A frequent complaint of patients here at our Springfield chiropractic is low back pain. Low back pain is something that most everyone experiences at one point in life. 80% of adults have experienced some sort of low back pain in their life, and it is a main cause of job related disability and missed work days. The National Institutes of Health says that over 35% of adults have experienced a recent episode of low back pain.
Both men and women are affected the same by low back pain. Low back pain can happen from a certain incident like over lifting, or can develop over time. Having a sedentary lifestyle during the week, like a desk job, but then being very active during the weekend can be another cause for low back pain.
Despite this, Springfield has some good news for you. About 80% of acute back pain can be cured with self care or short term management. Only 20% of people with acute lbp will continue to have symptoms for longer than a year. With this being said, what can be done to manage chronic low back pain and prevent disability?
A study looked at spinal manipulative therapy to determine if it works to manage chronic low back pain (aka pain that happens for longer than six months). Sixty patients were randomly assigned to groups. Group one received 12 treatments of sham therapy for one month, group 2 received 12 treatments of therapy for one month with no treatment after, and group three received 12 treatments for a month and then followed up with the therapy twice a month for the next 9 months.
The researchers found that groups two and three had much lower pain and disability scores than that of group one. The third group received more improvement when talking about pain and disability at the final ten month evaluation. Group two’s scores returned to where their scores were pre treatment, because they had stopped receiving it.
In short, our Springfield chiropractor wants you to know spinal manipulative therapy works for chronic non specific low back pain, but if you want to keep up the pain free lifestyle, we suggest you continue getting care regularly. So for low back pain in Springfield, contact us and let us help you get out of pain and stay out of pain. Call us today (908) 325 – 3000
