B.C. chiropractor’s blue whale spine display catches attention

One Nanaimo, B.C., chiropractor is taking patient education to the next level.

When Dr. Jerome Fryer was offered to join Pure Body Balance Health and Fitness Clinic in Nanaimo, he only had two questions for management, he tells Nanaimo Daily News: Was he going to have windows in his office, and would there be room for his blue whale spine.

Today, Fryer’s chiropractic office at Pure Body Balance displays part of a spine of a blue whale, four meters in length and suspended from his office ceiling – a perfect conversation starter and a much more interesting patient education tool.

The eight-vertebrae blue whale spine collection was a gift from a fisherman in Ucluelet, a B.C. coastal town located west of Vancouver Island, where Fryer had his first chiropractic clinic.

Some of the unique features of the display include individual suspension of each vertebra to demonstrate what happens when vertebra get too close to one another or go out of alignment, Fryer says in his blog.

“The display enables me to show how disc height loss affects movement,” says Fryer. “Uniquely, one of the vertebra has been sectioned to expose the cancellous bone and how unloading can enhance the delivery of nutrients to the disc. Many people think the inside of the vertebra is hollow and contain marrow like a long bone. That isn’t so. The infrastructure of the bone can be easily seen now.”

More on this whale of a story on Fryer’s blog.