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Chiropractic for High Blood Pressure

Over the years, Dr. Tim Johnson has been somewhat critical of chiropractic treatment, so it was satisfying to see him forced to admit that maybe, just maybe, there was some value to chiropractic after all. 

There are a couple of points that I think need clarification that the video is somewhat misleading on (in my opinion).  First, while the study was on a specific chiropractic technique and the video indicated that only the few chiropractors that use that technique could provide the same results, in my experience, most chiropractic techniques will lower blood pressure significantly for most hypertensive patients.  The study happened to be done using one particular technique, so for a pure scientist, the results can only be stated for that one technique, but I believe similar results would have been seen with just about any chiropractic technique. 

Second, they are theorizing that the reason that this particular chiropractic adjustment works is because mechanical problems/misalignments in the upper spine may alter blood flow through certain major blood vessels.  While this is possible, it is far more likely that the response is neurological, as it is widely recognized that chiropractic adjustments of the spine (the whole spine, not just the upper neck) can alter the “tone” of the autonomic nervous system.  The effect of chiropractic adjustments on blood pressure is usually immediate (within a few seconds of the adjustment), so it would almost have to be a neurological effect to occur so quickly.  If the effect was due to changes in blood flow in one or two blood vessels, it would likely take at least several minutes (and probably several hours) for global blood pressure to balance out at the new level. 

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