Health, inflammation and revenue
By Bryan Miller

The VIOXX™ withdrawal from the marketplace caused a stir in the news. So did the Food and Drug Administration’s Public Health Advisory regarding the use of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs for managing pain and inflammation.¹

These events, along with clinical research suggesting that inflammation may be the underlying factor for the onset of many diseases and conditions, will most likely lead to an accelerated increase in the use of nutritional products that manage and down-regulate inflammation.

In 2004 the chiropractic market purchased $400 million in nutritional products.² This figure should grow more rapidly than the 10 percent-predicted annual growth, due to the increased awareness of the risks of aspirin, acetaminophen and other popular non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medications.

At this point in time, chiropractors should be incorporating and expanding dietary and supplement protocols into their reports-of-findings and plans-of-care to provide safe, healthy means of managing inflammation and to capitalize on market conditions.

INFLAMMATION: TAKING CONTROL

Inflammation is one of our body’s natural responses for keeping us healthy and alive. The inflammatory response due to trauma, for example, is a way for the body to isolate the area of damage, avoid infection, provide protection to the damaged tissues and create an environment of reconstruction of these damaged tissues.³ When inflammation is chronic or our lifestyle leads to a pro-inflammatory state it becomes detrimental to health.

From a practical perspective, problems stemming from out-of-control inflammation can develop because of injury or because of ingestion.

The medical solution to controlling inflammation is pharmaceutical. Medical doctors recommend pharmaceutical products to reduce inflammation (whether caused by trauma or ingestion). These pharmaceuticals include corticosteroids, acetaminophen, traditional NSAIDs or COX2 inhibitors.

Although these products reduce inflammation, they also pose the risk of damaging the tissues themselves and/or creating toxicity problems in other organs. It should be noted that these products do not promote the healing response within the biochemistry of the protective and reconstructive phases of injury.

SUPPLEMENTS FOR INFLAMMATION

Chiropractors utilize adjustment, soft-tissue work, exercises and adjunctive physiological modalities as treatment for injury. However, supplements can be added to the treatment protocol to speed healing.

For example: To treat a patient suffering from an acute tissue trauma (such as a sprain, strain or hyperextension), with the goal of reducing edema, excessive fibrin deposition and fibrosis, the protocol could include:

• Rest, elevation and ice (RICE);
• Therapeutic modalities;
• A proteolytic enzyme supplement. Common professional-grade proteolytic enzyme formulas contain bromelain, papain, trypsin, and chymotrypsin. These are animal- and plant-based proteolytic (protein digesting) enzymes that work synergistically with the body’s natural response to tissue damage; and
• A vitamin/mineral-based combination specific to collagen repair.

INFLAMMATION AND POOR DIET

Chiropractors are less familiar with chronic inflammation propagated by poor diet and lifestyle choices. People who consume an unbalanced diet high in refined carbohydrates and packaged foods can develop a sub-clinical chronic inflammatory state.

Research suggests that a pro-inflammatory state is an underlying cause for various diseases, including cardiovascular disease, Alzheimer’s disease and cancer.⁴ This same sub-clinical chronic inflammation is thought to eventually express itself as common musculoskeletal-oriented conditions, such as osteoarthritis and osteoporosis, as well as fibromyalgia, migraines and many other typical conditions for seeking chiropractic care.

With patients who have these conditions, recommending simple dietary changes, such as reducing the intake of grains and increasing the consumption of fruits and vegetables with moderate animal protein intake, can do wonders to reduce chronic inflammation.

However, regular supplementation that includes multi-vitamins, essential fatty acid oils (such as fish and flax seed oil), magnesium and other botanicals can quickly and effectively reverse chronic inflammation. This grouping of products is also an excellent “general health and wellness” protocol.

BETTER PATIENTS AND MORE INCOME

Adding nutritional supplements help your patients manage inflammation better (and without the side effects of pharmaceuticals). But recommending supplements also contributes to your revenues.

For example: The basic nutritional products you would recommend to treat traumatic injury are widely available and typically cost you between $8 and $12. Retailing these products to acute-injury patients in the $20 price range generates clinic revenue of approximately $10 on a cash basis.

This may not sound like much on an individual basis, but if you add up the $10 revenue over a year’s worth of treatments, the figures are substantial.

The average annual purchases of nutritional products per chiropractor is $6,240.⁵ A practical markup on a small group of safe and healthy products for managing inflammation can easily yield revenue between $5,000 to $10,000 per year.

Bryan Miller is the sales representative for Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia for Anabolic Laboratories, Inc. (www.anaboliclabs.com), an 80-year-old manufacturer of professional nutritional products for the chiropractic market.

He provides sales and consulting services to chiropractors interested in expanding into nutritional counseling and supplementation. He can be reached directly at 410-296-7574 or 800-445-6849.