My Initial Interest in Chiropractic Care

I want to start off by thanking all of our amazing patients that we have treated over the past 5 years since we moved to Idaho and opened Spinal Dynamics Chiropractic. You have all shared your personal stories with me so, in return, I want to let you all know a little more about me and why I am in this great profession.

I was born just outside of Pittsburgh Pennsylvania and spent the first 20 years of my life there. I was a very active kid and played just about every sport my community had to offer. With these experiences I was able to find that I had a huge passion for both football and baseball and continued with these athletic endeavors through my college years. Unfortunately for me, I was also very accident prone and spend way too many nights in the emergency room. I would walk into University of Pittsburgh Medical Center Children’s hospital and they would know me by name as soon as I walked – or was carried in. This developed my interest in health care.

At the age of 10 I began to develop migraine headaches. At first, they would come on a few times per year. As I got older they became more frequent and more intense. By the time I got to high school I would have 2-3 migraines per week. After several CT scans, brain MRI and multiple neurologist visits, I was diagnosed with … migraine headaches! There was no medical reason that anyone could find. I was told to continue with my daily ibuprofen and prescription medication routine. At that point I was taking on average 10 ibuprofen per day just to try to minimize the intensity of the headaches but they never went away and I had a headache everyday. This continued through college.

My first experience with Chiropractic was my senior year of college. I did an internship with a chiropractic office while obtaining my degree in Exercise Physiology. After my first adjustment, I didn’t have a headache for 2 weeks. This was the first time in years where I did not have to take Advil on a daily basis. It finally dawned on me that my headaches were not the result of an “Advil deficiency.”

Since I had been planning on going to medical school, I had completed all of my necessary prerequisites for both medical and chiropractic. I was accepted into chiropractic college and decided to attend Palmer College of Chiropractic. As I went through school I became frustrated with the “traditional” chiropractic model of adjustment only treatments. In my third year of my doctorate training I was introduced to research on spinal structure and posture correction with an ability to fix pain and health problems permanently.

From that point on I spent the rest of my time reading research and training with techniques and treatments that focus on correcting abnormal posture and spinal structure. I also went through this type of treatment myself for my headaches. I have gone from having 2-3 migraines per week, to 1-2 migraines per year and am off of the Advil. My last 10 years of practice has been dedicated to providing the most research based chiropractic treatments in spinal rehabilitation to my patients. I have been able to see life changing improvements in not only my own health but through the thousands of patients I have treated over the past 10 years.