Your Pain Is Your Friend?
Pain is your body’s way of signaling to you that something needs your attention.
Think of it as your body saying ‘Pay Attention!’ When a problem occurs in our body, whether due to stress, spinal misalignment, or degenerative changes, our body uses pain as a signal for us to pay attention and take action.
But when the pain subsides, isn’t the problem corrected?
Many are surprised to find out that the answer is ‘no.’ Just because your pain eventually goes away doesn’t mean the problem has been corrected. Pain is like a bad party guest- it’s the last to show up and the first to leave.
In fact, studies have shown that when it comes to joint problems, your body can compensate for up to 80% loss of joint function before you start experiencing symptoms. That means you often don’t even start to feel pain until you have just 20% of a joint’s function remaining.
Chiropractic adjustments work to provide pain relief while also correcting the underlying problem.
You or someone you know may have visited a medical doctor in the past with neck or back pain. Perhaps an injection or prescription anti-inflammatories or painkillers were recommended. Which may have helped temporarily, but what happened next? For many people their pain returns in a matter of days or weeks. Why? Because the cause of the pain wasn’t corrected.
How can you correct the underlying problem that’s causing your pain?
If you’re receiving chiropractic adjustments as part of your care, then you already know the answer.
Chiropractic addresses the mechanical and neural aspects of the underlying cause of the pain. Recent research from JMPT found that low back pain patients who receive chiropractic care have a 60% decrease in pain, which was nearly 10% MORE relief that those who received corticosteroid injections or medication. It’s excellent pain relief while also correcting its cause – all with a chiropractic adjustment.
Next Steps
If you or someone you know is dealing with pain, make sure to remember that the science says that chiropractic adjustments will result in a greater outcome than an injection or medication alone.
Sources:
Spinal Manipulation Postepidural Injection for Lumbar and Cervical Radiculopathy: A Retrospective Case Series. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics. September 2004. Volume 27. Number 7
Symptomatic MRI-Confirmed Lumbar Disk Herniation Patients: A Comparative Effectiveness Prospective Observational Study of 2 Age- and Sex-Matched Cohorts Treated with Either High-Velocity, Low Amplitude Spinal Manipulative Therapy or Imaging-Guided Lumbar Nerve Root Injections. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, 2013 May; 36(4):218-25
A Retrospective Analysis of Vertebral Body Fractures Following Epidural Steroid Injections. The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery, Volume 95, Issue 11 (2013, Jun 05;95(11):961-964)
