Third Model of Chiropractic Care

When you think about politics or democracy, there are two main parties. One is conservatives and the other one is liberals. It’s like wings of a bird. The society doesn’t change radically because of conservatives and, the society advances just enough to advance because of liberals. Just like in our society,chiropractic had two parties. One was straight (conservatives) and, the other one was mixers (liberals). Chiropractic (meaning ‘done by hands) started out from one single root. When D.D. Palmer found chiropractic in 1895, he meant using only hands to manipulate the spine.

At that time, Dr. Palmer believed that all diseases came from misalignment of the spine (called ‘SUBLUXATION’) and, he thought that he would fix all the problems by correcting people’s spine. However, some doctors started to question his theory that all the disease came from misalignment of the spine and, they started to accept ideas of diseases coming from other causes. Basically, they did not want to limit their practice to fixing only subluxation.

Sequentially and inevitably, people were divided by two groups. Straight vs. Mixers. A group of chiropractors who would still believe that all diseases were coming from the existence of subluxation was considered as “straight chiropractors”. The other group was called as “mixers”.

Mixer chiropractic made more sense because it was true that diseases are coming from different sources. Because mixers were more science based as opposed to philosophy based, they could do better jobs in a way. Then, are mixers simply better than straight chiropractors? Of course, not. Mixers may seem superficially better than straight chiropractors. However, the bigger problem arose. They were killing the profession by not putting spine correction as the highest value. No matter what they do, the essence of chiropractic care is spine correction.

Nothing is right or wrong. It’s a balance issue. For mixers, I have no idea why did they even become a chiropractor if they were not going to perceive spine correction as the core value of chiropractic. If a chiropractor loses expertise in human spine, it’s no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot. For straight chiropractors, they need to be less exclusive about other things. Fortunately, it’s hard to see many extremely straight chiropractorsin these days.

I, Dr. Seung-Hyun Jung, was introduced to chiropractic by a straight chiropractor. However, I went to mixer school. And then, I started my career as a super straight chiropractor. I was very confused during my chiropractic education. However, after all the confusion, I integrated all the good things from each group. I want to name those chiropractors as ‘reformed chiropractors’. Reformed chiropractors are chiropractors who recognize spine correction as the core value, but not limited to only fixing spine. It’s the third model of chiropractic care.