Three Month Colics and Preferential Head Postures

A six-week-old baby was brought to my clinic by the parents because he almost exclusively kept his head turned to the right and cried excessively. This appeared to be due to so-called three month colic. The pregnancy and delivery had gone without complications.

He was still being breastfed but was nursing less successfully and with unease. Toward late afternoons, he grew increasingly restless and cried until late into the night without being able to find sound sleep. His head had become deformed asymmetrically because of the one-sided posture toward the right: On the right side, where he was touching the bed with his head, a flat and almost bald spot had formed. He showed no spontaneous turning of the head to the left and strongly resisted any passive turning to the left.

In the examination, I detected a clear loss of mobility in the head joints and the first two cervical vertebrae. The craniosacral rhythm of the skull was also clearly reduced. The occipital bone was blocked in its connection to the sphenoid bone.

During treatment, I mobilized the head joints and the cervical spine, and subsequently the connection between the occipital and sphenoid bone. After the treatment, the child was able to turn his head in maximum flexion to the left and right, but not spontaneously.

After one week, I saw the boy again. He was much quieter, the colic had clearly improved. While he was still holding his head preferentially to the right, he allowed others to turn his head to the left without protesting. He had also started on his own to turn his head more and more frequently to the left.

These kinds of complaints are quite common in babies. In my opinion, we often find the described functional disturbance of the head joints and cervical spine in the background of these symptoms. In this context, it is not unusual that a nerve is pinched at the base of the skull, namely the vagus nerve, which is in charge of digestion and can trigger the colic when pinched.

If we do not treat such joint blockages early on, children will later develop symptoms like poor concentration, poor perception, restlessness, or hyperactivity - also comprehensively referred to as ADHD or KISS-Syndrome.