Saw a chiropractor because I was starting to wake up with back pain every morning. Bought into something like a 3 month, twice per week program because the loss of sleep was really bad and he said he was pretty sure it would help.
After 3 months, I was still having a lot of difficulty. After an adjustment I’d be fine the next night but it would come right back.
So I decided to just go buy a high end new mattress. Boom. Every night after was a no-pain night. Never went back to the chiro.
This. Go buy three different pillows and experiment to discover which one gives you the best sleep. It’s cheaper that one trip to the chiro and will more likely yield long term results…
Chiropractors and osteopaths only exist in such large numbers because they bill less to insurers than actual doctors & hospitals. So of course insurers are going to promote these quacks because it’s cheaper than somebody going to an actual physiotherapist for treatment.
There should really be legislation that requires insurers to cover science & evidence based treatments. If someone wants woo it should be at additional expense to them, not part of a standard policy.
You’ve got it in reverse. See that “possible exception for back pain”? Chronic pain related to joint issues is ALL chiros do, insurance used to cover that when you had a back injury or whiplash, things it works for. Then insurance stopped covering that, pretty sure it’s because they favor you getting a prescrip for pain killers but that’s conspiracy on my part, and a lot of chiros started to turn to less savory things, as they did that more and more snake oil types who claim chiropractic work is some fuckin miracle come out of the woodwork.
I’ve worked with these issues a lot in representing injured workers, including litigating coverage of chiro treatment. In my experience, insurers will always cover chiropractic if it is under the direction of a doctor. A lot of orthos send their patients to chiros for treatment. Insurer is fine approving eight or twelve sessions as ordered by the treater. Where they have a problem is when it’s the chiropractor directing the care. You know, if you get hurt and you just go straight to the chiropractor, they will say they need to treat you indefinitely, twice a week or something.
As for efficacy, it’s undeniable that chiropractic care feels good. If it feels good and the patient believe it’s working, that’s enough to make it work for real. No doubt, there are plenty of studies that bear out improvements of objective functional capacity and subjective pain ratings after chiropractic care. The mechanism is that the “adjustments” affect the autonomic, sympathetic, and parasympathetic nervous systems, and prompt the release of neuroendocrine factors such as serotonin and dopamine. For some people that is enough to feel better and even heal. For insurers, many of them are happy to pay for a course of chiro care because doing so may save them from having to pay for continued Ortho followups, skilled PT, guided injections, or even surgical interventions.
On the other hand, chiropractic education and practice is highly subjective, and the entire field lacks consistency and validity, and IMO is inadequate for the forces it exerts on the most sensitive part of the human body: the cervical spine. Cervical manipulations are highly dangerous. It can severe arteries, cause strokes, cause stroke-like symptoms from nerve palsy, and can break vertebrae; this can easily paralyze or kill a patient, and the chiro cannot know these forces are likely safe for a patient unless they’ve reviewed prior imaging of the cervical spine and know for sure there are no preexisting stress fractures, lesions, or neural impingement.
At this point the industry is so large and powerful that the medical industry and regulatory structure has decided that patients may decide to bear these risks for themselves.
This comment is a hot mess of personal experience and fatalism wrapped in the vaneer of scientific authority. Chiropractor bad … Unless doctor say go. Then bad not bad anymore.
Just my medicolegal experience. Not sure what you mean by fatalist or veneer of scientific authority, though medicolegal science is a thing, I said up front I wasn’t a scientist and that my experience was in resolving and litigating coverage disputes or how you’d simplify my conclusions into such a slogan. I clearly said the entire art suffers from inadequate validity and training that ends up getting people seriously injured or killed.
Oh, it’s fatalist of me to say the law and insurance industry say patients may elect that risk? I suppose, that’s the way it is right now. Certainly doesn’t have to be. The political will of regular people is too distracted by culture wars and disinformation to be hopeful that Congress is going to step in and regulate chiropractic. We have serious challenges like maintaining democratic governance to be so focused on this. You want to regulate something that maims and kills people, I have about twenty other things way more urgent before we get to chiropracty. If you want to spend all your political capital in this one place, have at it. I hope you’re right and chiropractic medicine is the most imminent of our problems; is that fatalist?
So, DO’s in many of not most states in the US have the same licensure and practice limitations as MDs and charge/are reimbursed similarly. I’m many cases they actually attend the same residency programs as allopathic/MDs. Most I’ve worked with drop 99% of the Osteopathic manipulation stuff soon as they graduate. Naturopaths on the other hand…
If I pay for a business to make me a chocolate milkshake under the same health code regulations and standards as the place across town, I don’t want them finishing it off by stirring in a spoonful of shit with the ice cream as a bonus. Even if >99% of what’s in the cup is not shit, it isn’t somewhere I’ll go and I’ll make an effort to discourage people from going there too.
Osteopaths, chiropractors and all those other flavors of cargo cult imitation medical quackery differ only by the proportion of ingredients. Making a distinction between them is meaningless, it just lets the less-obvious liars get a foot in the door.
(Additional note because this is the internet: This is a “spherical cow in frictionless vacuum” scenario and ignores things like accidental contamination as well as the narrow range of illnesses where an appropriately-prepared and administered fecal transplant (which this is not) may be indicated.)
I think you’re misunderstanding what most of them keep practicing. It’s not the kooky cranial/cervical manipulation(you can make an argument that them having to learn that stuff in the first place is BS and a waste of time), but most do pick up a few muscle pressure point tricks and stretches that are essentially the same as what PT instructs patients on how to do. Is it bullshit? No more so than most medicine that’s practiced(the data behind the vast majority of what your average physician does is at best all over the place, the truly “settled” clinical questions are few and far between). In my book though, anything that keeps you from having to prescribe a scheduled drug (read as:narcotic or muscle relaxer) to get someone functional from something like severe trapezius tightness or piriformus syndrome is a heck of a tool to have at your disposal in a primary care or urgent care setting.
A broken clock might be right twice a day but that doesn’t mean you should rely on it for timekeeping. If something works, we study it in search of why, how and other details that may not be immediately obvious but could have an impact on patient outcomes. From what their product quality shows, chiropractors and their snake oil salespeople colleagues appear to be some combination of less diligent, less motivated and less capable when it comes to doing that sort of evaluation. Trying to blend that part of the market into the realm of legitimate evidence-based medicine is bad for almost everybody involved. Might as well start having the nurse follow the vitals check with a palm reading if the standard of “has a basis in reality” is too onerous for modern medicine.
We’re constantly making bigger and brighter lights to shine out into the darkness of what we don’t yet know while the Supplementary, Complementary and Alternative Medicine crowd sprints for the first patch of darkness to plant a flag and hide. You’re right that there are a lot of unanswered questions but an answer is not a valid substitute for a correct answer.
I’m allowed to call a cult leader “God” and I’m allowed to call the idiots at the apple store “geniuses” but I’m not going to devalue those words either.
Laws and accreditation don’t change how the human body works (and, importantly in the case of chiropractic performances, doesn’t work). No energy lines to unblock, your humors or bile aren’t unbalanced, a wheatstone bridge can’t detect alien ghosts and some distant planet’s apparent motion from the Earth’s perspective isn’t causing your misfortune. We’re just meat machines no matter which map lines you’re inside and a medical professional who can’t keep their mysticism and fantasy out of the workplace can not be trusted to maintain their patients’ physical or mental health.
Chiropractic has its benefits. The problem is that you can’t make a living if all you are doing is the few things that chiropractic works for. That’s why they have to make all kinds of spectacular claims about the benefits and rope you into 6 months of twice a week visits.
The Dr I went to as a kid was an MD and had a chiropractic license. He was able to reset my rib when it got knocked out from being shoved between the seats on the school bus.
I think this depends on the kind of chiropractic work. If they are just there to pop bubbles for that crack, then nothing is happening. I got into a car accident and my insurance sent me to a chiropractor that never cracked my back. Instead he gave me physical therapy, got me MRI images to check for an cracks on my spine or hernias in my discs, and gave me some equipment to help relax my back muscles and provide support to my bacl. I feel like this kind of work actually does provide benefit. I don’t go anymore since all of that stuff is cleared up now, but I would trust that guy with my back again if I needed it.
I’ve seen a couple ‘chiropractors’ that are just giving good physio work and advice but taking chiro insurance money. Scammy maybe, but if they’ll put me back together I’ll take it.
Some chiropracters are more or less “bootleg” physical therapists that use the same treatment. Of course, there is no guarantee that a given chiropractor will use effective and proven treatments like a licensed PT practitioner.
I mean, all they’re really doing is rubber stamping a form so insurance will pay. You can go to your hospital and give them cash to have an MRI done without a doctor being involved.
I’m not sure you could go to most hospitals and get an MRI just because. Diagnostic tests still carry risks, especially MRIs given how strong the magnetic field is and that you can’t easily turn them off.
People should also be aware of the growing number of alternative mental therapists popping up everywhere due to the shortage in actual psychologists.
They are nothing more than life coaches with a six-month certificate in whatever-the-fuck, most of which are disguised as Masters qualifications from wherever-the-fuck.
This is a very north american opinion, which also happens to be very condescending in tone, while op explicitly dismiss commenters who disagree with them. The practices designated by the various terms, such as chiropractors, osteopath, physical therapists, etc. vary depending on the countries and contexts, especially in some european countries where chiropractors must answer to the same standards and regulations as the other medical professions. This should be taken into account.
Well regulated snake oil is still snake oil. Just cause a regulatory board says its relatively safe doesnt mean its actually effective. Chiropractory is no more effective than a good massage, and you know what if thats all they advertised it as then fine. But it aint theres a whole bunch of woo mixed into it.
That’s just not true, regulations imply healthcare reimbursement, which implies strict control on the treatment and the practicians, because insurance companies hate paying.
Actually, a DC goes to school for 4 years to learn what they do. A PT used to go for 4 years undergrad, then 2 years for the MS. Now you really can’t practice without a PhD. When a DC says they can do everything a PT can do plus Rx certain things, it really pisses PTs off. They work within the scope of a MD’s direction. DC don’t. Both use Phillip Greenman’s Principles of Manual Medicine in their training (an Osteopathic text).
Osteopathy was originally pseudoscientific quackery, but has long abandoned the woo crap that was not supported by medical evidence. Osteopathic medicine today is grounded firmly and exclusively in actual science.
Physical therapy is, and always has been, medical science based therapy.
Chiropractic therapy is founded upon disproven theories and requires no actual medical training. The industry regulates its own certifications, and chiropractors are taught a perverted concept of physiology.
Considering osteopathy was invented in the United States by an American, who was basically just making shit up, and all of the underlying theories and mechanisms of action have been thoroughly debunked, I’d say that a lie is a lie anywhere in the world, regardless of legal status.
Psychoanalysis was invented almost at the same time in Vienna and a lot of freudian concepts have since been critiqued due to his biases. Does it mean Austria forever owns psychoanalysis and anything that could be discovered since? There is a difference between a field of research, a scientific discipline and a paradigm. Debunking a theory that was invented more than a century ago doesn’t disqualify every research done after that. Also, paradigm change often comes from opposing theories from the same field they oppose. If we did like that, there wouldn’t be a lot of research field left standing.
You accept yourself that osteopathy was able to go beyond its suspicious origin, but refuse to imagine that chiropractice could do the same. Which is why I reiterate: chiropractice requiring no medical training is a north american thing.
It means anyone anywhere practicing Freudian therapy is peddling debunked medicine.
Chiros anywhere still crack your joints, even though it’s an imaginary benefit and a very real risk. Patients of chiros would be better served in physical therapy or massage therapy. There’s nowhere on earth that this isn’t true.
You’re just presenting nuanced conclusions as overwhelming truths to put weight on your opinion, while taking a few shortcuts. You’re entitled to your opinion of course, but that doesn’t mean you get to dismiss any contradicting ones by deciding unilaterally what the words mean.
Chiropractice in the US might be just “cracking joints”, but it’s not true everywhere. If you can’t accept that, then I don’t know what to tell you.
Understandable. But it’s the chicken and egg problem. Creators don’t want to create content, because there’s no consumers. Consumers don’t want to sign up, because there’s no creators.
So are you the chicken or the egg? :-D
If you’re on one you don’t like anymore you could always change instances and watch videos there. If you’re worried about losing comments, well you can comment from other Fediverse servers such as Mastodon or GoToSocial and they show up on the page for the video. :-)
You know what, Peertube needs the equivalent of an acquisition and the perfect candidates would be, and I’m on record saying this before, DailyMotion and Vimeo. They’ve already got content and by implementing activitiypub integration, they can grow their audiences and compete with YouTube for once and for all.
But yeah, for me. I haven’t even found a video to watch let alone comment. That said, my YouTube is generally me watching album reactions, music videos, Hot Ones, Adam Something and Beard Meats Food.
Nothing stopping Vimeo from plumbing in ActivityPun amd joining the Fediverse. It’s open and the only reason no one does is because the data is valuable and they don’t want to share and play nice.
These walled gardens were not how the internet was imagined.
Just a side note, ActivityPub protocol - the core engine that lets all of fediverse to talk to the rest of the fediverse is… 5 years old. Every feature imaginable is still to be implemented.
en.wikipedia.org
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