Research

Chiropractic manipulation results in little or no risk of chest injury

By John Wiens DC|May 16, 2011|Research|

According to new study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics.

Lombard, IL, May 13, 2011 – Dynamic chest compression occurs during spinal manipulation. While dynamic chest compression has been well studied in events such as motor vehicle collisions, chest compression forces have not been studied during chiropractic manipulation. In a study published online today in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics, researchers quantified and analyzed the magnitude of chest compressions during typical as well as maximum chiropractic manipulation and have found them to be well under the threshold for injury.

“Results from this preliminary study showed that maximum chest compression during chiropractic manipulation of the thoracic spine is unlikely to result in injury,” according to lead investigator Brian D. Stemper, PhD, Associate Professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, WI. “We performed this study to get a better understanding of the force limits of chiropractic manipulation. This information may lead to safer manipulation procedures and help to decrease the possibility of adverse patient outcomes.” (more…)

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Scientists found effective treatment for cancer, but no one noticed

By John Wiens DC|May 16, 2011|Research|

Canadian researchers find a simple cure for cancer, but major pharmaceutical companies are not interested.

Source The University of Alberta DCA Website

DCA is an odourless, colourless, inexpensive, relatively non-toxic, small molecule. And researchers at the University of Alberta believe it may soon be used as an effective treatment for many forms of cancer.

Dr. Evangelos Michelakis, a professor at the U of A Department of Medicine, has shown that dichloroacetate (DCA) causes regression in several cancers, including lung, breast, and brain tumors.

Michelakis and his colleagues, including post-doctoral fellow Dr. Sebastien Bonnet, have published the results of their research in the journal Cancer Cell.

Scientists and doctors have used DCA for decades to treat children with inborn errors of metabolism due to mitochondrial diseases. Mitochondria, the energy producing units in cells, have been connected with cancer since the 1930s, when researchers first noticed that these organelles dysfunction when cancer is present.

Until recently, researchers believed that cancer-affected mitochondria are permanently damaged and that this damage is the result, not the cause, of the cancer. But Michelakis, a cardiologist, questioned this belief and began testing DCA, which activates a critical mitochondrial enzyme, as a way to “revive” cancer-affected mitochondria.

The results astounded him. (more…)

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Cervicogenic Headache Revisited

By Frank M. Painter|May 9, 2011|Headache, Research|

Cervicogenic Headache Revisited

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: The Chiropractic Report

Editor: David Chapman-Smith LL.B. (Hons.)

“In my experience, cervical migraine is the type of headache most frequently seen in general practice and also the type most frequently misinterpreted. It is usually erroneously diagnosed as classical migraine, tension headache, vascular headache. . . . Such patients have usually received an inadequate treatment and have often become neurotic and drug-dependent”.

Frykholm, neurosurgeon, Sweden (1972) [1]

“Manipulation is effective in patients with cervicogenic headache”.

Duke University Evidence-Based Practice Center, USA (2001) [2]

A. Introduction

Headache is one of the most frequent reasons people seek medical advice and is the primary complaint of about 10% of chiropractic patients [3,4]. Headaches may have a ‘sinister’ cause, such as accidental injury, a space-occupying lesion in the brain or other disease process. In that case they are secondary headaches. However the great majority of headaches are ‘benign’, not linked to any specific injury or disease, and are known as primary headaches.

Benign does not mean mild – symptoms may be frequent and severe. The three most common types of primary headaches are migraine, tension-type headache (TT H) and cervicogenic headache (CGH) [5]. Back in the 1960s the various categories of primary headache were thought to be distinct. That thinking still influences much clinical practice and public perception. However by 1988, when the International Headache Society (IHS) published a new classification of headaches [6] it was known: (more…)

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Immune Responses to Spinal Manipulation

By Frank M. Painter|May 1, 2011|Immune Function, Research, Spinal Manipulation|

Immune Responses to Spinal Manipulation

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: Dynamic Chiropractic ~ May 6, 2011

By Malik Slosberg, DC, MS

For many years, chiropractors have observed in their own practices that their patients sometimes demonstrate improvements of complaints related to immune problems: the disappearance or lessening of allergy symptoms, quicker recovery from or less frequent and severe colds and other respiratory infections, and so on.

In the scientific literature, there have been occasional case reports that corroborate such findings, but no sound evidence to really document their veracity. These clinical observations remain suspended in that grey area unsubstantiated by scientific data to confirm their validity. Significant limitations of changes attributed to spinal manipulation in individual patients include

1) there is never a control group;
2) there is no blinding;
3) the improvement may simply be due to time;
4) they may be a nonspecific effect of care and attention;
5) it may be a regression to the mean; or
6) the result may be due to something other than spinal manipulation.In some large studies, it has been found that chiropractic care for nonmusculoskeletal conditions is only weakly to moderately successful, but rarely harmful. [1-2] The most recent and thorough systematic literature review found that the evidence for effectiveness of spinal manipulation was inconclusive for nonmusculoskeletal conditions. [3]

Despite the lack of evidence of clinical effectiveness for nonmusculoskeletal conditions, a series of recent studies from several international research groups is systematically building the case that spinal manipulation appears to reduce the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines and increase the blood levels of immunoregulatory cytokines. Cytokines are small cell-signaling protein molecules that are secreted by numerous cells of the immune system and are a category of signaling molecules used extensively in intercellular communication.

There are more articles like this in our:

Chiropractic and Immune Function Page

(more…)

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The Evidence-based Rap, or What’s Wrong With My Pain Meds?

By Frank M. Painter|April 23, 2011|Low Back Pain, Research, Safety|

The Evidence-based Rap, or What’s Wrong With My Pain Meds?

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: A Chiro.Org Editorial

Based on: A Systematic Review on the Effectiveness of Pharmacological Interventions for Chronic Non-specific Low-back Pain ~ FULL TEXT
Eur Spine J. 2011 (Jan); 20 (1): 40–50

OK, maybe this isn’t a genuine Rap, and I’m not rhyming-Simon, but somebody needs to bust-a-cap on the pain-med industry, because they hold themselves to a much lower standard than they expect my profession to maintain.

Fortunately (and, to the rescue) comes this study from the Dutch Institute for Health Care Improvement. They actually *busted a cap*, by deciding to explore “the effectiveness of pharmacological interventions [i.e., non-steroid anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), muscle relaxants, antidepressants, and opioids] for non-specific chronic low-back pain (LBP)”.

This article is a real eye-opener!

I say Bravo, because these drugs are medicine’s sole conservative approach for managing LBP. This Blog has previously published numerous (and recent) studies suggesting that chiropractic management for low back pain is orders of magnitude more effective for pain relief, and is also significantly more cost-effective than standard medical management. [1-8] (more…)

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Predictors For Success Of Spinal Manipulation For Neck Pain

By Frank M. Painter|April 19, 2011|Neck Pain, Research, Spinal Manipulation|

Predictors For Success Of Spinal Manipulation For Neck Pain

The Chiro.Org Blog

SOURCE: J Manipulative Physiol Ther. 2011 (Mar); 34 (3): 144–152

Manuel Ssavedra-Hernández, PT, Adelaida M. Castro-Sánchez, PT, PhD, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas, PT, DO, PhD, Joshua A. Cleland, PT, PhD, Ricardo Ortega-Santiago, PT, MS, Manuel Arroyo-Morales, MD, PT, PhD

Department of Nursing and Physical Therapy,
Universidad de Almería, Spain.

This newly published JMPT study attempted to identify those prognostic clinical factors that may potentially identify, a priori, patients with mechanical neck pain who are likely to experience a rapid and successful response to spinal manipulation of the cervical and thoracic spine.

Data from 81 subjects were included in the analysis, of which 50 had experienced a successful outcome (61.7%). Five variables were found to be associated with a positive response:

Initial pain intensity greater than 4.5 points
Cervical extension less than 46°
Hypomobility at T1 vertebra (more…)

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