As I mentioned yesterday, Gina Crosley-Corcoran, The Feminist Breeder, aggressively demonstrated her astounding willingness to believe nonsense by washing out her vagina with soap in an attempt to prevent her daughter from acquiring Group B strep sepsis.
Unfortunately, as is often the case with homebirth advocates, that willingness to believe nonsense extends to infant care. She has “diagnosed” her daughter’s breastfeeding difficulties as “colic” and is dragging the baby off to a chiropracter for “treatment.” What’s wrong with Jolene?
… She has two modes: asleep, and mad. There’s pretty much no in-between. If she’s ever awake and NOT mad, it’s only a matter of mere minutes before her face screws up and the screaming starts. She pretty much hates side-laying nursing, too…
Here’s what I’m seeing: She starts nursing, soon she chokes and pulls away, and by the end of the session, she’s angry. She often starts crying in pain (obvious pain) with my boob still in her little mouth. My god – can you imagine how sad that sound is? Sometimes she just wakes up crying, and sometimes, she just fusses for hours on end for no apparent reason…
Hmmm. What could it be? I know, her spine is out of alignment! That makes sense … Oh, wait, it makes no sense at all. Why on earth does anyone believe such complete and utter nonsense?
It’s not like hasn’t been investigated. Chiropractic spinal manipulation for infant colic: a systematic review of randomised clinical trials (2009) by Ernst reviewed the world literature:
Collectively these RCTs fail to demonstrate that chiropractic spinal manipulation is an effective therapy for infant colic. The largest and best reported study failed to show effectiveness. Numerous weaknesses of the primary data would prevent firm conclusions, even if the results of all RCTs had been unanimously positive…
This is hardly surprising, since there is no plausible mechanism for spinal manipulation to have any impact on colic. How is it supposed to work? How does it supposedly work? According to Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Association of North America:
… [A]ll healthy, living tissues subtly “breathe” with the motion of life – a phenomenon that produces rhythmic impulses which can be palpated by sensitive hands. The presence of these subtle rhythms in the body was discovered by osteopath Dr William Sutherland over 100 years ago, after he had a remarkable insight … that cranial sutures were, in fact, designed to express small degrees of motion. He … eventually concluded it is essentially produced by the body’s inherent life force, which he referred to as the “Breath of Life.” Furthermore, … the motion of cranial bones he first discovered is closely connected to subtle movements that involve a network of interrelated tissues and fluids at the core of the body; including cerebrospinal fluid (the ‘sap in the tree’), the central nervous system, the membranes that surround the central nervous system and the sacrum.
That makes sense … NOT!
Okay, it’s nonsensical, but what’s the harm? Plenty, it turns out.
The Dutch Medical Journal reported on a case of infant death at craniosacral therapy.
A brief review of the literature reveals that this is not the first such tragedy. According to Adverse Events Associated With Pediatric Spinal Manipulation: A Systematic Review published in the journal Pediatrics, there have been at least two other infant catastrophic injures, a 3 month old boy who died as a result of a subarachnoid brain hemorrhage, and a 4 month old boy render quadriplegic after treatment for what turned out to be a spinal tumor.
In other words, not only is craniosacral “therapy” absurd; it can kill. So why are lay people like The Feminist Breeder embracing such a ridiculous, ineffective and potentially deadly therapy? It can’t be because “nature” was filled with chiropracters bending people’s spines to solve their medical problems.
The Feminist Breeder is taking her infant daughter off to the chiropracter for the exact same reason she washed her vagina out with soap to prevent Group B strep neonatal sepsis:
It fulfills the MOST important criteria for a natural childbirth “treatment”; it is a form of defiance of authority. And if that isn’t a good enough reason for an NCB advocate to subject her baby to a nonsensical, ineffective and potentially deadly “treatment,” what is?
Chiropractic physicians in this state shall obtain informed, written consent from a patient prior to performing any procedure that involves treatment of the patient’s cervical spine and such informed consent shall include the risks and possible side effects of such treatment including the risk of nyc chiropractors stroke.
If chiropractic doesn’t work, then why do you care so much? Why spend time fighting something that “doesn’t work”? PS, I’d like you to tell the people that experience results with chiropractic care that chiropractic doesn’t work. That’s just silly.
“If chiropractic doesn’t work, then why do you care so much? Why spend time fighting something that ‘doesn’t work’?”
Are you an idiot, or just a fraud? We shouldn’t care about people being mislead because… what they’re being told is factually inaccurate?
She doesn’t have a life 🙁
She’s the only quack bitter non-practitioner who advocates against breastfeeding, she’s an idiot ,don’t pay her any mind.
Bitch you crazy.
Hey Amy the way you respond to everyone’s post by not even ANSWERING their questions..makes me think EXACTLY OF THIS. http://www.naturalnews.com/023857_chiropractic_AMA_the.html hmmm interesting..
First of all Amy, Chiropractic can help Colic for the SAME reason it can help every other disease. Unlike Medical Doctors such as yourself, Chiropractics don’t treat “symptoms” like the medical profession. (or at least in the sense YOU are use to) The treatment of symptoms involves what? Drugs, surgery, and radiation. In specific cases, these are VERY EFFECTIVE. Yet our society has been abusive of this system. Go up to anyone on the street and ask them how many pills or medicine they take a day. It is terrifying. Before we didn’t need to take a drug to function normally why now?? Yes in some cases it is necessary…with that being said 8 prescriptions a day is absolutely ridiculous. The toxins we are delivering to our system via drugs, pesticides, genetically modified foods…and people WONDER why the incidence of cancer is rising? I digress. So the answer is to pop a pill and fix the problem? 15% of the time? MAYBE, but for the other 85% of the time no absolutely not, Why not fix the underlying REASON for you having this problem in the first place? I wish I could upload the studies upon studies that have shown an adjustment ( correction of a vertebrae being misaligned) works and has been working for years. They found that a subluxation in the back can cause 60% impingement on the cord and surrounding nerves…How do you think you would function at 40%…pretty shitty. Chiropractic allows the BODY to function at 100%. The adjustment is not magic, but your body’s ability to regulate and bring itself back into homeostasis when your spinal cord is not being impinged upon…that is absolutely amazing. Hence why chiropractors don’t treat disease and DIAGNOSIS and send their patients off with a pill. We treat the underlying cause so they can live a healthier lifestyle without continuously imbibing chemicals detrimental to their well being. We aren’t spectacular, we acknowledge how spectacular the BODY is when it is functioning correctly.
To the point, no you don’t bring your baby to a chiropractor and say hey fix my baby’s colic. why? The chiropractor may find a spot out on the baby’s back with is “out of place” and may seem to correspond with http://sandezchirowellness.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/autonomic-nervous-system.gif the nerve that runs to the problem area. But he isn’t in the business of fixing the colic (even though it most likely will get fixed with removal of the interference). His or her job is to remove that interference…and subsequently the colic may be fixed…he may be more “regular”…he may sleep better…the implications of restoring nerve function are incredible. It’s very difficult to judge how far and deep they run..but it IS on a CELLULAR level.
For instance: http://lacknerinnerspirit.info/?page_id=173
and there is a wonderful youtube video but I can’t find it
To bring it all home, everyone would function with healthier nervous systems no matter who they are or what problem they are having…because its all connected…and if you don’t understand that simple concept then you should retake and anatomy and physiology class.
Chiropractors: quacks who were not nearly good enough to get into medical school. Just so stories and treatments for problems without solutions. Masters of the placebo.
Nobody is giving a baby a pill for colic unless it is for reflux, an actual medical condition. Some evidence suggests that infants with colic often grow up to have migraines. Magic back massages don’t fix migraines and they won’t fix colic.
(snort!)
I broke my back when I was a teenager and know exactly how much my *misalignment* affects my other *systems*. Not at all. I hate quacks. A chiropractor teamed up with an orthopedic surgeon and almost convinced my 23 year old sister that she needed major back surgery. She had recently joined a rowing team. When she quit rowing, her pain subsided.
The word pseudoscientific cannot apply to chiropractic: reiko, for example, cannot be proved scientifically, because the placebo test cannot be applied. This is not the case with chiropractic. For shame! You don’t even know the meaning of that term! You didn’t even reply to the facts I pointed out that NONE of the examples listed were chiropractors. What if I said as an MD you were just a glorified drug dealer? Chiropractors affect definitive, measurable changes on the spinal structure, provable with frequent X-rays. There is nothing pseudoscientific about that. Even the Skeptics would be skeptical of you. I encourage your readers to not listen to MD’s on the mater of chiropractic, as you are not only not qualified to speak on the matter, (your few months of training compared to their 7 years), it is illegal for you to recommend people do not see one. People trust MD’s to give them advice to treat their conditions, and they abuse that trust by advising them not to seek the very treatment that could help them. Then, MDs, unable to diagose them correctly, eventually diagnose them with “fibromyalgia,” which is pseudoscientific gobblygook for pain they cannot diagnose, and proscribe them drugs that cause pain and damage far beyond the original symptoms, even possibly death.