Are most chiropractors really quacks?

I never dealt with chiropractors until this year. I had this unbearable pain behind my right shoulder whenever I used the mouse on the computer, and sometimes it would cramp up when I jogged.

My girlfriend suggested going to her family’s chiropractor. I went there, and on the first adjustment everything changed. Holy hell. The pain went away and I felt amazing. I could do normal things at my desk now without the pain, and the cramp never happened again when jogging.

Turns out I had kyphosis – aka, a hunched back. Funny enough, I somewhat suspected this when looking in the mirror, but wasn’t 100% sure since it wasn’t so severe. A couple years back, my general practitioner shrugged it off as some very slight scoliosis that I couldn’t do much about. But my chiropractor said it was kyphosis, and it makes sense given that my grandfather was also prone to having a hunched back, so it kind of runs in the family I guess, whereas nobody in my family ever had scoliosis.

I finished my treatment by now and went through a series of adjustments and the pain went away entirely. Not only that, but my chest has literally gotten wider. I first noticed when I put on a “slim fit” shirt that I normally wore. Turns out that I don’t fit most of my slim fit shirts anymore – my chest literally pops out below the top few buttons.

Then I realized the whole history of chiropractic and how modern medicine shuns it. I had no idea about it so I read and looked more into it. But I go back and forth on the pros and cons and trying to really judge it.

Yeah, it was founded on quackery, but I don’t think that should necessarily disavow any obvious beneficial treatments. Modern science evolved out of dubious efforts like alchemy. People can start things out of a wrong assumption, but then later on others can evolve it into a more rigorous basis.

And yeah – in theory it’s seemingly dangerous. You’re literally moving things around with your hands, and without any precise instruments. I keep seeing about how some small percentage of neck adjustments can make one susceptible to strokes in the future? That is something I am interested in learning more about.

But I told all this to a friend who lives in Europe and she said that chiropractic there is more positively viewed than in America. It seems that America has tied its chiropractic to more “new age” mumbo jumbo, while Europe doesn’t. That seems to make sense because although my chiropractor did a good job on me, he did express some “cringey” beliefs. He didn’t push any new age treatment or mumbo jumbo at all, but I could definitely tell that he might have some strong feelings about “mainstream science”. While he adjusted me one time, he said, “Some of these coronavirus rules don’t make sense. You can wear your mask here but not there.” He didn’t even fully understand how viruses and bacteria can linger on surfaces. I REALLY cringed at that and thought, “Just stick to fixing my back. Don’t do or say anything else.”

And so in the end, everything’s good now with my back. I’m able to do normal things again and no pain flares up, and I just have to be more mindful about my posture.

TL;DR VERSION
So do most chiropractors push some mumbo jumbo? Is that the same in America as it is in Europe? Was I just lucky and got a mostly reasonable chiropractor?