Back pain? Put this on the top of your list of therapies

For something that’s been helping people in pain for over 100 years, I’m always amazed at how chiropractic treatments can be called “controversial,” or even worse, “quackery.”

I guess that mainstream medicine has been in a snit ever since Daniel Palmer, the father of chiropractic care, performed the first successful spinal adjustment in 1895.

And ever since, the establishment has been trying to make it into some type of voodoo!

It’s only now, with the country reeling from the deadly effects of an unparalleled opioid crisis, that mainstream medicine is slowly beginning to wake up and smell the coffee when it comes to accepting alternative treatments for pain.

Of course, if you’ve never given chiropractic a try, you might wonder if there’s any truth to the controversy. But rest assured, a new study published in JAMA turns the tables on those naysayers once and for all.

It’s being called the “strongest evidence to date” of just how safe and effective chiropractic really is. And it confirms that if you suffer from back pain and are looking for relief, you should put a chiropractor on speed dial.

‘Follow the evidence’

For all of the claims of “pseudoscience,” the way that chiropractic works is actually quite simple and makes complete logical sense. A chiropractor mainly focuses on properly aligning your spine. An “adjustment” involves applying manual pressure to a joint to put it back into the correct position.

And it can do wonders for sciatica and other nerve injuries, as well as migraines, sinus problems, and even ear infections.

In this new study, however, the head of nonprofit group Spine IQ (which stands for the Spine Institute for Quality) followed the treatment of 750 patients suffering from back pain across the U.S.

While all of them received “usual medical care” (such as visits to their MDs and physical therapy), it soon became obvious which patients were also having chiropractic adjustments.

Lead researcher Christine Goetz said that “at every time point” (during the initial six weeks of therapy and another six-week follow-up), those who also had chiropractic treatments felt less intense pain.

Just that alone would be a major score for chiropractic, but there was an added benefit to the therapy as well – those who received it experienced less “pain-related disability,” meaning that they could go on with their lives without being laid up or limited in any way by their lower back pain.

Goetz said that the results of this study should leave no doubt about integrating this “safe” and “effective” treatment into traditional healthcare settings.

Look, we certainly don’t need any more proof that conventional methods for treating back pain haven’t been working very well.

Unfortunately, those patients have been turned into walking (or limping!) ATM machines for traditional physicians. From being subjected to pointless CT scans and MRIs all the way to risky treatments and surgeries, patients in pain have become the bread and butter of establishment medicine and Big Pharma.

And that’s all a real shame when you consider how well alternative treatments such as chiropractic can work.

Of course, despite how many hundreds of patients were involved or how much better they felt after being adjusted, I’m sure that the conventional pill-pushers will soon be saying how more research is necessary — the usual knee-jerk comment whenever positive results are found from alternative treatments!

Despite the unnecessary and unfair attempts to discredit chiropractic care, however, its detractors don’t want you to know is how much official acceptance it’s also received over the years.

Some of that approval, in fact, comes right from the feds, whose National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health recently gave a thumbs-up to spinal manipulation for back pain.

There’s also the fact that many insurers — Medicare included — cover chiropractic, although not for all conditions. And since most chiropractic care is amazingly affordable when compared to traditional medical treatments, just paying out of pocket is sometimes a better idea than being responsible for a co-pay.

But Goetz hopes that studies such as hers will help insurance companies expand such coverage as they “follow the evidence” of how a hands-on adjustment of your spine can take away your pain — no drugs required!

“Chiropractic has role to play in easing lower back pain: study” Dennis Thompson, May 18, 2018, HealthDay, consumer.healthday.com