This month I’d like to focus on an Australian research article recently published in The Lancet1, one of the most highly respected medical journals world-wide. This study compared over 1600 people with low back pain, one third took a regular daily paracetamol dose (3990mg), one third took a paracetamol dose when required to relieve pain (dosage varied) and one third took a sugar pill designed as the placebo.
The aim of the study was to reduce the low back pain of the patient to at least a 1 out of 10 on a pain scale. Of the three groups mentioned above the regular dosage group improved in an average in 17 days, the intermittent dose 17 days and the placebo group 16 days.
These findings suggest that regular or as-needed dosing with paracetamol does not affect recovery time compared with placebo in low-back pain, and questions the universal endorsement of paracetamol in this patient group.
Considering it is still common practice for patients to take paracetamol, this high quality research is particularly important as it now implies that some of our most recognised paracetamol brands are no better than taking a sugar pill for the treatment of low back pain.
Fortunately however Chiropractic does work. Chiropractic is a drug free, surgery free approach to low back pain. Chiropractors concentrate on finding the cause of the problem and correcting it with a mixture of treatment and rehabilitation options.
Contact your local CAA NT member Chiropractor today for an assessment.
