Doctors like your West Des Moines chiropractor often recommend exercise for back pain and neck pain help. Will exercise assist with the back and neck pain? Certainly! Are there volumes of research that show exercise helps with these pains? Absolutely! Executive Chiropractic of Iowa recognizes that the encircling muscles and fascia play an important role in controlling and relieving back and neck pain. This is why a segment of the West Des Moines chiropractic care plan at Executive Chiropractic of Iowa is often exercise for the physical body. But what about the mental part of back and neck pain? Let’s look at a calming exercise for the brain that controls the body: meditation.

Meditation is in the news. You've probably heard about meditation. It’s likely a recognition that the mind plays an important role in people’s daily experience of life. For some West Des Moines folks, meditation may be “out there,” but for others meditation may be the thing to try that will offer relieving help.

Now, patients who suffer with a chronic pain condition - one that has been with them for years be that neck pain or back pain or leg pain or whatever - are accustomed to their mind’s attention to pain. Might meditation be a way for them to change their focus, adjust their attention? It may be. Meditation may be for some Executive Chiropractic of Iowa’s West Des Moines neck pain patients a way to contain and manage the pain.

Researchers just published findings that meditation may be a new approach to reducing chronic neck pain. Executive Chiropractic of Iowa strives to share new and effective approaches to pain reduction and management for our West Des Moines patients.  Now, these researchers studied chronic neck pain patients who had experienced neck pain for an average of 11 years.  These neck pain patients reported pain over 40 out of 100 on the pain scale. The researchers randomized these chronic neck pain patients to one of two groups for 8 weeks: meditation or home exercise.  Executive Chiropractic of Iowa found the outcomes encouraging: meditation “significantly reduced pain” and decreased the bothersomeness of the neck pain more than home exercise. Bottomline: meditation seemed to have helped these chronic neck pain sufferers with pain reduction and pain coping. (1) Executive Chiropractic of Iowa sees nothing wrong with either of these outcomes!

So consider exercising your mind with meditation to reduce back and neck pain. It can be done at home alone or with others in a class or via an online directed meditation. Whatever format you are comfortable with, meditation may be an effective addition to your West Des Moines chiropractic care plan of spinal manipulation with Cox Technic and exercise. Contact Executive Chiropractic of Iowa today.