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Neck and headache pain are common problems that affect millions of people around the world. If you suffer from this type of issue, you're not alone. The good news is that chiropractic care is a great way to not only treat these common issues, but also help avoid future episodes.

Research Shows Chiropractic Helps With Neck Pain and Headaches

For many years, people with neck and headache pain in North County, St. Louis, MO have been helped by the chiropractic adjustments of Dr. Mark Holland. Our experience is backed up by a recent review done in Canada that found that non-surgical, non-drug treatments are the best choice for neck and headache pain.

The report looked at 15 studies from 1990 to 2015 and found that conservative treatment comprised of chiropractic adjustments, exercises, and stretches was advisable before resorting to drugs or more invasive treatments.

Previous studies have shown that chiropractic is effective and safe for neck pain and many other health conditions.

We Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Neck Pain and Headaches

If you're struggling with neck pain or headaches, Dr. Mark Holland and our staff are here to help you feel better. Give our North County, St. Louis, MO office a call today at (314) 867-8888 for an appointment today.

Reference

Varatharajan S, Ferguson B, Chrobak K, et al. Are non-invasive interventions effective for the management of headaches associated with neck pain? An update of the Bone and Joint Decade Task Force on Neck Pain and Its Associated Disorders by the Ontario Protocol for Traffic Injury Management (OPTIMa) Collaboration. European Spine Journal 2016; February 6:1-29.

There are many different kinds of headache, but one of the most common types is known as "cervicogenic headache," or those that start in your neck.

Dr. Mark Holland sees a lot of people in our North County, St. Louis, MO office who are suffering with recurring headaches. Fortunately, chiropractic can usually help, potentially reducing these types of headaches by 50%, and research confirms it.

Research Proves Chiropractic Helps With Cervicogenic Headaches

A study was conducted involving 80 participants who reported experiencing at least five cervicogenic headaches during the prior three months. The objective was to see how effective chiropractic was for this type of head pain, as well as to ascertain the number of treatment sessions required to achieve a positive effect.

The individuals were split into four separate groups, so that each group was similar in age, gender, number of cervicogenic headaches, and their intensity. Of the four groups, two engaged in chiropractic treatments and two received light massage. Furthermore, one group assigned to each treatment received eight sessions and the other group received twice that amount.

Each person was assessed based on head pain, neck pain, and disability prior to the study and 12 and 24 weeks after treatment was complete. The authors found that those who received chiropractic as opposed to massage reported fewer headaches at the conclusion of the study. Furthermore, improvements were maintained when checked six months after treatment ended.

Additionally, participants who were taking medications for their headaches were able to lower their intake after completing the study. Those who received chiropractic adjustments had lower medication usage 24 weeks post-study.

We Can Help People Find Relief From Head Pain

Dr. Mark Holland has helped many people who were suffering from headaches in our North County, St. Louis, MO office. Call us today at (314) 867-8888 for more information or for an appointment.

Reference

Haas M, Spegman A, Peterson D, Aickin M, Vavrek D. Dose response and efficacy of spinal manipulation for chronic cervicogenic headache: a pilot randomized controlled trial. The Spine Journal 2010; 10: 117-128.

Dr. Mark Holland sees many patients weekly in our busy North County, St. Louis, MO chiropractic office who are looking for relief from the pain and agony they feel due to herniated discs. Our experience isn't unique; the medical literature verifies that chiropractic care is a successful way to treat herniated disc problems.

Don't Suffer! Dr. Mark Holland and Chiropractic Care Helps With Disc Herniation

One particular research project involved 27 people, 8 male and 19 female, who had magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) confirming a disc herniation in either their neck or lower back. The individuals reported that they were experiencing pain, reduced range of motion, and sensory issues bad enough to keep them off work.

During the course of the research period, the participants were managed using one of two common chiropractic practices: traction for herniated discs in the cervical area or flexion distraction for the people who had herniation issues in the lumbar area.

Each man or woman was seen four or five times per week for the first two weeks, then three times weekly, and then as needed for the remainder of the study. Depending on the severity of the disc herniation, therapy ranged anywhere from six weeks to six months, with MRIs being performed at a variety of stages to identify what effect, if any, the chiropractic care was having in regard to the disc herniation.

Research Proves Chiropractic Helps With Back Pain and Herniated Disc

The researchers found that 80 percent of the subjects obtained a "good clinical outcome," meaning reduced pain and a reduction in other issues, such as numbness. Furthermore, 77 percent of these subjects also showed MRI evidence that their disc herniation was either reduced or resolved completely. This resulted in 78 percent of the study participants being able to return to their place of employment and led the researchers to conclude that chiropractic is both "safe and helpful" for disc herniations.

If you have a herniated disc and suffer from chronic back pain and are near Dr. Mark Holland in North County, St. Louis, MO, contact our office today to see what chiropractic can do for you!

Reference
BenEliyahu, DJ. Magnetic resonance imaging and clinical follow-up: study of 27 patients receiving chiropractic care for cervical and lumbar disc herniations. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 1996;19(9):597-606.

In our North County, St. Louis, MO practice, we see plenty of people who are struggling with back pain, and some of these people have been told they might need surgery to recover. Thankfully, Dr. Mark Holland has helped many people get relief without the need for any type of surgical procedure. The scientific research agrees with the results we see in our practice. One medical study published in the academic journal Spine found that seeing a chiropractor as your first move in overcoming with your back pain may literally keep you out of the operating room.

In this research study, medical professionals from Dartmouth reviewed statistics from 1,885 workers from the state of Washington who first saw either a surgeon or a chiropractic doctor for their back-related issues. They then examined three years' worth of follow-up medical data to find out whether the patients wound up having back surgery in an effort to treat the problem.

What the researchers found was that about 43% of the people who first consulted with a surgeon for their back issues ended up in surgery in that 3-year time frame, whereas only 1.5 percent of those who first consulted with a chiropractor had the same fate. The authors wrote:

"Even after controlling for injury severity and other measures, workers with an initial visit for the injury to a surgeon had almost nine times the odds of receiving lumbar spine surgery compared to those seeing primary care providers, whereas workers whose first visit was to a chiropractor had significantly lower odds of surgery."

These are remarkable results. Visiting a chiropractor drastically decreases your odds of getting back surgery, plus the chiropractic patients in this scientific study "had lower odds of chronic work disability" and they also had fewer expensive MRI tests.

Let's also take note this important detail: this study was performed by orthopedic surgeons from Dartmouth College, and printed in the world's most influential medical publication on spinal injury.

The Risks of Surgery

Any surgical procedure has risks, but a major problem associated with spinal surgery is that there is a very high failure rate. In an important analysis in the European Spine Journal, researchers wrote:

"Failed back surgery is a problem that has become sufficiently widespread to even warrant its own special conferences, with recent reviews reporting failure rates ranging from 5 to 50%."

The experts in this same study concluded:

"It is extremely difficult to identify unequivocal predictor factors that can be used to accurately predict the outcome of surgery."

As a chiropractor, Dr. Mark Holland is convinced that surgery should be the absolute last choice for treating back pain. Chiropractic works to restore your spine to its normal function--without risky surgery or drugs--and many scientific studies have established the effectiveness of chiropractic for back pain.

If you live in North County, St. Louis, MO and you need care for your back pain, give our practice a call today at (314) 867-8888 for a consultation or an appointment. We'll help get you back on the road to a pain-free life!

Studies

• Keeney BJ, Fulton-Kehoe D, Turner JA, Wickizer TM, Chan KC, Franklin GM. Early predictors of lumbar spine surgery after occupational back injury: results from a prospective study of workers in Washington State. Spine 2013;38(11):953-964.
• Mannion AF, Elfering A. Predictors of surgical outcome and their assessment. European Spine Journal 2006;15(Suppl 1):S93-S108.
  

We work with many car accident cases in in our North County, St. Louis, MO office, and a widespread symptom we see in our patients is shoulder pain. Chiropractic can be very helpful for shoulder pain symptoms after a crash. Let's see what causes shoulder pain and why chiropractic works.

There are at least two ways that you can develop shoulder pain after an accident: by direct trauma to the shoulder joint or by radiating pain from the neck.

Direct trauma can be caused by hitting your shoulder on a hard object in the car during the crash, or can occur if you have a tight grip on the steering wheel during a rear end crash. With this type of injury, you'll often be aware of the pain soon after the wreck.

More frequently, Dr. Mark Holland finds that shoulder or arm pain doesn't immediately appear after a collision, but begins a few days or weeks after the accident. This type of shoulder pain actually starts in the cervical spine. Injured soft tissue in your spine can squeeze nerves in your neck, causing numbness, tingling, or soreness in your shoulder, elbow, or wrist.

We've worked with many types of shoulder pain in our North County, St. Louis, MO office. This treatment involves chiropractic adjustments to restore your spine's natural flexibility and home exercises that strengthen your neck and shoulder.

You don't have to suffer from shoulder pain. Dr. Mark Holland is conveniently located in North County, St. Louis, MO to help you recover, whether you've been in a car crash or not. Dr. Mark Holland will first determine what's causing your pain and then work to restore your body to its natural functioning. Ready to make an appointment? Give us a call at (314) 867-8888 and we'll get you back on the road to health.

We tend to a large number of patients in our North County, St. Louis, MO office, and Dr. Mark Holland has helped countless people overcome a range of health issues. Even so, a common worry that seems to prevent a lot of women and men from pursuing treatment is whether or not chiropractic care is safe. Well, according to three different studies (out of countless on the issue), the answer to this concern is a clear: "Yes! Chiropractic is safe!"

Chiropractic is Safe, According to Australian Study

The first study(1) was published in Spine and involved 183 women and men between the ages of 20 and 85. Each person was affected by spine-related pain, and half of the people received real chiropractic adjustments whereas the other half were given two fake chiropractic treatments. Information was obtained after each real or fake adjustment to discover if any unfavorable negative effects were caused by the actual chiropractic adjustments.

Researchers found that nobody reported any serious unfavorable side effects in any way after receiving one or two sessions of chiropractic. Some individuals did state that they got a headache (9% of patients) or muscle stiffness (37 percent) after treatment, but the effects were not serious.

Nationwide Survey Finds that Chiropractic is Safe

The next article(2), also published in the distinguished medical journal, Spine, was done in an effort to establish the safety of chiropractic. The test group was much larger -- 20,000 people. Each participant received chiropractic adjustments of the neck, with over 50,000 total adjustments for all patients.

Again, the researchers discovered no serious adverse side effects. The experts determined the risk of total adverse reactions to be approximately 6 out of every 10,000 consultations or every 100,000 treatment sessions. And, just as with the previous study, some individuals did report non-serious, milder, unwanted effects such as dizziness (about 1.6%) or a headache (4 out of every 100), and this prompted the researchers to determine that "the risk of a serious adverse event, immediately or up to 7 days after treatment, was low to very low."

Chiropractic Is Safe for Your Children

The third research paper(3) is different from the previous two reports, as it concentrates on the safety of chiropractic care for kids. In this article, the researchers analyzed results reported by both chiropractors and parents involving 816 children who participated in 7,173 chiropractic treatment sessions.

Out of 5,438 chiropractic appointments made for the young children, chiropractors answering the survey reported only three cases where there were negative side effects. When parents were surveyed, they indicated only two adverse side effects out of 1,735 visits. Furthermore, both chiropractors and parents reported "a high rate of improvement with respect to the children's presenting complaints."

Based on these three studies (and many more!), chiropractic care has been found to be safe and effective for everyone. To find out what chiropractic care can do for you, call our North County, St. Louis, MO office and make an appointment today at (314) 867-8888.

References

1. Walker BF, Hebert JJ, Stomski NJ, Clarke BR, Bowden RS, Losco B, French SD. Outcomes of usual chiropractic. The OUCH randomized controlled trial of adverse events. Spine 2013;38(20):1723-9.
2. Thiel HW1, Bolton JE, Docherty S, Portlock JC. Safety of chiropractic manipulation of the cervical spine: a prospective national survey. Spine 2007;32(21):2375-8.
3. Alcantara J, Ohm J, Kunz D. The safety and effectiveness of pediatric chiropractic: a survey of chiropractors and parents in a practice-based research network. Explore NY 2009;5(5): 290-5.

When you're trying to sustain your family, take care of your household, and pay all of your bills on time, every day at your job counts. Work injuries can be a serious problem for many people, and we see many of these types of injuries in our North County, St. Louis, MO office. Dr. Mark Holland appreciates your situation and is here to help.

The benefits of chiropractic for work injuries are well-documented. A 2013 research paper involving 651 adults who were suffering with either back or neck pain found that the men and women who didn't see a chiropractor missed work at twice the rate of those who were seeing a chiropractor.

So, why don't more people use Chiropractic?

According to the respondents in this paper, two of the major factors were that they thought they needed a referral for chiropractic care (which is typically no longer true) and they overestimated the costs associated with chiropractic treatment sessions by almost 70 percent.

The reality is, chiropractic patients actually spend less on care than medical patients, plus they are less likely to use drugs for their symptoms.

Dr. Mark Holland Can Help People Find Relief From Chronic Pain

If you live in North County, St. Louis, MO and you've been injured at work, we can help. Give our office a call today at (314) 867-8888 for an appointment.

Sources

"Thousands of Minnesotans with Back and Neck Pain Don't Seek Treatment." (2013, June 12). ChiroCare.

We come across a lot of sports injuries in our North County, St. Louis, MO office, and Dr. Mark Holland is often able to assist these athletes. Stanford Children’s Hospital states that over 3.5 million children aged 14 and younger are hurt each year while playing sports. Add that to the almost 2 million adults hurt each year while engaged in sports-related activities, as reported by statistics compiled by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and you can start to see the necessity of preventing these types of widespread injuries. One way to possible achieve that goal, as reported by a study released in BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, is to receive routine chiropractic treatments.

In Australian Rules football, hamstring and other leg traumas are common, often sidelining the players and impacting their team's likelihood of winning. One specific study was conducted using 59 semi-elite Australian Rules footballers to see if chiropractic could cut down on these injuries and help keep them in the game.

Research Proves Chiropractic Helps in Treating Sports Injuries

For this study specifically, all of the volunteers got medical treatment. Furthermore, half of them also received chiropractic treatments at the rate of 1 treatment each week for the first six weeks, biweekly sessions for the next three months, and one session per month for the remaining 3 months of the study. The other group were given no chiropractic intervention at all and acted as the control group to assess the benefits of chiropractic care.

Following twenty-four matches, scientists noticed a lessened number of lower limb muscle strains in the group that had received chiropractic care. Additionally, that same group also missed fewer matches correlated to non-contact knee injuries. This lead the researchers to come to the conclusion that chiropractic should be made an addition to sports training programs to effectively reduce the amount of leg injuries.

Dr. Mark Holland Can Help Patients Find Comfort From Sports Injuries & Help You Recover Quicker

If you or your child plays sports and you want to ensure more time is dedicated on the field versus on the bench, call our North County, St. Louis, MO office at (314) 867-8888 and schedule an appointment today. We will do our best to keep you in the game!

References

• Hoskins, W, & Pollard, H. (2010, April 8). The effect of a sports chiropractic manual therapy intervention on the prevention of back pain, hamstring and lower limb injuries in semi-elite Australian Rules footballers: a randomized controlled trial. BMC Musculoskeletal Disorders, 11(64), doi:10.1186/1471-2474-11-64
• Misra, A. (2014, March 17). Common sports injuries: Incidence and average charges. Department of Health & Human Services.
• Stanford Children’s Hospital. (n.d.). Sports injury statistics.

According to research, roughly 2-5 percent of the population will experience painful ailments like frozen shoulder syndrome at some time in their lives. That makes shoulder pain a common problem and one that Dr. Mark Holland sees in our North County, St. Louis, MO practice on a regular basis.

Research Supports Chiropractic Helps With Shoulder Pain

Generally, this issue is more prevalent for people in their 40s, 50s, and 60s, and it tends to affect women more often than men. While ice, heat, and gentle stretching can sometimes help alleviate the discomfort, so too can chiropractic care.

For instance, one study published in the Journal of Chiropractic Medicine looked at 50 people with frozen shoulder who were given chiropractic care. The duration of care varied from 11 days to 51 days, with 28 days being the average.

The researchers found that nearly all of the study participants fared very well with chiropractic care. The study found:

8 of the subjects reported 50-75 percent improvement
25 indicated improvement ranging from 75- 90 percent
1 participant had complete resolution of their frozen shoulder pain

Only one participant reported an improvement of 50 percent or less, so studies like this demonstrate just how effective chiropractic can be when it comes to decreasing shoulder pain and increasing quality of life.

We Can Help Clients Find Relief From Shoulder Pain

Let Dr. Mark Holland help you decrease your pain by contacting our North County, St. Louis, MO office and scheduling your appointment today.

Resources

Murphy F et al. (2012, December). Chiropractic management of frozen shoulder syndrome using a novel technique: a retrospective case series of 50 patients. Journal of Chiropractic Medicine;11(4):267-272

Dr. Mark Holland works with many sciatica patients here in our North County, St. Louis, MO office, and many of these men and women were concerned that they might need surgery to relieve their pain. The most recent research indicates that many people don't need surgery for this common issue, and that chiropractic is more beneficial at solving sciatic nerve pain.

A popular surgery for sciatica is microdiscectomy, and in a 2010 study, specialists examined 80 individuals with sciatica who were referred for this procedure.

Forty patients were then randomly placed in one of two groups. The first group received surgical microdiscectomy and the second group was given chiropractic care.

Both groups got better; however, no obvious difference in outcome was reported one year post-treatment between the surgery group and the chiropractic group. Additionally, about sixty percent of the participating patients who could not find relief from any other treatment method "benefited from spinal manipulation to the same degree as if they underwent surgical intervention."

Put another way, chiropractic provided the same positive advantages as surgery without needing to endure the greater amounts of surgery-based pain or suffer through lengthy recovery times often affiliated with that type of treatment option. Additionally, you also don't run the risks associated with surgical microdiscectomy, which includes nerve root damage, bowel or bladder incontinence, bleeding, or infection.

Surgery should be the last resort for sciatica pain. If you live in North County, St. Louis, MO and you're suffering from back pain or sciatica, give Dr. Mark Holland a call today at (314) 867-8888. We'll help pinpoint the origin of your pain and work hard to get you relief.

References

• McMorland, G et al. Manipulation or microdiskectomy for sciatica? A prospective randomized clinical study. Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics 2010;33(8):576-584.
• Solberg TK, Nygaard OP, Sjaavik K, Hofoss D, Ingebrigtsen T. The risk of "getting worse" after lumbar microdiscectomy. European Spine Journal 2005;14(1):49-54.