Jeff Langmaid breaks down a study on how words shape pain relief from spinal adjustments. Patients told positive things before treatment reported 1.41 points less pain immediately after, and 2 points less pain a day later, compared to those given negative suggestions. The adjustment helped everyone, but positive framing made it work better.
The headline finding was that all 3 groups improved in pain after spinal adjustment. Now that's pretty important. The positive group improved, the neutral group improved, and quite frankly, even shockingly in some ways, the negative suggestion group also improved. So it's not saying the adjustment only works if you give somebody a positive suggestion, but the amount of improvement was different, and that's where things start to get interesting. The positive suggestion group had greater pain reduction than the negative suggestion group immediately after the adjustment, and again 24 hours later. Immediately after the adjustment, positive group, 1.41 point greater reduction in pain compared to the negative group. After 24 hours, the difference was even bigger. The positive group had over a 2 point greater reduction in pain compared to the negative group. On a 0 to 10 scale, that's significant. It's actually clinically meaningful. And we're talking about low back pain. A 2 point difference can really matter to a patient, and that could be the difference between them thinking to themselves, it helped a little, and man, I really feel better.
