Randolph Roxbury This Week (4/28/2010)

featured in Randolph Roxbury This Week |  Wednesday April, 28th 2010

ANSWERS: By Dr. Gerri Ryan unless otherwise indicated

Why did you start the business?
We have a calling to help others improve their health through natural chiropractic care. We want to make a difference in people's lives, to see kids grow up without medications, to help athletes improve their performance, to free adults from results of stress, whether it's migraines, pain or organ breakdown. If you have a spine, you'll be much better off if it's functioning properly.

If you could do it again, what would you do differently?
Gerri: Open on a beach.
Patrick: I wouldn't change a thing.

What's the best business advice you've ever received?
Hone your craft. That's what sets you apart from the others. We train in Manhattan almost every Thursday night and have for the past 13 years to improve our skills so we can help our patients. We travel and teach chiropractors and students how to analyze and adjust patients effectively. Last weekend, Dr. Patrick went to Mt. Horeb, Wis., and taught 150 students from chiropractic schools around the country how to give a specific spinal adjustment using the Gonstead system.

What personality trait helps you the most?
Tenacity. To work for constant and never-ending personal improvement. To not settle for mediocrity.

What's the most difficult part of the job?
Educating the public that their spinal column (which houses their central nervous system) is essential to optimal health and must be maintained and cared for. It is challenging because so many people have been programmed to rely on medication instead of doing what it takes to get and stay healthy. I keep trying and am seeing a shift toward wellness recently. Patients seem tired of the symptom-chasing and truly want to be healthy. Showing a patient their X-ray results, many with decades of spinal neglect, is also hard for me because I know their problems could have been prevented.

The easiest?
Educating and adjusting kids. They get it. Kids will get a cold or a fever and ask their parents to bring them in for an adjustment. That's awesome!

What's your least expensive product or service?
Juice Plus, whole-food nutrition for kids and adults, which is seven to eight servings of fruits and veggies per day.

The most expensive?
None. We never let finances stand in the way of patients who want to correct their spine and improve their health. We have many affordable payment options for individuals and families.

Describe your most unusual customer, job or work experience.
Dr. Patrick is a certified pediatric chiropractor and helps many infants get and stay healthy. He adjusts pregnant moms and their infants as early as hours old.

Here's a recent success story, dated April 10: "My husband and I first met Dr. Patrick and his wife, Dr. Gerri, in our Bradley Birth class in 2003. Both of my healthy pregnancies were supported by Dr. Patrick's great application of the Webster Technique, so that I could give birth with the optimal physical condition. As I learned more about birth traumas and what chiropractic care can do to alleviate the effects of these typical parts of most births, we were extremely grateful that Dr. Patrick was able to adjust our daughter within hours after her birth. She was born with mild Erb's Palsy in May 2003. Upon Dr Patrick's adjustment at her birth and continuous care since the first adjustment, our daughter's pediatrician couldn't detect any sign of Erb's Palsy at her three-month checkup."

Professional athletic assistance:
We received a call from the PGA Tour and the Gonstead Chiropractor of London with an emergency patient who could not turn his head and had to leave a practice round at Baltusrol (during the U.S. Open in 2005). A half-hour later, the golfer, Thomas Bjorn, showed up in excruciating pain. Dr. Patrick specifically adjusted his first thoracic vertebrae seated in the Gonstead cervical chair. Mr. Bjorn returned the next day for another adjustment. He then went back to play in the tournament and broke the Baltusrol club record and tied the PGA tour record with a 63.

What is the Gonstead system?
The Gonstead System of chiropractic is unique because it is thorough and specific. This is the only technique that uses full-spine 14-by-36-inch X-rays to see the entire spine as one system on one film. Our procedure on every visit for every patient includes reading their X-rays, using the Nervoscope (spine thermometer), visualization, static and motion palpation. Our adjustment is a specific short lever, nonrotatory skin-on-skin adjustment. We zero in on the problem vertebrae to effect a better spinal correction and improved health of the patient.

When you leave the business, what will you do?
I'll be working toward chiropractic mastery till the day I die.

In one sentence, tell us why customers should shop here.
We have dedicated our lives to educate and adjust as many families as possible toward optimal health through Gonstead chiropractic care. We focus on pediatric development and adult wellness and commit ourselves 100 percent to our patients.