Understood, and I hope that I have tread carefully. It is difficult for me not to mis-step since different chiropractors can have quite different practices. Surely, there are various degrees of "cheating" among all practitioners, but it is rare to find say, a licensed gastroenterologist that is an outright quack and by definition, impossible to find a legitimate homeopath. What makes it hard to talk about chiropractic is that while it started out as a psuedoscience by a man named D.D. Palmer who claims to have restored a man's hearing by adjusting a lump in his spine and believed that spinal subluxations were the cause of almost all disease, there are many different factions within chiropractic today, some of which are trying to bring legitimacy to the field.
It is clear that unlike homeopathy and acupuncture, there is at least plausibility to the use of spinal manipulation for certain issues. I feel that the main objection of the skeptics is that the chiros are currently not doing a good enough job policing their own field and building consensus, and thus you never quite know what you're going to get when you pluck a random chiro out of the phone book.
Luckily, I don't think I have an issue with anything you've said Indigo.
(though I admittedly don't know enough about either of those situations). The kind of crap I'm talking about are chiros that do spinal manipulations on infants to treat colic.
Back to Mitch tho; I would recommend some of the following if you're interested
If you only check out one thing, I'd make it the interview with David Seaman in podcast #88 of the Skeptic's Guide to the Universe. He's an evidence-based chiropractor who comes on to talk about some of the differences and disagreements between the chiropractic factions. It's probably one of the most fair skeptical treatments of chiropractic you'll find. Most others tend to be more dismissive of the entire field, likely for the reason I listed above.
http://www.theskepticsguide.org/archive ... d=1&pid=88Also the following few written things are decent if you have time, though even I have to admit I haven't read through all of both:
http://www.skepdic.com/chiro.htmlhttp://www.chirobase.org/01General/skeptic.htmlhttp://whatstheharm.net/chiropractic.htmlA couple of the big takeaways I get out of it:
* Do NOT submit to manipulation of your neck (cervical vertebrae). It carries the highest risk of serious injury with the least evidence of benefit.
* If you're going to get better with neck & back pain, you should get better within the first few visits. If you don't, at that point the chiro should be referring you out.
"What I really don't understand is what kind of recipe do you want because you talked about porn, phones and cooking and I became lost" - Vega
"Fate loves the fearless" - James Russell Lowell
Going on 2 weeks now, constant pain in my back and sharp pains in my neck. It's gotten bad enough I can not hold my head up at times because it hurts so bad, and the pain makes me sick at my stomach. Trying to avoid muscle relaxers and doctor visit but gotta get by til wednesday (payday), then will try a chiropractor (providing my insurance will cover the visit or he doesn't cost too much). Hope that helps rather than the pain / muscle relaxer meds that make me feel like crap.
