This study will be the first of its kind and aims to shed more light on how chiropractic care impacts the health and wellness of so many people around the world. The talented team we’ve assembled to carry out this study spans a number of disciplines and will be utilising innovative advances in technology and machine learning to help us to better understand how chiropractic care impacts nervous system function and human performance.

This study builds on our previous research that showed that a single sessions of chiropractic care affects PFC function. [1] This single session study was a great start, but it didn’t tell us how long this impact on PFC function lasts or how chiropractic care impacts the many vital functions that the PFC controls. The PFC is a vital part of the brain that makes you who you are. It is the part of the brain responsible for your executive function [2-7], it plays a key role in how you experience pain [8-11], is vital for your emotional control and mental health [12-17], and is critically involved in regulating your autonomic nervous system, endocrine system and immune system, enabling you to relax, sleep and heal (see Figure 1) [8, 18-28].

Figure 1: The various vital functions of the prefrontal cortex.

This new study aims to investigate the longer-term effects of chiropractic care on PFC function (12 weeks of care plus 4 weeks follow-up), and to explore which PFC functions may change when someone is adjusted by a chiropractor. To do this, we will assess how chiropractic care affects measures of neurological, metabolic and immunological function, along with mental health, sleep, movement, executive function and health-related quality of life in adults with subclinical pain.

In this parallel-group randomised controlled trial, participants with subclinical pain (120 in total) will be randomly allocated to receive either chiropractic care (n = 60) or a control intervention (n=60). The primary outcomes will include functional near-infrared spectroscopy, heart rate variability and levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor. This will enable us to assess if chiropractic care causes long-term beneficial changes in PFC function. The secondary outcomes in the study will include other tests of PFC function, such as executive function, measured by multiple cognitive tests, resting-state encephalography, immune and inflammatory markers, sleep and activity levels, mental health, stress and health-related quality of life measures. See Figure 2 for an overview of the project.

The project will be conducted at Railway General Hospital, Pakistan, over the course of a year. The data collected in this project will be a combination of extrinsic (sociodemographic, clinical questionnaires etc.) and intrinsic physiological data (objective physiological measures like EEG, HRV etc.), and will allow us to take advantage of advances in machine learning (also known as artificial intelligence; AI) to help inform the development of optimal chiropractic care plans in the future.

Please help make this project a reality! Please donate today. If everyone gives a little this project can start tomorrow!!!

Figure 2: Overview of study

References

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