i am also extremely convinced that if i just adjust myself enough there will be a big crack andall of my aches and pains will immediately go away an d I will have perfect posture and i will be cured of mental health and find a million bajillion dollars on the floor and live till im 120
Anecdotal evidence: When our first child was born they wouldn't lie on one side, seemed restless and had trouble sleeping. Not knowing much about chiropracy party from it being "someone who does spine stuff" and having had it recommended we went to a chiropractor with our infant.
The chiropractor massaged their neck and made it say a small cracking sound and that was it. The baby wasn't happy about the whole thing but it actually helped, they slept much better afterwards and could lie on either side without issues.
I don't know if I would do it again, knowing the quackery behind it all, but as a layman I wouldn't be too surprised if you could actually improve some neck and back issues by popping things back into place. Cracking your neck feels great so having someone else crack it would be good as well?
Maybe there's a difference between European and American chiropractors? Around here they are educated at real universities, they are supervised and credentialed by health authorities and I've never heard anybody talk about them as treating anything other than spine and back things. The insane claims about mental health and cancer and whatnot seems to be more of an American thing.
Chiropractors were banned in my country from performing spinal manipulation techniques on children under 12 because they occasionally break babies' necks and there's no strong evidence to support their efficacy.
Here they're educated at real universities and the study period can often be longer than a real medical degree. They are subject to the same medical professional regulatory body.
It's still a quack profession.
economists also go to university
I believe they're vaguely more regulated in Europe. But be careful the conclusions you draw, the modern way of supporting the lie is mixing this lethally dangerous pseudoscience with real science.
Even if they did nothing else, it's possible that their massaging the neck was enough, and the rest was nonsense/dangerous. Placebo in babies is also a genuine thing (usually proxied via the parents).
There's like a solid 30% chance whoever recommended that was trying to kill the kid.
The cracking is just gas escaping, and they achieve it by forcing joints to move how they shouldn't.
A physical therapist could have done the same with a significantly lower risk level. Chiropracty is literally made up nonsense that hits right exclusively by accident. PT usually follows modern evidence based methods. PT also usually tries to get you to a good place and teach you how to maintain that by yourself so you're not constantly paying some quack pretend doctor in a strip mall to "realign" you to Earth's Central Beam or whatever.