Hey everybody, Dr. Chris, Orthopedic surgeon and sports medicine physician. And today, I
reacting to chiropractic adjustments. I never realized that chiropractic
adjustments were such a big thing on YouTube. it seems that people watch just
to hear the sound of the adjustments. All of the cracking and the popping must be
satisfying to...must be satisfying to somebody because people are watching it
all the time. Anyway, a lot of people have asked me what I think about chiropractic.
They want to know if having a chiropractic adjustment and cracking your backs is
bad or not. So let's watch a few clips and we'll talk about it. So here's the
first video. Let's check it out. and let it out gently let your shoulders sink
good great up
So obviously this chiropractor is taking advantage of the fact that people are
interested in hearing the cracking because he's got freaking mics set up
That's one point I want to make actually... that sounds may not be exactly what you
think they are. Let me just read the description from spineuniverse.com with
an explanation of exactly what those sounds are during a back adjustment. Your
back undergoes a quick gentle stretching of the spinal facet joint
so you may hear a cracking or popping noise. This is caused by small pockets of
air or bubbles which are in the fluid that surrounds your joints. When joint
tissues are stretched during a chiropractic adjustment, the pockets of
air pop, which creates that cracking sound you hear. After this treatment you
may feel more movement in your back however the muscles may still be sore
and tight and I would say that that's an accurate description of what's happening
I recall times during my P presidency what I would being in the
operating room and we will be operating our patients who had some kind of spinal
disorder whether that the scoliosis or thoracic
kyphosis but something where we had to actually manipulate the spine directly
in order to restore it back to a normal straight alignment we had actually
exposed the vertical segments of the spine we would put screws directly into
the spine and then we would patch rods to those screws and we would manipulate
those rods with bending levers there would be two surgeons and we would be
pulling in one way or the other directly attached to the spine attempting to get
the spine to straighten out and we would actually have difficulty doing this if
we have trouble doing this when you're directly attached to the spine there is
no three key ways that somebody's gonna push on your shoulders or push on your
hips or push on your legs or whatever and indirectly manipulate your spine and
make it go where they want to go that's not going to work so you need to know
what's happening when you hear that cracking and popping okay
so let's watch the next she was moving already
to be honest the neck adjustment makes me uncomfortable and I'll tell you why
there are a lot of important structures that run through or around the neck and
chiropractic manipulation of the neck carries with it risk of injury to many
of these delicate structures when you choose to have any kind of medical
treatment you need to weigh the benefits versus the risks granted what I do as an
orthopedic surgeon is something that only helps a minority of people who have
musculoskeletal problems what about those people that I or my colleagues
North pieces you can tell that's for other healthcare practitioners come in
like chiropractors physiotherapist Athletic and massage therapists with me
for example in very simplified terms cut children and I screw you back together
but for someone who can't get to the inside of you
it's about soft link tissues and building muscle and mobility in areas
that are weak so that your problem can resolve that's it and that is not a wham
bam thank you man super quick kind of fix okay since you
have a very sore back they may do some manual therapy plant tissue massage and
or they will help me stretch in ways you wouldn't do on your own to get to the
effect must basically they are healthy to store mobility albeit temporary in
tight areas and to short circuit any muscle spasms you are having in order to
get the immediate and unbearable discomfort to cease after that you must
know that the muscles will tend to go back to the way they work especially if
you don't stop or at least modify the activity that is causing the problem in
the first place ask yourself how much impact can an outside person have on
your recovery if you only see them for a few times a week to say I'm 15 minutes
half an hour you must do most of the work a good pirate
we'll also show you some movements or exercises that you can do on your own so
that the thing that they have unstuck stays that way it may take a few times
for you to come back to work through the problem but this should not be an
ongoing process one of the things that's a part of my practice is insurance
assessments for motor vehicle accidents as part of these assessments I all too
frequently see people who have suffered minor musculoskeletal injuries that
should normally resolve within a period of six to eight weeks receiving
treatment for many many years but and shouldn't be that frequent regular
visits over in stemming period of time to anyone in my opinion is unnecessary
in most cases there are a few conditions that a person would have that require
this type of long term treatment this is not most people most people suffer
because they sit too much or because they do repetitive tasks without
balancing things out you don't keep banging your head against the wall and
then taking medicine to get rid of the headache like you know what I mean yeah
I got it but anyway let's watch the next video so I'm a chiropractor work a lot
not only with joins but soft tissue
I think like you'd said before you're working out really hard training hard
but you're not putting enough time in on mobility piece so it's really just about
finding the key things for you and I'll give them to you is like what are the
key things for the areas that you're dysfunctional in that what I like about
this video is that the Kyra here tells his client Michael she that he'll be
giving him work to do on his own that's the way that it should be like
you have to fix the problem not just put a band-aid over it
given that the healing of soft tissue works on a six to eight week cycle if
something is not getting better after that and you've changed your movement
habits and patterns then you need to have some other kind of investigation or
assessment and this is not to say that everybody needs a freakin MRI because
most people don't generally speaking if you don't have some kind of neurologic
dysfunction or deficit or you don't have sciatica running down to your lower
extremities then you don't need an MRI so what about going to a chiropractor to
prehab sure but you can either give a man a fish or you can teach him how to
fish you still need the education and practicing injury prevention is
something that you will do on your own remember no one is going to fix your
problems for you so let's get back to the question is cracking your back fat
not necessarily if you understand what is really happening the bigger question
is is it really necessary it may not be necessary as often as some people would
like to think and what about the neck cracking if it's risky and what they're
doing to you is only going to give you temporary relief and you still need to
modify your life choices and work on the imbalance
through exercise yourself then why not just leave out the neck cracking that's
just my opinion on that if you choose not to do the work and you want to pay
someone to give you relief on a regular basis that will only last a short time
until you go back then I guess that's your choice but it's just so long as
you're aware now I'm not a surgeon I'm the business of fixing problems not
managing them if I can at all happen for most people their problems can be fixed
whether they are operative or not it's just that you may not like all the work
or the lifestyle changes required to do the fixin's remember if you always do
what you've always done you'll always get the same result and no amount of
chiropractic works or physio or massage or anything like that is going to change
it so hopefully I've given you some insight on how to approach chiropractic
care and how to use it to your benefit if you like this video be sure to give
it a big thumbs up if you are new to the channel we should have subscribed at the
notification zone and as always that's the word from dr. Chris not your
everyday