What do you do when you have that awful neck pain that makes it hard to turn to see someone in the lane beside you or even lift your head up off the pillow? If your answer is to reach for a few Tylenol or Advil then think again. A new research study shows that chiropractic and light exercise are better than drugs for eliminating neck pain (Annals of Internal Medicine).

The new study is one of the few head-to-head comparisons of various treatments for neck pain, a problem that affects 75% of Americans at some point in their lives but has no proven, first-line treatment. But, the new research found that chiropractic care and simple neck exercises were better at reducing pain than taking medications like aspirin, ibuprofen or narcotics. Even a year later, the people that used chiropractic for their neck pain were still significantly better than the people that chose medications instead. That is some lasting pain relief!

In addition to their limited pain relief, the medications had at least one other downside: people kept taking them. The people in the medication group kept on using a higher amount of medication more frequently throughout the follow-up period, up to a year later. This could lead to side effects like gastrointestinal problems such as ulcers.

The other issue with the medication approach to neck pain is that the potential for eliminating the cause of the pain is ignored. A visit to a chiropractor like the ones at Back to Function will involve an evaluation of your posture and daily habits and positions. Most of the time we are able to show you exercises that will improve your posture and daily positions so that you can prevent future recurrences of a similar neck pain.