Chiropractic Question

[Stinge]

Hi,

A friend of mine is a Chiropractor. A few years ago, a mate and I went and visited her in Sydney and she took us into her practice and gave us the complete work over (which in hindsight should have sounded a huge alarm bell as there was nothing wrong with either of us to begin with). Please note this was prior to my skeptical enlightenment. At the time, one of the techniques she used to determine when an "adjustment" was required was by getting us to squeeze our middle finger and thumb together. She would then "adjust" a part of the body. She would do this for various areas of the body. While we had our two fingers pressed together, she would try pull them apart. I can't recall exactly which order it was but here goes...She would try pull my fingers apart. If she couldn't pull my fingers apart, there was no problem. But if she could she could (supposedly with the same force each time), there was a problem and and adjustment was required. I can testify to the fact that when she did certain "adjustments", my ability to keep my fingers together went (or was she just pulling harder..felt the same pressure though). She called it "turning on / off" the various areas. At the time my mate and I were quite impressed (with this aspect at any rate as it seemed pretty cool). Both my mate and I felt no different walking out, than we did walking in though. My main question after all this is: I've tried to find an explanation for this "on/off" on the Web but can't! Does anyone know the medical reason behind this?

She has moved back to my city and we rock climb together along with a few friends (including the mate who had the "adjustments" done in Sydney with me). I have tried to convince my mate what a steaming pile this is but he keeps bringing up the "on/off" thing as what he believes is proof. I am unable to counter this as I don't have a clue, but am sure it has a rational explanation.

My main concern in debunking this junk, is for my room mate, who also climbs with us. He was in a near fatal car crash a few years ago and spent quite some time in a coma. He was unable to use the right side of his body at first but has fought back and is nearly his old self (his right side is still weak and he won't ever be able to work full time due to loss of the use of about 1/6 of his brain...he's still better than me at rock climbing though).

My Chiro friend want's him to come and see her at her clinic so she can work on him. I sat him down and got him to read various articles and watch "Penn and Teller's ********". The last thing he needs is some quack tring to fix a brain injury by cracking his neck!!! I think I am close to convincing him not to.

Futher evidence of the Chiro quackery came on Friday night at climbing. My elbow was giving me severe grief...to the point I had to stop climbing. She offered to crack my elbow for me....um...NO!....NO WAY! She couldn't understand why I would refuse (she wasn't going to charge the $80..but I was going to have to sign a consent form which she said she could write up on a napkin). My other friends there were looking at me strangely, also wondering why I would pass up a free treatment. I said to her "What...you're just going to crack my elbow when you haven't even asked a single question as to what could have caused it...in this particular case I had overstrained it moving hundreds of pavers the day before and suspect "tennis elbow". I had also injured this elbow in a fall 6 months prior and a real Doctor advised that it would take 6-9 months to properly heal. She however was just going to yank on my arm. She grabbed my arm above the elbow and said "It's the muscle here..." and squeezed, to which I replied..."Ahh...no... the muscles fine". She kept wanting "crack it" for me. I continued to politely decline to which she finally replied while looking down her nose and proclaimed in a tone that made it sound as though I had the plague, "He's a SKEPTIC".

Sorry for the large post...but the question is...Does anyone know what the medical reason for the "on/off" technique in Chiro is?

 

[Zep]

Fairly obvious.

No-one can keep their fingers together under a uniformly constant pressure for longer than a few seconds - lack of fine muscle control, distraction, muscle tiredness, pain, etc, all make the variations. (There's an easy proof of this with a supermarket scale!*) So during the time she was examining you, there were bound to be times when you weren't holding your fingers as tight together as at other times, and so they could be parted more easily then. That this corresponded with her "testing" some part of your body elsewhere is entirely irrelevant, as you have already noted no discernible change in the before-and-after conditions. If she did the same procedure again later, she would have likely got a whole bunch of other places on your body, and the ones she "found" the first time would have been a no-show.


*ETA: On a digital scale, press down with one finger only, hand unsupported, until the scale registers exactly 2kg. Then see how long you can hold this measurement exactly.

 

[Blue Wode]

My main concern in debunking this junk, is for my room mate, who also climbs with us. He was in a near fatal car crash a few years ago and spent quite some time in a coma. He was unable to use the right side of his body at first but has fought back and is nearly his old self (his right side is still weak and he won't ever be able to work full time due to loss of the use of about 1/6 of his brain...he's still better than me at rock climbing though).

My Chiro friend want's him to come and see her at her clinic so she can work on him. I sat him down and got him to read various articles and watch "Penn and Teller's ********". The last thing he needs is some quack tring to fix a brain injury by cracking his neck!!! I think I am close to convincing him not to.

Do you know what his GP’s feelings are about the wisdom of taking the chiropractic route after suffering such a serious brain injury?

And do you know if your chiropractic friend always writes to her patients’ GPs giving the reasons why they require chiropractic treatment?

Your friend might find this resource useful:
http://chirotalk.proboards3.com/

And, of course, there’s Chirobase too:
http://www.chirobase.org/

 

[drfrank]

It sounds like you and your friends got exposed to some form of applied kinesiology by your chiroquackter, which is well known bunk (even more so than chiropracty in general, amazingly enough)

I didn't know that AK was usually associated with chiropracty but, in a receptive mind, a single piece of woo is never short of company

In fact, I'm going to make the bold hypothesis that woo may be some sort of metaphorical prion disease. People start off with one misshapen thought, and then that thought slowly causes all other thoughts to become similarly misshapen until they're constantly glacing up into the skies to check for UFOs spying on them for the government

 

[Beady]

Apropos of nothing, I used to work as a companion to a mentally/physically disabled person whose family insisted his regimen include a chiropractor. When I started with Alan, his chiropractor was *really* New Age: her husband (I'm surprised they were so formal as to actually get married) is a geomancer, and she's into angels, shoving wooden arrows into your throat, firewalking, etc. Her technique, which she proclaimed as "leading edge," involved pressing gently at a point on the back for a moment, then standing back and waiting for a twitch of some sort. This twitch was supposedly the body sending healing energy to the point she had touched.

A few months later, I managed to move Alan to a more "conventional" chiropractor, who described this "Leading Edge" as the "Outer Fringe." It seems even chiropractors think that certain kinds of chiropractic are woo.

 

[Angus McPresley]

She offered to crack my elbow for me....um...NO!....NO WAY! She couldn't understand why I would refuse...

Friend of a friend is a chiro. The wife and I were talking to him at a party once, and he was telling us how he could cure various sports injuries, on the spot, that would take the whole season to recover through conventional medicine. "Cryo-stretching", I believe he called it.

Afterwards, I had to give an aside to my wife: "If anything happens to me at this party that requires a doctor, it's your job to keep that guy away from me..."

 

[ChristineR]

Chiro-dowsing + applied kinesiology. Basically, she applied more strength when she subconsciously wanted to adjust that part of the body.

 

[I'll_buy_that]

I don't have any exposure to chiroprators, but a few friends of mine have said that their back pain was helped by one. They all swear to it and have stated that a regular MD wasn't doing much to help them. I can't really argue with them as they seem to be helped by their visits.

I am currently having really strong shoulder pains and have considered going to a qua.. er chiropractor. someone talk me out of it.

 

[ChristineR]

Go to chirobase.org (a sister site to quackwatch) and read what they have to say about rational chiropractic. That will help you decide whether a chiropractor can help your shoulder pain, and how to find a chiropractor that does legitimate manipulations without selling quack remedies.

 

[Evolver]

Last summer, my sciatica was so bad, I went to the doctor. He told me that it would go away in 2 to 4 weeks. The pain was intolerable, so on my wife's advice, I went to a chiropractor. To be honest, the treatment he used (warm vibrating paddles on my lower back muscles) actually helped for an hour or two, but then the pain always came back. After about 3 weeks, the pain faded away. The chiropractor said, "See? The treatment worked."

OTOH, since having major surgery a few years ago, I have been plagued with almost constant neck pain. The chiropractor's "adjustment" of my neck once a month has helped this immensely. There is still a slight pain, but nowhere near as bad as is was before.

My conclusion is that there are some things a chiropractor can help with, and many things that they cannot. Chiropractors are not regulated enough, so they can get away with claiming to heal many ailments that they have nothing to do with.

 

[Blue Wode]

My conclusion is that there are some things a chiropractor can help with, and many things that they cannot. Chiropractors are not regulated enough, so they can get away with claiming to heal many ailments that they have nothing to do with.

Chiropractors can be of some help when they stick to science-based manual therapy. However, it’s difficult for patients to know whether they are receiving appropriate evidence-based treatment or whether they are being subjected to chiroquackery.

Unfortunately, regulation does little to eliminate the quackery. Here in the UK, where chiropractic is regulated, there are at least two chiropractic associations that promote the philosophical ‘subluxation’ style of chiropractic. Although the members of these associations represent at least 25% of the profession, the regulators seem to turn a blind eye to them.

I agree with ChristineR's advice. And I would also encourage anyone who might be considering chiropractic treatment to read this:

Finding a Good Chiropractor
http://archfami.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/7/1/20

 

[Stinge]

Do you know what his GP’s feelings are about the wisdom of taking the chiropractic route after suffering such a serious brain injury?

And do you know if your chiropractic friend always writes to her patients’ GPs giving the reasons why they require chiropractic treatment?

QUOTE]

Hi Blue Wode,

I don't think he has brought this up with his GP, although I will certainly advise him to.

I am pretty sure she (the chiro) doesn't ever write to her patients GP's for anything. Anyone who walks into her clinic she will happily crack there back and has an abundance of patients sadly. The clinic she works at also includes Naturopaths and Homeopaths. The all-in-1-centre-for-woo-woo-medicine.

Thanks to everyone for there posts and links...has been very helpful.

 

[Stinge]

Do you know what his GP’s feelings are about the wisdom of taking the chiropractic route after suffering such a serious brain injury?

And do you know if your chiropractic friend always writes to her patients’ GPs giving the reasons why they require chiropractic treatment?

Hi Blue Wode,

I don't think he has brought this up with his GP, although I will certainly advise him to.

I am pretty sure she (the chiro) doesn't ever write to her patients GP's for anything. Anyone who walks into her clinic she will happily crack there back and has an abundance of patients sadly. The clinic she works at also includes Naturopaths and Homeopaths. The all-in-1-centre-for-woo-woo-medicine.

Thanks to everyone for there posts and links...has been very helpful.