Back pain is a huge issue for a growing number of jiu-jiteiros. Young, old, recreational or competitive more or less we’ve all had back issues at some point.
Many of us got referrals from our teammates for different doctors, physio therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists or even some weirder personalities. After all the bjj lifestyle lends itself to a kind of hipster happy go luck approach to most things.
But those of us who opted to visit a chiropractor are in for a rude awakening. According to a fresh article by Yvette d’Entremont Chiropractors all came from a serendipity meeting of Daniel David Palmer, a magnetic healer in Davenport, Iowa, and a deaf janitor named Harvey Lillard.
By cracking the spine of the deaf janitor in 1895 the hoax art of chiropractors was born. They claimed that adjusting his spine had rendered his hearing back. Now this is quite suspicious given that there are no scientific explanations for this unlikely “miracle”.
According to the article Palmer held séances to contact a dead physician named Jim Atkinson, and said that those séances helped him develop chiropractic. As he wrote in his 1914 book The Chiropractor:
“The knowledge and philosophy given me by Dr. Jim Atkinson, an intelligent spiritual being, together with explanations of phenomena, principles resolved from causes, effects, powers, laws and utility, appealed to my reason. The method by which I obtained an explanation of certain physical phenomena, from an intelligence in the spiritual world, is known in biblical language as inspiration. In a great measure The Chiropractor’s Adjuster was written under such spiritual promptings.”
Now if you think that the medicinal practice has advanced since then you might be dissuaded by the fact that Palmer’s school is still open to this daet and claims that health is a state we owe to something called vertebral subluxations.
This means that a joint in your body pops partially out of socket and pops back in resulting in damage to surrounding issues. This is something chiropractors claim to feel by hand but it’s unclear whether they can be seen on x ray or modern diagnostic procedures.
To boot there is very little medical evidence that a chiropractor is a best treatment option for pretty much anything.
Like most things in modern society – chiropractors attract majority of attention via social media with some of them having quite a celebrity status and many followers across different platforms.
As if all this wasn’t sketchy enough modern day chiropractors also offer something called infant chorpractice that in some cases can replace vaccines?!
Next time somebody refers you to a chiropractor perhaps consider what you’re signing up for – given that this is a practice with very scant medical evidence which came from quite a shady past and continues to be questionable.
You can read much more about the just why Chiropractors are bullsh*tsu here.
