Chiropractic is a health care discipline and profession that emphasizes diagnosis, treatment and prevention of mechanical disorders of the musculoskeletal system, especially the spine, under the hypothesis that these disorders affect general health via the nervous system. Chiropractic is controversial, and it is generally considered to be complementary and alternative medicine, a characterization that many chiropractors reject. The main treatment involves manual therapy, including manipulation of the spine, other joints, and soft tissues; treatment also includes exercises and health and lifestyle counseling. Traditional chiropractic assumes that a vertebral subluxation or spinal joint dysfunction interferes with the body's function and its innate intelligence, a notion that brings ridicule from mainstream science and medicine.
D.D. Palmer founded chiropractic in the 1890s and his son B.J. Palmer helped to expand it in the early 20th century. It has two main groups: "straights", now the minority, emphasize vitalism, Innate Intelligence and spinal adjustments, and consider subluxations to be the leading cause of all disease; "mixers" are more open to mainstream and alternative medical techniques such as exercise, massage, nutritional supplements, and acupuncture. Chiropractic is well established in the U.S., Canada and Australia.
For most of its existence, chiropractic has battled with mainstream medicine, sustained by ideas such as subluxation that are not based on solid science. Vaccination remains controversial among chiropractors. The American Medical Association called chiropractic an "unscientific cult" and boycotted it until losing a 1987 antitrust case. Chiropractic has had a strong political base and sustained demand for services; in recent decades, it has gained more legitimacy and greater acceptance among medical physicians and health plans in the U.S., and evidence-based medicine has been used to review research studies and generate practice guidelines. Many studies of treatments used by chiropractors have been conducted, with conflicting results. Collectively, systematic reviews of this research have not demonstrated that spinal manipulation is effective, with the possible exception of treatment of back pain. The efficacy and cost-effectiveness of maintenance chiropractic care are unknown. Although spinal manipulation can have serious complications in rare cases, chiropractic care is generally safe when employed skillfully and appropriately.
Chiropractic's early philosophy was rooted in vitalism, spiritual inspiration and rationalism. A philosophy based on deduction from irrefutable doctrine helped distinguish chiropractic from medicine, provided it with legal and political defenses against claims of practicing medicine without a license, and allowed chiropractors to establish themselves as an autonomous profession. This "straight" philosophy, taught to generations of chiropractors, rejects the inferential reasoning of the scientific method, and relies on deductions from vitalistic first principles rather than on the materialism of science. However, most practitioners currently accept the importance of scientific research into chiropractic, and most practitioners are "mixers" who attempt to combine the materialistic reductionism of science with the metaphysics of their predecessors and with the holistic paradigm of wellness; a 2008 commentary proposed that chiropractic actively divorce itself from the straight philosophy as part of a campaign to eliminate untestable dogma and engage in critical thinking and evidence-based research.
Although a wide diversity of ideas currently exists among chiropractors, they share the belief that the spine and health are related in a fundamental way, and that this relationship is mediated through the nervous system. Chiropractors study the biomechanics, structure and function of the spine, along with what they say are its effects on the musculoskeletal and nervous systems and its role in health and disease.
Chiropractic philosophy includes the following perspectives:
Chiropractic is often described as two professions masquerading as one. Unlike the distinction between podiatry (a science-based profession for foot disorders) and foot reflexology (an unscientific philosophy which posits that many disorders arise from the feet), in chiropractic the two professions attempt to live under one roof, albeit with much tension between them.
Straight chiropractors adhere to the philosophical principles set forth by D.D. and B.J. Palmer, and retain metaphysical definitions and vitalistic qualities. Straight chiropractors believe that vertebral subluxation leads to interference with an "Innate Intelligence" exerted via the human nervous system and is a primary underlying risk factor for many diseases. Straights view the medical diagnosis of patient complaints (which they consider to be the "secondary effects" of subluxations) to be unnecessary for chiropractic treatment. Thus, straight chiropractors are concerned primarily with the detection and correction of vertebral subluxation via adjustment and do not "mix" other types of therapies. Their philosophy and explanations are metaphysical in nature and they prefer to use traditional chiropractic lexicon terminology (i.e. perform spinal analysis, detect subluxation, correct with adjustment, etc.). They prefer to remain separate and distinct from mainstream health care.
Mixer chiropractors "mix" diagnostic and treatment approaches from osteopathic, medical, and chiropractic viewpoints. Unlike straight chiropractors, mixers believe subluxation is one of many causes of disease, and they incorporate mainstream medical diagnostics and employ many treatments including conventional techniques of physical therapy such as exercise, massage, ice packs, and moist heat, along with nutritional supplements, acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal remedies, and biofeedback. Mixers tend to be open to mainstream medicine and are the majority group.
Palmer hypothesized that vertebral joint misalignments, which he termed vertebral subluxations , interfered with the body's function and its inborn (innate) ability to heal itself. D.D. Palmer repudiated his earlier theory that vertebral subluxations caused pinched nerves in the intervertebral spaces in favor of subluxations causing altered nerve vibration, either too tense or too slack, affecting the tone (health) of the end organ. D.D. Palmer, using a vitalistic approach, imbued the term subluxation with a metaphysical and philosophical meaning. He qualified this by noting that knowledge of innate intelligence was not essential to the competent practice of chiropractic. This concept was later expanded upon by his son, B.J. Palmer and was instrumental in providing the legal basis of differentiating chiropractic medicine from conventional medicine. In 1910, D.D. Palmer theorized that the nervous system controlled health:
Vertebral subluxation, a core concept of chiropractic, remains unsubstantiated and largely untested, and a debate about whether to keep it in the chiropractic paradigm has been ongoing for decades. In general, critics of traditional subluxation-based chiropractic (including chiropractors) are skeptical of its clinical value, dogmatic beliefs and metaphysical approach. While straight chiropractic still retains the traditional vitalistic construct espoused by the founders, evidence-based chiropractic suggests that a mechanistic view will allow chiropractic care to become integrated into the wider health care community. This is still a continuing source of debate within the chiropractic profession as well, with some schools of chiropractic still teaching the traditional/straight subluxation-based chiropractic, while others have moved towards an evidence-based chiropractic that rejects metaphysical foundings and limits itself to primarily neuromusculoskeletal conditions.
A 2003 survey of North American chiropractors found that 88% wanted to retain the term vertebral subluxation complex , and that when asked to estimate the percent of disorders of internal organs (such as the heart, the lungs, or the stomach) that subluxation significantly contributes to, the mean response was 62%. In 2005, the chiropractic subluxation was defined by the World Health Organization as "a lesion or dysfunc
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