Chiropractic diagnosis

[Eos of the Eons]

from the 'Quackery 4 Kidz' site posted earlier.....




'significant spinal trauma'.....Are there a lot of kids coming out paraplegic or something? What on earth does any of this have to do with allergies or nursing? I think 'adjusting' their spine, when their bones aren't even fully developed, is going to create much bigger problems, especially later in life.

Hey, what about all the trauma to the skull? Don't they mention all the mishapen heads babies have? I mean, that must be severely traumatic on the nervous system and spine.

I mean, we all must be 50 IQ points less at least than all the kids who are born by C section.

[/sarcasm]

 

[Chanileslie]

El Greco,

just for the record, chiropractors are the only people who use the terminology "subluxation" which refers to some kind of vague misalignment of the spine. You would never hear an orthopedic surgeon or a family practice MD use that term.

Actually, sadly, I would have to disagree with you here. I work in industrial insurance, and so I work with a lot of Orthopods and Physiatrists, and subluxation is moving into their vocabulary. Granted, it isn't a great number at present, but a few, mostly physiatrists.

For chiros, this is their magic word, so to speak. According to them (see link I posted below), "vertebral subluxations" cause everything from asthma to tinnitus to back pain to infertility.

And Down Syndrome. I had a chiropractor tell me once that my son's Down Syndrome (a genetic disorder) could be cured if I took my then 1 year old child to a chiropractor to have his spine adjusted. When I explained very carefully that Down Syndrome was caused by a genetic abnormality, he continued to insist that if I had my son's subluxations dealt with that it would "clear his mind, and allow him to think better; thus improving his Down Syndrome."

How many parents endanger their child's developing spine (Especially Downs kids because their bone and joint structures can have stability problems anyway) just because some quack have given those parents some (non-existant) hope? I would give my right arm, I would give my ability to walk, I would even give my very life to have my son be normal, but I will not sacrifice his spine and his health.

Never mind that chiropractors dont even agree on what a subluxation is to begin with. Its a catch-all phrase to describe a so-called pathology that only chiros can diagnose or treat.

Very true.

 

[Chanileslie]

With all the 100's of clients I've spoken with, who went to see a chiropractor and were told they needed an adjustment... short answer is "no." They all needed adjustments. Then again, according to some chiros, every person in the WORLD has spinal misalignment of some kind; it happens from the moment you're born, and there is a certain type of chiro who advoated adjusting the spine of a baby to help it "early in life." It's a really rude term describing this type of chiropractor, so I will leave it to you to decide what it's called. So, as every person in the world has subluxations, every person in the world needs them. And so do domestic dogs, horses, etc.... our spines are so delicate and get knocked out of alignment so easily. Kind of scary if a chiro really COULD knock it back into alignment so easily.

Oh, I'm not saying Chiro is not beneficial, but the way they are managed now, they do more harm than good.

Chiropractors can be just as beneficial as a Physical Therapist because that is what they are basically offering, but what is the problem is Chiropractors are not required to be under the guidance of a physicians orders while a Physical Therapist must be and the patient will check back with thier physician at prescribed time periods.

Also, the baloney that chiros deal out to their patients to keep them coming is as sickening to me as the baloney a psychic deals out to their clients to keep them coming. They give out trash to dupe these people into wasting thier money for non-existant hope or a possible non-existant cure.

 

[Chanileslie]

Nope, never heard the dentist say that either. Don't see anybody attacking them.

Nope, but my treating physician says it almost every year when I go in for my annual physical.

 

[Rolfe]

just for the record, chiropractors are the only people who use the terminology "subluxation" which refers to some kind of vague misalignment of the spine. You would never hear an orthopedic surgeon or a family practice MD use that term.

Just for the record again, that isn't actually true. "Subluxation" is a perfectly respectable orthopaedic term to describe a joint which fits badly, usually the hip but it could be a shoulder or even a knee. It's part of the picture in hip dysplasia, where the joint is badly formed and the ball tends to slip partly out of the socket.

It's the chiropractic concept of subluxation of the spine which is delusional, not the word itself.

Rolfe.

 

[Dr. Popalot]

Rolfe said: It's the chiropractic concept of subluxation of the spine which is delusional, not the word itself.


Quite true. The chiropractors hijacked the once perfectly respectable medical term, added a mystical component (Innate and Universal Intellegence) and found that the "cause of all disesase" was this very thing that only a chiropractor could detect and correct.

 

[Rolfe]

the once perfectly respectable medical term....

Still is a perfectly respectable medical term as far as I know.

Around here chiropractic is just a word, and if anyone thinks anything about it at all, they think it's the same thing as osteopathy, and probably just describes slightly forceful physiotherapy. Daniel Palmer and all his works don't even figure on the average medic or vet's radar.

I don't think anyone here is avoiding the subluxation term because of perceived connotations, and although I'm not an orthopod, last time I looked it ws an essential part of describing hip-score x-rays for the Kennel Club HD scheme.

Is the term losing respectability in America?

Rolfe.

 

[davefoc]

Rolfe,
In the US Osteopathy is pretty much mainstream medicine. It is true that Osteopathy had a beginning similar to chiropracty, but at some point they started adding legitimate medical courses to the curriculum. And today, I believe that D.O.'s function pretty much as M.D.'s in the US. They don't seem to be common on the west coast but I think they are fairly common on the east coast. Even today though I think there is some massage/manipulation component to osteopathy which a D.O. may or may not include as part of his practice.

 

[Rolfe]

Completely different here. A doctor is a doctor is a doctor, and the only way you get to be a doctor is by getting through a standard medical course. These don't come in different flavours.

Osteopathy and chiropractic are things you see advertised outside "alternative" or "complementary" or "holistic" clinics, or sometimes associated with sports centres. They go with things like acupuncture and hypnotherapy, and it's up to the public to sort the woo-woo from the possibly effective. The practitioners are not medically qualified.

Until I read Quackwatch, I vaguely thought osteopathy and chiropractic were just different words for the same thing, and were just rather violent physiotherapy. The entire notion of subluxations and Daniel Palmer and the flow of nerve energy was a total closed book. Learning about the situation in the USA shocked me to my socks, I have to say.

Rolfe.

 

[davefoc]

Well Rolfe,
We're both surprised. It didn't occur to me that osteopathy would be different in England.

Are there actual schools of osteopathy in the UK?

This article seems to present a fairly balanced view of what osteopathy is today in the US.

http://www.quackwatch.org/04ConsumerEducation/QA/osteo.html

 

[bug_girl]

I had a chiropractor tell me once that my son's Down Syndrome (a genetic disorder) could be cured if I took my then 1 year old child to a chiropractor to have his spine adjusted. When I explained very carefully that Down Syndrome was caused by a genetic abnormality, he continued to insist that if I had my son's subluxations dealt with that it would "clear his mind, and allow him to think better; thus improving his Down Syndrome."

my god. How did you not smack the s#$! out of this guy, chani? i would have been so tempted. So little medical knowledge in a "medical professional" is really frightening. and, sadly, not that suprising.

 

[Chanileslie]

my god. How did you not smack the s#$! out of this guy, chani? i would have been so tempted. So little medical knowledge in a "medical professional" is really frightening. and, sadly, not that suprising.

I didn't smack him, but I did tell him he was a quack and what he was practicing was quackery. I also suggested that he take a course in genetics. I tried to be nice about it as I did work with this guy at the time and as we the only two who worked the night shift, I thought it would be best to let it go. This was his second job while he was finishing up his last year of chiropractic 'college' and was beginning his practice.

It is appalling to me that people with so little understanding in how the body works are working on people's spine where one wrong move could permanently cripple someone! [sigh]

 

[Rolfe]

Are there actual schools of osteopathy in the UK?

I believe you can get a BSc degree in it from the sort of "university" (read, former low-grade technical college) that will give you degrees in golf course management and interior decorating.

The graduates tend to hang around gyms and sports clubs, or maybe the sort of para-medical establishment that tries to help the people that fall through the NHS net with back pain and so on.

I had one session with one example. She did a reasonable job of jerking my stiff neck into better habits, then insisted on doing something called "cranial osteopathy". This consisted of tiny movements of her fingertips on the skin overlying my skull, so that the skin was moved very slightly in relation to the absolutely immovable bony tissue. All this accompanied by a stream of woo-woo nonsense about how this was checking the alignment of the sutures of my skull, and realigning them if they were out of place. Thankfully, she said they weren't - because the fact is that these sutures fuse immovably in about the late teens, and I was far older than that then. I believe there was also something about this allowing the CSF to flow properly. My God, did she think I had hydrocephalus??!

She said stuff like, when you start the course you don't believe it's possible to get these bones to move but when they show you, you realise, yes, they do move. And she displayed a distressing level of ignorance about the anatomy of the head.

I beat a hasty retreat before I said something I might not have regretted later. The stiff-neck manipulation was reasonable, but the "cranial osteopathy" was pure, unadulterated woo-woo. And she had a BSc degree in this garbage.

But at least she wasn't a doctor, not any sort of a doctor, and nothing like this would ever find its way into a medical course. (Please, nobody contradict this last statement....)

Rolfe.

 

[Suezoled]

(snipped)

It is appalling to me that people with so little understanding in how the body works are working on people's spine where one wrong move could permanently cripple someone! [sigh]

What's sad and scary to me is that a medical doctor, who knows anatomy, physiology, and genetics, can also crack the back and is probably much safer. But if that doctor messes up, and the patient's quality of life is compromised, it is the MD who will likely get sued for more

 

[jj]

Hunh? What?

What in the name of all that's Edly is a "chiropractic diagnosis"?

"Diagnosis" usually means, at least to the medical community, something that can at least in some fashion be tested and falsified.

How can you ever do that with "subluxations of the spinal column" that affect the flow of whateferitis that has no earthly evidence for its existance.

What's to test for?

I'm sorry, but for me, chiropractic (as opposed to back massage, which is an entirely reasonable thing for older, arthritic people who get a stiff back once in a while) seems even lower on the totem pole than homeopathy, which is so profoudly silly that I lack the words to discuss it in polite company.