Hi everybody

I was reading a chiropractic report and came across some interesting research that I thought would be worth sharing with you. The public in general is not aware of the research that is being done in chiropractic actually some people do not even think that chiropractic has any research!! When I am at conferences I am always impressed with all the amazing research that is actually being done in the field and wish some people from other fields would be there to listen!

One big name in our field is Dr.Greg Kawchuk Dc Phd. He is working with a multi-disciplicary team of prominent physical therapist and chiropractors from the US and Canada and they have been researching the Mechanisms of action of Manipulation in LBP patients. Here are the interesting facts of this research.  They wanted to  try  to explain some clinical results that we see when we use manipulation. They wanted to show the decrease in global stiffness and also show that a muscle called lumbar multifidus gets better recruitment. I will put the reference lower so if anybody is interested in learning exactly how they did it they will be able to find the article but for my blog I will simply go to the results section. The results did show that following manipulation “there is an immediate global stiffness change and enhancement of the multifidus recruitment”.  They also observed that manipulation may be superior to mobilization in reducing spinal stiffness. That is so exciting and would explain why some patients who don’t  get results with other therapies that mainly use mobilization suddenly start to get better after we start  using manipulation.  Therefore that  thrust or that little more force done quickly usually makes the difference in patients and they start to feel much better. Finally research that confirms what I had been saying and thinking all along!!!

Talking about research I need to mention that the UQTR where the chiropractic program is in Quebec has a full research departement working on excellent projects. I hope this will change the perception of the public that think that chiropractic has no research!

Hope you enjoy the new discovery!

Valerie

(Fritz MJ, Kopperhaven SL, Kawchuck GN et al. ( 2011) preliminary Investigation of Mechanisms Underlying the Effects of Manipulation, Spine 36: 1772-1781)

Information taken from the Chiropractic Report November 2011 Vol.25 No.6