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Comment by fartcannon | Hacker News Reader

Let me start by saying that I agree that doctors do suck. They are people and that should be enough to understand them. But all self regulating industries with a financial incentive to lie suck. I realize this topic treads deeply into quasi-religious territory so forgive me in advance, but couldn't this just be the placebo effect? Mixed with the healing effect of someone caring about you?

Maybe your physio actually got you on the way to recovery. And the chiropractor is simply taking credit.

Also what actually does an 'adjustment' do?

Just thinking out loud here.

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Not OP, But I've also had some success with chiropractic. There is some wackiness to avoid out there (the ones who treat it like a spirituality), but the one I go to currently takes a disciplined approach. They only target a few specific places based on thermal scans on the spine.

Their argument is that subluxations (misalignment of the vertebrae) impair nerve function, kind of like having a kink in a hose. Misaligned vertebrae press on nerves and make them less able to deliver signals from the brain. Those signals trigger healing, so by relieving the pressure, the body becomes more able to heal itself.

> Their argument is that subluxations (misalignment of the vertebrae) impair nerve function, kind of like having a kink in a hose.

And this "theory" is--pardon the expression--complete horseshit that's unsupported by any scientific evidence.

The article actually covers this topic at some length, including the fact that this "theory" regarding subluxations was discovered through the very scientific practice of seance...

Thank god someone else has some sense. I'm trying to not double facepalm at all the flat earthers' voluminous, glowing reviews of osteopathic "medicine" and chiropractic, both of which are pseudoscience medical equivalents of Scientology, which itself abuses the word "science."

I've had to think hard about engaging with you, because I don't think you're engaging in good faith. I didn't say that chiropractic is a science, nor did I use the word "theory."

In fact, it's not scientific, and that's why I consider it valuable. It can see things that science misses.

Science is often the best method we have, but it's far from infallible. And the idea that there must be a total disconnect between science and mysticism is simply false. Many of the best scientists have had a mystical bent (Einstein, Newton, Bacon).

No: I had stopped seeing my physical therapist months earlier for various reasons, including that I was experiencing setbacks that I found emotionally demoralizing.

What a "grade 5 lumbopelvic mobilization"--what all the medical science people (online) were saying I needed to get done (like, I was at the point where I was watching talks from conferences on lumbar spine radiculopathy issues)--does is it takes the ilium and the sacrum in one's pelvis and separates them slightly, essentially stretching the sacroiliac joint a bit (which is hard to do and requires enough directed force to make it really hard to do to yourself... that joint "normally" barely moves at all: it is at best a shock absorber) and then allowing it to go back to a maybe-more-normal position in the case that they have accidentally gotten locked into a bad place and ended up with some tissue (or even a nerve) getting pinched. Physical therapists will also do this, but as far as I can tell--after starting to try to get an appointment with a new one at around the same time (but unable to get one for weeks out)--they are way more addicted to following only the pathologies that have actually been determined by the doctor who prescribed you to see them (as that's how they work: the doctor give a you a prescription).

Fwiw I have no dog in this fight, but I am personally very skeptical of chiropractors. Nevertheless my doctor said he might actually prescribe me to see one for a long term (decade+) back and neck issue. His exact words were "normally I would never send anyone to a chiropractor, but one thing they are great at is getting dislocated things back into place." Which sounds like the kind of thing you were dealing with.

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