Value of chiropractic? Your experience?

[Peanut]

Wondering if anyone here has had experience with chiropractic care as an ongoing thing either for injury or just 'optimal health.' I ask bc I recently started going to a chiro, more on a lark than any specific pain or injury, and it's been fine but I don't know how or if I should keep it up.

There are some general reasons why I went in the first place: my posture has never been great, I feel like my grip strength is not as good as it used to be, and I have had two kids, one earlier this year, and I carry her around constantly so some sort of temporary back pain is common though not chronic. And of course being pregnant and carrying around an extra 25 lbs for a few months as well as childbirth might throw anyone out of alignment.

Anyway a friend recommended her chiro so I made an appt. Two interesting things happened at the evaluation: one, when I stood on the bilateral weight scales we saw that my distribution was very off, at least at that moment. It was 44:53 so almost a ten pound and percent difference. And in the posture pics we saw that from the front one shoulder was slightly higher than the other. Crazy and I definitely hadn't seen that in the mirror before.

Then she adjusted me, which was painful but only for a moment. And the neck cracking is actually very satisfying. And she recommended I come weekly for three months. Going in I thought it'd be a one time thing but I agreed and have gone for a month. The thing is as I wasn't there to fix some specific injury I haven't noticed much difference in how I feel. Maybe my grip strength is a bit better (relates to the neck). My posture I mostly need to be mindful of to improve. My shoulders seem level again. I haven't stepped back on the scales yet so am curious to see if the distribution has changed.

I will keep going for the next two months but after that she'll want to take films, which I don't want just bc it doesn't seem necessary to me, and make some recommendation about future care. No way can I keep going weekly. Among other things it's too much of a pain to bring the kids along. I feel like a few times a year might be worthwhile but that's not actually based on any research or science. Thoughts?

Btw I'm assuming some people think of chiropractic as quackery, I know I used to, so if you have reasons for that opinion I'd like to hear why as well.

[jacob]

I went to a chiropractor when I was a kid for allergies/hay fever . There were two "moves", one involving cracking/wrenching the neck and the other one involving cracking/pushing the upper back. Initially, I went twice a week; then less and less; until it was every 6 months on a need to basis; and then not at all after my mid teens.

I don't see the connection between posture and allergies (other than maybe fixing a side effect from sneezing a lot?!?) or whether it was mostly placebo, but it seemed to help/make it better every time I went, so ...

[chenda]

'In over a century, chiropractic research has produced no evidence to support the postulates of chiropractic theory and little evidence that chiropractic treatments provide objective benefits.'

https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/refere ... ropractic/

But it's produced some really satisfying videos https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=SDNM9mPqMeU

[Peanut]

@jacob: placebo effect is often very strong! Even when patients were told in some experiment or other they were getting the placebo pill they still felt better. I would think these days some probiotics would be recommended for allergies, perhaps?

@chenda: yikes some scary info on there. I did worry at first some disaster might happen but so far no ill effects. Is that website reliable?

[chenda]

@peanut - yes its a really useful resource. Improving posture I find is really difficult and takes a lot of conscious effort. This is quite good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvTakqZ-9WU&t=2s

[sarahen]

I've had friends who have had major functional improvements after visiting a chiro. Like many things in life, a few are amazing and many are not

[Farm_or]

Mountain biking and martial arts had taught me a lot about pain: broken leg, broken arm, broken sternum, concussions, torn rotator, ankle sprains, and many lesser bumps and bruises. Nothing prepared me for the debilitating pain of sciatica five years ago.

At the flare up, I thought I was dying. The pain was so intense! The doc in box took xrays, gave me a shot of "powerful narcotic" and sent me home. It might have well been placebo, because it made zero difference. They examined xrays, but found no problems.

Two sleepless nights and days, I took xrays to my chiropractor; as he was just returning on vacation. He immediately identified problem on the xray. It took a couple weeks of daily adjustments and he taught me a daily stretch, but I made full recovery and have not had any problems for five years now.

[Bankai]

I had a look at some meta-analyses available on pubmed and the few I looked at concluded that there were no benefits other than short term improvement for some patients with lower back pain. Main problem appears to be lack of properly designed clinical studies - only minority of the studies analysed had low risk of bias.

[BlueNote]

Pseudoscience. Google it, it's not evidence based medicine.

My step-dad used to go to one, he'd bring me with him. The office was set up exactly like a doctors office. A receptionist called you in when the 'doctor' was ready for you. They kept a file on you like a doctor. The chiropractor wore medical clothing and spoke sort of like a medical professional. They then proceeded to crack his back and put him in all sorts of weird holds and stuff. He swore it worked but there was no evidence his back pain actually improved. They try to say that the back is somehow magically connected to totally unrelated things. It's the equivalent of bloodletting and cupping but sometimes they'll also say that you should ice your back, something anyone with a non-moron iq could have figured out for themselves.

There are some doctors that practice real evidence based medicine but mix in a little quackery on the side to keep the lights on because their specialty can't provide enough revenue. My mother made me go to a foot doctor who prescribed shoe inserts that were supposed to cure me of being flat footed. They'd take a mold of my foot using plaster of paris and then special order custom made (expensive but covered by her works insurance plan) plastic shoe inserts that would supposedly train my foot to develop an arch. I used the prescribed inserts religiously and they didn't do sh**t, I am still flat footed and so is anyone else I knew that also had to use the stupid things. Try walking around on a piece of hard plastic all day vs a nice soft shoe insole for years. The foot doctor was however useful in other regards for other people with real foot problems.

[RFS]

The office was set up exactly like a doctors office. A receptionist called you in when the 'doctor' was ready for you. They kept a file on you like a doctor. The chiropractor wore medical clothing and spoke sort of like a medical professional. They then proceeded to crack his back and put him in all sorts of weird holds and stuff.

This made me chuckle. It reminds me of the medical marijuana industry trying to convince it's just like normal medicine. They stuff nugs into pill bottles and put government warning labels on them. Then you see the product label, which says, in a font that's made out of purple smoke cloud letters, "DEATH STAR"