The Latest Research on Chiropractic and Headaches | Podcast Ep. 93

Hello and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I am your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. I am extremely excited to be back after I think two weeks off, which is the longest break that we have ever taken. But as many of you know here in South Florida, we went through Hurricane Irma a couple weeks back and I had no power for just about a week, which made everything come to a grinding halt. Thankfully me and my family, much of Tampa Bay fared quite well with the storms, especially compared to those chiropractors and those individuals that lived south, further south of us into Miami area and certainly in Dominican, Puerto Rico, et cetera. So keep those individuals in your thoughts. But I also wanted to say that is why we have been off the last couple weeks. But we are back. We will be back to to weekly and barring any power outages, that's the way we intend on keeping it going. During that time. I traveled up to Connecticut, had a great event up there and I literally just came home from Rock Stock, which is rocktape's annual event today, and it was awesome. If you have not checked out the Evidence Based Chiropractor Facebook page, I live shot a bunch of videos. We also have some edited things coming through as well. It was perhaps the best event that I've been to within the chiropractic space, healthcare space yet. It was wonderful. I'm fortunate. I get to go to a bunch of really great events, but the Rock Tape crew really came through. But you're gonna see lots more to come and I thank them for having me out and being able to really dive in, get interviews with the entire crew. I was able to talk to a bunch of just absolutely killer docs that were out there. And a big shout out to Dr. Dan Lord. He is a practicing chiropractor at one of the largest tech companies in the world. That's all I'll say for now because I'm going to have him as a guest on the PODC very, very soon. But big ups to everybody at Rock Tape. The event was literally not even first class. It was world class. It was a ton of fun, awesome education. The week before that I was also able to travel up to Connecticut for their council event talk research. See Dr. Alex John de Villa. I mean it has just been. And it's nonstop because I'm headed out to Austin, Texas this weekend. But at any rate, today for research we are going to talk about headaches and I have a great paper, brand new, that you are definitely going to want to hear about. The paper Was titled Chiropractic Spinal Manipulation therapy for Cervicogenic headache. A single blinded placebo randomized controlled trial. It was put out by Biomed Central right this year in 2017. And I love this because you heard three magic words. Randomized controlled trial, RCT, the highest level there is single blind. And it pitted the spinal manipulation which they deem chiropractic spinal manipulation therapy against placebo. Because some, sometimes that is, well, it's just placebo. Well, let's take a look at the literature and I'll also touch on the fact that if you are a member of the evidence based chiropractor, you are going to have this as your white labeled research brief headed out to you today. So this is fresh. If you are not yet a member of the evidence based chiropractor, check out what we're doing. The evidencebasedchiropractor.com we help you build relationships based upon research. Nobody does it better. And we put out papers that are fantastic and give you the support necessary as well. So as we all know, cervicogenic headaches can affect 5% of the population or more on a daily basis. And why do these happen? Well, poor posture, awkward head positions and long periods of time at a desk with poor ergonomics. Do you know anybody that fits into that criteria? That's a rhetorical question. That's just about every single person in the industrialized world. And as we see every single day, medications and pharmacological management has been super unsuccessful. Doesn't take care of the problem. But research like this paper show that with proper manual care such as chiropractic adjustments, individuals can expect extremely positive and long lasting results. So what did these researchers found? I'm going to give you three quotes. The researchers found the efficacy of pharmacological management for cervicogenic headache is poor and medication overuse is frequent. We probably see that all the time. People are taking say one Advil a day, one Aleve a day, then that goes to two, then that goes to three and you ask them, well what has it done for your headaches? And they say not much yet they end up taking all of this medication. Not the ideal way to go. And the researchers agree with us. They also found quote, headache index improved in the chiropractic spinal manipulation therapy group at all time points. So this paper looked at people, baseline, the end of treatment, 3 month follow up, 6 month follow up and 12 month follow up. And the headache index improved with the chiropractic at all time points. So it not Only helped short term, but it also helped long term. Extremely important. And finally, they found, quote, and they referenced another study. An Australian RCT with high methodological quality reported 71% of the participants having greater than 50% reduction in headache frequency, while 33 reported 100% improvement in the spinal manipulation therapy group. So they also cited other papers saying, we're not alone with these findings. And I'm gonna rephrase kind of what they said there. We're not alone in finding that headache index, meaning the frequency, the duration and the intensity went down with chiropractic care compared to control and compared to placebo. Chiropractic outperformed both, not only at baseline, but literally at every single point in the study. At baseline, they all came in at what they came in at end of the first treatment, chiropractic improvement. At the end of the 3 months, chiropractic group had improvement. End of 6 months, chiropractic group had Improvement. End of 12 months. The chiropractic group that received chiropractic care, I should say still had great, even greater improvement. And what they're referring to is the Australian randomized controlled trial, another just top, top, top research type, that 71% of the participants had at least 50% reduction in headache frequency. That is pretty good. On top of that 33%, a third of the individuals in that study group had 100% improvement with chiropractic care adjustments, spinal manipulation. That's super, super powerful. Cervicogenic headaches are an unbelievably common thing. I mean, we see it in time to time. And you see, you ask somebody that comes in, maybe primarily with a hot disc or they come in for a sports, and you say, hey, do you have headaches? Eight out of 10 people are gonna say, yeah. Maybe even nine out of 10 people are gonna say, yeah, I have headaches from time to time in cervicogenic headaches, again, due to poor posture, due to awkward sleeping positions, due to ergonomic issues in the workplace, and maybe this little thing called stress that a few of our patients might be under. That creates a really, really fertile ground or toxic situation for headaches, cervicogenic headaches, to spur up from and when they are cervicogenic by nature, so to speak. That was really, and I'm not surprised by the results of this study. Those are just such great candidates for chiropractic adjustments. When you can get in segmentally, when you can stimulate the nervous system, when you can improve range of motion, when you can go through true chiropractic care for these individuals, it is no surprise that they have significant improvement. Now the big thing with that, as always, is the onus is on us to let everybody know about it and put it into terms that they understand. And that really is the clincher. And that's what we do of course each and every month at and with the Evidence based Chiropractor with our membership. But it is also why of course we do this podcast each and every week to make sure that we get that information out there. So again, this paper was from 2017 BioMed Central and it was titled Chiropractic Spinal Manipulative Therapy for Cervicogenic Headache, A single blinded placebo and Randomized Controlled Trial. So another great paper to have in your arsenal. If you are a member of the evidence based chiropractor, this will be coming through your pipeline. You will have it in your email box before the end of the day. If you are not a member of the Evidence based Chiropractor, it is time to hop on board and get the tools to build and grow your practice. We have docs get getting 20 more referrals from medical doctors, 30, 40 and more. And that's really, that's exciting to me because a lot of those patients were not necessarily gonna end up in a chiropractic office unless directed by that doctor. So it doesn't replace all of your other advertising online and off, but it can supplement it, bridge that gap, build those relationships and give yourself a little bit of protection from this ebb and flow with the crazy insurance world that we are in. Anytime you can div, it is a benefit for sure. So that is the news and happenings this week. I am again extremely pumped to be back. Big thanks to everybody over at Rock Tape. I cannot wait to get those videos out there. Keep your eyes peeled on my LinkedIn page as well as if you haven't checked it out, YouTube.com, the evidence based Chiropractor. Subscribe and follow there. You will not miss a video as far as that goes either this next week. Upcoming I am going to Austin, Texas for SumoCon. If you were listening, a few weeks ago you heard me speak to Noah Kim Kagan, who's the CEO and founder of Sumo Group and 30th employee at Facebook's, fourth or fifth employee at Mint. Really cool guy. Also Neville Medora, copywriter that I've worked with in the past that does great work and a bunch of other awesome people will be hanging out in Austin, Texas this weekend. I'm excited for that. The following weekend we are still waiting. I'm supposed to be going to Puerto Rico, but they're having a lot of trouble down there. Everybody in Puerto Rico is in our thoughts and minds for sure. A lot of travel coming up, a lot of excitement. But I can assure you we will keep the research coming, we will keep the marketing coming, and do everything we can to support you building and growing your practice. I hope you have a great week, Doc and I will talk to you soon.

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