Happy Halloween! While we usually try to keep our blogs on topic, we wanted to take the opportunity to do something a bit more light-hearted this week – especially after another year which has been a bit tough on all! Therefore, this week, Complete chiropractic presents 10 facts you didn’t know about Halloween (Chiro style)
The most played Halloween song is Michael Jackson’s Thriller
Depending on your taste this one may or may not be a surprise to you!
There are many songs associated with Halloween, like “The Monster Mash” and “Don’t Fear the Reaper”, but apparently, nothing quite beats Michael Jackson. Jackson’s 1983 “Thriller” is consistently downloaded, streamed, and played every Halloween – Since its release, there have been more than 66 million copies sold globally.
If you’re considering dancing along to Thriller this Halloween – be sure to warm up first, Jackson made those moves look easy, but we see tonnes of people each year with a painful complaint set off by – you guessed it, dancing!
The largest pumpkin ever carved weighed over 1,800 lbs.
On October 30, 2010, in New York, Scott Cully broke the record for carving the largest pumpkin (based on size) into a Jack-o’-lantern – The pumpkin weighed 1,810.5 lb. (821.23 kg)! Interestingly, although this is the largest in diameter pumpkin ever carved, it is not the heaviest. The largest based on weight was done by a team of three on October 6, 2018, weighing 2,077 lb (942.11 kg).
If you’re planning on carving any giant pumpkins (or even some not so giant ones) remember to use a safe lifting technique when hefting them about. Yes, this probably seems a little overkill for your average pumpkin – but very large ones can easily weigh enough to cause a low back injury!
Statistically, fewer babies are born on Halloween.
And this one really does seem strange – it makes sense that parents can and do make some effort to plan roughly when their child will be born, so If you are superstitious about Halloween then you can plan around it to some extent. What’s odd, however, is that research suggests that the human mind can influence hormones and when it comes to birth, if the mind is not ready then in some cases it can be put off for a small period of time.
To be exact – a report in Social Science & Medicine explained that on Halloween, births are reduced by around 11.3% compared to any other day in the US.
If you’re a new mum and suffering from back pain, either before or after birth, pop in and see us! Is a common misconception that chiropractic isn’t safe for those who are pregnant or have recently given birth. While we couldn’t recommend the usual kind of adjustments for those who are heavily pregnant, chiropractors have many other lower-force tricks up their sleeves!
The average Trick-or-Treater will collect around 7,000 calories on Halloween.
While trick or treat isn’t as big a thing in the UK as in the US (and this is a US statistic) it’s worth keeping in mind that, apparently, the average American will eat around 1.54 kg of sweets on Halloween – That’s around 3 cups (384 g) of sugar, meaning that the average child on Halloween will consume up to 7,000 calories. That’s about the same as 13 Big Macs!
We’re not against enjoying the foods you like, but do try and be mindful of just how many calories this really is! We often blog about ways to avoid losing your yearly health gains over Christmas and the same thing applies here – enjoy responsibly!
Originally, turnips not pumpkins were used for carving at Halloween.
The tradition of carving Jack-o’-lanterns out of pumpkins comes, in fact from an Irish tradition of carving turnips. The Irish myth of Stingy Jack holds that Jack tricked the Devil for monetary gain, thereafter, when he died God would not accept him into Heaven and the Devil banished him from Hell, leaving old jack to roam the earth and terrorise people (on Halloween specifically, apparently)
As a result, people began to carve faces on vegetables to scare his spirit away. Turnips were originally the vegetable of choice, but this changed as Irish immigrants moved to the US and found that pumpkins were more plentiful.
We don’t really have a clever chiropractic point for this one… if you cant get hold of a pumpkin, there’s a plan B for you!
Happy Halloween everyone!
