Chiropractors

[Bama]

What's your take?

[My Flight Surgeon]

In what respect? Your question is very vague. Be more specific and I will give you an opinion.

[Bama]

Well their practices are very controversial.. In a broad sense, do you think they can help with alignment and pain?

Also, they claim to fix more symptoms than pain by re-organizing the body's alignment the way it "should be." Symptoms such as asthma, eczema, and etc.

I was thinking of a visit but didn't know if was all hot air or not.

[BobDDuck]

Preface with... Not a medical opinion...

That said, I've been going to various chiropractors for years for various stuff. Seems to work pretty well for me. Most of my problems stem from the fact that my hamstrings are slightly shorter then they should be. Hence they are very tight (even with daily stretching) and pull my hips and back out of alignment. That manifests it's self in causing stomach and digestive problems for me due to the constant tension from the muscles running from my spine across my rib cage and over my digestive system.

I've found that as long as I get my back adjusted (in a specific place) about every 4 to 5 weeks the stomach issues are manageable. Otherwise, it's game on.

Also, about 3 months ago I started getting sever head pain just above the right side of my jawbone, over and above my temple. Obviously, I was a little worried about it. My doctor said it was probably due to stress and maybe me clenching my teeth (probably when I was sleeping). He offered to prescribe something for the pain and something to relax the muscles, but I'm not a big fan of medicating symptoms and not issues so I passed. I saw my chiropractor a day later and he said it was probably my temperal (sp?) nerve that was getting agitated due to my neck being out slightly. Three clicks and a day later the head pain was gone (after about two weeks of it) and it hasn't been back since.

Again, that's just my take. My mother is very big into alternative health stuff (homeopathy, acupressure, reiki etc) and I was pretty much raised not taking mainstream meds, unless there was a serious issue such as stepping on a rusty nail, so maybe I have more faith in this sort of thing then others. I dunno.

[SeatClutcher]

I had a strange tension string going up my left leg and into my lower back a few years ago. A doctor told me it might be MS, or ALS. Wanted to do a $1,000 MRI. Scared the crap out of me.

A friend at college told me she had similar pain and that she visited a chiropractor and discovered it was a pinched nerve.

I went to a chiropractor who asked when the pain started, where it was, etc., and fixed it in two visits, saving me not only what would probably have amounted to a ton of medical bills I couldn't have paid, but severe and undue emotional distress. (My Grandpa had - and died of - ALS. I knew I didn't want it.)

More recently, after I'd been sitting lopsided (my fault) at a computer for months, my lower back started hurting. It got so bad that when Ian and I went for a walk one day, it suddenly went ZING! and I couldn't step onto or off of a curb without having to go really, really slow.

A chiropractor fixed that, too.

[Bama]

Hey thanks for the responses guys... never hurts to be a little skeptical.
peace

[MQAAord]

My dad was HIGHLY skeptical of chiropractors until he got hurt working on airplanes about 10 years ago. One visit to a Gonstead Method practicing chiropractor changed his opinion. Bill gets bad kinks in his neck from sleeping funny now and then, and one visit to a Gonstead Chiropractor and he's fine. He was extremely leery of seeing a Chiropractor too, until my dad convinced him to give it a try. Dad even got my mother to go! She hates doctors, dentists, and all things medical, so for her to go is a huge thing.

My father-in-law had a back issue last summer that hurt him very badly, the doctor's basically said it was something with a disc that they couldn't fix but gave him several very painful spinal injections of painkiller to help him until his body healed itself. Personally, I wish that he would have gone to Bill's chiropractor and seen if he could have helped him.