[thathndude]

The historic scientific basis for chiropractors is total BS. The idea that everything stems from the spine, and if you get the spine and alignment, everything else will follow. Literally, a belief that you could, for example, cure cancer, by aligning the spine.

That’s no better than energy healing, and the idea that you have energy flows that get interrupted and need to be corrected by using a certain crystal.

Having said that, chiropractors can fix muscular skeletal issues, that the typical medical community often ignores.

My chiropractor anecdote is this: I was in college and I had a bad pain in my neck and jaw. It came out of nowhere, and lingered as an annoying pain. I went to the student health clinic, where the doctor promptly prescribed me antibiotics for 30 days. I took the antibiotics, and things sort of improved. But the pain never went away.

I went to a chiropractor, who gave me one, single adjustment. When he adjusted my neck, it hurt like heck. 24 hours later the pain was greatly diminished. 24 hours after that, the pain went away and I never felt it again.

There was no infection; the antibiotics did nothing. The relief I felt over 30 days was merely the healing of the body on its own. There was still something incorrect in my neck and jaw, and who knows if it ever would have resolved. The chiropractor fixed it in literally 30 seconds.

So, it’s a mixed bag. And certainly, I hope everyone criticizing chiropractic care is similarly critical of Western medicine, and dumb doctors like the one who simply threw antibiotics at me and sent me on my way.

One more thing, I’m a lawyer who does the occasional personal injury work. A lot of that industry is based on chiropractic care. And there are some over billing charlatans making bank doing that chiro care. I guess the bottom line is that I’m not willing to completely toss out chiro cares potential, but there are lots of bad actors.

[huachimingo]

I dont want to be the devils advocate. Usually in those cases you would be better consulting another doctor, just in case.

Doctors are also human.

I had a friend who had eye problems suddenly, and the first doctor told him that he would become blind in some more years. Then he told him to put some eyedrops to ease pain meanwhile.

He was devastated. Imagine being in your 18s and then become blind...

Then, he went to another doctor because the eyedrops werent very effective. That new doctor saw again his symptoms and told him that "it was just an hormonal thing, it will be no more when it stabilizes with adult developtment" and gave him more appropiate eyedrops.

Since then he has good health.

[Arch-TK]

Just a side note but in a place like the UK you don't get to "see another doctor" for a second opinion (unless you go private) without moving to a different surgery altogether. Usually if you even so much as question the opinion of your GP you will get ostracized and mocked. Asking to see a different one in the same surgery will leave you getting questioned by the receptionist as to why you would ever want to do that and if you do somehow manage to get an appointment with a different GP they will likely have been informed that you've moved to them from another GP in the practice and will treat you like a nagging hypochondriac.

I have an endless number of terrible experiences with UK GPs and few good experiences.

When I was 8 I started getting headaches. These headaches got worse and worse until I was hitting my head against the wall and the metal bedposts of my bed to give me pain to distract from the headache. My mother took me from GP to GP getting a record at the local surgery for being quite a pest trying to get a GP who would do something about it instead of claiming that it's normal for an 8 year old kid to get debilitating headaches and that I was just acting or that I just needed to get given paracetamol.

A year or two later I had flat feet which caused me immense pain while walking long distances. Going to the GP it took my mother's begging and another GP change before they decided to give me a referral to a specialist (previously one GP said that I just needed to take paracetamol and if that didn't work take ibuprofene as well, which my mother tried until I started getting pains in my abdomen which I assume must have been my liver or stomach complaining). The specialist immediately noticed that I did in fact have flat feet and needed inserts in my shoes to correct this. The inserts immediately stopped the pain from happening and a few months later I could walk without inserts.

When a lot of front-line doctors (at least in my experience) avoid taking on the responsibility of making any kind of diagnosis or even getting you to a specialist I can totally see why people who privately go directly to someone who has at least a little bit of specialization find the results to be a lot better.

[cj]

> Literally, a belief that you could, for example, cure cancer, by aligning the spine.

I can assure you that 99% of chiropractors would never claim that they can cure cancer.

[thathndude]

I agree. But the original basis for chiropractic care would make claims like this. They would blame the cancer on spinal issues. And that’s what I’m saying is bogus. I agree that most chiros now would not say that because it’s ludicrous.

[wizzwizz4]

The original basis for pretty much all medical treatment was nonsense. Some people noticed some things worked, that got passed down and added to over time, somebody spotted patterns and built up an elaborate theory and then that got passed down as gospel.

The classic example is Hippocrates' theory of the Four Humours. Galen, world-renowned physiologist, elaborated on this by ascribing psychological temperaments to each Humour… To cut a long story short, he taught us that the Central Nervous System controlled the body, and was in turn controlled by the brain (or, at least, the voice was); and that cataracts can be removed with a needle; and that blood provides life-giving energy and nutrition to the body (specifically, heart-generated blood provides energy and liver-generated blood provides nutrition, and blood passes between the chambers of the heart via a blood-permeable interventricular septum); and that men have more teeth than women.

Medicine has moved on since then. If Chiropractors haven't, that's a good argument, but “Chiropractors used to be quacks” isn't a particularly strong argument that they are now.

[selimthegrim]

Men have more teeth than women goes back to the Greeks, and Galen wasn't the only person to run with the idea. (cf. Jews having more teeth than non-Jews, etc)

[dragonwriter]

> Men have more teeth than women goes back to the Greeks

Men on average have more teeth than women (since hyperdontia is twice as common in men.)

But that's obviously not what the Greeks were referring to.