Tens of thousands of foreign patients already travel to the Texas Medical Center for health care each year, a multibillion-dollar practice known as “medical tourism.” Perhaps it should come as no surprise that Johnson struck gold in Houston, of all places. They allege that the content is merely a money-making scheme from practitioners of a profession marred by fraud and pseudoscience.
Johnson claims his wildly popular footage is strictly “educational.” But in an era in which YouTube is turning ordinary people into homegrown celebrities who can pocket hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in ad revenue each year, some critics see a problem. He has given his signature spine realignment-a technique resembling some combination of exorcism and medieval torture that online audiences can’t seem to get enough of-an official title: the “Ring Dinger.” Gregory Johnson, a magnetic, 61-year-old Houston chiropractor whose unorthodox methods and folksy charm have made him a YouTube phenomenon, with 387,000 subscribers and more than 111 million views.
In recent months, patients have journeyed to this understated office decorated with religious quotes and homeopathic paraphernalia from places as distant as China and Australia, each with their own horror stories of bodily breakdown.īut for almost all of them, the road to this office began even earlier, when they logged on to YouTube and found themselves mesmerized by videos showing a lively, silver-haired man in blue scrubs violently tugging on people’s necks-unleashing loud pops and even louder profanities. Svelte Instagram influencers are regulars, as are a race car driver, Vietnam veterans, and a former Miss Texas USA. Professional athletes are fixtures here, as are worn-down roughnecks, bodybuilders, and tattooed military veterans referred by the local VA medical center. Shekynah, a 23-year-old flight attendant with a herniated disc so painful she lost consciousness at 30,000 feet, flew in from her home in Boston. And yet, many of the patients at Advanced Chiropractic Relief have arrived here from far away.Īmong them is Sergio, a bulky, thirty-year-old construction worker suffering from excruciating back pain, who has made the seven-hour drive from Oklahoma City. Old and young, white and brown, wealthy and working class, they are a quintessential assemblage of twenty-first-century Houston.
on a Tuesday, the beleaguered patients-their bodies creaking and popping, their central nervous systems aflame-have packed a cramped waiting room in an office building overlooking the traffic-clogged Sam Houston Parkway.
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