Is Chiropractic Pseudoscience?
Why Is it that Chiropractors get such a hard time with the medical doctors? I’m not trying to bait any medical doctors or the NHS here, but in my career, it has always been interesting to see the relationship between mainstream medicine and ‘alternative’ healthcare.
Now more than ever the world all over is taking more responsibility for their own health. This has been highlighted in the UK where a free healthcare system is overloaded, and we now cannot rely on this system for outpatient appointments. Emergency care is still the best in the world with our NHS and I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but for wellness care and preventive health for longevity well into old age, the NHS doesn’t have the resources.
This is why the UK population is looking elsewhere to take their health back in to their own hands so that they never need to rely on this system.
Which brings us back around to alternative healthcare like Chiropractic. Chiropractic is relatively young compared to medicine, it was founded in 1895 and has only been around for 120 years. Compared to medicine has been here for centuries, medicine has a huge budget to invest in research and big pharma can supplement this funding. Don’t get me wrong this is great, and you must see the strides we are taking with HIV, MS and diabetes medication to allow people to live full, mobile and independent lives by the advances in this research.
What I’m really referring too is how you can keep yourself healthy and fit well in to your 70’s, 80’s perhaps even 90’s without having to rely on medication.
Therefore, there has been more research into Chiropractic, we have many reports published over the last 20 years with quality clinical evidence suggesting that there is a place for Chiropractic in treating low back pain.
The Bronfort report was the big one for Chiropractors published in 2010 and proved that Chiropractic is effective for low back pain, acute neck pain, headache and cervicogenic dizziness to name a few. You can read it here.
Hedi Haavik is a Chiropractic researcher, and she is proving that Chiropractic has a profound impact on the nervous system. Some of her best work talks about the role of spinal manipulation and the impact it has on sensory processing, motor output, functional performance, and sensorimotor integration. This can lead to greater spatial awareness and help with balance, falls and mobility long term. You can read it here.
Another one of her studies talks about how manipulation affects sensorimotor integration in the prefrontal cortex, meaning that it can affect motor output, so how your limbs move by influencing the frontal part of the brain which can also have a profound impact on pain. Read It here.
What do doctors think about Chiropractors?
Traditionally there has been a lot of reluctance to refer to Chiropractors due to a lack of research, but as you can see there is more funding to back alternative healthcare research due to the demand from patients especially in the UK. It is getting increasingly difficult for medics to ignore the changing tide as their patients are demanding change and looking to take control back and work more preventatively.
Even GP’s are thinking about how they can do more work preventatively with diet and nutrition advice, mental health techniques and exercise advice to get their patients healthier.
If you do know someone who wants more advice, please send them our details. You can send them this assessment as well to diagnose their back pain. It is a great tool to understand where your back pain is coming from, it is free and takes 60 seconds. Click here for assessment
