Chiropractic Medicine

Has chiropractic medicine ever helped anyone with sleep apnea?

John From RI wrote:Has chiropractic medicine ever helped anyone with sleep apnea?

I'll bet there's someone who thinks it's helped him with sleep apnea. And there are probably some chiropractors who think they can help sleep apnea.

I used to have back problems and the chiropractor definitely gave me some short term relief from my back pain. I also got some long term relief, but it's possible that was just natural healing over time, or changes I made to my sitting and sleeping positions.

If the chiropractor helps you with back problems and you find a better sleeping position, that could help. I suppose it's possible you could sleep with your neck cocked wrong, or pain or bad alignment causes your muscles to tense up or relax improperly and cause air blockage. They might help that. I have my doubts in general.

I'm highly skeptical about chiropractors fixing anything other then back/neck pain, or closely related ailments. I do believe that they can help back pain if your pain is due to the problems they can fix. Some people won't be helped by them. I don't believe they have general health benefits unless you suffer from what they treat.

My Chiropractor uses a Intellipap Auto.. I helped him buy it. I would think if he thought Chiropractic medicine could fix it it,, he would not have bought his Intellipap. He also bought it out of pocket.

I have a wonderful Chiropractor. I've discussed my sleep disorder with him at length, and he never suggested chiro could help it. He is very supportive of cpap therapy as the gold standard treatment. He has been supportive and interested in my results. Of course, not suffocating overnight has led to more relaxed muscles which, in turn, has led to easier adjustments....so he has noticed the difference!

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Chiropractic is not Medicine, so "Chiropractic Medicine" is an oxymoron.

Breathe Jimbo wrote:Chiropractic is not Medicine, so "Chiropractic Medicine" is an oxymoron.

A neurologist friend would go ape if he ever saw those words "chiropractic" and "medicine" used in the same sentence. And he'd do so using multisyllabic Latin words and lots of abbreviations and much hand-waving. I asked him once what he thought of chiropractors. I learned to leave that subject alone whenever I am around him. From what I've experienced, I'm not surprised that some chiropractor might claim to be able to help OSA.

That said, I don't doubt chiropractry can help with back problems, sports injuries and sprains/strains. But so can therapeutic massage, which seems to amount to the same thing without pretending to be a branch of medicine.

Osteopathic medicine is about what chiropractic would become if it developed into a fully fledged school of medicine. But my GP is an osteopath, and if she had something better, I'm sure she'd have said so when I described my OSA symptoms and asked her to prescribe an APAP machine.

John From RI wrote:Has chiropractic medicine ever helped anyone with sleep apnea?

Has chiropractic "medicine" ever helped anyone?

Chiropractic therapy will help about 30% of people in randomized, blinded trials, which closely matches the well-documented "placebo effect". I don't think that's a coincidence.

PST wrote:

John From RI wrote:Has chiropractic medicine ever helped anyone with sleep apnea?

Has chiropractic "medicine" ever helped anyone?

Haven't you ever had a joint, neck, or back pain that went away when you moved in the right direction? Or even when you "cracked" it?

If you've got a back pain that benefits from being cracked in the right way, they can help. I used to have back pain at various spots in my back from time to time. My chiropractor would examine my back, find out the one spot where I felt the pain without asking me any questions, and crack the right spot to give me relief.

I'm skeptical about them fixing things other than back pain or perhaps leg pain. I can easily believe that problems in your back can cause you to feel leg pain.

However, if you have a problem that's not caused by back or spine problems, I don't think they're going to to you any good. They're are probably a lot of back and spine problems that aren't going to be helped by their treatment, either.

Unfortunately, a lot of Chiropractors think they can help stuff they can't.

Of course, a lot of M.D.s believe they can help stuff they can't, too. Think back to lobotomies, thalidomide, IUDs, heroin, and all the other things that were supposed to be good medical practice that are now realized to be bad for the patient. Think of all the foods that were supposed to be bad for us are now considered to be OK or vice versa. How many of the things M.D.s are commonly doing today will be realized to be bad or at least ineffective in the future?

This is a reply, but I'm not going to quote archangle because it looks like this will be the next post. I admit I overstated the case for the sake of a snarky reply. Surely there must be people who have benefited, but I keep my distance.

The pure, old-school chiropractors who believe that 90 percent of all disease is caused by subluxations of the bones of the spine are scary because they ignore more than one hundred years of science that includes the germ theory of disease, genetics, and all the rest. They are a minority now, but I'm not sure I like the modern, more empirical chiropractors much better. Many of them seem to embrace any fad that conventional medicine rejects, like homeopathy, acupuncture, or nutritional supplements, as if they adhere to the adage, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

I would never put too much reliance on one example, but I came away from my only visit to a chiropractor very amused by his use of the techniques of salesmanship, including the forced close. "Which of these gives you more relief, this (criiick!) or this (craaack!)?" He strove to get me saying yes a lot, so in the end I would have to agree I felt better. He would have been good at cross-examining witnesses. I left feeling that I had experienced as much mental manipulation as spinal manipulation.

Think of a chiropractor as a masseuse with some extra techniques at his disposal. If it helps, good, if not, try something else. I've had a lot of back pain that the chiropractor gave me immediate relief from.

I'm not going to go on some weird special diet or take general medical advice from a masseuse or a chiropractor.

Heck, I'm skeptical of the diet advice I get from the AMA M.D. doctors. (Other than the "lose weight," eat less junk advice.) The rest of their opinions of which food is good and bad has changed so many times over my life that it's a joke.

I think I jinxed myself with this thread. I haven't been to the chiropractor in years, since my back hasn't been hurting. Just a few minutes I was walking back from the bathroom, moved wrong somehow, and nearly fell down with back pain.