My wife believes in chiroptactic treatment and goes regularly. I do not. She recently started taking my 12-year-old son for adjustments and, though I expressed my skepticism and concern about messing around with a child’s spine, I didn’t stop it altogether.
But circumstances led to me taking him for the visit today, and here’s my report:
Nice office but wierd that all the treatment happens in a main room with the other patients lined up waiting their turn.
I watched a few adjustments before it was my son’s turn and winced every time the attractive young chiro pushed a spine or yanked a head.
Here’s the best part. When it was my son’s turn, she offered to show me his X-rays and what was wrong with him. First she shows me how his upper spine is out of line by so many degrees, yadda, yadda, yadda. Ok, I’ll accept that maybe that’s a thing you can help with. But then she shows me the bone or whatever it is connecting the skull and spine. This was at a 20 degree angle or whatever she said, when it’s supposed to be 90 degrees. (Don’t remember the numbers but it’s not necessary.) Then she explained all the potential harm that can result if that is not fixed – sleeping problems, learning disabilities, depression, epilepsy, vision problems, mental illness, immunosuppression, diabetes, heart ailments, obesity… That’s just what I remember, and the list went on so long that I almost burst out laughing. All from one bone being out of alignment.
I also noticed she went from patient to patient without ever sanitizing her hands! And she used some kind tool on the sinuses and foreheads of some patients without ever sanitizing it! The lack of infection control is what bothered me the most.
Definitely having a talk with his mom.
So, you now have experienced quack medicine, first hand. Not how little sense the whole thing makes-as you noted, one bone (out of “alignment”) gives rise to all these problems?
Run, don’t walk, away from this nonsense. the treatments are dangerous, the practice unsanitary, and the whole premise absurd.
Chiropractic treatment will always have the same result. Your wallet will be a lot lighter.
This called Community chiropractic , it cost less than going to one that treat people one at a time in a room. I went to this and hated it b/c the chiropractic had to talk loud so I could hear her and this meant everyone could too. I like Zero Balancing a lot better it’s easier on your body . It’s doesn’t force your body to go beyond it limit . This was started by DR. Fritz Smith. I wouldn’t bring my child to a chiropractic b/c some of them are too rough .
I went for a few visits years ago, until the one time the chiroproctologist guy was trying to crack my neck, and just as he said, “Stop fighting me” my spine made a sound like a Howitzer going off, and I let out a groan that you could’ve heard on Jupiter. Then he told me to lie still for a few minutes and left the room.
I walked out with more pain than I came with, feeling grateful that I was able to walk at all, and never went back.
Later on I heard he’d lost his license. No doubt he now works on a farm somewhere, wringing the necks of turkeys.
There’s a friend of a Facebook friend who posted “Baby’s first trip to the chiropractor”. Apparently, it’s a thing to do ‘alignments’ on an infant. Fucking hell.
A chiropractor I went to said she did treatments on babies that were born
breech birth . Damn I am lucky b/c I was born breech and didn’t go a
chiropractor . I hate having anyone touching my head b/c my dad uses my head for target practice ! He threw anything he could get his hands on at my head !
Penn & Teller had a great episode about that very thing on their show Bullshit.
When my wife was 11 her mother married a chiropracter. He X-rayed her and she had scoliosis She had X-rays to prove it. Later x-rays, after a couple years treatment, proved it corrected. Can I demonstrate that the treatment cured it? No. But it is not the kind of condition that tends to spontaneously corrects itself. He himself stated that most chiropracters were quacks.
My experience. I had had regular debilitating experiences with my back going out. Finally, and very diffidently, my family doctor suggested I see his chiropracter. I did. He treats me and also assigned morning stretching exercises. I do the exercises and also see him regularly. My back problems have disappeared. I still get back pains but they have never left me bent over, just minor pain that I wake up with that goes away when I do my exercises. Is it the treatments or the exercises? Who knows?
One thing is that he makes no claim other than to keep my back happy. He does not delve in other medical things. He will not cure my diabetes or lower my blood pressure.
YMMV