Pretty much everything that I would have said here has already been said. I will only add that babies most certainly do not need “adjustment” as their bones and muscles are not “set” (probably not the right term) like those of adults. There is nothing to adjust!
I thought there was a more recent Dr. Dean column on the site about babies in particular, but now I can’t find it. You may want to poke around there, as there are many other articles on chiropractic there.
Last night my wife was hinting that the “adjustment” had worked, in that C hadn’t had hiccups since. I wasn’t up for a discussion on chiropractic, so I just gave an indifferent “hmmm”.
If V brings it up again, I’ll show her the info that you all have provided (like she suggested I look for).
I think I’m fairly open minded. If people want to consult with chiropractors, OK. For many things (like back pain, chronic fatigue), there’s not a lot that traditional docs can offer anyway.
But DON’t get your neck manipulated. Maybe your mid or lower spine, but not up in your neck. As the above reference attests, doing so can lead to strokes in otherwise young healthy people. Not a high risk, no. But why take any risk when there’s such a potential consequence and so little to gain.
Last night, (I swear that’s true) a 31 year-old woman was admitted with a stroke that developed immediately upon neck manipulation.
BTW, the strokes that occur following neck manipulation are not from carotid artery problems. Rather, it’s the vertebral arteries that get pinged.
For the record, I have been tasked as an ambulance officer on several occasions to attend and transport patients from chiroprators rooms to the Emergency Department of the local hospital. Each incident occured as a result of manipulations , where the patient became decidely worse during the therapy.
On one occasion, the chiropractor was less than impressed about the ambulance pulling up right out the front of his office.
I have difficulty with the premise that all manner of illness can be linked to a spinal misalignment. It just ain’t that simple. I am also troubled that unlike conventional medicine, where common problems receive similar universal mangement, every chiropractor seems to have a pet therapy for all manner of complaints, regardless of ateiology. There is also a lack of common standards. In Australia, one chiropractor can do a very short course of study lasting a few months, while another does a very long course lasting years. Yet both are entitled to use the same title, with no outward differentitation for the unsuspecting layman.
Consequently, I attribute them little credibility.
On the matter of the four month old child, a couple of points. A baby’s bones are still largely cartilage and very flexible, hence they will take an awful lot of bending that adult bones don’t tolerate. If this was not the case, every childbirth would result in devastating injury. To suggest that the symptoms described could be attributed to an event four months earlier is dangerously absurd.
Let me get this straight, he had you hold your daughter, he pulled and tugged on you, and somehow that tells him what is wrong with your daughter? And you have to ask if it’s good medicine? Can you say “magic”?
Look out, I hear a flock of ducks!!!
Read the links on quackwatch. They discuss chiropractic in tons more detail than I possibly could. Note how heavily rooted in “zen”, “qi” (or is that chi?), “energy”, and eastern mysticism a lot of the talk is. Check out the interrelations between chirocraptic and reflexology and all the various and sundry interrelated crap. As Eve said, "Basically, they invent an illness, tell you that you have it, and then “cure” it. "
Note that the quackwatch site will mention some justification for chiropractors who use spinal manipulation for back pain. Understand that their positive results in these manners are by accident, not because of their theory. Some lower back pain is the result of your spine shifting, and muscles tensing. Modern medicine can’t really do much but give you pain-killers and muscle relaxants, and tell you to exercise. The exercise is the real key. You have to move and bend and stretch to relieve the muscles and readjust your spine on its own. Yes, having a spinal manipulation from a chiropractor can relieve your pain and binding, but no more so than exercise and stretching. It’s just a getting a little assistance.
That said, it is probably okay if you want to see a chiropractor for your lower or mid or even upper back, if all you do is have that adjustment and don’t waste money on supplements nor time on solving all your health problems (like colon cancer, ingrown toenail, athletes foot, etc) with a spinal manipulation. However, as has been said, do NOT get your neck adjusted. Neurophysiologists may adjust your neck, but they do it slowly, and controlled, and only the amount your body will do on it’s own. Forced motions and manipulations by hand are dangerous.
taddycat said:
Sigh Sympathetic magic. As for the insurance company, so many people are clamoring for all sorts of alt med stuff, insurance companies cave.
Eve, I do not know anything about animal behaviorists. I have heard of some people who claim to be pet psychics and laud titles that could be similar. There may be some people who study animals and their behaviors and health issues, and just know what to look for. That’s a situation where experience shows cats eat their fur when their allergic to some common household plant but you don’t know it, for instance. It may seriously depend on the individual what you get.
etgaw1 said:
It depends, but the basis for it is bunk, and it feeds an anti-conventional medicine (allopathic care, as they call it) mentality.
As I said above, there is some benefit to spinal alignment, but not anything that can’t be achieved by yourself with stretching and exercise. However when your back is kinked and hurting, it’s hard to convince yourself to stretch and exercise, and it’s easy to want someone to fix you real quick.
No, chiropractors claim to have an advanced knowledge of subluxations - they made it up, there is no scientific evidence to back up their story. I will accept your correction of the wording that they will align you differently for different things to be they will help put you back in your proper alignment, and can tell how you are out of alignment differently for different ailments, but I won’t agree that the statement is any more true.
That is a possible correlation, but not necessarily validated. It is easy to think that pain=stress= high blood pressure, so maybe there is some validity there. In this particular instance, he may not be wrong. But the next sentence does not follow.
Wrong. That is one of the notions of holistic (alternative, complementary) medicine, but it is not true. It may sometimes work as a placebo, but not always, and often it does nothing to heal the actual problem, just makes you think you are doing something about it until it is too late.
dragonlady said:
[sarcasm mode on]Obviously he’s doing it right. You have to make the kid go back. See things have to get worse before they can get better, because he has all the built up negative energy/trapped chi/bound up toxins that have to be removed. So of course it’s going to hurt at first, and other ailments are going to surface. Those have been suppressed so long they are underlying and hidden by the body, so they will manifest when you start dealing with the problem. You have to stay with it! [/sarcasm mode off]
(Note: those lines are a very good impression of exactly the kind of things that alt meds will say.)
AWB - Your wife’s chiropractor was a quack, no doubt about it. But there are some good chiropractors out there. Chiroprctors who don’t do whatever that quack did. You should have refused payment. If he sent you to a collection agency then you could have sued him for quackery.
That quackwatch thing by Stephen Barrett. He just hates chiropractors, period. I mistrusts what he says.
There are also medical quacks out there. Medical quacks who order extra procedures, order MRIs for no reason, take x-rays for little reason, do blood tests for no reason. I’d say 10% of MDs are crooks, 50% of chiropractors are crooks. And there are incompetent dentists and physical therapists also. You get the point.
Um, if this were so, he’d have a hard time getting along with Charles E. DuVall Jr., D.C., who is a co-operator of the Chirobase site that is associated with Quackwatch (it’s at http://www.chirobase.org ).
DuVall is described as follows:
“Charles E. DuVall Jr., DC, 51, is a Vietnam Veteran (USMC) and third-generation chiropractor who has practiced in Akron, Ohio, for 20 years. He is board chairman of the National Council Against Health Fraud, a founding member of the council’s Ohio chapter, and co-founder and president of the National Association for Chiropractic Medicine (NACM), an organization dedicated to chiropractic reform. An outspoken critic of deviant and questionable chiropractic practices, he has been a featured speaker at health-fraud conferences and is a consultant to many organizations, companies, and government agencies. To gain admission to NACM, applicants must sign a written pledge to “openly renounce the historical chiropractic philosophical concept that subluxation is the cause of disease,” and to restrict their scope of practice to neuromusculoskeletal conditions that do not require surgery.”
Indeed, the Chirobase FAQ addresses a few other things you mention in your message:
**Why focus on chiropractors? Why don’t you talk about the serious problems in medicine? **
One has nothing to do with the other. Medicine’s shortcomings do not justify chiropractic quackery.
Doesn’t every profession have its rotten apples?
Yes, but we believe the percentage of chiropractors engaged in dubious practices is very high – much higher than it is in medicine and dentistry, for example. Chiropractors are the only professionals we know that promote courses and books on how to mislead people.
Isn’t the information on Chirobase unbalanced?
The key consideration should be whether the information is accurate, which it is. We plan to provide a comprehensive guide to chiropractic Web sites to enable browsers to explore the full range of prochiropractic viewpoints. We also plan to invite the American Chiropractic Association, Canadian Chiropractors Association, Federation of Straight Chiropractors and Organizations, Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research (FCER), International Chiropractors Association, World Chiropractic Alliance, and World Federation of Chiropractic, and individual chiropractors to furnish comments that we can post to Chirobase. If you would like to suggest additional sites, we should link to, please notify us.
Aren’t you being unfair to chiropractors who practice ethically and competently?
One of our goals is to help consumers evaluate individual chiropractors. To do this, we have posted guidelines describing both proper and improper care. We strongly support science-based chiropractic care. Chiropractors who believe our guidelines are valid can list their names in our referral directory so that prospective patients seeking such care can locate them. We have also posted a feature article describing what a rational chiropractor can do for people.
There seem to be two distinct breeds of chiropractors out there:
The old fashioned kind, who manipulates your bones and joints, hoping to alleviate pain. These guys are generally honest, intelligent, know their limits, are happy to work with genuine doctors, and are sometimes worth a shot.
The fruitcakes who THINK they’re real doctors… indeed, that they’re BETTER than real doctors, because they’re more “holistic.” AVOID such people like the plague.
The first type of chiropractor will refer a patient to a genuine doctor when he/she describes symptoms the chiro isn’t qualified to treat. The second kind will take it on himself to prescribe all kinds of odd treatments. THOSE guys can be dangerous.
In fact, the “old fashioned kind” are the ones you classified as #2. They are the “fruitcakes” who have held on to the original chiropractic claims, ignoring the discoveries of science and medicine and, well, reality.
It is the new chiros who stick to manipulating and only dealing with back pain, neck pain, etc., as opposed to cancer and asthma.
?? Sounds like even the name is off-balance. It should be chiroQUACKtic medicine. My mom is caught up in this crap, too. Throwing hundreds of dollars away instead of losing weight & exercising. I went to her doctor one time to see what it was all about. I left the office feeling like I’d been in a car accident, whiplash & all. Sheesh.
