It would seem that for everyone who knows what chiropractic care entails, what kind of people the field employs and what the potential benefits are, there are about a dozen people who have an absurdly false idea of what chiropractic care is. These common misconceptions about chiropractic care go in either direction, being that for every person you meet who thinks of chiropractic care as the first and last method of treatment for literally everything, you might meet just as many people who think chiropractic care is nothing more than potentially dangerous con-game. Of course, neither of these misconceptions are even half-true, chiropractic care is neither a con nor a miracle cure-all, rather, like any therapeutic technique, surgery or medicine, it is simply the right treatment for a specific kind of condition.

The first misconception is probably thanks to the emotional high a patient will feel after their first chiropractic appointment when they find that not only has their back stopped hurting, but their headaches are, seemingly by some miracle, completely gone. Patients commonly come out of the chiropractor’s office with the misconception that a bit of chiropractic care can cure just about anything there is to cure. They recommend it to their friends suffering from anything and everything from aching joints to the flu. The truth is, chiropractic care focuses solely on the musculoskeletal system, but other parts of the body can experience improved health thanks to corrections made to the spine. An ethical chiropractor isn’t going to try to use chiropractic care to cure a common cold anymore than a mechanic will use a hammer to administer an oil change. Unless you know your ailment to be musculoskeletal in nature, you should talk to your family doctor before stepping into the chiropractor’s office. They are trained to be capable therapists and doctors, but a chiropractor is not a magician. Your malady might not even be something chiropractic care can solve, even though it involves aching joints, in which case, chiropractors are well trained diagnosticians and can make recommendations for lifestyle and dietary changes that might help where hands on chiropractic care cannot.

The second could be seen as a cynical foil to the first. Chiropractic care is so commonly lionized by those who entertain the misconception that it’s the be-all end-all of medical treatment, that it’s only natural that others would go a little far in their efforts to disprove this. You might hear that chiropractors aren’t even real doctors, that they got their degrees by mail or some such, or that chiropractic care can only do damage to the body. Again, it is the right solution for the right problem and it would only be detrimental to neglect a problem that demands chiropractic attention. Licensed chiropractors are not con-men or pseudo-scientists’, they are officially recognized medical professionals, as legitimate and capable as any other, so there is no reason not to see one in the event of musculoskeletal aches and pains or lost mobility.