Chiropractic side effects may include stroke, death

No doubt you’ve seen articles all over the web extolling chiropractic manipulation. Many patients (and chiropractors) believe that spinal manipulation helps to balance flows of energy through the body, preventing disease and allowing the body to heal itself.

No, really. That’s the promise of chiropractic.

Others just rely on it to help with back or neck pain. For which spinal manipulation’s not apparently statistically better than other accepted therapies.

What most of chiropractic’s proponents don’t realize is that along with its virtually nonexistent benefits, it comes with a bonus that muscle relaxants and yoga don’t . . . possible side effects like strokes and death.

Well over 500 cases have been documented where a patient has suffered a stroke after getting his or her neck manipulated and many have died subsequently. What seems to happen is that certain manipulations carried out by chiropractors – particularly those that involve forceful rotation of the neck to one side – may over-stretch an artery that runs along the spine. If that happens this vessel can dissect or disintegrate, resulting in a blockage of blood flow to the brain, ie. a stroke.

Most chiropractors adamantly deny that their treatment is to blame. Strokes happen all the time, they rightly say. Lots of patients who suffer strokes haven’t been anywhere near a chiropractor. This is undeniably true, so the decisive question is this: do patients who consult chiropractors have more strokes than patients who do not?

Annoyingly, sound data to resolve this dispute is very hard to come by. The evidence so far is not entirely straightforward and, depending which study we select, support can be found for both sides. This is why every new piece of information on this topic is important and a recent article by US neurosurgeons is more than welcome.

The pesky neurosurgeons analyzed a database of stroke patients to determine which ones had experienced chiropractic manipulation before their strokes. Of those who had, every one had damage to the arteries in question.

The conclusion? Certain manipulations can damage arteries in such a way as to cause a stroke. However, the authors believe that incidents are underreported; in part because patients don’t connect the dots, and in part because the injuries are often asymptomatic, or transient.

Short version? Whip your own damned hair.

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