Going to chiropractor school before DO school

Started by airbear8
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airbear8

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7+ Year Member
My question isn't if a chiropractor can go to medical school but rather if there is an advantage to going to chiropractic school and then DO school. The path I was thinking would be to Finish massage therapy school and my BS in Biology followed by chiropractic school and oriental medicine school and then go to DO school and go into primary care. I'm not worried about the time it would take or the money I was just wondering if any chiropractors that went to DO school found that it was worth it to go to chiropractic school first. Thank you all for your help.
 
This thread is worthless without a photo.

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To try to turn this obvious troll thread into something useful is there a limit to how much financial aid/loans you can receive from the government? Can you get funding for two or three graduate degrees, one right after another?
 
Oo Cipher oO said:
To try to turn this obvious troll thread into something useful is there a limit to how much financial aid/loans you can receive from the government? Can you get funding for two or three graduate degrees, one right after another?
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I think the cap for federal Stafford loan is around 220k, but then you still have Grad plus loan that you can borrow up to your COA
 
It's not a troll thread.. This is a genuine question and I would appreciate genuine answers. I don't appreciate you disrespecting me like that.
 
OMG no. Just no. Expensive. Redundant. And unnecessary.
Just go to DO school and work extra hard becoming proficient at OMM if that's important to you.
 
Going to Ancient Chinese Medicine school would be a waste, as there is a lot to discrimination in Alchemy residencies against DOs and AOA alchemy is a joke. Not to mention that Obamacare slashed the reimbursement for transmutations anyway.
 
Ok Idk what that means but I just wanted to find out if there was any benefit from going to chiropractic school before DO school. If anyone has acrually done this or knows someone who has I would appreciate your input.
 
I don't know why I'm getting so many sarcastic posts but thank you to the few of you who posted sincerely, if there are any DCDO's out there I would love your opinion on if it helped or if OMM and chiropractic manipulation are so much alike that it isn't worth it.
 
Are u in high school?

I kind of wish this is a troll thread because it would make so much more sense.
 
I'm not in high school. I just got out of the military and I'm looking to change careers and this is what I was thinking about doing.
 
airbear8 said:
My question isn't if a chiropractor can go to medical school but rather if there is an advantage to going to chiropractic school and then DO school. The path I was thinking would be to Finish massage therapy school and my BS in Biology followed by chiropractic school and oriental medicine school and then go to DO school and go into primary care. I'm not worried about the time it would take or the money I was just wondering if any chiropractors that went to DO school found that it was worth it to go to chiropractic school first. Thank you all for your help.
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I'm going to add another "No" vote. The patient interaction experience might be helpful, but you can gain that by volunteering several hours a week at your local medical facility and save the extra tuition expense (and a lot of years). IMO, it's better to learn the manual skills you need in DO school so you won't have to unlearn any nonstandard techniques.

I've seen maybe three practicing chiropractors post on SDN in my years as a member asking for application advice. Whether any of them made it into a US medical school, I don't know. You might seek out such persons by using the Search term "chiropractor," see if you can find their user names, and then PM any of them who are med students or residents who have posted recently to ask your question.
 
Catalystik said:
You might seek out such persons by using the Search term "chiropractor," see if you can find their user names, and then PM any of them who are med students or residents who have posted recently to ask your question.
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Oh, dang. Now I need to go edit out all of my posts.
 
Medickdb, I have heard that as well. Some say it did and others say it didnt, I don't know enough about what they do for manipulations but from what I read it is very different.
 
airbear8 said:
Ok so OMM do the same thing as chiropractic and then some...
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No. They have separate origins and theory behind them. No one really knows the true history of chiropractic but there's a lot of evidence that the guy who came up with it essentially became aware of A. T. Stills initial success with OMT and ripped it off and created a bastardized version of it claiming it to be his own creation and completely unique. Also, I could be wrong about this, but I believe there's more quality research and evidence supporting the mechanisms behind OMT and their effects than there is for chiropractic. However the literature backing OMT has it's limits too.


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Also, for what it's worth, in my time working on a med/surg unit I saw 3 patients who ended-up requiring urgent back surgery because of chiropractic and one who developed a pneumothorax from it and/or some other alternative therapies that the practitioner "dabbled" in.


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Here's an excerpt from Norman Gevitz's book (The DOs: Osteopathic Medicine in America 2e, Johns Hopkins Univ Press, 2004)

IMPOSTORS AND IMITATORS

... Quite a different problem, however, was presented by those individuals practicing what appeared to many to be osteopathy under a different name. The most numerous of these were the exponents of chiropractic, founded by Daniel David Palmer (1845–1913). According to Palmer the principles of this system were fashioned by him in 1895, while he was making a living as a magnetic healer in Davenport, Iowa... In 1906 he was convicted of practicing medicine without a license and was sentenced to spend six months in jail. During his incarceration, his school was taken over by his son, Bartlett Joshua Palmer (1881–1961). The two were better known as BJ and DD. When DD was released, BJ squeezed him out of the college, whereupon DD tried without success to operate schools elsewhere. Returning to private practice, the elder Palmer wrote a massive textbook, a significant portion of which was devoted to a diatribe against his son. Bitter feelings between the two remained strong. At a founder’s day parade held in Davenport in August of 1913, the uninvited DD, marching on foot, was struck from behind by an auto driven by BJ. DD died a few months later, with some of his followers convinced that his death was a consequence of his injuries. Under the younger Palmer the school continued to grow, securing many matriculants by sensational advertising—a practice BJ encouraged his followers to emulate. By 1916 there reportedly were some fourteen hundred students in attendance, taking one year’s training leading to a doctorate in chiropractic, or DC, degree. For those who could not appear in person, a correspondence course was instituted.

Many early chiropractors were arrested on the charge of practicing osteopathy without a license. Unlike those with fake DO diplomas, however, chiropractors claimed that they were not pretending to be osteopaths and were therefore innocent of any offense. In court they cited a number of differences between the two systems. The DOs, they pointed out, commonly adjusted several vertebrae to treat a given disorder; they invariably adjusted but one. The technique also varied. Osteopathic manipulations were based on the lever principle, namely, the application of pressure on one part of the body to overcome resistance in motion elsewhere. This meant twisting the patient’s torso in certain directions while maintaining a steady hold upon the point to be influenced. The most common chiropractic procedure of the era had the client lying prone with little, if any support below the spine. The operator would then place both hands directly over a vertebral segment that was believed to be “subluxated” and administered a quick thrust downward with all possible force. In court, when DO witnesses were called to the stand, they would often testify that this method was crude and dangerous and would not be employed in osteopathic practice. Such statements, however, unintentionally worked to the chiropractors’ advantage, since they indicated to juries that there were indeed divergences in approach. With respect to the element of danger, the defendants were only too glad to present patients who had been so treated, attesting to the safety of such maneuvers. To further cement their position, some chiropractors cleverly managed to obtain and circulate signed letters by officials of recognized DO-granting schools stating that a course of chiropractic was not the same as one in osteopathy. As a result of these tactics, they generally won acquittal.

Since the courts were beginning to establish the chiropractors’ right to engage in their livelihood outside the jurisdiction of either the medical or osteopathic licensure acts, several legislatures realized that unless they passed laws recognizing the group, their states would be inundated with diploma mill graduates. In 1913, despite vigorous lobbying of MDs and DOs alike, Kansas and Arkansas became the first to enact chiropractic bills. Each required for licensure an eighteen-month course of personal instruction at a duly chartered college. By 1922 twenty other states had similar statutes. At this time the number of DCs legally and illegally in practice probably exceeded the number of osteopaths in the country...
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A quick Wikipedia search on the differences between osteopathic medicine and chiropractors would yield some pretty good results. As many have said before, osteopathic medicine is WAY more than chiropractors.

Dare I say chiropractic medicine? Is that even close to being correct?
 
airbear8 said:
Do you really have nothing better to do with your time than post snarky remarks about something I am legitimately asking about?
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Honestly, I don'tt buy for a second that you're not a troll. This is actually out of respect because the alternative is you're willing to throw away thousands of dollars on useless training, and it implies you have made zero research into what it takes to do medicine. In either case you are not medical school quality.
 
AlbinoHawk DO said:
Honestly, I don'tt buy for a second that you're not a troll. This is actually out of respect because the alternative is you're willing to throw away thousands of dollars on useless training, and it implies you have made zero research into what it takes to do medicine. In either case you are not medical school quality.
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I am still not a troll, whatever that means. And I did do plenty of research, and it always came to the same conclusion that DC and DO are different. Which that research also lead me to learn that a good amount of Chiropractors were going to DO school and my main question is if there was a benefit of going that route as opposed to just DO school. I don't have enough education or training to know what either manipulation is like which is why I asked. And instead of people answering my question I get called a troll and get all these insulting comments. I have no interest in starting a debate on what works and what is 'fake' medicine or what is better.
 
and on top if that, your going to tell me I'm not qualified for medicine because I asked a question that is nowhere online? Sure there are comparisons everywhere, but none that answers my actual question.
 
If you had done any research on DC, you'd know that the foundation of the practice, subluxations, are not real phenomena and therefore equating or proposing a benefit to your your training as a science-based modality is a ridiculous question. That's like asking if going to tooth fairy school will make you a better dentist.
 
DrCharlemagne said:
If you had done any research on DC, you'd know that the foundation of the practice, subluxations, are not real phenomena and therefore equating or proposing a benefit to your your training as a science-based modality is a ridiculous question. That's like asking if going to tooth fairy school will make you a better dentist.
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I'm no scientist and I don't have any training at all but I feel like western medicine is short sighted in regards to things like this. When I was 13 I blew my back out and couldn't walk. And after seeing a chiro for a couple visits i was back to 100%. So to me it works. I know you can't do double blind placebo studies to make sure it actually works, but I'm a results person and it worked for me. And as far as acupuncture I've never had it but I find it fascinating and my wife who is from Korea has used it and had great results.
 
airbear8 said:
I'm no scientist and I don't have any training at all but I feel like western medicine is short sighted in regards to things like this. When I was 13 I blew my back out and couldn't walk. And after seeing a chiro for a couple visits i was back to 100%. So to me it works. I know you can't do double blind placebo studies to make sure it actually works, but I'm a results person and it worked for me. And as far as acupuncture I've never had it but I find it fascinating and my wife who is from Korea has used it and had great results.
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You should consider googling what a DO is and what OMM is. And giving you the benefit of the doubt, the definition of a troll is someone who makes a comment to incite an emotional response, which you clearly are doing whether intentional or not.

You aren't going to get good responses on this thread. Educate yourself as you will be doing a lot of this in med school should you get in.
 
airbear8 said:
When I was 13 I blew my back out and couldn't walk. And after seeing a chiro for a couple visits i was back to 100%. So to me it works.
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Have you ever heard of the placebo effect?


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airbear8 said:
I am still not a troll, whatever that means. And I did do plenty of research, and it always came to the same conclusion that DC and DO are different. Which that research also lead me to learn that a good amount of Chiropractors were going to DO school and my main question is if there was a benefit of going that route as opposed to just DO school. I don't have enough education or training to know what either manipulation is like which is why I asked. And instead of people answering my question I get called a troll and get all these insulting comments. I have no interest in starting a debate on what works and what is 'fake' medicine or what is better.
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You don't need to have a conversation about that with us, but you do with yourself. The fact that you're not even familiar with the differences and options of each says you haven't done any research at all. What do you want to do? Chiropractic? Oriental Medicine? Or Osteopathic Medicine? Familiarize yourself with each and their differences. Then find the smartest path to get to your goal instead of being all over the place and making it seem like you believe each of the 3 are interrelated.
 
airbear8 said:
I'm no scientist and I don't have any training at all but I feel like western medicine is short sighted in regards to things like this. When I was 13 I blew my back out and couldn't walk. And after seeing a chiro for a couple visits i was back to 100%. So to me it works. I know you can't do double blind placebo studies to make sure it actually works, but I'm a results person and it worked for me. And as far as acupuncture I've never had it but I find it fascinating and my wife who is from Korea has used it and had great results.
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Honestly, I would do more research before you go on saying Western medicine is shortsighted. I agree it is in some regards, but you should definitely do some research and compare and contrast to see which career path is truly right for you. If you plan to go to medical school in this country, prepare to become a scientist. You'll need to take quite a few science classes before you even apply. And, it's no secret, but medical school is full of science as well and at a level that's way more in depth than many realize.

I'm not going to say that Eastern medicine is full of $4!t because I don't believe that to be true. Disciplines like acupuncture have been around for centuries. They each have their uses. If you feel what we classify as "alternative medicine" in this country is what's right for you, then pursue it. Figure out the way you feel you'll help people best.

AlbinoHawk DO said:
You don't need to have a conversation about that with us, but you do with yourself. The fact that you're not even familiar with the differences and options of each says you haven't done any research at all. What do you want to do? Chiropractic? Oriental Medicine? Or Osteopathic Medicine? Familiarize yourself with each and their differences. Then find the smartest path to get to your goal instead of being all over the place and making it seem like you believe each of the 3 are interrelated.
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I agree with AlbinoHawk DO. Do some research. Shadow a DO, a DC, and an acupuncturist. The best thing you can do for yourself is to get a general idea of each discipline before investing the time and energy into any one of them.
 
There was a chiropractor at one of my interviews. He seemed to think pretty highly of himself. I googled chiropractors in the specific state the interview was held in and sure enough his website popped up with explanations on how he was a chiropractic "physician." Pretty sure he wouldn't be interviewing with the lowly premeds if he were already a REAL high and mighty physician. Don't waste your time with quackery. Go straight MD or DO and learn the fruits of real science.
 
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I am really interested in Emergency Medicine and I know sometimes people come into the ER with broken teeth, so I was wondering if I should go to dental school before DO school so I can really know how to handle it. Any thoughts?
 
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