Yep tilling your neck back is dangerous even a friend who’s a hairdresser has seen a few people knocked out tilting their head back in the wash basin, no doubt a percentage have gone away and had a stroke, maybe neck braces should be compulsory for everyone.
Neckbraces, helmets and wheelchairs. Just to be sure.
Qagdop Thanks for the info. And it’s good to know the info on the neck cracking stuff. I think I’ll discontinue the neck cracking with my chiro. It doesn’t really make be too comfortable as it is. My chiro deals with spinal issues in terms of postural alignment. That’s pretty much it.
Right. They are very good as fixing moderate back pain. There have been scientific studies that verify this.
Now sure, being in pain will stress you ans stress can make you sick. Thus, in a way, being free of back pain will help your overall health.
That’s not how they sell it - the chiropractics that follow D.D. Palmer (the original creator of chiropractic) believe that the health improvements come from the realigning of the body’s life force/chi/whatever you want to call vitalism, and so it goes beyond pain relief. They think major diseases are caused by an imbalance in your life energy and that it can be balanced by manipulation.
We need to be careful when supporters of chiropractic (or, for that matter, any kind of “alternative medicine”) boast of scientific studies that support them.
All too often the studies are small or poorly conducted. A recent review of randomized controlled trials of chiropractic manipulation for back pain (acute and chronic) found that chiropractic did not demonstrate efficacy based on the evidence.
Mayo Clinic has this to say about chiropractic manipulation for acute back pain:
“Clinical trials indicate that chiropractic care is as safe and effective as conventional treatments — which may include pain medication, rest or exercise. But that may not be saying much. Low back pain typically improves within a matter of weeks, even for people who seek no treatment at all.”
There are no magic bullets out there for “curing” back pain and other types of musculoskeletal pain. Some people may find relief through physical therapy, others through massage, some via exercise, painkilling medications and for some, through chiropractic treatment. Chiropractic does not stand out as superior to the other therapies based on good evidence obtained through quality clinical trials.
In other words, according to the Mayo Clinic, clinical trials show that chiropractic is about as effective is doing NOTHING. Not a great advertisement, I’d say.
My parents are a scientist and a doctor. My grandpa and several cousins were professors and a psychiatrist. None of them agree with chiropractors.
I hear exercise is good for a bad back, and it is good for mine.
But every friend I have goes to one, and swears by them, although they always have to go back.
A guy at work had a bulging disc and was out for half a year. Doctors diagnosed him, but chiropractors treated him. He went from back surgery candidate to ‘I’m fine!’, and has stayed fine. Seemed to work for him.
That’s what’s known as an ‘anecdotal’ case. It does not qualify as evidence, as we can’t compare them to all the folks that had the same problem, sought help from a physical therapist and got better/worse/no change in the same time frame, or took meds, and got better/worse/no change in the same time frame, or did nothing, and and did better/worse/no change in the same time frame.
Keep in mind that back in the day, a common treatment for measles was to rub the patient’s skin with paper that had red dots drawn on it. And, amazingly enough, many of those people got better! Would you try that if your own child came down with the disease?
I regret not noticing this thread earlier. But, as a Johnny-come-lately, I wanted to note another consideration concerning chiropractic manipulation (at least with respect to low back pain).
I can do no better than to paraphrase the last two sentences of the abstract to this article which appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine:
In the study cited, costs for chiropractic treatment, while not huge ($429), were almost triple that of those who only get the educational booklet ($153)
Qadgop, CC, you’re right you know. Anecdotes are the kind of info I have about chiropractors. Other people seem to be in the same boat. So… maybe there is something there. I hear mostly good things, and the bit about causing strokes is new to me. There is a subtext of quack and rip-off anecdotes though.
Some of the concepts get panned, but has any study concluded that the whole of chiropractic is at best useless, at worst harmful; or all a charlatan’s scam, etc.?
The questions around chiropractic remind me of skepticism of Qigong:
I think this is interesting as an example of an anecdotal critical narrative. Notice that most of the criticisms are followed by ‘who?’ and ‘citation needed’. Maybe that is shorthand for ‘putting words in someone’s mouth’?
A decent summation:
"In When Healing Becomes and Crime, Kenny Ausubel writes, “For over 12 years and with the full knowledge and support of their executive officers, the AMA paid the salaries and expenses for a team of more than a dozen medical doctors, lawyers and support staff for the expressed purpose of conspiring (overtly and covertly) with others in medicine to first contain, and eventually, destroy the profession of chiropractic in the United States and elsewhere.”
This was not speculation. The actions taken by the U.S. Court of Appeals 7th circuit support Ausubel’s accusation. In 1990, chiropractic doctors Chester A. Wilk, James W. Bryden, Patricia B. Arthur and Michael D. Pedigo won a landmark antitrust lawsuit against the AMA. The court ruled that the AMA had violated the Sherman Act by “conducting an illegal boycott in restraint of the trade directed at chiropractors generally, and at the four plaintiffs in particular.” This 1990 verdict against the AMA followed three other antitrust cases against the association in 1978, 1980 and 1986, all of which were settled. "
Of course, this has no bearing on whether chiropractic is or is not effective, but the AMA has engaged in similar campaigns against other “alternative” health care options, including midwifery, which lend some weight to the idea that their primary interest has more to do with protecting their monopoly on health care than with legitimate concerns for the public welfare. The medical profession has a record going back hundreds of years of systematically defaming and destroying its competition (who at the time were often the women who delivered the babies and treated their neighbors with herbal remedies…the “witches” who were slandered as baby killers and poisoners)
I have never used a chiropractor myself, but my late husband got regular adjustments to keep his back aligned which he found very helpful. (he was tall and did lots of bending and twisting in his work as a printer)
Our family doc for many years was an MD, a Naturopath, AND a chiropractor.
My view is that some approaches work best for certain things and others best for others. For back pain due to mis-alignment or strain, manipulation is likely superior to drugs or surgery (the medical approach). For most minor or chronic illnesses or injuries, a non-medical approach is usually best. For serious injury or infection, (broken bones, surgical intervention) medical is where it’s at.
The problem, imo, is that medical science, which is simply ONE of MANY forms of healing, seeks to eliminate all the others.
Sorry, I cannot afford a three-time a week visit.
And even if I could afford it, I still would not go.
Speaking as a layman (patient), I would much rather place my trust (even if he is an intern) in someone who specializes in bone structure and its abnormalities.
Q
Why do you say ‘seemed to work for him’? This conclusion does not follow at all from the facts as stated. You may want to look up the ‘Post hoc ergo prompter hoc’ fallacy, or simply look at some of the comments offered in this thread.
Of course. We know his bulging disc is in remission. We know this isn’t because of drugs or surgery, because those weren’t treatments. We know that chiropractic was the treatment (unless you would also like to count the perfectly admissible ‘taking some time off’). We don’t know if chiropractic is the cause of the remission.
I go see my chiro when my back hurts to much to ignore or live with. I got better long term results when my regular MD sent me to a Physical Therapist. The PT taught me stretches and exercises to help my back keep itself in line. She taught me how to lose my bursitis, too.
My brother-in-law had a different take on chiros. When he threw his back out, he asked around to find out what to do. Four people gave him the same advice, and he tried it. Later, he told me, “I just don’t know, Nott. I been goin’ to choir practice ever’ Wednesday night, over to the Methodist church, for three months, and my back ain’t no better.”
That’s weird. I’ve heard that it’s just the opposite.