Having an acute low back attack?
Try chiropractic.
That’s the word from the U.S. government in a report reverberating throughout the healing arts community.

 

In compiling the report, a 23-member panel (which included medical physicians) reviewed nearly 4,000 back studies before reaching its conclusions and preparing federal guidelines for treatment of acute low back pain – guidelines which are expected to be seen as the standard of care.

 

CHIROPRACTIC FOR BACK PAIN 
The report, issued by the federal Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, clearly va1idates chiropractic’s method of spinal manipulation while rebuffing several conventional medical treatments for low back pain.

 

The importance of this government report cannot be overemphasized because back pain, second only to the common cold, is a leading reason people go to doctors. In fact, some 52 million persons each year suffer low back pain agony and 80 percent of the population will have at least one bout with back pain before the age of fifty.

 

BACK PAIN’S HUGE COST
Back pain’s estimated cost – including lost work productivity – is as high as $50 billion each year. In a typical year at least $20 billion goes for direct medical care of back pain, but one-third of that amount – about $7 billion – is spent for services that do little to help patients, the report says.

 

These new back pain treatment guidelines mark the first time the United States government has taken a pro-chiropractic position, while at the same time downgrading much of the usual medical treatments and procedures for back pain.

 

A main conclusion of the report says spinal manipulation can be helpful for patients with acute low back problems, and that 94 percent of all spinal manipulations are performed by chiropractic doctors.

 

If the condition is mild or moderate, low stress exercise may also be indicated. Later, conditioning exercises for the trunk muscles may be appropriate.

 

MANY MEDICAL TREATMENTS NEGATED 
The report negated such conventional back pain treatments as extended bed rest, muscle relaxants, and surgery. Bed rest for more than four days can weaken and decondition muscles and bones and delay recovery, the report said. And since only about one percent of back pain cases benefit from surgery, it is contraindicated during the first three months of symptoms unless there is a serious problem such as a fracture or underlying disease process.

 

Conclusions of the report do not come as a surprise to chiropractic doctors and their patients who already know from experience (and many other research reports) that chiropractic works. But it comes as somewhat of a shock to some members of the medical establishment, though many medica1 doctors routinely refer low back patients to chiropractic doctors and themselves take chiropractic treatments for some of their own ailments.

 

TRY CHIROPRACTIC FIRST 
Naturally chiropractic doctors welcome this report. Backed up by nearly 4,000 back studies, it firmly establishes chiropractic as a primary treatment for acute low back pain.

 

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