Research and technology the backbone of chiropractic clinic
David Shapiro, who has been a chiropractor for 16 years, chose Brookhaven as the location of his new Complete Spine Solutions (CSS) clinic, describing DeKalb County’s largest city as an area where “people make health a priority.”
Shapiro, who continues to operate the Tucker clinic where he has practiced for 14 years, said he opened the Brookhaven Station facility because he wants to bring what he describes as “the most advanced natural health recovery system” to the inside-the-perimeter community.
A graduate of Life University, a health and wellness institution in Marietta, Shapiro said, “A healthy spinal structure is crucial for better overall body functioning. While it is easy to take medicine and get some quick relief, it’s quite another thing to get to the root of the problem and have it resolved forever. We help people reach their health potential.”
Shapiro is now on Life’s extension faculty.
On CSS’s website, Shapiro explains how he became interested in chiropractic medicine. Following a high school wrestling injury he visited a chiropractor. “I was reluctant to turn to chiropractic, but [it was] the only option instead of surgery,” he recalled. “I’ll never forget that first treatment. It felt as if a huge weight was suddenly lifted from my body. My misaligned spine was putting excessive pressure on the side of the injured knee. Dr. Galbraith balanced out my body with adjustments to the spine, allowing my injured knee to finally heal—no surgery! That was the moment I decided I was going to be a chiropractor.”
Calling poor posture “common, but not normal,” Shapiro said those who habitually slump over cellphones and other such devices are potentially damaging their spines. “If the Pokémon Go craze continues, I’ll be busy the rest of my life,” he joked.
Shapiro said people should be examined before they are experiencing chronic pain. “Pain is the final symptom with many conditions. By the time you are experiencing pain, the problem is well advanced and may be beyond non-surgical help.
“We’re not like other chiropractor offices,” Shapiro said. “We don’t even look like other clinics. Everything we do here is backed by scientific research and involves the newest equipment.”
He said many of the devices are unlike those clients have seen before. Of one piece of body stretching equipment that Shapiro said was designed and manufactured by a friend in Las Vegas he said, “I know this looks like a torture device, but it’s actually a torture-relieving device.”
Shapiro described a whole body vibrator in his clinic as “the Cadillac of vibrating machines. This is the type the top professional athletes use. It vibrates 900 times a minute. It was developed for use by cosmonauts (Soviet space explorers) when they returned from space. Many times people returning from space have to be taken off on a stretcher, but after a few minutes on this they can just walk away.”
Shapiro added that every course of treatment is customized to individual clients. “We don’t have a menu of treatments we offer our clients. Every person is different with a unique body and unique needs, so we design a treatment just for that person.”
The result, he said, has been health improvements even for people who have not had success with other treatments and have been advised to “just live with it.”
“We’ve been able to help patients who had gone to doctors, specialists, physical therapists and maybe even another chiropractor, but were still in pain,” Shapiro said
Shapiro acknowledged that not every problem is fixable. “The first thing we do is a detailed analysis. We don’t want to put you through a course of treatment unless we are confident it’s going to help you.”
On their first visit, he said, clients are subjected to a high-powered X-ray that provides detailed information about the spine. “Even though this X-ray uses much more power than the type people usually receive, the client actually receives a lower dosage of radiation than normal because exposure is for a shorter period of time,” Shapiro said.
