Throughout high school I had awful posture and back pain. Especially in the upper spine and neck. I never went to a chiropractor because everyone told me they were quacks and hacks and all sorts of horror stories about this and that.
During my year off my part-time job became really the main focus of my life aside from reading, TV, and long walks. Everything just got worse, even though the job is not remotely stressful (it's sort of obscene that I get paid even minimum wage for it, really).
I went to massage therapists. Very well-known and much-recommended ones. Nothing worked for me. Sure, muscle tension in my back was reduced, but it became increasingly obvious that the vertebrae were just freakin' out of place.
So I ignored everyone and went to a chiropractor. Best decision of my life. They balanced my gait, my posture, my back, everything. I had this weird walk that they got rid of. I could tell by feeling that vertebrae were out of place and over a few months they placed those back, fixed virtually everything that was wrong with me physically, and I am now about a billion times more comfortable. I can actually walk straight instead of looking like a quasi-hunchback.
Sometimes I wonder if my chiropractor does lead others on, and he does talk about subluxations with other patients, etc. For this reason I won't mention who it is. So I don't really believe that chiro has much benefit with all that sort of thing... in which case, yeah, it is just 'alternative medicine'.
But when it comes to the very basics of chiro- that they can really fix someone's comfort level, rid you of pain, drastically improve your posture, put everything back where it should be, and have that be a permanent fix which only needs to be looked at every so often beyond that point, then I absolutely believe that it works.
Every single thing about how I feel is a billion times better than it was before I went to a chiropractor. Not to mention I've seen hard proof of the results in X-rays and such.
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