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justine wrote:

thelegendofjohn wrote:

I feel better all around when I am seeing mine.

So basically, as long as you keep seeing them, you feel fine? No permanent solution to your problems? Just a symptom reliever?

No, I had permanent solutions to multiple problems.

For most of the year I don't live in Portland anymore, but when I'm in town I usually make an appointment to get adjusted and come away feeling noticeably better than when I went in. 

The MD's had a variety of explanations, saying the migraines were genetic, or stress related, or an allergic reaction to something.  They wanted me to try medications, which was not something I preferred to do.  I'm not saying they wouldn't have worked for me, but I wanted to avoid taking medication if I could.

When I first went in to see my chiropractor my spine was severely out of alignment, so much so that one leg was about an inch longer than the other.  I play lacrosse and get knocked around a lot.  It took around 5 adjustments to get to the point where I stopped getting the migraines, but once my spine was in alignment they stopped altogether.  This makes perfect sense to me, as I hadn't had the migraines forever, but had been dealing with them for about a year (in which I had been playing lacrosse the entire year).

As I said before, chiropractic isn't for everyone.  Not everybody's migraines are from the same thing and who knows if a chiropractor could help them otherwise, but it certainly worked for me.

I have to say I am pro-chiropractor.  I saw one in college, and then for the last couple of years again.  I credit chiropractic for being able to move my neck to the right past a 45 degree angle.  I also have far less lower back pain.

However, the line of BS that he gave you is something else.  The chiropractors that I have gone to are pretty down to earth and to the point.    I'd try someone else.

Fracai wrote:

OK, so the items I pull out of that are:
-That you were given options, they were just options you didn't want.
-You went to a chiropractor and found one leg to be longer than the other.

I've heard of this "test" before and I can't imagine a quick way to definitively determine that your legs are of different lengths or what that is supposed to indicate anyway.  Notice how you can shift your weight from leg to leg, stretch one leg or the other longer than the other, etc.  You'd need to get x-rays of your legs and measure the bones.  And if there were indeed a difference in bone length how would a chiropractor correct that?
If the difference were because your spine was indeed out of alignment (What quantifies the extent of misalignment?  What quantifies when the alignment is corrected?) why will a re-alignment correct a migraine or other problem?

-You were experiencing migraines for a year while playing rugby.

Was the chiropractic visit shortly after finishing rugby or was this long after?

-You seem to imply that the migraines stopped when you stopped playing rugby.

Is that accurate or was there more time involved in between?


If chiropractic isn't for everyone, is that because not everyone needs it?  Or because it won't work for everyone who could be helped by it?  What determines if chiropractic is appropriate for someone.


Thanks for your answers.

The chiropractor determined the disparity in my leg length while I was laying down.  My bones aren't different length, my spine was out of alignment.  After corrections they were the right length again.

I'm not a doctor or a chiropractor so I really can't explain to you how having my body in correct alignment cleared up my issues, but I know it worked for me.  Just a guess that maybe a nerve was being pinched or pressed on wrong somewhere. 

I was playing lacrosse (not rugby), which I still play.  So no, the migraines didn't stop when I stopped that.

I'm saying I think something happened to my body during lacrosse that caused me to have migraines.  I still play lacrosse, and no longer have migraines, so I'm not saying that lacrosse always equals migraines for me.  I'm guessing I got hit just right to cause whatever happened to me.

When I say chiropractic is not for everyone, I mean that it's not like you can go see a chiropractor for anything that's wrong with you and expect to be cured.  They aren't substitutes for doctors.  I see no reason why they wouldn't be beneficial to everybody though, like I said I feel markedly better when my spine is aligned.

I'm more than happy to answer these questions to a point, but I'm curious as to what you are trying to ascertain.  Are you trying to discredit my experience, or chiropractors, or are you just genuinely interested in the process?

Malkin wrote:

What a timely news blurb!

(Note the first tip. )

Thanks for the link!  There's no doubt that carrying around a baby (and one who is growing really fast) is at least a contributor to her back problems.  However, there's a far more sinister side effect of being preggers:  Many of your joins, including your hips and spine, loosen to permit easier childbirth.  Once the baby is born everything tightens up again.  Unfortunately, sometimes things don't line up properly afterwards (something that, oddly enough, this chiropractor never thought to mention or consider), resulting in offset vertebrae and the resulting symptoms.

Malkin wrote:

Yup, and that's why she should be doing stretching and strength training.  Even at home Yoga would be great.  While I'm sure chiropractors work for some people, I think a lot of them are little more than charlatans- perhaps well meaning ones, but charlatans nevertheless.

I've been trying to convince her to do yoga, without much success (yet).  She could attend a whole lot of yoga classes for what the chiropractor would cost!!

THIS little article, from a different chiropractor than the one we visited, is pretty much the same spiel we got during the presentation.  I guess I'll be avoiding this place, too.

Couples yoga, you say?  Hmmmmmm....

Fracai wrote:

thelegendofjohn wrote:

I'm not a doctor or a chiropractor so I really can't explain to you how having my body in correct alignment cleared up my issues, but I know it worked for me.  Just a guess that maybe a nerve was being pinched or pressed on wrong somewhere. 

...

I see no reason why they wouldn't be beneficial to everybody though, like I said I feel markedly better when my spine is aligned.

I'm more than happy to answer these questions to a point, but I'm curious as to what you are trying to ascertain.  Are you trying to discredit my experience, or chiropractors, or are you just genuinely interested in the process?

First off, sorry about the rugby / lacrosse confusion.  I'm not really sure how I managed to read "lacrosse" as "rugby".


The main point of my asking questions was to find out what you were told was going on and then examine that.  If you don't know what the guy was doing to your back there's really no point.
I'm not a doctor or a chiropractor either (I agree that there's a distinction there) but if someone says to me, "you have a problem that I can fix by moving your bones around" I'm gonna be damned sure to ask questions about what's wrong, what needs to be moved around, how the two are related, and how the moving is going to fix anything.

I don't know that I really need to discredit chiropractors, that generally has already been done.  The basic premise of chiropractic (subluxation) has absolutely no scientific basis.  Anything that is done is either massage, damaging bone manipulation, or holistic naturopathic "remedies".

To be completely transparent, when you posted about the leg length business I thought I'd try to find out how much information you were given about what was going on.  It's one thing to claim that a process cured your migraines, but without knowing what was done and why it worked, how can you say that it was the cure aside from coinciding with the result?

That said, it does seem that there are some chiropractors who intend to only treat patients very briefly before forwarding them on for more extensive care from a physical therapist.  In the current situation though, it seems to me that it's far safer to play it safe and avoid the situation entirely by going straight for physical therapy and conventional medicine.

You need to do more research. Perhaps you would like to talk to my mother who was the receptionist for a chiropractor for twenty-five years. You can listen to her talk about people who crawled into their office because they couldn't walk but walked out. Maybe you would like to ask me about the medical problems that I had that conventional medicine was not able to fix but chiropractic could.

Or, perhaps, you should just not talk about things you know nothing about. You obviously know nothing about what chiropractic is or what chiropractors do. Do a bit more research, then offer an opinion.

thelegendofjohn wrote:

[snip]
The chiropractor determined the disparity in my leg length while I was laying down.  My bones aren't different length, my spine was out of alignment.  After corrections they were the right length again.
[snip]

The "uneven legs" scam is one of the easiest to perform. All one has to do is push the legs not very far to one side or the other and voila! Uneven legs.

A lot of scammers rely upon a basic truism of health care--there are three things that will happen to any condition: 1) it get worse, 2) it will get better, or 3) it will stay about the same. The scammers will give a variation on these three answers: 1) "It's too bad you didn't get to me in time--I could have helped you X months ago", 2) "See! My treatment works!", or 3) "It's a good thing you got to me in time because you would have gotten worse." It is nearly impossible to tell if most chiropractors do any good because of so many claims depend upon post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning. It could be that doing nothing (except perhaps resting) would have improved your particular situation.

Fracai wrote:

Subluxation completely baseless to begin with.  The Skeptic's Guide to The Universe had a pretty decent interview with a "reform chiropractor" and their forum usually has some good discussion.

Fracai.

I'd like to thank you for referencing The Skeptic's Guide to The Universe.

I checked out their website, and message board (I only wish they had a search feature for the boards) . Prior to your post I was unfamiliar with them.


I've been headed on a path towards skepticism for some time now -- especially in regards to the vaccine-autimsm link (which I see as more of a bandwagon hype monster than anything) and things like accupuncture/homeopathy.

I really didn't know much about chiropractic -with the exception that it had a controversial past. Didn't know just how much of what they do is comparable to snake oil.

Kendall wrote:

You need to do more research. Perhaps you would like to talk to my mother who was the receptionist for a chiropractor for twenty-five years. You can listen to her talk about people who crawled into their office because they couldn't walk but walked out. Maybe you would like to ask me about the medical problems that I had that conventional medicine was not able to fix but chiropractic could.

Or, perhaps, you should just not talk about things you know nothing about. You obviously know nothing about what chiropractic is or what chiropractors do. Do a bit more research, then offer an opinion.

Get back to me when your research consists of more than just anecdotes.

thelegendofjohn wrote:

It could be, you're right.  Like I said though, my symptoms cleared up after a few visits.  I firmly believe the chiropractor helped me, you guys don't have to. 

I guess the reason I get fired up about things like this is that your last statement isn't satisfactory at all to me.  Believing something doesn't make it true and it scares me that people are willing to brush off scientific evidence with the notion of "it worked for me, so it must be true, despite any other evidence".


There's also whatstheharm.net for some horror stories: http://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.html

And of course, you'll find these stories in any field.  What you won't find is anyone claiming "What's the harm" for conventional medicine, because in those fields responsible doctors will inform you of the risks involved in the treatment.  I wonder if any chiropractor has prefaced a treatment with "you could end up paralyzed if I do this wrong"?


iSeamus, happy to introduce you to the SGU.  The podcast is quite excellent.