What are your thoughts/opinion on Chiropractors?

Your alternative to a Chiropractor is drugs and surgery. Most back surgeries cause scar tissue that becomes a new problem and your back won't be any better -- that's why there's a medical category called "failed back surgery". You'll be mortified if you do some more research into this. Drugs might help with pain but they damage your liver.

There's nothing better than a good Chiropractor for muskuloskeletal injuries. They use a wide variety of modalities. The best generally advertise as sports injury specialists and use the Cox method along with active muscle release techniques/ART.

Massage therapists are not required to have a BSc degree with an additional 4-5 years of specialized medical training. There's no comparison. Family doctors/MDs specialize in cookbook drug prescribing.

Its a bit of a lucky dip as to if you get a 'good' one or not. Traditional chiropractors maintain nonsense beliefs including the root cause of all disease is due to 'subluxations' in the spine which lead to nerve 'interferrance'. These chiropractors reject germ theory of disease, are anti-vaccination and usually make unsupportable claims such as being able to treat asthma, ear infections, childhood colic, and the like.

Traditional chiropractic has never been shown to work for anything more than temporary relief of lower back pain. They will often lock you into regular maintenance work and will keep you coming back until you get better naturally, run out of money, or simply give up.

Traditional chiropractic is not without risk, never ever let one touch your neck.

Reform chiropractors don't believe in the magic subluxations and tend to do a version of physiotherapy. They can sometimes achieve good results - but I'd rather not run the risk of getting a dangerous quack. A proper physiotherapist or musculoskeletal doctor are much better options.

Your spine hooks up to about everything in your body...and having it lined up properly is very important to your health. The reason it takes so many visits is because when it is out of place your muscles go into spasm, even they set it the spasms pull it back out of place. It works best to get massage therapy by a licensed massage therapist to break down the spasms so your back will tend to stay more in place. I have had miraculous things happen from going to the chiropractors once my ears were clogged making it hard to hear for months, one visit and after I left my ears popped and my hearing came back 100%. I worked for a Chiropractor as a massage therapist. When we combined the two therapies and we worked on auto accident cases everyone that came to me also got well. The one guy who didn't didn't get well. Yes all doctors can do is surgery. They cannot adjust your back that is not their field. And the chiropractor well he said he couldn't afford to look at my face...everyone got well and he was a person to respect because he went into some other modalities to supplement his income and continued to get people well even though he lost a lot of his income from the returning customers. They don't do this on purpose they just have never realized the value of massage therapy to break down the muscle spasms.

Some can be good if you have an issue but the ones who want you to go see them constantly many times are not good. I have even encountered a chiropractor who told me how he can cure cancer since the fact that your spine is not aligned is what causes cancer which is BS.

There is a motto in chiropractic...."The purpose of the spine is to support the head,the ribs and to support the CHIROPRACTOR"!! Mandolyn, you say you don't trust chiropractors, and why should you? Why indeed, when they publish in their own journal they actually know that they are the least honest and least ethical of practitioners..http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/common/viewphot... What chiropractors say, and what they can actually accomplish with their silly back cracking is, of course two different things. When it come to the chiropractic "profession" it is caveat emptor.

Edit: I hope this won't be you in a few years..http://www.chirobase.org/17QA/misaligned.html

Physiotherapists with egos.

There's some evidence it may be beneficial for mild lower back pain of soft tissue origin. Claims made beyond this are unsupported. Not that it stops them from making claims though.