Not directly Chiropractor related but I did see an interesting study that was in a similar line.
They were looking at correlation between back pain and abnormalities in the spine under xray and MRI.
well while lots of people with bad backs did have visual back issues, bulging discs, minor scoliosis etc, lots of people reporting NO back pain also had spinal ‘abnormalities’ and basically there was no statistically significant correlation. Its just that it turns out a lot of people have spinal ‘abnormalities’, so if you check someone with back pain there is a good chance they will have some, but they are unlikely to be the cause.
I think the same effect comes from chiropraction, everyone has these abnormalities, so if someone comes in with pain you’ll be able to find something.
I think Jordan Feigenbaum had a bit on this. He got a scan of his back done during med school for practise and they found a few bulging discs, despite zero back pain
A friend of mine was looking at different tools to help non-surgically treat injury and athletic performance. One of them was like a little sound/concussion based tool that actually reads the relative placement of each vertebrae, creates a virtual model of the spine, then using an alignment tool similar to an impulse driver-nudges each vertebrae into “better” alignment.
We demoed it on me over the course of about 8 weeks, and even though it did consistently show various locations of misalignment, I was never in any actual pain from them, nor was there any improvement from the treatment.
The actual cause was/is likely different amounts of muscle mass and tension on each side of the spine due to lateral dominance, work specialization, and generally just being. Superficially, our bodies are symmetrical. Up close, there is nothing symmetrical about them.
It sounds akin to one of those bracelets with a piece of metal in it that is supposed to improve your power and balance. Can’t remember what they were called but I still see them at conventions (or at least did pre-COVID).
Those and Faraday cages for cell phones “to reduce radiation exposure” are still popular where I live.
there was quite a lot of research work in the UK about back treatment via NICE, the org that is meant to define the NHS standard of care. the thing that sticks in my mind is that they found most of the specific treatment was ineffective or worse except for…exercise. and there was a nasty row because are you telling the depressed bad back guys to exercise you monster?!
everyone thinks, or pretends to think, that spending money as part of a relationship is fake, or whorish, or abusive. money is such a powerful force for all those things that it’s not surprising the culture developed a norm of pushing back against its influence in relationships.
but if you commit money to something, you’ve committed to it, and the commitment is clear.
a little story: a while ago I was chronically short of cash, and buying into a holiday involved both doing it cheap and timing booking when I had money available. this was seen as making me a bad person. later I had more money, and I recall sitting at a table in a pub with a beer and being asked about going away, and I fired up Kayak, put forward options, and booked right there on my phone. this was a big surprise as my girlfriend thought I had some sort of character flaw or psychological block about travel, and she was really astonished by the idea that it was just…
…Money
now part of the story here is taking up with a posh bird who doesn’t really grasp that you might not have any money, another part is being slack about money, but another is that money is a very clear commitment.
That person was thinking about eating them, and I’m over here wondering if dinosaurs weren’t extinct would we see something akin to The Crocodile Hunter, where we’ve got some older guy, on the Nat Geo channel trying to “dinosaur whisper” these mostly huge creatures into being reasoned with.
All I can think of is the show going something like this:
Host: “And here we have the massive Stegosaurus. Let’s get a zoom in on those huge exterior plates. Wooooowwww look at that. Alright I’m gonna try to get it to roll over.”
