What is Colic? 

Do you have an unsettled baby? Irritable infant? Or just plain old colic? There are MANY causes of colic, or unsettled behaviour in newborns and infants, and in this video, one potential (and often overlooked) cause is discussed. We found that in infants with shoulder dysfunction, over 90% presented with UNSETTLED BEHAVIOUR.

Unsettled infant. Irritable baby syndrome. Purple crying.

“Colic” is one of the many terms that are used to describe the baby that cries excessively. What makes this difficult is determining why your baby may be crying (Camilleri, 2017). Could it be considered “normal”? Is there a food sensitivity (Gultom, 2017)?

Or could it be discomfort?

In a recent retrospective analysis, we found that in infants who were unsettled, over 90% had a restriction of shoulder motion, and we hypothesized that the discomfort caused by this may be a factor in unsettled infant behaviour (Fludder, 2018).

The most recent systematic review about manual therapy and unsettled infants (Carnes, 2018) came to this conclusion:

“We found moderate favourable evidence for the reduction in crying time in infants receiving manual therapy care (around 1 hour per day), but this may change with further research evidence.”

You can read more about unsettled infants by following the link below.