Chiropractor near Belfast?

spaceraiders

Girlzmum wrote: »

I have made my point several times - you are chosing to ignore it.

Your point appears to be that reporting personal experiences allows us to tell if medicine works (e.g. works as in better than placebo or just doing nothing). I have given you countless examples and evidence that this is not true and instead of backing yourself up with anything concrete, you're ignoring it.

If your point is something different to this, please explain it concisely to see if I actually disagree with you.

I haven't responded to your links because I don't feel the need to, I am sure that if I wanted proof that the sky is green I could find it with a quick google search on the internet. However, that does not change my point of view.

You might find a link that says the sky is green, but where is the evidence? We can measure if the sky is green just as we can do an experiment to measure if chiro works (and such experiments have already been done!). My links contain references to experiments that back up what I say about personal experiences being unreliable. You can hold the opinion that e.g. confirmation bias does not exist if you want but the evidence says you are wrong.

Your attitude is the very definition of close mindedness; you are ignoring things that go contrary to your current view. I will gladly accept that chiro works better than e.g. massage/pills/doing nothing if you supply me with evidence. Your anecdote is not reliable evidence; a fact you continue to ignore despite you actually working in the medical industry which I find jaw dropping.

N79

Spaceradiers

I would give up if I were you. Remember what you were taught in the first days of science education.

"If someone is ill, seeks treatment and gets better then nothing will ever convince them that the treatment was not the reason they got better".

It is pointless wasting your breath trying to educate people who have no scientific education and no knowledge of the concept of scientific evidence. I gave up years ago. If people want to believe in hocus pocus then they are welcome.

But keep up the good work!

spaceraiders

N79 wrote: »

Spaceradiers

I would give up if I were you. Remember what you were taught in the first days of science education.

"If someone is ill, seeks treatment and gets better then nothing will ever convince them that the treatment was not the reason they got better".

I'm disappointed I forgot a link to that source of false belief:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

For people saying chiro worked for them, please read the link above and think about how you are able to attribute chiro as being the cause of your improvement and how you know for sure it wasn't just a correlation. Huge expensive medical experiments are conducted precisely because determining cause is so difficult.

It is pointless wasting your breath trying to educate people who have no scientific education and no knowledge of the concept of scientific evidence. I gave up years ago. If people want to believe in hocus pocus then they are welcome.

But keep up the good work!

I know it rarely works, but I like to try now and again. People are welcome to it, but you need to remember that some people in the chiro industry encourage people not to get flu shots which puts other people at risk. Proper treatment can also be delayed as chiros aren't medically trained to spot medical problems. Also, if someone is willing to try chiro (which has no evidence for it), they are more likely to try other non-evidence based treatments. There are cases every now and again of someone who died from a treatable problem because they chose alternative treatments over real ones. All the money being put into alternative treatments could be put to better use as well (e.g. research).

Girlzmum

No, I am not close minded and ignoring things that are contrary to my current view. I think that people are entitled to their opinions despite what others may say. I have not been arguing that you are wrong, I have been saying that others are entitled to express their opinions without being told constantly that they are wrong. If someone tells me that they went to see a chirporactor/doctor/medium and was told x, y or z surely it is up to them to draw their own conclusions as to whether or not the advice and treatment they received actually worked? I haven't backed myself up with anything concrete because I expressed an opinion, not a scientific fact (yes, believe it or not I do know the difference) - I believe I have already stated that. Try reading what I actually said before jumping.

As for people who choose alternative treatments over conventional medicine - I have also already stated that I went through 11 years of treatment, operations and investigations before I went to a chiropractor, I did not go on a whim, in fact I didn't believe it would help. The 11 years of constant pain that I went through did not ease overnight or go away on its own. At the end of the day, even if it was a placebo effect as you are so determined to tell me, I stopped feeling pain, I stopped requiring constant medication and I have been fine ever since (no I don't go anymore). Who are you to tell me that I am wrong in doing that?

Regarding my lack of scientific education and no knowledge of the concept scientific evidence - I have a BSc (Hons). I have full knowledge of the concept of scientific evidence and use it on a daily basis. Please don't take a pop at my intelligence to try to make yourself feel big, it only makes you look incredibly petty.

spaceraiders

Girlzmum wrote: »

No, I am not close minded and ignoring things that are contrary to my current view. I think that people are entitled to their opinions despite what others may say.

When have I said people can't have an opinion? You seem obsessed with stating people can have opinions and that people should be allowed to say their opinions. What has this got to do with knowing if a treatment works?

Some people say blood letting works, in their opinion. Some people say blood letting doesn't work, in their opinion. The reliable evidence says blood letting does not work. Does this mean the evidence is wrong because some people have a different opinion? Evidence trumps opinions and opinions can be wrong. Do you agree with this?

I have not been arguing that you are wrong, I have been saying that others are entitled to express their opinions without being told constantly that they are wrong.

So I can't have an opinion if my opinion is that your evidence is unreliable? Sounds like a double standard to me.

If someone tells me that they went to see a chirporactor/doctor/medium and was told x, y or z surely it is up to them to draw their own conclusions as to whether or not the advice and treatment they received actually worked?

They can draw their own conclusions but they'll probably be wrong. You need to rely on proper experiments.

I haven't backed myself up with anything concrete because I expressed an opinion, not a scientific fact (yes, believe it or not I do know the difference) - I believe I have already stated that. Try reading what I actually said before jumping.

You can state any opinion you want. I'm just telling you what the the scientific data says. If this happens to go against your opinion, maybe you should go read the evidence and consider if your opinion is an informed one.

As for people who choose alternative treatments over conventional medicine - I have also already stated that I went through 11 years of treatment, operations and investigations before I went to a chiropractor, I did not go on a whim, in fact I didn't believe it would help. The 11 years of constant pain that I went through did not ease overnight or go away on its own. At the end of the day, even if it was a placebo effect as you are so determined to tell me, I stopped feeling pain, I stopped requiring constant medication and I have been fine ever since (no I don't go anymore). Who are you to tell me that I am wrong in doing that?

I didn't say it was wrong for you to think chiro helped. Do you read my posts?

Regarding my lack of scientific education and no knowledge of the concept scientific evidence - I have a BSc (Hons). I have full knowledge of the concept of scientific evidence and use it on a daily basis. Please don't take a pop at my intelligence to try to make yourself feel big, it only makes you look incredibly petty.

I'm not taking a pop at your intelligence. I posted some links to back up what I wrote. Feel free to tell me if you were already aware of the contents on my links. So far, you've not had the decency to tell me anything I've said that you agree on or answer any of my questions to help resolve this.

All you keep saying is that people can have opinions and that they should be allowed to say their opinions which not a single person in this thread has disagreed with.

Perfectly_Gorgeous

spaceraiders wrote: »

You cannot conduct a medical experiment on yourself. Going yourself and seeing if it works or asking friends will not tell you if something medical works because it's a complex issue. Most importantly, you don't know how many people it failed on and whether the problem would have just cleared up itself. This is why medical companies must spend millions organising double blind placebo controlled studies. It's irrelevant if I've tried it or not; studies have been conducted on both these things and they've been shown not to work beyond placebo effect. Bare in mind placebo works on anything if you believe it and all it does is cover up the pain and does not fix the problems.

I don't understand when anyone says that you go because the NHS doctors don't know what to do. If the NHS doctors don't know what to do when they're basing their decisions on the best current medical knowledge, how are these alternative medicine people going to help when all they're doing is essentially guessing and making things up?

As far as I'm aware, exercise is good for back pain, massages and so is seeing a physio. Back pain comes and goes all by itself and can also come on with stress. When you say these places "work", they're probably just doing some of these things. Please go and read about where the ideas behind these alternative treatments came from and realise they are just insane and could not possibly work base on our current medical knowledge.

Don't spend your hard earned cash funding fraudsters to lie to you to make you feel better.

You sound so far up your own !!!!! you could probably do with a chiropractor yourself.

phead

Perfectly_Gorgeous wrote: »

You sound so far up your own !!!!! you could probably do with a chiropractor yourself.

LOL, sounds about right.

People need to chill and realise that the medical profession knows very little about back problems, for many years the only advise they gave to people with back problems was to lie flat for several weeks. Now they have changed their mind and decided that the advise they gave for decades was plain wrong. Some doctors are getting quite good, but many still know more about treating your pets than they do about treating your back!

thetope

i love the way spaceraiders "scientific" responses are all quoted from wikipedia which can be edited by anyone and is not at all scientific... credibility rating, zero...

spaceraiders

thetope wrote: »

i love the way spaceraiders "scientific" responses are all quoted from wikipedia which can be edited by anyone and is not at all scientific... credibility rating, zero...

Wikipedia is generally very good for accuracy (I can back that up with a link!) and their articles contain links to actual scientific studies. It's a good site for giving general overviews. Journal papers aren't very readable unless you work in that area. I thought people would prefer the wiki link for the generally well accepted things like confirmation biases. I gave a link to pubmed for the alternative medicine studies.

If you tell me what statements you think need backed up with direct linked I'll gladly post them.

I generally do find it very odd people in this thread don't like me backing anything up with links. How would people prefer that I back up what I say?

SnowyOwl_2

jenny-wren wrote: »

I'm considering going to see a chiropractor to see if a few recent health issues could be caused by a dodgy neck.

Can anyone recommend one in or close to East Belfast?

What can I expect and what's the likely cost? I'm assuming that it's not possible to be referred on the NHS.

Jenny, if your head hasn't exploded with all this "helpful" information (apologies, I haven't read any of it), perhaps you could let us know which discipline you choose, and how you get on.