For over 30 years, I have practiced as a qualified chiropractor here in Australia. During this time, I have witnessed countless transformations. People come into the practice with grimaces of pain, under a cloud of stress stemming from their conditions and walk out with smiles on their faces. And this is not just a temporary alleviation, these people are on their way to a pain-free existence and increased vigour and mobility.

Then, out of the blue, I experienced the devastating effects of a life-threatening illness myself. At one point, I was told I’d never be able to work again. This was one of the lowest points of my entire life. Happily, thanks to some excellent medical treatments and a long period of recovery, I have regained my physical health. Consequently, I have been able to get back to work – not working all the hours God sends, but happy to be back in the practice and able to make a difference. My personal experiences also reinforced another important element in the Mind & Body approach: to recommend other health professionals as and when appropriate.

At Mind & Body, we are completely clear about our position in the world of health professionals. We focus on musculoskeletal problems and the pain and debilitation they can cause. We work closely with other professionals in a variety of disciplines. We have a network of like-minded practitioners to whom we refer our patients as appropriate. Chiropractic is complementary to traditional medical science not competitive. Working with the natural resilience of the human body, we can work wonders.

When we first set up Mind & Body Chiropractic, the name was inspired by a real sense of purpose: we would treat the mental side of health and wellbeing as much as the physical. Back then, many people shied away from the idea of needing help mentally – as if it was an admission of being crazy! So there was a stigma attached to admitting you might need help in those areas.

Now, our world has changed dramatically. There is a much wider acceptance that many people suffer from stress, anxiety, depression, insomnia – all symptoms of a mental imbalance. We have also come to understand more about how these negative mental and emotional states impact our physical wellbeing.

So now, as a natural extension of our original philosophy, we are introducing the practice of meditation into the clinic. We want to encourage patients to learn these techniques while with us. We also have these amazing massage chairs that we use to help patients relax to gain the maximum benefit from the treatments. It’s a great way to introduce you to the healing potential of simple meditation. Heal the mind, and the body will follow.

Dr Andrew Fell
Chiropractor

At the youngish age of 52, I was happily working full-time hours, my clinic schedule was fully-booked and patients were responding well. I was enjoying a very successful period in my professional life and was on the crest of my career wave.

There was a downside. My busy clinic made it seem like there was never enough time to do the other important things outside of the practice. I justified that I could live with that as it was only for the short term (this year) and the greater good was being served. Little did I know, the adverse health effects of this unfortunate balancing act could be catastrophic.

The previous eighteen months had been busy challenging and very stressful. While maintaining my daily practice as a chiropractor, our team had opened a beautiful new clinic at Surfers Paradise. Chiropractor Dr Alex had settled in nicely at the Surfers clinic. In October 2016 we then moved our Worongary Clinic to Mudgeeraba. This was a necessary business decision that required another six months of planning, focus and effort. When I added the ‘normal’ stresses and strains of keeping up with a young family, trying to stay fit and balancing the cheque book, every moment of every day seemed to be accounted for. There was little time to think and there was no time for me.

All of this activity distracted me from what should have been of paramount importance; I didn’t notice my body was screaming out loudly… Physician Heal Thyself.

Six weeks before I was hospitalised, I was stricken by a severe infection that left me coughing and very unwell. I felt chest tightness, breathless, feverish and fatigued. I blamed this on the flu and waited for my body to improve. I waited and waited, but something was wrong this time. I wasn’t getting better. In fact, my symptoms were worsening day by day.

I kept my family and work commitments up as best I could, but my health continued to decline. My job finally ground to a halt at 6 pm on 8^th Augusts 2017. As the last patient left, I stood drained, weak and gasped for air. I had hardly slept in a week and was feeling worryingly unwell. Like nothing, I had experienced before. I was glad that I had booked an appointment with my doctor first thing in the morning. He would soon get me over this persistent ‘chest infection’ or whatever it was.

The cheery disposition of my doctor didn’t last very long. A chest examination and ECG quickly revealed my heart was madly over pumping and my pulse and blood pressure were sky high. An hour later I was admitted to Robina Hospital Emergency Department and soon was transferred by ambulance to Gold Coast University Hospital. A raft of blood tests, echocardiogram, angiogram and ultrasound, revealed my heart was working crazily fast and hard but only producing about 12% of its typical pumping requirement. The cardiologist diagnosed Heart Failure caused by dilated cardiomyopathy – a serious life threatening illness likely caused by a virus some weeks ago when my immune system was over stressed and overwhelmed.

My downward health spiral played-out like a horror movie in my mind. I had become a victim of the self-neglect that I counsel my patients to avoid every single day. How easy it is to think about the goal and forget the journey. To ignore advice, even when it is coming from concerned family and friends that can see things going wrong. How dumb to not pay attention to your most precious asset, your own body! I spent the rest of my hospital time in deep contemplation hoping my heart would begin to heal, getting my priorities in order again and rededicating myself to live again by the axiom Physician Heal Thyself.

It has been 2 weeks since being discharged from the hospital, and I am feeling a little better each day. My health regimen consists of heart medication, continual medical monitoring, low-salt diet, prescribed exercise, adequate rest, deeper sleep, daily stress management and an excellent chiropractor. It may take some time to return to work, but I will be back at Mind & Body Chiropractic as soon as possible with a better attitude and a sustainable, sensible balancing act between my work life as a chiropractor and my personal life as a husband, dad and grandfather.

Finally, thank you so much for the very kind well wishes, get well cards and messages of encouragement and hope. Thank you, thank you, thank you! They are so very appreciated. I look forward to seeing you all back at the clinic in the soonest possible time.

Dr Andrew Fell
Chiropractor
Mind & Body Chiropractic

Standard stress management is a reactive process to the problem. When the ancient stress (fight or flight) response  kicks in, the body is flooded with cortisol and adrenaline. It can take over 12 hours to clear the body of these chemicals. Once the stress response has happened, people have various ways of recovering such as jogging, watching TV, meditating or self-medicating. These have varied levels of success.

We instead have the latest cutting edge computer technology to help you tackle stress and its effects. It’s called Heartmath and it brings a very affordable, new approach to managing and preventing stress. HeartMath gives us the means to measure your heart rate variability. So it’s a scientific way to identify stress levels. Your HeartMath Coach, will teach you a range of stress management techniques to pre-empt or turn off the stress response, it’s a simple, effective way to beat stress before it gets to you.

HeartMath works by identifying the stressor in the moment and not allowing the body to go into the stressed state. It works like a magic shield that protects you from the stressful events we all face. Essentially, it’s a way to stop the stress before it starts. HeartMath is safe, non-confronting and fun to learn.

The Initial Consultation to evaluate your stress levels, stress triggers and learn the first powerful HeartMath technique is free. So you have nothing to lose except the serious damage caused by relentless stress!!!!

Since the turn of the century, there has been a growing awareness among people on the cutting edge of alternative medicine, bio-physics and cellular biology that the mind plays a critical role in the state of our health.

“Our thoughts create our body moment by moment. When we think positive thoughts, we release certain chemicals into our body. When we think negative thoughts, we release negative chemicals into our body. These have a profound effect on how cells behave and how nutrition is used.”
Arielle Essex, Osteopath

More and more evidence is emerging that stress is at the root of many of our ailments and disorders. A recent report from the World Health Organization suggests that up to 70% of health problems in the developed world are connected to stress. Now if you Google ‘stress’, you’ll be taken to many sites run by health organizations.

They will tell you the likely causes of stress and the effects it can have on your wellbeing. Wikipedia will tell you:

“Stress is a person’s response to a stressor such as an environmental condition or a stimulus. Stress is a body’s method of reacting to a challenge. According to the stressful event, the body’s way to respond to stress is by sympathetic nervous system activation which results in the fight-or-flight response. Stress typically describes a negative condition that can have an impact on a person’s mental and physical well-being.”

In response to acute stress, the body’s sympathetic nervous system is activated due to the sudden release of hormones. The system stimulates the adrenal glands triggering the release of catecholamines, which include adrenaline and noradrenaline. This results in an increase in heart rate, blood pressure and breathing rate.

Fight or flight is an instinct that’s deeply rooted in our ancestral past, when we were not so much the hunters as the hunted. This was all well and good in prehistoric times. But what’s happening today in our high speed, short attention span, increasingly complex society is that these chemical reactions are being triggered all the time. With no appropriate outlet, they swirl around in the body triggering feelings of anger, or frustration or anxiety. Over time, these negative emotions have a cumulative effect reducing the efficiency of the immune system and creating patterns of stress that lead to physical disorders. So the mind has enormous power both to make us unwell and, equally, to help us get better.

Throughout my many years of working as a chiropractor I have studied a variety of techniques and methodologies that enable me to identify and alleviate these patterns of stress. These include neuro-linguistic programming, acupuncture, hypnosis and many other alternative forms of treatment. By reducing stressful patterns and aligning the body so that the energy flow is in harmony, extraordinary healings have taken place. Today, I’m happy to say there is a growing awareness of stress and its impact. We now understand the mind is much more than a thinking machine, it’s part of an intricate energy field that connects the entire body. Thoughts have power. Your current mindset and your emotional intelligence have a profound effect on your health.

This is why our practice is called Mind & Body. We work closely with a team of psychologists to ensure the mental, emotional and psychological aspects of each patient are taken into consideration. It’s an approach that has worked wonders. Here, in the safe space we have created for the diagnosis and treatment of our patients, is where the miracles happen. I’ve seen countless patients come in to the practice under a cloud of pain and stress and walk out with springs in their steps and smiles on their faces.

“We make an emotional shift. Say we go from frustration to joy. About 1400 biochemical changes instantly go off in the body. We can see how emotions are making lots of changes in our physiology. So it makes a lot of sense to pay as much attention to our emotional diet as to our physical diet.”
Howard Martin, Bio-physicist

Music Of The Heart

“When the heart’s rhythmic beating pattern is smooth and ordered, it’s called a coherent rhythm. That coherent rhythm synchronizes the brain rhythm, the nervous system, the body’s organs and glands. All dance in harmony to the heart’s coherent rhythm.”
Deborah Rozman PhD

There’s a revolution going on in the associated fields of biology and medicine. Scientists and researchers, doctors and alternative health professionals are discovering entirely new ways of looking at the human body. How does it really work? What causes it to degenerate? What allows it to re-generate and heal itself?

We are hearing from a growing number of enlightened practitioners around the world whose various studies and experiences have led them to conclude that our thoughts and, even more so, our emotions have a critical effect on our health. Strong positive emotions support the immune system and strong negative emotions make the system deteriorate.

Simply by changing our attitudes, by channeling positive emotions and feelings of trust and joy, we can make a profound impact on our physical wellbeing. This is why we don’t just tackle the symptoms of our patients, we look to the causes of the disorders. Taking a holistic approach means addressing the whole person and finding ways to enhance the body’s ability to heal itself.

“The heart generates by far the largest electromagnetic signal in the body. If you look at this magnetic field as a carrier wave, it’s been modulated with information. The work in our lab has shown quite clearly that it’s modulated with emotional patterns. If you’re feeling angry or frustrated, the information that’s being imprinted is very different than if you’re feeling care or love or compassion.”
Rollin McCraty PhD

The Best Of Both Worlds

“We have to learn from other cultures, from other traditions, from observations of all kinds of healers. We have to take the best of modern science and use it to integrate what’s going on.”
Rupert Sheldrake, Professor of Biology

Here at Mind & Body, we combine the tried and tested techniques of chiropractic with the very latest technologies and alternative treatments. It’s a “high-touch” hi-tech combo that works a treat. The idea is for you to feel relaxed and confident in the healing treatments. As part of the process, we have Relaxation Rooms: specially designed chambers with state of the art massage chairs that can be customized to each individual patient.

Once you are comfortably situated and the chair has been adjusted to your requirements, we can play relaxation music, we can use a biofeedback program or a hypnosis program, we can show visual imagery – all designed to relax both mind and body so you will be receptive to treatment. It’s a deeply soothing experience and some of our patients would be happy just staying in the chair for their entire visit!

In the treatment room, we have the latest chiropractic drop table. It’s a four section drop with forward head carriage. It is the fastest yet gentlest table currently available. Just as each person is different so the treatment is individual and so we have a wide range of hands-on techniques to alleviate specific conditions.

We also have some amazing technology to help us identify causes of symptoms. What used to be a bio-feedback system has evolved into neuro-feedback that enables us to measure stress levels and all sorts of things that are invisible to the human eye. The most critical step on the path to getting better is the correct identification and diagnosis of your condition.

Then, each time you come in for treatment, your condition is evaluated. We have a program that digitizes your posture and informs the report that will recommend the best form of treatment.

It really is the best of both worlds, the combination of hands-on treatment and the latest in medical technology. I look forward to welcoming you to Mind & Body and helping you not only to get better but to attain a level of well-being that will enable you to enjoy life to the full.

It’s a natural assumption to think such headaches are the result of being too tense. Recent research suggests that it is not quite as straightforward as that. Frequently, the source of the pain is what we call ‘muscular hyper-tonicity’ or tight muscles. But it is now being recognized that the mechanism causing tension headaches is more complicated.

The human body is an incredibly complex and sophisticated system. This is why the Mind & Body approach is a holistic one that takes into account the big picture as well as the specific details of the condition we’re treating. All too often, the root cause of what we call tension headaches is stress. As our lifestyle becomes more and more hectic and the pressures to compete and succeed build up on us, our basic wellbeing becomes threatened. The relationship between mind and body is complicated and fragile. When it’s out of balance, all sorts of problems can arise, including headaches.

Image courtesy of healthyfoodleader.com

When a patient comes to us with such headaches, we look at a number of elements in the equation. Through examination and conversation, we can arrive at a pretty clear picture of the causes behind the symptoms. With tension headaches, there is often an emotional dimension that has to be addressed with these patients. We often discover they’re not sleeping well, not eating right and leading the typically modern unhealthy lifestyle. This may be compounded by emotional problems at home or stressful situations in the workplace. The good news is that ‘tension’ headaches can be relieved by a holistic treatment that will involve emotional management, stress reduction, improved diet and other lifestyle changes.

Chiropractic is, by definition, a hands-on treatment. So we give more than just good advice. We can do adjustments that will alleviate the pain by reducing the pressure on the muscles and irritation to the nerves in the upper part of the neck.

We are so confident of our abilities to relieve tension headaches, we offer an unconditional money back guarantee. So if anyone out there is needlessly suffering, you can say goodbye to your headaches by saying hello to us. Just contact our Gold Coast clinic and we’ll make an appointment.