Chiropractic > Drugs for Back Pain

Hands-on, mind-body therapies beat supplements

A new survey of subscribers to Consumer Reports found that prescription drugs generally performed better than alternative therapies for 12 common health problems. But hands-on treatments such as chiropractic care and deep-tissue massage, as well as mind-body therapies such as yoga and meditation, held their own, especially for certain conditions. Far fewer said that dietary supplements helped a lot.

Prescription drugs helped the most for nine of the conditions we asked about: allergies, anxiety, colds and flu, depression, digestive problems, headache and migraine, insomnia, irritable bowel syndrome, and osteoarthritis.

But chiropractic care performed better than drugs for back pain, and deep-tissue massage beat drugs for neck pain. Massage was as also as good as drugs for fibromyalgia. Those hands-on therapies also scored near the top for osteoarthritis as well as for headaches and migraines.

Mind-body therapies such as meditation, deep breathing, and yoga are being used to treat a range of conditions. Since our last survey on alternative therapies in 2005, there appears to be a modest up-tick in the use of meditation as a treatment for depression and anxiety. And for those two conditions—as well as insomnia—it seemed to help some people a lot: 42 percent said that for anxiety, 36 percent for depression, and 24 percent for insomnia.

Dietary supplements generally did not perform very well. But about a third of people who took probiotics for digestive problems (35 percent) or irritable bowel syndrome (31 percent) said it helped a lot, as did 26 percent of those who took zinc for the colds and flu and 25 percent of those who took glucosamine, chondroitin, or both for osteoarthritis.

-Joel Keehn