Chiropractors...snake oil salesman?

[Stevo]

Rip,

OK, here's yet another challenge to the conventional wisdom I've been brought up with. Following is a short list of items that I took as gospel & have now changed my thinking but need help on 3):

1)
THEN: squats create undue wear & tear on the back.
NOW: squats done with proper form cause no such injuries

2)
THEN: fat, milk especially, will plug the arteries resulting in a guaranteed heart attack
NOW: VLDL particles containing triglycerides & LDL particles carrying cholestrol are correlated strongly to heart attacks which are created primarily from consuming refined white sugar (aka "white poison").

3)
THEN: chiropractors are not doctors & are a joke
NOW: chiropractors provide a valuable service ???

[Mark Rippetoe]

You seem to be improving.

[nisora33]

Rip, I'm still having a tough time trusting chiropracters after having some bad experiences with them. Since then, i've read some pretty damning stuff about the profession in general, most of it on a website called Quackwatch. I'm not saying that there aren't legitimate uses for chiropractic and honest, effective practitioners out there, but in a market so saturated with chiropractic, imagine the desperation of some of these guys and gals to distinguish themselves and meet their bottom line. Walk into a lot of offices (those in the Tennessee area, at least) and just look at all the horseshit supplements some of them are pushing. Anyway, I thought you might find these "Quackwatch" articles interesting:

http://www.chirobase.org/

[Mark Rippetoe]

Yes, there are bad chiropractors. We have some amusing ones here. But need I point out that there are bad surgeons, attorneys, plumbers, and PTs, all of whom are licensed by some governmental entity which supposedly assures the public of quality in practice? Chiropractic as a whole is a useful approach to many types of problems, even if they are a bit fuzzy in terms of what they are actually doing and why. I like Dr. Homola's comments about "defining the proper limits on chiropractic" and "support[ing] the appropriate use of spinal manipulation but renounc[ing] chiropractic dogma". But they are less expensive than most other treatment modalities (if you know how to deal with their office people) which makes the good ones the default first-in-line for most common back injuries. This is why the MDs don't like them; this, plus the fact that they get to be called "Doctor" with a lot less time in school than the mainstream medical professions require.

[Tuesday]

Homela's book has received some hearteningly negative reviews of the "I have faith it's helped me" and "chiropractors are better trained than MDs" types:
http://www.amazon.com/review/product...rBy=addOneStar

But even after reading the book (a while ago, I admit) I'm not sure I understand the difference is between what a good chiropractor does and what a good PT or good masseuse does, or why the chiropractic approach is better than Stuart McGill's muscle and movement-based approach.

Additionally, if Homela has discarded effectively all of the ideology behind chiropractic in order to rid the profession of the fluff, I'm not sure why he calls what he does "chiropractic." It's sort of like an atheist calling love or energy "god."

[TravisRussellDC]

Actually, the Chiropractic program is no less time in school than medical school. I went through 9 years of college following high school. Chiropractic college is a 3 & 1/3 year proram after undergrad. However, we operated in trimesters and were in school straight through the summers. This translates to 5 academic years post-grad. Plus, our average credit hour load per trimester was 30+ hours, more than double full time undergrad credit hour requirements.

Here's a copy of the curriculum I went through, nearly 5000 contact hours.

http://www.logan.edu/DocumentUploads...curriculum.pdf

And in actuality, the market is nowhere near saturated with Chiropractors. There are about 60,000 licensed Chiropractors in this country serving approximately 10% of the population. Compare that to the number of MDs, PTs, lawyers, etc.

And the guys who run quackwatch are highly suspect. They misrepresent the Chiropractic profession and are better compared to conspiracy theorists than to actual non-partial reporters.

That being said, I will be the first person to state that there are some very poor Chiropractors out there. I graduated with some of them.

[Polynomial]

Actually, the Chiropractic program is no less time in school than medical school. I went through 9 years of college following high school. Chiropractic college is a 3 & 1/3 year proram after undergrad. However, we operated in trimesters and were in school straight through the summers. This translates to 5 academic years post-grad. Plus, our average credit hour load per trimester was 30+ hours, more than double full time undergrad credit hour requirements.

No. Assuming that you finish college at 22, and do even 4 years of Chiropractic college, you leave when you're 26. Majority of doctors that graduate college at 22 have a hard time getting a job before they're 30.

And if you think want to know how hard doctors have to work through the first few years of school, take a look at the level 1 exams that they take after 2 years of medical school.

Don't get me wrong, I think that chiropractors are extremely useful, and recently there have been many studies (check out pubmed) demonstrating great success of incorporating chiropractors in mainstream medicine. But I'm still going to call bullshit on the whole 'same amount of schooling as doctors.' And yes, residency is part of schooling, so it's useless to start talking about these little technicalities.

When chiropractors graduate in their 30's with 200,000+ dollars in debt, having done many 36 hours shifts where they're part responsible for people's lives, only to be hit with shitty holiday schedules for the first few years on their new job, then we'll talk.

In any case, I'm really fond of Rip's advice on the whole subject: doctors and chiropractors are just consultants. If you don't like what you get, go see a different one.

[gman]

Actually, the Chiropractic program is no less time in school than medical school.

I hate to disagree with you, but medical school is 4 years followed by residency that is anywhere from 3 to 7+ years, depending on your specialty. That translates to a minimum of 7 years at 80+ hours per week, or theoretically 14 years if you were to "only" work 40 hours per week.

The only time off I got was 6 weeks between my first and second year of medical school, otherwise you get 1-2 weeks off during the summer while in medical school, and no time off except a couple of holidays, if your lucky, during residency. Most of those years were 80+ hours per week.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining or trying to take anything away from your profession, just wanted to set the record straight.