Raz: Crippled.

[garbon]

Building better lives through pharmaceutical products.

[Fate]

How would the testicles be effected by back pain?   

Metastatic cancer to the spine...

[Fate]

I did that when I had severe back pain about ten years ago.

Thank god I did.  Ten treatments later, I was done and never had the problem recur.  It's not as dramatic as the kidney transplant scam, or the LASIC scam, but it is as good, if you have the right chiropractor and the right problem.

For lower back muscle problems, something like http://www.amazon.com/Zewa-Body-Relax-Relief-System/dp/B002L6LXQG/ref=pd_bxgy_hpc_text_b works pretty well.

I have really mixed feelings on chiropractors. I mean on one hand if you actually read about them, there are some serious scam warning bells and some really dicey stuff that goes on. For example when my wife was in medical school two guys were forced out due to failing too many courses, both became chiropractors. That's apparently a somewhat common source of practitioners of chiropractic. (Now, FWIW, because medical school is so difficult to get into even the rare guys who flunk out aren't idiots, they probably had 3.5-4.0 GPAs and strong general academic performance to get in, and would have had to pass fairly difficult biology and chemistry courses as an undergrad.)

The problem I think a lot of people have with chiropractors is historically they were strong advocates of "manual manipulation" as a "holistic health treatment." Basically they believed that by subjecting a patient to manual manipulation it could fix a wide variety of ills, not just stuff relating to the musculoskeletal system. That aspect of it is pretty much baseless woo, and unfortunately some chiropractors still practice in this trade. Even worse, some of the ones who do this stuff do really risky "manipulations" to the neck and other areas and have actually inadvertently fractured people's necks and etc.

On the other hand, over the past 30 years chiropractors as a field have moved away from that by and large. Many of them are more about specifically treating musculoskeletal problems and some specializing in sort of helping coordinate general physical therapy and etc in conjunction with what they do themselves to get you back in shape. Apparently that part of it is genuinely respected and accepted as legitimate by "real" doctors.

Just as a side point, while my wife is an MD, a lot of people she works with (including several surgeons) are DOs. The only real difference between the two medical schools (DOs for anyone who doesn't know are fully licensed physicians who can become surgeons or any other type of specialist physician you can imagine, with all the same authority and licensure) is DO schools still teach manual manipulation--because they got their start at the end of the 19th century by a guy who practice manual manipulation as a "holistic healthcare" system. DOs have long gotten rid of that woo part of it, but they still learn a lot of chiropractic techniques and generally stand by their effectiveness.

Grumbler's pain most likely would have disappeared in the absence of any treatment. What he went through is the placebo effect. He'll never admit to it and that's quite fine, but that's what the science shows.

Most of them shouldn't be near patients. Their profession is a hot bed of anti-vaccination fanatics that poison the well and actively hurt public health in the United States. Fine, practice your voodoo all you want but don't fucking try to convince parents that their kids should get spinal manipulation to cure Johnny's asthma and that vaccines cause autism or cancer.

Try to get a double blind randomized control study for effectiveness on most of their "procedures". It never happens because they don't want their practices put under the same microscope of scrutiny that aspirin or any other medical intervention is put under. They do not believe in the scientific method.

[garbon]

Most of it is placebo. Grumbler's pain most likely would have disappeared in the absence of any treatment. He'll never admit to it and that's quite fine, but that's what the science shows.

Why would he admit that it didn't help him if no one can speak definitively on his case in either direction?

[Fate]

Most of it is placebo. Grumbler's pain most likely would have disappeared in the absence of any treatment. He'll never admit to it and that's quite fine, but that's what the science shows.

Why would he admit that it didn't help him if no one can speak definitively on his case in either direction?

He's bought into the religion. Correlation does not equal causation. The natural history of his disease resolved around the time he started getting spinal manipulations. The lack of double blinded RCTs to support most chiropractic interventions speaks in my direction.

This is similar to how parents swear vaccines cause autism. The time when you start to notice developmental delays occurs roughly around the same time babies are at the pediatrician getting their vaccines. Yet studies show no difference in autism rates in the presence or absence of the MMR vaccine. These parents, like grumbler with his pain, will believe the lie until their death beds.

[Barrister]

Fate's embrace of chiro-hate has caused me to question my own chiro-hate.

[Fate]

Fate's embrace of chiro-hate has caused me to question my own chiro-hate.

I also believe that vaccines are the greatest medical development in the history of man kind and that physicians should practice evidence based medicine. I hope you don't start questioning those things as well. 

[DGuller]

Try to get a double blind randomized control study for effectiveness on most of their "procedures". It never happens because they don't want their practices put under the same microscope of scrutiny that aspirin or any other medical intervention is put under. They do not believe in the scientific method.

How would you do a double-blind study of chiropractic procedures?  What would you do to the control group, crack their knuckles?

[garbon]

Most of it is placebo. Grumbler's pain most likely would have disappeared in the absence of any treatment. He'll never admit to it and that's quite fine, but that's what the science shows.

Why would he admit that it didn't help him if no one can speak definitively on his case in either direction?

He's bought into the religion. Correlation does not equal causation. The natural history of his disease resolved around the time he started getting spinal manipulations. The lack of double blinded RCTs to support most chiropractic interventions speaks in my direction.

This is similar to how parents swear vaccines cause autism. The time when you start to notice developmental delays occurs roughly around the same time babies are at the pediatrician getting their vaccines. Yet studies show no difference in autism rates in the presence or absence of the MMR vaccine. These parents, like grumbler with his pain, will believe the lie until their death beds.

I think you are over analyzing what he posted.

[merithyn]

DO's do offer a refreshing alternative to the current "script first, ask questions later" methodology of a lot of today's medical schools.  The DOs I've met have been pretty down to earth, too.

Because I grew up in Des Moines - home of one of the better DO medical schools in the country - and the hospital my mom worked at was a DO hosptital, all of my doctors were DOs. It was quite a culture shock to move to Chicago where they're all MDs. The only MDs that I've found that follow the DO methodology are those from India or Africa. They look at medication as a last resort, not the first, and they often try to find the root of the problem instead of just treating the symptoms.

[garbon]

DO's do offer a refreshing alternative to the current "script first, ask questions later" methodology of a lot of today's medical schools.  The DOs I've met have been pretty down to earth, too.

Because I grew up in Des Moines - home of one of the better DO medical schools in the country - and the hospital my mom worked at was a DO hosptital, all of my doctors were DOs. It was quite a culture shock to move to Chicago where they're all MDs. The only MDs that I've found that follow the DO methodology are those from India or Africa. They look at medication as a last resort, not the first, and they often try to find the root of the problem instead of just treating the symptoms.

We already know about how your body talks to you.

[merithyn]

We already know about how your body talks to you.

Paying attention to how my body works has saved my life at least twice. If you want me to apologize for that, you'll be waiting a long while.

[garbon]

We already know about how your body talks to you.

Paying attention to how my body works has saved my life at least twice. If you want me to apologize for that, you'll be waiting a long while.

Not at all. Hearing your hippy thoughts on medicine:

[Barrister]

Fate's embrace of chiro-hate has caused me to question my own chiro-hate.

I also believe that vaccines are the greatest medical development in the history of man kind and that physicians should practice evidence based medicine. I hope you don't start questioning those things as well. 

I certainly do.  The greatest medical development in the history of mankind is very clearly antibiotics, and to say otherwise is madness.

The idea that there is something to spinal manipulations being an effective treatment for lower back pain is intriguing.  It's really because of chiro's ongoing connection to all that other mumbo-jumbo that gives me the biggest problem with chiropractic treatment for back injuries.

[Fate]

Try to get a double blind randomized control study for effectiveness on most of their "procedures". It never happens because they don't want their practices put under the same microscope of scrutiny that aspirin or any other medical intervention is put under. They do not believe in the scientific method.

How would you do a double-blind study of chiropractic procedures?  What would you do to the control group, crack their knuckles?

Essentially, yeah. You'd use sham procedures.