Chiropractic 1st
October is synonymous with fall, bonfires, and pumpkin-spiced everything. A lesser known fact about October is it is National Chiropractic month. This year's theme is #Chiropractic1st. The campaign seeks to promote the use of chiropractic services and other non-drug approaches to pain management.
Now more than ever, it is important for us to change our thoughts and actions concerning pain treatment. The people of our country are facing an epidemic of gigantic magnitude and it all started with pain.
Every day, 1000 Americans visit emergency rooms for misuse of pain pills. On average, 3 people in the US die every hour from an overdose of prescription painkillers. Deaths caused by opioids have quadrupled since 1999; in 2014 alone, more than 15,000 people died from overdoses involving the drugs. To put that number in perspective, it would equate to 50 fully packed Boeing 787 Dreamliners going down in one year, nearly one every week. But if just 2-3 jumbo jets had problems, this would be the only topic discussed on the news and Boeing would be out of business. However this massive epidemic is all but totally omitted by the national media and politicians. The United States has 3.4% of the world’s population but we consume 80% of prescription painkillers on the planet! We must stop this devastating trend and change our collective perspective concerning pain treatment.
Current research validates the effectiveness of chiropractic services, leading many respected health care organizations to recommend chiropractic and its drug-free approach to pain relief. In a 2013 patient page on low-back pain, The Journal of the American Medical Association, suggested patients consider chiropractic treatment before resorting to surgery. In 2015, the Joint Commision, the organization that accredits more than 20,000 health care systems in the U.S. (including every major hospital), recognized the value of non-drug approaches by adding chiropractic to its pain management standard. Most recently, in March 2016, the CDC, in response to the opioid epidemic, released guidelines for prescribing opioids that also promote non-pharmacologic alternatives for the treatment of chronic pain. In a recent study, 94% of low back pain patients reported improvement in symptoms while just 54% of patients treated with painkillers achieved the same level of improvement. Furthermore, chiropractic has been shown to cost more than 20% less than treatment for low back pain initiated with an MD.
Next time you are afflicted by pain, make the smart, informed choice, try chiropractic first! #Chiropractic1st
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SOURCES
http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/1681414
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/rr/rr6501e1.htm