The Tribune

By Dr Susan Donald

Your children inherit many physical characteristics and traits from you, including strengths and weaknesses of their spinal columns. Just as the shape of their noses, colour of their eyes, or size of their skeletal frames can be inherited, so can curvatures or weak areas in their spines.

When I tell patients they have arthritis many will say, “Arthritis runs in my family”.

The same holds true for heart disease, high cholesterol, diabetes, etcetera. So your children may have a tendency to inherit the same or corresponding problems, just as you may have similarly inherited your spinal weaknesses from your parents or the accumulated weaknesses of several generations.

If you suffer from headaches, backaches, nervousness, constipation, stomach trouble or a much longer list of physical complaints: your own children may certainly be subject to these same conditions. Natural parental concern compels you to prevent your children from experiencing the same distressing health problems you have known.

As chiropractic has grown, it has continued to place greater emphasis on the prevention of spinal problems which can cause any number of other health problems due to spinal nerve pressure.

The prevention is most effective in childhood. A regular spinal examination at least once a year during your child’s growing years is one of the best physical health insurance procedures you can obtain for him or her.

If chiropractic corrective adjustment is indicated, you will have the great satisfaction that you have taken the proper step to assure your child of a healthy body, and therefore, a nervous system free from nerve pressure or irritation.

May serious health condition in youth, as well as later in life, can be prevented by this precautionary procedure. Remember, “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”