Do you want to understand the trick to excellent back pain relief? It's not lying on your couch, aching with pain while you wait for it improve. It's not just doing your daily physical therapy and icing. So what is it?

Physical therapies are fantastic for musculoskeletal injury, but to get the total benefits of those stretching and strengthening exercises you need to to get treatment that corrects misalignment in the muscles plus the spine. That's where your Naperville, IL chiropractic doctor, Dr. Bendiks, comes in. If you have hurt your back, it is likely that you have a vertebra or two out-of-place. Lengthening and strengthening your back muscles alone won't be sufficient to put the vertebrae back into place. Recent research explains why blending physical therapy with chiropractic is so advantageous.

Investigators studied 49 men and women with chronic back pain who were randomly assigned to get either manual therapy or sham treatment. Manual therapies consisted of techniques commonly employed by your Naperville, IL chiropractor, like chiropractic adjustments and chiropractic mobilization. Immediately after treatment, patients did exercises like stretches, muscle and motor control workouts, mobility workouts, and conditioning. The clients were given eight sessions, with an assessment after three and six months.

Instantly after treatment, patients receiving manual therapy plus exercise experienced bigger reductions in pain compared to  the sham plus exercise group. The advantage seen in the treatment room was sustained at the three and six-month follow-up sessions. The manual therapy clients had reduced disability and a pattern of lower pain scores compared to the sham group. These results indicate that a integrated treatment of chiropractic and exercise could be better than exercise therapy alone for back problems.

So if you want comprehensive relief of back pain, pick up the phone and give our office in Naperville, IL a call. After a few  appointments with Dr. Bendiks, you'll wonder why you didn't call earlier!

Reference

Balthazard P, et al. Manual therapy followed by specific active exercises versus a placebo followed by specific active exercises on the improvement of functional disability in patients with chronic non specific low back pain: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders 2012; 13: 162. doi:10.1186/1471-2474-13-162.

Post on