The Evidence Based Chiropractor- Chiropractic Marketing and Research
Oct 5, 2026 · 14 min · 13 segments
Today we’re diving deep into the science of spinal adjustments with a groundbreaking study on what actually happens in the multifidus muscle during acute low back pain. We’ll explore how motor units…
Spinal manipulation in acute low back pain patients is associated with reduced motor unit firing variability without altering bilateral coordination, a single motor unit EMG study of the lumbar multifidus.
We're going to talk about what all of that means, clinical pearls, how it can impact your practice and much more on today's episode.
And somebody comes to you and says, hey, do you mind if a radiologist puts tiny wires straight through into the deepest muscle of your back and then a chiropractor adjusts you while the wires are still in? Most people would probably say, I'm going to think about it.
And because they said yes, we get to peek at something almost nobody in our profession has ever seen.
And that is what individual motor units in the deep lumbar multifidus, my favorite muscle, are actually doing before and after an adjustment.
Not surface EMG, not a guess, the actual firing pattern of single motor neurons.
So After one side-lying high velocity, low amplitude adjustment, those motor units did not fire faster.
It's a pretty small study, so it's limited in what we can extrapolate, but... it's a really good one to start the conversation around what happens.
Spinal manipulation in acute low back pain patients is associated with reduced motor unit firing variability without altering bilateral coordination, a single motor unit EMG study of the lumbar multifidus.
We're going to talk about what all of that means, clinical pearls, how it can impact your practice and much more on today's episode.
And somebody comes to you and says, hey, do you mind if a radiologist puts tiny wires straight through into the deepest muscle of your back and then a chiropractor adjusts you while the wires are still in? Most people would probably say, I'm going to think about it.
And because they said yes, we get to peek at something almost nobody in our profession has ever seen.
And that is what individual motor units in the deep lumbar multifidus, my favorite muscle, are actually doing before and after an adjustment.
Not surface EMG, not a guess, the actual firing pattern of single motor neurons.
So After one side-lying high velocity, low amplitude adjustment, those motor units did not fire faster.
It's a pretty small study, so it's limited in what we can extrapolate, but... it's a really good one to start the conversation around what happens.
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