Frederick

Frederick Chiropractors Donate Care to Iraq & Afghanistan vets

The Frederick chiropractors at Park Bench Chiropractic, just north of downtown on North Market Street, have been participating in an International Chiropractors Association program designed to provide free access to chiropractic care for returning veterans. At Park Bench Chiropractic the doctors take very seriously their opportunity to give back to the community. As chiropractors in their thirties, the doctors at Park Bench have the honor of growing up alongside the generations doing much of the work overseas  as members of the US military.

To date, Frederick’s Park Bench Chiropractic has provided nearly $30,000 worth of complimentary physical examinations, chiropractic spinal and extremity adjustments, physical therapy modalities and other services. Their military and ex-military clients present with issues ranging from discomfort during pregnancy, failed back surgery-related pain, numbness and tingling in the arms and legs, disc bulges and inflammation, headaches, and simple back and neck pain. Dozens of individuals, including many from Fort Detrick, have given the doctors at Park Bench the honor of providing care for them.

Visit their website at www.parkbenchchiropractic.com for more information about their practice.

Cornhole, Coffee and Brewery Tours at Park Bench Chiropractic

Rob and Logan went to the craft beer mecca of Frederick – Flying Dog Brewery – to get some BREWERY TOUR PASSES…15 of them in fact. We will be giving away Flying Dog Brewery Tour passes to bike swappers, cornhole players, and anyone lucky enough to get one on Sunday October 2nd. Get your coffee buzz on with Dublin Roasters and win a pass to get your beer buzz on with Flying Dog.

The chiropractors at Park Bench will be playing cornhole with anyone interested, and giving out prizes all the while.

Check out the Flying Dog Brewery website to learn about their awesome craft beers, and see the Dublin Roasters Coffee website to learn about the coffee shop hosting the Bike Swap. See the Frederick Bicycle Coalition website for more information on the swap. Be there Sunday, October 2nd to take part in the fun.

Chiropractic Helps Swimmers Set Records

Life University (the chiropractic school both Matt and Rob got their DC degress from) has been working with some professional United States Masters Swimming team members by providing them chiropractic care. Quotes from swimmers:

“I haven’t swum this well in decades.”, and…
“This was my best time in 12 years.”

At least two swimmers who received chiropractic set world age-group records.

Original story here.

Low Back Pain

Low Back Pain…most Americans deal with severe lower back pain sometime in their lives, many Americans deal with it more than once every year, year after year after year.

For reasons beyond explanation with just a few paragraphs, most people do not utilize chiropractic care for their low back pain. This is despite the fact that the American Pain Society and the American College of Physicians have both declared that chiropractic adjustments for low back pain is of “proven benefit“. Hundreds of high-quality research studies, published in some of the most prestigious medical journals, have declared that chiropractic adjustments are effective as a treatment for lower back pain, while being safe and having none of the side effects that drugs and surgery carry. In 1994 the US Department of Health and Human Services declared that chiropractic treatment for lower back pain was “the only doctor-delivered method shown to both relieve pain and improve function”. The American journal, Spine, as well as the European Spine Journal, have both declared chiropractic to be a safe and effective treatment for low back pain. In fact, spinal adjustments are consistently found to be more effective than all other treatments for low back pain, as well as a less expensive and all-natural option.

All these facts, and only about 10% of Americans (more likely less than that, actually) utilize chiropractic care.

Perhaps you should decide to choose the safe, non-addictive, non-surgery method of addressing your lower back pain? If you are ready to make that decision, visit the main Park Bench Chiropractic website now.

Antidepressants are now being prescribed by Medical Doctors (MD’s) to treat common lower back pain

In 1996 about 13 million Americans were using antidepressants. By 2005 that number rose to 27 million. Not only are more Americans being prescribed antidepressants, but those individuals are taking more antidepressants. (1)

More than 164 million prescriptions were written for antidepressants in 2008. More than 1 out of 10 Americans are on antidepressants as of 2008.

Researchers Olfson and Marcus examined the clinical data from 1995-2005 and focused on 50,000 people to study. They found that those on antidepressants were more likely to then go on to use more powerful anti-psychotic drugs and less likely to partake in psychotherapy. (2) In that sense, antidepressants are a type of gateway drug and they apparently aren’t effective enough in many cases because more powerful antipsychotic drugs are later prescribed.

Dr. Eric Caine of the University of Rochester in New York said he was concerned by the findings, and noted that several studies show therapy is as effective as, if not more effective than, drug use alone. “There are no data to say that the population is healthier. Indeed, the suicide rate in the middle years of life has been climbing,” he said.

Therapy is not as easy to simply popping pills, though, which leads us to the low back pain issue.

Low back pain is one of the most common and most expensive medical conditions in the United States. Most people will have to deal with low back pain at some point in their lives. The cost of prescription drugs and expensive surgeries are two of the major factors causing an explosion in healthcare costs in the past decade. Surgery is a significant cost associated with treating low back pain, and this is despite the fact that research repeatedly shows that chiropractic care is a safer, less expensive and more effective way to treat most cases of low back pain. (3) Research has also shown that contemporary medical treatment of lower back pain is more likely to lead to disability than is chiropractic care. (4) Still, most people do not know these facts and instead go see a medical doctor.

Medical doctors routinely prescribe painkillers and muscle relaxers to their patients who complain of low back pain, often doing so rather than referring them to a chiropractor. On top of those drugs, now medical doctors have begun to prescribe antidepressants to their back pain patients.

This is where we come to a thought experiment. Think with me for a moment: as anti-depressant use doubled in the United States from 1996-2005, did the incidence of lower back pain decrease alongside it?

If anti-depressant use has more than doubled, and medical doctors consider antidepressants a treatment for lower back pain, then the prevalence of lower back pain should have dropped significantly.

But it didn’t.

That should tell you all you need to know about using prescription psychiatric drugs to treat a problem with your lower back.

1.       http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19652124

2.       http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21135326

3.       http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21036279

4.       http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21407100