Adjust Your Thinking: Chiropractic First For Low Back Pain

Recently, I was doing some research on low back pain and common treatments for the condition.  What struck me as peculiar was how difficult it was to find accurate information on chiropractic care in the medical literature.  Having seen thousands of patients with back pain over the years and watching the vast majority of them improve with spinal adjusting, it seems to me to be inexcusable that chiropractic care is not the number one consideration when discussing caring for patients with back pain.

My search was rife with cautions and contraindications, most of which were inaccurate to say the least, and very few medical sites even referenced chiropractic spinal adjusting at all as a valid treatment for back pain.  Sure they’ll list about every other form of medical procedure from drugs to surgery, rarely mentioning known complications to those treatments, but chiropractic care is noticeably absent, ironic considering the success rate and safety record of chiropractic care versus traditional treatments for this condition.

According to WebMD, one of the foremost sources of health information on the internet, over 22 million Americans seek chiropractic care annually and over a third of those patients are seeking care for back pain.   Additionally, research confirms that chiropractic care is effective for the treatment of back pain, neck pain, and headaches.  Moreover, WebMD also reports that the satisfaction rate for patients seeking care in a chiropractic office is 95%.

So, why does the mainstream medical establishment still apparently have difficulty embracing chiropractic care as an effective valid option for patients with back pain?  I have spoken with many medical physicians over the years and their opinions are generally across the board.  Most, I have observed, really have no idea about how chiropractic works, why it is effective, or even what happens in a chiropractic office.  Essentially, I’ve inferred that they just think chiropractors ‘crack backs’ and the patient gets better either by magic or would have improved anyways.

Part of the reason for this misconception and poor understanding of the nature of spinal adjusting is that so many doctors, in my experience, have ever even been to a chiropractor.  Worse, with so much antiquated and disinformation prevalent from “respected” sources, it’s tough to sum up chiropractic care from a medical literature perspective.  I’ve seen, though, that those few medical doctors we’ve worked with in our office have a completely different opinion of chiropractic care once they become a patient.

When researching treatment options for low back pain, options such as lifestyle modification, physical therapy, oral medication, or even surgery are very common in searches.  Too often, unfortunately, chiropractic care is omitted altogether, though it may arguably be the most effective method of addressing the cause of the pain, rather than just covering the symptoms or offering temporary relief.  Even the National Institute of Health refers only briefly to ‘spinal manipulation’ and does not use the term ‘chiropractic’ at all when suggesting treatment options for back pain.  This is despite the fact that a 1992 government sponsored study by the RAND organization found chiropractic care to be more effective and less costly than medical care for the treatment of acute back pain.

Deepak Chopra, M.D. has said “instead of thinking outside of the box, get rid of the box.”  For too long, options for the treatment of back pain have been confined to limited ‘box thinking.’  Chiropractic care has been an established healthcare choice for over a century and its effectiveness for treating low back pain is well documented in the peer review literature.

Sites that offer back pain relief suggestions should be recommending chiropractic care as a first choice, especially given its effectiveness rate and safety when compared to medical care for comparable conditions.  Instead of burying ‘spinal manipulation’ in the second half of an article on back pain, the article should be saying, “If you have back pain, see a chiropractor first!”

It’s time to toss out the box that traditional methods are the only ‘solution’ for back pain.  Medication, for one, does nothing to address the cause of the pain and merely offers symptom relief.  It completely ignores the fact that pain occurs for a reason.  Surgery may directly address the cause of the back pain but comes with high procedural risk due to its invasiveness and relatively high potential for failure, not to mention limited options for care post-surgery, should the procedure fail.

Chiropractic care has a proven track record of safety and high effectiveness for low back pain.  Risk of complication from adjusting is also very low.  So, why then is chiropractic not the first choice in all instances for mild to moderate back pain?  The only answer can be fear.  Fear that more patients may choose chiropractic care over traditional medical care for one of the most common ailments in a doctor’s office.  Fear that patients may take fewer pharmaceuticals.  Fear that patients may actually get well and may not need expensive, invasive procedures.  Fear that maybe medicine doesn’t have all the answers.

There is a history of discrimination against chiropractors that goes back 100 years.  As recently as just a half century ago, chiropractors were still being jailed for “practicing medicine without a license.”  This changed in the 80’s, though.  In 1988 the American Medical Association was sued in a case many refer to as Wilk vs. AMA in which the AMA was found to be guilty of violating the Sherman Antitrust Act, essentially conspiring to restrain chiropractic care and guilty of working to prevent medical physician referral to chiropractors.  It also found the AMA guilty of preventing chiropractors from obtaining access to hospital diagnostic procedures and staff.  The effects of this discrimination against chiropractic however, are still being felt today.  While chiropractic care is certainly becoming more mainstream, it still appears as though many medical sites regard chiropractic care as a fringe alternative treatment method.

Fortunately, the art and science of chiropractic has moved ahead by laps and bounds despite the lack of recognition in medical circles.  Most insurance companies now cover chiropractic care and even Medicare will cover spinal adjusting.  An important question is, when will medicine get with the times?  With more and more people choosing alternative medicine every day, chiropractic care has become the wave of the future.

I once saw a quote that said that “research is proving every day what chiropractors have been saying for a hundred years.”  It’s so true.  Chiropractic care is a method whose time has come.  Is it a panacea for back pain?  Not by any means.  But chiropractors should be the gatekeepers for back pain, limiting access to more invasive medical interventions only if conservative care fails.  Who knows how many spines we may save, and how much of a difference we might make in the lifestyle and health of a patient if we adopt this approach?