kind of have a little chat and really dive in to some great topics that have to do with How our brain works, how our body works. And most of all, How I can connect dots about things that are going on, especially for children today. There are so many. Lately, we've had so may little toddlers come into the office. I'm really not surprised because back when COVID hit, that was the audience or the population, I should say, the special population.

that was really targeted for change early on and it was documented even as early as six months after some kids were born or as those children were already demonstrating language delay. And when we think about our development, we always want to keep the pieces in mind of what's going on that influences how development happens. And this is what I'm going to spend today's focus on is integration. integration. Think of it like an orchestra. You have a conductor. We'll think of the conductor as the brain and then you have all the different musical instruments and they come together and everything sounds so beautiful.

I want you to think of your body that way. And unfortunately, in our healthcare system, we still have, you know, the cardiologist for the heart. We have the gastroenterologist, for belly. we have orthopedics for bone. Wait, just kind of treat everything separately. And whoever ties it together? Well, I think that's one of the things that I really do specialize in is putting it all together. So think of these little people, either women were pregnant at that time getting ready to have a baby during COVID, or they were little ones running around.

And everybody was masked up and people weren't really gathering like they're used to. Grocery stores looked different. People even driving around in cars look different, but what happened for that child? So if I think about a mask over my mouth, how did everybody sound? And if you are new to development for yourself as a child, sound is so big.

COVID-era developmental impacts in toddlers 2:54

So when you come into the world, you can hear low frequency sound, but you acquire the rest of the frequencies over the first three years of life. Now, we've talked about these kind of concepts before, so let's connect a dot so we can understand how the sound would have been interrupted. But what else came up during that time was not only language delay, but was a lot of emotional irregularity, and a lot of, even proprioception, what does that mean? Proprioception is the muscle tone of your body and knowing where you are in space, okay?

So let's first talk about propriocession. You come into the world, you're a baby, somebody's most of the time carrying you around or you laying down in your crib sleeping. or motoring around on the floor okay so you're not really interacting with gravity yet right and it takes humans a full year to stand up and walk in gravity so that's a big deal so if if that motor time gets interrupted then the muscles don't get worked the way that they're supposed to and One scenario can be a child, like you can almost feel if I just hold their wrist, I can pull all those bones away from the forearm, they're loose.

They have a particular posture to their legs. Typically, the knees are bowing in. Even on a worst case scenario, you might even see posture alterations in the hands and the feet, meaning that if I stretch my hand out and all my fingers are straight, if i'm not getting the opportunity to actually crawl around I'm not walking on time. The hands and the feet will actually curl in a little bit. So this idea of low tone. One of the really easy ways to see this is people used to call people whose elbows would bend inward double jointed.

So that's not really an official term, but it really does demonstrate low tone, meaning I can't keep one joint over the other. So when they're on their hands and knees, it literally looks like the elbows are bowing in. And that is one of the things that we see quite common. In children, even school age, because it's something that they were dealing with even all the way back when they WERE toddlers, but nobody really took a look at it, or the classic answer, your child will grow out of it. And I can tell you probably 99.9% of the time, these kids do not grow out of things.

In fact, it actually gets worse over time because it's a pattern that's getting set up in the body and nobody's doing anything to change it. So let me go back now to the emotional dysregulation. If we're not able to properly develop the auditory piece or the acquiring of all the frequencies, the other parts that are attached to the ear are the eyes and the vestibular system. So we know what our eyes are. Vestibula are these three little canals that in the ear, okay? And that is believed to be one of the first systems that completely matures before your baby's even born.

But it has neurological connection to the eyes and the ears. And typically, if one is off, all three of them are off. That's a big deal.

Sensory systems, low tone, and developmental mismatch 7:36

So keep that in mind. We're also going to talk about eyes, ears, and vestibular as our sensory system, a big part of the sensory Maybe I'm not getting my ear organized on the dominant side of my eye, hand and foot. So eye ear, hands and feet should all have a dominance on one side over the other and that happens around age four. Let's say because there is this interruption, maybe the ear is on the opposite side. We're going to connect that dot. That gives us sensory mismatch. If my eyes are not working correctly, may be they're turned in.

Or maybe I've got an alteration to the lens of the eye. You would have already had somebody say, your child has a strabismus, for an example. That's something that impacts the actual lens, of The Eye. If any of these pieces are off, then what we're doing as a human, as baby human is we are trying to make sense out of these things, but we have no point of reference because of our age. and we don't really have the ability to communicate to somebody, wow, I don' think I can hear properly. I'm seeing the world as I should.

Okay, so that's a lot that could have happened in that special population and I am not even touching the whole thing yet, right? So that is toddlers. So we do, we have a lotta toddler coming in. And the feedback that I'm getting from the parents is I have been trying certain services for the last year and I am not getting anywhere. And this is what's tying us back to the word integration. One of the biggest things that i believe, one we've mastered at Connect My Brain, but is that especially being a chiropractor, I was taught to look at the entire body.

Now, I am highly specialized, but that core belief and education came through my chiropractic education. We had classes from one end of the body to the other. And if you listen to The Last Truth Bomb I did, it talked about the truth about chiropractic. And I only listed out the first year and a half of our education and all the different subjects that we were exposed to. And one of the greatest things about that education is that it taught me how to be really resourceful. I couldn't master every single one those topics, and that's exactly why I went on to further educate myself But it opened my eyes.

It opened to my perception. So now, when I'm looking at a school-age child or young adults in their 20s, I still bring up the same line of questioning. When did you actually notice that this had started this way? And every case There is not one exception. Every case had something going on when this person, regardless of age, something was going in their early development. The moms remember. And sometimes it could be something as simple as, you know what, they didn't crawl. Or they walked super early.

Or there was a trauma that forced them to dominate mismatch on their body. It's been in every single case that something has been going on. And it's not that people haven't done any type of therapies, services, medical care. it isn't that. It's more about that somebody only looked at one part. And that to me is really an eye-opening experience because when they come to connect my brain, And they tell me, well, we've been doing even neurofeedback somewhere else, but that's all they did. Or they didn't neuro-feed back and then they saw the OT on another day.

But that is all that they do. Nobody was putting the entire picture together. I had my child with a tutor. And it's because of the way we have brought healthcare into our world is that it started off very compartmentalized. Now there's certainly other people like myself that think in this big picture, but here's my podcast, so I'm gonna share my background with you. And I was absolutely raised in that same kind of compartment of thinking. And, I am so grateful to the different types of educations that I've had because it's really opened up a much broader perspective for me.

Why one-part therapies often miss the bigger picture 13:48

In fact, how this program at Connect My Brain came together as a traditional chiropractor, Lots of kids did tremendous, but then there were kids that did not, and it made me stand back and go, okay, so what do I do now? And what we used to talk about as a vertebral subluxation complex It's really at the heart of this program where we talked or were educated in chiropractic that there would be a movement component. Well, I've kind of already started talking about movement, right? That there is a neurological component, well, i've already talked about that too, the way the eyes, ears and vestibular, they actually share neurons.

I typically call it neurological intimacy. And therefore there's the neurology. And then there is the muscle and we do, we a lot of muscle work here. We do muscle, work to strengthen. Do muscle. Work to create flexibility. Muscle work, to work cranial sacral therapies, working on the cranio vault. working on the muscles of the mouth. We refer a lot of children to get tongue tie revisions and then we help parents with the releases and stretching of fascia inside of their mouth and there is what you call histology and that I will always refer to as body chemistry.

So what does it take to fuel these wonderful bodies. And when you're a child, and let's say you could have a genetic issue, you are in stress. Let's you have focus issue. You are stress, let say, can't control your eyes, emotional breakdowns, resulting in If these kids are back in their brain stem and that moro reflex, a primitive reflex mororeflex, that one is completely tied to the sympathetic nervous system, which is what you know as fight or flight. And if I'm in that state, I am burning through the raw material inside of me that is going to help me orchestrate the ability to have energy, the Ability to absorb the vitamins and minerals in my food, The ability go to the bathroom every day, the ability, no matter what my state of health is, with a genetic issue or a focus issue, that I can still become the very best person God intended me to be.

And that fuel is imperative. When those systems, movement, neurons, muscle, body chemistry, when those are not in balance, you are going to end up with a label of some sort. It might be attention deficit. It might be constipation. It may be anxiety, depression. You can pick it. And then these little bodies are completely off rhythm and they're not going to sleep. Even if you look at what's known as the Sarcadian rhythm of the human body, it has a clock. And when we bring that body back into balance, you can heal.

So this approach here at Connect My Brain is an integrative approach. Now maybe this is the first podcast you've ever heard. So at Connect My Brain, we have a really easy way for people to start to get to know us. I typically will say dip your toe in. And it's our CMB membership. It used to be called the parent membership, We've decided to change it to the CMD membership It's very moderately priced and it starts to you acquainted with us Now, you can even go deeper. You can say, no, I've been listening to your podcast, Dr.

Hanson, for a while, and I would like to do more. Then I want you to look at our coaching program. If you go on the website, it says, how to work with me. And those are a couple of options that you could do. Now, I want to go back to this idea of balance versus stress, because there's another big area that I often like to tie into this subject, and it has to do with cholesterol. And you're probably going, cholesterol, where is she going now? Well cholesterol has always been given a very bad rap.

In fact if you really dive into it what you will learn is that when cholesterol got accused of creating all kinds of vascular problems it was actually

Chiropractic, movement, and the three-part model 19:48

because there was damage done to the lining of the blood vessel and there were cholesterol particles that had gotten trapped. So when we have inflammation and all disease, regardless if it's the first 24 hours of disease or years of diseases, everything starts in inflammation. So when inflammation goes chronic, it will actually tear the inside what's called the lumen of the blood vessel, and it'll literally fray. Now cholesterol is actually in different size particles. You have big, fluffy cholesterol.

you have medium-sized cholesterol, and then you have golf ball size cholesterol. So a particle lab test. lets you know what your ratios are. And that would be another better indicator of cardiovascular stress than to simply look at one number, your total cholesterol, and make some kind of definitive diagnosis on an individual. If you have a higher ratio of big fat fluffy to golf ball. Those little golf balls don't have the tendency to get trapped like I was talking about the inside of the blood vessel.

So that's one part about it. You actually make 80% of your own cholesterol in your liver. You only get 20% from food. Cholesterol is needed for reproductive health. That's right, reproductive Health. So anybody out there that is having trouble conceiving a baby, I would look there. Okay, number two, it makes the neurotransmitters for your brain, dopamine, serotonin, norepinephrine, epinephrin. It makes those chemistries for you brain. The third thing is it makes the stress chemicals. And that's the connection that I want to make as I was talking about balance versus stress in our children.

their repair system of cholesterol while they are building their brains. Your brain is mainly fat. Cholesterol is fat, you know, back in my 40s. That's when I really learned about cholesterol and that, okay, I'll tell you how old I am. I'm 64 years old. So about 24 years ago, I was such an irritated person. I felt like anything would just trigger me and I had no idea why. And that in and of itself is such a good response to just kind of let me create a little tributary on that for you real quick.

Anybody that ever says I'm emotional and they don't know why, I'm crying and I don't know why. I am angry and don�t know. That to me has become such an incredible red flag that that nervous system is so out of balance. And that is what I love to dive into because most of the time it has to do with the reflexes. when that reflex system is still trying to manage you, especially as children. But in my situation, I had become so irritable for so long, and it was probably about six to eight months. And that's long enough for something to become chronic.

to where at any time you or I can regress back into the brain stem, the reflexes, that the survival mode, let me just try to figure out how we can get back to some kind of basics here. So I was back in my own little morrow at that time. But I went to a functional medicine doctor who did lab work on me. And that's when I found out I had really low cholesterol. So when i'm talking low, I'm talkin' under a hundred, fifty, hundred and thirty. I know what they tell us on the lab reports, but I can tell you right now that's not accurate.

That's actually low cholesterol. And on a traditional lab report, it's going to tell that you're within normal limits. Because what is driving that lab, number one, is an insurance company. Number two is outdated information. In fact, there is incredible documentary Oh gosh, I'm going to have to think about it for just a second because it's about cholesterol and if I can't remember it while we are in our session right now, i'll make sure we put it in the show notes, okay? But there is a great documentary that actually helps people understand.

Oh, statination. See, if you just give your brain a And that's about processing. That's the alpha brain wave. So my brain went ahead and said, you keep going. You said you were going to keep and we'll help you go find the name of that documentary.

Cholesterol, inflammation, and mood 26:00

Boy, I am just giving you some great examples today. so it's called statination now while ago you had to pay ten dollars to watch it but honestly i think it is really worth ten dollar's because we need to understand there's a lot of people that are on statin medications and those staten medications start lowering the person's cholesterol. Now maybe you have somebody in your life that's on a statin med. I'd like you to think about what is their mood like because low cholesterol creates moodiness.

It can also create OCD tendencies and oppositional defiance because you don't have enough fat manufacturing enough chemicals for your brain. This is why working with an integrative practitioner like myself, I'm going to look in every direction. Your blueprint, your intake form, it literally covers all these different systems. of your body and every one of them. Remember what we talked about at the beginning? They're part of the orchestra. So the flutes have to be with the trombones and the piccolos have be to with violins and everybody has to work together.

and they have to follow the conductor. But remember about development, and this is why it's so pivotal to pull this integration together. When you follow the conductor, you first wake up the Conductor in your body as a baby. You move before you read, write, and do arithmetic. You move before even sound starts to come together. You are fully formed, but you are not fully functioning at birth. you have to move in order to release that brain stem. That brainstem is acting as the mini conductor and it must release to allow the rest of the brain to And if any of the part of developmental journey is interrupted for any reason, it could be just because somebody was scared to put their baby on their belly.

It could because your child didn't crawl or they walked late. it Could be because the world was running around with masks on and the energy of world, was not in resonance. of the Sherman frequency of 7.8. In fact, if you go and look at Sherman's frequency, that is the frequency on the earth, and it should be around 7 point 8. It's saying right now that it's resonating more at around 13 to 15. That's getting closer to a fast brainwave. And if you just drive around Atlanta for 10 minutes, you would feel that, and I'm sure you're feeling it in your hometown.

We've had so much come into our world that we're not used to, things that are going on that have no point of reference on how to handle. Everybody goes and goes, And then we've got everybody attached to a device. And make sure you listen to my next truth bomb, because I'm going to talk about AI. I know there's certain things that I will never be able to stop. But I do have the choice to participate or not. Just think for a minute. If something is always Generating the next word that you're going to type.

How long do you think it's going take you before you don't even think about things like that anymore? I think that's a perfect storm to take us into early degenerative changes in our brain. And that is part of the prediction, not only on AI, but on many other things. I want to keep my brain as sharp as I possibly can. And I know it means that I must have cognitive flexibility. I msut be willing to learn new things.I must be wiling to hear others perspectives. i hear different perspectives all the time.

And I am grateful that I have acquired even more flexibility because not everybody agrees with me. Not everybody follows the recommendations. But I can tell you this about Connect My Brain. When people do follow the plan, and the Plan is about a three-tier approach, mechanical, body chemistry and the brain. The families that have followed this and I've got an abundance that do. The results have been incredible. And some of the challenges that we face here, I would say the attention focus issue is number one.

People coming to the office looking for support for their child that is having trouble paying attention, or it could be school-age and even college-aged young people. There are adults, too, that come. I would say the next one is emotional dysregulation. And I'd put some bullets under that. I would put POTS under that. I wouldn't put anxiety under, that I'd put depression under. That I put OCD under ODD under lots of different labels would fall under emotional dysregulation. The third thing that i would say is a developmental delay.

Developmental milestones, the app, and working with Connect My Brain 33:00

And under that bullets of autism and dyslexia. And when you talk about developmental delay, It simply means that the child is not on target for their age. So when we look at children, we want to look their chronological age and match it to their neurological age, the bodies just continue to grow. But the neurology doesn't always catch up. And so that's really what's meant by developmental delay. It's not just about a little person. it really could be anyone that did not accomplish all of their milestones.

And that is why it is so important to know those milestones In addition to the coaching and the memberships, I developed an app a few years ago. We just relaunched it last month. Were not 100% yet, but it's a beginning. where I wanted to put into the hands of every parent when a child is supposed to do what everything about us like the podcast is called connect my brain so even the app is cold connect. My brain available on apple and google play. When you look at the app, it's going to be a lot of little babies and pregnant mothers, and you can access the podcasts.

There's a whole lot more that we want to do with it. It's just a timing. But when you looks at it, what I want you to appreciate is even if your child is not a little baby, I want you to think about whoever you're concerned about, whether it's you or college age or a teenager, whatever. I wanted you look at that app as if you were doing an inventory of your child's development. And then I want you to understand the idea of integration, our three-tier approach, mechanical, body chemistry, brain. Mechanical looks at, is your body, regardless of age, coordinated chronologically and neurologically?

Do your eyeballs work the way that they're supposed to? And I'm not talking about optometry. I am talking the muscles. Remember, that's one of the components that we look at. of the high percentage of focused kids that come here, the number one issue is their eyes. They can't control their eye. And if you can control your eyes, how do you focus? And all the stimulant medication in the world is not going to fix that. It may give you an artificial energy level, but it isn't going to fix the movement.

In addition, we also look at how do you hear? Do you here symmetrically? And then the body chemistry is labs. It's how you eat. What's going on? What is in the background? How many infections have you been dealing with in your life? I want to dedicate a whole podcast to strep. That's a big deal. and then the brain. How did you get wired up? Where are you now? And then, the idea is how we put it all together. We don't just work one part. we are going to work with the conductor. And we're going work the flutes and the piccolos and drums and violins.

and the whole part is going to come together. And the body chemistry is the tuning of our instrument. or if we have to make sure that our strings are not frayed, that's what your body chemistry is going to be. And we're gonna put the whole thing together because that is the way that the human body works. It works together and you need to do everything at the same time. Thanks so much for tuning in today. I've enjoyed being with you. If you have a question, reach out just like everything else. The website is called Connect My Brain.

Check out how to work with me. If you have an idea that there's a podcast that you'd like me to focus on, send it right through the website. I love to hear from you. And remember, we work with our community, the world. Be blessed.