AMA Study Concludes Chiropractic Works for Low Back Pain

The American Medical Association has a long history of suppressing chiropractic care. Now its new study concludes that chiropractic works for low back pain.

The American Medical Association Finally Says It: Chiropractic Is Effective for Low Back Pain!

Knowing something is true, believing in it, and having hard evidence are very different things. Chiropractors have practiced the art and science of chiropractic care to treat low back pain and other conditions for well over 100 years. We know what we do is safe, effective, and superior to many other forms of healthcare.

Now though, we finally have some long-overdue validation: after years suppressing the chiropractic profession, the American Medical Association has published a study concluding that chiropractic effectively treats low back pain.

Chiropractors Treat Low Back Pain and See Results

During our treatment programs, we watch our patients improve their ability to sit, drive, stand, walk, bend, and turn. That translates into an improved quality of life. Sleeping through the night, getting up in the morning without trouble, being able to drive and sit for prolonged periods of time, being able to work a full day, enjoying a movie or dinner out with friends, improved relationships—these are all ways your life improves when your chronic pain is treated.

Pain affects your work life, social life, married life, relationships, exercise tolerance, and more. When you are in pain, you try to do activities that DO NOT increase the pain. For a lot of us that means a more sedentary lifestyle. If we move and exercise less, that can set off a downward spiral that will affect every aspect of our physical and mental well-being.

Less activity and exercise leads to weaker muscles, core weakness, decreased endurance, and deteriorating balance. Less activity is not good for your heart, circulation, lungs, brain, bones, or blood sugar control.

Let’s say a patient hurts their back—for example, maybe they have sciatica, a disc herniation, spinal stenosis, back and leg pain, arthritis, or numerous other conditions. They seek out medical care, are mismanaged by their medical team, and they end up with chronic pain. We know 1 in 7 cases of acute low back pain turn chronic. The patient can’t exercise anymore, they walk less, and what happens?

They become “deconditioned,” meaning they get really out of shape. Muscles get weaker, balance deteriorates, they gain body fat, their blood pressure goes up, their blood sugar goes up (putting them at risk of diabetes), they become a greater fall risk, bones become weaker (putting them at higher risk of a fracture), and often they become depressed.

All from a back injury that they thought would just “go away.”

This is why we take back and neck pain so seriously. Pain can ruin your life.

There have been positive studies on the safety, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness of chiropractic care for decades. The medical community has largely ignored these studies. Why? Good question. The bottom line is, we as physicians want to do the best we can for our patients, and if that means referring to another provider then that’s what we do, as all doctors should do.

The American Medical Association Finally Comes Around

On September 25, 1987, Judge Getzendanner issued her opinion that the AMA had violated Section 1 of the Sherman Act, and that it had engaged in an unlawful conspiracy in restraint of trade “to contain and eliminate the chiropractic profession.” (Wilk v. American Medical Ass’n, 671 F. Supp. 1465, N.D. Ill. 1987).

What that means is the American Medical Association tried to eliminate the profession of chiropractic…and failed big time!

The American Medical Association has one agenda and only one – promote medicine and medical doctors. It would be much too weak of a statement to say the American Medical Association does not like chiropractic. It is much deeper than that: they tried to eliminate an entire profession.

Then on April 11, 2017 something extraordinary happened.

It was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), the “prestigious” journal published by the American Medical Association. Medical Doctors across the country could not believe their eyes!

The Journal of the American Medical Association published an article recommending spinal manipulation for acute low back pain! And since 94% of all spinal manipulation in the United States is performed by chiropractic physicians this is as close as you will get for the Journal of the American Medical Association to recommend chiropractic care. As a matter of fact, it IS a recommendation of chiropractic care, whether the authors come out and say it or not.

The title looks like this:

“Association of Spinal Manipulative Therapy With Clinical Benefit and Harm for Acute Low Back Pain: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis”

The study asked this question:

“Is the use of spinal manipulative therapy in the management of acute (≤6 weeks) low back pain associated with improvements in pain or function?”

They answered the question by:

“Systematically reviewing studies of the effectiveness and harms of SMT (spinal manipulative therapy) for acute (≤6 weeks) low back pain.”

What they came up with was this:

“Among patients with acute low back pain, spinal manipulative therapy was associated with modest improvements in pain and function at up to 6 weeks, with transient minor musculoskeletal harms.”

Translated: spinal manipulation (chiropractic care) works with few side effects!

They reviewed 26 studies. Some of these positive studies have been around for over 20 years but have been buried by the press. Most people have never heard that chiropractic care is safe, effective, will cost you less, and is associated with less adverse outcomes than many medical therapies. How do you keep that a secret? Why would you want to keep that a secret when it could help so many people?

This study received a lot of press. Even Consumer Reports jumped in with an article titled “Spinal Manipulation Can Ease Your Aching Back”.

Now you know, but you may not know a few key statistics:

• Low back pain has a 60% recurrence rate in one year.
• Low back pain has a 94% recurrence rate in 4 years.
• The United States spends an estimated $80-100 Billion a year on low back pain and associated costs. To put that in perspective, we spend only about $684 million per year on breast cancer!

Hoping your low back pain will “just go away” is dangerous.

Consider safe, effective, cost-effective chiropractic care for you and your family. We here at the Algonquin Chiropractic Center have been successfully treating low back pain in Algonquin, IL and the surrounding Chicagoland area for years. We utilize a variety of methods including the cox technic, peripheral neuropathy, orthotics, and more. Give us a call at (847) 854-2000 to set up an appointment today and get back on the path to good health and overall well-being.

Be Well!