American College of Physicians List Acupuncture as Top Treatment for Back Pain

The American College of Physicians (ACP) released a new set of recommendations for people with acute and subacute back pain. If you have back pain you may want to avoid medication and move more, get acupuncture, massage, or manual therapy. We also recommend Egoscue, Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS) and QiGong. The ACP review lots of research looking at different over-the-counter medication all the way up to opioids. What they found was that medication didn’t really help. What we are seeing is that as research develops our job is to figure out which works best for the person sitting in front of us. For patients with chronic back pain – The ACP recommends initially no drug therapy but exercise, multidisciplinary rehabilitation with acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, and motor control exercise, contrast relaxation exercise, progress relaxation, biofeedback, low-level laser, cognitive behavior and manual therapy. Now, this is exactly what we have recommended for the past 25 years… Exercise, Acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, mindful stress reduction, Qigong, Osteopathic manual therapy plus Regenerative Injection Therapy.

Dr.Ross Ralph Dr.TCM, RAc. DOMP, Advance Neurofunctional Sports Performance Specialist
Courtenay Healing Centre
www.courtenayhealing.ca