Canadian Chiropractor magazine was launched. It marked the first year into a new century for the chiropractic profession, after having just celebrated its centennial the year before. The first chiropractic out-patient clinic at the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières in Quebec was opened. Fourth and fifth-year chiropractic students finally had a place to practice the techniques they learned in class. A new chiropractic sports sciences residency program was instituted by the Royal College of Chiropractic Sports Sciences, allowing practicing chiropractors the opportunity to obtain their Sports Fellowship. To date, there are 107 DCs with a Sports Fellowship through the RCCSS. A new and improved Canadian Chiropractor website was launched. For the first time, readers were able to view and search previous articles through an electronic archive of the magazine. 1996 1997 2000 2001 2002 2004 which has really helped our profession evolve and develop and find our niche within the sporting community,” Sea-man explains. In addition, chiropractors have in-creasingly become involved with local and national athletes, sports teams and sporting organizations. It is not un-common today to find chiropractors volunteering their time and clinical skills to providing care for athletes, not only during specific sporting events but on an on-going basis. Seaman says progress in sports chi-ropractic can be traced back to the ’80s, when many athletes were trying to find ways to make their training more efficient and “provide them with some type of an edge, if you will.” “If you look at chiropractic from strictly a biomechanical perspective, you can see how the athletes would look at it and see that… chiropractic is a great way to treat injuries, but it’s also a great way for avoiding injuries and also performance enhancement,” he explains. He adds, “if there’s a restriction in mobility of an athlete when they are doing sport… which is caused either by 28 Canadian Chiropractor May 2016 For the first time in Canadian chiropractic history, two chiropractors were named to Team Canada core medical for the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics: Dr. Brian Seaman of Nova Scotia and Dr. Greg Uchacz of Alberta. Since then, chiropractors have become a significant member of medical teams in major sporting events. The infamous Lewis inquest concluded the death of Lana Dale Lewis as accidental, essentially linking her death to chiropractic neck manipulation. This was a challenging year for the profession. joints and/or muscles, treating it from a chiropractic perspective can improve the mobility. If there’s improved mobil-ity, there’s better efficiency of move-ment… then the athlete will be able to perform the movements of their sport more effectively and more efficiently.” Soon after athletes sought and found chiropractic care for physical condi-tioning and performance enhancement, high-profile sports personalities began giving credit to chiropractic as part of their care regimen. Meanwhile, the initiatives of RCCSS in engaging the sporting community in the higher level and the increasing participation of chiropractors in their respective local athletic communities through volunteerism started to really bear fruit in the late 1990s to the early 2000s, Seaman recalls. For the first time in the history of Canadian chiropractic, chiropractors were named to the core medical team for Team Canada: first, at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg in 1999, and then at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. Seaman was the chiropractor for Team Canada at the 1999 Pan Am Games and the 2002 Olympics, where he was also joined by Calgary-based chiropractor Dr. Greg Uchacz, another RCCSS fellow. Since then, chiropractors have con-stantly been named to core medical teams for major international and na-tional sporting events. The last eight to ten years saw a shift in the trends, however, Seaman says. “It started around 2006, with the Torino Winter Olympics,” he recalls. What the industry saw at that time were individual national sport organi-zations bringing their own medical teams to major games. The skating team within Team Canada, for exam-ple, would bring its own set of health-care providers – which often include a chiropractor – instead of relying on the COC-led core medical team. “[The teams] will tend to take the health-care professionals who are working with them on an on-going basis, so the advantage to the athletes is that they are dealing with the same people through the season as well as major events like the Olympics.” The upside to this emerging trend is that chiropractors working with na-tional teams have the opportunity to www.canadianchiropractor.ca
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor May 2016: Page 28
