this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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I need something clarified by someone who doesn't go to a chiropractor and never has.
I've heard it's all bullshit from multiple sources over the years. I've heard they aren't even doctors most of the time and that there's no empirical evidence that supports chiropractic practitioners at all.
Every attempt to research this is met with thousands of results from low quality sources all singing its praise.
So is it bullshit?
it is and it isn't.
it works for some things for some people, but it has no consistent or replicable results across things and patients, so it isn't scientific.
it's more like mental health therapy. therapy works for some folks in some circumstances with certain therapists... but again it isn't explicable. there is no general set of emotional therapeutic principles that will work for everyone.
and for many folks this type of stuff is a placebo effect. we all know someone who goes to therapy... but it never fixes their problems... but it convinces them that they are 'fixing it'. just like person you know who went gluten free who 'no longer gets headaches'.
compare that to drug where the entire point of a drugs/medical procedures where the entire point is reproducibility. a certain drug is supposed to cure a certain problem for all folks that have that problem.
First of all, I agree that it would be great if a drug/medicinal procedure would cure a certain condition in each and every patient or at least the vast majority of them. Sadly, that is rarely the case, but that by no means is equivalent to say that when this drug or procedure helps, it's mostly or entirely due to the placebo effect. That's the whole reason we need randomised controlled trials as their might be a significant difference in treatments that only becomes clearly observable once a certain sample size is reached and possible confounding variables are controlled for (usually by randomisation). The human body and many of diseases are incredibly complex so it's naive to assume we could forsee each and every possible influence on a drugs efficacy and therefore determine without error how a patient will react to it.
While there is quite a big group of non-responders when it comes to psychotherapy, it is, on average, an effective treatment clearly proven by a vast body of research. There is still much more to find out, but putting it on the same level as not consuming gluten is in no way defensible.
Now to get back to chiropractics, I don't know too much about it, but I thought it's mostly short term pressure and pain relief, which however rarely combats the underlying issues. Can still be helpful, of course, as pain relief helps with getting more physical activity, as this is often a culprit for example back problems.
That said, I personally wouldn't let anyone touch my spine or neck like some chiropractors do. I'd be too scared of irreparable nerve damage.
Cool, I know several people and a dog or two who use chiropractic services. To them it's like getting an oil change in their car or taking the car in when the brakes squeal for a brake job.
Most folks don't give a fuck how shit works or where it's 'real' or not. They just want the annoying thing to go away and find someone who makes it go away.