The International Chiropractic Association has created a fact sheet for people interested in learning more about Chiropractors and their training. Click on the link below to learn how well educated and trained Chiropractors are.
A man who once carried the ball for 197 touchdowns is the now carrying the ball for the chiropractic profession.
The legendary Jerry Rice, one of the National Football League’s (NFL) greatest players and wide receivers, has been enlisted by the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress to speak out on his use and support of chiropractors.
An advertising campaign featuring Jerry Rice kicked off in the December 15th issue of ESPN The Magazine, with a national circulation of over 2 million. The full-page ad included supportive statements on how chiropractic made a difference in making him one of the most feared wide receivers in the history of football, and later as a finalist with the popular Dancing with the Stars competition reality program.
“This ad is the beginning of a comprehensive public relations effort that is planned in the next couple of months to communicate Rice’s endorsement of our profession and will include placement in Sports Illustrated, USA Today, Men’s Fitness and Women’s Health,” said Laura Carabello, principal in CPR Communications, the company that handles all media and public relations for the Foundation.
“Our campaign also includes press releases, a video of Jerry Rice discussing his experience with chiropractors, which will be sent to various media throughout the country, an advertorial that will be sent to 10,000 newspapers in the country, and various Public Service Announcements for radio,” Carabello added.
“My first experience with chiropractic care was right before the 49ers were to play the Cincinnati Bengals in Super Bowl XXIII in 1987,” said Rice in the promotional video. “A couple of our key players were injured and a chiropractor turned things around. I quickly became a believer and ever since, I have had the benefit of chiropractic care.”
Rice, who attended Mississippi Valley State University, was an outstanding college wide receiver. In 1984, his senior year, he scored five touchdowns in two games and was named to every All-American football team in the country. His college career total of 50 touchdowns stood as an NCAA record until 2006.
Although he was a first round draft by the San Francisco 49ers in 1985, NFL scouts were somewhat concerned because he was not considered very fast to be a professional wide receiver (reportedly he only ran the 40-yard dash in 4.70 seconds — most wide receivers run 40 yards in at least 4.5 seconds).
His rookie year he recorded 49 catches for 927 yards, averaging nearly 19 yards per catch and was named the National Football Conference Offensive Rookie of the Year. In 1987, he was named the NFL’s Player of the Year. Twenty years later, he retired from professional football holding nearly every wide receiver record in the NFL.
“Football is a very rough and vigorous sport,” said Rice in the video. “Many of the pass patterns in a game — either long or short — required a maximum effort. I took some vicious hits from players nearly twice my size. [Rice is 6’2” and his playing weight was 200 pounds] Thankfully, I had the durability to withstand these tackles — or I would never have succeeded or lasted as long as I did. Chiropractic was the key to keeping me in the game.”
Although his football career is over, his use of chiropractic treatment continues —most recently helping him when he was a finalist on Dancing with the Stars.
“Dancing with the Stars was every bit as exhausting and challenging — though not nearly as brutal as football,” said Rice in the video. “It required many hours of practice. I had aches and pains that I never had before. Again, chiropractic made the difference — and kept me dancing and in competition.”
The Foundation was founded in November 2003 as a nonprofit corporation. Kent S. Greenawalt, president and CEO of Foot Levelers Inc., spearheaded the founding of the Foundation and is its current chairman.
“To bring all factions of our industry today — from the schools, to the students, to the DCs, to the vendors supporting the chiropractic industry — we developed and have maintained a mission statement that all of us can and should support,” said Greenawalt. “Our mission is to increase the number of people who seek chiropractic treatment on a regular basis.”
In 2005, Foot Levelers and NCMIC Group committed to contribute $1 million each over a five-year period to the Foundation. Standard Process has committed more than $250,000 to the Foundation.
“Major contributions have permitted us to continue an effective and high-profile advertising campaign,” said Gary Cuneo, chief operation officer of the Foundation. “But to really achieve our purpose of increasing chiropractic care in the country, we need the entire chiropractic community’s support and especially support from individual DCs because they are truly the reason for our existence.”
Since July 2006, the Foundation has placed full-page advertisements in national publications featuring patients and medical doctors providing positive testimony regarding chiropractic. National publications carrying the advertisements include: Sports Illustrated, U.S. News & World Report, New York Times Magazine, TV Guide, Newsweek, Martha Stewart Living, Working Mothers, Health, Business Insurance, and Business Week.
“Singing Jerry Rice as a spokesperson, however, takes us to a whole other level of public awareness,” said Greenawalt. “We have Joseph Doyle to thank for this. It was his idea and he went and made the initial contact with Mr. Rice’s agent.” Joseph Doyle is publisher of Chiropractic Economics Magazine and is a director of the Foundation.
Chiropractic Case Study Background: The patient is a 37 year old female complaining of neck, upper and low back pain. She spends long hours at a desk and has been in the same job for two years. Her job requires that most of her day is spent on the telephone and computer. Her pains began three or four months after beginning her job and have gradually gotten worse. She has had some neck and back pain in the past but not of this intensity or duration.
Challenges: In addition to her work environment contributing to her neck and back pain she also does not have a healthy exercise routine and considers herself “a little overweight.” She does not have a regular exercise routine and due to her schedule often eats on the run mostly consisting of processed snacks.
Treatment Options: After an examination and a review of her history Dr. Paul sat with her to discuss treatment options. Dr. Paul’s suggested course of action is a treatment protocol of two visits per week for four weeks followed by an evaluation. Treatment consists of chiropractic adjustment and soft tissue therapy which would involve trigger point therapy and myofascial release therapy. Dr. Paul also instructs the patient in the home use of ice and heat as well as strengthening and stretching exercises to be done at home. The patient agreed to the treatment regimen.
McGee Chiropractic is an integrated practice designing treatments for their clients that include nutrition and exercise. Dr. Paul discussed changes she could make in her diet and exercise to improve her overall health, ways she could modify her work station and work habits in order to make her work day a more enjoyable experience. Some specific work solutions are: using a headset with her phone, adjusting her seat height, muscle relaxing exercises to be done at her desk and standing up while on break.
Results: during the consultation at the end of the treatment period it was determined there was improvement and the next course of action would be to reduce the visits to one visit per week for two more weeks and to continue the exercise and nutrition regimen. At this time it was determined the patient’s condition had improved enough to be discharged. We did discuss early warning signs in case this might reoccur. Four months later the patient made an appointment for treatment. During the visit the patient said she was still feeling better overall but was beginning to experience some pain and wanted to “nip it in the bud.” This time the patient required two visits to relieve her pain. Finally we went over her home exercises to make sure she was still doing them properly as well as the overall changes we had made to her diet and work habits.
A recent study suggests that wellness care provided by doctors of chiropractic may improve health behaviors, enhance patient perceived quality of life and reduce health care costs. Published in the Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research (JVSR), a joint study by chiropractors and researchers at the University of Lund found that chiropractic care could influence basic physiological processes that affected oxidative stress and DNA repair. The study’s landmark results offer a scientific explanation for the positive health benefits reported by chiropractic patients.
The study measured serum thiol levels in 21 patients under short term chiropractic care and 25 patients undergoing long-term chiropractic care, compared with 30 subjects in a non-chiropractic care control group. Long-term chiropractic care of two or more years was shown to re-establish a normal physiological state independent of age, sex or nutritional supplements. Symptom-free or primary wellness subjects under chiropractic care demonstrated higher mean serum thiol values than patients with active disease, and produced somewhat higher than normal wellness values. Serum thiols, primary antioxidants that serve to measure human health status, provide a surrogate estimate of DNA repair enzyme activity, which has been linked with lifespan and aging.
The chemical, physical and emotional stress of life affects the function of the nervous system and the study hypothesized that these disturbances in nerve function could affect oxidative stress and DNA repair on a cellular level. Now a broadly accepted theory about human aging and disease development, oxidative stress metabolically generates free radicals, which result in DNA damage and inhibition of DNA repair, the mechanism that fixes the damage caused by environmental impact. Chiropractors apply spinal adjustments to correct disturbances of nerve function, thereby improving the ability of the body to adapt to stress.
Oklahoma patients overwhelmingly declare that they are satisfied with their chiropractic care, according to a survey taken by the Oklahoma State Chiropractic Independent Physician Association (OSCIPA), a non-profit physician association with 175 chiropractors.
The survey was conducted among a random sample of 750 patients, selected from 36, 710 patients seen by OSCIPA members in 2004.
The study also found that word-of-mouth communication is a cost-effective way to build a chiropractic practice. Findings included:
Chiropractic is one of the “great jobs” according to a ranking by the business magazine Fast Company. The magazine ranked chiropractic fourth in its list of Top 25 jobs in America.
The magazine used four criteria to identify the best jobs: job growth, salary potential, education level, and room for innovation. It relied “heavily” on data from the Bureau of Labor and Statistics and Salary.com.
Spinal manipulation, in the form of chiropractic, osteopathy, or manipulative physiotherapy, followed by a program of exercise, provides significant relief of symptoms and improvements in general health, according to a trial by the Medical Research Council (MRC). The results of the trial were published November 19, 2006 in the Online edition of the British Medical Journal.
According to the MRC, which is a national research organization funded by the British Parliament, lower back pain is one of the most common ailments general practitioners have to treat.
The MRC trial recruited more than 1,300 patients from across the UK, whose back pain had not improved after receiving “best care” in general practice, to assess the effectiveness of three different treatments. The treatments were:
The results showed that patients in all treatment groups reported improved back function and reduced pain over time, but to varying degrees. On average, patients assigned to exercise classes in addition to care by a general practitioner (GP) reported a small benefit at three months but not at one year.
Those assigned to spinal manipulation in addition to GP care reported a small to moderate benefit at three months and a small, on average, benefit at one year.
The greatest improvement was found in the patients assigned to combined manipulation and exercise in addition to GP care. They reported a moderate, on average, improvement at three months and a small average improvement at one year. These benefits were the same whether treatment was delivered using private or National Health Service (NHS) premises.
An economic analysis was also carried out. It showed that the cost to the NHS of all three treatments was modest. It also showed that both spinal manipulation and the combined package of spinal manipulation and exercise achieved similar benefits to patients at a similar cost to the NHS.
According to the American Chiropractic Association, the MRC study is one of a number of recent studies regarding chiropractic’s effectiveness for back pain over traditional medical care.
A March 2004 study in the Journal of Manipulative and Physiological Therapeutics found that chiropractic care is more effective than medical care at treating chronic low-back pain in patients’ first year of symptoms. And a study published in the July 13, 2003 edition of the medical journal Spine found that manual manipulation provides better short-term relief of chronic spinal pain than does a variety of medications.
David Johnson, D.C., a 1977 graduate of Palmer’s Davenport campus from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, spoke to more than 50 alumni and guests at the Palmer Alumni dinner on Oct. 21, held in conjunction with the Iowa Chiropractic Society Fall Symposium in Cedar Rapids. Dr. Johnson is the father of Zach Johnson, a professional golfer on the PGA tour and a member of this year’s Ryder Cup team. Dr. Johnson spoke about his son’s rise to prominence in the PGA and how chiropractic is utilized by PGA golfers. Zach and his fellow PGA golfers take advantage of the performance edge that regular chiropractic care can provide to athletes by utilizing a chiropractic trailer that accompanies the golfers to each PGA event. During the Ryder Cup this year in Europe, Dr. Johnson was pleased to see Tiger Woods as one who took advantage of the chiropractic care being offered.
