Miracle men?

By MAKAYLA TENDALL
m.tendall@beeherald.com

The patients entering Miller Chiropractic in Jefferson might very well be entering a holy land of holistic health, if Martin and Branden Miller’s track records are any proof.

Branden Miller, a 2006 graduate of Jefferson-Scranton High School, recently returned to Jefferson to join his father’s chiropractic practice.

Miller, 26, who graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic, said he always knew he wanted to be a chiropractor and return to Jefferson where, “when you wave, you get a wave back,” and patients are interested in bettering their health.

“I just saw how much it can help people. I basically grew up in the office, grew up with the patients,” Branden said. “People come in here and they’re happy.”

The Millers’ office provides a different kind of medical care than the hospital a block away. If his father, Martin, is any indication, Branden may even provide care in the form of biblical miracles.

“The first patient I had out of school was deaf. He got one adjustment and he could hear,” Martin said.

When asked how the clean-shaven man performed the kind of feat that would require the same healing powers possessed by Jesus Christ, he laughed and said, “You tell me, and then we’ll both know.”

It’s not stories of sorcery, either, that created the book Chicken Soup for the Chiropractic Soul — full of success stories that the publisher deemed unbelievable — Martin said.

The secret, the Millers said, lies within holistic health care.

Chiropractic care is an alternative form of medicine that focuses on the healing and preventing injury or sickness through the musculoskeletal and nervous systems.

“If your nervous system is functioning properly, your whole body is better,” Martin said.

Branden said their office operates on a philosophy different from other chiropractors who may give a patient the same adjustments every time.

“It knows how to heal itself,” Branden said about the human body. “We believe the body is always changing. What it was before is different than what it is now. We look at the body how it is now. Chiropractic is different because it helps people without drugs or surgery. Chiropractic helps people with everything, not simple neck and back problems.”

Instead of simply focusing on simple musculoskeletal adjustments, Branden said he and his father take a more holistic approach at their practice, also focusing on how patients’ behaviors affect their health. That holistic approach comes in the form of emotional, structural and toxin care.

“Most patients that come here have already been to Mayo and Des Moines. They’ve done an MRI and still don’t know what the problem is,” Martin said of his patients who are new to chiropractic care. “In 26 years of practice, what I noticed is my patients are more toxic.”

Martin said he isn’t sure if food, environments or behaviors are more toxic than they were in the past, but he cites it as another reason to consider chiropractic care over medicine and surgery.

Branden, who adjusted his infant daughter the first day she came home from the hospital, said he believes everyone can benefit from lifelong chiropractic care.

Martin is also a chiropractor neurologist, allowing him to perform such supposed miracles as stopping a man’s seizures with pink-tinted glasses that fixed the problem in his left temporal lobe causing the episodes.

“We don’t actually have to heal the body,” Martin said. “We just have to remove the interference to help it along.”