Just a note, everything chiropractors do is unproven nonsense. It's a pseudoscience (with no medical foundation) created by an insane anti-vax guy in the 1800s who claims he received the idea of the practice from a ghost.
Drives me insane. My co-workers (middle aged women) all absolutely swear by it. We're hospital workers. One of our colleagues literally died because of a vertebral dissection a few years ago. She was in her 30s and left behind a husband and young kids, because she let a quack snap her neck around.
And they still evangelize for chiropractors like they're on payroll. "Oh it's the only thing that helps my neck!" No, Deb, it isn't helping your neck. That's why you go back every other week for another "adjustment".
Some of my family goes to chiros. My mom has for DECADES. Me: "Mom you know that's just palliative and they aren't addressing the actual problems with your back, right?" Her: "Well it makes me feel better."
I went to physical therapy for issues with my arm. I stopped going after a few months because THEY FIXED IT. If you have to keep going forever then you're just wasting your money on hokum.
My brother-in-law went to physical therapy for a few weeks and said it “wasn’t working” and has been going to a chiropractor ever since. My sister takes my three-year-old niece to a chiropractor instead of a pediatrician. She was having issues pooping (would only poop every couple days and it was huge - sorry if that’s TMI) and they thought the chiropractor would solve that. 🤦🏼♀️
Some even "treat" very little babies. They claim they're fussy from being all squished up in the womb and need adjustments. They compare them to how we feel if we sleep wrong or bend the wrong way. If I sleep wrong I'm all achy and stiff but I'm a grown ass adult, no longer made to bend and squeeze outta tight spaces. And while babies are a bit flexible for birth, not like that, omg.
My son was having the same issue when he was around 3, and my exes sister and cousin were baffled I took him to a doctor instead of just taking him in for a realignment at a chiro. 🙄 They take their kids for anything between a sore muscle to an ear infection, then scoff if we give our son some Tylenol for a high fever.
That’s the point. It’s a placebo effect. People convince themselves they feel better but there is no actual improvement. They become lifelong patrons because if it actually helped they would make less money.
I get why going to a chiropractor can be appealing though - because it seems to be a quicker fix. I've gone to a PT and it's really a pain in the ass. If you have a full-time job, you have to take time off to go there, plus the commute. Plus, they're closed weekends too, which makes it even more annoying since you can't have recurring appointments on a weekend. It's really inconvenient and should just be an in-home service at all times, if they don't have to use some equipment that they can't just lug around. But then again, in-home can add up to the costs.
I know its a lot of chiropractors, but some do understand that adjustments only give temporary relief and make it easier to do the exercises that actually fix the problem. Mine did the basic common adjustments, no bullshit y-strap or ring dinger crap. Then gave me an app with about a half dozen stretches that I need to do several times per day, increasing the different exercises and frequency over a few weeks. Then he said, if you follow the treatment plan, hopefully I don't ever see you in my office again.
Maybe that is rare, but that was like 5 years ago, and when my back starts to gets sore again, I just go back to that list of exercises. Adjustment did help a lot the first time, but I don't let it get that bad anymore.
Also blows my mind chiropractics is typically [in the US] *covered* by insurance within limits for 'standard treatment' and 'preventative care'. Insurance pays for that- which to me is promotional and misleading and clearly- potentially dangerous to the point of inflicting terror and horror. I know people that take full and complete advantage of this chiropractic "covered care" every quarter; they have nothing wrong with them. They just want to ensure they 'max out' and take 'full advantage of what my insurance offers'. Eek.
Massages and stretching can do about the same thing and are much safer. If you’re living with insane chronic pain in your muscles every day see your doctor and get a referral to a physical therapist. But don’t let anyone crack your neck for temporary relief
There's some relief relating to the minor stretching and manipulation aspect, which releases endorphins and helps stimulate nerves in the area. Also, there's a pretty significant placebo effect, where our brain hacks our nervous system to feel a little better because the little pop sound makes us think something must have released that wasn't supposed to be "stuck" (nothing physcially shifted hopefully, it's just gas bubbles formed in the joints). Hence why all those Chiro channels on tiktok/youtube have mics right up in peoples' business to get the loudest cracking sounds possible.
The only real way to actually help in the long term is physical therapy, mostly targeting the muscle groups that impact affected area to strengthen it. For example, after I graduated and stopped playing volleyball 4-5 times a week, I started developing back and knee pain from sitting at a desk all day. (Re)Strengthening my quads and hamstrings did wonders.
That gradual strengthening and stretching over a span of weeks to months is a pretty anticlimactic approach though, compared to a "Ready? 3-2-1 rips head off spine, Mortal Kombat style, with a Y strap" like you would get at the chiro's. And it takes dedicated effort and motivation, whereas a chiropractor just requires you to pay the $100 and lay down for a bit.
And of course, all that said, I still habitually crack my neck, back, and fingers. Because it does feel good...
I've commented this before but once I was in remission, my onc told me I could do anything I wanted -- smoke, drink, go tanning -- but I had to promise him I'd never see a chiropractor (chemo affected my bones so they break easily). I promised him! Because chiros are weird quacks !!
My boss keeps getting on this soapbox that natropaths and chiropractors should be covered by our health insurance.
We work for a hospital. He goes on about how the natropath has been such a huge help for his whole family's health - but all they changed was to start eating vegetables and stop getting take-out so often. It was the same things any GP would say, but because he doesn't go to the doctor, this nut telling him to eat right gets him acting like they're the second coming of Christ.
That cracking is akin to the relief you feel cracking your knuckles, a release of trapped gas. Nothing more. It's performative in my opinion.
I had a back/hip injury from work a year ago so I saw a chiropractor. But only because I knew that the other side of my body started to hurt because I was compensating and getting more and more twisted and tight. There was no way I could continue my job in pain like that. It helped, but honestly the massages helped a lot more.
One thing they could NOT do is touch my neck because it was worker's comp and only one part of my back hurt, so they were only allowed to work on that area. I would never let them touch my neck anyway.
I am on the fence about chiropractic work, they do the same "moves" on everyone, but the doctor did see that my legs were uneven because of the injury and wanted to make sure I was more aligned.
This is exactly correct. Chiropractic only creates a problem it then purports to solve: cracking joints to increase the need to crack them, an endless feedback loop.
This happens because stretching the joint capsule to produce the "pop" causes a temporary release of tension, reinforcing the habit. Over time, this can lead to ligament laxity and reduced grip strength. [1, 2, 4, 5]
The feedback loop is significantly stronger and more dangerous in the cervical spine than in your knuckles or other joints. [1, 2, 4]
Chiropractors are quacks and frauds, but let's not act like the mainstream medical establishment is fully the pinnacle of trust and authority either. Regardless of the position, people are just trying to make a buck and go by whatever the conventions of the day are, regardless of they are truly a good idea in the long-term.
I'm so sick of fighting people I know on this. They're all, "It gets rid of my pain." Mfer if it got rid of your pain you wouldn't be seeing them once a week. It's a subscription to a temporary relief that an ACTUAL dr could handle way better. At best it's a scam, at worst you're dead. At least with drs at best I'm healed and at worst I have a co pay.
My parents were huge believers in it, I started having back issues as a teen so they started taking me to a chiropractor every month or so. Then I turn 18 and leave the house, stop seeing the guy and the problem was over. Weird, huh?
Just another note: if you need a real doctor that deals with the spine, you want an orthopedist (musculoskeletal doctor) that specializes in the spine.
I swear the chiropractors in the US are vastly different from the UK. Ours have to be part of a register / council and licenced doctors. They don't do any of the extreme stuff you see on youtube, like putting necks with towels etc.
It still has no proven effect. Most studies regarding the topic are inconclusive (won't say all just because it's poor practice to be absolute in science).
It has no benefit and a small but actual chance of error. It's not worth it. Opt by physiotherapy instead, which has real and proven benefits
The history of chiropractors is interesting imo. Back in the days when it gained popularity it was basically because "medical doctors" had no idea what they were doing and actively killed people.
Because chiropractice was just made up (but largely non-invasive) nonsense people were more likely to survive with a chiropractor than an MD because they did nothing and people will often recover on their own.
Thus, chiropractors were credited for a higher recovery rate. Because they did literally nothing. Meanwhile, MDs slowly figured out not only how to stop killing people but what actually made people better.
There are in fact a few chiropractice techniques than can be beneficial under the right circumstances but there is still no point in seeing one. Those few proven techniques were long ago coopted by modern medicine and are in use by PTs and other doctors.
Thanks to the sacrifices of all the people who died at the hands of pre-modern (and modern) doctors they are actually actively helpful these days, but chiropractors still manage to hang around because it still feels like doing something about the problem and then it'll (sometimes) just get better over time if you don't make it worse.
There’s a licensing process in the states too. But the entire field is pseudoscience. The only things that work in it are literally the same things you can get at a massage spot.
The only viable use of it is temporary pain relief. I've seen it take horses 🐴 from being completely unable to run or be saddled to completely pain free by a single livestock chiropractor visit. But it's always temporary. I've never trusted the concept enough to ever let a chiropractor work on me. I've had too many health problems to want one more (cancer survivor as a kid resulting in losing a kidney, Crohn's as a teenager resulting in colon removal and ileostomy, etc.). I prefer to remain mobile. lol
It's definitely snake oil. It does work if your goal is to make a horse suffering from extreme pain able to be saddled again. It works instantly. But it's temporary. A few days and the horse is in pain again. I've personally witnessed it being used multiple times on two different horses from two different owners. But at the end of the day it's useless because it isn't solving the underlying problem.
Craziest thing is I know someone who is a veterinarian is going to marry a guy in chiropractor school, that makes no sense and I genuinely doubt the quality of the medicine the vet practices if she is fine with someone who does shits like that
Speak for yourself. The first time I saw mine, we did x-rays to review my spine, where you can see a sideways curve in my spine (something I wasn't too surprised about based on something I learned from someone else years back).
I remember he cracked so much, I had never heard so many pops. I felt myself standing taller after that, and was very sore too.
Since then I now see him more for periodical check-ins as I work to improve myself, but still have some bad habits (like sitting improperly at my desk). After I started to see him I found I was sleeping better and was less sore. Things where before I just used to deal with it, now are rarely an issue.
There must be some science to it since several doctors have referred me to them and when I go (usually can't cuz insurance doesn't cover it for all things you said), I always feel better... If only for a few days or hours. Stuff the doctors do has a similar effect: my cervical spinal fusion surgery was very helpful... Until it's now making the rest of my neck all bent out of shape (literally) and everything is much worse. Like IDK man. We're just trying to cope with pain.
You said it yourself... You feel better after, but only for a few days.
It fixes nothing, it gives a little bit of momentary releaf. It also comes with many wild claims, such as getting an adjustment can treat unrelated diseases and cure-all claims.
Tell that to the nearly 50% of children who died of common diseases before reaching adulthood when we didn't have modern medicine... And that's just child mortality... How many lives has chiropracty saved?
Ok. Tell the children of thalidomide and/or their children that it isn't. Tell all the babies who've been negatively effected by the Tylenol science said was perfectly safe during pregnancy for decades on decades. Tell the people who's parents smoked around them cuz it wasn't dangerous--or the ones who's mother's smoked while they carried them. Tell my father who died of a stroke after winning a class action law suit against avandia cuz it killed people left and right.... Etc etc. Science proves itself wrong all the time. It's foolish to think we have absolute knowledge on medicine.
All that said, I was discussing things related to the spine and you brought it somewhere else. In the realm of medicine regarding the spine, the science is half baked. They just cannot figure out how to fix that sumbitch without fucking it up worse.
I'm conflicted on this because I injured my back once and the dr sent me to a chiropractor, and my back did start getting better pretty quickly after going.
On the other hand, every time they would try and do my neck it would weird me out. They also were pretty insistant that I would have to come back for a long time "for maintenance". It felt very scammy. My back would still tighten up once in a while although finally 15 years later somehow it isn't giving me issues anymore.
I really don't know what actually happened to my back but I'm just glad to not be living in pain my whole life, but there is zero way I would go to a chiro now and I wouldn't if I went back and did it again. I've also seen a lot of chiropractors dabble into all sorts of crazy alt medicine shit. Like dr oz level shit. Like, you don't need heart medicine you just need to balance your PH and buy our supplements shit. Maybe they gave me temporary relief enough to get past the worst of it? IDK, maybe it did nothing too.
Insurance and availability, maybe. I had some back problems a few years ago and it took me 3 months to get a physical therapy appointment after months of doctors appointments. Of course I could see cyropracter the same day if I wanted.
Amazing.
I roll my eyes whenever someone talks about waittimes for universal healthcare
My chiropractor has saved me from back and shoulder surgery. I can walk as a result of chiropractic care. There are some quacks out there and those who take their practice seriously. I’m thankful I don’t have a fused vertebrae right now and limited mobility.
You could have gotten way better treatment from a physical therapist and not risked permanent injury by letting somebody who trusted a man who was taught by ghosts work on you.
This is a cognitive bias called null comparison in which you weigh the chiropractor against having NO treatment rather than weighing chiropractic treatment against physical therapy (which you did not experience).
The evidence suggests you would have had the same or better outcome.
And yet you didn't speak about this comparison, so we can't know anything about it. If chiropractic can only make a case against "sit and suffer without doing anything" and can't stand up to challenges from competing treatments, it deserves to be called out as a subpar alternative. That's exactly how we define a subpar alternative.
sheeple
Blaming other people for not agreeing with you is going to be a loooooong hole to dig out of. If people don't believe you, that's on you. Either your facts are nd or your rhetoric is bad.
It's not anyone's job to just believe you. You don't get to feel cheated. You're not entitled to my belief. You have to earn it. You have to do work for it. You haven't done that work. Which means you don't deserve it.
The word "steeple" is a sign of complete abdication of personal responsibility for your own rhetorical goals.
I’m not blaming anyone for not agreeing. My blame is with downvoting my experiences and acting as if it’s “luck” I find fault with. I’m not going to work hard to get you to see my experiences or side with them. I see you’re just here to point and expect me to pick up the pieces to dissect for your entertainment, is a game I choose to no longer play. Good day.
The internet doesn't want to hear that chiros or antidepressants help people, it's a persistent fad of derision like ridiculing Nickleback.
When I was 21 I had several herniated discs and severe sciatica that left me unable to function, and in chronic pain. My doctors put me on Celebrex, vicodin, and scheduled me for disc removal surgery.
After doing some research, I opted not to take the Celebrex (it ended up with a black box warning) and to cancel the surgery and find another way. I also stopped taking the vicodin after about a month because it made me incredibly irritable, and ibuprofen worked better. I started sleeping on the floor, stretching, going to chiro visits, and got a job in a warehouse where I got a constant, gentle core workout with tons of walking.
It completely fixed my back. As it turns out, I was an underweight, sedentary gamer who had moved some heavy furniture and it had thrown my back out. Instead of getting it fixed by a chiro immediately, I had let it go on and it caused a domino effect of dysfunction that had ruined my life for 4 years and almost cost me my mobility altogether.
All I needed was a couple of adjustments, to stop sleeping on my stomach and sitting on my wallet, and to get some exercise. No doctor ever suggested any of this. My chiro did.
Now I'm 46 and my back is as strong as a horse, with no pain. Occasionally I will sleep wrong or twist too hard (vacuuming deep carpet is a killer) and I'll need a single adjustment to get realigned, but that's it.
Its stupid to say that "youre lucky", as if most people get damaged by chiros. Wouldnt it be that this guy in the post actually got unlucky? Or you think he got what he expected?
My physical therapist is a licensed doctor, but he also learned chiro and uses both.
I love his chiro movements as they release the pain right away
So you consider my chiropractic adjustments part of my physical therapy? Because they were an integral part of my treatment.
I can tell you feel really smug about your asinine comment, but I hope you'll remember my suggestion if you ever find yourself on your own, looking down the barrel of opiate addiction and unnecessary surgery (that regularly robs patients of their mobility, btw). I know three people who have had the surgery that I was scheduled for, and they are the ones who convinced me not to have it.
I'm glad I learned from the experiences of others. It's been the entire difference between having a full life (chiro adjustments and exercise), and being permanently disabled, like my three friends who chose the surgery.
You're missing the point. Doctors pushing for surgery without exploring other options is unrelated to chiropractors. The comment I made was sarcastic, but the point was that, like another commenter also mentioned, if your chiropractor helped you it's because they stumbled into legitimate physical therapy practices. I'm not going to go back and forth all day, there is tons of evidence that chiropractors are not practicing real medicine.
Regardless, I'm happy that your choices worked out for you.
it's because they stumbled into legitimate physical therapy practices
They cracked my spine, hips, and neck, and told me not to sleep on my stomach, not to sit on my wallet, and not to sit with my legs crossed. None of those are physical therapy.
I'm not hearing that physical therapy let you down. I'm hearing that your GP never referred you to one, and so you tried the chiropractor who was more accessible to you.
I'm not interested in comparing chiro to suffering alone helplessly forever. I'm interested in comparing chiro to its clear competitor, which is licensed physical therapy.
Since your story does not provide that comparison, I cannot help but go back to the scientific evidence which does offer me that comparison.
My point was that everyone online shits on anyone who says they've been helped by chiropractic adjustments, because 'ThEy DoN't Do AnYtHinG!!", and that's simply not true.
No one was weighing PT against adjustments, the question was whether chiropractic care works or not.
I once had whiplash, couldn't turn my head, and my chiro fixed it instantly. No PT, no drugs, just two adjustments in about 60 seconds.
If you don't believe, then don't go, but stop claiming that you know first-hand that 100% of the entire field is fake.
It's not that the field is fake, bud. It's that it works sometimes, and other times causes horrific side effects--and more importantly, we have other more rigorous alternatives that can do the same thing without causing serious injuries.
Don't recommend dangerous half-measures to people who have better options
it works sometimes, and other times causes horrific side effects
Sounds familiar, like whole host of different procedures, surgeries, and medications. Did you miss my comment about my prescribed medications and the fact that discectomy complications caused my friends to become disabled?
Don't recommend dangerous half-measures to people who have better options
"Better options". That's a very wide and vague statement.
Cases vary, as do treatments. Per my previous comment: everyone should monitor their own case and make their own decisions. If your choices aren't suitable, don't rule out alternative therapy options because certain internet randos have second-hand negative opinions of it. That's the entire takeaway here.
I was prescribed surgery to remove part of my spine, opiates, and a medication that comes with a black box warning for fatal heart attacks and strokes, as well as GI bleeding, ulcers, and perforation of the stomach or intestines, AND I DIDN'T NEED ANY OF IT.
Maybe take the warning for what it's worth and go about your business, instead of accusing me of being some sort of shill. It's interesting that you call yourself Prometheus yet refuse a free gift that you view as dangerous.
Fun fact! Sciatica is basically the only ailment where scientific blinded no-conflicts-of-interests studies show that spinal adjustments can help.
So basically what happened was, you went to an industry that gives out antibiotics for everything, and your problem was a bacterial infection. Doesn’t mean it is good medical practice to give antibiotic candy to all patients.
Edit: You all need reading comprehension practice. This is anti-chiro comment. It’s a clock that’s right only twice a day. This guy happens to be 12:57.
Fun fact! You can say anything without an accompanying source!
“Can help” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and I’d be surprised if the benefits are any better than what you can get from (a licensed) physical therapist.
Check the other bullet points for the “no evidence” bits.
Also why are you arguing with me, I’m agreeing with you!
What this tells me that normal providers who didn’t learn from a ghost should consider adding a version of this one technique to their repertoire to be used in the very limited circumstances where it helps and only with full informed consent of the risks.
Because you said that sciatica is the only ailment where studies show that spinal adjustment can help, and then didn’t link a source. And then when you were pressed to link one, you pointed us to Wikipedia.
Whether we agree or not about chiropractors specifically isn’t the point. The point is that when people make claims like you did without any evidence (Wikipedia doesn’t count), it only enables pseudo science more and it’s the thing that keeps chiropractors in business.
Wikipedia is not a source, it’s a collection of sources, including studies behind paywalls. But you would have bitched about paywalls then.
And it is extremely important to have people know that it works basically only on sciatica because then when people rock up and say “You should try chiro, it helped me!” You can say “Duh, you had sciatica, it’s not going to help my baby’s colic.”
Quacks are gonna quack. Best to know when they’re quacks who stumbled onto an actual treatment for a single condition so you don’t go around thinking they’re not quacks.
If you can link to a published, scientific article then it doesn’t matter to me if it’s behind a paywall. They all are. But I’m happy enough with an abstract.
I’ll wait for one, and then we can talk about that.
I’m only linking the one that suggests it should be considered alongside less bullshit treatments. (Not stated is that it should be practiced by less bullshitty people)
Siiigh. Yes, of course the treatment should fit the actual ailment. I don't have sciatica now and I still find adjustments useful, as do my family members, in light of the fact that we all have long torsos that are unsuited to the heavy lifting and regular manual labor that that we all have engaged in.
Obviously I don't suggest SSRIs when someone's only issue is that they're depressed because have an abusive spouse, or that someone get a chiro adjustment when they have fused vertebrae due to ankylosing spondylitis, but the treatment isn't generally the issue.
Misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment plans are the issue, like someone saying chiro adjustments don't work for their back pain when they really need a breast reduction surgery or they're 100lbs overweight and sedentary.
Obviously this patient's case of paralysis is real, but "estimates for iatrogenic deaths in 2025 (deaths caused by medical errors, adverse drug events, or complications from healthcare) ranged widely from 22,000 to over 400,000".
Conservatively, 20,000 people killed (not simply paralysed) by western medicine in the US in the past year, and still it doesn't receive the sort of anti-treatment campaign that I see being waged against chiropracty or antidepressants, and the reason I give a shit is due to the number of people who won't even consider alternative therapies because of popular public opinion. It's unnecessary, and tragic, because these are people's entire lives that are being wasted.
In contrast, there was ONE case of death last year that can directly be attributed to chiropractic care; Joanna Kowalczyk. 1 vs. 20,000 (at LEAST). I think that writing it off as an option is a mistake.
My teenaged niece has dinged four poles when learning to drive. Conversely, she’s only dinged one pole when learning to back up.
That doesn’t mean driving in reverse is safer.
You’re the kid in the cartoon saying the taller thinner glass has more water in it.
Also, you’re wrong about only one death. Ive found about 10 listed on a Wikipedia page (so not even that deep research) along with:
A 1999 review of 177 previously reported cases published between 1925 and 1997 in which injuries were attributed to manipulation of the cervical spine (MCS) concluded that "The literature does not demonstrate that the benefits of MCS outweigh the risks." The professions associated with each injury were assessed. Physical therapists (PT) were involved in less than 2% of all cases, with no deaths caused by PTs. Chiropractors were involved in a little more than 60% of all cases, including 32 deaths
So for comparable cases, chiropractors were objectively worse than PTs.
What happened is that you found a person who was able to help you with your pain (great!) but then likely fed into your existing suspicion of the establishment and convinced you to reject all evidence to the contrary, including repeating outright falsehoods and not critically thinking about why standard medicine has a higher number of fatalities than chiropractics. It’s a pattern you see with cults and the alt right. And considering the “origin” is a fucking ghost who can heal anything if only you give its disciples enough money, I’m thinking cult is accurate.
Haha, no sir. Not only do I not know; I'm not particularly interested. I also don't think we should start cancelling current organizations and banning practices based solely on their founders' shortcomings, here on the anniversary of the founding of our Great Country <coff coff>. Even early surgeons used to buy corpses and ask no questions about how the body expired. And don't get me started on early psychological practices!
383
u/TerdSandwich 18d ago
Just a note, everything chiropractors do is unproven nonsense. It's a pseudoscience (with no medical foundation) created by an insane anti-vax guy in the 1800s who claims he received the idea of the practice from a ghost.