Hi Everybody,
We receive “Spinal News International”, a newsletter for spinal surgeons. I’m not sure how we got on their list, but we read the newsletter every month. It gives us an inside view into the world of spinal surgery. I think you would be shocked by what they say in their own magazines.
The following is a summary from the March 2015 issue:
First, it was found in one article that if you have spinal stenosis, it didn’t seem to matter in the long run whether or not you have surgery- after eight years, the results are the same. But a different article bragged that decompression surgery for spinal stenosis was the gold standard.
The issue also went on to say that open surgery for disc problems seemed to work way better than laser surgery for those problems. The article basically indicated that laser surgery was an art that was harder to learn, and you were better off with traditional surgery, unless you found a highly skilled laser surgeon. A different article went on to say that a certain type of laser surgery was a “game changer”.
This is common. Even in the scientific community, where research is the gold standard, two different people or groups come up with two different answers or beliefs. Chocolate is good for you one day, bad the next. Same with coffee. And the same with spinal surgery. One group finds it is good for you, then next finds the opposite.
As an interesting side note, another article in this issue mentioned that spinal manipulation (Chiropractic) was the best thing researchers had found for short term back pain relief in the majority of acute and subacute patients. Remember, this was in a surgical magazine.
Chiropractic first, medication, surgery as a last resort.
Hope this helps,
Dr Robin Barnes
mattandrobin@yahoo.com (email)
This week’s bit of Useless Information: Crying literally alleviates stress and uniquely allows humans to decrease feelings of anger and sadness.
This email is courtesy of Matthew Barnes, D.C. and Robin Barnes, D.C. Neither this nor any of our emails are intended to be medical advice and should not be taken as such. They are opinion and are for informational purposes only. None of the nutrients discussed here are meant to diagnose, treat, or cure any disease.