I was reading this great article on ChiroAccess.com which talks about two studies that have been published in medical literature since January, that support chiropractic care. This isn’t a first, medical literature has been supporting chiropractic care for years. The difference, is that medical literature that supports chiropractic care, always supports it for ACUTE care only.
These literature pieces support maintenance care! Ongoing chiropractic adjustments for better health. Let me give you the details.
The first study published in January 2011 in Spine concluded that “SMT (spinal manipulative therapy) is effective for the treatment of chronic non specific LBP (low back pain). To obtain long-term benefit, this study suggests maintenance spinal manipulations after the initial intensive manipulative therapy.”
The study… of course, is directed at pain, which isn’t the best thing for chiropractic progress, but it is a start. Cool part, they discuss maintenance adjustments as a method of continuing to keep someone out of low back pain. Which is nice to see in the medical literature. You may have heard me say it before (and when I say it, it is way more profound – because I know that chiropractic brings health, not just pain free living)… eating healthy one day a month doesn’t bring health. Working out one day a month, doesn’t bring health or fitness (but it does bring soreness); and getting adjusted one day a month, doesn’t bring health.
The next study, published in April 2011 – Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, provides additional support for the value of chiropractic maintenance care for post injury low back pain patients. The study followed 894 injured workers for a period of one year. During that year there were four different types of therapy available to the workers: medical management, physical therapy, chiropractic, and no therapy. Episodes of repeat disability were recorded during the year following the initial injury. Physical therapy had the highest percentage of reinjured workers followed by those receiving medical management or no treatment at all. The lowest incidence of repeat injury was found among those workers who had received chiropractic maintenance care.
Nice! The simple answer… your brain is the single most valuable tool in bringing and maintaining health. God protected your nervous system with a skull and a spine, and nothing else is protected that way. You can work on your muscles, and rehabilitate them… but if you do not rehabilitate the message to them, then you cannot heal. It is necessary for healing!
I have another journal article that I am fond of. In 2005 the Spine Journal published a study from six medical doctors in Japan showed that loss of cervical curve increases incidence of atrophy of the spinal cord, as well as demyelination. Basically, these doctors figured out that the cervical curve directly relates to MS and ALS type conditions.
This is a good direction for chiropractic, but we sure do need more. In the meantime, we’ll do everything we can to keep you healthy, and everything we can to keep your moving in the direction of correction! Be well!
Dr. E
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