I’m a medical worker, and I’ve been trying to read about the history of chiropractice. It’s fascinating to me how the field was started as a spiritual practice. But with the background of chiropractic care being challenged by modern science, and spinal manipulation being disproven to have any benefits, how is chiro so mainstream today? It’s covered by health insurance, even though medical researchers are regularly publishing data that disproves the benefits. DISCLAIMER: IM NOT TRYING TO HATE ON ANYTHING, I’m genuinely interested in the history and how the practice became so mainstream with a somewhat unsteady foundation.
In: Biology
Short answer: it feeds off of the desire for a quick fix that’s easy. Just some pain and supposedly the pain is gone. That and its a lot less scary than surgery, a lot easier than physical therapy, and seems like its less debilitating than opioids.
The reality is most of the patients of chiro’s need physical therapy or surgery and are either unable to afford it or unwilling to accept they need to spend 6+ months to recover. Then they get the ‘quick fix’ and they go why would I believe these doctors the chiro fixed me. Then a few days later the same problem shows up again. The problem is they don’t connect that its a lifestyle behavior that needs correcting (new sitting position, walking gait etc) that PT can help with instead of getting popped, getting the endorphins and dopamine and feeling great for a few days.
Basically chiro’s became mainstream because people like a quick fix that doesn’t involve a ton of work and they complained to insurance companies enough that they started covering it.
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