High blood pressure?
Dr. Amy Spoelstra | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 13 years, 10 months AGO
I have witnessed chiropractic care greatly improve the lives of many patients. We see patients daily whose health has changed dramatically for the better after undergoing chiropractic care and I'm NOT talking about simply getting rid of their back pain! Today I'd like to share with you a scientific placebo-controlled study concerning the improvement of hypertension (high blood pressure) after chiropractic adjustments. The study was directed by Dr. George Bakis, M.D., director of the University of Chicago Hypertension Center.
This study included 50 patients with early-stage high blood pressure. Twenty-five of these patients underwent "sham" chiropractic adjustments and the remaining 25 patients received "real" chiropractic adjustments. At the end of the study, the 25 patients that received the actual chiropractic care had significantly lower blood pressure. Compared to the sham-treated patients, those who got the real chiropractic adjustments saw an average 14mm HG greater drop in systolic blood pressure (the top number in a blood pressure count), and an average 8 mm Hg greater drop in diastolic blood pressure (the bottom blood pressure number). None of the patients took blood pressure medication during the eight week study.
"This procedure has the effect of not one, but two blood pressure medications given in combination," study leader Dr. Bakis reported. "And it seems to be adverse-event free. We saw no side effects and no problems for the patients, "added Dr. Bakis in his report in the Journal of Human Hypertension. X-rays taken before and after the treatment period showed that the chiropractic adjustments realigned the Atlas vertebra, the doughnut-like bone at the very top of the spine, with the spine in the treated patients, but not in the sham-treated patients.
Dr. Bakis began the study after a fellow medical doctor told him that something strange was happening in his family practice. The doctor had been sending some of his patients to a chiropractor for treatment of back pain, but some of these patients did, in fact, suffer from high blood pressure. After seeing the chiropractor, the patients' blood pressure had normalized and some of them were able to stop taking their blood pressure medications.
The results of this and many other studies make perfect sense when understanding how chiropractic care actually works. If a bone of the spine is misaligned and thus causing interference for one or more of the many nerves exiting the spinal column, the messages that these nerves carry are not able to be taken to the cells, tissues and organs of the body so that the body can heal itself. Give your body the opportunity to do what it was intended to do... to live a healthy, active life!
For more information concerning high blood pressure and chiropractic, please give us a call at (208) 667-7434 or stop by and see us at 370 E. Kathleen Ave., Coeur d'Alene. We can also be found on the Web at www.CDAHealth.com.
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