Periodic reminder that you should never trust a chiropractor with your body under any circumstances
Chiropracty is a quack medicine in the extreme. It was invented by a guy in the 19th century who said a ghost taught it to him. It claims it can fix cirrhosis by cracking your spine. Chiropractors are one of the biggest groups keeping anti-vaccine fraud alive. Oh, and they can kill you doing a “routine adjustment”
Like I won’t go so far as to say “Ban chiropractors” because doing so would definitely backfire, but you should literally never ever under any circumstances seek their assistance for any health problem at all.
Since this is getting a few notes I may as well attempt to head off one of the inevitable objections that’ll show up if this gets far enough.
“If Chiropractic* doesn’t work, why does insurance cover it?”
Well, it’s very simple you see, insurance hates paying for things, and chiropractors are cheap as fuck.
Let’s say you injure your back scrubbing a toilet or something. You go to a real doctor, a good doctor who doesn’t blow you off. That doctor may tell you to take some Motrin and call them if it doesn’t get better, but they also might prescribe you a stronger anti-inflammatory, or a muscle relaxer. Your insurance has to pay out for the visit and the medicine.
Let’s say they do that and two weeks later your back still hurts. Your doctor orders an MRI. Your insurance now has to pay for an MRI, which can be a couple thousand dollars, well more than the premium you’ve paid this month, which means they’ve lost money on you.
So you’re lucky and the MRI comes back that you’re okay but you need physical therapy. That’s another couple grand that your insurance has to pay out.
But maybe you weren’t lucky. Maybe the MRI comes back and you have a herniated disc. You’re gonna need surgery and physical therapy, and now you’ve not only cost them more than your premiums bring in in a year, you’ve hit your annual maximum which means they have to pay everything from now on. They aren’t happy.
So let’s start back at the beginning. You injure your back, you instead go to a chiropractor. The chiropractor doesn’t have a decade of medical training, they have a certificate from a for-profit college that says they’re a chiropractor. They charge your insurance for an office visit, crack your back a bit, and send you on your merry way.
You might feel better for a while, because the placebo effect is more powerful than you think. But even if you do feel better, there’s still the chance that you’ve got damage. You may still need physical therapy, you may still have a herniated disc.
But if you keep going back to that chiropractor, they’re never gonna tell you that, and even if they do, it’ll be after 2-3 sessions, so 6-8 weeks at a minimum, during which time you’re putting more wear and tear on that injury, and eventually, you have to go to a real doctor.
But here’s where the magic happens. See, you injured your back in December. Now it’s February. Because your insurance put off sending you to a real doctor for two months, some actuary gets a big fat bonus for “reducing costs” in quarter 4. Meanwhile, your real doctor orders an MRI that shows that the damage is, in fact, much worse than it probably was to begin with. And there’s some evidence of injuries after the fact from the chiropractor. Oh, and by the way, there’s a chance you’re gonna be in pain for the rest of your life even with surgery.
But hey, your insurance managed to post a profit in Q4.
* “Chiropractic” is the “official” term for whatever the hell it is chiropractors do. I don’t respect it enough to use it unless I’m mocking someone who’s defending it.
I love how the notes on this are like, 60% “my friend in their 20s got paralyzed/had a stroke/exploded because of a chiropractor”, 39% “I didn’t know holy shit” and then there’s like four really loud people going on about how I’m being really mean and chiropracty totally works bro, you just have to find the right practitioner bro, they’re better at neck manips now bro, you’re totally not risking your life at them bro
My father, who is generally a very mild mannered and respectful type of guy but who is also an MD, will quack like a duck if anyone brings up chiropractors.
🦆🦆🦆
People now bring babies and pets to the chiropractor and they “adjust” BABIES and ANIMALS
Doctors don’t generally treat babies and adults because they have different issues
They certainly don’t do animals also???? That’s a whole different specialty
I cannot stress enough how fragile babies are holy shit these kids are going to live with issues for the rest of their lives if they’re not killed outright, it is absolutely child abuse
My father was an orthopedic surgeon, and his go-to recommendation book regarding chiropractors was Spin Doctors: The Chiropractic Industry Under Examinatio (2003), by Benedetti and MacPhail.
