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Chiropractors are bullshit

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Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#11

Post by kenbaylor »

Totally not bullshit.

Hospitals alone kill close to 100,000 Americans alone each year. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical...

Chiropractors are good: 1) Personal experience. They have helped my spine recover multiple times, in record recovery time. 2) Modern medicine consists of prescribing drugs, or high risk surgeries. Paralysis for life is a real risk. 3) If you get a great one, they will add years of pain-free time for your life

Chiropractors are also bad: a) There are some 'religious schools' founded by 'bodies for Christ' aka Maximized Living that make some interesting claims. Unfortunately these are becoming common b) many new chiropractors have poor technique. This often goes back to the previous point. c) Unless the person is really good don't let them mess with your neck. There is a growing link between neck manipulation and strokes, especially when 'fast techniques' are involved. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Deanna_Rothwell/publica...

TLDR; This doesn't mean that Chiropractors are bad. There are many many great ones and it really works.

There are many quacks who drink the cool aid. They are mostly new graduates.

Modern medicine's approach to back and neck pain is utterly subpar and medieval. There are many quacks there too, and they kill a lot more every year.

And the medical community also disavowed Surgery as 'quackery' not too long ago: http://mentalfloss.com/article/66664/how-uneducated-butchers...

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#12

Post by pfarnsworth »

Geimfari wrote: post #8
pfarnsworth wrote: post #5

No it is not bullshit, not for back problems. I hurt my back and was suffering for 2 years. I went to a physiotherapist and they made me do stretches and other exercises. I took Advil and aleve and both eventually stopped working. It was debilitating and I desperation I went to a chiropractor. I am a huge skeptic and thought chiropractors were scams too but I was desperate. Within 6 weeks the pain disappeared permane…

There only exists two proven methods for stopping back pain: Physical exercise and rest. Many things tend to go away by themselves (regression to the mean), back pain appears to be one of them and we haven't found better ways to treat it. Chiropractors often make one feel good for a few days but the effect does not last.

I love how everyone thinks they are an expert. I went to physiotherapy for over a year. I took medications for longer. Neither worked. I took a short course of chiro and the pain permanently went away.

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#14

Post by 0xcde4c3db »

Just to be clear, the fact that someone bills themselves as a chiropractor doesn't mean that they exclusively offer chiropractic "treatments". Some offer quasi-legitimate physiotherapy-like treatment, advice on lifestyle modification, and guidance on over-the-counter drugs. Any of which might end up being useless or harmful depending on how knowledgeable and sensible a given chiropractor is. But the extent to which they do this corresponds pretty closely to how much they deviate from chiropractic theory and accept proven understandings of physiology.

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#15

Post by pfarnsworth »

obstinate wrote: post #6
pfarnsworth wrote: post #5

No it is not bullshit, not for back problems. I hurt my back and was suffering for 2 years. I went to a physiotherapist and they made me do stretches and other exercises. I took Advil and aleve and both eventually stopped working. It was debilitating and I desperation I went to a chiropractor. I am a huge skeptic and thought chiropractors were scams too but I was desperate. Within 6 weeks the pain disappeared permane…

You know that thing about anecdotes. There are a lot of explanations for your situation getting better concurrently with chiro, but not because of chiro. For example, regression to the mean, placebo effect, etc. That said, I had been under the impression that chiro is about as effective for lower back pain as evidence-based physical therapy. But that doesn't mean it is effective. It could equally well mean that we do…

When you hurt your back then come back and respond. There's nothing worse than an armchair expert googling Wikipedia for their "knowledge".

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#16

Post by awinder »

kenbaylor wrote: post #11

Totally not bullshit. Hospitals alone kill close to 100,000 Americans alone each year. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical... Chiropractors are good: 1) Personal experience. They have helped my spine recover multiple times, in record recovery time. 2) Modern medicine consists of prescribing drugs, or high risk surgeries. Paralysis for life is a real risk. 3) If you get a great one, they will…

I don’t know what the more common treatment paths are but im fairly sure that the first line treatment path from modern medicine is working with a physical therapist, not surgery.

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#17

Post by closed »

This made me curious about its effectiveness for back pain, so I tried to find a meta-analysis. Turned up this on plos one. (note, I can't speak for the article's quality).

> Moderate evidence suggests that chiropractic care for LBP appears to be equally effective as physical therapy. Limited evidence suggests the same conclusion when chiropractic care is compared to exercise therapy and medical care although no firm conclusion can be reached at this time. No serious adverse events were reported for any type of care. Our review was also unable to clarify whether chiropractic or medical care is more cost-effective. Given the limited available evidence, the decision to seek or to refer patients for chiropractic care should be based on patient preference and values. Future studies are likely to have an important impact on our estimates as these were based on only a few admissible studies.

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal....

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#18

Post by E6300 »

kenbaylor wrote: post #11

Totally not bullshit. Hospitals alone kill close to 100,000 Americans alone each year. https://www.propublica.org/article/how-many-die-from-medical... Chiropractors are good: 1) Personal experience. They have helped my spine recover multiple times, in record recovery time. 2) Modern medicine consists of prescribing drugs, or high risk surgeries. Paralysis for life is a real risk. 3) If you get a great one, they will…

> Hospitals alone kill close to 100,000 Americans alone each year.

> 2) Modern medicine consists of prescribing drugs, or high risk surgeries. Paralysis for life is a real risk.

This is reminiscent of the arguments used by creationists. "Creationism isn't bullshit! Look at all the flaws in evolution!"

> 1) Personal experience.

There's people who use homeopathy who swear by it. That doesn't make homeopathy any more legitimate.

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#19

Post by obstinate »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #15
obstinate wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that thing about anecdotes. There are a lot of explanations for your situation getting better concurrently with chiro, but not because of chiro. For example, regression to the mean, placebo effect, etc. That said, I had been under the impression that chiro is about as effective for lower back pain as evidence-based physical therapy. But that doesn't mean it is effective. It could equally well mean that we do…

When you hurt your back then come back and respond. There's nothing worse than an armchair expert googling Wikipedia for their "knowledge".

Even if I did, it would still be an anecdote. It would prove nothing either way. For that we have to look to data.

Re: Chiropractors are bullshit

#20

Post by yomly »

pfarnsworth wrote: post #15
obstinate wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know that thing about anecdotes. There are a lot of explanations for your situation getting better concurrently with chiro, but not because of chiro. For example, regression to the mean, placebo effect, etc. That said, I had been under the impression that chiro is about as effective for lower back pain as evidence-based physical therapy. But that doesn't mean it is effective. It could equally well mean that we do…

When you hurt your back then come back and respond. There's nothing worse than an armchair expert googling Wikipedia for their "knowledge".

Lots of science-only hecklers here. Seems to me to be a bit arrogant to think science holds all the answers and that holistic treatments are devoid of value?

Should we ideally strive for scientific rigour in everything we do? Yes. Does quantum mechanics prevent us from predicing anything to arbitrary precision? Yes. Are we currently unable to model any three body interaction analytically? Yes.

Right at the atomic level, our science is built on top of approximations and concessions to rigour. The second you get to anything remotely murky like biological systems, it all gets a bit hand wavey anyway.

This is not to discount the scientific method or years of evidence based research, but if chiropractors and Chinese medicine, and even homeopathy can have an effect on people then who are we to tell them they're wrong?

Even if it is just a placebo, until we can in precise terms explain the pathways of the placebo effect, then various healing methods in their various cultural contexts still have their place in the world imho, provided they are not known to be causing harm.

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