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In the November 11th, 1998 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, (JAMA), David Eisenberg, M.D. published his long awaited follow up study on the use of “Alternative Medicine” in the United States. Several years earlier, Dr. Eisenberg published his initial study that rocked the medical community with his findings of how many people were actually going to what he termed “Alternative Providers”.

From inside the medical profession, any other health care profession was known as an alternative. However, the numbers from the Eisenberg study quickly showed that chiropractic and other non-medical forms of health care are not “alternative” in the public’s eye.

This new study, conducted in 1997, illustrated some astounding facts and figures.

• Americans spent $27 billion out-of-pocket for alternative therapies in 1997.
• Four out of 10 people used alternative healthcare in 1997.
• Visits to alternative health care providers (mostly chiropractors) increased by almost 50% from 1990.
• The number of visits to alternative health care providers (629 million) exceeded visits to medical providers (only 386 million) visits in 1997 alone.
• Less than 40% of patients tell their medical doctors that they seek alternative therapies.

Researchers also found that 42% of the alternative care was for existing illness while 58% was used for prevention and wellness. These numbers look good for the chiropractic profession, which has built its health care delivery future on wellness. “Many people initially enter the chiropractor’s office for a health problem. But many then stay there for the wellness benefits chiropractic has to offer”, says Robert Braile, D.C. President of the International Chiropractor Association.

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.

Most of us are familiar with the series of successful books “Chicken Soup for the Soul”. Well, now one more has been added to that group which speaks the truth and success of chiropractic care. “Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul,” by best-selling authors Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen and Dr. Fabrizio Mancini was recently released and is now available.

In a review of the book, Dr. Eric Plasker states, “Inside the pages of this profoundly moving book, you will find real life stories of people who survived and triumphed over illness with the help of the chiropractic wellness model. Among the dozens of incredible testimonials are stories about newborns, athletes and average citizens whose lives have been miraculously changed by the healing touch of chiropractors.”

The book contains a series of testimonials from individuals whose lives had been changed by chiropractic. One such notable testimonial was from Olympic Triathlon Gold medalist Dan O’Brien, “I have gone from the depths of despair and failure to the pinnacle of athletic and personal victory. It’s been a long, sometimes anguishing, and much-publicized journey. Through it all, one thing is absolutely certain – if not for chiropractic, I would not have won the gold! ” He went on to say, “I can honestly say, in the last five years, it has remarkably improved my overall wellness. I hardly ever get sick and I don’t get headaches. Chiropractic helps in injury prevention, and dramatically improves recovery – which is crucial, because I’ve found that the body cannot heal itself if it’s not in alignment”

Other stories in the book include a Vietnam veteran and former POW who wins the state golf tournament for amputees after years away from the game, a man without hope regains lost vision, an “infertile” woman who gives birth to a healthy baby girl and a child freed from migraines grows up to help others with the same problem.

Dr. Fabrizio Mancini, one of the co-authors of the book sums up the book by saying. “As you begin to read Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul we hope that you will be inspired and moved by the heart warming stories of people like yourself who have chosen chiropractic for a holistic approach to healing, pain relief, and lifelong wellness. Many of the stories will sound miraculous to you – and to those who experienced them, they were indeed miracles. But once you understand the underlying philosophy of chiropractic they are not really miraculous at all; they are just the results of the body’s innate healing power being released to do its work.”

The above is the headline from a September 6, 2007 NewsMax article reporting on a pilot study, published in the August 23, 2007 Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research. The preliminary study showed that chiropractic care helped test subjects with adult ADHD.

In this study 9 patients ranging in age from 22 58 years were evaluated using a specific test known as the “Test of Variable of Attention” (TOVA). The TOVA company who introduced the test describe the test on their website as “The T.O.V.A. is an objective, neurophysiological measure of attention, not a subjective rating of behavior. It is a 21.6 minute long, very simple “computer game” that measures your responses to either visual or auditory stimuli. These measurements are then compared to the measurements of a group of people without attention disorders.”

The NewsMax article noted that In the United States, somewhere between 3-10 percent of children, and 1-6 percent of adults suffer from ADHD.

The study was performed in Lausanne, Switzerland by Yannick Pauli, DC, who is a chiropractor and the director of the “Centre Wellness NeuroFit”, specializing in wellness neurology. He described the study by stating, “In this pilot study, we used objective outcome measures to evaluate attention in nine adult patients before and after two months of wellness chiropractic care.”

The results of the study showed that after 2 months of chiropractic care, all patients had a significant change in ADHD score and 88% completely normalized their ADHD score. All 9 patients experienced significant improvement in concentration and additionally, 77% and 66% of patients experienced significant change in reaction time and variability score, respectively.

Matthew McCoy, DC, editor of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, added his comments in the NewsMax article, “This preliminary study is exciting. It is part of an increasing amount of research suggesting that chiropractic care may be an effective natural choice for people suffering from ADD/ADHD. It offers the possibility of a new option for millions of children and adults that are seeking to manage their conditions naturally.”

Dr. Pauli concluded, “Although the results are preliminary and more research is needed, the outcome of the study suggests that patients suffering from attention deficit benefited from chiropractic care.”

A health minded program, “America on the Move” seems to fit the Chiropractic model of wellness. From an April 9, 2004 release on PRNewswire, the American Chiropractic Association (ACA) urges people to take an extra 2000 steps per day. America on the Move is a national initiative dedicated to helping individuals and communities make positive changes to improve their health and quality of life.

To assist in this program chiropractors are urging people to take some simple additional steps each day. Dr. George McClelland, a chiropractor and member of ACA’s Wellness Committee, explains that, “Adding a short walk to your lunchtime schedule, coupled with taking the stairs at work rather than the elevator, could add up to 2,000 additional steps for many of us. And cutting just one can of soda from your day and replacing it with water can eliminate more than 100 calories.”

According to Dr. McClelland, “Many health care providers are now beginning to talk with their patients about healthy lifestyles — an approach doctors of chiropractic have taken for many years. It’s simply not good enough to wait until someone gets sick to start thinking about making them well. As we’ve seen, that model of health care is just not working.”

The article notes that the easiest way to keep track of your extra 2,000 steps is to get your hands on a pedometer, a small device that can count the number of steps you take. It just might be the best 10 dollars you’ll ever spend.

In the February 11, 2002 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine comes an article on a study performed to see if there is a relationship between the usage of what the study called CAM (Complementary and Alternative Medicine) and insurance coverage. Included in the CAM professions, one of the most regularly used is chiropractic care. Past studies showed that an estimated 44% of the US population used at least 1 CAM procedure in 1997. Of those using CAM, 52% had seen at least 1 CAM provider in the last year.

This study was performed by conducting a nationally representative, random household telephone survey of 2055 adults. Not surprising, the study showed that factors independently associated with frequent use (more than 8 visits per year) of a CAM provider were full insurance coverage for the CAM service. This basically means that patients with insurance coverage tended to go to their CAM provider more often than those without insurance. According to the study some of the other factors that increased usage of CAM care include patients with back and neck problems as well as people desiring wellness or preventative care.

In concluding the study states, “A small minority of persons accounted for more than 75% of visits to CAM providers. Extent of insurance coverage for CAM providers and use for wellness are strong correlates of frequent use of CAM providers.”

From the Associate Press comes an article that reports on the benefits of corporations having their employees participate in wellness exercise programs. “Enthusiastic participation in worksite wellness can yield a variety of health benefits,” said Dr. Roy Shephard of the University of Toronto.

These corporate programs put exercise equipment and “health advisers” close to the workers. The companies add an extra incentive by either paying for all or part of the program. Unfortunately, many workers still don’t participate. But, among those who do the results were impressive and several areas of health benefits were noticed.

One of the benefits noticed was that workers who participated in the program lost an average of 13% body fat. Weight loss was 2% on average, and most participants were able to lower their blood pressure. Another benefit was that workers were able to increase their aerobic power. In this area women gained 7.4 percent while men gained 4.4 percent.

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Probably most important to employers who pick up the tab for medical health insurance was that these programs showed a reduction in medical expenses for workers who participated. Studies found that medical claims were reduced on average from between $100 and $400 for those people who took part in the wellness programs. These workers also took less sick time than the average.

Between the reduction of sick days, and the reduction of medical claims, it was shown that these programs saved the companies who offered them an average of $500 to $700 per worker, more than enough to cover the cost of implementing these programs.

The above title came from the March 11, 2002 issue of the American Medical News. This story reports on several studies and programs where corporate wellness programs are having a positive effect on reducing health care costs on their employees. “There’s a growing body of data indicating that corporate wellness programs lower medical costs for employees”, said Ron Z. Goetzel, PhD, vice president of consulting and applied research for the Medstat Group, a health care research firm in Ann Arbor, Mich.

A survey done by Medstat, published in the January 2002 issue of the Journal of Occupational Medicine, concluded that medical claims costs for Johnson & Johnson Inc. employees dropped an average of $225 per year after the company started its wellness program in 1995. Additionally, Goetzel reported that a literature review of corporate wellness studies published in the May/June 2001 issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion concluded that medical costs dropped for employees in the wellness program for 28 out of 32 of the corporate wellness programs reviewed.

The report claims that about 90% of Johnson & Johnson employees participate in the corporate wellness program. Their program consists of free health risk assessments and physicals. Additionally employees can then join free weight management, smoking cessation or nutrition classes and can use on-site fitness centers. John McKeegan, a Johnson & Johnson spokesman stated that the savings in reduced medical claims total about $5 million a year. When you factor in administrative savings from combining various health services into one program, McKeegan estimates the savings come to about $8.5 million a year.

The Wellness Councils of America, a coalition representing 3,000 corporate wellness programs, estimated that presently 80% to 90% of large U.S. corporations offer some sort of wellness program.