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Are Growing Pains Real?

“Mom, my legs really hurt!” How often have you heard that from your child? And, how often have you been quick to dismiss it as, “It’s just growing pains,” without really understanding if there even is such a condition?

Actually there is! Growing pains generally affect young children and adolescents. The child usually feels pain in the calves, thighs, and behind the knees of both legs. Sometimes the pain can even wake a sleeping child. Studies indicate 20 – 40% of all children experience growing pains and the condition is typically seen more often in girls than in boys.

Before the diagnosis of “growing pains” can be made with any relative certainty, other conditions or symptoms might need to be addressed, especially if the pain is accompanied by fever, inflammation, limping, fatigue or loss of appetite.

If no other cause for the pain is found, it might be convenient to give your child some form of pain reliever so that you both can sleep, but that only masks the underlying problem. And that underlying problem is often spinal misalignment in the lower back that affects the nerves that travel from that region into the legs. Misalignments can occur from falls, accidents, injuries or even the birth process. If they go uncorrected, they can become more serious than simple “growing pains” as your child grows older into adulthood.

Chiropractic care locates misalignments and corrects them, usually alleviating your child’s leg pains after only a few visits. When corrected at this age, you give your child a better chance at growing up healthy, with a properly functioning nervous system. And… what better gift can you give your child than true health, the kind that radiates from the top down and the inside out?