A Tennessee man has warned against going to a chiropractor — especially for neck pain — after suffering an ‘excruciating’ injury.
Tyler Williams, a content creator from Nashville, visited a local chiropractor the day before his 33rd birthday last June for tightness in his neck.
His neck failed to crack on the first attempt, but on the second attempt, the chiropractor put ‘a lot of force behind it’ causing ‘one huge and painful pop.’
Mr Williams said: ‘I knew immediately that something was wrong.’
As he tried to sit up, ‘the whole room was spinning,’ and he found himself sweating profusely.
It took 30 minutes before Mr Williams could sit up, and by the time he got home, he was violently vomiting and suffering blurred vision.
The next morning, as he reached forward to turn off his alarm, he could barely move due to excruciating pain.
Mr Williams rushed to the hospital, where tests revealed he had suffered a herniated disc in the C6 area of his spine, found in the neck.
Chiropractor injuries can be severe (stock image)
This occurs when the soft, jelly-like center of a disc pushes against the spine’s outer ring, leading to pain, weakness, and paralysis.
Mr Williams said in a recent TikTok video, which has gotten 2.6million views: ‘I was in the worst pain I have ever experienced in my entire life. The entire right side of my body just felt kind of like static. It was really numb.
‘It was really scary, to be honest with you. I had no idea what was happening, but I knew something was really wrong.’
Now, the 33-year-old is warning against getting neck adjustments from a chiropractor after the injury left him bedbound for two months and drained him of his savings.
He said: ‘I just don’t want what happened to me to happen to someone else.’
About 3million Americans suffer a herniated disc every year, and it is considered one of the most common causes of neck and back pain.
While it normally causes pain, weakness, and numbness, in rare cases, a herniated disc can lead to paralysis.
Mr Williams spent several weeks in the hospital as doctors tried to treat the pain. He said doctors injected corticosteroids into his spine to help reduce inflammation, though they ‘didn’t even make a dent’ in the pain.
‘It literally did nothing,’ he said.
Doctors said he could either undergo spinal fusion surgery – a procedure that removes herniated vertebrae and joins the two vertebrae around it with synthetic bone – or try to manage the pain with physical therapy.
Spinal fusion surgery can fail and become less effective over time, causing a need for additional surgeries. To avoid this, Mr Williams opted for physical therapy.
However, the pain was so crippling that he was forced to spend two months in bed and was unable to work as a content creator.
He said: ‘It basically just ended up at a point where my savings just evaporated.’
Seven months later, Mr Williams still has limited mobility and lives with severe pain. He is now considering suing the chiropractor allegedly responsible for the injury.
He said: ‘It just destroyed me mentally, financially, physically, all of it. This really just derailed my entire life overnight when I didn’t do anything wrong.
‘I wouldn’t wish what happened to me and what is happening to me on my worst enemy.
‘Please don’t go to the chiropractor because if something happens, there’s not much that you can do.
‘This is the last thing you want to experience, I promise you.’
Caitlin Jensen from Georgia claims she was paralyzed from the neck down after having her neck adjusted by a chiropractor. She is pictured here before the injury
Ms Jensen, pictured after the injury, spent eight months in the hospital and is still working to regain her basic movements
Chiropractors, generally, are not medical doctors, as they don’t have to go to medical school to obtain their degree.
But they are required, typically, to complete at least three years of undergraduate study and four years of a chiropractic graduate program in order to become a Doctor of Chiropractor (DC). All states require practicing chiropractors to be licensed.
Chiropractic’s are often times advertised as an alternative to drugs or surgery for conditions like chronic pain, headaches, arthritis and stiffness in adults, and are popular in holistic health circles.
Still, the fact they are not medical doctors has brought ire from the public, especially following controversial cases.
For example, in 2014, a 30-year-old Oklahoman named Jeremy Youngblood died of a stoke shortly after visiting the chiropractors office. The corner said his death was caused by spinal manipulation.
In response to this tragedy, Dr Bill Kinsiger, the President of the Oklahoma Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision, called chiropractors ‘snake oil salesmen’.
He told FOX13: ‘they (chiropractors) use neck manipulation for things that have nothing to do with the neck — low back pain, knee pain and all sorts of organic illnesses like ear infections in babies, colicky babies and PMS in women.’
And in 2022, 28-year-old Caitlin Jensen of Georgia suffered a stroke and lost her pulse for 10 minutes after a chiropractic adjustment ruptured four arteries in her neck.
Her mother told WSB-TV that doctors believe the stroke occurred ‘as a direct result of the neck manipulation.’
She was paralyzed from the neck down and hospitalized for eight months while she slowly regained movement in her neck, arms, and legs and had to relearn how to speak.
