Posted on 11/09/2007 12:21:14 PM PST by Red Badger
Going to a chiropractor to treat back pain could be a waste of time, according to a new study which found that having your spine manipulated does nothing to speed up recovery. Current treatment guidelines for acute back pain recommend that, in the first instance, GPs advise patients to remain active and avoid bed rest and take paracetamol for the pain. If that does not work, patients are referred for spinal manipulative therapy and given non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) drugs such as ibuprofen and diclofenac to treat the pain. Mark Hancock, of the back pain research group at the University of Sydney, studied 240 patients with short-term lower back pain who had already been given both advice and paracetamol. The patients were randomly allocated to four groups and given different treatments: NSAIDs with placebo manipulative therapy; manipulative therapy with placebo drugs; drugs with therapy; or double placebo. "Neither diclofenac nor spinal manipulative therapy gave clinically useful effects on the primary outcome of time to recovery," the researchers wrote in the Lancet today. "If patients have high rates of recovery with baseline care, and no clinically worthwhile benefit from the addition of diclofenac or spinal manipulative therapy, then GPs can manage patients confidently without exposing them to increased risks and costs associated with NSAIDs or spinal manipulative therapy." In an accompanying article in the Lancet, Bart Koes of Erasmus University medical centre in Rotterdam wrote: "The limited or absent beneficial effect of diclofenac for acute lower back pain after adequate first-line treatment may have wide implications. NSAIDs are widely prescribed for a range of acute musculoskeletal disorders. The important message is that the management of acute low back pain in primary care (advice and prescription of paracetamol) is sufficient for most patients."
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
I'll pass that along to my wife. She'll probably spit at me.............
Chiropractors do nothing to “heal” back pain. All they do is invite blood flow to the tense, painful areas...this reduces pain...but it ALWAYS comes back, doesn’t it? They heal nothing. Unless you have some sort of real damage to the structure of your spinal column...the overwhelmingly majority of back pain is “mental.” I recommend a you get the book: Healing Back Pain by Dr. Sarno. It’s brilliant.
I’ve never been, but I have lots of friends who have and they swear by it. The only downside (for them) is that they have to keep going *forever* as the treatments only offer relief and don’t actually fix anything.
“teaches that 95 % of all human disease arises from spinal misalignment.”
This seems typical of ALL “alternative” garbage. They claim to be all “cures” to all problems. That is a red flag for any of these silly snake-oil schemes.
Seems chiropractic generally claims that (don’t know about this “Palmer” thing). Worse, I fear it has hurt people (just like acupuncture).
People who think it helps are probably having their bodies shape up just in time - coincidental.
I don’t know why people don’t just go to PHYSICAL THERAPY if they have musculoskeletal problems. PT has helped me much, for sure. They don’t claim to cure anything with “just aligning this 1 thing”, nor to cure DISEASES like these charlatan/quacks do.
Well, my FRiend, from Wiki...DD Palmer, using a vitalistic approach, imbued the term subluxation with a metaphysical and philosophical meaning. He held that a malposition of spinal bones, which protect the spinal cord and nerve roots, interfered with the transmission of nerve impulses. Because half of the nervous system is sensory and the other half motor (control), he postulated that living things had an Innate intelligence, a kind of "spiritual energy" or life force that received the sensory information from the various parts of the body and made a decision as to what the motor nerves should convey. DD Palmer claimed that subluxations interfered with this innate intelligence, and that by fixing them, all diseases could be treated...
Having said that, if you have a Chiro that provides good care for you, by all means, freedom of choice is a good thing.
I'll even add that I recently took a course in 'injury-free running' from some chiros, and it was quite well-done and useful.
Being someone who first started usinc a chiropractor in my late 30’s I find this article comical.
I feel like Neil Armstrong reading an article that says we never went to the moon.
BTW, this whole scheme of chiropracty was thought up by some pseudo-scientific man in the 19th century. I can’t believe how people actually think this is viable. If it were, the whole “mainstream Western medical establishment” would be out of business.
I agree
I found several back-crackers who were of little use. Each time I went, the relief was shorter and shorter. Then, I found one in Chatham, NJ that used a technique that didn't involve back-cracking. And every time I went, the relief lasted longer than the previous time. (I don't remember the name of the technique, sorry....)
So, some techniques are better than others for me. I don't expect that what works for me works the same for everybody. My guess is that by randomly assigning patients to practitioners, they lost the signal in the noise. It'd be like testing for sickle-cell anemia in Japan. The study would say that it doesn't exist.
In the longer run, curing my sarcoid has also greatly relieved my back troubles.
Of course we went to the moon! WHERE DO YOU THINK WE GOT ALL THESE DAMN CHIROPRACTORS?.............
I know what you mean. I’m lucky enough to get 30 chiro visits /yr on my insurance and I use every one of them.
I believe hospitals also kill a lot of people that whould not have died had they stayed out.
There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for pretty much any position. e.g. my dad died in a car accident therefore cars are dangerous and should be outlawed.
That's what arouses the ire of the medical establishment. I've told this tale before, but it's worth repeating. I injured my back severely about 7 years ago. Got a nice ambulance ride and everything. The orthopedic surgeon the hospital referred me to was absolutely crestfallen that no surgery was required. I'm not kidding, you could hear the disappointment in his voice. When I asked what I should do to "get back in the game" as it were, he told threw me a 'scrip for Celebrex and told me knock of the exercise, as it was "highly overated". Long story short, it took a chiropracter to get me back to where I was before.
I do not doubt that chiropractors can't fix some of the things medical doctors fix. However, I know more people who have had ongoing problems with their backs after surgery than after visiting a chiropractor.
Interesting, I'd never heard the chiro's were on to this. I happen to agree, but that's because curing the infection underlying my sarcoid is also curing the back trouble.
You can bet the farm that their pain is real. However, bone manipulation does nothing heal anything. Think about it. Does it even make sense that someone’s back is out of alignment? Do you think that if that were the case that you’d have a bit more of a problem than some pain? Why is it that in the last 30 years there has been an outbreak of back pain? When did the human spine become so fragile? Studies show that the vast majority of back pain occurs between the ages of 25-50. If the back was degenerating (as many chiro’s say) then wouldn’t you expect that back pain issues would continue to increase with age? But it doesn’t. Like I posted earlier...for everyone with back pain (not those with real back damage, but the other 85% who have pulled muscles, pinched nerves, sciatic, etc.) do yourself a favor...buy the Dr. Sarno book, Healing Back Pain.
It works for me
While inducing an over-stimulation of the insurance node.
Careful, you’ll upset the friends of chiropractic here. :)
Personally, I think chiropractic is mostly quackery, but some people do seem to at least get some symptomatic relief from them, which as often as not is about all medical establishment can do for you, either.
Well your book advice is worth a try, but I’m not going to win over the people I know who love their chiropractor. It works for them.
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