FaceBook Post by Dr. Palevsky

http://www.ky3.com/news/contactky3/ky3-lack-of-tummy-time-blamed-for-developmental-delays-02232011,0,3781056.story

DR PALEVSKY’S COMMENTS: I am very excited to see this article. I have been stressing tummy time to parents, and recommending occasions when babies can sleep on their stomachs, for a very long time. In the 1990's the American Academy of Pediatrics recommended that babies should be put down on their backs or sides to avoid the possibility of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS), without a full investigation into the impact of this policy on childhood development. Many of us in the field of pediatrics, chiropractic, osteopathy, physical therapy, and cranial sacral therapy, to name a few, have understood for a long time how valuable the time babies spend on their stomachs is to proper brain development, motor development and coordination, and even digestive health. The motor part of the brain, called the cerebellum, is one of the first parts of the brain to be stimulated and developed in infants. If improper stimulation is received by the cerebellum in early infancy, ie minimal or no belly time, then many of the developmental skills that go forward from the cerebellum will not develop properly, which include symmetrical crawling, right-left brain coordination, visual-motor coordination, visual-auditory-motor coordination, motor coordination, muscle tone, and even speech. If you are worried about putting your infants on their bellies for fear of SIDS, then at least make sure they get a lot of tummy time, and try to get them to nap on their stomachs while making sure you are in the room to closely watch them. In addition, the subject of SIDS is much more complex than just considering the role that belly sleeping plays in contributing to sudden infant death. Good scientific information about several of the other factors that contribute to sudden infant deaths, besides belly sleeping, is usually suppressed and negated by the authorities and the media, like the role that noxious chemicals used to treat the mattresses play in suppressing the respiratory centers of infants when these chemicals emanate from the mattresses after mixing with the heat and moisture of their breath while sleeping on their bellies; or the role that vaccines play in causing a vasculitis in the brains of infants leading to their deaths, otherwise labeled either as SIDS or Shaken Baby Syndrome. As is typical of the Western cultural paradigm, we commonly recommend a policy to help "fix" what we perceive is a problem, ie belly sleeping leading to SIDS, without considering the fall-out of the policy. Then, later on, we realize we have a new problem on our hands that needs "fixing" as a result of the "incorrect" policy that we used to help "fix a previous problem (SIDS) that might not have been caused by the reason we said it happened in the first place; all in the name of protecting the ideology of the vaccine program, and protecting the liability of the infant mattress manufacturers.