Patients often ask how long they must come for chiropractic care. Ultimately, their relief dictates this. For some the end of care is decided together, patient and chiropractor. For others, when the pain is gone, they are gone. The patients make the decision themselves. And when there’s no pain, it seems natural to stop care. Only there may be a special consideration: If back pain is bothersome and keeps you from doing the things you want to do, receiving chiropractic care on a regular schedule (aka “maintenance care”) whether you are hurting or not helps. In a randomized control trial of 319 such patients, maintenance care reduced the number of days with pain in acute episodes and increased the length of pain free days for patients with recurrent and persistent low back pain. (1) Back pain is not usually cured. It’s like a bruise on an apple. It won’t just go away. With back pain, the no-pain period is surely welcome, and continued chiropractic care via a plan set together can only help prevent more and/or more painful back pain episodes. Some patients actually ask for maintenance care after a few episodes of pain. Some set up a schedule right away to avoid starting over. Whichever patient type you are, we are the chiropractic care partner to see!

TIP OF THE MONTH:Exercise Benefits Before Back Surgery and for Non-Specific Low Back Pain

A 16-week study of supervised resistance training with varying low, moderate and high intensity exercise throughout the week benefited patients with persistent non-specific low back pain. How? By improving pain, daily function and disability, energy level, muscle strength, sleep and perception of physical activity as helpful. (2) Those are positive outcomes! Sadly, in the year before back surgery, only 34.8% of back pain patients were prescribed PT, 34.1% had at least one PT visit with exercise, only 14.6% had a minimum of 6 exercise therapy visits. 84.4% got at least one opioid prescription fill with a mean of 6.1 unique fills each. (3) Conservative, non-drug care incorporating spinal manipulation and exercise are worthy pre-back surgery efforts. Your chiropractor is here to do this with you! Listen to this PODCAST with chiropractic back pain specialist, James Cox DC DACBR, developer of the Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management, and a PODCAST with spine surgeon, David Hanscom, MD, on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as they discuss the conservative approach to back pain.

Thank you for trusting us with your chiropractic care!
We look forward to seeing you soon!

References for HEALTHY NEWS – May 2020