Claire Conger

Posture guru Kathleen Porter posits that placing babies on their backs brings a significant risk of autism. They lie helpless and don’t develop the core strength required to hold up their heads. Then we encase them in little bucket strollers and car seats, their tail bones tucked, and they don’t get enough time to feel the sensations resulting from pushing against the floor and so do not learn to use their bodies in a natural way. Slumped posture results and inhibits the circulatory system such that the brain is not properly nourished.

This connection between supine sleep and autism has been studied. A 2016 article from the World Journal of Pediatrics concludes that Ms. Porter is right, but they find a different mechanism.*

Supine sleep is likely a physiological stressor, that does reduce SIDS, but at the cost of impact on emotional and social development in the population, a portion of which will be susceptible to, and consequently express autism. A re-evaluation of all benefits and harms of supine sleep is warranted.

The “Back to Sleep” campaign came out in 1994. I was already past the stage of putting babies to bed, and I wonder if I would have followed the advice. It seemed prudent to me to put the baby on his belly, in case he spit up or drooled too much, so he wouldn’t choke. But babies can drink and breathe at the same time, so maybe choking is not a problem. I don’t know.

Ms. Porter also points to health issues we attribute to age, such as GERD and heart problems. A posture slumped (my usual) or too rigid (trying to be perfect) may squish the valve at the top of the stomach and squeeze the heart; blood vessels are compressed and plaque may pile up as would sludge in a kinked hose. I find these ideas certainly worthy of study.

As for Ms. Porter’s advise on posture: straight spine, heiny behind, breath into your back. Her advise is uncannily similar to that of Esther Gokhale. Ms. Gokhale informs us not only that we lost it, good posture, about a century ago, but also that depictions of the ideal spine went from straight to S-curvy. The medical establishment slid into thinking that what is common is normal and confused normal with natural.

* link is to National Institutes of Health library