The Secret to Successful Back Pain Recovery in Salem, OR

Do you want to know the trick to effective back pain relief? It's not lying on your couch, suffering in pain while you wait for it to go away. It's not just doing your daily physical therapy and icing. So what is it?

Physical therapies are wonderful for musculoskeletal injury, but to get the full benefits of the exercises you have to get care that corrects misalignments in the muscles and the spine. That's where your Salem chiropractor Dr. Michels comes in.

If you've hurt your back, it is more than likely that you have a vertebra or two out-of-place. Stretching and conditioning your back muscles alone won't be enough to fix the misaligned vertebrae. One recent study explains why blending physical therapy with chiropractic is so advantageous.

Researchers studied 49 individuals 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 Salem chiropractor, such as chiropractic adjustments and chiropractic mobilization. Immediately after treatment, patients did exercises like stretching, muscle and motor control workouts, mobility workouts and strengthening. The participants were given eight treatments, with an evaluation after three and six months.

Right after the treatment session, patients receiving manual therapy experienced greater reductions in pain compared to  the control group. This advantage lasted at the three and six-month follow-up visit. The chiropractic participants had lower disability and a trend towards reduced pain scores compared to the sham group. These results suggest that a combined treatment of chiropractic and exercise could be better than exercise therapy alone for back aches.

So if you'd like comprehensive relief of back pain, pick up the phone and give our office in Salem a call. After a few  sessions with Dr. Michels, 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.