My mom is in her late 80’s and is very active. She does water aerobics, bowls, walks and shovels snow. Her only health problem is osteoporosis. Last week she was having pain in her right buttock, which she thought was maybe sciatica. At the advice of a friend she went to a chiropractor. If she would have talked to my sister or me first we would have told her Hell No.
So she goes to the chiro and he, in her words “wonked me good with a mallet ,twice”.
Of course he did the X-rays first.
What I want to know is what kind of fucking idiot would wonk an elderly osteoporotic woman with anything?! I don’t care if he did X-rays first. He is not a radiologist and has no business reading X-rays anyway. And she has more pain now than she did before. She now is going to see a real doctor. This asshole chiro had better hope that he didn’t do further damage or we will sue his ass off.
Another scenario- a friend of mine has a good friend/ relative who is a chiro. He sold her (for $1600) a magic diet that “was not one of these crazy gimmick diets”. She was eating 500 calories a day so of course she lost a lot of weight in a short time. She looked like death warmed over. People were asking me if she had cancer! But of course there was more. There was the magic palm-reading machine that measured the toxins in your blood, and the specially formulated nutrient drops!! And the best part was that this diet would reset your metabolism so that you would not gain back the weight once you started eating cheesecake again. That part didn’t take because she has gained back at least half the weight. She actually looks better now.
So I am wondering what kind of asshole knows he is selling snake oil but is willing to gouge a friend/relative to do it.
Thanks for listening.
Hey! At least 5% of chiropractors are not charlatans. You should have pitted some, (perhaps “most”) chiropractors.
What’s with a chiro whacking an elderly lady with a mallet? Shouldn’t he have wrenched her neck back into alignment?
The magic gadget stuff sounds like fairly mainstream chiropractic.
The dumbest kid in my high school class became a chiropractor. He’s always posting shit on Facebook claiming that chiropractors have more medical education than doctors. Uh, sure they do. This is the kid who couldn’t get past Algebra I.
The pics he posted of his office are nice, though. That snake oil money spends good.
You know, I used to back chiropractic in general, that it was only the “woo” (“chiropractic can cure cancer!”) that were the bad guys, and that the “chiropractic is good for back pain, etc” group is fine.
No longer. The California chiropractic association came out against vaccination.
https://www.calchiro.org/content/oppose-sb-277-elimination-immunization-personal-belief-exemption
Now sure, what they are saying is that they arent against vaccination, they are just in favor of the completely bogus and overused nutcase “personal belief exemption”. But it works out to be the same thing. By being against SB277 they are pro-antivac nutjobs.
No longer will I go to one.
I live in a city with a college of chiropractic, and they’re on almost every street corner, or so it seems. They do have their place, but have a slight tendency to overstep their boundaries.
Some years back, the college president was found dead in his house (from what turned out to be a massive heart attack) and investigators found some Viagra, which was then a very new drug. One of my co-workers said, “You mean they don’t have an adjustment for that?”
Hey, how many chiropractors does it take to change a light bulb?
Just one. But it takes fifty visits.
Isn’t that the old joke? Chiropractors are the best discipline to go into because the patients don’t get better, they don’t get worse, but they swear it works.
I’ve been having lingering soreness and pain in my neck and I scheduled an appointment with a chiropractor. This thread has me concerned; is there a different type of doctor I should see for this sort of thing?
The only things chiropractors do that might help anyone at all are also done by massage therapists. Everything else they do is either meaningless or dangerous.
Then again, a lot of massage therapists also do meaningless or dangerous things. Get a recommendation from an MD you trust.
A doctor of osteopathy (D.O.) or a massage therapist.
Physical therapist.
Decades ago when I was desperate for work I got a job programming an office management system for chiropractors. A big chunk of the system was dedicated to generating technical-sounding “assessments” that were designed to milk money from clients. I quit as soon as I could and shortly afterwards the whole operation collapsed in a jumble of lawsuits and criminal prosecutions. I’m sure that there are some honest chiropractors out there, but I certainly didn’t interact with any of them.
Cite?
Oh, grow a spine! Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk! 
Or an M.D., perhaps an orthopedist. Who might prescribe massage therapy, or anti-inflammatory drugs, or something else. But it’s important to rule out spinal osteoarthritis – which I have, and which causes intractable daily muscle cramping in my neck and shoulders; neither chiropractic nor massage will treat arthritis, though either might provide symptom relief. I tried chiropractic for years but the doc finally gave up on me, told me there was nothing more chiropractic could do for me, and she referred me to a general M.D., who referred me to an ortho, who (based on x-rays and MRIs) diagnosed osteoarthritis. I should have started there. What I do now is, I take Naproxen, and I have massages when it gets really bad. Which don’t help much; nothing short of surgery would, and even that is iffy.
Some pain just has to be lived with.
No, they are fine for that. Just make sure to get one without too much woo.
Which is kind of like saying “I don’t support bank robbery, I just think you should be able to take their money if you feel like it.”
I got referred to a chiropractor for some neck pain about 10 years ago. When I arrived some dude in track pants came out into the waiting room and picked up the tv/vhs combo and took it into another room and put in a tape about chiropractic treatment. The audio was ridiculous and I was getting a kick out of it but I was a little annoyed that the chiropractor was late for my appointment. The waiting room was empty, no one came or left for about 30 minutes. Then “the doctor” was ready to see me. “The doctor” formerly known as “some dude in track pants.”
He began a fairly poor recital of the video and asked if I was on medication. I said my MD had given me ibuprofen 800mg and the chiro said he couldn’t properly assess my condition because I was “high on drugs” and part of the treatment would be detoxification from OTC NSAIDS (he had a quaint and incorrect term, not NSAIDS) He warned me that Tylenol is more addictive than heroin and most daily aches and pains are entirely caused by Tylenol withdrawal.
I asked what would happen if I chose to undergo his treatment. He said it would be a lifelong journey but I would be pain free if I kept my end of the commitment. I asked if it would be fair to then classify most daily aches and pains going forward as entirely caused by chiropractic adjustment withdrawal.
His mouth gave an unconvincing “no” but his eyes said “A smart guy?! Who sent me a SMART guy?? I wasted 30 minutes studying for THIS?”
I don’t mean to get off track, but my husband has spinal osteoarthritis and cannot take NSAIDs. The doctor mentioned massage therapy, but my husband doesn’t want to.
Can you tell me what they concentrate on, does it hurt, and does it really help you?