There's almost nothing in the way of unbiased research which has shown the neck angle to be the problem they say it is.
Do you have immediate friends or family treated by chiropractor (i have), have you seen chiropractor yourself (i have). Can you point any specific respectable publication which dismiss chiropractors as a whole or shows significant presence of "unscrupoluousness"? Until that your groundless dismissal of the whole class of professional people and their practice is just it, groundless childish dismissal.
Start here: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/3801081.htm
Shift over here for some overview: http://crookedtimber.org/2009/06/04/if-this-is-evidence-base...
Then jump into the hard science at SBM: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-a-brief-ove...
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/chiropractic-a-brief-ove...
It's not acusing someone from a position of superiority if a profession has continually shown itself incapable of eliminating the pseudoscience in its practice, which is most of it. A claim could be made that Chiropractory is largely fraud based on their incredibly weak evidence base and the fact they are charging money for treatment that is no better than placebo.
Have a nice day!
http://umm.edu/programs/spine/health/guides/cervical-kyphosi...
that was, almost word for word, among the things that was explained to me by the chiropractor [when he shown me the disk deformation on my X-ray - abnormally straight neck and thus abnormally compressing the front side of the disks] :
"As the discs collapse and grow thinner, the head tilts forward and the neck begins to curve forward. This begins a process that may continue to progress for years. The weight of the head causes an imbalance of forces pushing the neck increasingly forward. This slowly leads to an increasing curve and may end with a kyphosis. "
we were arguing diagnosis, hence the link that quick search brought.
I'm really surprised by the prejudice [especially baseless prejudice which is just plain offensive] against chiropractors that i met in this thread. I understand that you(+your family) had mixed experience and that provides basis for your opinion. My experience is completely different.
Even without going into personal experiences and opinions which as we see may vary (like in the case of regular medicine as well), the objectively most important fact here is that insurance covers chiropractors - this is ultimate and most important endorsement in the US :) - speaking from my personal experience of fighting an insurance several years ago when they refused to pay for a procedure an MD performed on me.
Wrt. my experience with chiropractors. My father was successfully treated for back pain by a chiropractor 30 years ago back in Soviet Union, and my wife got successfully treated for a joint issue here recently, and in my case everything has so far been consistent with my knowledge/understanding as well as with medical info i could find.
So, i don't see any reasons to worry or be suspicious with chiropractors beyond what would be typical and prudent in any other encounter with any other medical professional.
The prejudice is based on their ignorance of science. In fact, traditionally, chiropractics totally eschews science in exchange for philosophy. This leads to chiropractors using techniques that have been shown to be harmful, such as doing spinal manipulation to fix nerve impingement, which is contraindicated by numerous studies. Additionally, there are still many chiropractors that are anti-immunization, another scientifically baseless position, but one that is dangerous for both the individual and society.
Insurance coverage is not an endorsement whatsoever. It is the effect of heavy lobbying on the part of chiropractors. Remember, insurance is not incentivized to do what is best for the patient.
On the other hand, problems with the practice are widely documented: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2012/may/14/dangers-...
that is outright fantasy.
"NIH is made up of 27 Institutes and Centers, each with a specific research agenda, often focusing on particular diseases or body systems."
My experience with a specific NIH's center - NCBI - and their work clearly correlates with it, they [ ie. their own researchers] are doing fundamental science.
The rest of your statements goes the same way.
may be now you do. Couple comments up - you obviously didn't as you so eagerly agreed with tghw's doubting what abnormal cervical curvature can be a problem :)
yep, it was a sole basis of you doubt. Even though tghw was outright trashing neck angle problem, you still supported the trashing because diagnosis comes from chiropractor. Evidence based reasoning coming from a future medical doctor i guess ...
> Chiropractors are notorious
... and more of it.
Precisely. What is your problem with this? Chiropractic is a pseudo-profession. It is well established in scientific fields as a pseudo-profession and it has done very little to try and shed this image, besides making ad-homenim (if you can call it that) attacks against the rest of science screaming of prejudice.
You wouldn't hire a pseudo-coder to build a program for you and you shouldn't pay a pseudo-doctor to treat you.
I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you didn't even look at my references (that you asked for) regarding chiropractic. That's okay. I understand you are a 'true believer', are not going to look at resources I have provided, and are not even really debating whether or not chiropractic is a worthwhile field of human endeavour; instead we are debating your belief. And I just want to say I am not challenging your belief, you are free to believe whatever you want. But I am not, in fact, suffering from Dunning-Kruger in this instance; I am not unskilled, in fact my entire tertiary study (10 years worth now) has been in science and healthcare. and the balance of evidence is against your position; which is what I supported tghw on; and was communicating to the greater audience on HN, including yourself.
To continue to claim that I am attacking chiropractic because I 'dont know' or 'don't believe' is an empty statement, because I understand the available evidence, and my statements in these posts have been consistent with the published scientific concensus.
Instead, one can look at NIH site:
http://nccam.nih.gov/health/chiropractic/introduction.htm
After that we can look at your statements:
>Chiropractic is a pseudo-profession. It is well established in scientific fields as a pseudo-profession and it has done very little to try and shed this image, besides making ad-homenim (if you can call it that) attacks against the rest of science screaming of prejudice.
yep, man, calling it a pseudo-profession in the face of NIH is a definition of ad-homenim. As well as calling 'true believer' people whose opinion is supported by NIH, yet contradict your own. Speaking about 'true believers' :)
On your link: It is a summary of chiropractics, along with a summary of studies discussing what treatments may or may not help. It is lacking substance and has no new information that was missing from the SBM links.
"The good thing about science is that it's true whether or not you believe in it." -Neil deGrasse Tyson
The guys clearly have an agenda, and their opinion of what is "non-scientific based medicine" clearly goes against NIH, a top medical research organization. One is free to pick a side, a top medical research organization or the alternative :)
> You totally failed to address the content of the article.
i didn't even planned on doing it. My word against SBM, even when NIH's word is supposedly not enough? Are you kidding?
>On your link: It is a summary of chiropractics, along with a summary of studies discussing what treatments may or may not help. It is lacking substance and has no new information that was missing from the SBM links.
exactly - summary by NIH is just some fluff that is "lacking substance". Man, i rest my case.
There are those I respect and there are those that are scam artists. The ones I respect are the ones that know the limits of their practice. The ones that are scam artists often use x-rays and neck angle to dupe people into "treatment" they don't need, using words like "natural healing power" and "life force".
The over-arching problem is twofold.
First, like many alternative treatments, there is very little real scientific research backing up their methods. Within chiropractics, they do studies, but they typically fail to meet scientific rigor in a number of areas, including controlling for bias and methodology.
Second, and much more worrisome, is that chiropractors are not medical doctors and are rarely trained to properly refer people when a problem is outside their area of expertise. I've seen this with both of my parents. My mother had knee pain, which the chiropractor (which was one of the ones I respected) insisted was an alignment issue. In reality, she needed a whole knee replacement, and suffered unnecessarily for a number of months before seeing an orthopod, because the chiropractor insisted he could fix it.
My father had severe shoulder pain, extending all the way down to his fingers, and eventually started losing functionality in that hand. Again, the chiropractor thought he could fix it. My father had a severely herniated disk which was impinging a nerve. Again, he suffered unnecessarily because chiropractors do not refer people when they're out of their element. Finally, a neurologist determined that surgery was the only way to fix the problem, which it did. He has regained 95% of the function of his hand.
I think chiropractors have their place and can help with some skeletal alignment issues, but there are significant problems with the industry as well, and people should be aware of them before going in.