Back to Wellness, P.C.
Why Chiropractic

Why chiropractic? Simple. Because you don't have to live in pain. It has been shown that it only takes the weight of a dime to reduce nerve transmission by over 60%.

Millions of Americans live with pain each and every day. They tell themselves that this pain is normal. That just isn't true. As children and young adults we are harder on our bodies. We push the limits, often pushing them so far we end up tearing muscles, tendons, or ligaments. Everything in our body is connected so when we push too far we not only hurt the tissue that gave out, but lots of other damage gets done as well. This can cause life long injuries because we didn't take care of ourselves well enough. Chiropractic helps prevent these minor injuries from becoming major life long problems.

As we get older a lot of the pain we tell ourselves is normal is due to arthritic changes in our bone structure. One of the many things that chiropractic can help with is preventing these arthritic changes. Once you have developed arthritic changes it is very difficult to get rid of those changes. This is why it is so important to take care of our bodies. We only get one. One of our sayings here at Back to Wellness, P.C. is "What you do to your body today you'll feel tomorrow." This applies for both the good things we do, such as eating right and general exercise, as well as for things we shouldn't do, such as over eating or pushing through pain while we exercise.

Even before we ever feel pain we've already injured our body. Trying to understand this phenomenon can be tricky so try to think of your body functioning on a percentage scale. If everything is perfect in our bodies we're running at 100%. If nothing is working in our body we're at 0%. Most Americans are between 70% - 80% on a daily basis. When we get sick or hurt, the level we are functioning at drops. We generally start to feel symptoms between 60% - 65%. Pain is one of those symptoms. Our body produces pain signals as a warning system. When we try to do something and it hurts, it is our body's way of warning us that something isn't right. When we start feeling better and we get above 65% our symptoms go away again. This is why it is possible to not have symptoms and still not be well. Once we've returned to our normal 70% - 80% most of us think we're perfect again, a.k.a. 100%. Think of how you feel right now, now think of how you'd feel if you were more physically fit. If you had been at 100% to begin with you wouldn't be able to feel better after toning up. This is an example of how you can still not be completely healthy yet not have pain or feel sick.

Chiropractors Have the Training to Know What to Do up

According to the Council on Chiropractic Education, chiropractors are trained as Primary Care Providers. Chiropractor's training provides an in-depth understanding of the structure and function of the human body in health and disease. The training includes the basic medical sciences, including anatomy with human dissection, physiology, and biochemistry. Training is also obtained in differential diagnosis, radiology, and therapeutic techniques.

Note: Most of the information found below this point comes from the American Chiropractic Association website.

Is Chiropractic Safe? up

Chiropractic is a safe, non-invasive method to treating several conditions that Americans suffer from. All doctors believe in using the most conservative options first. If those methods aren't enough then they will go on to using more aggressive/invasive methods. Consider this hypothetical example; if you have a slight cut on your finger you bandage it. This is a conservative and noninvasive treatment. If that cut became infected then maybe you would take some antibiotics. This is a moderately conservative and moderately invasive treatment. If something went horribly wrong and gangrene set in then the finger would have to be removed before it spread. This is a last resort action and is not considered conservative at all, except in regards to conserving your life. This is a completely invasive treatment.

So which treatment for the finger is the right one? All of them. Each level of treatment in this example is correct for the condition at the time. Here at Back to Wellness, P.C. we strongly support getting the treatment a person needs based on the severity of the condition. However you should keep in mind, most things that health care professionals see can be treated conservatively.

Chiropractic spinal manipulation is a safe and effective spine pain treatment. It reduces pain, decreases medication, rapidly advances physical therapy, and requires very few passive forms of treatment, such as bed rest.1

After an extensive study of all currently available care for low back problems, the federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research recommended that low back pain sufferers choose the most conservative care first. It recommended spinal manipulation as the only safe, effective, and drugless form of initial professional treatment for acute low back problems in adults.2

Who Can Benefit From Chiropractic Care? up

Who uses chiropractic care? From children to elderly, men to women, manual laborers to office workers, rich to poor, every type of person can get benefit from chiropractic care.

In 1997, it was estimated that Americans made nearly 192 million visits a year to chiropractors.3 Over 88 million of those visits were to treat back or neck pain.4 In one recent survey, more than 40 percent of patients receiving chiropractic care were being treated for back or low back problems.5 More than half of those surveyed said that their symptoms were chronic.

Chiropractors can adjust children? Yes, children can benefit from chiropractic care. Children are very physically active and experience many types of falls and blows from activities of daily living as well as from participating in sports. Injuries such as these may cause many symptoms including back and neck pain, stiffness, soreness, or discomfort. Chiropractic care is always adapted to the individual patient. It is a highly skilled treatment, and in the case of children, very gentle. The single most physically traumatic thing we experience in life is birth. Children can be and have been adjusted just after birth. This helps with a wide variety of childhood ailments. Some chiropractors take additional training to become specialized in pediatric chiropractic care.

Used primarily by chiropractors for the last century, spinal manipulation has been largely ignored by most others in the health care community until recently. Now, with today's growing emphasis on treatment and cost effectiveness, spinal manipulation is receiving more widespread attention. The continuing recognition and respect for the chiropractic profession in the United States has led to growing support for chiropractic care all over the world.

What Are Some Conditions Chiropractic Can Treat? up
Specific Information about Low Back Pain up

Although chiropractors care for more than just back pain, many patients visit chiropractors looking for relief from this pervasive condition. In the general US population in 1992, $49.2 billion was spent on back-pain-related disability, accounting for the largest single proportion (34%) of all occupation-related injury costs in that year. To put this into perspective, this amount falls between the amount spent treating and compensating AIDS ($30.0 billion), and Alzheimer's ($67.3 billion), and is about a third of the total costs of circulatory and heart disease ($164.3 billion). 80% of these costs are consumed by the 10% of the back pain cases where disability persists longer than six weeks.

Interesting facts about back pain:
Specific Information about Neck Pain and Headache up

Two things almost everyone experiences in life are neck pain and headache.

Interesting facts about neck pain and headache:

Chiropractic care can help with headaches of all kinds. A research study published in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, found that migraine headache sufferers, many with neck pain, who were treated by a chiropractor showed a significant decrease in migraine frequency, duration, and disability. The study also found that most participants no longer felt a need to use medication. A total of 94% of the study's participants had significantly decreased or eliminated neck pain after treatment.

What Causes Things in My Back to "Go Out"? up

The back is a complicated structure of bones, joints, ligaments, and muscles. You can sprain ligaments, strain muscles, rupture disks, and irritate joints, all of which can lead to back pain. While sports injuries or accidents can cause back pain, sometimes the simplest of movements, such as picking up a pencil from the floor, can have painful results. In addition, arthritis, poor posture, and obesity 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.

Tissue injury can be caused by a single traumatic event, such as improper lifting of a heavy object, or through repetitive stresses, such as sitting in an awkward position with poor spinal posture for an extended period of time. In either case, injured tissues undergo physical and chemical changes that can cause inflammation, pain, and diminished function for the sufferer. Manipulation, or adjustment of the affected joint and tissues, restores mobility, thereby alleviating pain and muscle tightness, and allowing tissues to heal.

Research That Supports Getting Chiropractic Care up
General Research Supporting Chiropractic Care

A particularly significant study of chiropractic was conducted between 1978-1980 by the New Zealand Commission of Inquiry. In its 377-page report to the House of Representatives, the Commission called its study "probably the most comprehensive and detailed independent examination of chiropractic ever undertaken in any country." The Commission entered the inquiry with "the general impression ... shared by many in the community: that chiropractic was an unscientific cult, not to be compared with orthodox medical or paramedical services." By the end of the inquiry, the commission reported itself "irresistibly and with complete unanimity drawn to the conclusion that modern chiropractic is a soundly-based and valuable branch of health care in a specialized area..." Conclusions of the Commission's report, based on investigations in New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, stated:

  • Spinal manual therapy in the hands of a registered chiropractor is safe.
  • Spinal manual therapy can be effective in relieving musculoskeletal symptoms such as back pain, and other symptoms known to respond to such therapy, such as migraine.
  • Chiropractors are the only health practitioners who are necessarily equipped by their education and training to carry out spinal manual therapy.
  • In the public interest and in the interests of patients, there must be no impediment to full professional cooperation between chiropractors and medical practitioners.

"Chiropractic care is a cost-effective alternative to the management of neuromusculoskeletal conditions. It is also safer, increasingly accepted by the public as reflected in the growing utilization and high patient retention rates and there is much and repeated evidence that patients prefer chiropractic over other forms of care for the more common musculoskeletal conditions. The integration of chiropractic into the health care system should serve to reduce health care costs, improve accessibility to needed care, and improve health outcomes. There is an extensive body of literature demonstrating that chiropractic care for NMS disorders is effective though there (are) studies that question or dispute this finding. Suffice to say that there is not nearly as much nor as convincing evidence for the effectiveness of medical management of these conditions. Additionally, there is a strong and compelling consensus that chiropractic is safer, and patient satisfaction is higher than for other professions." Economic Case for the Integration of Chiropractic Services into the Health Care System", by Pran Manga, Ph.D., University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

In 2001, Media General Research conducted a national survey and discovered that most consumers rely on chiropractic care as the number one natural, non-drug choice for most pain and injuries.

23% of those surveyed said that if they had experienced an injury to their neck or back that they would go seek out a chiropractor for help. 7% of those surveyed said they would use physical therapy.

Research Showing the Effectiveness and Safety of Chiropractic Care

In 1990, a detailed study on low back pain was published in the British Medical Journal, vol. 300, p 1431. It compared chiropractic with hospital outpatient treatment for managing low back pain. It demonstrated that chiropractic was the more effective of the two. A follow-up study in 1995 confirmed this conclusion, reporting that 29% of those surveyed had more improvement with chiropractic care over hospital treatment, BMJ, vol. 311, p 349.

In 1997, at the World Chiropractic Congress in Tokyo, Danish researchers presented results showing that chiropractic reduced the duration of headaches by 69% (compared with 37% for massage) and their intensity by 36% (compared with 17% for massage). It also reduced the number of painkillers needed by 36%.

A Dutch study shows that for shoulder pain arising from disorders of the spine or upper ribs, chiropractic manipulation has very positive effects (BMJ, vol 314, p 1320).

A 1994 study published by the U.S. Agency for Health Care Policy and Research and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services endorses spinal manipulation for acute low back pain in adults in its Clinical Practice Guideline, #14. An independent multidisciplinary panel of private sector clinicians and other experts convened and developed specific statements on appropriate health care of acute low back problems in adults. It was stated that relief of discomfort (low back pain) can be accomplished most safely with spinal manipulation, and/or nonprescription medication.

Following a 1993 study, researchers J. David Cassidy, DC, Haymo Thiel, DC, M.S., and W. Kirkaldy-Willis, M.D., of the Back Pain Clinic at the Royal University Hospital in Saskatchewan concluded that "the treatment of lumbar intervertebral disk herniation by side posture manipulation is both safe and effective."

A 1978 study conducted by J.S. Wight, DC , and reported in the ACA Journal of Chiropractic, indicated that 74.6% of patients with recurring headaches, including migraines, were either cured or experienced reduced headache symptomatology after receiving chiropractic manipulation. Note: We do not endorse the use of the word cure in this research. To cure in our eyes means that you would never have a headache again and that is not something we agree with.

A study conducted by T.W. Meade, MD reported in the June 2, 1990, British Medical Journal concluded after two years of patient monitoring, "for patients with low-back pain in whom manipulation is not contraindicated, chiropractic almost certainly confers worthwhile, long-term benefit in comparison with hospital outpatient management."

In 1985 the University of Saskatchewan conducted a study of 283 patients "who had not responded to previous conservative or operative treatment" and who were initially classified as totally disabled. The study revealed that "81% ... became symptom free or achieved a state of mild intermittent pain with no work restrictions" after daily spinal manipulations were administered. Note: This frequent use of care is very rare and only used in the most extreme of cases.

Further validation of chiropractic care evolved from an antitrust suit which was filed by four members of the chiropractic profession against the American Medical Association and a number of other health care organizations in the U.S. (Wilk et al v. AMA et al, 1990). Following 11 years of litigation, a federal appellate court judge upheld a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Susan Getzendanner that the AMA had engaged in a "lengthy, systematic, successful, and unlawful boycott" designed to restrict cooperation between MDs and chiropractors in order to eliminate the profession of chiropractic as a competitor in the U.S. health care system. Judge Getzendanner rejected the AMA's patient care defense, and cited scientific studies which implied that "chiropractic care was twice as effective as medical care in relieving many painful conditions of the neck and back as well as related musculoskeletal problems." Since the court's findings and conclusions were released, an increasing number of medical doctors, hospitals, and health care organizations in the U.S. have begun to include the services of chiropractors. Note: Please note we do not include this reference to point out or engender discord between chiropractors and other health care professionals but to give another example of the effectiveness of chiropractic care. We are very pleased with the relationships with other health care professionals that we have had the privilege to deal with.

Research Showing the Cost Effectiveness of Chiropractic Care

"Chiropractic care appeared relatively cost-effective for the treatment of chronic low-back pain. Chiropractic and medical care performed comparably for acute patients. Practice-based clinical outcomes were consistent with systematic reviews of spinal manipulative efficacy: manipulation-based therapy is at least as good as and, in some cases, better than other therapeusis." - Haas et al (2005), Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics

A 1988 study of 10,652 Florida workers' compensation cases was conducted by Steve Wolk, Ph.D. , and reported by the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research. It was concluded that "a claimant with a back-related injury, when initially treated by a chiropractor versus a medical doctor, is less likely to become temporarily disabled, or if disabled, remains disabled for a shorter period of time; and claimants treated by medical doctors were hospitalized at a much higher rate than claimants treated by chiropractors.

A workers' compensation study conducted in Utah by Kelly B. Jarvis, D.C., Reed B. Phillips, DC, Ph.D., and Elliot K. Morris, JD, MBA, compared the cost of chiropractic care to the costs of medical care for conditions with identical diagnostic codes. Results were reported in the August 1991 Journal of Occupational Medicine. The study indicated that costs were significantly higher for medical claims than for chiropractic claims; in addition, the number of work days lost was nearly ten times higher for those who received medical care instead of chiropractic care.

A 1992 article in the Journal of Family Practice reported a study by DC Cherkin, Ph.D., which compared patients of family physicians and of chiropractors. The article stated "the number of days of disability for patients seen by family physicians was significantly higher (mean 39.7) than for patients managed by chiropractors (mean 10.8)." A related editorial in the same issue referred to risks of complications from lumbar manipulation as being "very low".

A study by Miron Stano, Ph.D., reported in the June 1993 Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics involved 395,641 patients with neuromusculoskeletal conditions. Results over a two-year period showed that patients who received chiropractic care incurred significantly lower health care costs than did patients treated solely by medical or osteopathic physicians.

A 1992 study conducted by L.G. Schifrin, Ph.D., provided an economic assessment of mandated health insurance coverage for chiropractic treatment within the Commonwealth of Virginia. As reported by the College of William and Mary, and the Medical College of Virginia, the study indicated that chiropractic provides therapeutic benefits at economical costs. The report also recommended that chiropractic be a widely available form of health care.

A 1992 review of data from over 2,000,000 users of chiropractic care in the U.S., reported in the Journal of American Health Policy, stated that "chiropractic users tend to have substantially lower total health care costs," and "chiropractic care reduces the use of both physician and hospital care."

Research Showing Patient Satisfaction with Chiropractic Care

"Chiropractic patients were found to be more satisfied with their back care providers after four weeks of treatment than were medical patients. Results from observational studies suggested that back pain patients are more satisfied with chiropractic care than with medical care. Additionally, studies conclude that patients are more satisfied with chiropractic care than they were with physical therapy after six weeks." - Hertzman-Miller et al (2002), American Journal of Public Health

"Chiropractic is the largest, most regulated, and best recognized of the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) professions. CAM patient surveys show that chiropractors are used more often than any other alternative provider group and patient satisfaction with chiropractic care is very high. There is steadily increasing patient use of chiropractic in the United States, which has tripled in the past two decades." - Meeker, Haldeman (2002), Annals of Internal Medicine

In 1989, a survey administered by Daniel C. Cherkin, Ph.D., and Frederick A. MacCornack, Ph.D., concluded that patients receiving care from health maintenance organizations (HMOs) within the state of Washington were three times as likely to report satisfaction with care from chiropractors as they were with care from other physicians. The patients were also more likely to believe that their chiropractor was concerned about them.

A 1991 demographic poll conducted by the Gallup Organization revealed that 90% of chiropractic patients felt their treatment was effective; more than 80% were satisfied with that treatment; and nearly 75% felt most of their expectations had been met during their chiropractic visits.

References: up
  1. Bigos S, Bowyer O, Braen G, et al. Acute Low Back Problems in Adults. Clinical Practice Guideline No.14. AHCPR Publication No. 95-0642. Rockville, MD: Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Public Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, December, 1994.
  2. Jensen M, Brant-Zawadzki M, Obuchowski N, et al. Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Lumbar Spine in People Without Back Pain. N Engl J Med 1994; 331: 69-116.
  3. Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, Ettner SL, et al. Trends in alternative medicine use in the United States, 1990-1997: results of a follow-up national survey. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998;280(18):1569-1575.
  4. Wolsko PM, Eisenberg DM, Davis RB, et al. Patterns and perceptions of care for treatment of back and neck pain: results of a national survey. Spine. 2003;28(3):292-297.
  5. Coulter ID, Hurwitz EL, Adams AH, et al. Patients using chiropractors in North America: who are they, and why are they in chiropractic care? Spine. 2002;27(3):291-296.
  6. Vickers A, Zollman C. ABC of complementary medicine. The manipulative therapies: osteopathy and chiropractic. BMJ. 1999;319(7218):1176-1179
  7. Time to recognize value of chiropractic care? Science and patient satisfaction surveys cite usefulness of spinal manipulation. Orthopedics Today 2003 Feb; 23(2):14-15.
  8. Vallfors B. Acute, Subacute and Chronic Low Back Pain: Clinical Symptoms, Absenteeism and Working Environment. Scan J Rehab Med Suppl 1985; 11: 1-98
  9. This total represents only the more readily identifiable costs for medical care, workers compensation payments, and time lost from work. It does not include costs associated with lost personal income due to acquired physical limitation resulting from a back problem and lost employer productivity due to employee medical absence. In Project Briefs: Back Pain Patient Outcomes Assessment Team (BOAT). In MEDTEP Update, Vol. 1 Issue 1, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Rockville, MD, Summer 1994.
  10. Atlas SJ, Nardin RA. Evaluation and treatment of low back pain: an evidence-based approach to clinical care. Muscle and Nerve. 2003;27(3):265-284
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