Episode 11: The Truth About Chiropractic – Debunking Common Myths

Episode Title: Episode 11: The Truth About Chiropractic – Debunking Common Myths

Episode Summary: Welcome back to Ask the Chiropractor with Dr. Brant Hulsebus! In Episode 11 of our 12-part Wellness Lifecycle series, we are taking a step back to address the elephant in the room: chiropractic myths.

Over the decades, plenty of rumors, misunderstandings, and false statements have circulated about what chiropractors actually do and whether it is safe. Today, we are setting the record straight. Join us as we break down the science, the history, and a healthy dose of common sense to debunk the most common misconceptions about chiropractic care.

In This Episode, We Cover:

• The "Towel Yank" Myth: Why you will never see us yanking necks with towels or performing dangerous gross manipulations. True chiropractic care is incredibly precise, using specific lines of drive based on thorough exams and X-rays.
• The Stroke & Safety Myth: Is chiropractic care dangerous? We explain why chiropractors pay some of the lowest malpractice insurance rates in the healthcare field, and we tell the real story behind the AMA's historic anti-chiropractic campaign (and the famous Chester Wilk antitrust lawsuit).
• What is That Popping Sound?: Spoiler alert: It's not your bones cracking, ligaments snapping, and it definitely doesn't cause arthritis. Learn the basic physics of joint "cavitation" and why adjusting a joint is just like releasing the pressure from a can of soda.
• Are Chiropractors "Real" Doctors?: A breakdown of the rigorous education—four years of undergrad and ten trimesters of specialized chiropractic college—required to earn the title of Doctor of Chiropractic (DC).

Resources Mentioned:

• Want to look into the research yourself? Search PubMed for peer-reviewed studies on the safety and efficacy of chiropractic care, or look up the AMA vs. Chester Wilk lawsuit!
• Missed our previous episodes? Check out Episode 10 to learn how to age without limits and avoid spinal arthritis!
• Next Week: Tune in for our grand finale, Episode 12, where we will wrap up the entire Wellness Lifecycle series.

Call to Action: Don't let outdated myths or internet rumors keep you from functioning at your best. If you have questions or want to see the science for yourself, my door is always open! If you are in the Rockford, Illinois area, come visit us at Hulsebus Rockford Chiropractic for a full, scientifically-backed spinal evaluation.

If you loved this episode, please leave us a rating and review, and share it with someone who might be hesitant about trying chiropractic care!

Connect with Dr. Brant Hulsebus:

• Website: https://rockforddc.com
• Location: Rockford, IL
• Proud Team Chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

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Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford IceHogs. Let's dive into it. hello. Welcome to episode 11 of 12. If you're just joining us, I invite you to go back and listen to some of the pre episodes. We'll, we dive into different things about what chiropractors do and what chiropractors don't do. I want to get back into this a little bit about some of the myths and some of the false things that have been set about chiropractors over the years and maybe why this happened. Yeah, and some of the things maybe you've seen on YouTube and stuff like that you've seen happen over the years, and I want to try to clarify what is and what's not really chiropractic. First thing is I never took a class at chiropractic school when I wrapped somebody's towel around their neck and yanked on it. Okay. Every chiropractic adjustment we do here is very precise and specific aiming for a particular vertebrae using a very precise line of drive and torque correction on that vertebrae. Here at Rockford, our clinic, we isolate individual vertebrae through a chiropractic exam and x-ray to find the correct vertebrae. Never will you see us grab an entire chunk of the spine yank pole. Push or do anything. I try to do a gross manipulation in the entire area that is not chiropractic, as I know chiropractic. So when you see these things, these techniques, this is not something I would ever have anybody ever do to me. No, anybody ever try to put that on me? So I definitely would never do it in my office. So if you come into my clinic in Rockford, Illinois, wanna see me strap you down and grab a towel, yank and pull on you, it's just never gonna happen here. because that's not real chiropractic. And I say that because it's not taught any chiropractic college. None of the national associations endorse this or think it's a good thing. And I think only one malpractice carrier will even consider to cover you if you do these moves. So that's not chiropractic. We have a lot of kids that come and see us, that job shadow with us, and they watch those videos hoping they're gonna see that. And the first thing I do is I burst their bubble. Tell them there's nothing like we're gonna see here in this office. Everything we do here is very precise and exact. The next is, I hear a lot of even foolish. Medical doctors. I had a do, and I saw Gabe even tell me that anybody does anything to the neck. They increase the risk of stroke and that's just totally made up. You can go into pub bed, type it in. You can see that there's no incidence of that. Probably about 10 years ago, the American Heart, American Stroke Association claimed this was a thing too. The PubMed articles, the real scientific articles went back and totally debunked this and called bologna on what they reported, and what they reported was only a quarter truth. They basically, what happens is if you have an artery in your neck that is hemorrhage or leaking blood, the number one symptom of that is severe neck pain. Where do people go when they have severe neck pain? It's not weird for someone to go to a chiropractor when they have severe neck pain, although this shouldn't be a surprise, but I'm always shocked by it. In chiropractic college, they actually trained us who's not safe to adjust. How to identify things, how to know when someone's having a bigger issue. We're actually taught that what a kidney stone is and how your lower back pain might be a kidney stone and not a chiropractic adjustment. I know it's amazing that they would caulk about that in eight years of college. That would even come up. I'm always amazed by that. I even had a patient come in today. She just had knee surgery and I was told by the doctor that I should probably not put her on her side and twist on her back to get her hips adjusted. I was like, boy. It's a good thing they told me that. because we never discussed that in chiropractic college. It's comical to me. I told it's okay to go back and continue to work with this doctor to tell him I give him my blessing. because it's just as silly sounding as anything else. So if you were to have this hemorrhaging in your neck of a blood vessel and you turn your head left or right, it could make it worse. But we're trained to identify this, where it's not identified. The officer called it a beauty salon stroke because you go hair wash and they turn your head and it can happen too. It can also happen just backing outta your driveway. It can happen just getting dressed. But when you go to the medical doctor and they turn your head the same way that a chiropractor might, they discovered it. We caused it. There's been a biases towards chiropractic from the American Medical Association for a long time. Up until the 19, early 1990s, the American Medical Association had a division on quackery they called it, where they literally were trying to destroy the chiropractic profession. And I can say this without being feared of repercussion because Chester Wilke, a chiropractor in the Chicagoland area, actually sued the AMA as an antitrust, and he was able to get his hands on the documents and the stuff that the AMA was doing to try to ruin chiropractors. And he sued the AMA and he won. You can look it up, the AMA versus Chester. Wilk, WILK. And when Chester passed away a few years ago, I had the unique privilege of going up to his house and his family donated all his possessions to the profession, and I got to load up my vehicle with all his awards and honors. I actually got to hold the Supreme Court papers in my hand. I got to read the transcripts. These are all not well preserved in the International Chiropractic Association's headquarters and some of them at Palmer College Archives. So I've actually got to see the stuff and I got to talk to Chester Wilkes several times before he passed away and he actually sued the AMA for trying to say bad things about us. And a lot of the stuff with the neck issue came from those lawsuits came from them, badmouthing us, came from them saying bad things about us and these things just aren't true. But chiropractic started in 1895. Chester Wilk won his lawsuit in the early nineties, so we're talking about at least nine decades of lies. And it's amazing how nine decades of lying about something can, most people can actually start to think it's the truth. When I lie about something for nine years, 90 years, it's easy for someone to think that's actually the fact. And so every once in a while, we come across a medical doctor in Rockford that will still say, chiropractors are dangerous. Chiropractors hurt people. I learned it at school., I talk a lot about my football coach. He coached me the way he was coached. He coached the way he was coached. He coached the way he was coached. Football coaching hasn't changed much. So a professor teaches the way he was taught. He teaches the way they were taught, and these lies, and these misconceptions. And these lies about chiropractic practic. Continue, continue, and continue from the decades of v. Now, today we have social media, we have the internet, we have research papers online where you can go read this stuff for yourself. And you've heard me several times refer to PubMed. PubMed's a really neat place where they store research. In order to get indexed on PubMed, you have to go through some of the highest level of scrutiny to make sure what you're writing is actually true. So if I wanna get PubMed index, I send my paperwork and I just get published after they've able to validate. There's no errors in my research. It's 2026 and we're just now really starting to get the COVID papers on PubMed. because it took that long to validate the research on COVID. It was accurate in order for it to get listed on the PubMed. So just type in this chiropractic safe PubMed on a Google search, you'll find all kinds of articles about the safety of chiropractic., I know chiropractic's safe for one. Simple fact, we pay some of the lowest possible malpractice rates of any type of healthcare provider. If we were dangerous, surely our malpractice would be astronomical. There'd be so many lawsuits and things against us. People would be suing us and coming after us left and right that our malpractice rates would be astronomical. According to the things I hear from other doctors about how dangerous we are, we'd be the same as trying to ensure a 16-year-old male driver who has a drinking issue. It'd be astronomically expensive. My last associate, Dr. Sam, when she first started practice, her malpractice was lower, which she paid a whole year than when an orthopedic doctor who works with backs pays in a day. She paid less for a year than they pay for a day. So how could we possibly be that dangerous if our practice is that low? Let's talk about one last little thing that we hear a lot about chiropractors, that popping noise. They're cracking my bones or snapping ligaments. Things are shifting and moving. What that noise is, you've heard me talk a lot about when the spine's misaligned, the body will lock down and protect it. What happens is pressure builds up inside those joints and that pressure is the liquid under pressure. And when you take a liquid under pressure and you release the pressure, there's an audible noise. So when you crack your knuckles, that is just gas being released from inside your joints. It's called cavitation. Maybe your grandmother told you that gives you arthritis. Grandma was wrong. That's not true. But the cavitations are simply gases being released from a joint. Think about a can of pop or soda. When you open it as a popping noise, that stuff's under pressure. You open a pressure's released, it pops maybe not a bottle. You get more of a S when you undo a bottle, right? Because it's a hiss. When you open a can you pop, you hear That's pop, right? because it makes that popping sound. Same principles, same physics. We're not snapping ligaments or popping tendons. That's crazy. Again, we injure so many people. Our malpractice would be outrageous, but again, we have some of the lowest malpractice of anybody. Maybe you've heard chiropractors aren't real doctors., I'd challenge you to find the word doctor. Doctrine usually means you want a doctrine. As chiropractors, I did four years of college, got my Bachelor's of science, and I went on to chiropractic school. Chiropractic school was 10 trimester, so 10 semesters. Each semester is over 30 hours. After I graduated, I earned a doctrine of chiropractic, just like, if you remember, president Biden's wife had a doctrine education. When you get a doctrine, you call yourself doctor. So I call myself a doctor of chiropractic. I don't call myself a medical doctor. I never thought I'd be a medical doctor. I wanna to be a chiropractor. So we're doctors of chiropractic DC not a medical doctor. Not a D doctor of osteopath. We're a medical, we're dcs, doctors are chiropractic. because we want a doctor just like your dentist and a doctor, and you call them doctor also. So those are some of the rules and myths and things about chiropractors. I hope I answered them. If you've had a question or a myth you've heard about chiropractic, you wanna know if it's true or not. Feel free to leave a comment below. I'll be honest with you, I've been practice since in practice, since 2002. When someone comes to my office and they act like they're scared, they're bad, like they're frightful, like we're gonna hurt them or do something bad to them, I, I just tell them to come back a different day when they're ready to start., I don't try to convince anybody. I have a practice, luckily that's full of patients that already knows it works. I don't really waste my time anymore on people that come with me, that stuff, and for the medical doctors I've worked with in the past that have said that chiropractic isn't real, I just shove so much research and data down their throats. I never hear from them again. So when you actually want to break down the science and the research and the data, I'm always happy to have that conversation. If you're watching this, listening to this, you want to challenge me. Don't. Don't just write something bad about chiropractic. Show me the data, show me the research. Show me where you read that, and may I have a copy? Let's discuss the research and the data you have. Prove me wrong through science, not just through being able to little troll on the internet, but if you have a real question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, remember only a chiropractor is authorized to answer that question or educated. To answer that question, leave a comment below. I'll be happy to answer it. If you ever want me to cite my work. Go ahead, ask me. I'm happy to do that. I do it all the time. Other than that, have a great day. Thank you for tuning in. And remember if you have question about chiropractic, chiropractic care, only a chiropractor can answer. This is episode 11. Come back next week. We can do episode 12. We'll be wrap it all up. Thank you.