Chiropractor Check-Up

Local chiropractors share tips on staying healthy (and when it’s time to come in for a cracking)

By Deb Dent | May 27, 2023

According to the American Chiropractic Association, over 35 million (or about 10 percent) of Americans visit the chiropractor each year. To put that number in perspective, the AARP says only one-fifth of U.S. adults get their annual physical.

If you’ve never been in for a snap, crackle, and pop, chiropractic care can seem like a bit of a mystery. How does spinal manipulation help relieve pain? Are necks supposed to bend that way? Why does the spine have so much sway over our other muscles, joints, and nerves?

We went straight to the experts to get the scoop.

Meet Dr. Josh Bowman

Dr. Josh Bowman of Focus Chiropractic in Traverse City says he was introduced to the concept of chiropractic care at a young age. He was plagued with migraines and digestive issues at the age of 12, and after several pediatric specialist visits offered no solutions, his mother finally decided to seek out help from a local chiropractor.

Bowman says that the whole experience was inspiring to him. “After the first treatment, my symptoms were reduced significantly, and a spark of interest was born. At that moment, I knew I wanted to find a natural niche in healthcare to help serve people without medications. Chiropractic gave me this chance.”

After graduating high school, Bowman went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, followed by a doctorate in chiropractic from Life University in Atlanta, Georgia. With all that schooling behind him, Bowman decided he was in need of a grand adventure. And without knowing anyone or even the language, he picked up and moved to the Netherlands.

“It was an amazing growth experience,” he says, “and after a short 1.5 years, I worked up the courage to start my own clinic in Barendrecht, Netherlands. The clinic grew up to be a thriving practice where I had an opportunity to train and coach eight young chiropractors.”

So how’d he get back on this side of the Atlantic? After about 13 years, the Bowmans took a family vacation to northern Michigan, immediately fell in love with the area, and decided they were ready for their next adventure. Bowman opened the doors to Focus Chiropractic in January of this year.

“Our clinic has a holistic family focus approach,” he shares. “We treat everyone as an individual and do our best to help them achieve their health goals. We reach these goals by using an array of different techniques and technologies together.”

Meet Dr. Lea Piché

Dr. Lea Piché owns Piché Family Chiropractic of Traverse City alongside her husband, Dr. Joe Piché. She started off with an undergraduate degree in interior design and a great job doing design work in the Chicago area while her husband attended chiropractic college. When they moved to Iowa so he could attend Palmer College of Chiropractic, Piché started to feel the nudge to go back to school herself.

“Frankly, I avoided it, denied it, made all sorts of excuses until I got ‘God-smacked’ and decided that I needed to go for it,” Piché says.

After a full year of science classes before even getting accepted into Palmer, she graduated at the age of 30 with big plans to start a prenatal and pediatric practice in Traverse City. But life had other plans. The couple had their first baby a year after she graduated, and they added three more kids to the family within six years. Joe started Piché Family Chiropractic in 1999, but Lea chose to wait a couple years and joined him in 2001.

She says that her pregnancies and her children have both been huge influences in how she does her work now. It taught her firsthand how to provide better care and support for moms and helped her to grow into the chiropractor she is today. 

Since then, Piché has fully immersed herself in the health and wellness world. In 2014, she attained her certificate in Clinical Whole Food Nutrition through the International Foundation for Nutrition and Health. She is now entering into her 22nd year in practice and says that they consider their office a “full family practice.”

Besides being a husband-and-wife team, they quite often are taking care of three generations within a family at the same time. “We have all ages in our office and love it!” Piché says.

So How Does Chiropractic Care Work?

Bowman says there is a big misconception that a chiropractor only “cracks” a patient’s neck or back during a visit. He notes that within chiropractic, there are many types of different techniques that they use during manipulation that are all very safe and are dependent on which best suits a client’s individual body.

For example, some patients may have arthritis, osteoporosis, or a history of spinal surgeries that would preclude traditional manipulation methods.

Bowman explains that his practice uses flexion distraction, which involves “a very special table we have that gently pulls the spine into flexion and extension, which can relieve a lot of disk and nerve problems.”

There’s also non-surgical spinal decompression, which utilizes a chair that “inverts the body and the patient…it’s computerized so we can dial it into certain degrees of range of motion.”

And last but not least, Bowman uses impulse technique, or a light mechanical hammer of NASA-design origin that “vibrates the spine into place from hitting it.”

What Can a Chiropractor Help With?

Besides addressing neck and back pain, Focus Chiropractic also treats a variety of other issues such as migraines, hernias, plantar fasciitis, tennis elbow, and runners’ knee. Can all of that be tied back to the spine? Bowman believes so.

“The spine is related to many different health issues because what’s inside the spine is the spinal cord. So anytime that the spinal column is compromised with motion or compromised with fluid inflammation or soreness or weakness, those nerves tend to react on a local level. And those nerves don’t necessarily only go to the muscles or the skin—those nerves also go to the organs and digestion,” Bowman says.

He adds, “Chiropractic has grown alongside modern medicines’ knowledge of how the human body functions in relation to the nervous system. This expansion in understanding has allowed modern chiropractic to achieve more effective results.”

Speaking of modern care, what about modern issues? When asked what concerns are trending in his office, Bowman points to “text neck,” or issues stemming from the fact that many of us spend all day hunched over phones, keyboards, and other devices.

That problem—and others—are affecting an increasing number of people. Bowman says that a decade ago, the average age of a patient in his practice was 52.5. Now, it’s 32.5.

“People are getting pain younger,” he says. “So I always try to explain to people a painless life doesn’t exist, but we try to focus on the quality of life because we’re living longer.”

How Can You Take Care of Your Body and Spine?

Besides making healthy food choices (and making regular visits to your chiropractor), Piché shares that there are numerous things that you can do at home as well to aid in improving your overall health:

Drink water—a lot more than you think. She says to start with half your body weight in ounces, and make sure it has minerals in it; our bodies need minerals to hold onto the water.

Get seven to eight hours of sleep per night. If you’re not sleeping, you’re not recovering from the stress of your day. A great way to monitor your sleep is with a smart watch, Piché recommends.

Stretch! Stretch your body and your joints daily. Give your body a chance to open up your joints and decrease the effects gravity has on it.

Move every single day. Piché says a brisk, 20-minute walk is shown to drastically decrease your chances of heart issues.

When Should You Visit a Chiropractor?

Bowman’s childhood issues were greatly improved with chiropractic care, but for him, that route was something of a Hail Mary, a last shot when other medical experts couldn’t figure out what was going wrong. So how do you know when it’s time for you to visit a chiropractor?

“Use your own knowledge and your own logic,” Bowman recommends. “If something’s bugging you for more than two weeks, I would definitely [say] come in. You don’t want to compensate and create other problems on top of each other.”

He notes this is especially important for folks with jobs that include heavy lifting or repetitive tasks in a certain posture, like construction workers or dental hygienists. “If you’re doing repetitive action for more than 25 hours a week, there’s probably some form of [imbalance] that has happened.”