Research

Back pain is a health condition.  Back pain is the largest single cause of disability in the UK, with lower back pain alone accounting for 11% of the total disability of the UK population (Source: The National Back Pain Pathway, 2016).

We live in an evidence-based world of medicine and healthcare. Remember this just means that we look to three sources of information: 1) What the current scientific literature is telling us, 2) What You the patients are telling us the practitioners - your choices and preferences, and, 3) What treatment options the practitioners trying to help you are offering - their knowledge, experience and skill sets. A series of inter-connected decisions can then be made.

The gold standard of research is the double-blind randomised controlled trial (RCT). It is a type of scientific (often medical) experiment that aims to reduce certain sources of bias when testing the effectiveness of new treatments. The first published RCT in medicine appeared in the 1948 paper entitled "Streptomycin treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis ". RCTs appear to be very good for testing the efficacy of new drugs.

Positive, qualitative aspects of chiropractic care are not borne out in RCTs. The care and attention of the practitioner; the human connection (notwithstanding the surgical mask and gloves), an empathic approach, reassuring advice and a skilled adjustment are not borne out by statistics. Positive anecdotal evidence from individual testimony can certainly be cherry picked to look good, but the process of studying purely unbiased objective outcome measures does not and cannot tell the whole story of how chiropractic works. It's like trying to analyse the humour content of a punch line without hearing the joke. Reductionism can strip everything down to its individual working parts but it is the sum of the parts that actually create the big, whole and connected picture.

There is a range of evidence to indicate that chiropractic care is safe and effective.

Click on the link below which will take you to the Royal College of Chiropractor's summary web page: Evidence for chiropractic.