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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.

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.