We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andrea a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Andrea, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the story behind how you got your first job in field that you currently practice in.
Question: Why do I do what I do?
My story about becoming a chiropractor is one that actually changed every aspect of my life. I was 30 years old and in a sales career that had moved me from WI to Colorado Springs to LA to Miami to Charlotte all within six years with the company I was with. As I got further along and gained more responsibility, the new roles and increasing pressure started to really weigh on me, especially with the added stress of moving and starting over every year or two in a new place. All of a sudden and seemingly out of nowhere, while thinking I was in the best shape of my life, my GI tract shut down and I suddenly couldn’t go to the bathroom for eight months.
You did not read that wrong – EIGHT. I’m talking, I couldn’t go #2 for the better half of a year. I looked like I was six month pregnant. I would literally stand in front of the bathroom mirror and take pictures and text them to my sister saying, “It’s a boy!” just to make light of the crazy, horrible situation I was in, because I needed something to help me get a laugh through my misery. Believe me, I tried lots of different things to try to relieve the constipation, but nothing helped. By this point, I had already been dealing with the medical world for nearly 30 years with asthma attacks and allergies and being told by doctors that there was no solution other than taking drugs my whole life and being limited by these conditions.I knew I didn’t want to resort to drugs and surgery for my GI troubles, but I was desperate for an answer. If you’ve ever dealt with this for even a couple days, you know how horrible it is, so after months the desperation was real. Deep down, I knew something was “causing” this, though I had no idea what and didn’t know where to turn to find out. It came to the point that I quit my job and took two months off work to try and heal myself through destressing. While flying back to my hometown in WI to interview for a job with my family’s business, I ran into a childhood friend, Holly, who was also living in Charlotte (where I was living at the time). When we returned to Charlotte, we got together one day and Holly’s boyfriend (who is now her husband) asked if I wanted to get adjusted. As he checked me, he pointed out that I had some serious misalignments, and Holly came running over and asked if I’d ever been t-boned or in an accident of any kind. I reminded her about the rollover accident I had at 16. At this point, the wheels started turning in my mind, and a week later, while lying on the couch, still MISERABLE, I texted her and asked if she could help me. Even though I knew nothing about chiropractic, I knew she lived this really healthy, holistic lifestyle, and I thought maybe she could help. Plus, she told me I had some issues going on with my spine, so I was curious about that as well.
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in her office getting examined. She did a bunch of tests and took x-rays of my spine. She had me stand on two scales – one foot on each – and I had 10 lb difference from side-to-side. I couldn’t believe how misaligned I was. Then, she sat me down in a room and told me something that changed my life forever. She explained that God put all the healing power in the nervous system. Messages travel from the brain down the spinal cord and over the nerves to all your organs, tissues and cells, and messages travel from the organs, tissues, and cells back over the nerves, up the spinal cord, to the brain. When there are misalignments in the spine, which in chiropractic is called a “subluxation”, they cause interference in the communication of the nervous system and then the body doesn’t function and heal the way it’s designed. She then showed me exactly where the issues were in my spine that was causing the problem I was having.
I don’t know how to explain how I felt during and after that conversation other than completely mindblown. Why had no one ever told me this before? And what about all the other people who are sick and suffering out there who don’t know this? I started getting adjusted right away and after two months of care, my GI symptoms resolved! The next spring, I also realized that my allergies and asthma I’d had for 30 years also went away. Needless to say, I was AMAZED. Not a single drug was used, and in fact, I got off all drugs and haven’t taken once since – it’s been nearly nine years.
From the day I set foot in her office, God started beating on me to become a chiropractor. At first, I quickly brushed it off like it was a crazy idea since I didn’t really know anything about chiropractic and I was just about to start a new job; however, after chiropractic completely changed – and arguably SAVED – my life, and after I saw so many other people in her office get THEIR lives back (healing from all sorts of conditions), I finally rose to the calling. The thought that “Everyone deserves to know this” has been on repeat in my mind since that day she explained chiropractic to me. A year later to the week after starting care in Dr. Holly’s office, I was sitting in orientation at Life University for chiropractic school. Now, not only am I living the chiropractic dream, I’m also married to a chiropractor. I got healed, found my calling, and my amazing husband!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?
In our practice, our main focus is pregnancy, pediatric, and family health and well-being. Within the pediatric category, we specialize in not only keeping kids well and healthy, but also in serving kids with neuro-developmental disorders by getting to the cause and restoring function so that they can live life to the fullest (and their parents can too). More and more people are learning about how beneficial chiropractic is for pregnancy – not only does it help a mama live with more ease and less pain, but it takes stress off her nervous system and body and helps set her up for a safer, easier birth and shorter labor times. This is imperative, as we are finding that birth intervention is the root cause for neuro-developmental disorders in many kids. Getting adjusted during pregnancy is one of the best things a woman can do to set herself up for a safer birth for her and the baby and give the baby the best chance of a healthy childhood and life. With neuro-developmental disorders rapidly on the rise in recent years, this is a great passion of ours – it truly breaks our hearts when parents come to us after going from doctor to doctor to doctor seeking answers for their child. The great news is that our work is becoming more well-known and people are starting to find us earlier, which saves them a great deal of hardship and struggle. It is the best thing ever to see these families get their lives back! If you know anyone with a child who has autism, ADHD, asthma, allergies, sensory processing disorder, autoimmune disorders, is struggling in school or constantly sick, please tell them about us! If we aren’t close by, we can recommend a chiropractor nearby who also specializes in this work. Our community of doctors specializing in this work is growing rapidly and we are so passionate about helping anyone we can through our practice or referring to another chiropractor.
What we are most proud of is our work in helping families live healthy lives from the get go! Starting with pre-conconception – when we get to families at this stage and help them get healthy before pregnancy, their chances of having a healthy, thriving pregnancy and birth, followed by healthy, thriving children improves greatly. While we are absolutely elated to facilitate the restoration of health in kids who are suffering, we of course want them never to suffer. So, helping families be healthy from the beginning is the best part of what we get to do.
In addition to all of this, I am also certified in Neuro-Emotional Technique (NET) and help people process stress in the body that is emotionally rooted. I absolutely love this work and have a great deal of fun working with people in this way – it’s amazing the freedom one gets through NET. It may be something that triggers you, a painful or concerning feeling in your body, or something that you simply want to be ok with – NET is a quick process that can get to and help you process an underlying issue that may otherwise take decades on which to connect the dots and process.
I just love what I get to do for a living. Leading other people in this lifestyle is simply the BEST. Everyone deserves to know how to live a life fully alive – it’s up to them to take action on it, but they at least deserve to be told about these truths in health and healing that we teach and provide in our practice.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
Let me start by saying that my parents did their absolute best with what they knew and what they had been told. I was a very sick child, in and out of doctors offices for years with asthma and allergies. But my family did not know back then what I now know about where health comes from. We are designed to heal from above-down and inside-out. You see, God designed the body to heal itself, it just needs no interference. Interference to the nervous system comes from tension on the spinal cord and the nerves traveling to and from the organs, tissues and cells. In chiropractic, we remove this interference to the nervous system by adjusting misalignments in the spine (called subluxations), and then we step back and let the body heal on its own, the way God designed (that’s the above-down part). After 30 years of living my life from outside-in and taking medications for every ill, I now live my life by healing from inside-out…and I’m much healthier today at 39 than I was at 29!
Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?
This is something that I absolutely LOVE about my field…and it’s HEART. We have a heart for people and we see a future for them that they often may not even see for themselves. We know what is possible through chiropractic care and the freedom not only in health that can be achieved, but in LIFE when you live at your best health. Having a heart is truly the most helpful in succeeding – not only does it help with caring for the people we see, but the people feel it and gravitate to it. And often, they aren’t getting it in other areas in life. This was my experience when I started under care myself for the first time and it changed every aspect of my life, so much so that I became a chiropractor!!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.lifealivechiro.com
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Image Credits
Ashlee Crowden Photography (headshot)