Out of the Box: Dr. Marlin Takes a Different Approach as a Jupiter Chiropractor

Article by John Pacenti

Photography by Elizabeth Palace

Dr. Marlin Meldonian opened his practice in Jupiter in 2023. He uses

non-traditional methods to help patients. ‘He’ll go out of his way,’ one said.

When Marlin Meldonian was little, he would accompany his mother, who had been in a bad car accident before he was born, to the chiropractor.

“I’d sit underneath the table, look up at her, and she made all the little hoots and hollers, and I would just laugh at her,” Meldonian says. “It was a ball.”

Now Meldonian – who says it’s just easier to say Dr. Marlin than pronounce his last name – practices out of his own office on Indiantown Road. His longtime girlfriend, Tabitha Ayotte, manages the practice. Of course, it’s called Marlin Chiropractic.

Meldonian was thinking of calling it Swordfish Chiropractic until one of his buddies piped up. “He’s like, ‘Dude, your name’s Marlin. Like, you’re in Jupiter.’”

Meldonian has a laid-back approach and at 31 a youthful – and refreshing – style to patient care. He takes a unique philosophy to healing, knowing that many patients have preconceived views of chiropractic treatment.

“They’re very kind of used to the old-school hustle and bustle. Come in, get your neck cracked, and maybe get a little electric stim,” Meldonian said.

“For me, I kind of do it the opposite way. I do the soft tissue work, I do the massage therapy. I make sure that all of that is well, happy and dandy before we kind of dive into the adjustments –if that’s even needed for those areas.”

Meldonian’s practice has grown in part around clientele who are professional trainers and bodybuilders, some of them the most renowned in the world.

‘He is like the only person who has been able to help me’

Electric stimulation – stim – is a common practice among chiropractors, using pulses to contract muscles to imitate brain signals. Yet, Meldonian turns it on its head and becomes the equivalent of the massage superhero.

Meldonian uses what is called a PEMF Machine – about as big as a small backpack – that pulsates the electric current through his body and out of his hands.

“It allows me to get into the tissue. It allows me to see what muscles are contracting, and what aren’t working,” he said. “We can start to activate certain muscle groups. And we can go all the way up and even get into entire nerve complexes. And we can go for the vagus nerve.”

The patient is electrically grounded through the treatment. It is something to experience.

Even though Meldonian was exposed to chiropractic via his mother – a well-known underwater photographer – as a child, his route to becoming one was rather circuitous.

Meldonian uses a PEMF Machine that pulsates electric current into his body and out through his hands.

He started out aiming to be a medical doctor but he became disenchanted with the focus on pharmaceuticals. “You give the muscle relaxer, some ibuprofen. If that doesn’t work, then you send them to the neurologist or osteopath,” Meldonian said. “And I was like, wait, we’re skipping like so much.”

He changed course from pre-med at the University of Florida and started focusing on vertebrate studies. From there, he became a licensed massage therapist. “My mom wasn’t happy,” he recalls. He then went to chiropractic school at Keiser University in West Palm Beach and after working as an associate for a few years opened up his practice in 2023 in Jupiter.

Why Jupiter? The same reason as everybody else. It’s beautiful.

“I always wanted to live in Jupiter, because that’s where we would come up here to surf,” he said. Meldonian’s practice has grown in part around clientele who are professional trainers and bodybuilders – the latter are some of the most renowned bodybuilders in the world.

Trainer Binky Malone called Meldonian “my hero.” Malone has struggled with chronic pain issues for years.

“He is like the only person who has been able to help me,” Malone said. “He has gone outside the box.” Malone said Meldonian also is hands-on with patients. “He’ll go out of his way to do anything for you,” she said.

And “hands-on” is exactly what Meldonian prefers when it comes to his patients.

He did work in traditional chiropractic, hooking people up to machines, and letting the machines do the work. But Meldonian wanted to be able to holistically treat patients.

Our treatments are tailored to each individual person rather than the cookie-cutter approach of the industry,” he said.