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Comment by sonograph | Hacker News Reader

Tangent topic;

I have often wondered if back pain was less likely in the past? How did they manage without chiropractors?

Chiropractors are charlatans so it was the same as any other healing elixir scam that was being run (which are notable and commonplace throughout history).

My brother is a chiropractor who mostly agrees with you. He thinks that most chiropractors do about as much harm as good, or more.

Of course, he believes otherwise about his own particular school of chiropractic, the Gonstead Technique. As a long time beneficiary of that method I've come to agree with him. It has helped me quite a bit, and the long list of his vastly improved patients (many or most who are refugees from other chiropractors) is impressive and convincing to me.

Some healers are quacks; in some disciplines, most are. But that doesn't make them all quacks.

I've done some research on this and it seems there is some evidence that what chiropractors do, Spinal Manipulation Therapy, is effective when combined with traditional medicine and physical therapy at reducing chronic back pain (and can help some people manage it with reduced pain management medication which is a plus!) However if a chiropractor tells you they can fix your stomach or headaches or anxiety by cracking your back they're a quack.

Strong disagree with regard to headaches. I've had immediate relief from debilitating headache pain after an adjustment.

Have to ask, are you weirdly flexible?

No.

I have hEDS hypermobile Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (so does possibly 2% of the population.) The vast majority don’t who have it don’t know it. My stomach issues and headaches are caused by joint problems with a likely vagus nerve link. It’s entirely possible that the kind of people the go to chiropractors could benefit in this way.

They may be on to something without knowing exactly what.

Chiropractors don’t actually help with back pain or any of the other problems they claims to help. The practice is based on “re-aligning” subtle subluxations in the spine. Two problems: there is no evidence that these subtle subluxations exist, and there is no evidence that spine alignment even extreme ones cause any ailments other than pinched nerves. Here is a good summary about the history of this pseudo-science: https://theoutline.com/post/1617/chiropractors-are-bullshit

so it's a high grade placebo placebo massage ?

You dont have to wonder. Look at regions with poor levels of mechanization and you will find farmers in pretty bad shape.

Excerise and especially walking and running does a lot for back health but at the same time they probably did a lot heavy lifting and handicraft (weaving, shoe making, etc) in bad ergonomic positions.

Poor ergonomics are almost non-existent in traditional cultures. This makes some intuitive sense as only in a wealthy industrialized society is poor posture and back/leg weakness de-correlated from surival. This is one starting point to research it: https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2015/06/08/4123147...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27164956

I imagine the answer is different depending on whether you have agriculture. Agriculture can be back-breaking work.

> How did they manage without chiropractors?

Tough it out. You had to work/farm/hunt to survive.

>How did they manage without chiropractors?

We've always had charlatans pretending to have solutions to our problems before chiropracty and homeopathy, we had traveling salesmen peddling fish oil as a cure-all and of course the power of prayer.

Not sure if it speaks to the gullibility of humanity or craftiness of private enterprise.

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