John Wiens DC

The Canadian roots of Elon Musk’s chiropractor grandpa

By John Wiens DC|March 21, 2025|History|

Joshua Haldeman was just one of thousands of Saskatchewan farmers who lost their land in the drought of the Dirty ’30s.

While that trauma shaped the lives of everyone who went through it, the crisis affected Haldeman in an exceptional way — he never stopped raging at what he perceived were the causes of the Great Depression.

“He would remain leery of financial institutions and other bureaucracies throughout his life, a sentiment that would shape his political philosophy,” says a 1995 academic paper about Haldeman co-written by his son Scott.

Haldeman attended nine colleges and universities, including Moose Jaw College and Regina College, according to the academic paper written by his son Scott. Haldeman concluded his chiropractic training in 1926. Throughout his life, Haldeman was a leader in the chiropractic industry, taking board positions in provincial and national associations and pushing for new legislation.

But in the mid-1920s, instead of taking up chiropractic, he began farming.

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The Passing of a Giant – Chester Wilk dies at 91

By John Wiens DC|April 23, 2022|History|

Shared from the World Federation of Chiropractic Facebook page

Dr Chester A. Wilk, the chiropractor famed for taking on the American Medical Association – and winning – passed away on Thursday, April, 21 at Advocate Lutheran Hospital, Park Ridge, Illinois.

The case of Wilk v AMA, an antitrust law suit, was a seminal moment in the profession’s history, at a time when chiropractors in the United States found themselves subjected to extreme prejudice and discrimination. The story of Chester Wilk’s epic battle is told in ‘Contain and Eliminate: the American Medical Association’s Conspiracy to Destroy Chiropractic’, written by Howard Wolinsky and published in 2021.

The persistence and fortitude of Wilk and his four co-plaintiffs, in the face of serious roadblocks to practicing as chiropractors, drove him to step up and take on the giant of healthcare. The David and Goliath story saw him consumed by his mission to expose the injustice and the covert Committee on Quackery that had been set up by the AMA to undermine and destroy chiropractic.

Starting in the 1970s, the legal battle continued for years, before a 1987 judgment by Judge Susan Getzendanner ruled that the AMA had illegally engaged in an unlawful conspiracy, a judgment subsequently upheld in 1990 in the Court of Appeals.

The impact of Wilk v AMA was huge. Doors that had previously been firmly shut opened up to allow interprofessional care and changes in the AMA’s ethical rules permitted referral by medical doctors to doctors of chiropractic.

We mourn the passing of Dr Wilk and recognize with gratitude the life of one of the legendary figures of the chiropractic profession.

Chiro.org has compiled a comprehensive page on the Wilk Anti-tust suit.

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BJ Palmer Adjusting in 1924

By John Wiens DC|April 27, 2021|Video|

RECOIL!!!

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Elon Musk’s chiropractic connection

By John Wiens DC|March 14, 2021|History|

Source Regina Leader-Post

Dr. Scott Haldeman is a board certified Neurologist in active clinical practice in Santa Ana, California. He currently is a distinguished Professor at the University of California, the Chairman of the Research Council for the World Federation of Chiropractic and the Founder/President of World Spine Care.

Accomplished in his own right, he also happens to be the uncle of one of the worlds great innovators, Elon Musk. Read how the young Musk spent time on the Haldeman family farm in Saskatchewan. Both Scott’s father and his grandmother (Musk’s great-grandmother) were chiropractors. In fact, Almeda Haldeman became Canada’s first known chiropractor in the early 1900’s.

You can read the rest of the story here.

Information on the Haldeman’s and other chiropractic pioneers can be found in Dr J.C. Keating’s notes in our Chiropractic History section.

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Move the fig leaf – how to bend properly

By John Wiens DC|February 26, 2018|Posture|

Source NPR

By Michaeleen Doucleff

To see if you’re bending correctly, try a simple experiment.

“Stand up and put your hands on your waist,” says Jean Couch, who has been helping people get out of back pain for 25 years at her studio in Palo Alto, Calif.

“Now imagine I’ve dropped a feather in front of your feet and asked to pick it up,” Couch says. “Usually everybody immediately moves their heads and looks down.”

That little look down bends your spine and triggers your stomach to do a little crunch. “You’ve already started to bend incorrectly — at your waist,” Couch says. “Almost everyone in the U.S. bends at the stomach.”

In the process, our backs curve into the letter “C” — or, as Couch says, “We all look like really folded cashews.”

In other words, when we bend over in the U.S., most of us look like nuts!

But in many parts of the world, people don’t look like cashews when they bend over. Instead, you see something very different.

I first noticed this mysterious bending style back in 2014 while covering the Ebola outbreak. We were driving on a back road in the rainforest of Liberia and every now and then, we would pass women working in their gardens. The women had striking silhouettes: They were bent over with their backs nearly straight. But they weren’t squatting with a vertical back. Instead, their backs were parallel to the ground. They looked like tables.

After returning home, I started seeing this “table” bending in photos all around the world — an older woman planting rice in Madagascar, a Mayan woman bending over at a market in Guatemala and women farming grass in northern India. This bending seemed to be common in many places, except in Western societies.

“The anthropologists have noted exactly what you’re saying for years,” says Stuart McGill, at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada, who has been studying the biomechanics of the spine for more than three decades.

“It’s called hip hinging,” McGill says. “And I’ve spent my career trying to prove it’s a better way of bending than what we do.” (more…)

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Chiropractic Science – Podcast interview with Scott Haldeman

By John Wiens DC|February 9, 2018|Podcast|

Source Chiropractic Science

Dr. Haldeman is a pioneer of chiropractic science and a world leader in spine research. Dr. Haldeman holds the positions of Adjunct Professor, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California, Los Angeles, and Clinical Professor, Department of Neurology, University of California, Irvine.

He is Past President of the North American Spine Society, the American Back Society, the North American Academy of Manipulative Therapy, and the Orange County Neurological Society, and is currently Chairman Emeritus of the Research Council of the World Federation of Chiropractic. He is certified by the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada and a Fellow of the American Academy of Neurology. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Electrodiagnostic Medicine, the American Board of Electroencephalography and Neurophysiology and the American Board of Clinical Physiology. He also served on the US department of Health AHCPR Clinical Guidelines Committee on Acute Low Back Problems in Adults as well as four other Clinical Guidelines Committees. He presided over The Bone and Joint Decade 2000 to 2010 Task Force on Neck Pain and Its Associated Disorders.

You can find the podcast here.

He also happens to be the uncle of innovator Elon Musk.

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About John Wiens DC

The Canadian roots of Elon Musk’s chiropractor grandpa

The Passing of a Giant – Chester Wilk dies at 91

BJ Palmer Adjusting in 1924

Elon Musk’s chiropractic connection

Move the fig leaf – how to bend properly

Chiropractic Science – Podcast interview with Scott Haldeman