Current Events > Good Chiropractors are fucking insane

(+) Yeah! (+)

joe40001 posted...

(I could be wrong)

(Coughing fit of laughter)


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I can see why the TC needs a chiropractor with all the bending over backwards he's doing for them.

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If chiropracty worked it would be medicine

dolomedes posted...

the article referred to on the NCCIH wikipedia page that you ignored me quote from earlier.

Mielczarek, EV; Engler, BD (2012). "Measuring mythology: startling concepts in NCCAM grants" (PDF). Skeptical Inquirer. 36: 3643.

Thanks, sorry I missed it. Yes, some of the investigation find no benefits (I would not expect a benefit towards depression from acupuncture) but others do, which is why more research should be done. But that said research being unable to measure benefits of something is not proof such benefit doesn't exist, particularly in the context of other research which does show such benefit measurable.

It suggests that there are a range of factors and efficacy to the things being researched. And that is likely the case. So the question shouldn't be

Like if you've done 10 studies on prayer and it not once did anything scientifically measurable I agree we probably don't need to fun any more looking into it because there's not thing there, ditto for the other stuff that is bullshit every time it's tested.

But things like massage, acupuncture, chiropratics, etc scientifically measurable results are findable, and the strong anecdotal evidence is nothing to laugh either. So we should use that to motivate us to find the components of these alternative medicines that have merit and integrate them into medicine proper.

Laughing at them is counterproductive.

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https://journals.lww.com/anesthesia-analgesia
/Fulltext/2013/06000/Acupuncture_Is_Theatrical_Placebo.25.aspx

Here is an article discussing a literature review of acupuncture.

joe40001 posted...

This is from The Journal of the American Medical Association (a peer-reviewed medical journal)

I can look more into this article later, but frankly I have no idea of what control or placebo results should look like for either of the measures of efficacy listed.

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dolomedes posted...

yeah dude

you're ... getting it?

The bullshit being:
362 projects for diabetes (e.g. whether expressive writing reduces symptoms)
Does inhaling lemon and lavender scents promote wound healing?
Does prayer treat diseases?
Does distance healing improve outcome of HIV patients?
To study effect of prayer on glioblastoma
Can ancient Indian remedies control type 2 diabetes?
Can magnets cure arthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, or migraine headaches?
Use of coffee enemas to cure pancreatic cancer
Effects of Energy Healers on cholesterol-fed rabbits

Not the chiropractors where I literally just posted a study from a peer-reviewed medical journal.

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joe40001 posted...

Laughing at them is counterproductive.

I don't think anyone's laughing at the studies themselves. Knowing something definitely doesn't work is just as important as knowing when something does.

Chiropractics is just one of those things in the "doesn't work" category and anecdotes contradicting that finding are simply mistaken or biased.

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Rexdragon125 posted...

If chiropracty worked it would be medicine

You know there have been things that have been accepted treatments/medicines that have been pulled and also many things that weren't once accepted parts of medicine but were later part of medicine?

Medicine is not immutable, all the more reason we should follow science where-ever it leads us regardless of our prejudices.


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Tyranthraxus posted...

I don't think anyone's laughing at the studies themselves. Knowing something definitely doesn't work is just as important as knowing when something does.

Chiropractics is just one of those things in the "doesn't work" category and anecdotes contradicting that finding are simply mistaken or biased.

Again:
Peer reviewed medical journal:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28399251/

Findings: Of 26 eligible RCTs identified, 15 RCTs (1711 patients) provided moderate-quality evidence that SMT has a statistically significant association with improvements in pain (pooled mean improvement in the 100-mm visual analog pain scale, -9.95 [95% CI, -15.6 to -4.3]). Twelve RCTs (1381 patients) produced moderate-quality evidence that SMT has a statistically significant association with improvements in function (pooled mean effect size, -0.39 [95% CI, -0.71 to -0.07]). Heterogeneity was not explained by type of clinician performing SMT, type of manipulation, study quality, or whether SMT was given alone or as part of a package of therapies. No RCT reported any serious adverse event. Minor transient adverse events such as increased pain, muscle stiffness, and headache were reported 50% to 67% of the time in large case series of patients treated with SMT.
Conclusions and relevance: Among patients with acute low back pain, spinal manipulative therapy was associated with modest improvements in pain and function at up to 6 weeks, with transient minor musculoskeletal harms. However, heterogeneity in study results was large.

And that's not the only research that finds something in Chiropractics. Is it inconsistent? Yes. So are many Chiropractic techniques, does it intersect with foo foo nonsense? For some practitioners and patients yes. Should it be a replacement for traditional medicine? No. But based on the evidence is it accurate to say it across the board "Doesn't Work"? No.

On a more human level I don't see how anybody could see the woman in the video in the state she was in and the state she left in, know that she got at least weeks of relief from her obvious huge pain and weeks of improved function and just dismiss it as her somehow getting scammed by quackery.

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joe40001 posted...

You know there have been things that have been accepted treatments/medicines that have been pulled and also many things that weren't once accepted parts of medicine but were later part of medicine?

Medicine is not immutable, all the more reason we should follow science where-ever it leads us regardless of our prejudices.

And chiropracty has had decades to prove itself and it hasn't

dolomedes posted...

idk man i've taken grad level biology courses and i couldn't make any sense out of what you quoted earlier.

I linked to the paper, it's in The Journal of the American Medical Association, does you not immediately understanding it somehow invalidate that or suggest the journal made a mistake?

The conclusion seems pretty clear:
"Among patients with acute low back pain, spinal manipulative therapy was associated with modest improvements in pain and function at up to 6 weeks, with transient minor musculoskeletal harms. However, heterogeneity in study results was large."

"It helped in pain and function for up to 6 weeks but the results were diverse"

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dolomedes posted...

the peer reviewed article you posted has some concerning notes above it.
Erratum in
* Error in 2 Figures.
* Incorrect Data in Text.

and a concerning conflict of interest statement:
Conflict of Interest Disclosures: All authors have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest. Dr Shekelle reports receiving personal fees from ECRI Institute and UpToDate. No other disclosures were reported.

What are you claiming?

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dolomedes posted...

^ nah dude chiropracty is a sham

DeadBankerDream posted...

Chiropractioning should be illegal.

*chiropractic

Chicken posted...

This. My family all go to the chiropractor but they never actually get better. Its the perfect scam too. Youll always have to go back for more.

Not endorsing chiropractic but you could say this for many patients of any kind of doctor. Patients with chronic conditions. I have to take medicine daily to stay alive, for example. My doctor isnt scamming me though lol


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The full article is provided here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5470352/

Grading the Quality of Evidence
The quality of evidence was judged as moderate that treatment with SMT was associated with improved pain and function in patients with acute low back pain, which was downgraded from high due to inconsistency of results.
The quality of evidence was judged as high that SMT is commonly associated with transient minor musculoskeletal harms, although they may be equally common following non-SMT manual therapy.

It's worth noting that the study itself does not consider this strong evidence.

Discussion
The principal conclusion of this review was that SMT treatments for acute low back pain were associated with statistically significant benefit in pain and function at up to 6 weeks, that was, on average, clinically modest. The size of the benefit for pain (9.95 mm) is about the same as the benefit for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs in acute low back pain (8.39 mm) according to the Cochrane review on this topic. For function, the effect size of 0.39 is approximately equivalent to an improvement in the RMDQ score of between 1 and 2.5 points, using the range of SDs for the RMDQ in the included studies. However, heterogeneity was high, and could not be explained by differences in patients, clinicians, type of manipulation, study quality, or timing of the outcome. Evaluation of these differences was limited by the quality of reporting in the primary studies.

The research here suggests it is about as helpful as taking some ibuprofen in the short term. The high heterogeneity seems to mean significant differences in outcomes for subpopulations that they were unable to explain (based on context clues and some googling).

Limitations
This study has limitations. First, there were limitations in the quantity and quality of the original research. More studies were classified as low quality than high quality. Nevertheless, high-quality studies tended to report larger benefits. Second, some studies did not describe the manipulation in sufficient detail to allow application in practice. Third, there was significant unexplained heterogeneity. There were too few studies to use meta-regression methods to simultaneously test for variables possibly associated with heterogeneity. The most fruitful area for further research is likely to be assessing the role of patient selection and type of SMT on explaining heterogeneity in treatment effects. Fourth, the minimum clinically important difference for these outcomes has not been well established, raising questions about the size of the clinical benefit. Fifth, the possibility of publication bias exists, although no statistical evidence for it was detected.

It is somewhat suspect that the studies they considered higher quality also happened to report better results, particularly when they say this is lukewarm evidence in their conclusions. The other parts I bolded are just important caveats.

That was interested to peruse tbh.

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Jabodie posted...

The full article is provided here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5470352/

It's worth noting that the study itself does not consider this strong evidence.

The research here suggests it is about as helpful as taking some ibuprofen in the short term. The high heterogeneity seems to mean significant differences in outcomes for subpopulations that they were unable to explain (based on context clues and some googling).

It is somewhat suspect that the studies they considered higher quality also happened to report better results, particularly when they say this is lukewarm evidence in their conclusions. The other parts I bolded are just important caveats.

That was interested to peruse tbh.

Well I'm glad you looked. I don't think the journal would allow it to be published if they thought it came to false conclusions, looking at a few other random articles in the journal (about random topics) having somebody who has to report something for potential conflict of interest doesn't seem uncommon.

I have no problem with them pointing out and fixing small typo errors after the fact, I'm sure that any good journal probably does.

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Why doesn't the Veterans Administration treat Veterans with it???

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Chiropracty is literally quackery

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To be clear about the ibuprofen the comparison is not getting one adjustment vs taking ibuprofen once. So like getting ibuprofen level of relief without taking anything for up to six weeks is pretty good.

I admit it's lukewarm, but my main point is that a lukewarm thing is not cold, so to extend the metaphor, we should find the part of the practice of chiropractic that is providing these effects (the warm water) and then yeah throw out the proverbial cold water portion.

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I work in insurance and I love when I used to get chiro bills for applying hot and cold packs. People can probably do that themselves. Or when they bill for using an ultrasound to somehow magically help with pain.

OrangeShirt posted...

I work in insurance and I love when I used to get chiro bills for applying hot and cold packs. People can probably do that themselves. Or when they bill for using an ultrasound to somehow magically help with pain.

That is just them fleecing your company

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More anecdotal evidence of people having strokes after adjustments than what TC posted.

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KronoCloud posted...

More anecdotal evidence of people having strokes after adjustments than what TC posted.

Source?

[LFAQs-redacted-quote]


Perhaps typo is the wrong term when it's numbers, but the point is the conclusion remains exactly the same and all data online is completely up to date. Corrected errors in no way would invalidate scientific research.

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I had a car accident a few years ago that gave me bruised ribs and back pain for a month. I enjoyed the relief from the adjustments even if they were temporary for a few days.

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Let's get some actual doctors and scientists
@DarkRoast
@COVxy

BlueMage279 posted...

TC, this is a really really bad take. You can't say that because A occurs before B, therefore A caused B. You need evidence for that. And the efficacy of chiropractors isn't supported by evidence.

So somebody has a condition for 4 years says it's quite bad, get's treatment, has improved mobility and reduced pain, and you believe the most likely outcome is that it is a coincidence even when the patient self-reports that the change happened during and as a result of her visits?

The video itself is just one case discussion on a human level. If you want to talk about science we can talk about the journal article I posted.

For the record I acknowledge it could in theory be a coincidence (which is why I do talk in more scientific terms too in the general case) but when speaking of this specific case I think it would be remarkably improbable to be a coincidence localized over such a specific time window.

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BlueMage279 posted...

"A occurs before B, therefore A caused B"

That is a cartoonish strawman and you likely know that.

Reread the post, see if you can do a better job parsing it. I won't bother defending something I never said.

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BlueMage279 posted...

If chiropractic was a legitimate medical practice, you wouldn't need anecdotes to defend it.

Again, you are pivoting. When talking about a specific anecdote, we are indeed talking about that anecdote. And in that singular case the situation you were arguing for of extreme coincidence is quite improbable. Which is likely why you didn't explicitly claim it.

If you want to have a good faith discussion, you should likely make claims like "this is probably a coincidence" rather than only implying an coincidence and then deflecting when being called out.

If you don't want to discuss the specific situation in the videos then you shouldn't bring it up at all and instead limit your comments to the scientific articles posted.

That said, it is worth noting you have no clear explanation for the events in the video other than "coincidence". If you are making that claim, that's fine but you likely should take ownership of that.

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BlueMage279 posted...

lmao if your evidence of the efficacy of chiropractic is a single anecdote, then you failed. You don't understand a thing you're talking about.

Again strawman. I never claimed this video was proof, just a striking example.

BlueMage279 posted...

Also dude, the burden of proof is on you.
I could show you a video of someone communing with healing crystals for years and one day their ailment goes away. Is it your job to prove that the healing crystals didn't work?

Way to twist the events, the analogous situation would be somebody suffering an ailment for years and then after one commune with healing crystals their ailment going away. And if you shared such a video I'd look more into it (particularly if there were countless videos with similarly striking results). After viewing those videos I'd look into the scientific research. And yes, if some of the research showed light or moderate evidence for the efficacy of healing crystals I'd recommend we look into them further and no longer believe "healing crystals are definitely a nonsense bullshit scam"..

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joe40001 posted...

Way to twist the events, the analogous situation would be somebody suffering an ailment for years and then after one commune with healing crystals their ailment going away.

Wait why do healing crystals have to work immediately? What are you basing that on?

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did someone say...
crystals...?


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That was impressive!

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Tyranthraxus posted...

Wait why do healing crystals have to work immediately? What are you basing that on?

Because in the video she felt relief right after the treatment.

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Why doesn't the Veterans Administration over this to wounded Veterans???

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boshafty posted...

Why doesn't the Veterans Administration over this to wounded Veterans???

I don't know.

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The main issue I have is that while their manipulations will usually help in some capacity it does not address what is causing the issue in the first place.

I'm a big proponent of physiotherapists because they can do the same manipulations but also are involved in the process of strengthening your body to stop the problem.

I have no issue with someone seeing one for some relief from pain and allowing more movement in your body. However, physiotherapists can do that and more.

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joe40001 posted...

I didn't say watch the long ass video, I said look at her at the start of the first video and her walking around towards the end of the second.

She clearly has improved range of movement and clearly has greatly reduced pain.

My point of asking what witchcraft you attribute it to, is that there is a clear observed effect and if you completely dismiss the actions the Gonstead Dr engaged in as some kind of performance art or guess than how the hell do you explain it? You can't say "something huge happened magically" that's a far dumber guess than saying "ok, maybe some parts of the medical industry aren't flawless (see rampant opioid addiction from prescriptions for example) and so maybe them being like "it's always better to stick a metal rod in your back, which btw is the thing that gets people rich" isn't something to be taken completely unskeptically.

At the end of the day spend literally 10 seconds of effort to watch her in the beginning of the first vid and towards the end of the second and then come up with any explanation that isn't "ok maybe there is *some* merit to chiropractors."

She stated that she couldn't move her legs together in the first video, and then when she's up on the table, she touches her ankles together. It's a load.


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you chumps are aware that chiropractic is a pseudo science right

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ManicPlumber77 posted...

She stated that she couldn't move her legs together in the first video, and then when she's up on the table, she touches her ankles together. It's a load.

Are you claiming she's a paid actor or that she's lying and faking all this?

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