Colic Research summary
Researchers define infantile colic as "paroxysmal episodes of unexplained full-force crying for at least three days per week, and continuing for one week in a thriving well-nourished infant". This full-force crying in colicky infants is up to six times longer than in non-colicky babies (122 minutes per day versus 19 minutes per day).
Other symptoms shown by colicky babies are arching of the back, pulling the knees to the tummy, throwing the arms back and forth.
The relationship of crying after feeding is not consistent amongst colicky babies. Settling the child after a feed is obviously important but in a colicky child, the crying continues well after burping has finished. When burping does happen there is often a temporary easing of the intense crying.
Other treatments can be useful for colic. The figure (right - click on it to enlarge it) shows a comparison of reported effects of a number of "colic" treatments. As is obvious from the simple percentage benefit chiropractic appears to be the most effective. A small word of caution though: we should not rely exclusively on simple comparisons.
Two studies have shown positive effects of chiropractic care for infants with colic.
In one study a group of 316 babies (who fulfilled selection criteria) were treated by chiropractors. 91% showed relief of the colic symptoms. The figure below (click to enlarge) shows the "natural" decrease in babies with colic compared to the reduction that occurred in the two-week chiropractic treatment period at about 2-8 weeks. (These figures adapted from the original research paper.)
In the other study, chiropractic was compared to standard drug treatment (dimethicone). Within 4 days chiropractic care had reduced crying duration by 2.4 hours on average compared to only 1-hour reduction in the drug treatment group. This effect was maintained throughout the study period of 2 weeks.
The figure below illustrates the advantage of chiropractic over standard drug treatment for colic symptoms.
Most people prefer to use natural treatments before trying drug treatment.
