Home Exercises or Chiropractic Care Beat Medications for Neck Pain

Neck pain is a very common problem. Many of us have woken up with a painful neck and found that we couldn’t turn our head because of painful muscle spasm. Doctors use various treatments for neck pain. Pain medication, spinal manipulation by a chiropractor, and physical therapy for stretching exercises are all popular remedies, but there is very little scientific evidence to support any of them. I frequently used to prescribe anti-inflammatory pain medications as an initial treatment, but not anymore.

This issue of ” target=”_blank”>home exercises. They were asked to continue the exercises for the 12 weeks of treatment.

All patients were followed for a year after the start of the study to periodically measure their pain and range of motion.

Surprisingly, both the home exercise group and the chiropractic spinal manipulation group did much better than the medication group. And there was not a significant difference in outcomes between the home exercise group and the chiropractor group.

So the next time you get a crick in your neck, check out the ” target=”_blank”>For Neck Pain, Chiropractic and Exercise Are Better Than Drugs (NY Times, Well column)
” target=”_blank”>Is Spinal Manipulation an Effective Treatment for Neck Pain? (Annals of Internal Medicine, Summaries for Patients)
” target=”_blank”>Spinal Manipulation, Medication, or Home Exercise With Advice for Acute and Subacute Neck Pain (Annals of Internal Medicine article)