After an extensive study of all available care for low back problems, the Federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (now the Agency for Health Care Research and Quality) recommended that low back pain sufferers choose the most conservative care first. And it recommended spinal manipulation as the only safe and effective, drugless form of initial professional treatment for acute low back problems in adults.
One of the best things you can do to prevent and/or eliminate back pain is to exercise. Both an inactive lifestyle and being overweight contribute to back pain. Exercise benefits you in so many ways, such as lowering blood pressure, helping you maintain a healthy weight, lowering your risk for diabetes, and the list goes on!
Orthotics can help you maintain a healthy spine through the use of spinal pelvic stabilizers. Devices that you wear in your shoes, stabilizers align all three arches of your foot to provide a balanced foundation for your spine and body.
While sports injuries or accidents can cause back pain, sometimes the simplest of movements — for example, picking up a pencil from the floor — can have painful results. In addition, arthritis, poor posture, obesity, and psychological stress can cause or complicate back pain. Back pain can also directly result from disease of the internal organs, such as kidney stones, kidney infections, blood clots, or bone loss.
Research supports chiropractic spinal manipulation:
Access to essential health care is limited in economically depressed urban areas. Federally qualified health centers strive to bridge the gap of care to these areas by providing affordable, comprehensive health care. Some of the risk factors for chronic pain happen to be the same risk factors that are common among those who utilize FQHCs (low education level, low socioeconomic status, and higher rate of substance dependence or abuse). Therefore, those more likely to have chronic pain are also more likely to have their healthcare needs met at FQHCs.
Older Medicare patients with chronic low back pain and other medical problems who received spinal manipulation from a chiropractic physician had lower costs of care and shorter episodes of back pain than patients in other treatment groups. Patients who received a combination of chiropractic and medical care had the next lowest Medicare costs, and patients who received only medical care incurred the highest costs. – Weeks et al (2016), Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics
For Headaches
“6 to 8 sessions of upper cervical and upper thoracic manipulation were shown to be more effective than mobilization and exercise in patients with CGH (cervicogenic headache), and the effects were maintained at 3 months.” – Dunning et al. (2016) BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders
In Comparison to Other Treatments
“Chiropractic users had 64% lower odds of receiving an opioid prescription than non users.” – Corcoran et al. (2019) Pain Medicine
A growing list of research studies and reviews demonstrate that the services provided by chiropractors are not only clinically effective and safe but also cost effective. Following are excerpts and summaries from a few of those studies. The evidence supports the natural, whole-body, nondrug approach of chiropractic for a variety of conditions.
For Acute and Chronic Pain
Chiropractic is a system of therapy focused on the structure of the body, particularly the spine. Chiropractors manipulate the body’s alignment to relieve pain and improve function and to help the body heal itself.
In addition to revealing trends in chronic pain, a new study also provides a glimpse of what might be causing the increase.
The information necessary for a detailed explanation isn’t part of the NHIS (National Health Interview Survey) data set, but the researchers did look at a host of variables to determine which ones were most closely associated with the pain trends.