Eating a salad get to the bottom and there is a human hair. Not mine. What do I do? At a restaurant.

I think chiropractors are considered woo because the guy who developed it claimed he cured a man's deafness by manipulating his neck.

And that something called subluxation is the sole cause of all ailments and illness in people and spinal manipulation is the only cure for all those diseases.

I think it's been demonstrated that chiropractic works for the lower- and mid-back, because shit gets out of whack. (The upper back and neck are dicier, because if something gets adjusted wrong, you are fucked unto the Lord.)

The sketchy part is when they tell you that you need adjustments every week forever to keep things in working order. OR when they claim that chiropractic can cure or fix anything other than some parts that are out of whack (say, from years of sitting on your foot, not that my hip would know anything about that). Because adjusting a vertebra will not cure a cold.

But from a biomechanical sense, chiropractic can help some things about as well as PT can.

Yep, what everyone else said - adjustments curing colds and deafness is pretty woo, but a fair amount of it seems pretty commonsensical.

I got a neck/shoulder adjustment once and it was pretty amazing - something horribly awry in one shoulder, that laughed mockingly at ibuprofen and heat and ice and a lengthy massage by a very gifted friend; then another acquaintance, a PT with some chiro training, offered to give it a try. She spent a few minutes poking and prodding both the wrecked and the normal shoulder, and then she did something fast and super-painful, and then the pain by-God vanished, completely. That's my kind of woo.

Timelies all!

Need to clean the house, since we are having a party tomorrow night. Got a big case of the "don't wanna"s, though.

Yeah, my acquaintance the chiropractor made my back feel great, but also told me that what he was doing would help my digestion and the fact that I was boy-crazy.

well, I decided to speak to the manager about it. It was at a Panera, and I told him overall I was "having a bad visit." they didn't put the dressing on the side of my salad initially, so they had to remake it, and then I was charged for chopped egg, that wasn't on the salad, so I just was not particularly happy.

He wanted to get me another food item, but I had already eaten almost all of my salad and all of my soup.

He gave me a refund on the entire meal and apologized!

Most physical therapists I know talk mad shit about chiros. PTs believe their job is to help patients improve over the long haul while chiros give short-term benefits and make patients come back repeatedly. I am not sure what I think (never having been to a chiro) but the PTs point of view amused me.

I think EM's periodic chiro appointments over many years are what wrecked her neck. She was never in a bad accident but her neck would periodically get stiff and she'd go and get an adjustment. I suspect those wrenching adjustments broke down her neck and caused her chronic pain.

And then there are stories like this:

I'm a grad student in neuroscience at a major hospital. My adviser is a MD PhD neurologist. Every week, there's a morning case conference where all the neurology attendings and residents get together and present all the new cases that have come in in the past week.

Every single week with little or no exception, one of those cases is someone who died or became a paraplegic due to the actions of a chiropractor.