Chiropractors will “treat” anything for which they can get paid. True story: my mother was seeing a chiropractor for a back problem. One day she called to to cancel her appointment. The receptionist asked why so she lied & said she had diarrhea. The receptionist said hold on a minute. After a few minutes she got back on the phone & said “The doctor says the manipulation will take care of that too.” I still laugh about that. I guess when they find that bone & shove it the right way we won’t need Kaopectate anymore. My mother eventually had back surgery, saw a physical therapist for a while afterwards and her back has been great ever since (about 5 years now). I read a front page article in the Wall Street Journal about three or four years ago that was about how aggressive chiropractors were getting in “practice development” – what we call “drumming up business” in the business world. The WSJ reported that many – not all but many – chiropractors were telling people they should have a chiropractor as their primary care physician. AND that their children don’t need immunizations, kids just need spinal manipulations. I had an aunt, about 70 years old that went to a chiropractor against her MD’s advice. The chiropractor broke three of her ribs during the treatment. Now I’m not trying to knock chiropractors. I think some of them probably recognize the limitations of what they can do. And they probably can give a very nice relaxing massage. BUT THEY ARE NOT medical doctors! Anyone with a medical condition should go to a physician, orthopedist, or physical therapist if they really want to get well.
Anyone Heard of Atlas Orthoganal?
ADD
Neurological disorganization is simple defined as uncoordinated nerve signaling cause by nerve receptors sending conflicting information for interpretation to the brain. This can effect a child coordination or”learning ability. It may occasionally effect both, but usually one predominates. Neurological disorganization is corrected by Neurolymphatic and cranio-sacral therapies, usually performed by chiropractors and ocassionally by osteopaths and MD’s. In many cases of ADD this is all thats required to acheive correction.
I used cranial manipulation on my son Tony. Ron has indicated to me that his technique does not really work for defects in brain chemistry (but correcting some nutritional imbalances in the body can help). When a specific genetic defect results in less receptor 5 for the dopaminergic system being present (active), what good is cranial manipulation going to do? For my son, dexadrine was the only drug that worked (Ritalin did not) but by the time we found it, he was already into street drug use. His drug of choice was crank (methamphetamine) but he used everything he could get his hands on. Cocaine was not that great (but better than a non-drug existence). After learning about the dopaminergic system I had tried tyrosine on him with no success. He loved doing crank with LSD, he said that was the only time in his whole life that he ever felt really good (until he increased the dose and started getting some bad trips). Now that he is a drug rehab problem, he has said that without drugs he can’t get any pleasure from life. He knows that he can’t use and survive but what kind of life can he have if there is no enjoyment in it.
I get pleasure from learning, he doesn’t. I get pleasure from watching the sun come up, he doesn’t. He either has to find an occupation or a hobby that will give him the stimulation that he needs. He can’t use illegal (or legal drugs). The dexadrine isn’t an option anymore (as far as his physician is concerned because of his inability to regulate dose). I don’t know if the outcome would have been different with an earlier diagnosis. He choose his friends based on their common problems with school (hardly any of them ever graduated from high school). My daughter who enjoyed school and did well choose other kinds of friends (where drug use was not common). Drug use was very common with the friends my son choose. It is absolutely imperative that an early diagnosis be made and that the school performance improve (meaning that it has to become enjoyable). We loose far too many good people by not recognizing a problem early (school systems are horrible when it comes to trying to help).
Pediatric Chiro Care
Main Outcome Measures Demographics, practice characteristics, and fee structure. Practitioners were also asked about their approach to childhood immunizations and a clinical scenario. Data were analyzed using simple descriptive statistics.
Results Ninety (60%) chiropractors responded. All were white and 65% were men. Respondents had on average 122 patient visits weekly, of which 13 (11%) were from children and adolescents. Typical visit frequency ranged from 1 to 3 times weekly. Average visit fees were $82 and $38 (initial and follow-up) and 49% of the fees were covered by insurance. Seventy percent of the respondents recommended herbs and dietary supplements. For pediatric care, 30% reported actively recommending childhood immunizations; presented with a hypothetical 2-week-old neonate with a fever, 17% would treat the patient themselves rather than immediately refer the patient to a doctor of medicine, doctor of osteopathy, or an emergency facility.
Conclusions Children and adolescents constitute a substantial number of patients in chiropractic’s. An estimated 420,000 pediatric chiropractic visits were made in the Boston metropolitan area in 1998, costing approximately $14 million. Pediatric chiropractic care is often inconsistent with recommended medical guidelines. National studies are needed to assess the safety, efficacy, and cost of chiropractic care for children.
South Bay Chiropractor?
I’m pretty skeptical myself. I’ve seen a number of doctors who have helped me less and charged me more than Faith Healer probably would. Have you used a chiropractor before? Have you had lower back pain that a “regular” doctor (MD) relieved? Personally, I’ve seen a chiropractor only once before for a shoulder injury. I saw him three times in four days (I was home from college on a break and didn’t have much time). I don’t know if anything he did really helped the injury or not, but I will tell you I felt GREAT (overall) after each adjustment.
I’ve never gotten a massage (other than from friends. Maybe a massage would have made me feel just as good. I don’t know. I am definitely skeptical about all of the channels and chokras or whatever. I don’t really buy that stuff. But I am definitely open to adjustments, exercises, and stretches being able to relieve and prevent back pain.
Consumer’s Reports, SRI, 60 Minutes, and others have shown that many services offered by chiropractors are pure bunk. The latest scam which I think is criminal is encouraging parents of babies not to immunize their children and that children need to be “adjusted.” I’m not sure how many chiropractors are doing this, but it is a dangerous practice.
Many people think that chiropractors are real doctors because they can put Dr. in front of their name. They are not doctors. Personally I only let someone who has graduated from medical school mess with my body. I’m normally quite the skeptic, and I’ve seen the documentaries on 60 minutes where they totally tear apart claims by some chiropractors that they can cure diseases like diabetes and cancer. The ones that claim that are quacks, and there are a lot of them. I’ve certainly heard some claim stuff that doesn’t make logical sense to me, but I wouldn’t hesitate to go back to a good one if I were suffering some
problem with my bones. Problem is, the good ones are hard to find.
Chiropractors-Activator Method
I would not go to a chiropractor who uses anything BUT the activator. My neck pain began six years ago when a chiro adjusted it using the old fashioned manual manipulation. This was on a neck that never had any symptoms before, but he thought he had to manipulate it to fix my lower back which was “out” at the time. Now, when my lower back is out, I get my (a different one) chiropractor to use the activator, and within a day or two I am dramatically better. The activator has not cured my neck pain unfortunately and I am not very sure if it can help that problem at all, but I have no doubts about its benefit for my lower back.
Also, I know this will sound weird, but a couple of years ago I had developed some pretty severe pain in my foot – plantar’s fasciitis, I think. I could hardly walk first thing in the morning, and anytime I had been sitting down for ten minutes or more. It was pretty clearly caused by the muscles in my calf being in a constantly contracted state. This had gone on for about eight months and I was beginning to imagine myself with a walker. I had seen a podiatrist for several months already, was doing exercises and had inserts in my shoes and everything. I happened to mention it to a chiropractor who I was actually seeing for my neck. She adjusted my pelvis on that side and a couple of spots on my knee and I felt better in a day. After one more adjustment, the pain in my foot was gone. It has never come back.
I am not sure that even chiropractors know why it works and I have also come across one chiro who had an activator but obviously did not know what he was doing because he did not go through the procedure that they should go through to determine where to place it, he just used it randomly around my upper back, causing a new pain that took quite a while to go away.
Anyway, it seems that there is some school in St. Louis that trains them on this method and they should be able to tell you what level they were trained to, they will say something like “proficiency rated” or “advanced proficiency rated” or something like that. The advanced is better, it means they had an extra year of training and can do more things. Sorry, I sound so vague. Mainly you need to make sure your chiro is qualified.
Chiropractic vs. Herbology
This is not aimed at all chiropractors, merely those that make outrageous claims. Despite my “knee-jerk” reaction there are chiropractors who practice science. First, my apologies to the head of the ACA. He did not make the comment about chiropractors being quacks. It was Chuck Duvall DC who is head of the NACM (National Association for Chiropractic Medicine) in an interview on 20/20. Although a news program like 20/20 is usually not the best source for scientific information I thought their program on chiropractory contained some interesting quotes and information. The program focused on pediatric chiropractory. The ACA supported the idea that children can be treated with chiropractory for illnesses including ear infections. Chuck Duvall did not agree. The news program did not do a randomized study, but they did investigate 17 chiropractors in one area. The claims made by these chiropractors include:
1) Ear infections can be cured with chiro
2) Asthma can be cured (my sister swears she was cured of asthma by a chiropractor 20 years ago, but she won’t talk about it when using her inhaler)
3) Fevers and colds can be cured with chiro
4) Subluxations can be seen on x-rays (but they refused to submit themselves to systematic testing)
5) 95% of children have vertebral subluxations
6) Subluxations are life-threatening
Hidden camera investigations: A healthy child was taken to 9 DC’s and a child with chronic ear infections was taken to 8 different DC’s. All 9 DC’s found problems with the healthy child, rarely finding the same problem. None of the 8 DC’s diagnosed the ear infection, yet every one found different problems (one concluded that the kids left leg was longer than the right and another concluded that his right leg was longer than the left). Two different chiropractors used muscle feeling techiniques, meaning they could diagnose illness by merely feeling the tone in the kids’ muscles. One of these was even able to diagnose the kids’ problems by feeling the mothers’ muscles (the ACA said they did not condone this practice at all, but I found it interesting that their license to manipulate was not revoked).
Two kids in this area showed up at the hospital with mastoiditis from ear infections that went unchecked. The parents said they thought they had provided adequate care because the chiropractor told them he could cure ear infections without antibiotics. One chiropractor gave a child herbal remedies for skin rashes. Shortly afterward, the child died from malnutrition. One child was paralyzed after his manipulation because the chiropractor did not know he had a tumor on his spinal cord. The parents returned to the same chiro to ask him why the child had gone limp and he replied that “he probably has a flu bug”. These cases show why chiropractors must be excellent diagnosticians and know what can be helped using chiro.
When I was a freshman in college, I was fascinated by the nervous system and I became extremely curious about the health of the body and how it could be effected by spinal manipulation. I was considering chiropractory as a career (afterall, my mother and my sister were certain it worked). So, I visited some local chiropractors to ask some questions about how it worked. Despite my pressing for information (i knew a little about Biology), I couldn’t get any of the ones I visited to give me some hard facts. So, I started to become skeptical (who says chiropractory isn’t useful? it gave me a healthy skepticism). I began to read as much as I could about it and nerve function in general. I realized that some chiropractors were making claims that they couldn’t back up just by learning some simple facts like- that part of the autonomic nervous sytem which innervates the lungs does not travel through the spinal cord making it very unlikely that my sister’s asthma was “cured” by spinal manipulation. More tenuous links between fundamental chiropractic claims (like the subluxation itself) and health problems are investigated
Baby to a Chiropractor??
Our baby boy, now 19 weeks old, has leaned his head to the right ever since he has been holding his head up. Our pediatrician suggested at the two month check-up that we lay him on his stomach and turn his head to the side and hold it for a few seconds several times a day. The baby (Nathan) didn’t care for this very much but we kept it up for a little while, and it seemed to help. The pediatrician wasn’t too concerned, but wanted to keep his eye on it. Now at four and a half months, Nathan is still leaning his head to the right. The pediatrician still doesn’t seem too concerned, and suggests that we start the excercises again.
In the meantime a new neighbor told us that she works in a chiropractor’s office. She took one look at Nathan, and said that it was obvious that he had a back problem. She asked about the delivery (forceps?) and said she wasn’t surprised when I told her that the doctor used a suction cup and pulled pretty hard. She said that Nathan’s back was probably hyper-extended, and that he was in need of chiropractic attention. We took Nathan in for a free consultation, the chiropractor said that the problem was obvious, and that with the right treatment we could straighten his neck, and prevent the scoliosis that he was in danger of contracting! The doctor gave him quick treatment (my wife said it was some simple thumping on his back with a small “thumping stick”), and that was that.
We talked briefly with our pediatrician who mentioned that he had a fear of “baby manipulation,” and of course didn’t place much stock in chiropractic techniques in general. That’s where we are right now. I know nothing about chiropracy, except for the common arguments — “quacks” vs. “I swear by my chiropractor.” Right now, I don’t fully trust either the pediatrican or the chiropractor.
Chiropractic Care and Nursing
I am a chiropractic student and I would like to disagree with the above statement. First of all, your reference to scientific research is misleading. True, at the present time findings are conflicting, but I can present as much if not more American and international findings that show great benefits of chiropractic care then the ones that don’t. There is not enough research done yet to make any serious scientific conclusions. NIH spends billions of dollars every year for medical research, and only recently they offered a pitiful sum (by research standards) to chiropractic community. Nevertheless, in the past few years, chiropractic research has really picked up and we will see the results relatively soon.
Again, I have to disagree. First of all, I can say that nobody in our chiropractic school is teaching us that “we are the only way”, i think it becomes more and more the thing of the past. I agree that there are some pretty conservative chiropractors, and I, as well as the great majority of chiropractors disagree with them. We believe that that give a bad rap to our profession.
Again, I respect your opinion, and I just felt that I can express my own opinion here. I believe in chiropractic, that’s why I have chosen it as my career. More and more people in US and in the World believe in Chiropractic, what is why medical community is a bit confused with how to deal with it. It is funny to see how AMA, medical schools, medical media, and individual M.D.s are tore between deciding to either join in or destroy chiropractic They tried to destroy us for many years, until they were found guilty by the Supreme Court of the USA. Now as more and more chiropractic literature, research, international interest, domestic acceptance, and government support becomes available, medical establishment is organizing another campaign thought the press, I am afraid, it’s a bit too late
