If your college student is home for the weekend, you might want to have a discussion with him or her about the benefits of chiropractic treatment during the school year. After all, chiropractic treatment is not just for older adults with back problems. It’s beneficial for all people and college students are among those best poised for benefit.

The use of smartphones, tablets and laptops has become commonplace throughout the world and has been especially prevalent among college students. recent studies have found that college students accumulate higher levels of screen time, and they utilize multiple devices at higher rates compared to previous generations.

While some lower back pain needs to be treated by a specialist, chiropractors can help children and adolescents prevent and manage lower back pain. Most pain with no specific cause responds to rest, rehabilitation and identification of predisposing risk factors.

Chiropractic colleges accredited by the Council on Chiropractic Education (CCE) offer Doctor of Chiropractic (D.C.) degree programs. (CCE is the agency certified by the U.S. Department of Education to accredit chiropractic colleges in the United States.) Admission to a chiropractic college requires a minimum of 90 semester hour credits of undergraduate study, mostly in the sciences.

In the United States, chiropractic is often considered a complementary health approach. According to a recent survey about 8 percent of adults (more than 18 million) and nearly 3 percent of children (more than 2 million) had received chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation in the past 12 months. Additionally, an analysis of NHLS cost data found that adults in the United States spent approximately $11.9 billion out-of-pocket on visits to complementary health practitioners — $3.9 billion of which was spent on visits to practitioners for chiropractic or osteopathic manipulation.

Researchers have studied spinal manipulation for a number of conditions ranging from back, neck, and shoulder pain to asthma, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibromyalgia, and headaches. Much of the research has focused on low-back pain, and has shown that spinal manipulation appears to benefit some people with this condition.

One of the most common and well-known therapeutic procedures performed by doctors of chiropractic is spinal manipulation (sometimes referred to as a “chiropractic adjustment”). The purpose of spinal manipulation is to restore joint mobility by manually applying a controlled force into joints that have become hypomobile — or restricted in their movement — as a result of a tissue injury.

Chiropractic is a health care profession that focuses on disorders of the musculoskeletal system and the nervous system, and the effects of these disorders on general health. Chiropractic services are used most often to treat neuromusculoskeletal complaints, including but not limited to back pain, neck pain, pain in the joints of the arms or legs, and headaches.

The opioid epidemic has led many respected health groups to reconsider the value of a conservative approach to low back pain (the most common condition for which opioids are prescribed). Most notably, the American College of Physicians (ACP), the largest medical-specialty society in the world, updated its low back pain treatment guideline to support a conservative approach to care.

Despite the high prevalence of musculoskeletal pain during pregnancy, few women in underserved populations receive treatment for their low back pain. Moreover, researchers found that pain in a previous pregnancy may predict a high risk for musculoskeletal complaints in future pregnancies. 85 percent of women who experienced pain in a previous pregnancy reported pain during their current pregnancy.