Why Would a Reflex Not Integrate?

According to the Masgutova Method, there are four reasons why a reflex wouldn’t integrate:

1. congenital disorders

2. traumas

3. prolonged, intermittent or chronic stress

4. non-congenital disease 

Let’s break them down…

A congenital disorder is a medical condition that occurs before or at birth. These can include down syndrome, cystic fibrosis and more. This type of disorder can also be passed down from the mother: rebella, syphilis, aids, hyperthyroidism, diabetes, or the mother used drugs/alcohol during pregnancy. These disorders can possibly inhibit neural pathways that are required for these innate reflexes to develop. 

The Masgutova Method defines trauma as “an unexpected life-threatening event that results in a debilitating outcome that disrupts normal physical or emotional function.” In short, an experience that threatens your survival and has a negative affect on how you function going forward. However, the key factor to remember is that your brain/body can categorize an event as trauma that logically doesn’t seem like it should and that someone else’s body may not categorize the same experience as trauma. It all depends on your experiences thus far since you were created in your mother’s womb. Trauma can occur during pregnancy, during birth, and/or after birth. Even if a reflex was fully integrated, a trauma can cause a reflex to move back into its primary state - meaning that it is no longer considered integrated. 

When someone experiences stress over a longer period of time, whether that be for the same reason or a multitude of different reasons, it is likely to have a negative effect on the body. Our bodies are balanced by a parasympathetic (rest/digest) nervous system vs. a sympathetic (fight/flight) nervous system. These nervous systems are on a teeter-totter. If your sympathetic nervous system is heightened then that means that your parasympathetic system is lowered and vice-versa. If your sympathetic nervous system is “on”/higher on the teeter-totter, then your body would be considered to be in an alarmed state - it cannot relax. In order to heal, recover, digest, etc., we need to be in our parasympathetic state. When we cannot relax, our bodies cannot take care of themselves. The inability to relax can compromise the body's neurological system and therefore affect the reflexes that our body relies on causing them to not function efficiently.

A non-congenital disease is a disease that occurs after birth and is not linked to genetic issues. Depending on when you or a child experiences this disease, it may cause certain reflexes to not develop/integrate. This would then result in less efficient brain processing and a lower level neuroplasticity. 

There are lots of factors in our lives that can fall under these categories, and how those factors affect each of us is different. What we do know is that if you or your child have experienced something that would fall under these basic categories, then it is very likely that you’ll see a negative effect on how the body functions. You could see it as delayed crawling, inability to speak clearly, increased anxiety, developing an autoimmune disease, a change in gait patterns, shoulder pain and so much more. The body is complicated, and when you are dealing with something as fundamental as the neurological system then its shortcomings can show up in a multitude of ways - all the more reason so make sure it is at the top of its game! 

If you want to take a deeper dive into this questions, take a look at this article on www.masgutovamethod.com 

(https://masgutovamethod.com/the-method/what-can-make-reflexes-dysfunctional)