Quackery?

Before this week I’d never been to a chiropractor and quite frankly I felt there was a strong likliehood it was a bunch of bullshit. But late last week I pinched a nerve in my neck, it got all tight and was hard to sleep comfortably. I’ve had worse in the past, but my days were filled with robotic full-torso head turning when people called my name. I bumped into a chiropractor while at the gym and he said “come on down, I’ll have you in and out in 15 minutes”. Well, it took about 45 with paperwork but I had my first neck-cracking session two days ago with an x-ray followed yesterday by an x-ray review and 2nd neck cracking. The popping of the joints , particularly the neck, freaked me out. But I exhaled and let him do his thing.

So, I have to say that it worked. I wanted to be a disbeliever (and I don’t know that I’m a convert) but it really did seem to alleviate the pinching altogether. It’s a bit tender as the area of my left shoulder was pretty well seized up and it may take a couple days to come down. But the pinching is effectively gone and everything feels loosened up. Is this coincidence (would my body have arrived here on it’s own these past 3 days) or did it really work? It feels like the adjustments really did the trick but I don’t fully understand what’s going on.

This wikipedia article is an interesting read on the history of chiropractic care. I didn’t realize until reading it that it’s largely a Canadian/US form of health care. I’m thankful I’m out of pain and the gent I went to is suggesting 2 months of adjustments to fully address the curve of my neck (I’ll give him credit for a low pressure pitch). I’m probably like most people—the pain is gone and I’m fine going about my business without further adjustments but who knows.

Has anybody had any good or bad experiences with chiropractic care in the past? Is it a bunch of hooey or do you think it’s the real deal? Has anyone done a full set of adjustments like the 2 months I’m being offered?

3 thoughts on “Quackery?

  1. I frequent a chiropractor to deal with the minor hunch I’ve developed from years in front of a computer. I’ve got x-rays from the beginning of my treatment and then 6 month increments after that. The results are pretty amazing. My neck is transforming.

  2. Thanks, John. How long was the majority of your treatment. You reference 6 months — was that 6 full months of 5-days-a-week visits or something less? I’d love to know how long it took for you to see major results and what type of schedule you are one going forward. Thanks!

  3. I started going in March of 2006. I went three times a week for the first few months, then twice a week after a few more months, and once a week ever since.
    I’ve uploaded some x-rays they took on my first visit and then a year later. I’ll have another set taken soon.
    It’s nice to backup the perceived progress with actual pictures.
    http://flickr.com/photos/jwulff/tags/xray/
    I’d say I saw major results after 4 or 5 months. With smaller and more gradual improvements ever since.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s