Do Chiropractors Break Necks? “Dr.” Greg Malakoff (Chiropractor/Neurologist, Board Certified) provides an answer

Do Chiropractors Break Necks? This is an interesting question. “Dr.” Greg Malakoff (Chiropractor/Neurologist, Board Certified) provided the following answer (never mind that he seems to mean ‘do chiros cause strokes?’):

… The total disinformation that seems to be republished monthly on the news concerning chiropractors and strokes is based on a study performed in the 1950’s, that has been totally discredited.  However, students these days are rather lazy and every time a meta analysis is performed on this old study it reaches all the news stations because their main sponsors are drug companies and they don’t want you having the opportunity to get well without their products.  A meta analysis is simply someone reading the old study, and writing a book report on it.

If they were to actually study what has been discovered since the 1950’s, which is a tremendous amount of valid scientific research, not one done on a cadaver and deliberately making false conclusions, they would discover a few things, that I feel you should know.

The typical stroke victim if they survive has stroke posture, which consists of the arm being flexed and a lower leg extended.  That would be a whole lot of brain damage, but we don’t see the entire motor strip damaged on brain scans.  We typically see just a small area with an infarct.  That area is the internal capsule.  Picture a vase with all it’s stems entering into the narrow portion of it.  All the neurons in the brain that leave it from different areas of the motor cortex with long nerves that go to innervate the muscles that you want to move are exiting through this narrow opening called the internal capsule.

Why is that important to know if you ever want a chance at being healthy?  The arteries in the back of your neck, called the vertebral arteries do not go there, they do not go to the internal capsule where we see the stroke damage.  That part of the brain is being fed by the carotid arteries that are in the front of your neck.  That means the chiropractor is not the problem, we are not affecting those arteries.  Case closed.

However, there is a type of more severe stroke related to the back of the neck arteries called vertebral artery dissection.  These arteries feed the brain stem and the vital centers in there.  The vital centers are what keep you breathing and your heart beating.  That means, that I have never been sued by a victim of this because they are going to be dead before they get off of the table.  That doesn’t happen, well it hasn’t happened to me or just about any other chiropractor.  People can get this type of artery damage, but it is proven to be practically impossible to tear those arteries by a chiropractic adjustment.  It would require hundreds of pounds of force to tear those arteries with a chiropractic adjustment.  So unless your chiropractor is the size of a Polar Bear, there is a good chance you are remaining sick or in pain for no reason at all.

I know, what about that playboy model who died from the chiropractor that she went to?  The incompetent medical examiner said that was the cause, but apparently he and all the media don’t read well.  She had fallen and hurt the arteries in her neck a month earlier.  The E.R. didn’t bother to do an ultrasound Doppler study of her arteries and if they had, they might have realized that she was injured more severely.  Instead, she sought help for her neck pain a month later from a chiropractor.  Most chiropractors do not have ultrasound Doppler equipment in their office.  Neither do most urgent medical care centers.  In this case, the adjustment aggravated the severe insult that she had sustained a month earlier.  Perhaps he is guilty of taking for granted that the E.R. had done it’s job properly.  She should never have been released from the E.R.

While it was all over the news everyday, every hour of every day for weeks, just how often does something like this occur?  You are more likely to get blown up out of the sky by a terrorist, and as you are falling to earth still in your seat, get struck by lightning and shot and stabbed by terrorists that have parachuted out of another plane to make sure they had finished their job.  However, they too get struck by lightning and you fall to the ground safely where you are now eaten by a land shark.

With that in mind, millions of people are suffering daily for decades because they are afraid of a chiropractic adjustment.  This is the safest and most powerful form of treatment known to modern medical science.  The number 3 leading cause of death in America is from medicine.  Compare that to the one woman that died from a chiropractor in Canada.  The case is kind of famous because that was the case that had Chiropractic outlawed in a province.  The patient was obese, smoked, was diabetic, and took birth control pills.  She had died of a stroke a month after going to the chiropractor.  She was the perfect storm of walking disease and as I stated earlier, if the chiropractor was to have caused the stroke, she was not walking out of his office.

There are millions of dollars to be made off of your medical misery.  You being sick helps fuel our economy.  However, if you want the opportunity to be healthy it can’t be achieved with a lifestyle of drugs.  Chiropractors have been labeled back pain doctors, but we are really brain doctors.  Our treatment affects your brain and your brain is responsible for creating good health.  If you are a drug company, then you would want people to be sick and miserable enough to buy your product.  If you are sick and tired of being sick and tired your best chance of not staying that way is to visit a chiropractor.  Don’t let all the disinformation keep you miserable and unhealthy.

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I find Malakoff’s answer relevant nnot least because it demonstrates a few points that are important:

• Some chiros call themselves doctors and manage to fool consumers in assuming that they are medically competent.
• Some even call themselves neurologists, it seems.
• They are the exact opposite of competent.
• They understand neither science, nor medicine, nor the methodologies used.
• They have misunderstood so much about [patho)physiology that it’s frightening to think they treat ill people.
• Despite all this they love to use pseudo-scientific language.
• They use it to impress and to white-wash their quackery and the chiropractic profession.
• They have an unrealistic view about the value of chiropractic.
• They are in denial about the risks of spinal manipulation.
• They are consumed by conspiracy theories without even attempting to provide evidence in their support.