# has anyone tried upper cervical Chiropractic treatment for ibs?



## wumonty (Jan 10, 2008)

my pastor swears that his upper cervical (knee-chest method) chiro cured all his ailments. cured his mom's severe dystonia. cured his chronic gastritis, and cured his chronic Hep B infection (anti body developed after 20+ years without it), and his benign tumors are all shrinking. he's been doing it for several years. he says i should really try it for my ibs. but the Dr. says its a 6 months commitment and will cost close to $2000, and also time commitment of 2x/week every week. but as all wellness chiros, they don't promise to cure anything, they say they just release any subluxations that may be causing nerve function problems. and then our body cures itself.

If it works, i don't mind paying ten's of thousands just to be cured. but has anyone else tried this? or heard of it first hand??


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## atilla (Apr 6, 2014)

$2000.00 for something that has no promise behind it sounds fishy, especially from a chiropractor - I have tried everything out there for IBS-D and this is my first time hearing of this. I would do a little more homework on the subject before wasting your money.


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## wumonty (Jan 10, 2008)

i've done lots of searching online. and that's just the nature of chiropractic wellness care. no chiro will ever promise you results all they can say is they are relieving the nerve impingement and allowing the nerves to naturally heal our bodies as it should. what would it heal? they don't know. will it heal, no promises. But chiro must work somehow for many people since its such a huge profession. sometimes with people like us, ibs for 15 years, i'm looking for anything that will help. such a hard decision. not just the $$ but its a 1.5hr drive 2x/week for 6 months. as a single working dad with a toddler, time is not something i can afford to waste if it doesn't work. such a conundrum...


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## BQ (May 22, 2000)

No I have never heard of someone being "cured" of IBS solely using a chiropractor.

Funny how the chiro would know what it was going to cost you and how long it would take before examining you...... Don't get me wrong, good chiropractors can help us tremendously with a variety of problems. If I were you I would get a second opinion (hopefully closer to your home) and then look into any insurance coverage you may have to help cover the costs. Many insurance carriers do cover chiros now. Course if the chiro doesn't accept insurance... look for one who does.


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## wumonty (Jan 10, 2008)

thanks for reply bq. i'm a bit torn cause my pastor is very sincere. and he's not making $$ if i see his chiro. he says he's seeing many chiros before, and non of them work for him. except for this one. and even though this one is in torrance, she's willing to drive to my pastor house (closer to me, but still 40 mins) to seem me. and my pastor nice enough to open his home to me anytime i need treatment. she did do a initial consult, and says i do need adjustment. but honestly, i think most people's need adjustment if you get evaluated by any chiro. if anyone near torrance/carson area, and want to try, let me know, i can post her contact info. if i was closer, and had the time, the $$ is not so much the issue, to try. i'm just tired of living with this ibs!!!


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## niece (May 15, 2014)

I tried it to see if it would help either my IBS and my trigeminal neuralgia. After having an expensive work-up, I went to 2 sessions. I stopped because I had more neck pain after each session, and did not want to risk getting worse or doing some kind of damage. It did not help either condition. And they guaranteed nothing.


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## Kathleen M. (Nov 16, 1999)

AFAIK, chiropractors are only legally allowed to say they treat the spine pushing on the nerves, so trying to find one who actually claimes to be practicing medicine (diagnosing and treating illnesses) rather than doing chiropractic (diagnosing the spine nerve thing and treating that), especially on their website, is going to be tough.

If you want a 100% sure thing then no treatment or doctor or practioner of any kind is going to be acceptable. That being said, some things are much more likely to work than others. Also some people are just healing to be around so sometimes it isn't the modality being used, but how the practioner or doctor is with you (in research some doctors have a much higher placebo cure rate than others for a lot of studies).

None of that makes it easier to decide if a certain person is worth the time and money (and even if they help a lot of people, no one can cure everyone, although some people will make those claims).


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## SteveInAustin (Aug 22, 2007)

There actually is no such thing as subluxation. CT scans of the spine before and after chiropractic alignment show no changes to the positions of the vertebrae. And if it really did mess with the spine like that, that would be extremely bad.

Alan Alda (the star from "M*A*S*H") did a nice documentary on this exact subject (chiropracty and CT scans of subluxation before and after chiropractic treatment) for PBS or Bill Moyers or something. You can probably find it on youtube. He interviews ex-chiropractors who have figured out that spinal manipulation doesn't actually do anything. That pop you hear is similar to what you hear when you crack your knuckles. When you hear it, it makes you think that the chiropractor has done something. You may even feel better for a short period of time, but it's mostly just a temporary placebo. There are some studies showing that works significantly better than placebo for a small number of things (such as lower back pain), but in those cases often an aspirin would work about as well (and would only cost a penny or two). Honestly, I see no value to chiropractic "medicine" at all. It's alternative medicine, largely unsupported and refuted by scientific evidence.

Anyway, assuming you're still itching to try chiropracty, I'd just ask what's the theory? How is this supposed to help IBS? If the answer is that it fixes "subluxations" or somehow relaxes pinched spinal nerves or something along that lines, you can discard that right away. It does nothing of the sort, and that's been proven scientifically. So, what else could be going on? What other theories could explain how it might help IBS? Get a convincing answer to this question first before ever engaging in anything that purports to be some kind of magic cure for IBS or anything. Especially if you're going to be shelling out thousands of dollars.

My advice anway.


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## SteveInAustin (Aug 22, 2007)

By the way, many people swear by all kinds of things that don't actually work. Your pastor is just as human as anyone else, capable of making the same mistakes all humans make. Just because he's convinced of its effectiveness, it doesn't mean it actually is effective. The placebo effect is very real. It can explain things like infections being "cured" or even tumors being reduced. Problem is, it's the placebo effect. It may only work for him, not for you and anyone else. Read up on the "placebo effect" to get a good understanding of what it is, what's actually going on, and whether or not it's something you can use.


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