Resolution of Breastfeeding Difficulties Following Chiropractic Care

The title above comes from a January 16, 2023, review study published in the Journal of Pediatric, Maternal & Family Health Chiropractic. This paper looked at numerous previous studies on chiropractic care for mothers and infants with breastfeeding problems.

The author begins by noting that "Breastfeeding is the process of feeding a mother’s breast milk to her infant, either directly from the breast or by expressing the milk from the breast and bottle-feeding it to the infant. Breastfeeding provides essential nutrition."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's, Division of Nutrition, Physical Activity, and Obesity, "Breastfeeding has health benefits for both babies and mothers. Breast milk provides a baby with ideal nutrition and supports growth and development. Breastfeeding can also help protect baby and mom against certain illnesses and diseases."

The author of this review study searched a number of scientific publications and databases for studies relating to chiropractic and breastfeeding issues. In his search, the author found 26 case reports, 12 articles, and 3 literature reviews that were related to this subject.

In the 26 cases reports, the common factor was that there was some sort of birth trauma followed by sub-optimal breastfeeding. In several of the case studies reviewed, the author found that the inability to properly breastfeed would lead to a lack of weight gain and a failure to thrive situation.

In these case studies, the infants ranged in age from just a few days to just over 3 months of age. All had trouble breastfeeding and all had the situation either improve or completely resolve with chiropractic care. In the case studies, the chiropractic care rendered was focused on correction of vertebral subluxations. Subluxations happen when vertebrae in the spine are not properly positioned causing some form of nerve system interference.

The author of this review did note, however, that although there were published case studies that showed breastfeeding improvement with chiropractic, there was a lack of strong clinical trials on this subject.

One of the other papers included in this review stated that there was a lack of clinical data and addressed the issue when the author of that paper stated, "There is a lack of high-level evidence available on the effects of chiropractic intervention, a situation partly due to the ethical issue of assigning infants with suboptimal breastfeeding into a high level randomized controlled trial where some children would be allocated to a non-treatment group." In other words, the problem with having clinical trials is that some babies would receive care that could help them, while others would be left to suffer for the purpose of a study.

In the review study conclusion, the author summed up the findings by saying, "Breastfeeding is beneficial for an infant’s health as well as for the mother in the long and short-term. Chiropractic care has the potential to help assist in improving suboptimal breastfeeding."