The Chiropractic Adjustment
Recent research shows that chiropractic care, and the chiropractic adjustment specifically, is often the key to resolving painful and expensive musculoskeletal complaints like low back pain.
What Is It?
The chiropractic adjustment, or manual manipulation, is central to chiropractic practice. You may also hear it called Chiropractic Manipulative Therapy (CMT) or Spinal Manipulative Therapy (SMT). We use our clinical experience and exam findings to decide the best way to resolve your specific complaint, and many of the techniques we use apply no more pressure than you could comfortably place with a finger against your own closed eye. We'll always walk you through what's recommended, what's safe, and your own comfort level before we begin.
What It's Actually For
The evidence-based purpose of the adjustment, as we use it, is to restore motion to a joint so that corrective exercise and daily activity can be performed safely and effectively. We see strong gains with manual technique, and we teach the home care that maintains those gains — it's the consistency of a home exercise program, made possible by what we do in the office, that makes the real long-term difference.
What the Research Says
Recent studies in leading medical journals back this up:
- JAMA Network (May 2018) on the effectiveness of spinal manipulative therapy
- The Cochrane Database (2012) comparing thrust versus non-thrust manipulation techniques
- Spine (2013) on combining chiropractic manipulative therapy with standard medical care
- Pain (2019) on the limited effectiveness of paracetamol for acute low back pain
If you're dealing with a musculoskeletal complaint like low back pain, the research points to your local evidence-based doctor of chiropractic as a good place to start.