Chiropractic for Kids?

Many people, even strong supporters of chiropractic, assume that you need to be an adult to get treatment. They think that it is adults, with their chronic back and joint issues, who need the healing adjustments a chiropractor can provide. However, there are plenty of children who get chiropractic treatments also.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3.1 percent of children in the United States were treated by chiropractors in 2012. That works out to almost 2 million children, which is a substantial number.

There’s no reason why children can’t get the same benefit from Doylestown chiropractic treatment as adults. Their bodies are the same, only smaller, and they’re subject to the same bruises, imbalances, and other ailments as adults. In fact, with millions of children playing organized sports — many of them grueling contact sports — there are more opportunities for kids to get the kind of injuries that would benefit from chiropractic care. A child playing football or soccer can end up with a back injury that is just as painful as an adult who shoveled a driveway full of snow and threw his back out.

Doylestown Pediatric Chiropractors are specialists, and they can work wonders for kids as well as adults. Some youth coaches have been known to recommend chiropractic treatment for their athletes, and a growing number of parents are taking their children to chiropractors even for stubborn infections, colds, and other ailments that have not responded to pediatric care.

Chiropractic treatment is a great tool to add to the medical treatment options for your child.

A Good Alternative To Surgery

Studies have shown that approximately 70 percent of people will have back pain at some point in their lives. With many people the pain becomes so debilitating that they need treatment in order to get relief. A study by McMorland, Suter, Casha,du Plessis, and Hurlbertin 2010 found that over 250,000 patients a year undergo elective lumbar discectomy (spinal surgery) for the treatment of low back disc issues in the United States.

However, there is another way to treat low back problems. Chiropractic treatments have been shown to be effective in many cases. That same study cited above looked at thousands of patients who had distinct one-sided lumbar disc herniations as diagnosed through MRI studies, along with associated radicular (nerve root) symptoms. These were all patients who were candidates for surgery based on the authors’ review of available MRI studies. The conclusion was that 60 percent of the patients who got chiropractic care instead of surgery reported a successful outcome. The other 40 percent ended up getting surgery in order to get rid of their back pain.

What these percentages reveal is that the people who elected to get chiropractic treatment from a Doylestown chiropractor had a 60 percent chance of getting better without surgery, so it was a smart decision by them to try the chiropractic approach before going under the surgeon’s knife.

A more recent study showed that patients with acute lumbar herniated disc pain felt 80 percent better after two weeks of chiropractic treatment from a Doylestown PA chiropractor, with an improvement of 95 percent in three months.

These studies show that for acute lower back pain, chiropractic care is a very good alternative to surgery in many cases, and it’s certainly worth investigating before a patient submits to a surgical procedure.