One of the most common questions we get asked as chiropractors (and one of the easiest to answer) is the question of chiropractic safety. The simple facts are that chiropractic care is incredibly safe.
There are so many rumours and old wives tales out there about the supposed "dangers" of chiropractic care (and believe me I have heard them all). In fact many of them are propagated by people who should know better if they had read their research.
One of the most common and persistent stories we hear is around the safety of neck adjustments (and in particular in relation to strokes). This topic has been studied in the research time and time again and the conclusion has always been the same, these events are exceedingly rare (less than one in a million) and in fact the most recent in-depth review of the relationship between stroke and chiropractic care, was published in the February 15, 2008 issue of Spine Journal. It looked at 10 years of hospital records, involving 100 million person-years and showed that you are just as likely to suffer from a stroke after visiting your Medical Doctor as you are after visiting a chiropractor. In other words cases of serious injury with chiropractic care (even with the supposedly "riskiest" adjustment) are virtually nonexistent.
Not only that but safe, gentle and effective chiropractic care can often reduce your need for drugs and surgery, which we know do have adverse side effects, further increasing the safety benefit. In fact one good way to measure chiropractic safety is to look at the Professional Indemnity insurance premiums paid by chiropractors. They pay only a fraction of what medical doctors pay (not to even mention spinal surgeons). Do you think the insurance companies are biased towards chiropractors, or do you think they just care about the bottom line?
So as I said this is a question that we get asked a lot but it is also a very easy one to answer. Chiropractic is a safe, gentle and effective form of care that you can feel comfortable recommending for friends and family of all ages.
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