And as for the pilates, Alexander book, look for "The Mind Body Workout" at amazon UK or elsewhere.
Posted on 01/01/2005 7:13:21 AM PST by aculeus
And as for the pilates, Alexander book, look for "The Mind Body Workout" at amazon UK or elsewhere.
I wish I could remember the name of her teacher - she's told me several times, but I can't dredge it up right off hand.
Not really. Knowing chiros as I do, I those that I have known have all said that medical practitioners have their place and physical healers do as well. It is the horrible chiros that think they can treat all things.
I never said that chiropractors say or think that they can prevent all disease, much less treat all disease. What they are absolute about, and cannot be swayed by evidence on, if they accept what they have been taught, is chiropractic theory.
Despite what chiropractors may think, conventional medical practitioners do not “have their place" in any absolute sense. The minute there is a really effective anti-cancer drug cocktail equivalent to multi-drug treatment of cancer, every specialist cancer surgeon in this country – and, hopefully, the world – is out of a job, and just like the old TB surgeons will have to move on to another area of medicine. By contrast, true chiropractors will always believe there is a place for their manipulations regardless of any medical advances.
This is a little exaggerated because there is a chiropractic college in LA that also teaches a lot of massage and acupuncture. What other chiro schools are responding to the research linking the manipulations with strokes by mostly switching over to safer treatments like massage and acupuncture? None that I know. Until they do start letting scientific research findings continually change their treatments, I’ll still consider them quacks.
Here are my two chiropractor stories. I'll make them as brief as possible.
1. As a wild and stupid youth I dove off the roof into a swimming pool and hurt my back horribly. I slept standing up, couldn't walk the next day and my roommate took me to the hospital. They laid me on a table, lifted my legs, and told me I'd sprained my back, and that there was nothing at all I could do about it but lie still for a couple weeks. Charged me $85 (which was A LOT of money in 1977, probably equal to about $250 today) and told me to go home. This was bad news. I was a college student, waitressing to work my way through school and to pay the rent. I simply could not afford to "lie still for a couple of weeks," though medical doctors told me I had no other alternative.
Long story short, though strange circumstances, the next day I was referred to a chiropractor. He had me up, walking, and going back to work in one day.
2. Years later, in my late twenties, I still thought chiropractors were mostly quacks. I'd had a chronic problem with horrible itching in my right ear, eye, and nostril, for a couple of years. Saw many docs and specialists, exrays showed congestion in my sinsuses, they had no idea what caused it and could only stifle the symptoms with drugs that were very expensive and had awful side effects. My mother saw that the cure was almost as bad as the affliction, and referred me to her chiropractor. He was a handsome guy with an Australian accent whom I knew was a quack taking advantage of my mom. But she said she'd pay, so I went to see him and told him about the chronic inner ear itching and runny nose and running eye on the right side of my head.
He took some exrays of my back. He pointed out where the top vertebrae in my neck was tilted to one side. Then he asked in passing, "Do you also get hay fever?"
I regarded hay fever as a fact of life. Every spring I put up with it by eating those pills that help mask the sneezing, burning, etc. I didn't tell him that, though. I just said, "Yes." He said, "Maybe we'll be able to do something about that, too." Then I knew he was a quack.
My low opinion was further enforced when he asked me, "Do you often get bladder infections or yeast infections?" Odd question -- no to the latter, but as regarding bladder infections, there again I simply lived with them -- they were a fact of life. Over the years I had seen doctors and a urologist (very unpleasant experience!) and they had run expensive tests and prescribed expensive medicines, none of which had any permanent effect. I had lived with chronic bladder infections since I was about 17 -- about ten years. Sometimes they were so bad my pee was pink with the blood, and they hurt like hell. Aside from the medicines, I drank lots and lots of cranberry juice. It helped a bit, but man I got sick of cranberry juice.
Again, however, I didn't tell the chiropractor any of that, I just answered, "Yes, bladder infections." He pointed to an area on my exray showing some vertebrae in my lower back that were off kilter, and said, "Maybe it's caused by this mess down here. Maybe I can help with that, too."
Hearing that, I became convinced that this guy was a quack supreme -- fix hay fever and bladder infections? How he knew I suffered from them was probably a lucky guess on his part. But my mom was paying, and I had nothing to lose ...
Guess what? I have NEVER had hay fever since I was treated by this guy, over the course of a year or so, some 20 years ago.
The only time I had a bladder infection since, was about ten years later. By that time I'd moved to another city. The returning bladder infection motivated me to hunt down another chiropractor who used the drop-table method -- NO electric gizmos, no shock treatments, ONLY the laying on of hands. I finally found one, and voila, bladder infection went away and I have not had any since.
As for the original ailment of the jaw, ear, eye, and nose, it nearly disappeared; I still suffer from itching in my ear above my jaw, but only the mildest, merest traces. No runny nostril, no weeping eye.
Medical doctors are a neccessity, especially for women. My new gyencologist asked me about previous doctors, who had I seen? I said a couple of chiropractors. She gave me a very stern look and said, "Never, ever go to a chiropractor."
I have never, ever been back to her office. If she's that ignorant, then I'd be stupid to trust her with my health.
I am sure serious cardio problems can't be in what I am about to describe, but I can tell you that after suffering anxiety attacks that turned out to be directly related to my mitral valve prolapse.
I started to go to a chiro. I don't know why, to relieve tension mainly because of the anxiety attacks). Even though my mitral valve bothered me steadily for 8 years, I never had a problem with it or anxiety attacks after I started to see the chiro.
"Waitaminut. SHE scams for insurance money and it is the chiropractor who is at fault?? It is your neighbor who is the criminal."
Neither are criminals, per se. Point is, my neighbor wasn't really hurt, but in order for her lawsuit to proceed, her lawyer suggested regular chiropractic visits to establish "pain and suffering".
My wife has pretty bad asthma. One of the resulting injuries asthmatics can suffer is bad spinal alignment. Our chiro doesn't "cure" her asthma, he just helps keep her body in such shape that it doesn't have as much of an affect. She uses her inhaler infrequently because of his help. He never says that he cures asthma, but people who don't like chiros try to say that he does.
My chiropractor girlfriend is sitting next to me as I type. No, they don't study pharmacology because they don't practice that way. As far as anatomy goes, they take the same gross anatomy as MD's - cutting up every inch of a cadaver. Chiros' also take many more hours of neurology than do MD's, again because it fits their model of practice.
I assure you, it's a rigorous course of study, 4 years post graduate, plus clinical and internship work. This is not a massage school degree.
MD's philosophy of medicine requires different coursework than do chiropractors. Evaluate these methods based on their results, not the syllabus.
"A continual lie. Medical doctors are more likely to be involved with medical insurance fraud than anyone. "
What chiropractors (usually) do is not fraud. While not entirely honest, it isn't illegal either.
They simply form a purported medical basis of a "pain and suffering" lawsuit. Most Medical Doctors are just harder for lawyers to convince to participate - and most, being professionals, expect to be paid for their services on something other than a contingent basis.
Chiropractors are perfect for lawyers. So until frivolous lawsuits are prosecuted as fraud, Chiropractors aren't comitting fraud.
Why do i get the feeling you are making fun of me? :P
thanks Veto!
You make a valid point.
Or perhaps we could use as judges people on Free Republic who may not have any experience or knowledge of a subject, but are simply relying on personal prejudice?
Not in the least. They are trained to ask those questions in order to make you think you are getting more for your money. Doesn't change the treatment one iota, any more than the x-rays.
Medical doctors are a neccessity, especially for women. My new gyencologist asked me about previous doctors, who had I seen? I said a couple of chiropractors. She gave me a very stern look and said, "Never, ever go to a chiropractor."
I have never, ever been back to her office. If she's that ignorant, then I'd be stupid to trust her with my health.
Maybe she'd had a patient who got a stroke after seeing a chiropractor. Or maybe she just believes in the principles of her profession and doesn't hide them to ingratiate herself with patients, as would a well-trained chiropractor. Instead, I presume, you prefer physicians who tell you what want to hear.
Now, I'm presuming here that you're open to hearing from other posters who don't tell you what you want to hear. If not, you have my apologies.
I would think tort reform would be a better way of approaching this problem. I admit to being glib with that last answer...:)
I think you have information that you have gotten from stereotyping chiros, not from factual information. You make it sound as though chiros do nothing but sit around waiting for a lawer to include them in a traffic accident lawsuit, that, and chiros are normally succeptable to such things.
I don't know where you got that idea, other than from TV, but it simply isn't true.
Heh, I have been reading some of the responses on here, and it sounds like this type of thread has been started before, many times, with pretty much the same types of responses from people.
Well, I admit to getting sucked in.
"I think you have information that you have gotten from stereotyping chiros, not from factual information..."
are you accusing me of being an anti-chiroite??
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