Do you want to understand the key to excellent back pain relief? It's not resting on your couch, aching with pain while you wait for it to improve. It's not just doing your daily exercise therapy and icing. So what is it?
Physical therapies are fantastic for musculoskeletal injury, but to get the entire advantages of the stretching and strengthening exercises you have to to get treatment that corrects misalignments in the muscles plus the spine. That's where your Prescott, AZ chiropractor, Dr. Weary, can help. If you've hurt your back, it is more than likely that you have a vertebra or two out-of-place. Lengthening and strengthening your back muscles alone won't be adequate to remedy the misaligned vertebrae. One recent study explains why blending physical therapy with chiropractic is so useful.
Investigators studied 49 patients with chronic back pain who were randomly assigned to receive either manual therapy or sham (placebo) treatment. Manual therapies included treatments frequently employed by Dr. Weary, such as spinal adjustments and spinal mobilization. Directly after treatment, patients did exercises like stretches, muscle and motor control exercises, mobility exercises, and conditioning. The patients were treated eight times, with an assessment after three and six months.
Directly after treatment, patients receiving manual therapy plus exercise experienced greater reductions in pain compared to the placebo plus exercise group. The benefit seen in the treatment room was sustained at the three and six-month follow-up visits. The manual therapy patients had lower disability and a pattern of reduced pain scores compared to the placebo group. These findings suggest that an integrated treatment of chiropractic and exercise could be better than exercise therapy alone for back aches.
So if you'd prefer complete relief of back pain, pick up the phone and give our office in Prescott, AZ a call. After a few appointments with Dr. Weary, you'll wonder why you didn't call earlier!
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.