We see many patients in our Shelton office who are suffering from acute or chronic pain, and we've found that our chiropractic approach is very successful and getting people relief.


​Your body contains roughly 60 different chemicals and each one is responsible for very different functions and regulatory actions. For instance, calcium helps your muscles contract and potassium regulates your heartbeat. Sodium controls the balance of water in your system and fluorine protects your teeth against decay. There are also four chemicals associated with management of pain, and a study published in Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy has found that chiropractic promotes almost all of them.

For purposes of this study, researchers chose thirty participants who weren’t actively in any sort of pain to see what effect chiropractic treatments had on their levels of neurotensin, oxytocin, orexin A, and cortisol—the four chemicals that impact how much pain a person feels. The subjects were separated into three different groups: ten engaged in cervical spinal manipulation (chiropractic involving the neck area), ten received thoracic spinal manipulation (manipulation to the discs and vertebrae in the middle and upper back), and the final ten subjects were the control group, so they received no spinal manipulation therapy whatsoever. Researchers drew each individual’s blood prior to, immediately after, and two hours post-treatment to determine the starting levels of neurotensin, oxytocin, orexin A, and cortisol, as well as to note any changes that may occur.
Immediately upon conclusion of the spinal manipulation sessions, researchers found “significantly higher” levels of both neurotensin and oxytocin in the participants who received either form of spinal manipulation. Cortisol levels increased only for the subjects who engaged in cervical spinal manipulation, and orexin A levels were unaffected by the chiropractic treatments entirely.

These findings suggest that engaging in regular chiropractic care can help your pain on a cellular level by changing the chemical makeup of your body. Not to mention, regular spinal manipulations also work to correct the spinal issue that is causing the pain in the first place. This makes chiropractic an effective two-prong approach to pain management.

If you're in pain, chiropractic care can help. We've helped hundreds of patients with auto injury pain, sciatica, back pain, neck pain, and more. Don't put your health second, call to schedule your appointment today!

That's a wrap for our blog this week! Stay tuned for our next blog, and send your questions to [email protected]

*Plaza-Manzano G, Molina F, Lomas-Vega R, et al. Changes in biochemical markers of pain perception and stress response after spinal manipulation. Journal Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy 2014;44(4):231-9.

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Understanding Nerve Compression Syndromes: 
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When you have symptoms of numbness or tingling, this usually indicates a nerve problem. Nerves run from the spine throughout the body to give us sensation and feeling, giving our brains vital information about the world around us. 

When a nerve is compressed or pinched, it interferes with these signals. This is what happens when your arm or foot falls asleep after sitting on it for a long time. Except with carpal tunnel you can’t quite shake it out the way you can a sleeping foot. The more frequent and persistent numbness and tingling become the more severe the problem is.

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome specifically compresses the median nerve at the wrist. There are other syndromes that have the same symptoms as carpal tunnel, for example, the median nerve can be compressed at the elbow such as in pronator teres syndrome, or at the shoulder such as in thoracic outlet syndrome, or in the neck due to a subluxation or misalignment in the cervical spine. That is why it is important to get a proper diagnosis for your symptoms. There have been many cases of patients receiving surgery for carpal tunnel but, the surgery did noting for their symptoms as they actually had one of these other conditions.

What's happening in the 'tunnel'?

The transverse carpal ligament is a round band of fascia that hold the flexor muscles in place. Imagine a rubbery calamari ring in your wrist, and that your muscles and nerves are strands of spaghetti strands are running through it! (Are you hungry yet?) The wrist is a high traffic area! You’ve got carpal bones, you’ve got the tendons of the flexor muscles, you’ve got the median nerve… When this area gets over-crowded the other tissues in the space will compress the median nerve and cause these symptoms. There are several things that can cause a jam-up in this area include edema, subluxation of a carpal bone, fascial adhesion, inflammation of the flexor muscle tendons, and inflammation of the transverse carpal ligament itself.

Yes!

Chiropractic has been proven to help manage both acute and chronic pain.

Pain management, in general, is a big issue in healthcare. Let’s look at some facts:

Low back pain is the single leading cause of disability. According to the US bone and Joint initiative study, back pain was cause for over 264 million days off of work. That is all without considering any other type of chronic pain condition. Pain affects more Americans than diabetes, heart disease and cancer combined. 

When looking for solutions to chronic pain, the first thing we tend to reach for is over-the-counter aids such as Aspirin, Advil, or Ibuprofen. Then if these conditions worsen and we go to the doctor we are typically directed to stronger prescription medications, which, can be concerning to many patient situations.

Many people are looking for ways to treat their chronic pain without resorting to drugs of the traditional medication protocol. With alternative care we can lessen our dependency on over the counter drugs and even opioids. 

Back pain is also one of the most common conditions that opioids are prescribed for with over half of opioid users reporting back pain among their symptoms. Why is this connection between back pain and opioids so concerning?

While prescription opioids are certainly helpful to many patients in complex severe conditions, however, we need to also be looking at the big picture of the opioid crisis: In 2016, illicit and prescription opioids were responsible for more than 42,000 fatal overdoses across the country. According to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention, those numbers have quintupled since 1999, which means the problem is just getting worse.

The good news is that, alternative medicines are already making great improvements to these dire statistics.


Let's take a look at some strategies the VA has been using in order reduce opioid addiction among veterans. After launching one initiative, they were able to reduce overall opioid prescriptions by 41% over the past five years. The project was focused on non-drug treatment for chronic pain, such as acupuncture, spinal manipulation therapy, chiropractic care, and yoga. 
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It is also good news to know that patients who received services from a chiropractor were less likely to fill a prescription for opioid medication, and, there was a 51 percent lower likelihood of an adverse drug incident compared to non recipients of chiropractic care.


A visit to the chiropractor may also be more cost effective for sufferers of chronic pain. In one study, "those who initiated treatment for low back pain with chiropractic rather than a regular MD had 40% in reduced healthcare cost!" In general “Healthcare plans that incorporate chiropractic typically realize a 2:1 return for every dollar spent.” 

There are numerous research studies, reports, and surveys proving how effective chiropractic can be for pain:

"In a Randomized controlled trial, 183 patients with neck pain were randomly allocated to manual therapy (spinal mobilization), physiotherapy (mainly exercise) or general practitioner care (counseling, education and drugs) in a 52-week study. The clinical outcomes measures showed that manual therapy resulted in faster recovery than physiotherapy and general practitioner care. Moreover, total costs of the manual therapy-treated patients were about one-third of the costs of physiotherapy or general practitioner care."
          Korthals-de Bos et al (2003), British Medical Journal
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“Patients with chronic low-back pain treated by chiropractors showed greater improvement and satisfaction at one month than patients treated by family physicians. Satisfaction scores were higher for chiropractic patients. A higher proportion of chiropractic patients (56 percent vs. 13 percent) reported that their low-back pain was better or much better, whereas nearly one-third of medical patients reported their low-back pain was worse or much worse.” 
          Nyiendo et al (2000), Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutic

The evidence and anecdotes are solid. If you are suffering form chronic or acute pain, chiropractic care may well worth a try!

Send us your questions! Yours might be answered next week. [email protected]
Sources and Further Reading:
NIH Fact Sheet -- Pain Management
​The Center for Disease Control and Prevention -- Drug Overdose Deaths 
​VHA Pain Management -- Opioid Saftey Initiative
​Boss Magazine -- Corrective Care for the Opioid Epidemic 
​American Chiropractic Association -- What Research Shows About Chiropractic