Back Pain? Visit Orem Chiropractor & Save Money!

As we enter a brave new world of government sponsored health care with politicians and insurers trying to find a way to lower health care expenditures, take a look at what this research says about chiropractors and cost savings.

The Mercer Health and Benefits group did a cost analysis of chiropractic care for low back pain and this is what they found.

When Orem chiropractic care is added to a health benefit plan, the total cost increase of the plan per patient per year increases by only $75.  This is highly cost effective care because it represents a good value in comparison to medical care and to widely accepted cost-effectiveness thresholds.

Low back pain is a common condition and chiropractic care is well established as the treatment of choice for people suffering from low back pain.

When you add chiropractic care to a health insurance plan, the total cost per patient every year only increases by $75.  For neck pain, it actually costs less by $302, incidentally.

Orem chiropractic care is shown to produce better pain and disability outcomes for low back pain, and is shown to be more satisfying to patients when surveyed by satisfaction rates.  This small increase doesn’t even take into account that the researchers didn’t add the costs of pharmaceutical drugs to the health care bill, so their numbers may be conservative.

Chiropractic care is a drug free approach to Orem back pain relief.  Chiropractic care consists mainly of spinal adjustments, but also includes strengthening exercises, massage, stretches, nutritional therapy, oxygen therapy and a variety of joint, muscle and nerve therapies.

Because chiropractic is drug free, there are no side effects either.

When chiropractic was included in health plans, the amount in-patient hospitalizations, imaging studies, hospitalization, surgical procedures were all reduced.  This is significant because these are the very things that drive health care costs up so high.  

Here is another, very interesting, fact that researchers discovered.  Paying the chiropractor more didn’t really affect cost savings.  In fact, during the research it was found that paying the chiropractor $40 an office visit produced a $300 annual savings.  Now the cool part (I’ll admit I’m biased) is that when they paid the chiropractor $100 an office visit there was a $294 annual savings.

So, if policy makers want to reduce costs they should be very interested in adding Orem chiropractors to the system and paying them well.

Orem Chiropractor Discusses Religious Activity and Obesity

As your Orem Chiropractor I don’t necessarily deal with obesity directly, I do see and address several of the consequences of it.

With that in mind I thought our religious readers should be familiar with this study.

“Oh Heavily, Father: Churchgoers More Likely to Become Obese”

The results of this study suggest that church goers are “consuming a little bit more than the . . . good word of God.”  Those who attend church frequently in young adulthood are significantly more likely to become obese in middle age.  In fact researchers found that those who with “high frequency” of religious activities were 50% more likely to be obese in middle age.

One of the researchers said, "One possible explanation, though, is that religious gatherings might center on eating traditional, high-calorie comfort food, and this in itself might contribute to the higher incidence and prevalence of obesity."

There might be some actual truth to that.  Having attended religious activities of several faiths, many are associated with food and typically food that is “high-calorie comfort food.”  I haven't seen a church gathering that had baked salmon, spinach salad and filtered water.

In past articles we’ve discussed how many who seek fibromyalgia treatment in Orem or migraine treatment in Orem eat these kinds of foods regularly.

So the take home lesson isn’t to stop your religious activities (many studies suggest that such activities have many beneficial results) but to either avoid the buffet line or convert your congregation to higher nutritional value foods at your gatherings. 

Orem Chiropractor Discusses One Reason Back Pain Becomes Chronic

At some point in your life some has probably told you to “have a good attitude.”  Well, researchers at the American Academy of Pain Medicine have just discovered one of the most important reasons why you should have a good attitude about your health. 

Are you looking for Orem migraine treatment?  If so please read carefully because there will be important information for you.

Researchers found that thinking of events as a catastrophe or looking at them with fear and being depressed seem to be major predictors of whether acute pain from injury will change into chronic pain.

Studies have shown that having a “catastrophe” attitude about back pain has been found to be SEVEN TIMES more powerful than any other factor in predicting whether pain will become chronic.

Fear also seems to play a role. "Those who had more fear during an acute low back pain episode were much more likely to ultimately over-predict the amount of pain they had, which ultimately led to significant increase in fear-avoidance behaviors, with subsequent worsening of symptoms, increase in duration of pain, and increase in disability," said Sean Mackey, MD, PhD, chief of the pain management division at Stanford University.

Depression and anxiety also had similar effects. 30% to 65% of patients who have chronic pain are also depressed.  Those who are depressed and suffer with anxiety are two to five times more likely to develop chronic pain within eight years.

In a study that appeared in the Annals of Surgery in 2007 researchers found that those with fear of the long term consequences of the operation was associated with more pain, poor recovery and worse quality of life at a six month follow up.

Having these kind of attitudes and beliefs causes a change in a person’s brain and nervous system that inhibits one’s innate ability to end pain. 

As your Orem fibromyalgia specialist, I have found that these people not only become more sensitive to pain, but they also develop more persistence of pain. 

There appears to be two parts of the brain that contribute.  The first is the lateral orbital frontal cortex.  It’s an area involved with self-evaluation and making decisions on what to do about incoming sensations.  The second area of the brain seems to be the medial prefrontal cortex.  This is an area of the brain that has been found to be dysfunctional in people with post-traumatic stress disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

The part that is unknown is whether the pain has caused these areas of the brain to malfunction or has the malfunction caused the pain to persist.

As your Orem Chiropractor, I am your Orem back pain specialist.  If you suffer with pain that isn’t going away, consider contacting my office at 801-225-1311.  Learn more at AskDrNed.com