There are some babies who are as good as gold and spend all day cooing and smiling at people, and then there are those others the ones that cry from day one, for months on end.Infantile colic is defined as babies under three months old crying for more than three hours a day. Doctors are still out on the cause of colic. Some people attribute it to gas, undeveloped intestines, a food allergy or just general disposition. Some researchers are now looking at the possibility that the baby’s back and spine may be part of the problem.Chiropractor Bari Fenster accepts all patients but her speciality is pediatric patients and pregnant mothers. Dr Fenster said she has seen great improvements in colic babies after receiving chiropractic care.“There are a lot of theories about what causes it, but it is not really known,” said Dr Fenster, who arrived on the Island this week to work with Reid Robinson at Inside Outside Wellness. “From a chiropractic stand point, we don’t necessarily treat colic, but when we work with a child’s spine and make it so they can regulate their system better, they generally improve. One study followed a number of children and kids who were undergoing chiropractic care for colic and they had about a 94 percent success rate.”Unfortunately, research study results vary considerably and while some studies rate chiropractic care as being highly successful at dealing with colic, others only saw a minute improvement in clinical trials.“It is not necessarily a cure,” said Dr Fenster, “but if it is something coming from the spine which is causing their excessive crying, and they can’t regulate themselves like they should, it can help.”Dr Fenster is originally from New York. She went to chiropractic school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She came to Bermuda last week after working in the Cayman Islands for over a year.“They had a pediatric and pregnancy specialist on the Island, but she was gone and Dr Robinson was looking to fill that gap,” said Dr Fenster.She said although a lot of people think of chiropractors as back doctors, what they really do is work with the spine to ensure that the nervous system is functioning properly.“What most chiropractors do is feel through with their hands to see if there is an area that isn’t moving quite like it should,” she said. “Then the adjustment itself is just a restoring motion to that joint. So it is very gentle. Many people have the idea that we are kind of like Rambo, but it is a lot gentler than that. We work to restore alignment and motion to the spine.”People often don’t think of children as needing chiropractic care but there are number of reasons they might be taken to the chiropractor, depending on their age.“A two-month-old isn’t going to tell you my lower back hurts,” said Dr Fenster. “But when the spine isn’t moving quite like it should, it can change the function of the nerve that exits the spinal cord. And then it can affect anything along that path. Sometimes if a baby had a particularly traumatic birth or a really constrained position within the uterus, when they come out they might have a couple of malpositions in the neck or mid-back. When people bring in babies, I assess to see how everything is lining up.”She said a very gentle chiropractic technique is used with small children, and children generally respond very quickly if it is found their spine needs adjustment.“I think there is an under-assessed need for pediatric chiropractic care out there,” she said. “A lot of people don’t know about it. I constantly get people coming in and saying ‘oh, you work on kids?’ It would be great if every kid could get checked. Even if nothing traumatic happened in the uterus or while they were being born, walking, jumping on trampolines can contribute to back problems.”Dr Fenster said signs of a spinal problem in an infant could include difficulty latching during breastfeeding, colic, constipation, chest congestion and wheeziness.Older children who are age nine or ten years old, for example, might complain of headaches or stomachaches. Heavy school backpacks are often a cause of back pain in school-age children.“They tend to be able to vocalise what is going on with them more,” she said. “If your kid is being active, or if they have had accidents it is good to have a wellness check that includes a look at their spines.”Dr Fenster also sees many pregnant women who are experiencing back pain. For some women, the strain of carrying all the extra weight on their spines is so bad they are reduced to a walking stick or even bed rest.“For some women, pregnancy is not the smoothest process and they can feel a bit of back pain,” said Dr Fenster. “Also, a lot of pregnant women come to me for the Webster technique. It is designed to restore balance in the pelvis in a pregnant woman.“It is essentially working with the sacroiliac joint in the back. This is the joint between the tailbone and the hip. It works with the round ligament in the front which is one of the ligaments that supports the uterus. The importance of doing the Webster technique is if the pelvis is perfectly balanced then the uterus inside the pelvis should be balanced and the baby has the optimum room to grow. In cases where you see a whole lot of twisting in a mother’s pelvis and twisting in the uterus, the baby will move into the breech position because it is safer and more comfortable to have his head in a different spot. A lot of pregnant mothers with breech babies will come in to see if chiropractic [adjustment] can help. We never do anything that touches or moves the baby, but we try to restores balance to the pelvis. A study found that to be 82 percent effective.“The forces that we use when adjusting pregnant women is far less than anything they ever go through in birth. It is mostly pinkie finger weight and using their body weight against it. There haven’t been any studies that show recurrent adverse effects. It is incredibly, incredibly safe.”However, pediatric chiropractics is not without controversy. Some medical organisations, such as the Canadian Pediatric Society, have remained highly critical of the chiropractic industry and pediatric chiropractors, in particular.Useful website: icpa4kids.com/index.php.