We were lucky to catch up with Dr. Julia Platt recently and have shared our conversation below.
Dr. Julia, appreciate you joining us today. Is there a heartwarming story from your career that you look back on?
I’ll never forget when I was an associate chiropractor in Summerville, a young lady in her mid 30s came into our practice. She had fallen out of her semi-truck and her health started to decline shortly after. She lost complete use of her legs and was wheelchair bound. She lost feeling in both of her legs, lost control of her bowel and her bladder and had stopped eating. She literally thought she was dying. She had been back and forth to the hospital dozens of times with no answers. At her last hospital visit, they assumed she was just there for more pain drugs and stuck her in the psych unit for a 24-hour watch. The nurse that was taking care of her was one of our patients and told her it could be a spinal misalignment, and she urged her to get her spine checked. Fast forward to her first visit, I analyzed her spine, did a consultation, examination and took x-rays to determine if there was an issue. Sure enough, there was a huge misalignment (I can still picture her x-rays to this day), at the level of C1 which was pressing on her brainstem. I told her that we could help, and she broke down in tears. After one specific and gentle correction to her upper cervical spine, she yelled “I CAN FEEL MY LEGS AGAIN!” Over the course of her 8-month corrective plan, she was able to walk again, got off dozens of medications, got out of her depression and anxiety ridden state, began eating again and gained the weight back in a healthy manner. She even started to work out again! She said once that her life was BACK. She wrote me a personal handwritten card that I keep in the glovebox of my car to remind me why I do what I do every day!
Dr. Julia, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
It’s always hard to describe yourself. HA.. but when I really think about who I am at the core: I am a huge lover. I love people, I love people’s stories, and I love learning. I was introduced to chiropractic at a young age when my older brother suffered a severe football injury that left him unable to walk. It was chiropractic care that got my brother walking again and he went on to play college football and is now an amazing chiropractor himself. I was an athlete myself and playing competitive soccer left me with two concussions back to back within a few months. I went on to college and noticed that I couldn’t focus in class. I was having daily headaches and migraines and my gut became a disaster. I was sick almost every month. I could tell something was wrong with my body, like a flip had been switched. My brother was already in chiropractic school at the time and he kept telling me to go see a chiropractor. I began care with Dr. Jen and she changed my life. My headaches disappeared, my brain fog went away, my gut issues cleared up, and I was feeling the healthiest I had ever felt. She kept teaching me about the body and how it can heal itself without drugs. So, on I went to visit Sherman College of Chiropractic to explore the college and learn more. One weekend visit, and I just fell in love with the philosophy, science and art of chiropractic and I knew that’s how I wanted to serve the community.
When I was a couple months into school, I learned about Upper Cervical Chiropractic, which is a specific technique within the chiropractic field that focuses on the top two bones in the neck. The brainstem runs through the top two bones at the top of the neck, and if there’s any misalignment at the top of the neck, the brainstem gets pressed on and can effect every organ, cell, tissue. As I dove deeper into the work, I realized that Upper Cervical Care was getting really really sick people, well. I saw people get up and walk out of wheelchairs, facial paralysis go away in an instant, women get pregnant after trying for years, all after addressing the upper cervical spine. I spent hundreds of hours studying and learning from some of the best upper cervical doctors in the world and earned my Basic, Advanced and Blue Angel Certification in Knee Chest Upper Cervical care and never looked back. The amazing thing about upper cervical care is that there is no twisting, yanking, popping or forceful adjustments made to the spine. The adjustments are specific, gentle, and actually correct the spine.
I see a lot of really sick people in my office who have been bounced from provider to provider with no answers. Many of my patients have seen other chiropractors as well and just haven’t gotten the results they wanted. I use state of the art imaging and thermography to determine where a subluxation is and when it is present. I pride myself on being specific and getting to the root cause of someone’s issues. I care deeply for my patients and truly care about their health and well-being and I won’t stop until I figure out how to fix the problem.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
One of the biggest lessons I had to unlearn (and still unlearning everyday) is to detach yourself from the outcome. When I first started practice, I would wake up in the middle of the night thinking about specific cases, and adjustments and asking myself “did I do the right thing? Should I have said something different? Did I make enough of an impact on this person” I would constantly wonder why a specific patient didn’t come back or why they stopped care. I remember talking to my mentor and he gave me the best piece of advice. He said, if you can lay your head on the pillow and know that you did everything you could that day and you did your best, than that’s enough. And if you didn’t do your best, you will surely do your best tomorrow.
Sometimes being too attached to every single outcome can be a negative. It’s best sometimes to just move on. One of the things I’ve learned is having a balance of caring but not being SO attached to every single outcome. There are countless number of reasons why things happen or someone drops out of care, or their headache didn’t go away after 4 visits. The important thing that I’ve really learned is to do my best and know that is enough. Show up, do the work, and let the chips fall where they may!
If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?
I’ve often thought about this question and the answer is always YES. Chiropractic to me, is not just a profession, but it’s a lifestyle. The paradigm that chiropractic shifts your mind into is invaluable to me. I have learned about true health and wellness. Because of the doors chiropractic has opened in my education, I’ve learned about proper nutrition, sleep, pre and post natal care, mindset, and the list goes on and on. I would go back to chiropractic school every time to just have the knowledge I gained. Selfishly, it has shaped my life in a completely different way and it’s changed my thought process of how I will raise children and that to me was worth that very expensive piece of paper on my wall in my office.
From a clinical standpoint, there is no greater gift than being able to give someone their health back in a natural way. Giving hope back to the hopeless is something I’d go back to chiropractic school for one million times.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.elevatespinalcare.com
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