Which branch of chiropractic works best for lower back pain?!

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Any one of those techniques would work but it would ultimately depend on the individual patient. Of course with low back pain there is usually a muscular component that must be addressed along with the adjustment. The associated muscles need to be stretched, then the spine adjusted, then the muscles need to be strengthened over time. Some patients prefer lumbar/pelvic adjustments with drops over side posture because they feel it is less forceful, but both seem to work very well.

I know this is not your question but I have a lower back problem. I keep it warm at night while sleeping, by sleeping in a fleece pullover. I find that the slight pain goes away when I keep the fleece pullover on for about a half hour or so. I also walk every morning for about an hour an a half. I think this really helps. Also do stretches for the upper back off leg. I find that this is really tight. It is hard to straighten one leg out. This pulls your spine out of alignment I believe. This all seems to help me.

I doubt either do as much as either suggests.....

Apparently, our resident fan of Hio doesn't know either...

I got an amazing phone call this moring, from someone pertending to be a lawyers office regarding a minor car accident I was in months ago...said that I was entitled to sum of money...I had no idea what it was about.....and in the end it turned out to be a chiropractors office trying to fraud not one, but two insurance agencies....they can try to explain that one to the NICB and the state licensing board but my feeling on the matter is that the majority of them have earned that bad repution. Furthermore, while I do like some aspects of manipulative medicine, I am everyday getting closer to believing that basic physical therapy covers pretty much the same tx.

Good night all

For your low back condition find a chiropractor who uses 1 of the following techniques Cox, SOT,
Thompson Terminal Point

I hope any chiropractor would answer that it depends on the patient.
Being a manual therapist I have a good range of techniques in my "tool bag" and the ones I use vary depending on how my patient presents.

An Osteopath that teaches in one of the UK teaching school talks about 27 different levers to bind a joint in order to make it release in HVT. Of these levers some will use traction, compression, rotation, side bending, flexion, extension etc. As no 2 spines are the same I would say which levers really depends on which spine.

Other practitioners say "No! Don't treat trauma with trauma" and use techniques known as Harmonics. Others will use position of ease or functional techniques, others will use myofascial techniques, others will use cranial techniques and the list goes on. Lots will use a combination of any of these. Chiropractors can learn all of these as well as adjustment and many do.
It would be appropriate to treat 18 year old with a sub acute facet lock with HVT, it wouldn't be appropriate to treat an 80 year old with osteoporosis with those techniques so there really shouldn't be any confusion there.
It can be confusing where you have a choice because not all patients will respond equally. Experience gives you a good idea of which techniques a patient will respond to. Applying the same technique to all is just silly.

NZ registered Osteopath

A study from Italy published in the March issue of The Spine Journal, showed that chiropractic care was effective in helping patients with acute back pain and sciatica with disc protrusion. This randomized double-blind clinical trial involved 102 ambulatory patients with at least moderate pain or radiating pain, who had an MRI study showing disc protrusion.

The patients were divided into two groups. One group received chiropractic adjustments 5 days per week by experienced chiropractors, with a maximum of 20 visits. The second group received what the study termed, "simulated manipulations" in order to have a group for comparison to those receiving real chiropractic care.

The results showed that those who got the real chiropractic care improved significantly over the group that received the simulated manipulations. In the group that received the chiropractic care, 55% were free of radiating pain in the follow ups compared to 20% of patients who got the simulated manipulations. Additionally, when measuring local pain, 28% of those who received real chiropractic were free of local pain, versus only 6% of those who got the simulated manipulation.

The results also showed improvements in days of pain with the group that received the real care reporting 6 less days of pain than those in the simulated care group. In addition to these benefits the group with the real care reported using less medications to help with the pain as a result of the chiropractic care.

In this study none of the patients in either group had any adverse effects, and one from each group did report no results at all and were listed as "treatment failures". The researchers conclusions were, "Active manipulations have more effect than simulated manipulations on pain relief for acute back pain and sciatica with disc protrusion."
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A study published in the July / August 2004 peer-reviewed scientific journal, "Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics", compared the effects of chiropractic adjustments to muscle relaxants in a group of patients with subacute low back pain.

This study defined subacute low back pain as lower back pain (LBP) with a duration of 2 to 12 weeks. The study noted that in the United States the incidence of low back pain is as high as 75% to 85% of the population being affected at some time in their lives. On a yearly basis, the study noted that between 15% to 20% of the adult population can expect to experience LBP in any given year.

In the study, conducted at Life University in Georgia, 192 subjects with LBP from 2 to 6 weeks were separated into three groups. One group received Chiropractic adjustments with placebo medication. The second group received muscle relaxants with sham (fake) adjustments. The third group was a control group and received both placebo medication as well as the sham (fake) adjustments. Care was rendered to the group for a 4 week period with evaluations being done at the 2 week and 4 week marks.

Results were measured in terms of patient reported pain, severity, disability and depression, as well as measured flexibility and the patients self usage of over the counter acetaminophen (Tylenol). The results of this short study showed that for the two primary indicators of pain and severity, the chiropractic group did better than the other two groups. No significant differences were seen for disability, depression, flexibility, or acetaminophen usage across groups in a study of this short a period of time. All three groups showed improvement in the areas of depression, disability and drug usage.

The authors of the study did note that a longer study could have yielded more differences in recovery. However, in the area of pain, a primary patient concern in subacute LBP cases, the group that received the chiropractic adjustments faired the best. Their comments were: "Statistically, the chiropractic group responded significantly better than the control group with respect to a decrease in pain scores."

Edit: Gary...go check out idealspine.com I suggest you read through all of their literature as they are the most published in peer reviewed journals.

i have defined chiropractic many times in my responses, yet apparently it hasn't made a dent in the ineducable minds of the medically brainwashed. therapeutics is not chiropractic. chiropractic is not therapeutics. when you come up with an actual chiropractic opinion, i'll let you know. ( gary- when you use a term such as chiropractic, you are presumed to know it's definition, yet apparently you do not, or you would not reference a journal of therapeutics for support. chiropractors in practice specialize in taking care of people, not wasting their time attempting to validate themselves to their enemies, as if any "data" one might have would be understood or accepted by the medically minded anyway. it is a considerable source of irritation to "skeptics" for one reason. it gets results where medicine does not. one can produce all the bogus "studies" they want, cut down all the strawmen "chiropractoids", but they can't explain or get around the results, or convince those who achieve them or received them they didn't happen. it doesn't fit into the medical paradigm, the only thing they understand, so they're completely stymied. tink, what an ignorant remark. it is not the purpose of chiropractic, as i have explained many times here, to treat anything. try learning something about the subject before attempting to give an opinion. your attempt at smearing the entire profession because of one alleged dishonest occurrence is pathetic.