facetduder, I dont have a problem with chiropractors. I have a problem with chiropractors who think they do anything more than massage. The mechanisms were simply made up by a farmer one day,
At least we've established that you approve of chiropractors. Whewww! I was nervous there for a second.
Chiropractic is more than massage. That you don't know that tells me a lot about your knowledge base in this area.
And DD Palmer was a fish broker. Perhaps he did some farming on the side, I don't know. He "discovered" the chiropractic profession over 100 years ago. We've learned a few things since then.
and the loyal patient population is because you are treating people with questionable need for treatment in the majority of cases with emphasis on "prevention" via these treatments in people who were not likely to incur whatever illness you were trying to prevent in the first place.
If you disagree that there's value in promoting good health practices to patients, that's on you. If you believe health comes solely from Pharma products, shame shame.
I also have an issue with chiropractors who attempt to undermine valid treatment modalities via propaganda while touting their "therapies" for things that simply do not make sense (asthma? Celiacs? Diabeetus?
)
Who does this? If a DC steers a patient away from a "valid treatment" and something happens to that patient, the DC gets sued. It's that simple. That alone would be a deterrent against DCs doing that. Now, regarding something like celiac, why couldn't a DC knowledgeable in nutrition discuss dietary issues with a patient? Of course they could. And for diabetics, especially Type 2 diabetics, should a DC not try to motivate that patient toward better diet and exercise habits? Of course they should. Somehow in your mind that equates to DCs telling diabetics to cease all their meds immediately and rely on Innate Intelligence to take care of the rest; please note that this thought is
in your mind, not reality.
One of your favorite things to attack is NSAIDs (and you have piped in on vaccines too..... but lets leave that for another day) but lets think about this for a minute.......
I've never said NSAIDs don't have value, and I certainly have never attacked them. What I have said is that NSAIDS aren't magic and often don't do squat. You're early in your medical education, so you are still of the mindset that everything you prescribe a patient will work like a charm. Give it a few years, especially if you work with MSK patients and you'll quickly learn the limitations of medications. Again, not that they're worthless, because sometimes they can be very helpful; they just aren't the magic pills you think they are right now.
The topic of NSAIDs has come up from time to time in the context of safety. Typically, someone will say chiros are sooooo dangerous, and I'll remind them that thousands of people die each year from NSAIDs that, despite being properly prescribed, are prescribed with virtually no thought toward safety. That's not an attack on NSAIDs or allopathic medicine; it's keeping things in perspective.
NSAID use is HUGE. Everybody is on an NSAID.
Where is this coming from? Did I miss something?
I would really like to see data normalized to use on complications with NSAIDs vs complications with neck HVLA.
Off the top of my head, I do recall a similar study from years ago:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=dabbs and lauretti
You like to downplay it, but for something that has a real harmful outcome and a questionable and possibly placebo benefit (or something that could be reproduced with a weekly massage at half the cost...) id say stroke is still a significant worry factor. And even though stomach issues arise from NSAID use, when compared to the level of use, I would bet money that it is comparable to strokes from cervical manipulation.
I would never downplay stroke. You simply fail to grasp several key issues. First, there is currently no established causal relationship between cervical manipulation and stroke. Lots of association/correlation, but no causal. Now, being adults, we should hold out the possibility of causation, however we also need to understand that these events are so rare that the largest study to date looked at 109,000,000 person years and could not find any association at all. That's pretty friggin' rare, which is another issue. Moreover, you misrepresent/misunderstand the literature when you say manipulation is placebo.
I would agree with this. Misunderstood in the fact that people simply believe the story without looking into it. An ex-co-worker of mine had a frigging chiropractor for her horses... wtf did he do manipulations with? A skid loader?!!?
I don't have any experience with horses. In fact, I don't know the first thing about horses. But I do know that many trainers/owners of big time race horses have a chiro "on staff". Beyond that, don't ask me.
You tell people a fancy story about their spine and use a few buzzwords about "healing" (which for some odd reason people do not interpret as a return to normal, but rather as some form of improvement from the norm)
Returning someone to normal, as you say, is always the goal. It's not always possible....under anyone's care....but it's a goal.
and "dont just treat the symptoms" which is an obvious rhetorical ploy
We treat symptoms, but we also look for causes. Once you have more exposure to MSK training, you'll get that.
..... and viola! loyal customer base. Homeopaths and naturopaths have this loyal base too..... at least until their kids start dropping dead from the diseases prevented by MMR
You wanna be a back pain guy, fine. Id argue in your favor that you guys do well there. I dont think a one of you knows why it works (or is willing to admit that it just feels good to get your back and hips pounded on every once in awhile) but whatever. But please stop arguing against effective treatments with the assumption that chiropractic is the obvious alternative.
As you say, we do well with back pain. As well as anything you will ever refer your future back pain patients for or otherwise treat them with. That's not what I say, that's what the literature says.
As far as mechanism, you are correct that it's a continually evolving model. But to say that we are at the same place as we were in the days of DD Palmer would of course be ridiculous.
And your final statement tells me why you are so confused about this. No one is saying that allopathic medicine should be trashed and chiropractic be used to replace it. Dude, that doesn't even make sense! But somewhere along the way, you've come to believe that that's what chiros think. Perhaps I've put your mind at ease today.
