In my 30s, my back started giving me major problems. With trepidation I went to a chiropractor, and it helped, but only for a short time. I went to practitioner after practitioner, trying all sorts of chiropractic techniques, until I found the one that transformed my back—and my overall health.
That’s why Restorative Spine and Pain is so intriguing to me. Restorative’s Dr. Keith Denning is an expert in a wide variety of chiropractic disciplines that actually relieve pain.
“People who don't know much about chiropractic think everybody practices the same,” Keith says. “That's because in traditional medicine, if you go to ten different primary care physicians with a specific condition, they’re all going to prescribe the same kind of drug. It's cookie cutter almost.
“That's not who we are. There are dozens of adjustment techniques. Our assessment determines which one’s appropriate for you. Patients tell me our initial exam is the most insanely thorough exam they've ever had. We leave no stone unturned.”
Chiropractic cured Keith’s severe allergies as a teen. “I was sneezing nonstop. Popping Claritin like Tic-Tacs,” he recalls. “Then, three or four weeks into my chiropractic treatment, I no longer needed Claritin. With chiropractic, I realized Claritin wasn't my only option. That opened my eyes.”
Office manager Garrett Prince calls Restorative Spine and Pain “an extremely ethical means to finding people real solutions” without sending them into insane debt.
“Patients start at ‘My life is pain every day that I wake up,’” Garrett informs me. “They arrive at, ‘Hey, I can do what I want again. I can get back to living my life.’ To do that for less than an arm and a leg is almost unheard of.”
Keith practices traditional chiropractic, low force techniques, soft tissue mobilization—even zero-force methods. I’ve personally spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on chiropractic, so I’m up on most modalities, but Keith lists some I’ve never heard of. MDT for instance.
“It can be completely hands-off,” Keith describes. “Some 99 percent of MDT practitioners are physical therapists. There are very few chiropractors certified in this technique.”
He also educates me about shockwave therapy.
“Other forms of shockwave therapy have superficial benefits,” Keith explains. “Stemwave is a focused, more specific shockwave that can penetrate deeper for healing things like chronic inflammation.”
For traumatically injured clients, Restorative practices Manipulation Under Anesthesia.
“MUA can be a less invasive, more effective approach than surgery for patients that are dramatically injured. With MUA, you're asleep. There is no pain. We're able to mix in a repetitive motion-based therapy called MDT. I don't know of anybody else in the country doing MDT in the MUA arena.
“So yeah, we’ve got a lot of tools in our tool belt.”
For readers who, like I did, fear or doubt the power of chiropractic, Keith shares an interesting and convincing statistic.
“Beyond the millions that have been helped, there's this: chiropractors pay less for malpractice insurance than any other physician I know. I pay less per month for my malpractice insurance than I do my two cars. Insurance companies know what injures people—drugs and surgery. In the world of risk assessment, Tylenol is more dangerous to people than what I do.”
What Keith does has resulted in 25,000 successful treatments. One of them is Michelle Gomez, the owner of 6 Degree Burn Fitness in Troy. An auto accident in her 20s left Michelle with chronic back issues, but after working with Dr. Keith, she’s pain-free.
“It allows me to teach kickboxing, bootcamp, cycling,” Michelle says. “He is amazing—one of the best chiropractors I’ve ever been to.”
Another patient who came in with constant excruciating pain—so bad he couldn’t function—credits Dr. Keith for ‘absolutely saving my life.’ A third, who found Dr. Keith after she’d tried every kind of pain medication and therapy, saw her pain reduced by 90 percent. “She wrote a 10-page letter,” Keith remembers.
What’s the feeling Keith gets from those success stories?
“Euphoria is the best way to explain it,” he replies. “When somebody comes in my office in pain having tried everything under the sun, they’re ready to give up. We're the last bastion of hope. It’s a feeling of euphoria to help a human being change their life. I'm a man of faith, but regardless if you are or not, we’re instruments. I'm just an instrument providing that love and that care, and letting the body’s natural healing process do the rest. But it's quite a feeling, I’ve got to tell you.”
To schedule your free consultation, visit restorativespineandpain.org or call (248) 515-5852.