Chiropractic: Science or Pseudo-Science

Oh and far as a doctor goes it is the way to go...make good money and keep really regular hours.

 

If military standard of care is what you judge "real science" on- You are sorely misguided. Some of the worst hack doctors I've ever seen are in the military.
I've also been treated with many of the same procedures chiros use by physical threapists, who are military- but maybe not "medical officers"

 

I used to refer to chiropractors as "witch doctors". Then, my MD suggested trying one after he couldn't seem to solve reoccurring lower back pain.

Wouldn't you know, I had to eat my words.

 

Lieutenant, I received the finest medical care the taxpayers could provide during my Coast Guard career and still receive at Kirtland AFB hospital. Chiropractors are not neurologists, orthopedists, physiatrists or any other type of medical doctor. Chiropractic is a belief that all health problems are caused by misalignments of the spine (sublaxations) that interfere with nerve signals from the brain. There is NO scientific evidence that manipulations of the spine can cure disease or lessen pain. I stand by my statement that the reason the military does not give these quacks commissions or TriCare pay for their "treatments" is because chiropractic is just bull shit. Just like scientology and christian science. Bull! Shit!
I 'm sorry you haven't received good medical care in the Coast Guard. During your next flight physical please feel free to share your opinion with the flight surgeon.

 

Could you please point me in the direction of literature that states exactly that. Cause I have never been to the many chiropractors that I've been to in my life and had them tell me that my cold or raging case of sexually contracted syphilis is due to my lower lumber being out of wack due to my duty belt pressing on my L4 and L5 disks, and not due to raw dawging the shit out of that one chick who I probably should have ordered a full battery of blood and urine tests before slipping her the tan salami.

 

i have been playing ice hockey practically my whole life and i know i'm going to get shit for this since i'm 18, but i would go to a chiropracor whenever i'd get hurt in hockey but other that i'd go about twice a month.
my parents health insurance paid for it all so it is free for me, and the chiropractor just wants me to keep coming in to help prevent from anything happening

 

I go to one regularly. Once a month now. Due to my job I often over exert myself on ladders and carrying stuff. He re-aligns me and I feel great for another month till I do something else that messes it up.

 

I had issues with my back/wrist etc. My wife has issues with headaches, neck pain. The chiro we go to helps us out without having to take a bunch of pills, so you tell me. If it's a bunch of horseshit, then call me Mr. Ed.

 

If it was really no good, then insurances wouldn't cover as much as they do. It has been proven to reduce pain, and headaches, among other things. You need to do a little more research.
If I can barely bend over and I can do backflips after being adjusted, not sure how that is fake???

 

First up- A major hole in your theory-There are now locations that will approve chriopractic treatments thru Tricare (Ref: http://www.tricare.mil/mybenefit/ProfileFilter.do;jsessionid=MGcMcQGfv77bSTcmQw9p1G8JmV2KCbjLwgY8TQ1YdCKJ7Wxzlvyh!-1237733612?puri=%2Fhome%2Foverview%2FSpecialPrograms%2FChiropracticCare

Second- I didn't say all doctors in military are bad- but that some of the worst that I have come across have been military doctors. And if/when I find them- I bring it up....Just like any other service industry personnel that don't treat me or my family professionally and respectfully.

I also said that if what the military standards are all you require/what you make judgments based on-I think you should re-evaluate your priorities. Military is good- but there is room to improve.

And as far as it being bullshit- Not so much. The headaches I had and stiffness in my back and left shoulder were greatly reduced when PT, painkillers, massage, and stretching on my own could not. I don't need a formal scientific evaluation to know that less pain means it worked...

Chiropractic is a health care discipline, which emphasizes the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery." Source: The Association of Chiropractic Colleges

 

This topic is probably a little too potentially volatile for my third post here, but I couldn't resist.

Disclaimer. I used to be a Physical Therapist, currently I'm an MD Orthopedic Surgeon. That undoubtedly colors my views of the topic. But for what it's worth I have a spine surgeon partner who used to be a Chiropractor - and still believes deeply in it. My wife also uses a chiropractor occasionally.

I voted pseudoscience.

That doesn't mean Chiropractic doesn't help people - clearly it does. But that doesn't make it a science. MDs, DOs, and DCs can all help people - and they can all be worthless. Whether or not any health care provider is going to make a difference for you probably depends much more on what kind of person they are than what kind of training they had in my opinion. I personally feel that many chiropractic practices are designed primarily as a way to make money - not as a way to heal disease. Sadly - it embarrasses me to say that's probably true of more MDs than I'd like to believe as well.

But the question was science or not. No. And here's why:

I don't claim an intimate knowledge of the basis of chiropractic - but it is built around the idea that the spine is the root of everything. That almost certainly isn't true. Admittedly allopathic (MD) medicine has supported some pretty kooky ideas in the past as well. And a few years from now some of what I strongly believe to be true will be proven wrong. The difference is that the basis of allopathic medicine allows these underlying beliefs to change as science proves them wrong. If the evidence shows that spinal manipulation will cure diabetes there's room for that. (Not that there wouldn't be a lot of resistance early on!) But the whole basis of chiropractic is that all these things are a direct result of, or at least very strongly influenced by, dz of the spine. Well designed studies (and there have been some) trying to look at this have found it to be false. What the chiropractic community needs to do if it wants to enter mainstream science is to publicly say "We acknowledge that all these problems don't come from the spine, the evidence shows that we were wrong about that, but there is a lot of pain and suffering we can have an impact on." I'd respect the heck out of them for that. It's unlikely ever to happen for a number of reasons.

A few other problems I have with chiropractic:
They say the training is similar to mainstream medicine. Usually in my experience that's not true. The true hours involved tend to be different, when compared fairly. More importantly - they may have a biochemistry class or a pathology class in school - but these are generally taught not by biochemists or practicing pathologists, but by, you guessed it, chiropractors. If this sort of basic science is vital to the field it should be taught by people who know what they are doing. I suspect most chiropractors have as little business teaching biochemistry as I do.

The chiropractic community is very good at marketing and political involvement. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But it is something to keep in mind.

One last thing:
Most of the general population would be appalled if they knew how poor the scientific evidence was for many of the medical decisions we have to make every day. That's one reason why every few months the news makes a big deal about some new medical issue that isn't quite what we thought it was. There's a lot we don't understand as well as we'd like - and it is far more difficult than people think to study these things well. Again - allopathic medicine acknowledges this - and as the evidence shows that what we used to believe is wrong, we'll gradually adjust (some of us quicker than others) because there isn't an underlying tenant that forces us to believe what we all know isn't true. Chiropractic - and anything else that's built around a single underlying theory of dz that can't be changed - doesn't have that flexibility.

Sorry for the rant.

p

The question, however

 

AGREED 100%!!!

 

Perhaps you can show scientific evidence that pain can not be caused by your spine being twisted then. Show me how the spine, which supports all the weight of your torso and keeps it upright, can not cause problems if it's not properly aligned and centered. Does you truck run correctly if both tires on one side are flat? No it doesn't. How would you expect your body to run if your spine twisted to one side, put more pressure on on side of your discs (leading to the them rupturing like a water balloon pressed between 2 books), and causing you to lean slightly to one side like the truck with flat tires?

How can you be so ignorant to say that the spine being out of alignment doesn't cause pain?? Do you have any idea how many nerves run through holes in the bones of the spine, parallel to the spinal cord? Don't you think if the holes don't line up those nerves (which are electrical based) can be pinched or severed causing pain or numbness? How is that different from your truck? If you want to run a 12v wire through the firewall for new lights do you just drill a hole and thread the wire through or do you use a rubber grommet so the wire doesn't get worn through and short out? Same concept. You pad the wire to keep it from getting cut on the metal hole, shorting out, blowing fuses, and potentially causing a fire. Same thing with making sure the spine is lined up correctly and the nerves don't get pinched or cut by the bones they run through.

One other thing. I twisted my leg at work and could barely limp to my truck due to the pain. My chiropractor realized my knee cap had shifted out of the socket and popped it back in. Had I followed your line of thinking I would have masked the problem with drugs and kept walking. That's a bandaid solution that would cause more problems as bone rubbed on bone instead of sitting in the cartilage padding and functioning correctly. To me that's not science. That's giving money to the drug companies for the rest of my life (or until my knee popped back in place on it's own) to mask the pain. To me the real science is fixing the problem in the first place: put the knee cap back where it belongs, make it work correctly, and not rely on addictive, expensive, pain killers. Especially considering if you read the fine print nearly every pain killer out there causes problems. IE, stomach problems, liver damage, etc after prolonged use. Sure my knee doesn't hurt, but now my kidneys or liver are shutting down due to all the drugs I have to take for the pain. That's a great trade off. Better to do a drug-free solution.

 

Excellent write up

 

Thanks. I'm not saying they can cure cancer or aids or whatever by twisting your spine, but come on! How can a bone being out of place NOT cause pain?! How can your hips being out of alignment NOT cause difficulty walking if not outright pain?

My wife has had 2 back surgeries. They did the same thing each time: drained fluid that had leaked out of a ruptured disc and put pressure on her spine. Each time she was in massive amounts of pain and doped up on vicodin for weeks after surgery. And the fact she had a second surgery obviously means the problem wasn't fixed the first time. Not one single doctor took xrays to see that her lower spine twists to the left pinching the discs on that side, forcing the fluid to the wider gap on the right side. And we wonder why her discs are rupturing? DUH! The weight of her torso isn't being evenly distributed across the whole disc so she has weak spots that keep popping. Just like pushing on half of a water balloon. The water shifts to one side and eventually the balloon pops.

The chiropractor on the other hand saw that and was in the process of straightening her spine so that her weight would be evenly distributed and her spine would stop deteriorating. As it is without the chiro she'll continue rupturing discs up her spine and probably end up in a wheel chair.

Why put her through that pain, and have to spend massive amounts of money to make our 2 story house wheel chair accessible (or buy a new one) when the problem could be prevented in the first place?

 

Before you get too high and mighty about your side of the argument- Take a look at the poll- There are roughly twice as many people who think it's a science. Not to mention your doctors quote discounts them based on their training not being as good....but it apparently works just fine to get them licensed.
Here is a basic scientific method diagram-

That is how "science" is done- and I would say that they have met that.
I would say that having Chiropractors teaching other chiropractors biochemistry makes sense. I don't need an aeronautical engineering to teach me how to fly nor do I need to understand to the depth that they do what makes my helicopter fly. I need a pilot teaching me to be a pilot....Practical application not super deep theory.

How about your argument that because "Tricare doesn't approve it"- That website is real....

On that note- Good news is you don't have to have any sort of care you don't want to have. You also don't have to insult others other their beliefs- so lets leave the shots at religion out of this...That is a can of worms not worth opening.

 

Jon, I can't argue with all the anonymous testimonials in favor of chiropractic posted on TW. I however, DO NOT BELIEVE and nothing that's been posted so far has proved me wrong or changed my mind. All one has to do is enter chiropractic in yer favorite search engine and you can read up on what CHIROPRACTIC REALLY BELIEVES.
I'm glad your wife is okay.

 

Yeah...They believe they can help people thru non-drug means...What a bunch of unscientific idiots...

As a point of order- I clearly proved you wrong regarding the military/Tricare opinion of chiropractic care...And since the military tells you "all you need to know"...

 

definitly helped me... my neck was curved in the wrong direction giving me bad shoulder pain......she fixed me up in a few months time....i wouldnt go just to go but if your in pain and nothing else has helped might wanna check into a chiro