Chiropractors work!?

[Tomblvd]

As I had stated earlier in the thread. Pain is far too difficult to measure. So i've turned over to something which CAN be measured. Mobility. My head could not be turned to the right, if I tried to turn it on my own power I would hit a block where my pain was so intense that I refused to push any harder.

If someone manually turned my head, they could get SLIGHTLY more motion, but all they did is hurt me (note that I let doctors move my head to test my limits, this wasn't something I had random people do for fun)

OK, allow me to restate. "Everyone knows somebody who can make you feel better by "cracking your back"....."

There, that fills in all the loopholes.

My point stands.

 

[mikeyx]

First off, I'm not saying EVERYthing that a Chiropractor says or does is real, I'm just stating my experience.

My Chiropractic experience: Written on June 22nd 2012, as experienced on June 21st 2012

As a sceptic, and since I’ve heard that Chiropractors have NO scientific evidence to back up the results they claim, I decided not to go in to go in to see a chiropractor of my own accord. And here is my story.

I realize that this is PURE testimonial, and I don’t support any quackery, but lets get this over with. Please don’t flame me, but go ahead and ask me any follow up questions for details!

To ensure that you understand this fully, I do not believe in anything that is not proven, and as far as I know I am not susceptible to the placebo effect (Or else the meds and physio would have made me feel better LONG ago!)

I did not visit the chiropractor at the peak levels of my pain, in fact I didn’t even take any pain killers that day and I was VERY suspicious of everything that was going on during this visit. I went to see the chiropractor on a “low” day for my back pain because my father could no longer bear to see me in such agony all the time.

This was the information that I provided to my Chiropractor:
-Pinched nerve in the C6 or C7 disk
-Likely caused from curling too much weight with my left arm
-First noticed I was injured on May 5th
-Saw a doctor on May 9th
-Regular Physiotherapy since May 14th
-Had major arm pain (enough to make me forget my back was hurt)
-Pain has mostly moved on to be muscle (back) pain as opposed to nerve (arm/wrist) pain
-Left index finger has loss of sensation
-Relieved pain through traction
-Worse pain from chin tucking
-Quick careless movements cause long lasting (days) pain, almost like I’m starting over
-My range of motion has slowly been increasing over the last 4 weeks

I also gave out the usual personal information.

Skipping the diagnosis and xrays…
When I was told that I would hear a loud popping sound, I thought “I wonder where that sound is going to come from, because it’s not gonna come from me!”.

The Chiropractor did an “adjustment” which gave 4 (maybe 5?) very loud popping sounds which all came from inside of my neck. Immediately afterwards I had broken out into a sweat, was breathing heavily, and felt very weak. I was NOT expecting what just happened. About 30 seconds later I was helped to sit up to see how I felt.

Immediate result:
-All back pain was gone (I rated my pain as a 5 in my back that day)
-My arm pain increased slightly
-I was able to TURN my head to the right! I was stuck at 1/8th motion for WEEKS!
-I had increased motion to look upwards, but it wasn’t back to normal yet

After this was completed, the Chiropractor wanted to see me again in one hour, (the office was closed for the next 3 days and he wanted to do it again since my back had been compressed for so long)

I slept on my side last night (I am a stomach sleeper) I haven’t slept on anything but my back in 6 weeks!

Today, my range of motion is ALMOST what it was yesterday after the treatment, but I lost a little bit of it. I’m certainly not at 1/8th anymore though (Probably 7/8ths realistically)

Since my chiropractor saw me I haven’t used most of my daily fixes:
-Ice
-Traction (A counter weight that pulls my head up to relieve pressure on my nerve prescribed by my physiotherapist)

This morning I still took some pain killers for the nerve pain in my arms.

Note: My Chiropractor went to school, he was not promoting “energy” healing to me. Although some of what he said seemed far fetched. In either case, his treatment has worked! The coming days will give further results. My next appointment with him is on Monday the 25th of June. He figures I will only need a total of 3-4 sessions to get me fully functional again.

This is potentially what is wrong with this brand of skepticism. I have been to two chiropracters in my time, one was a complete quack, the other, used the same equipment (xrays) and methodology a doctor did, and used therapeutic technique to ease the tensed muscle that caused my issue.

I can see you making the same biased claims against accupuncture, which I tried for a pinched nerve, the end result was 85% plus improvement. The results were enough proof that there something to it.

Closed mindedness like your first sentence is just another form of willingful ignorance.

 

[mikeyx]

I had back pain for over a year. I tired exercise, stretches, massage, TENS, rest, and finally went to see a chiropractor after 6 months. He said the problem was my psoas muscle. After several sessions, I was still not getting relief.
My doctor decided I had an inflamed intercostal nerve, running from my spine, just under the ribs, to almost the middle front. I have had pain radiate throughout that whole area. After 11 months, I got nerve block shots. Still no relief.

After 13 months, my pain got so bad, I had to go to the ER. By now, the pain was mostly on the right-front of my abdomen.

It turned out I had gallstones, and an infected gallbladder. After removal, I have had no back pain.

I wasted over a year in pain.

so in the end, the doctor was wrong to.... huh.

 

[mikeyx]

The problem with these successful anecdotes is if the treatment really was the cause of the improvement and not merely coincidental, then the results should show up in controlled studies and it does not. There is an irresistible allure of the personal experience that seems so unlikely to have been a coincidence. A critical thinker resists the urge and looks instead at the research which can tease out what was coincidence (no matter how convincing) and what is causal. Causal will always be detectible in properly done controlled studies. ALWAYS.

The problem with the anecdotal stories to contrary have the same failing which is what it funny thats keptics are pressing the way and ignoring the opposite, every story is anecdotal, thus provinf nothing.

 

[Cuddles]

To be fair, not all current chiropractors still believe in these concepts.

I am a physicist. Every morning I get up early to feed and muck out the pigs. Once they grow big enough, I slaughter most of them and sell them as bacon, keeping enough to breed more pigs for next year.

Hopefully you've spotted a problem with the above paragraph. Just because I say I am a physicist does not mean I actually am. If my job appears to sound more like pig farming than particle physics, it may just be that I'm actually a pig farmer, regardless of what I try to claim.

Similarly, just because someone calls themselves a chiropractor, a homeopath, a naturalist, or whatever, does not mean that they actually are one. If someone does not believe in the fundamental basis of chiropractic and does not practice the methods of chiropractic to try to cure the things chiropractic claims to cure, what exactly does it mean to call them a chiropractor? Why not just call them an inconsistently trained, unregulated physical therapist?

As far as I can tell, you're saying that chiropractic might not be woo because when people who don't believe in it do physical therapy they can be perfectly competent physical therapists. Well sure, they can. But actual chiropractic claims to cure all ailments, deafness, viruses, and so on, by altering the alignment of the spine. No amount of anecdotes saying that physical therapy helped with a muscle problem is going to stop those claims from being total bollocks.

 

[ectoplasm]

The problem with the anecdotal stories to contrary have the same failing which is what it funny thats keptics are pressing the way and ignoring the opposite, every story is anecdotal, thus provinf nothing.

English please.

There are many anecdotal "miracle" cures in the annals of chiropractic, but they don't appear to be captured in clinical trials.

What I am wondering is if chiropractors are doing something (cracking) that temporarily relieves pain but fails to solve the underlying condition. If so, what exactly are they doing?

 

[mikeyx]

English please.

There are many anecdotal "miracle" cures in the annals of chiropractic, but they don't appear to be captured in clinical trials.

What I am wondering is if chiropractors are doing something (cracking) that temporarily relieves pain but fails to solve the underlying condition. If so, what exactly are they doing?

someone beat me to it, all the "evidence" is acedotal, which a violation of the skeptic code, hard evidence or admit ya don't know.

 

[ectoplasm]

someone beat me to it, all the "evidence" is acedotal, which a violation of the skeptic code, hard evidence or admit ya don't know.

Do you mean evidence for or against the efficacy of chiropractic is anecdotal?

 

[jdc324]

Here's a quote from a critical review of chiropractic (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280103):

Back and neck pain are the domains of chiropractic but many chiropractors treat conditions other than musculoskeletal problems. With the possible exception of back pain, chiropractic spinal manipulation has not been shown to be effective for any medical condition. Manipulation is associated with frequent mild adverse effects and with serious complications of unknown incidence. Its cost-effectiveness has not been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt. The concepts of chiropractic are not based on solid science and its therapeutic value has not been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.

With regards back pain, this is interesting http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD000447.pub2/abstract:

Thirty-nine RCTs were identified. Meta-regression models were developed for acute or chronic pain and short-term and long-term pain and function. For patients with acute low-back pain, spinal manipulative therapy was superior only to sham therapy (10-mm difference [95% CI, 2 to 17 mm] on a 100-mm visual analogue scale) or therapies judged to be ineffective or even harmful. Spinal manipulative therapy had no statistically or clinically significant advantage over general practitioner care, analgesics, physical therapy, exercises, or back school. Results for patients with chronic low-back pain were similar. Radiation of pain, study quality, profession of manipulator, and use of manipulation alone or in combination with other therapies did not affect these results.

 

[Pixel42]

deleted.

 

[SezMe]

I am a physicist.... <snippity do dah>

The entire post is very well said, Cuddles.

 

[dlorde]

... The pain was not in my mind, ...

The pain is always in your mind.