As a chiropractor, I spend much of my time clearing up misconceptions and educating on how human physiology and the art of chiropractic actually works.  On of the biggest myths hanging over the chiropractic profession is the famous, “Once you start going, ‘they’ want you to keep going forever.”A better way of looking at this is that many people who benefit from chiropractic choose to continue care just like they would choose to continue going to the dentist or exercising regularly if they perceived it added to their quality of life.  I believe it’s only fair to say that most chiropractors, once you get better, would like to see you stay that way.  So we often recommend maintenance care which is much like a series of tune-ups intended to reduce the effects of the ongoing stress in all our lives.  I write about this because a recent study published in the prestigious medical journal, Spine, looked into this practice of maintenance care to see if it was truly relevant.

In the study they looked at three groups of people with different histories of chronic pain.  The first group received fake chiropractic treatment for 12 visits over a month period.  The second group received the real chiropractic adjustments for twelve visits over the same month and care was discontinued.  The final group received the real twelve adjustments over the month, but received continued care every two weeks for the following nine months.  What they found is both chiropractic groups did much better over the first month as compared to the sham or fake group.  However, when they followed up after ten months, the group that continued care had significantly reduced pain and improvement in disability scores.  The chronic pain group that stopped after a month of care was still better than when they began, but some of their pain was returning.

This may be the very first medical study to justify what chiropractors have been recommending for over 100 years.  Life is stressful, and to keep at your best it takes regular habits and upkeep.  Just like a healthy diet, regular exercise, and proper sleep, regular chiropractic helps reduce the effects or symptoms that physical, chemical, and emotional stress can impose upon the body.