Comment by chneu
4 hours ago
Its a con that is trying very hard to become legitimate.
Chiros started as a scam, continued as a scam, and are now a widely accepted scam. The legit work they do is often just physical therapy.
Just go to a physical therapist.
This doesn't really make any sense, because the entire point of chiropracty is pain and function improvement. This is measurable by people. The Wiki page on the topic is loaded with vitriol and agenda, but the study [1] they relied on to try to discredit chiropracty concludes: "When spinal manipulative therapy (SMT) is compared to sham SMT/placebo, it may result in a small improvement in pain and medium improvement in functional status in adults with chronic low back pain. When compared to no treatment, SMT may result in a medium improvement in pain and a large improvement in functional status."
The issue they had is that the data were very noisy due to the SMT being conducted across different populations, with differing frequency, and differing application formats. In any case, if that's the worst our agenda-driven editor could dig up, then I can only conclude that chiropracty is, at the minimum, certainly not a scam.
[1] - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/41494147/
A physical therapist costs significantly more, which is why a lot of chiropractors in rural areas with a lot of manual labor are well looked upon. They are mostly just practicing physical therapy without a medical license which could get them in trouble if it wasn't considered chiropractic work. The pure quackery doesn't get them as far because most of their customers are too poor to regularly spend on woowoo crap.
In my area someone's insurance might cover the first 3-4 sessions of physical therapy, but nothing after that despite them needing it for longer. So the physical therapist will at the end of insurance billing send them down the road to do the exact same thing at the chiropractor for significantly cheaper.
In places without a lot of manual labor they are probably mostly just the quackery. Their clients are lots of hypochondriacs and office workers who really just need to get more exercise but are willing to find anyone who says they can make them better without significant effort. Im sure the massages and stretching does feel good though atleast, but im sure a massage parlor would set out some crystals and do a massage for cheaper.
It's a con like osteopathic "medicine". D.O. should be shunned and rejected because it's pretending to be legitimate and/or legitimized.
DOs are sorta weird in the US. They go to real medical school for 4 years like MDs and practice actual licensed medicine at the same level as an MD. They can even call themselves physicians.
Non DO osteopaths are not trained with any sort of scientifically backed curriculum.
I have a cousin who is a DO (in the US). It seems like it's basically an out to get effectively an MD with a slightly lower bar for admission.
Once you're in the program, it's basically the same as an MD program, and then you go through residency programs on an equal basis with MDs.
Its such a scam that professional sports teams all hire chiropractors to work on the bodies they invest millions of dollars into each year.
Yes, rich people get scammed too.
none of us is as dumb as all of us...