Hell no, I said. He also recommended a physical therapist, which I think is a good idea. I was just so annoyed that I had to rant for a little bit.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Hell no, I said. He also recommended a physical therapist, which I think is a good idea. I was just so annoyed that I had to rant for a little bit.
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FYI, you and I are just a few months apart in age.
I have visited chiropractors, off and on, over the years.
I recently visited a new one (I move a lot), and he was great.
He wasn’t trying to get me to schedule “the next visit” or several visits afterwards.
He was just trying to heal me. Which he did (more or less, and I waved off the next scheduled visit).
MY EXPERIENCE is most chiropractors doing little to resolve the issue (but this is not totally true, because I’ve been helped), but there is a place for them. The last chiropractor is the best I’ve ever encountered, and I expect him to be unusual, but he was totally all the way through the process, and wasn’t looking for his next check.
I will note that he’s an exception in my experience. But it’s a worthy note.
Yeah, in one of my jobs a colleague went to the chiropractor every other week. For years.
(Pesky subluxations!)
My first wife had a knee injury, and was seeing a chiropractor for about a year. I’m not sure what he did (it was back in the ’90s), but I remember it involving some sort of low-power electrical current through the affected area; and she said it helped a good bit, and the guy was nicer and more helpful than the physical therapists she’d seen. At some point, though, he said he couldn’t do anything more for her and she needed surgery, which she got, and which did improve things quite a bit. So that guy at least seemed competent and honest, and admitted his limits.
Besides that, I know next to jaque merde about chiropractic care. My only recommendation is that you don’t let them mess with your spine.
Change doctors.
Raging Bee, it’s pure woo, since you state you know fuck-all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiropractic
To the degree it’s not harmful, it’s purely because modern types incorporate actual physical therapy or do nothing much.
Like homeopathy, whatever it ‘cures’ is due to the body healing itself when no further damage is caused.
Anecdotal claims such as ANB’s above are also applicable to other forms of woo, for much the same reason.
So yeah. A quack that recommends it is a true quack; whatever benefit accrues is basically placebo.
I have used chiropractors since being the victim of a rear-end collision that gave me serious whiplash. I avoid chiropractors who try to tell me that chiropractic is ‘medicine’. I’ve had a couple of poor ones, but one cured my chronic sciatica and one has reset my cervical spine very nicely. My current ‘practor combines chiropractic with sports medicine, and is truly interested in fixing me, rather than getting me to return repeatedly.
Spinal resets have killed people.
@7: look up ‘iatrogenic’.
True, derek. chiropracty isn’t medicine, so it can’t be that.
More like ‘misadventure’ — as in a fool was treated by a true quack and got hurt thereby.
(“Do you know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.” — Tim Minchin)
—
cf. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK91735/
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to summarise all cases in which chiropractic spinal manipulation was followed by death.
DESIGN: This study is a systematic review of case reports.
METHODS: Literature searches in four electronic databases with no restrictions of time or language.
MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Death.
RESULTS: Twenty six fatalities were published in the medical literature and many more might have remained unpublished. The alleged pathology usually was a vascular accident involving the dissection of a vertebral artery.
CONCLUSION: Numerous deaths have occurred after chiropractic manipulations. The risks of this treatment by far outweigh its benefit.
@9: you missed my point, which is that conventional medicine is also not entirely safe: to the extent that our lexicon includes a word that means “(of a medical disorder) caused by the diagnosis, manner, or treatment of a physician” — http://www.dictiomary.com.
You also missed this part of my response: “I avoid chiropractors who try to tell me that chiropractic is ‘medicine’. ” I regard chiropractic as therapy. When I’m sick I go to an MD.
Although 26 is not a negligible number, I do not see how many treatments were performed to achieve that count. I also note the weasel phrase “many more might have remained unpublished.” It’s a clear sign of bias.
In my jurisdiction, chiropractic treatments are partially covered under our national medical insurance.
The choice of whether or not to use chiropractic treatment is yours of course, as is mine. I have benefitted greatly from it..
“@9: you missed my point, which is that conventional medicine is also not entirely safe”
Then it is not chiropracty. It is regular therapy labelled ‘chiropracty’ for idiots who believe in it.
“In my jurisdiction, chiropractic treatments are partially covered under our national medical insurance.”
Like I said, for fools the label works.
Same here in Oz: https://www.chiropracticboard.gov.au/Codes-guidelines.aspx
Also have homeopathy regulated: https://www.tga.gov.au/sites/default/files/australian-regulatory-guidelines-complementary-medicines-argcm.pdf
Main idea is to prevent the more harmful aspects, not to protect people from scams.
“The choice of whether or not to use chiropractic treatment is yours of course, as is mine. I have benefitted greatly from it.”
No you have not. Either you would have got better anyway (as I noted above) or you did not get ‘true’ chiropracty, but actual physiotherapy.
What a stupid thing to imagine. It is the opposite; it notes that not every case may have been documented, so they are only able to access part of the entirety of deadly outcomes. And this is just deaths.
FWIW: https://www.respectfulinsolence.com/2012/07/05/when-chiropractors-play-at-being-real-doctors/
Orac (the pseudonym for David Gorski) has many such posts.
Or: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/the-war-against-chiropractors/
There are many other such sites. Medical sites.