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
Pain management is a really big problem faced by many people in the modern world. Hard pain medication like opioids are scary, so if you see an alternative, lots of people are going to go for it. Chiropractice does have some real (if minimal) benefits in some types of back pain, and more than that, it **feels** like it should work. There are a lot of satisfying clicks and crunches, and in the aftermath you might feel a little bit better for a while. The placebo effect is real: if you believe something is going to work, there is a possibility you can see some improvement. That gets passed on anecdotally. On top of that, many people are aware that it has some vague Indian based spiritual practice component, and the idea of ‘lost native wisdom’ in alternative medicine is really alluring. When your choices might be as narrow as “addictive drugs” or “click-crack pseudo-medicine massage”, a lot of people are going to be interested in trying the latter.
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