I apologize for the misunderstanding. I stated that I wouldn't seek to treat those conditions and instead treat the muscoluskeletal complaints that kids come in with. Research for back pain is great, I was just trying to explain where some of the other claims come from (pretty limited research for a lot of other conditions). Funny thing about health insurance companies is that they are actually pushing harder for chiropractic utilization than anyone else right now!
Optum released some data a few years back showing the cost-effectiveness of different providers and the treatment pathways resulting from the initial visit. "Data from OptumHealth indicate that a more efficient treatment path typically begins with a patient consulting a chiropractor. This path tends to lead to interventions that are more closely aligned with recommended treatment guidelines and ultimately more favorable solutions at more reasonable costs." New FDA guidelines also suggest to use chiropractic (and acupuncture believe it or not) to reduce the use of Opioids and amount of drug interaction adverse events. Anyway, the previous post was supposed to read as:
1) Research is very limited and there are almost no high quality randomized controlled trials. This is due to many factors such as limited corporate money, difficulty in designing studies with placebo/sham treatments, and the difficulty in organizing outcome measures for many small clinics that all operate as separate businesses. Hopefully Meaningful Use and insurance reimbursement changes help gather more data surrounding outcome measures etc. Research studies involving children are usually retrospective and limited anyway due to the ethics and morals surrounding child studies.
2) Research usually follows the path 1) determine a biological mechanism and develop a treatment/medication to influence that mechanism. 2) progress to animal trials then human trials etc. Here's a semi-plausible biological mechanism for which treatment could be effective, and that's where some people will make claims beyond the current research. I was more-so trying to pose a question or explain where some of the claims come from.
If a spinal adjustment can affect parasympathetic or sympathetic activity, can that cause a cholinergic or anti-cholinergic response in a synapse to influence neurological activity? Marketing people will take that and run with it and make claims surrounding any parasympathetic or sympathetic activity in the body, which turns out to be a pretty wide set of conditions. Many of the medications aimed at certain conditions like bedwetting work through an anti-cholinergic effect. That's where some of those claims come from but there hasn't been enough research to back up a lot of those claims. That's why any marketing materials you see will say something like "MAY improve", and that was part of the marketing legal issues over in Europe. Interesting stuff!
3) I stated that I wouldn't seek to treat those conditions specifically. Treat the musculoskeletal issues and if anything else resolves, great! Take asthma/respiratory issues for example. Those claims above would say the adjustment stimulated a sympathetic response and helped the lungs dilate etc etc. (School nurses learn thoracic percussion to help kids during asthma attacks so there might be something there) That may or may not have an influence, but I would say that mobilizing the thoracic spine, ribs, and accessory breathing muscles allows the rib cage to open up more and allow for easier breathing, which will probably give some relief to asthma symptoms in effect. I wasn't trying to treat asthma, I was treating the back pain and rib pain that someone with asthma came in with. If we get symptom relief in another condition, that's just a bonus. Is that fair? Does that make sense? I'm not trying to say we can treat everything and I would never go outside my scope of practice and tell anyone not to take medications etc.
This isn't a marketing post. We aren't going to profit in any way from this post. We just want to provide people with helpful materials to prevent injury in a sport we all love to play.
"More than 81% of respondents stated that they had sustained an injury playing disc golf" with about 1 in 8 needing surgery. If some of those could be prevented, I think that would be pretty great! :thmbup: If you'd like to help someone profit from disc golf workouts and exercise, check out
Disc Golf Strong. The only video of his I've watched about mobility vs stability in certain joints was pretty good! Watching the rest of them is definitely on my to-do list.
Anyway, I came on here to see what people would find interesting and useful, not to start a big debate, so I think it's time to let this thread die. Someone suggested I set something up in another forum so I'll post again once we have some disc golf content to share with everyone. Good luck out on the course!