Therapy And Chiropractic Quackery (Part 3)

Trademarked Treatment Methods

"'Modality empire' is my own term1 for a proprietary method of manual therapy — a sub-discipline — championed and promoted by a single entrepreneur who is likely to suffer from a serious case of healer syndrome. It’s important to know this if you have a chronic pain problem, because so many of the therapies that will be offered to you are the dubious products of modality empires. If you are a manual therapist, especially a massage therapist or chiropractor, you need to understand it too: continuing education should mainly be about acquiring knowledge — with an emphasis on “how to think, not just what to think” (Jason Erickson, HealthArtes.com) — and not just on buying the right to say that you use a trademarked technique."

Click on the link below for an in-depth look at this problem.

The trouble with the toxic tradition of ego-driven, trademarked treatment methods in massage therapy, chiropractic, and physiotherapy

Therapy And Chiropractic Quackery (Part 2)

Structuralism: It's Not Just Chiropractic

"To understand injuries and pain problems and to recover from them more effectively, both patients and professionals need to stop trying to think of the body as a machine that breaks down, and start thinking more in terms of squishy, messy physiology, especially neurology and biochemistry, and even messier psychology and lifestyle factors. Curve balls like medication side effects and subtle pathologies are major drivers of pain.4 Exhaustion, emotional distress,5 smoking,6 and being really out-of-shape are all more important risk factors for pain than any typical “misalignment” has ever been. And then there’s the way chronic pain seems to be a disease in its own right, and the bizarre phenomenon of central sensitization, basically turning up the “volume” on all pain.7 Pain itself is much weirder and more useful to understand — its volatility, its inherent unpredictability8 — than the many mechanical glitches that supposedly cause it."

Click on the link below for an in-depth look at the fallacy of over-interpreting misalignment's cause for pain.

Your Back Is Not Out of Alignment

Therapy And Chiropractic Quackery (Part 1)

Massage Therapy Update

"If scientifically unsupportable practices are surprisingly common with medical massage therapists, they are close to universal among barely-trained and untrained bodyworkers. Many of them aspire to greater skill, but usually don’t do so by studying orthopedics and physical therapy — a project that could occupy anyone for a lifetime — but instead by increasing their repertoire of certifications in proprietary hands-on techniques, most of which are either silly and/or medically unimportant (i.e. pleasant and harmless, but producing no significant therapeutic effect for any important health problem — hot stone massage would be a good example of this).

"And that is why most people still go to a doctor or physiotherapist when they have an obvious injury." 

The link below is one of the best and most recent and complete science-based reviews of the state of research on the effects of massage. If one is interested in availing themselves of this procedure, one had best click on and read the link below.

A review of the science of massage therapy ... such as it is

A review of the science of massage therapy … such as it is