Living with chronic back pain is more common than we might think. Statistics suggest that a little over 1 in 10 people grapple with persistent back pain. The tricky part? When it strikes, there often isn’t a clear culprit, making it a challenge for healthcare providers to manage aside from providing pain relief medication while waiting for test results. However, chiropractic treatment has been gathering popularity as a potential therapy in the pain management arena. But what does the evidence say about it?
The Landscape of Back Pain
Before diving into solutions, let’s understand the lay of the land. Back pain is widespread, affecting millions globally. Unfortunately, it often leaves us without a specific cause, leading to the term “non-specific.” Due to this, healthcare providers wouldn’t able to immediately suggest a specific treatment until they understand more about what’s causing the pain. This is where chiropractic treatment could become a consideration.
Chiropractic Treatment: A Potential Game-Changer?
Chiropractic treatment focuses on spinal manipulation, or spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) a hands-on approach to address back and neck pain (often accompanied by a shockingly audible, but admittedly satisfying sound). It’s gained attention for potentially being as effective as other recommended therapies, one study showed that it can offer relief for spine pain that persists beyond the typical 3-month mark.
But here’s the catch: More research is needed. While chiropractic treatment shows promise, there is still a lingering uncertainty, especially when taking into consideration the potential harm it can cause, as with every other therapy. There’s just not enough evidence to confidently say that chiropractic treatment is more or as effective as current recommended treatment. It can help as much as standard care (ie, medication, home exercise, and advice); but the effects are still not consistent across the board.
Temporary Relief: Better Than Nothing (or a Placebo)
A meta-analysis suggests that SMT aligns with recommended therapies, providing a comparable level of relief. The meta-analysis also found that SMT produced greater short-term improvement in function compared with non-recommended interventions, which included light soft tissue massages and “sham” (placebo) SMT (ie, simulating SMT by hands-on touch and movements but designed not to deliver a therapeutic effect). One could also consider SMT as an adjuvant to recommended treatment as there doesn’t appear to be a negative effect when combining SMT with pharmacotherapy.
The twist: It seems SMT could be more effective than a regular massage, but there is still a possibility that you could also end up with some short-term muscle soreness in place of the initial back pain. Though, maybe some people do find pleasure in experiencing that kind of pain (muscle soreness).
So, What’s the Verdict?
Back pain remains a puzzle. Chiropractic treatment and SMT could potentially fit as pieces to that puzzle, but the full picture is generally still a blur. As with any other treatment, one needs to make careful consideration based on the current available evidence as well as personal preferences. Evidently, chiropractic treatment won’t be considered as a one-size-fits-all answer for back pain any time soon, but at the very least, it’s still an interesting option that’s on the table.
SMT: spinal manipulative therapy
Link to the research paper and meta-analysis:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8915715/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30867144/
References:
Gevers-Montoro C, Provencher B, Descarreaux M, Ortega de Mues A, Piché M. Clinical Effectiveness and Efficacy of Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation for Spine Pain. Front Pain Res (Lausanne). 2021;2:765921. Published 2021 Oct 25. doi:10.3389/fpain.2021.765921
Rubinstein SM, de Zoete A, van Middelkoop M, Assendelft WJJ, de Boer MR, van Tulder MW. Benefits and harms of spinal manipulative therapy for the treatment of chronic low back pain: systematic review and meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials. BMJ. 2019;364:l689. Published 2019 Mar 13. doi:10.1136/bmj.l689
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