Chiropractic Shown to be Safe for Children

In a literature research study conducted by the International Chiropractic Pediatric Association (ICPA) the risk of injury as a result of chiropractic adjustments was shown to be extremely low for adults and even smaller for the pediatric patient. In reviewing 31 years of medical literature the ICPA found only one questionable report of injury to a child following chiropractic care of a child. This ICPA concluded "the potential risk to children is so low it can not be accurately estimated". The above safety rate of chiropractic care for children should be compared to the adverse reaction rate for medicine described in the article below.

Medicines That Commonly Harm Children

According to a Canadian study reported at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Allergy Asthma and Immunology, antibiotics and vaccines are the medicines that most often cause adverse reactions in children.

"There is relatively little pediatric data on adverse reactions, which can range from rashes to potentially fatal hypersensitivity". More than 1,500 Canadian cases were reviewed between 1985 and 1995 by Sandra R. Knowles and her colleagues at the Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center in Toronto. In all, 1,800 drugs were implicated in this study.

The leading problems were caused from: Amoxicillin/Ampicillin with a 24% reaction rate, vaccines in general with a 19% reaction rate, Trimethoprim came in with 8%, Sulfamethoxazole (sulfa drug) at 8%, Erythromycin - was at 3%, and Penicillin also at 3% reaction rate.

Annual Death Rate Due to Medications Continues to Rise!

The following is reprinted from a recent article in the Boston Globe entitled, "Medication-Error Deaths Soar in U.S.," by Richard A. Knox, "The incidence of death due to medication errors increased dramatically between 1983 and 1993 and shows no signs of abating, new research on the subject shows. Over the ten-year period in question, patient deaths due to medication leaped 260 percent overall, and 850 percent among persons receiving outpatient care. And these figures may represent "only the tip of the iceberg," according to David Phillips of U.C. at San Diego, who points out that many prescription error deaths aren't listed as such on death certificates. Death certificates from the ten-year period provided the raw data on which the findings are based.

Researchers involved in the study say that the increase in medication fatalities cannot be attributed simply to patients taking larger-than-prescribed doses of medication. Their comments are borne out by the fact that the sharpest increase in such deaths among outpatients occurred with the use of anesthetics. Anesthesia drugs are not self-administered, suggesting that the increase in outpatient care as part of overall cost-cutting measures among hospitals may be part of the problem. The study found that deaths due to anesthetics among outpatients increased 400 percent compared to anethesia deaths occurring in hospitals.

Surprisingly, the steep rise in medication deaths is not due to an increase in prescriptions, which during the ten-year period rose 39 percent, compared to the 260 percent increase in medication error deaths. Compounding the problem, according to research conducted by Harvard University, is the fact that medication errors commonly occur even in the nation's highest-ranking teaching hospitals. The findings clearly indicate the need for a close reexamination of modern medicine's over-reliance on drug use and symptom care as primary approaches for treating illness."

(Fortunately Chiropractic is a drugless health profession that deals with correcting causes and not just treating effects.)

What is a Subluxation?

In simplest terms, a subluxation (a.k.a. Vertebral Subluxation) is when one or more of the bones of your spine (vertebrae) move out of position and put pressure on or irritate spinal nerves. Spinal nerves are the nerves that come out from between each of the bones in your spine. This pressure or irritation on the nerves then causes those nerves to malfunction and interfere with the signals traveling over those nerves.

Your nervous system controls and coordinates all the functions of your body. If you interfere with the signals traveling over nerves, parts of your body will not get the proper nerve messages and will not be able to function at 100% of their innate abilities. In other words, some part of your body will not be working properly It is the responsibility of the Doctor of Chiropractic to locate subluxations, and reduce or correct them. This is done through a series of chiropractic adjustments specifically designed to correct the vertebral subluxations in your spine. Chiropractors are the only professionals who undergo years of training to be the experts at correcting subluxations.

U.S. Maternity Deaths Have Not Declined

In a story from the "Chiropractic News Service" it was noted that federal health officials reported the rate at which American women die from pregnancy and childbirth complications hasn't changed in 15 years. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, (CDC) maternal deaths occurred at a rate of seven or eight per 100,000 live births every year from 1982 to 1996. The CDC also said half of all such deaths are preventable.

Similar to infant mortality, maternal deaths are used as a measure of a country's overall health. In some developing nations, maternal death rates are as high as 1,700 per 100,000 births. In other countries, such as Norway and Switzerland, maternal deaths occur at about half the U.S. rate.

Researchers said such deaths are rare enough that many doctors may not notice the problem. The CDC identified maternal deaths by looking at death certificates. However, some researchers said such deaths are under reported and the actual rates could be three times higher.

More than half of maternal deaths are caused by bleeding, infection, pregnancy-induced high blood pressure and tubal pregnancies, complications that can be prevented or treated with early diagnosis, the CDC said.

The CDC also reported that differences in maternal deaths between black and white women indicate room for improvement. It found that maternal deaths of black women ranged from 18 to 22 per 100,000 births, compared with five to six deaths per 100,000 births for white women.

Midwife Deliveries Safer

In a related story from the Washington Post, results from a new federal study found babies delivered by certified nurse midwives were significantly less likely to die than those delivered by physicians. The study conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics, and published in the Journal of Epidemiological and Community Health, was the first to compare infant mortality rate between physician attended births and those births attended by nurse midwives. After ruling our other outside factors, the study looked at 3.9 millions births in 1991. Results showed a 19% lower infant mortality rate for births attended by nurse midwives than those attended by physicians. In addition when the births were attended by nurse midwives, deaths that occur within the first 28 days of life were 33% lower, and the incidence of low birth-weight babies was 31 percent lower.

Authors of the study, and researchers, Marion F. MacDorman and Gopal K. Singh noted that part of the reason may be that the physicians care may be more "episodic" or transient, while the nurse midwives spend more time with the women in prenatal care and during labor.

Study Shows More People Visiting Chiropractors

In the May issue of American Journal of Public Health, a study was published entitled "Use of Chiropractic Services from 1895 through 1991 in the United States and Canada". The conclusion of this study was that the number of visits to chiropractors has more than doubled in the past 20 years.

The study further reported that on average patients were between the ages of 30 and 50 years old. The study also showed that slightly more females than males sought chiropractic care. According to Dr. Alan Adams, "This study is the most current description of demographic and clinical characteristics of patients seeking care from Doctors of Chiropractic that has been published in the literature."

This study was conducted by the Rand Corporation and the Los Angeles College of Chiropractic in Santa Monica, California.

Study shows more people using "alternative" health care. According to an article in the May 20 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), more people are turning toward what JAMA terms "Alternative Medicine". Traditionally, chiropractors do not use the term "Alternative Medicine" when referring to the profession of chiropractic, since chiropractic is a drugless natural approach to health.

But it is interesting to note how the medical profession views chiropractic and other health approaches they term "alternative". The article says, "Research both in the United States and abroad suggests that significant numbers of people are involved with various forms of alternative medicine. However, the reasons for such use are, at present, poorly understood. Along with being more educated and reporting poorer health status, the majority of alternative medicine users appear to be doing so not so much as a result of being dissatisfied with conventional medicine but largely because they find these health care alternatives to be more congruent with their own values, beliefs, and philosophical orientations toward health and life." According to John A. Astin, Ph.D., a researcher at Stanford University's School of Medicine in Palo Alto, California who surveyed 1,035 randomly selected people, "Alternative medicine users tend to hold a philosophical orientation toward health that can be described as holistic and are more likely to have had some type of transformational experience that changed their world view in a significant way." …Sounds like a chiropractic patient to me!