We see quite a few people with back pain in our Otown office, and TJ Delorie has helped a lot of them get relief with chiropractic care. At the same time, recovering from back pain doesn't necessarily mean having to make a choice between chiropractic care and medical treatment, as many people utilize both types of care with great success.
Study Confirms Chiropractic and Medical Care Work Together
In a report published by the medical journal Spine experts1 looked at a group of active-duty military personnel between the ages of 18 and 35 who claimed both acute pain and limited function due to back pain. Some of the test subjects engaged in treatment via standard medical therapy, while the remainder received chiropractic adjustments together with standard medical care, as researchers wanted to see which patients fared better.
The authors discovered that the patients who got standard medical care combined with chiropractic care scored "significantly better" than the patients who got medical care alone; 73 percent reported positive benefits in comparison to just 17% of the medical treatment only group who indicated the same amount of improvement. This was true regarding both pain and level of function at two and four weeks.
Accordingly, incorporating these two forms of care can greatly benefit you--the patient--offering advantages when compared to medical care alone. However, while chiropractic and medicine can work alongside each other, chiropractic offers some unique strengths over medical therapy.
Where Chiropractic Pulls Ahead
Although it might seem as if each approach plays a 50/50 role, there is one significant benefit that chiropractic care has over medical care and that is in patient satisfaction. In fact, a piece of research conducted at UCLA2 that was published in the American Journal of Public Health found that, on average, chiropractic patients are generally more satisfied with their recovery than patients undergoing medical care.
According to the researchers, the main factors that patients preferred over medical treatment were "self-care advice and explanation of treatment." This isn't unexpected, as chiropractors typically spend much more time advising their patients as to how they can improve their health on their own, as well as discussing more thoroughly what to expect from chiropractic care.
Chiropractic Offers a Holistic Approach
Certainly, the strategies associated with chiropractic are quite different than those provided with medical treatment, but a large amount of the difference is the fact that chiropractic is a holistic approach to health and well-being. In contrast to focusing on just relieving the symptoms, chiropractic means searching for the root cause of your pain, which often means greater improvement as you are tackling the problem at its source.
Furthermore, while medication is sometimes helpful for managing certain conditions, many health issues respond well to natural forms of treatment such as chiropractic. This means fewer negative responses to drugs and longer-lasting results.
You don't have to struggle with back pain or other health issues. Give our Otown office a call today at 724-123-1234. We'll work to help you get and continue to be free from back pain.
References
- Goertz CM, Long CR, Hondras MA, Petri R, Delgado R, Lawrence DJ, Owens EF, Meeker WC. Adding chiropractic manipulative therapy to standard medical care for patients with acute low back pain: results of a pragmatic randomized comparative effectiveness study. Spine 2013;38(8):627-634.
- Hertzman-Miller RP1, Morgenstern H, Hurwitz EL, Yu F, Adams AH, Harber P, Kominski GF. Comparing the satisfaction of low back pain patients randomized to receive medical or chiropractic care: results from the UCLA low-back pain study. American Journal of Public Health 2002;92(10):1628-1633.