The real cost of back pain! What can be done?

Did you know that if you the longer you are out of work with back pain the less chance you have of going back to work, and the more your health care will cost or you will require. In fact if you are off work for 2 years there is little chance that you will EVER return to work. For this reason health care providers promote patients to get back to work.

Pain not only limits you, if limits your family and friends and all those that you interact with. As we can appreciate we are not our normal happy self when we are in pain.

In 2017 the HSE (Health and safety Executive) in the United Kingdom published the Work-related Musculoskeletal Disorders Statics in Great Britain 2017 (1) an estimated 8.9 million working days were lost as a result of this condition and that such conditions represented 35% of all days lost due to work-related ill health in Great Britain. Interestingly these statistics are based on self reported days days only!

Also interestingly younger age groups of either gender seemed to report less sick days than old age groups, Females aged 16-34 seemed to have the lowest number of sick days out of all groups presented in both genders (1).

So what can we do about it?

Whilst acute pain is usually a self limiting problem (I.e. it will go away by itself in time if you do nothing) this is not always the case there is strong research available that mentions the benefits of spinal manipulative care as can be provided by a chiropractor. Such studies include the U.K. Beam trails that were published in the British Mexico Journal in 1991 and then examinated again and published in 1994 indicated positive results through spinal manipulative care over just the use of medication alone. The conclusion in the 1994 trail was:

“Relative to “best care” in general practice, manipulation followed by exercise achieved a moderate benefit at 3 months” (3).

They also added that an unanswered question was are the weight of these benefits worth the cost, however also to consider given the surmounting cost of low back pain on Society that even small differences in clinical outcomes may have large economic effects.

In our office we do have a saving the 5 most dangerous words are “maybe it will go away”. And most of our patients that look at this tend to say “that’s me!”. Most enter a schedule of care. Most get better.!

At The Chiropractic Centres - Billericay and The Chiropractic Centre - Brentwood we will happily talk to anyone that seeks to improve their health. Call us today on 01277 63 025. Mention STEEMITJan18 for the month of January ONLY and you will get the Initial consultation AND report of findings normally valued at £70 for only £35. That’s a £35 savings. This includes a complete case history and a detailed top to toe assessment of your nerves, muscles and ligaments, and a followup session explaining in detail what we found, how we can help as well as the time and costs involved so you know right from the start what’s involved.

(1) www.hse.gov.uk/Statistics/causdis/musculoskeletal/msd.pdf
(2) Waddell, G. 2004. The back pain revolution. 2nd ed. Churchill Livingstone, Edinburgh.
(3)