Chiropracters and damaged backs…

Has anyone ever ended up feeling worse in the short or long term after being treated by a chiropracter?

Usually feel worse for a couple of days, then it should get better.

Unless they’ve done some serious damage, of course.

Have a read of this;

http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/nick-cohen/2013/04/simon-singh-let-us-praise-a-bloody-minded-hero/%5B/url%5D

Chiropractic therapy – the pummelling of backs by mystic masseurs – was particularly pernicious. All alternative treatments are potentially dangerous. Credulous patients, who believe their quacks, may avoid seeking trustworthy advice from a qualified doctor, and suffer the consequences. But chiropractic falls into that small class of alternative therapies that are not only useless but dangerous. In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experienced temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. Patients put themselves in jeopardy when they allowed therapists to execute high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust on their necks – one of the most vulnerable parts of the body, as hangmen know

<Pulls up chair, opens biscuits, awaits the spine-wizard show/>

I went to one chiropractor who made things feel worse, went to another for a second opinion, and with a totally different approach and treatment made things better.

What is the difference between a chiropractor and an osteopath?

chiropractor and an osteopath?

scientific proof.

Hmmm. Ok, to answer my own question,[/url] it seems that chiropractors are mostly concerned with the spine and making ‘adjustments’ (as in the old ‘clunk click’) and osteopaths are more likely to look at and treat the body as a whole, but still focus mainly on the joints. And, as there so often is, there’s a spectrum with a whole variety of practitioners calling themselves chiropractors and osteopaths that fall somewhere inbetween. To answer the OP: I’ve seen many osteopaths for my back and neck, the treatment I got was massage, adjustments and excercises to take home. I never really got better until I saw my current guy, who is really REALLY good. Happy to pass on details if you want, he’s based in Kilburn (London).

Yes had one catch a nerve in my neck, I now only use physio (ex BC so cycling specific) who are alot less forceful with any manipulation.

I’ll explain why.

about 6 years ago, I pulled a muscle in my back while skiing (made a hash of a mogul and had the choice of plumett down the mountain or take a lunge for the mogul. I chose the latter but over-stretched myself). When I returned home, I sought treatment and saw a local chiro advertised and thought “ah-ha, bad-back, that’s me then”.
I had treatment for 3 months or so. The spinal manipulation didn’t hurt and always felt better afterwards, and the damaged muscle was treated carefully and healed over time. With hindsight, I suspect it was more the effect of being careful with my back for 3 months.

One thing that always concerned me was that I had to sign a disclaimer that I was aware that chiro could damage by back. That should have set the alarm bells off, but I assumed it was just to safeguard themselves against over-litigious eejits, rather than normal eejits like me.

After 3 months, I wasn’t really feeling any additional benefit from each session, so stopped as it was costing me quite a bit of money. Obviously the chiro tried t persuade me to carry on, at discounted rates, but I walked (comfortably) away.

Roll forward a few years to january 2013. Once again, the same muscle in my back went “ping”. Off to the GP, who recommended physio, which sorted through employer’s health insurance. Physio diagnosed a prolapsed disc and through careful massage and stretches, helped me recover in about 6 months. Since its improved, I’ve been lax about doing my daily stretches and exercise, sure enough, the old injury flared up, although not so much muscular, just local pain in my spine. I saw the physio again who explained the the disc-damage is permanent, so I just need to take it easy. In the long-term I’m going to have to bite the bullet and start going to Pilates and other rubbish stuff to strengthen my core to enable me to carry on.

What I’m wondering is, did the chiro treatment 6 years ago actually damage my back, and make it worse than it was before? I went there with a pulled muscle, no spinal pain, just weakness. As I said, I signed a disclaimer so can’t do anything about it if it did. Just wondering if its a possible link.

I use this chap;
http://www.clevechiropractic.com/index.php/the-team/58.html
He’s a genius in my unqualified opinion. Very nice chap too.
I mixed the treatment with some S&C training.

I would have thought that if the chiropractor was making it worse, you would know straight away, surely? Backs are not known for being pain free if there’s any way they can help it!!

Can you call yourself a Dr with an MSc?

Before:

After:

Source

Can you call yourself a Dr with an MSc?

Nope, for that you need a PhD or be a doctor of medicine. Why, do chiropractors call themselves Drs? That would seem a bit much!!

Chiropractors seem to

1. be much more direct in any manipulation, which feels more dangerous

2. always try to trap you into a course of treatment, encouraging you to accept that you will now need to undertake corrective work for the rest of your life.

Osteopaths manipulations generally seem to be less direct, and I haven’t yet found one would has tried to encourage a course of treatment, or hasn’t done their best to ‘fix’ you as quickly as possible.

The best osteopaths I have been to will do some deep tissue massage before eventually trying any manipulations.

There is a lack of data to show osteopathy works but then again it is very difficult to perform trials without the recipient knowing what form of treatment they are getting, which will obviously skew any trials data. So you have to rely on anecdotal ‘evidence’.

Calling osteopathy an ‘alternative’ therapy is completely misguided imho, and it doesn’t seem to me that there is much difference between a decent (massaging) osteopath and a ‘good’ physiotherapist that also does manipulation, except that the latter is much harder to find.

This is the one I go to in London – you can see him manipulating his pregnant wife on the video on the main page.

My wife, who only ever goes every year and a half or longer, has his number filed under ‘magician’.

http://www.cityclinic.co.uk/

do chiropractors call themselves Drs

http://www.gcc-uk.org/page.cfm?page_id=6#8

Q8. Can chiropractors use the title ‘Dr’ when advertising?

A8. The Committee of Advertising Practice’s (CAP) position is that advertisers who use the title ‘Dr’ should take care not to imply that they hold a general medical qualification. In general, CAP advises that if they do not possess such a qualification advertisers should not call themselves ‘Dr’. Chiropractors are therefore advised not to use the title ‘Dr’ in their advertisements or in any information targetted at patients.

When referring to themselves in, for example, print adverts, practice leaflets or websites, chiropractors who wish to use the courtesy title of ‘Dr’ should give their name followed by their qualification in brackets e.g. John Bloggs (Doctor of Chiropractic).

Chiropracter: Oh yes, we can sort that out. It’ll probably take 20 sessions, one per week. Now, what seems to be the problem?

no. felt better tho so maybe i`m just lucky after readin the above!

whats teh right course of action for a bad back then? oesteopath?

Sure. Just read a bit more about chiropractors and all the stuff about ‘innate intelligence’ and ‘subluxation’ all looks a bit Gillian McKeith….

Just like the best bike is the one you own, my experience of Chiropratorism was entirely positive and signed off by private health care.

Almost immedite relief from whiplash caused by hitting a tree with my collarbone whilst crashing my mtb… lucky I didn’t break bones really.

Very pleased with the treatment and would recommend this particular Chriro. Can’t speak for Physio…

Just like the best bike is the one you own, my experience of Chiropratorism was entirely positive and signed off by private health care.

My wife works on the reception of a chiropractors and there is a difference between the 3 chiros there, although none are as good as the one I go to and when my wife has an issue she will go to him at £85 per hour rather than the free treatment she gets at the chiropractors.

One of the Chiropractors there is chuffed that she was able to diagnose one guys back problems as actually a cancer and sent him off for early diagnosis, so maybe saving his life.

whats teh right course of action for a bad back then? oesteopath?

I would as I have seen more useless physios that useless osteopaths.

As ever, look for personal recommendations I think. I would recommend that guy above.

Chiropractor … hmmm … not for me.

Don’t know about you lot but I am in agony at the moment due to my lower back pain. Now I could hardly turn my body as it is very stiff. It hurts badly whenever I need to get up.

I could feel nodes popping out from my lower back near the pelvis area and near spine area … a bit like “bubble” …

All started 3 days ago but I was in slight discomfort several days before things flare up.

🙁

p/s: wiping my arse after no.2 is a struggle at the moment …

Any group whose reponse to criticism is to sue for libel rather than actually respond to said criticism needs to viewed with a great deal of suspicion.

One of the Chiropractors there is chuffed that she was able to diagnose one guys back problems as actually a cancer and sent him off for early diagnosis, so maybe saving his life.

Confirmation bias isn’t exactly helpful either.

that sounds nasty – think a trip to the doctors might be needed on that one.

[Note that the doctors wanted my mum to have a pretty risky operation on her back for a problem, but an osteopath sorted her out).

For pain relief consider these Thermacare pads. I used them when I had Piriformis syndrome, which feels like sciatic pain, and they got me through a weekend of walking in the lakes and a 5 hour train journey back to london standing up all the way:

http://www.boots.com/en/ThermaCare-Therapeutic-HeatWraps-Back-small-to-extra-large-2-single-use-heatwraps_865683/

Some of the other pads won’t go next tot he skin, whereas these will I think.

Confirmation bias isn’t exactly helpful either.

what are you going on about ?

She treated him for a while and wasn’t getting anywhere, so started looking at other areas and noticed this, so sent him to the doctors.

Sounds like a somewhat redeeming feature for an otherwise ‘evil’ chiropractor.

She treated him for a while and wasn’t getting anywhere, so started looking at other areas and noticed this, so sent him to the doctors.

Whereas if he’d gone to the doctors straight away (“I’ve got a pain in my back Doctor”) rather than be needlessly manipulated for a few weeks first?

what are you going on about ?

She treated him for a while and wasn’t getting anywhere, so started looking at other areas and noticed this, so sent him to the doctors.

Tell me what it was about the chiropractic treatment that was able to diagnose the cancer or was it more a case of “I don’t know what’s wrong with you so go and see a doctor”? How many cases of cancer has she missed? My point is that this was one case where the chiropractor got something right but offers no good eveidence of how an why they were correct.

There are good and bad in every profession.
I’ve never seen a good GP, but I’m sure there are some. Somewhere.

My wife and a few friends over the years have sworn by chiropractors but I’m sceptical, they all seem to need to see one again eventually, like the symptoms are sorted for a short time but not the route cause. I’m no doctor but unless they resolve the underlying issue then the problem will re-occur. usually the under lying problem with the people I know is fundamenatlly the way they live… either a job where they bend a lot or carry heavy objects, or where they dont look after themselves physically. I say this from the luxury of not having excruating back pain of course and reserve the right to try it when my back goes. 😉

My point is that this was one case where the chiropractor got something right but offers no good eveidence of how an why they were correct.

All I said was she was chuffed at the result, I was offering no evidence that this was found as part of her ‘role’ as a chiropractor.

I was not defending Chiropractors and if you look back at my posts I have actually taken the opposite approach.

Anyway, normally if you go to the doctors with back pain they just tell you to take it easy and take pain killers for a while.

And why is it Confirmation Bias as well ? Or are you just trying to make yourself look clever (and failing).

And why is it Confirmation Bias as well ?

I was refering to the chiropractor, not you. From that post where you said she was chuffed at “diagnosing a back problem as cancer”. Why exactly is she chuffed? Because she has diagnosed cancer? What specifically did she do to perform that diagnosis or was it just a lucky guess? Don’t get me wrong I’m glad whoever has been diagnosed with the cancer has had it diagnosed but claim any sort of professional achievement of which to be proud she’d need to come up with a lot more than a single case where she was right.

And why is it Confirmation Bias as well ? Or are you just trying to make yourself look clever (and failing).

Presumably it’s confirmation bias because she remembers the time she found something and would be ignorant of all the times she didn’t. Besides, claiming to have “diagnosed cancer” is amazingly arrogant unless chiropractors have started performing biopsies now; surely what happened is she found a lump and advised to get it checked out?

But yeah. It’s more of a – what’s the opposite of a straw man? It’s a little positive anecdote about chiropractic which, when you actually look at it, is nothing to do with chiropractic at all. Suzy at the beauty salon might as easily have gone “ooh, that’s a strange lump, you’ve better go see a doctor” when she’s slapping on some fake tan; that doesn’t mean we should start going to beauty parlours with our bad backs.

Am I wrong? What’s the conclusion we’re expected to draw from that story, that chiropractic is efficacious in detecting cancer now? At best it’s a little disingenuous.

I am pretty sure she just sent him for some x-rays and then noticed some indications from them and told him to go and see the doctor.

She was chuffed as he easily could have just kept coming back for some more temporary relief, or could have just taken more pain killers.

She was chuffed as she had some part in the early diagnosis of one of her patients.

Again, note that I haven’t been recommending chiropractors at all, I was just saying that she was happy at the outcome.

If he had gone to the doctors who knows what would have happened, he might have been on prescribed pain killers for a while and then the doctor might eventually have noticed that nothing was happening.

Am I wrong? What’s the conclusion we’re expected to draw from that story, that chiropractic is efficacious in detecting cancer now? At best it’s a little disingenuous.

clearly not as all my previous posts and the paragraph immediately before had not been in favour of chiropractors at all.

Sure. And good for her for doing the right thing.

But again, this is positive bias:

If he had gone to the doctors who knows what would have happened

Who knows, he could’ve been diagnosed equally quickly by a GP and saved himself an unnecessary trip to the chiropractor in the first place. Or he could have gone to a different chiropractor who didn’t bother with the X-ray and have died six months later. Or Suzy might have noticed a lump. You can’t just speculate as to what might have happened and then use it as a counterpoint, it’s misleading.

It’s a very Daily Mail approach to reporting. Headline, “DOES CHIROPRACTIC CURE CANCER?” followed by body text going “well, people are looking into it but there’s no proof that it does.” What do you take away from that article as a reader? What are you meant to take away from it as a reader?

all my previous posts and the paragraph immediately before had not been in favour of chiropractors at all.

I’m clearly missing the point you’re trying to make then, I’m afraid.

I’m patently missing the point you’re trying to make, then

So I had just said that, although my wife works there and gets free treatment, she eschews it and goes and pays £85 an hour plus £20 train fair to get better treatment from an osteopath elsewhere.

And then you think I am endorsing one of the chiropractors at that same clinic because she got lucky ?

strange.

I suppose this seems like a ringing endorsement as well :

Chiropractors seem to

1. be much more direct in any manipulation, which feels more dangerous

2. always try to trap you into a course of treatment, encouraging you to accept that you will now need to undertake corrective work for the rest of your life.