That was for not even looking at your back. I believe bump’s question was about once the MD saw that there was a herniated disc.
Cite?
I don’t even trust D.O.'s, given their roots in magic therapeutical massage.
Chiropractors, like the sellers of unregulated (and constantly fraudulent) herbal remedies, and like homeopaths, should be mocked rather more than they are already–and maybe even outlawed.
Yeah, a PT (if they’re any good) will try to strengthen your muscles.
I gave up on chiropractic care completely when an uncle who was a PT pointed out that the muscles hold the spine in place, not the other way around. He saw chiropractic as a backwards approach and waste of money.
My grandfather liked the old-fashioned osteopaths, who I guess were somewhere in between a chiropractor and a physician’s assistant. I guess they’re not completely horrible.
Migraines and I have a long acquaintance. I had the completely debilitating kind from about age 12 to age 20. I’d get about 5 a year, which doesn’t seem like a lot, except they were the kind that came with nausea and light sensitivity, and all I could do was lie in a dark room.
I had my last headache of that type when I was 20, but about 4 years later, I started getting “atypical” migraines. The pain was bearable, albeit, it was persistent; I no longer got nausea, but I got weird neurological symptoms. By this time, some good migraine meds, like Imitrex were just coming onto the market (when I was 12, Tylenol wasn’t even available in the US yet; my mother would give me aspirin, which probably just made the nausea worse). Anyway, when I get a migraine, even though it isn’t “classic,” migraine medicine, like a triptan, is the only thing that works, which is how I know it’s a true migraine. Tylenol does nothing, and narcotics make it worse.
Now, if I’d gotten frustrated with the fact that medicine had nothing but narcotics and things like caffeine-ergot pills to take pre-onset (during the aura), and gone to a chiropractor, and then the “classic” headaches disappeared when I was 20, I probably would have credited it to the chiropractor, given that I probably would have started going sometime less than a year before, when I had the autonomy to do so.
Just my 2 cents that migraines are unpredictable that way. That can vanish for no apparent reason (probably because of changing hormone levels as you age, or changing climate if you move for an unrelated reason).
Well, backache does tend to resolve after pregnancy, and I speak as someone whose backache didn’t, but I still think your doctor was correct, because x-rays on a pregnant woman are verboten, and surgery has to be for something pretty serious, something that really, really can’t wait until after the birth.
FWIW, age has something to do with it. My aunt, who had known skeletal problems (severe childhood rickets), and had already had back surgery before her first pregnancy, had very little in the way of back pain during her first two pregnancies, when she was in her 20s, but in her fourth, when she was 36 or 37, she had so much pain, she could barely walk, and had to go to physical therapy after the birth to resolve the pain. Number of pregnancies probably has something to do with it too. I know women who have big families who didn’t start having problems until their fourth or fifth pregnancy, and it just got worse each time after. One woman, who was an Orthodox Jew, had her doctor tell her “No more,” after her sixth child because of her developing back problems, unless she wanted to end up in a wheelchair.
I don’t get DOs. They sing this song that they are just like MDs, and take the same medical boards, etc., etc. OK, then why not be an MD. Why be a DO? Obviously you think that the manipulations and the “skeletal health” theory have something to offer, and I reject them, so I reject your whole “club.” I’m fine with being treated by NPs for minor acute ailments, or even chronic things within the NP’s specialty that have been diagnosed my an MD, but keep DOs away from me.
Well–due to our political class’s now-successful attempts to create an MD shortage in the USA–I think some students go to DO schools because that’s what’s available.
I think we would do well to train more physician assistants, which is an unfamiliar term to many. PA’s can do a lot of patient treatment, while more complete diagnosis and analysis is still the domain of MD’s.
As a practical matter, I think PA’s are somewhere in between LPN’s and MD’s in what they can do.
Okay, I know there are some chiropractors out there who think they can cure cancer with apricot pits, and shit like that. But it’s not like they don’t study the mechanics of the human body. And it’s not like the medical field relegates them to the position of fake shamans, either. I know several people who have been sent, by MDs, to chiropractors, to fix their problems. Not cancer–but back problems, dislocated rib (yikes!), frozen shoulder.
There are a lot of people here who are even down on DOs, who are pretty much indistinguishable from MDs as doctors. A friend is a DO–he’s a psychiatrist, and no massage table in his office at all. He has a piano in there, though. He went to a school of osteopathic medicine rather than a school of allopathic medicine, but did a psych residency just like an MD would do to become a psychiatrist. In fact most residency programs are open to DOs and they teach everybody the same stuff.
Some people are healers, some are not. A lot of MDs are just not, even with science on their side. My cousin, an MD, is not a healer, but he knows it and works in a lab where he never sees patients. A lot of MDs are just in it for the money (which, in fairness, they have to recoup their student loans, which can take years). This is not to say that all chiropractors are healers, either.
No, the doc was right not to x-ray me, but he was wrong to tell me it was normal, because it wasn’t. The chiropractor recognized that right away, and also without an x-ray. It had nothing to do with my age, either. It was an injury. Not something caused by pregnancy, but maybe exacerbated by it. I had less trouble with back pain in my last pregnancy and I was way older then.
They are often cheaper. once you get beyond the number of visits your insurance will pay for.
I went as a kid, and while I don’t think it helped in any way, I do know he didn’t do the neck stuff on kids. Most of it was putting his fingers on the sides of my head and pushing to try and get my legs into alignment.
Which reminds me that one time I did all that stuff to my sister, and then checked her legs and they lined up. I was so excited that I told the Chiro about it. Never did I think that I was probably insulting him by showing him that a child could do his work.
Yeah, no, chiropracty is a bunch of woo, top to bottom. I don’t care if the one you (general you) found came from the “good” side, they’re never going to be as good as a proper physical therapist. A physical therapist is what you’re actually looking for if you’re even considering a chiropractor, as a physical therapists does and knows all the science and therapy without any of the woo. And if the chiropractor was any good they would’ve gone to school to be a physical therapist instead rather than go into such a ridiculous profession.
Growing up and seeing chiropractor signs everywhere I assumed they were a legitimate type of doctor. Not in the slightest. It wasn’t until I looked up their wikipedia page a few years ago out of curiosity that I discovered what was really going on.