Chiropractic Economics POINT-COUNTERPOINT: Meditation vs. Yoga to help fight pain

Chiropractic Economics’ Point-Counterpoint is where doctors of chiropractic and health care industry professionals debate the industry’s hottest topics.

Meditation or Yoga?

POINT: Meditation and chiropractic the perfect match

BY DAVID SATTERWHITE, DC

Doctors regularly advocate exercise for back pain and neck pain alleviation. The question is, will exercising help a patient’s pain? Absolutely! Has there been research done to back up these claims? Definitely!

A portion of care plans is usually exercise for the physical body. But what about the mental part of back and neck pain? There’s a good exercise for patients’ brains that can help with controlling the body: meditation.

For some folks meditation may be “out there,” but for others meditation may be the thing to try that will offer relieving help. Patients who suffer with a chronic pain condition — one that has been with them for years, be that neck pain or back pain or leg pain or whatever — are used to their mind’s attention to pain. Might meditation be a way for them to change their focus, adjust their attention? It may be.

Researchers have published findings that meditation may be a new approach to reducing chronic neck pain. These researchers studied chronic neck pain patients who had experienced neck pain for an average of 11 years. These neck pain patients reported pain over 40 out of 100 on the pain scale.

The researchers randomized these chronic neck pain patients to one of two groups for eight weeks: meditation or home exercise. The outcomes were encouraging: Meditation “significantly reduced pain” more than home exercise.

So encourage patients to exercise their mind with meditation to reduce back and neck pain. It can be done at home alone or with others in a class or via an online-directed meditation. Whatever format they are comfortable with, meditation may be an effective addition to your chiropractic care plan of spinal manipulation.

DAVID SATTERWHITE, DC, is clinical director at Satterwhite Chiropractic of Oxford in North Carolina and can be reached at satterwhitechiropractic.com.

COUNTERPOINT: Yoga and chiropractic offer complimentary healing

BY RYAN PORTERFIELD, DC

Yoga has gained steadily in popularity in the last decade. Originally developed thousands of years ago, the practice of breathing, posing and stretching offers a variety of important health benefits.

Although the two disciplines come from entirely different histories, the concept that yoga heals the body in its entirety closely mirrors the concept behind chiropractic care. These similar foundations offer enormous benefits to those suffering from a variety of injuries and conditions that seek help from a chiropractor.

Here are four reasons why:

Yoga primes the body for healing — Practicing yoga stretches and elongates the body’s muscles, releasing tension and stress. Before patients visit their chiropractors, yoga can serve to warm up their bodies and clarify their minds.

Yoga strengthens joints and ligaments — Dealing with a health condition or injury is frustrating and can seem like it takes forever to heal. Implementing yoga into a recovery plan helps strengthen joints and ligaments, which aids in promoting healing and cutting down the time it takes to get better.

Yoga increases range of motion — Depending on the severity of the individual’s specific condition, chiropractic patients may need several visits to “prep” their bodies before the main issue can even be addressed. The patient is more pliable, and the visit is able to offer more in-depth adjustments.

It prevents future injury — Many reasons individuals seek chiropractic treatment are for recurring issues. Yoga provides an ongoing way for patients dealing with chronic issues to manage and reduce instances of pain, inflammation and other symptoms. Chiropractic care coupled with yoga offers a great many benefits to patients who are dealing with medical conditions or injury.

RYAN PORTERFIELD, DC, attended Logan College of Chiropractic. He can be contacted at Porterfield Family Chiropractic at valparaisochiropractor.com.

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