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A report published in the July / August 2004 peer-reviewed medical journal, “Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics”, compared the effects of chiropractic care adjustments to muscle relaxants in a group of individuals who have subacute low back pain.

This investigation classified subacute low back pain as being lower back pain (LBP) which has a length of 2 to 12 weeks. This particular investigation noted that in the united states the number of cases of low back pain is considered as high as 75% to 85% of the population to be suffering at some time in his or her’s lives. On a annual time frame, the study observed that around 15% to 20% of the adult population can count on to suffer from LBP in any given 365 days.

During the study, 192 individuals suffering from LBP from 2 to 6 weeks ended up being divided into three groups. One group received Chiropractic manipulations together with placebo medicines. The next group received muscle relaxants with sham (fake) manipulations. The last group was a control group and received both placebo medicine plus the sham (fake) adjustments. Therapy was rendered on the group for a 4 week timeframe with assessments being performed at the 2 week and 4 week marks.

Effects ended up being measured relating to patient reported pain, severity, impairment and depression, as well as measured flexibility along with the patients personal utilization of over-the-counter acetaminophen (Tylenol). The results of this short study showed that for the two major signs of pain and severity, the chiropractic group did better than the other two groups. No significant differences were found with regard to disability, depression, flexibility, or even acetaminophen usage across groups in a study of this short a time frame. All 3 groups exhibited improvement in the areas of depression, disability as well as pharmaceutical usage.

The authors of the study did observe that a longer study could have yielded more variations in recuperation. Even so, in the realm of pain, a principal patient point of interest in subacute LBP conditions, the group that received the chiropractic manipulations faired the best. Their comments were: “Statistically, the chiropractic group responded significantly better than the control group with respect to a decrease in pain scores.”