Chiropractic Care May Help Adult ADHD

The above is the headline from a September 6, 2007 NewsMax article reporting on a pilot study, published in the August 23, 2007 Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research. The preliminary study showed that chiropractic care helped test subjects with adult ADHD.

In this study 9 patients ranging in age from 22 – 58 years were evaluated using a specific test known as the "Test of Variable of Attention" (TOVA). The TOVA company who introduced the test describe the test on their website as "The T.O.V.A. is an objective, neurophysiological measure of attention, not a subjective rating of behavior. It is a 21.6 minute long, very simple "computer game" that measures your responses to either visual or auditory stimuli. These measurements are then compared to the measurements of a group of people without attention disorders."

The NewsMax article noted that In the United States, somewhere between 3-10 percent of children, and 1-6 percent of adults suffer from ADHD.

The study was performed in Lausanne, Switzerland by Yannick Pauli, DC, who is a chiropractor and the director of the "Centre Wellness NeuroFit", specializing in wellness neurology. He described the study by stating, "In this pilot study, we used objective outcome measures to evaluate attention in nine adult patients before and after two months of wellness chiropractic care."

The results of the study showed that after 2 months of chiropractic care, all patients had a significant change in ADHD score and 88% completely normalized their ADHD score. All 9 patients experienced significant improvement in concentration and additionally, 77% and 66% of patients experienced significant change in reaction time and variability score, respectively.

Matthew McCoy, DC, editor of the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, added his comments in the NewsMax article, "This preliminary study is exciting. It is part of an increasing amount of research suggesting that chiropractic care may be an effective natural choice for people suffering from ADD/ADHD. It offers the possibility of a new option for millions of children and adults that are seeking to manage their conditions naturally."

Dr. Pauli concluded, "Although the results are preliminary and more research is needed, the outcome of the study suggests that patients suffering from attention deficit benefited from chiropractic care."