I have lived my whole life wanting to be a doctor where the type of the doctor varied between being a pediatrician, orthopedist, and a chiropractor. As a child, I was also always told "follow your dream" and "grow up to be whatever you want to be." I never expected when I made the final decision to be a Chiropractic Doctor being asked: "I thought you wanted to be a doctor?"

The first time I was asked that it was a shot right in the chest, I felt my heart drop into my stomach like I had no support behind me. But I decided to follow my heart and ignore all the comments made by my family and friends. I made that decision two years ago and still to this day I get ridiculed about my career choice.

I am here to clear it up; a Chiropractor is, in fact, a doctor.

A Chiropractic doctor is one that specialized in a treatment of misalignment of joints, specifically the spinal column causing disorders affecting the nerves, muscles and organs.

In easier terms this means the doctor uses his or her hands to alleviate discomfort. Why do you go to your doctors? You go because you are in pain, or there is discomfort within your body and you are looking for a diagnosis to try to fix the problem.

That’s what a chiropractor does, fixes medical problems, just without heavy medications.

To become a chiropractor, you must go through extensive schooling for 3 to 4 years depending on the school you go to. While in school, these students must take and pass four different National Boards to practice patient care. These boards are incredibly important because they test the knowledge you have already gained to make sure that all future chiropractors are properly trained just as medical students and medical residents take boards to practice medicine.

Some might say that these boards are equally important as the medical boards because Chiropractors can work directly with the spine and one mistake can cause serious injury.

Yes, chiropractors are currently more inclined to have malpractice suits right now but that is because chiropractic care is still relatively new and can be very dangerous. Yes, chiropractors can “cure” many different injuries and disorders. I recently traveled to Sherman College of Chiropractic Care and met one of the leading Pediatric Chiropractors who told me about his most memorable manipulation.

A 3-year-old girl had recently returned from vacation in a South American country with her family and became very sick to the point where she went into a coma. They called this chiropractor who came to just see if there was any spinal subluxation and as he was correcting her spine she woke up in his arms. The doctors at the hospital were shocked along with everyone else in the room, to this day the little girl and her family come to attest to the positives of chiropractic care.

Another important fact about chiropractic care is that it can be holistically or medically based. There are chiropractic schools that believe and teach that correcting a subluxation can cure everything where other schools teach a more medically based science of it as you would learn in medical school. The medically based science of it requires collaboration with other doctors (both chiropractic and non-chiropractic).

Per doctor-patient confidentiality laws, a doctor cannot just share patient information with just anyone, so yes, a chiropractor is a doctor.

Next time you put someone down about what they want to do, think about what their future entails. Chiropractors are doctors and I am going to be a chiropractic doctor no matter what everyone else says. And to anyone who has had similar experiences use their negativity and disbelief to fuel yourself and become the best at whatever it is you want to do.