Neurologically-based care for your growing family
Case Study
Finding Calm in the Storm: Autism
Transformative Results through Chiropractic Care
When a 4-year old boy’s mother first came to us to ask if we could help her son, she was running on fumes. He was sleeping no more than four hours a night, which meant she wasn't sleeping much either. Throughout the day, his body seemed to be in constant motion and distress — kicking the floor, banging his head against any hard surface he could find, cycling through moments of high anxiety and frustration that never fully resolved. He had been diagnosed with a severe case of autism, and it was clear his nervous system was overwhelmed — in every physiological sense, stuck in a state of fight or flight.
What We Found
The initial examination told part of the story. Along with vertebral subluxation, the 4-year-old presented with several severe positive findings on testing for retained primitive reflexes — the early, involuntary reflex patterns meant to integrate into the nervous system in infancy, but which had remained active and unresolved in his case. Retained reflexes like these are often associated with the kind of sensory overload, dysregulation, and stress response his mother was describing at home.
The First Adjustment
He received his first adjustment — a gentle, sustained-contact technique focused on the upper cervical and sacral regions. That night, he slept nine hours. It was the first full night's sleep his mother could remember in a long time.
The Progression
From there, care continued once a day, several days a week, with the same gentle approach — consistently addressing subluxation wherever our analysis detected it. Within a couple of weeks, the changes extended well beyond sleep:
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His impulsivity began to soften
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His mood grew steadier and less volatile
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Head-banging and floor-kicking, once near-constant, became far less frequent
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He started making more eye contact and communicating more
At home, the ripple effect was just as significant — the stress pressing down on the whole family began to lift. For the first three months of care, these shifts occurred while he was only under chiropractic care, before he began any additional therapies.
The primitive reflexes that had shown up so strongly on that first exam changed too, moving over time from severe findings to the mild-to-moderate range — a shift that tracked alongside the behavioral and regulatory improvements his mother was seeing day to day.
Today
This patient continues to progress. His sleep, mood, communication, and self-regulation have all continued trending in a positive direction. Recently, his mother shared that he has started sitting down with her to read books — and recognizing a few words on his own.