Jeff LangmaidFounder, The Evidence Based Chiropractor

Chiropractic Care Outshines NSAIDs in Pain Relief

19 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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0:46

Jeff Langmaid (speaker) summarizes a double-blind randomized controlled trial comparing spinal manipulation (chiropractic) plus standard medical care, standard medical care alone, and NSAID (diclofenac). He reports that about 75% of participants receiving standard care plus chiropractic had pain completely resolved, that the chiropractic/spinal-adjustment group had 19 people with pain completely gone and 0 people worse, while diclofenac outcomes were described as inconsistent ('a crapshoot'). The speaker emphasizes chiropractic produced clear superiority to placebo and to NSAID in this trial.

Questions this video answers

A double-blind randomized controlled trial.

About 75%.

19.

Diclofenac.

Chapters

So in this study they had a double blind randomized controlled trial that showed that we were clearly superior to placebo and clearly superior to NSAID. About 75% of the people that had standard medical care plus chiropractic had pain completely gone as opposed to pretty much almost the complete opposite. And if you just had standard medical care what did that look like? It looked like this. So on the right hand side all the way if you look at the diclofenac, basically it was like a crapshoot. Like you were just as likely to get better as not to get better as get worse. And if you look at the manipulation as they call it in the literature, if you look at the spinal adjustment group you can see the 19 was pain really completely gone. The 0 was slightly worse. 0 people got worse. Everybody had improvement where if we look at the other way we can see it was middling at best. That is a big deal.