Living The Chiropractic Lifestyle For Optimal Health and Wellness.
There are few people that have been more positive and influential (certainly when he was in his earlier years!) than Dr. Jack LaLanne.
Yes, doctor, many people don’t realize that the “Godfather of Fitness” and the man who started the American Fitness Revolution was a Chiropractor!
Dr. LaLanne was the first person to open a modern health studio in 1936!
Yes going back to 1936, Chiropractic was associated with health, wellness, and fitness. Principles that still are a part of most Chiropractic practices today.
Dr. LaLanne is probably most well known as the inventor of the power and fusion juicers.
At an early age, according to Jack he became a junk food junkie and sugar addict.
Talking about his diet at the time, “It made me weak and it made me mean. I had boils, pimples, and was near sighted. Little girls used to beat me up.”
At age 15 he was so sick that he had to drop out of school for 6 months.
At that point, Jack said he made a decision to get off the junk food and he began his very focused journey towards optimal health.
Jack said he picked up a copy of the Medical Text, Gray’s Anatomy. This one of the textbooks used in Chiropractic school (and Medical school).
Going through the textbook, Jack discovered how muscles, bones, and tendons of the body looked and worked.
He made a decision to follow his vision for learning about health and human potential making the logical choice to go to Chiropractic school.
Dr. LaLanne was a chiropractor but he decided to fuse his knowledge about health and the human body to focus upon fitness. He said he did this because he could help more people because of the massive opposition from the medical community to Chiropractic.
No one really understood this medical opposition at the time, but the American Medical Association had a massive campaign to eliminate the competition, Chiropractic, that was fully uncovered when they lost the US Supreme Court Case, Wilks versus the AMA in 1985.*
This decades long attack on chiropractic damaged both medical doctors and the public’s opinion of chiropractic.
*As an aside, Chiropractic and Medicine do not actually compete against each other in reality. Both should just be responsible for helping the patient in the best way possible which often involves cooperating.
Anyway, so Dr. LaLanne didn’t start a practice.
Instead choosing to use Chiropractic health principles to help change millions of lives through exercise and nutrition.
He used his knowledge of health and human physiology to come up with innovative exercises and equipment many of which are still used in modern day equipment.
He developed exercise equipment that is still seen in gyms and health clubs today.
He invented the weight selector pulley, calf machine, leg extension and squat machines and more, none of which he patented.
Dr. LaLanne said, “The medical doctors were against me and that working out with weights would give people heart attacks, and lose their sex drive. Women would look like men and coaches banned their athletes from using weights predicting that they would get muscle-bound. Today all world class athletes work out with weights.“
Jack was a proponent of juicing for over seven decades beginning with a press that would press the juice from the fruit or vegetables. Juicing is one of Jack’s ideas that is arguable not healthy especially in today’s food and chronic disease environment.
It concentrates sugar too much which wasn’t as much of a problem back in Dr. LaLanne’s early days. It is however a massive problem now.
Jack believed that giving your body the right fuel was like giving your automobile the right gas.
Jack LaLanne passed away at 96 while still exercising daily well into his nineties!
Dr. Jack LaLanne is a prime example of someone who used Chiropractic principles to help educate and bring greater health to millions.
In a future article I’ll talk about some of the amazing accomplishments he had over the course of his life because it goes far beyond starting health clubs, the fitness movement, exercise equipment and juicers.
Exercise, Nutrition, Fitness, and Spinal Hygiene through Chiropractic are the basic fundamentals your body requires in order to function optimally.
Chiropractors have always been at the forefront of promoting health.
Still today modern science is only starting to understand and prove Chiropractic as the best kept secret for optimal health.
Chiropractors are best known for improving spinal health, adjusting the spine and maintaining a healthy, balanced nervous system.
When you combine nutrition, exercise, and other healthy habits with Chiropractic treatment, your body is able to function, heal and repair much more effectively.
This is the fundamental truth Jack and many others who are at the leading edge of health have come to understand and utilize to help millions of people lead healthier lives.
By the way did you know that the “Jumping Jack” was named after it’s inventor, Dr. Jack LaLanne?
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