Jim Chester and I have something in common that most people wouldn't guess: we both grew up in Davenport, Iowa. And if you know anything about chiropractic, you know that Davenport is where it all started. The birthplace of the profession. The place where D.D. Palmer made the first chiropractic adjustment in 1895.
Neither of us knew, growing up in that town, that our lives would become so deeply intertwined with this work. But here we are.
Jim is a documentary filmmaker, a chiropractic advocate, and the host of Chiro Hustle, which has grown into the number one chiropractic podcast in the world. He has made two feature films on the profession, conducted over 800 interviews in three years, and spent the better part of a decade dedicated to one mission: telling the chiropractic story truthfully, before someone else tells a distorted version of it.
If We Don't Tell Our Story, Someone Else Will
Jim started his career as a journalist. Not a chiropractic advocate, not a filmmaker: a sports journalist, working for a newspaper called the Quad City Times in Davenport. And what he discovered fairly quickly was that journalism, at least the kind practiced in most newsrooms, was not really journalism. It was editorial. The story that got published was the story the editor decided to frame. The truth was secondary.
When he found chiropractic, he found a profession that was widely misunderstood and desperately in need of real, honest storytelling. And he had exactly the skills to do it.
"If we don't tell our story, someone else will make one up about us," he said. "And that's been a real big problem for my career in chiropractic: people are really misunderstood about why chiropractic works, what different chiropractic practitioners do."
So he dedicated his life to it. Not as a chiropractor, not as a patient advocate, but as a journalist in the truest sense: someone committed to going out into the world, finding the truth, and bringing it back.
I find that remarkable. Because the chiropractic profession needs both: the people doing the work and the people telling the story. Jim does the latter better than almost anyone I know.
Subluxation-Based Care and Why the Philosophy Matters
Something Jim is deeply passionate about, and something I want to make sure every listener and reader understands, is the distinction between subluxation-based chiropractic and other forms of the profession.
Subluxation-based chiropractic is rooted in a principle: the body has an innate intelligence. It knows how to heal itself. When a subluxation, a misalignment in the spine that creates interference in the nervous system, is removed, the body's physiology changes and healing can occur naturally. No pills, no surgery, no burns, no cuts. The adjustment removes the interference and the body does the rest.
That is the foundation. And it is what I practice every day in my office with the Blair upper cervical technique.
Jim said it as simply and clearly as I've ever heard it said: "The number one doctor in the world is the one inside of you."
The philosophical and scientific split within the chiropractic profession is real and it matters. There are chiropractors who operate more like physical therapists, addressing musculoskeletal pain without engaging the nervous system framework. And there are chiropractors who practice from a subluxation-based, innate intelligence philosophy. Both exist. Both call themselves chiropractors. Both can help people in certain ways.
But they are not the same thing. And the public deserves to know the difference so they can seek the care that is actually right for what they need.
Jim's work is helping people understand that distinction. And I am deeply grateful for it.
A Kid Who Wasn't Supposed to Become Educated
I want to share something Jim told me because I think it says everything about who he is and why he does what he does.
Jim struggled in school. He was in special classes. He had dyslexia. He was not the one on the honor roll, not the one getting the gold stars. He was, in his words, "passed through school because he couldn't do what all the other kids were doing."
And yet he became the first in his family, the youngest of five children, to earn a college degree.
He described what happened in those years of struggling differently from how most people would. While other kids were celebrating report cards, he was building something else: grit, resilience, a different kind of intelligence. Emotional intelligence forged through adversity. The kind that doesn't show up on a transcript but carries a person through every hard thing that comes after.
"How many valedictorians that graduated from chiropractic school can't practice chiropractic because they don't know how to communicate with people?" he said.
Point taken.
I shared something similar in this conversation: I was always the encourager on the team, not the scorer. I still can't make a basket. But I can engineer a complicated upper cervical correction. I found my lane. Jim found his. And I genuinely believe it is the lane he was built for.
The Loss of His Mom
This episode was recorded on September 11th, 2020, and we acknowledged that weight at the top. But there was another loss sitting in the room with us that day: Jim had lost his mother that year.
He didn't go into detail, and I didn't push. But he did say something that I found profoundly moving. His mother had spent her career in chiropractic, served others, and retired, in his words, broke. Not financially rich. Not with all the material markers of professional success.
And I said to him: maybe she retired broke in the monetary sense. But she has a rich heritage and a rich legacy through you.
The care he brings to his work, the truth-telling, the advocacy, the way he shows up for a profession he loves: that came from somewhere. It came from her. And that is worth more than any paycheck.
What He Would Ask BJ Palmer
I asked Jim a question I don't ask every guest: if he could ask BJ Palmer one thing, what would it be?
BJ Palmer was the son of chiropractic's founder, D.D. Palmer. He took the profession and brought it to the world: through radio, through books he called The Green Books, through global travel and partnerships with the most influential figures of his time. He was a visionary.
Jim's question: how could chiropractic become financially self-sufficient so that it didn't have to take money from outside entities, so that its philosophy and its independence could be protected?
That is a question about integrity. About whether a profession can sustain itself on its own terms without being shaped by the hands that fund it. It's a question every health profession should be asking. And it is one that BJ Palmer, who fought his entire life to protect the sacred trust of chiropractic, would have had a great deal to say about.
Find Jim
Jim can be found at chirohustle.com, where he hosts the Chiro Hustle podcast, or on Facebook where he is active and responsive. If you are a chiropractor looking to connect with others who share a subluxation-based philosophy, or a patient who wants to learn more about the chiropractic story from someone who has dedicated his life to telling it, Jim is your person.
His three core values: adventure, connection, and leadership. You can feel all three in the way he moves through the world.
I'm grateful he came on the show. I'm grateful for the work he does. And I'm grateful that two kids from Davenport, Iowa ended up on the same team.
Listen to the full conversation with Jim Chester on the Well Connected Podcast: Live Your Life in Alignment. Available wherever you get your podcasts.
Learn more about Jim and the Chiro Hustle podcast at chirohustle.com
