The Dish by Darcie

Massage and Chiropractic treatment. Can it cure thumb sucking? Apparently it can and it has.

I’m one of those people who has to know why something works so when this subject came up, I had to look deeper. And of course, try to relate it to dogs some how. I think I’ve done it.

My Mom doesn’t remember if I sucked my thumb as a child or not. I don’t remember ever doing it so I can’t approach this subject from personal experience.

There are a ton of adults who suck their thumbs so what makes it taboo or should it be? Is it a bad thing? I don’t know. Some people think is is, some think it’s not. What I did find was that most of the adults who posted to lists that I saw online wish that they could quit. Most say they try to hide it from the world.

I did some digging and it seems that most adults who suck their thumbs want to stop. I found out a lot of stuff as I looked and talked. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts that you know someone who sucks their thumb in secret. Their closest family member might know about it but no one else does.

Any way, the reason I got interested in this was because the subject came up the other day when we were talking about cranial sacral therapy by massage therapists and chiropractors. One of the therapists told us about a boy whose family did everything they could to get him to stop. He was five years old when they finally found help. His thumb sucking was giving him trouble with his friends and the family unit. They found help when turned away from traditional medicine.

This little boy’s parents had done everything to get him to quit sucking his thumb. They belittled him, they used bad tasting stuff, they wrapped his thumb, they scolded him, they told him he would never have a girlfriend or a wife or children, he would live alone forever and nobody would ever love him. Geez, folks, I thought, lighten up, he’s five years old. I found out in my searching that these tactics are ones commonly used by people who have thumb suckers in their life. Including adult thumb suckers. It doesn’t work for them any better than it did for the little boy.

The parents of the little boy talked to all the professionals they could get to. Their dentist told them that his teeth would be oddly shaped if they didn’t get him to quit, keep trying by any means. Their family doctor said that the boy was a little retarded or autistic and he might suck his thumb his whole life so to just ignore it. They went to psychologists and psychiatrists, who told them that the boy was deprived of motherly love and that all of their damming him had caused him an ego problem and he would never be “normal”. That his low self esteem caused by them would start to cause tantrums because of extreme emotions like anger and self hatred. Well, that was encouraging. And expensive.

I did some looking around online and talked to some people who are supposed to know about these things, I was surprised with what I found out. The cure they found for the boy makes perfect sense to me because of the reasoning behind it. It explains at some level why the Anxiety Release Exercise for Dogs (pics of the exercise) that I’ve developed works so well on rescue dogs. Dogs who have behavioral and fear related problems like biting, not eating, separation anxiety.

According to the info I’ve found, and it’s pretty new stuff according to some of the professionals, human heads do not fuse. Our cranial bones do not fuse together. It was always thought that they did. We were told years ago when our babies were little to turn them several times when they were laying down, so their heads would have a nice shape and when the bones fused, the head would be a nice looking head so the generally accepted idea was that the skull does fuse at some point in childhood.

There has been a study that proves that our skulls do not fuse or at least they are not supposed to. Our skulls have the flexibility to move so when air pressure changes, we don’t have pain in our head and ears.

Some newer information is that young children who do head banging and thumb sucking may simply be releasing the pressure of their skull because their skull isn’t doing it for them. When they suck their thumb, they put pressure on the roof of the mouth, effectively releasing the pressure of the skull and the pain it causes. Some experts believe the pain happens with air pressure changes. Like when a storm is coming. Some believe that the skull is stuck, causing the behavior to be repeated over and over again on a daily basis.

If you’ve ever had a dog who could predict a storm was on the way, this is very interesting stuff. Is it barometric pressure changes that cause some dogs to have pain in their heads before a storm? And if it’s not pain, why does the dog react the way it does? Why the fear behavior? Is the change in air pressure causing the pain which then creates a fear based reaction? The dog starts to shake or whine and hide, or maybe just go to it’s person and want comfort. Sure enough, about a half hour later, here comes the storm. Was the dog telling us that pressure was causing his head to hurt?

A child wouldn’t be able to reason through the pain and maybe he instinctively found an activity that helped calm and comfort him, thumb sucking. The dog can’t suck his thumb so is left with the pain of the pressure so he does not calm down until the storm passes. According to the experts who’ve done the studies, it is the change of pressure in the skull. The child bangs his head or sucks his thumb to help relive the pressure in his head and he feels better. Does the dog shake his head and have body shaking to do the same thing? Or is the dog prisoner to the feeling until the storm passes? Or maybe both?

Experts are saying that in normal children, the need to suck their thumb ends when the child starts to walk, the body changes and the spine helps the skull effectively relieve the pressure without the thumb sucking. But what if the sucking doesn’t stop? What’s going on then? They  think that they skull may be stuck in a static position, it can’t move on it’s own, thus the thumb sucking behavior doesn’t stop.

Even more, they’ve found that when the spine is not aligned properly, the spinal column cannot work properly which can keep the skull from moving as it should. The stuck position. Subluxations (misalignment of the spine) can cause people to suffer with disease, organ function problems, and can mess with general good health. Does it cause thumb sucking, too? And behavior problems in dogs?

Many professionals think that subluxation stresses are often the result of damage caused by pre-natal or birth trauma, vaccinations, accidents, chemical or emotional stress. The holistic and most natural practitioners in the dog world have been preaching against vaccinations for years. Today more and more veterinarians are coming out about this and suggesting against giving them so often. Traditionally most vaccinations are given yearly, they’d like to see that go to every three years instead.

“Accidents” with dogs can be anything from rough play, to being jerked around or hung with a leash in traditional types of training, to being in a car accident with their people. I hear about dogs who need help giving birth all the time. Is that because of bad breeding practices, vaccinations causing problems, lack of nutrition? Whatever that is, it’s not the way Nature intended it to be and it has to be traumatic not only to the mother but to the puppies as well.

I’m told that cranial sacral massage is done by feeling the scalp and skull to find out where the troubles are and then manipulating the skeleton, the skull and the muscles, helping to repair the damage. Muscles are what hold our bones together. So maybe when all of it is put together, old fears and behavioral issues go away. Perhaps the Anxiety Release Exercise is truly, as I believe, a form of releasing the memory from the muscles and the dogs would do even better if they saw a chiropractor and massage therapist to get even deeper into the physical being of the animal as well as the emotional and mental side of it. Or is the posture and sometimes the struggle to keep the dog on it’s back somehow manipulating the spine, the skull and the muscles? Is that why it works?

So if you follow the logic that perhaps humans suck their thumbs into adulthood and so many millions of dogs suffer fear and behavioral issues including thunder phobia, you might wonder if it’s at all possible that all of those people and animals suffered some sort of injury, chemical or physical, to their skulls and skeletons at some point from when they were conceived to where they are now, keeping their body from working properly.

There is an Italian study proving that human and monkey skulls are not supposed to fuse but remain movable throughout our life. If it happens in us and monkeys, is it the same in dogs?

So what happened with the five year old boy? His parents took him to a massage therapist who did cranial sacral therapy. After every visit, the boy quit sucking his thumb for about two months. Entirely. He quit, didn’t even try. After two months, he would start again. Did the memory come back? Did the muscle return to it’s former wrong place pulling the spine out of whack thus stopping the skull from working properly?

They returned again and again to the therapist. After one year, the child quit sucking his thumb entirely.

Okay, maybe he would have anyway. Maybe. The parents didn’t think so. So I’ll lean with the parents for now and for the sake of argument, if he hadn’t had the treatment, maybe he would be sucking his thumb into adulthood.

If all of this is true and I have no reason to doubt it, then adults who still suck their thumbs can be treated effectively as well. If the skull and spine can be permanently moved back into place and the muscles learn where they are supposed to be, maybe so.

It’s worth a shot for those people who want to quit sucking their thumbs. And for the dogs? Maybe it will cure their fear and bad behavior? I don’t know. I do know that good nutrition, which supports muscles, goes a long way to helping dogs recover from fear based problems. And I recommend chiropractic and massage therapy anyway, it’s helped so many dogs and people.

I’ll just throw this in while I’m at it. A study was done a few years ago, traditional medicine vs chiropractors. Medical doctors and chiropractors were involved in this study. The study showed that for every two people who recovered completely with traditional medicine, eleven recovered completely with chiropractic. That’s 450% more!

My research into this was pretty simple and I’m positive not conclusive but I have to think that the therapy is worth a try. To live without secrets and fears caused by something that they have no control over is worth a lot. Isn’t it?

I know this to be a fact. Before Tilli had her chiropractic treatment a week ago, when there was a bad storm, she would move in beside my bed, not scared out of her mind like some dogs are but panting and not sleeping. We had a storm roll through a day ago and Tilli didn’t seem to notice it.

I’m just saying….