It could be that our data merely reflect what happens naturally to mild essential hypertensives in the general population. After all, the body is its own powerful healer. Our observations don't have a control group to give us this information. So we can't say what would have happened if we hadn't adjusted them. Twenty percent of the people discontinued care and we don't know what happened to their blood pressure.
All doctors have patients that discontinue care.
If we could find out what actually happened to their blood pressure and add it into the data, it could make the results more or less attractive. We might argue that because 60 percent of the readings went down and only 10 percent went up, if the adjustment affected anything, chances are greater it caused a downward effect. But this is no more than a guess. We can't say with any degree of certainty because our observations aren't set up to give us that information. Based on these data, a chiropractor, a nutritional advocate, an exercise physiologist, and a psychologist who teaches stress reduction might all equally claim their technique works on blood pressure.