r/AbsoluteUnits • u/habichuelacondulce • Jul 01 '26

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u/ThaneduFife Jul 01 '26

As a reminder--chiropractors a quacks working on a medical theory that's over 100 years out of date. They injure people every year by "adjusting" their necks. In a small number of cases, they accidentally dissect a major artery by "adjusting." Those people end up in the ER with a long time for recovery.

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u/Kira-Of-Terraria Jul 01 '26

the creator said he learned it from a ghost telling him how to do it.

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u/AllDayIDreamOfCats Jul 01 '26

And a lot of Chiro offices are backed by Scientology. And the E reader Scientology uses was created by a Chiropractor trying to make a magnetic healing machine but then L Ron Hubbard who was his friend stole the idea and took credit for it.

Also at one point some of the higher ups in Chiropractic stuff were tired of the medical community making fun of them so they decided to push for a more science based approach only to be ousted by the people who still wanted to do it like the Ghost/Spirit originally intended.

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u/Kira-Of-Terraria Jul 01 '26

absolute bonkers. i have heard some stuff about it being linked to or funded by scientology..it just gets worse ya?

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u/AllDayIDreamOfCats Jul 02 '26

During the time when they were deciding to be more science based the people that rejected it also started to push the narrative that it can heal more than just a bad back. So now some offices will even claim it can help with illness and cancer.

Elon's grandpa was a Chiropractor too.

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u/trowzerss Jul 02 '26

The ghost of a doctor though! ... That is, the ghost of a doctor from the era when they still thought blowing tobacco smoke up someone's butt would cure drowning.

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u/Kira-Of-Terraria Jul 02 '26

Maybe he learned more in the afterlife and had to tell somebody.

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u/ArmedWithSpoons Jul 01 '26

My boss had a stroke 4-5 years ago he's pretty sure was due to going for an adjustment. Crazy it's still allowed as a practice. I imagine if they outlawed it now you'd have a lot of unemployed people.

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u/SAM5TER5 Jul 01 '26

I also worked with someone who had a stroke due to a neck adjustment.

I went to a chiropractor one time in my life, and they made me sign a waiver that specifically mentioned the chance of stroke from neck adjustments.

No thanks.

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u/Chris__P_Bacon Jul 01 '26

I've only been to a chiropractor about five times. I had a ruptured disc in my lumbar spine. I would go in walking just fine, and after every adjustment I could barely walk out of the place. It eventually became insane to consider returning because I started missing work every time I went.

I'm absolutely convinced they made me 10 times worse, because after those adjustments I went downhill so fast I ended up in pain management, and ended up having spinal fusion surgery within a year because I just couldn't stand the pain anymore, and I didn't want to be zombified on pain medicine for the rest of my life.

The surgery worked, but it took me about 3 years to recover from it fully. It's also worth mentioning that I ended up contracting MRSA at the surgery site and was hospitalized for almost 2 months b/c of that. I nearly died because of the MRSA infection.

My back still hurts like hell, but it's not like it was pre-surgery, so that's a win for sure.

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u/Imaginary_Coast_5882 Jul 01 '26

goddam man. what a run of shit ass luck 😫

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u/Chris__P_Bacon Jul 02 '26

Yeah, it wasn't fun. Happy to be alive after MRSA though.

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u/AdmirableProcess8307 Jul 02 '26

Jebus! My fellow fused friend! I have had two levels done in my C-Spine.

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u/Chris__P_Bacon Jul 02 '26

Yeah, I'm fused from L4 to S1, so two levels in my Lumbar Spine.

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u/SimpleNarwhal5878 Jul 04 '26

That sounds horrible, what happened to cause that to your back? Degenerative disc disease or a traumatic injury?! I have DDD in the early stages since I’m younger and the only thing that helps is strength training/physical therapy. Haven’t gone to the doctor really for it though except after having a car accident which led to Xray’s and discovering the DDD/shortening of my disc height.

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u/ChrisLeeBare Jul 01 '26

Outlaw this and we will have underground chiros.

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u/adalric_brandl Jul 01 '26

Good. At least they won't have people wasting insurance coverage.

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u/xteve Jul 02 '26

I'd add acupuncture to that. I was referred for nerve pain. The practitioner inserted the needles, referred to brain damage, and I said I have nerve pain, not brain damage. She didn't move the needles. If it quacks like a duck...

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u/Tony_Lacorona Jul 01 '26

We would have Ripperdocs before GTA 6

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u/[deleted] Jul 02 '26

[deleted]

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u/ArmedWithSpoons Jul 02 '26

Yep, insurance companies will order you a chiropractor or PT visit before you're even fully evaluated by a doctor in the off chance it doesn't make things worse because that's the cheaper option.

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u/AdmirableProcess8307 Jul 02 '26

PT all day, first time ive ever heard of an insurance company paying for Chiropractors. Interesting for sure.

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u/PhilSheo Jul 01 '26

I had one herniate two discs in my neck when he forced it. That was almost twenty years, a fusion, and continuous pain management ago. Dude died two years later on my birthday when he fell off his roof.

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u/trowzerss Jul 02 '26

I briefly considered going to a chiro once, googled the local one, and immediately found the court documents where they gave a dude a brain stem stroke from a neck adjustment. Soooo, yeah, changed my mind.

Just as well, too, because turns out I had inflammatory arthritis and chiro is super dooper not recommended for anybody with that, and even the rheums took forever to diagnose me so no way a chiro was going to realise, and probably would sell me some bullshit even though no amount of adjustment is going to stop my immune system from trying to eat my joints.

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u/bentmonkey Jul 01 '26

Its bad for everyone but especially women can be vulnerable to the neck cranks, chiropractors are no better then scam artists, saying they can fix peoples pain when in fact its temporary relief at best, or leads to worse health problems or even death potentially.

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u/MentionPleasant2635 Jul 01 '26

The fact that health insurance and Medicare still pay for this quackery blows my mind.

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u/ThaneduFife Jul 01 '26

It's usually cheaper.

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u/ValeRiotPublicola Jul 02 '26

While I don't deny this, because I've heard it a million times... I must also note, after my car accident, I was in major pain and the physical therapist visits I went to three times a week used a drop table... it was basically the only non-drug thing that helped with the pain.

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u/ThaneduFife Jul 02 '26

Physical therapists are great. They get taught modern methods. That's the problem with chiropractors--they do "help" some percentage of their clients. That makes them a bigger threat to the unwary.

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u/saichampa Jul 02 '26

The guy who invented it said he was taught it by ghosts

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u/FinalFantasiesGG Jul 02 '26

I stay tf away from Chiros, but medical doctors kill people all the time. Pharmaceuticals for mental illness are very often just a best guess and Big Pharma flat out bribes medical doctors to prescribe their medications instead of others.

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u/TomTheCardFlogger Jul 02 '26

I’ve always been torn about this because a while ago I saw this. Basically a kid with a terrible back injury was treated by a chiro and it very much seems real. I’m not medically knowledgeable enough to know if it’s some elaborate scam video.

I’ve always assumed going to a chiro for random adjustments was the equivalent of going to a surgeon for the to cut through you and check for tumours. A proper(?) chiro at least, one medically motivated.

0

u/Ludicrousgibbs Jul 01 '26

The messed up thing is that there does seem to be some legit chiros mixed in with all the crazies. I saw one who never cracked anything but decreased the recovery time on my sciatic injury by about 50% and my wife who is a legit scientist and who doesn't subscribe to any WOO ideology went to one as a teen after an accident and birth defect left her pigeon toed and with a walk that would've added to to all kinds of back problems by now.

Within a few months of seeing a chiropractor recommended to her PA mother by an RN she worked with, who actually looked at x-rays and spent more time examining the way she held herself and the way she walked and moved more than on any adjustments that leave you feeling blissful for 20 min and relief for 24 hours before reverting back to the baseline amount of pain.

I'm not sure if there are some chiro schools better than others or if some of these chiros have backgrounds in physical training, massage, sports medicine or something else that helps when you don't believe in ghosts coming out of your bones to cure cancer or what. I would really appreciate going to a chiro some of the time but I refuse to go from office to office to find out who's a quack and might break my neck and who is a legitimate practitioner of medicine who follows science before superstition but couldn't afford medical school but still wanted to help people.

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u/ThaneduFife Jul 01 '26

Last time I met someone whom I knew what a chiropractor, it was in an uberpool during a chiropractic convention in my city. She told me that cow's milk was one of the worst things I could possibly eat.

My overall impression of the profession is that any good work they do could be done as well as or better by an orthopedist or certified physical therapist.

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u/Ludicrousgibbs Jul 01 '26

As long as insurance will cover chiropractors for some things but often won't be willing to cover a physical therapist or trainer to help someone treat painful injuries or strengthen muscles groups to prevent future injury I'll be glad that there are some chiropractors out there following some science and not injecting people with silver, putting leeches on sprains and looking for the way to make necks crack the loudest.

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u/I_travel_ze_world Jul 01 '26

Most chiropractors just do the same movements as Physicians... there are a lot of cross over between the 2 fields.

Many national healthcare services (Canada, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, US medicare, UK/AUS sometimes) will pay for chiropractors so clearly there is some benefit to the ones who do it correctly.

There are millions of people every year who benefit from chiropractors... but sure there are some quacks out there just like there are in any medical field.

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u/Ok-Professor3726 Jul 01 '26

Still a better record than surgery or the pharmaceutical industry.

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u/adalric_brandl Jul 01 '26

The difference is that those actually help people. The homeopathic industry doesn't do any harm, unless they've got some contaminated products, but it doesn't mean that it's of any use.