More Evidence That Chiropractic Can Help Patients With Asthma

There are many types of research articles. The simplest is the case study, where a doctor reports what happened to one particular patient. The most complex is the systematic review, where researchers comb through all of the existing literature on a particular topic to enhance our overall knowledge on that topic.

A systematic review was recently published by the journal Clinical Chiropractic which examined research on "The chiropractic care of patients with asthma." Asthma is a very serious condition, which is growing more prevalent each decade. In terms of overall health care dollars, Americans spend between $1 billion and $6 billion annually on asthma medication.

The authors of this systematic review noted that some recent research articles had come to light which were critical of the effectiveness of chiropractic towards patients with asthma. In taking a closer look at those articles, these authors determined that there were serious flaws with the research procedures and, in particular, with the way in which the sham adjustments (i.e., placebos) were administered. After all, it is very difficult to convince a patient that they have had a chiropractic adjustment when they have not!

The authors also looked at a broad scope of research, including case studies and other smaller research studies. They found that there is much anecdotal and clinical evidence for chiropractic effectiveness in asthmatic patients, and encouraged other researchers to continue to produce high-quality literature on the subject.

The chiropractic profession already knows the benefits of the chiropractic adjustment for non-musculoskeletal conditions such as asthma, and looks forward to more research on the subject.