Interview by Madonna Gauding

Photos by Rachael Waring

Dr. Craig Stoller, D.C. has an unassuming office on Stadium, just east of Trader Joe’s. The sign on the door says, “Align Chiropractic.” His logo looks like a mandala. It represents the top vertebrae of the spine, otherwise known as the “atlas.” When you enter the waiting room, you are greeted with a large children’s play area, and above it a giant hand-painted mural. It depicts an idyllic scene of people of all ages and abilities actively enjoying the outdoors in a beautiful park like setting. It represents Stoller’s goal of having all of his patients, no matter what age or ability, enjoy an active, healthy lifestyle. Some chiropractors release a patient’s back pain or neck pain and send them on their way. Stoller’s aim is to maximize his patient’s health potential, whatever that might be. He is passionate about the inherent recuperative power of the body to heal itself without the use of drugs or surgery. He helps achieve this healing by focusing on the relationship between the structure of the body, the spine, and its function as coordinated by the nervous system.

Madonna Gauding: I’ve seen you on and off for care for some years starting with a serious car accident. I was reluctant to see you at first because I didn’t really know how a chiropractor could help, but a mutual friend strongly encouraged me to see you. You not only helped me recover from a strange, accident-induced brain fog, but I ended up feeling better than I had for a long time. I’ve been inspired by your holistic approach to health, your enthusiasm for how the body functions, and in particular, your laser focus on the benefits of a properly functioning nervous system. You introduced me to the depth and profound healing chiropractic has to offer. So, my first question is: What made you decide to become a chiropractor?

Craig Stoller: I was in college, I had already taken the MCAT exam and was getting ready to apply to medical school, when one of my fraternity brothers asked me why I wanted to become a doctor. I shared my thoughts about the field of medicine, and I mentioned how I didn’t believe medication was the answer for good health. I remember talking to him about physiology and my love for how the body works. He asked me if I had ever thought about going into chiropractic. My thinking was, “Well, that’s just for back pain.” I didn’t realize at that time how all-encompassing chiropractic can be. He said, “My dad and my grandfather are both chiropractors in Defiance, Ohio. You should talk to them and then see what you think. If you don’t believe pharmaceuticals are the ultimate answer to good health, you will be really interested in what they have to say.”

So, I took a little field trip to Defiance, Ohio, met Dr. Beane, and spent the day with him. It was such an eye-opening experience. People were coming into his office for all sorts of problems—headaches, poor digestion, balance issues, and of course knee and back pain—the whole gamut of health problems. He was utilizing chiropractic adjustments, nutritional counseling, and education to help his patients restore their bodies to proper functioning. What he was doing deeply resonated with me. I left Defiance knowing chiropractic is where I fit in the field of medicine. I went back to my college, got applications for chiropractic schools, and the rest is history.

Madonna Gauding: Well, I’m thinking of your parents, were they disappointed you didn’t become an MD? For some reason, the world doesn’t give chiropractors the same respect.

Craig Stoller: I have three siblings and my parents always wanted us to pursue what was best for us—what made us happy—so they had no problem with me becoming a chiropractor. Unfortunately, fifty years ago the AMA tried to destroy chiropractic. From the mid 1970s to the 90s, the AMA had a board called “the board on quackery” whose sole purpose was to contain and eliminate chiropractors as competition for medical doctors. The board spread misconceptions about chiropractic to discourage people from going to chiropractors or becoming chiropractors. They pressured high school counselors to advise students against pursuing a career in chiropractic. A group of chiropractors eventually filed a federal antitrust suit, and their case went all the way to the Supreme Court. After several appeals, the chiropractors won, and there was a significant financial settlement, but by then the AMA had done its damage. To this day, misconceptions and negative views about chiropractic continue.

Madonna Gauding: I remember chiropractic being trashed during those years. People would call chiropractors “quacks” without actually knowing what they did.

Craig Stoller: One thing I find fascinating about chiropractic, and what helped me make the decision to enter the field, is that as complex as the body is, there are certain universal, innate principles regarding health that are always going to be true. Ultimately, our health depends on whether we listen to our body and understand how it works. There are so many ways chiropractors can educate patients and help them be active participants in maintaining their health. My job is to facilitate my patients having optimum health and to remove any roadblocks that may be preventing it. This has been my passion. It has motivated and resonated with me all these years.

MG: When I go to a regular doctor, I don’t feel he or she is that interested in how well my body functions as a whole. They tend to look for signs of illness or pathology. They focus on symptoms, tests, and prescriptions, all useful to some degree but not helpful in terms of my preventing disease or helping me have a better quality of life. The traditional doctors I see are sincere and well-meaning, and certainly helpful at times, but they operate under a different paradigm.

CS: There is definitely a time and place for traditional medicine. It is designed to put out a five-alarm fire, and diagnostic tests and pharmaceuticals can be helpful when you have serious symptoms. In my practice I have a different approach. I focus on dysfunction rather than symptoms. Dysfunction, if it were on a continuum, would be on the opposite end from symptoms because symptoms are always the last to occur. If we just address the symptom alone, we may be missing the deeper cause. For example, someone may come in with shoulder pain on their right side, but they may not realize it originated in their left ankle. To treat shoulder pain with muscle relaxants or pain killers will not get to the dysfunction underlying it. Unfortunately, traditional medicine is so focused on symptom patterning they don’t look at the body as whole. In standard medicine, everything is compartmentalized. If you have a heart condition, obviously the organ is sick, and it needs treatment. But your diseased heart will have ramifications throughout your entire body. Oxygenation is important, and if your heart is not working properly, you will not be getting oxygen to all your cells in the capacity they need. This could cause a cascade of problems affecting your lungs, your digestion, your kidneys, and so on. You have to get to where the dysfunction started, and when you address where that dysfunction began, so many other symptoms start to heal. A lot of people complain that chiropractors say they can fix everything. But, actually, we don’t “fix” anything. What we do is restore function to the body which triggers your body’s innate ability to heal. My goal is to get your body to heal and function at the highest level possible.

MG: This may sound like an aside, but I think it’s relevant as an example of the state of standard medicine. A few months ago, I went to the ER with extreme vertigo and other symptoms that made me think I was having a heart attack. I was there for 12 hours and given every possible test imaginable. The bill was over $12,000 mostly paid by my insurance. I was relieved to learn I had not had a heart attack or a stroke, however, they suggested I make an appointment with a cardiologist because of a slight anomaly on one of the blood tests. When I saw the cardiologist, he said I should not have been referred to him, that the ER doctors overreacted. Turns out I did not have heart disease. What showed up on that blood test was simply a result of my age.

CS: Well, the problem with standard health care is that it has become so regimented. A lot of people who go into medicine are very smart and are really good students. They can study, memorize, and regurgitate. That is one reason why standard medicine has become so formulaic. So, in your situation they ordered a predetermined battery of tests, but they didn’t find any answers to your vertigo. Diagnostics are good because you want to make sure to uncover something if it is there, but your ER testing and treatment cost over $12,000, which is why insurance costs are so high. Also, because medical malpractice insurance is so expensive, doctors and hospitals will over test out of fear of missing something. Obviously, our healthcare system needs revamping so that physicians make clinical decisions based on the needs of their patient rather than the requirements of insurance companies.

There are “outside the box” doctors in the Ann Arbor area, like Jay Sandweiss and Sue McCreadie. They don’t fit in the “box” of medicine because they think about physiology and the body as a whole. And they don’t fit into large medical groups because they are thinkers. Rather than just treating symptoms, they will look for the underlying causes of symptoms.

MG: When doctors go to medical school, they learn about the physiology of the entire body and how it functions, but it seems when they begin practicing, they abandon that holistic view.

CS: In the U.S. there are five recognized primary care physicians. There are chiropractors (DC), medical doctors (MD), osteopaths (DO), dentists (DDS), and podiatrists (DPM). For chiropractors, osteopaths, and medical doctors, 95% of our curriculum is identical. We all learn the same physiology, whether it is gastroenterology, endocrinology, or embryology, we all go through the same training. You are right about doctors abandoning a holistic view of the body. If they asked “how is this body working as a whole” instead of compartmentalizing it into medical specialties, we would have dramatically better health care.

The chiropractic field originally promoted the idea of “wellness care” which in standard medicine became the “wellness check.” But a wellness check shouldn’t be, “Okay, we did a wellness check on you, and we found this problem we need to treat.” A wellness model should ask the question: How can we keep your entire body and mind working properly?

We live in such a fast-paced, stressful world, we need to counteract that by cultivating a positive and relaxed mind. This is something standard medicine completely overlooks. I suggest meditation to my patients to help with relaxation. Meditating just five minutes a day can help you achieve calm and peace. That five minutes will give you time to just slow down, breathe, and clear your mind. That small step can help undo the ravages of stress. I have a very busy life, but I make sure I take time every day to meditate. Some days it may be 15 minutes, others it may be an hour. There are many aspects to health and well-being. I always talk about these five pillars of health we just talked about to my patients.

MG: Can you go over them again?

CS: I start with a properly functioning nervous system. This is achieved through chiropractic diagnosis and adjustments. Consider that the tabletop. Then the four supporting legs are healthy nutrition, a consistent exercise plan, a positive mental attitude, and daily rest and relaxation. Those are the raw materials our body needs to be able to function at a high level. Let’s say someone comes to me to get adjusted. Yet, when they leave here, they eat poorly, and are not proactive with their health. A body that is aligned, with a properly functioning nervous system will definitely be of benefit, but they are not going to reach their maximum health potential if their lifestyle is undermining them. And if someone is already doing all the right things—exercising, eating well—and yet they don’t feel that great, well, the missing component in that case is their nervous system. A fully functioning nervous system is what allows their body to communicate and integrate all these great things they are doing for themselves. If there are blockages in the way their brain and body are communicating, if there are circuits turned off, then ultimately, no matter what they do, they are not going to feel their best, and their body is not going to reach their maximum potential. Even though they have good nutrition, exercise, rest and relaxation, and meditation—these great raw materials of good health—the body will not be able to integrate or assimilate them fully.

MG: Can you explain more about how the nervous system works?

CS: Think of the nerves as the electrical wires, and the brain as the main computer. The “wires” allow the brain to communicate with every cell, every tissue, and every organ in your body. I work with the spine, primarily, because that is the electrical circuit breaker of the nervous system. If you were to look at the spine, it would look like a circuit breaker with wires coming out at different levels that go to different parts of the body. It’s kind of like your house. You have this big wire that comes into your house from the electric company, and the breaker box separates the electricity and routes it to the bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, wherever it needs to go. Same with our body, whether it’s a nerve going to your foot, your stomach, your heart, your lungs, or your hands. If there is any static on the line, if there is interference in the flow of the nerve signals, those parts of your body are not going to work properly.

I tell all of my patients that everyone is an athlete. One patient’s goal may be to be able to walk with a walker to the mailbox and back, and another may have the goal of running a marathon. These are both athletic activities. Any movement involves your brain telling your body to function well. At the same time, that brain has to be able to receive information. We basically live our life through our nerve system. Any break in that communication, any constriction, is going to end up as a point of dysfunction that we were talking about earlier.

MG: Do most chiropractors think about the nervous system in the way you are talking about it or are they focused more on muscles, bones, and the skeletal system?

CS: Chiropractic is described as a philosophy, an art, and a science. The philosophy of chiropractic is that the nerve system controls and directs the proper function of the body. Daniel David Palmer, who founded chiropractic in the late 19th century, was practicing magnetic healing at the time. He started noticing electric currents in the body, which led him to the spine and the functioning of the nervous system. He, and A. T. Stills, the founder of osteopathy, were friends. Osteopaths focus on the oxygenation of the body, and osteopathic manipulation is geared toward increasing circulation. And really, they both are right. Everywhere a nerve goes so does a vein, so if you are affecting the nervous system, you are also affecting the oxygenation of the body.

Back to your question, no matter what their technique, all chiropractors focus on the nervous system. Some may not necessarily talk about it in the way that I do, and their technique and approach may differ. Then there is the art of the practice. The art of chiropractic is being able to diagnose what needs to be adjusted on that day, and determine how to go about adjusting it, there are lots of different things to consider. Different chiropractors will come to different conclusions. But all approaches should be rooted in the concept that the nerve system has to be free of interference for the body to function correctly.

MG: You practice a type of chiropractic called “upper cervical.” How did you decide to use that method?

CS: I went to a chiropractic school that taught both regular chiropractic and upper cervical chiropractic. There are hundreds of chiropractic techniques, but they all fall under two categories: full spine chiropractic and upper cervically based chiropractic. They both effect the whole spine. The difference is in technique. After I graduated, I started practicing traditional full spine chiropractic using what is called a high velocity adjusting technique, what people jokingly call “bone crunching.” Eventually, I realized this was not the practice of my dreams. I couldn’t see myself doing this for 30 years. So, I decided to move my family to Vermont for a year where I worked with another doctor to get advanced training in chiropractic neurology. I started looking into neurological tests—balance testing and testing cranial nerves—really looking at how the brain and body are communicating. A lot of people may not feel dysfunction and won’t know they have a problem until they feel symptoms. The testing helps identify nerve interference and dysfunction before they manifest as symptoms. One of my frustrations in my earlier practice with traditional full spine chiropractic was I didn’t want patients coming to me every six weeks saying, “Hey doc, I threw out my back.” I felt there is much more to chiropractic than back pain, and was I really making a change if they were constantly throwing out their back?

MG: I want to talk more about upper cervical chiropractic. In that system, does the health of the body depend on the position of the top vertebrae, the atlas? Is that where the main blockage occurs in the nervous system?

CS: The atlas holds a unique place in upper cervical chiropractic. Envision your head as a bowling ball, your atlas as a saucer it rests on, and the rest of your body as a rod that keeps you upright and balanced. If the saucer is tipped and rotated, there is going to be some kind of postural distortion introduced to keep your body upright against gravity. The brain stem and the spinal cord meet there at the atlas. Every single nerve has to go from your brain through that juncture, so the atlas can have a far-reaching neurological effect. I focus on that bone to get every vertebra below it to stack up like blocks which allows other things to correct.

MG: Does it ever happen that you adjust the atlas, and the rest of the spine does not fall into place?

CS: Yes. Sometimes there are areas that don’t respond. That’s why I use multiple ways to analyze and treat the body. Think of your body as a closed kinetic chain. Any time I project force into your body there is going to be a ripple effect. For example, when I move my shoulder, it’s not just my shoulder that moves but there is movement all the way through my body. Let’s say the atlas is in the correct place, but there are blockages elsewhere, maybe at the ankle, or the knee or another vertebra. Maybe a vertebra is “stuck.” My job is to find where those blockages are. At times I will use alternate techniques to address those areas, all with the goal of keeping the nerve system functioning optimally. That is why open communication between patient and doctor is so important. I really value having conversations with my patients. I encourage them to ask questions and to share whatever they want with me, even information they found online and want to know if it applies to them. There are no bad questions. It’s amazing how we chiropractors can read the body, but sometimes when we start talking, and my patients tell me what they are experiencing, the wheels start spinning in my head, and I realize there is a blockage somewhere I didn’t expect. Or they tell me they are doing great except in this one area. There is something called “point of subluxation,” the subluxation being a slight misalignment of a vertebra. You might be balanced when you are standing, but say you are a violinist and when you begin to play, that position triggers your subluxation. I actually have to adjust you in that position because that blockage, or that misalignment, will only show up when you are performing. I have to dig into that and do my detective work. Then, I can get the body to work the way it is supposed to.

MG: Do you use other techniques than upper cervical?

CS: Besides upper cervical adjustments, I use another technique called the “Zone School of Healing.” It works on the premise that we have six, principal systems in our body—glandular, elimination, neurological, muscular, circulatory, and digestive. Each has different control centers or zones in the brain, and those control areas are governed by certain areas along the spinal cord. I can assess if those systems are communicating by doing some palpation along the base of the skull. This technique differs from upper cervical structural adjustments, in that it is governed by spinal cord stimulation.

MG: In general, what gets people to your practice?

CS: I am very fortunate in that my practice is primarily referral-based by patients who are already educated about what I do. Certainly, I will get new people who come in with aches and pains. In most chiropractic settings that is why people seek chiropractic care. When someone does come in for back pain, we go through their history, and all of a sudden, they are talking about digestive problems. I get people who come to me for headaches or fatigue. I get a whole range of health issues besides pain.

MG: And because you have educated your patients about the nervous system and optimizing its functioning, you get new patients who are not necessarily having symptoms but want their bodies to function at a higher level?

CS: Yes. Think of it as a model of going to a doctor when you are not sick. This goes back to what we were talking about with wellness. My patients are generally people who want to own their own health. And to do that they are willing to take proactive steps. I also get people on the other end of the spectrum, who have tried everything in traditional medicine, have failed to get relief, and are at a loss for what to do next. I am sometimes their last resort. When I educate patients about physiology and how the body works, a lightbulb goes off. When I sit down with them and explain what is working and what is not working in their body, it typically makes sense to them. There is nothing about the body that is so complex that the average lay person cannot understand. I want patients to be an active participant in their health, whether it’s changing diet, adding simple exercises or changing their movement patterns. Exercise doesn’t have to be “I’m going to go to the gym and workout at this extreme pace for an hour and a half.” For some patients, exercise can simply be taking a walk outside for twenty minutes a day. That achieves a lot. And, in that twenty minutes, they can be in a meditative mind space which also contributes to the “pillar” of having a positive mental attitude.

After patients see me for a while, they begin to differentiate between feeling good and feeling bad. And they begin to understand what feeling good is. They begin to tune into their barometer, and they become more sensitive to changes in their body. They will tell me I’m feeling pretty good, but I’ve noticed this certain thing happening when I run. So many people chalk things up to getting older or they are so used to not feeling good, they think that’s normal. You know, “I wake up in the morning, I take my Aleve, and I’m good to go.” When my patients begin to be proactive about their health, which I encourage them to do, they begin to make positive changes in their daily life.

Read related article: Sustainable Health: Ask for Help!

MG: What about cancer or heart disease? Can chiropractic help with serious illness?

CS: Those are examples of the “five alarm fire” we talked about. There are a lot of treatment options in those cases, but they all involve critical care, whether someone chooses the traditional path for cancer or heart disease or not. If I were to take two patients who had cancer, who were both going through traditional chemo and radiation, and one was getting chiropractic care and one was not, in all likelihood, the one who is getting chiropractic care will respond better to their traditional treatment, because their body will be better equipped to handle the chemical onslaught of chemotherapy. Basically, chemotherapy chemically attacks and hopefully kills the cancer. And then after, we worry about restoring the health of the body. If I can keep the body functioning most optimally while going through a challenging cancer treatment, it is only going to give the person a chance to have a better outcome.

MG: What about breathing issues such as asthma?

CS: A lot of chiropractors are drawn to the field because they had childhood asthma and it was the only thing that helped them. Whatever the breathing issue, if there is some blockage in a functional path related to breathing, chiropractic can help to open it up. Sometimes it’s as simple as the diaphragm is not working exactly as it should because there is some kind of misalignment in the nerves that are feeding it. Or sometimes patients have a hiatal hernia they need to address, or their body is too acidic. There are so many things that can cause breathing problems. With sleep apnea, because our respiratory centers are in the brain stem, some people respond extremely well to upper cervical adjustment. And even though they may still have to use a c-pap device, they may achieve better respiratory function overall. There is no one health treatment that is the end all answer to everything. That’s why we often need multiple forms of healthcare.

MG: I know you adjust newborn babies. Can you talk about that?

CS: I sometimes go to the hospital to adjust babies before they come home. Since Covid restrictions have been lifted, just a couple of weeks ago, I was able to get back in the hospital and adjust a patient of mine’s newborn. I’ve had patients who, before they drove the baby home from the hospital, came by the office to have them adjusted. Later in life, when patients come to me with problems, they ask, “how did I get here?” I tell them how you arrived at this point is the story of your life and everything that has happened to you since you were born. The birthing process is one of the most traumatic experiences a person will go through. Because of that, my kids have been adjusted since they were five minutes old and would have been adjusted quicker if I hadn’t been helping with the birth. I have adjusted them at minimum once a week since they were born. They have never taken any prescriptions and they have never missed school because they were sick. My fifteen-year-old has probably had five colds in his life, and they lasted only one or two days. My twelve-year-old daughter has probably only had two or three. Our goal with them is to always maximize their health. Everything we do, and the lifestyle we live, promotes that.

Some kids have their first misalignment at birth. And if it is not corrected, it just compounds. And, again, that’s were my detective skills come in. Things happen in your life, there are traumas. You have an auto accident, you step off a curb wrong, you are a programmer hunched over your keyboard, you play hockey or football, and you get injured, you are a cyclist, and you have a bad fall, or you are a desk jockey who just sits all day—all these lifestyle things add to your story. So, the detective work is asking, “How did those past experiences imprint onto your body?” There are certain patterns and certain structures that have shifted in your body over time. Every nerve goes to different muscle groups, different organs, cells, tissues, and my job is to sort out where you need correction. If someone comes in saying they have migraines and digestive issues, and they also complain of midback pain, the back may be the source of their problems. After a series of adjustments, they tell me their headaches and digestive issues are better than they have been in years. It’s not by coincidence. All these nerves feed muscles and organs.

MG: So, when you do these adjustments, you don’t actually “cure” anything. What happens is the body heals, and symptoms resolve when the body comes into alignment and the nervous system is flowing freely. This process, I assume, is very unique to each individual.

CS: The body is a self-healing organism. So, if you are having chronic, ongoing symptoms, you have to ask yourself, “Why is my body not healing itself?” Everybody has cut their finger at one time, and it healed. Or you have had some kind of ailment like a cold where you didn’t have to tell your body to heal, it just did it on its own. If we have a wound, yes, we have to intervene, we have to clean it, if not infection will set in. We have systems in our body that fight against infection. On the functional side, all I do is introduce proper alignment and proper function of the body which turns on the body’s ability to heal. Someone may come to me saying, “I have this symptom, and nobody has been able to figure out what’s causing it.” What I love about physiology is there is always a reason why something is occurring in your body. You may have health issues that are genetic, that you inherited from your parents, but there has to be something that turns those tendencies on. We all have the ability to express health and I have to find out what is blocking that ability for each patient. Each individual will have a different “100% of health” they can express, so what is keeping that person from expressing that 100%? We need to free up that expression so the body can heal.

MG: What about chiropractic for children?

CS: I would say about 30% of my patients are children. I often get the question, “Why chiropractic for kids when they don’t have back pain?” Of course, chiropractic isn’t only about back pain, it’s about optimizing the function of the entire body. Patients bring their kids in for that reason, or they may be having some kind of health issue that hasn’t resolved, or their kid is always sick and missing school. Then some kids may be on a sports team, and I see them to help them improve athletic performance. Children respond pretty quickly to treatment. They don’t have the muscle memory we do and typically they don’t require the same treatment frequency. I test them neurologically, I check their postural balance, their muscle strength, their eye movements. What I’m looking for is how their brain and body are communicating. If there is a break in that communication, I address that. I typically don’t x-ray young children unless there is a need to. When they reach adolescence, I sometimes take an x-ray to see how their spine is developing.

MG: What about chiropractic for the elderly?

CS: I see whole families, so I end up seeing patients of all ages. A patient may say I’d like to bring my mom in, she’s 83, can this help her? No matter what age, there is a maximum measure of health unique for that individual. Can I turn an 83-year-old into a 25-year-old? Probably not. But with their participation, I can help maximize their body’s potential. One of the biggest concerns of the elderly is falling. One of the tests I do is a cerebellum balance test. By testing how the body and cerebellum work together in understanding where the body is in space and time, I can help improve their balance. I will do a simple finger to nose test, which is a cerebellum test. And I will have them march in place and see what their patterns are so I can read what their cerebellum is doing. I will have them stand on one leg and observe how they stand and if they sway a certain way. If their eyes are closed and they sway to the right, that lets me know how the cerebellum is working. Sometimes I have to look at gait, how are they walking. For example, they may not be picking up their right foot, which may cause them to trip on a curb. Sometimes it is just what their brain is perceiving, or maybe their glute muscles are not firing on the right side, and they have trouble picking up that leg. These are all things that can be addressed and corrected to create the most optimal balance for the elderly person. We can open up those messages from the cerebellum so their body can understand better where it is in space and time. One of the things that is very problematic in the elderly community is they are not moving. Being stuck sitting in a chair all day is very detrimental to the body. So, I encourage consistent, daily movement for older people. There are ways to adapt to make movement possible for most everyone.

MG: Can you go over what happens when someone first comes to see you. What can they expect? What is the process for becoming your patient?

CS: I start with the consultation. I have to understand why they are seeking care, what their history is, and what’s going on in their body. Wheels start spinning for me the minute we have that conversation. Then I do an assessment, I look at the structure of the body; I do a postural assessment, how they distribute force through weight balance, postural changes. Then I do a series of x-rays where I look at the blueprint of the body. I look to see if the posture and the blueprint match. Then I do a series of neurological testing—looking at how the neurological system is functioning. After all of that, I go back and analyze whether what we talked about in our initial conversation matches what is going on physiologically in the body. It if does match, then I develop a plan for correcting what is functionally wrong so that their body can heal.

MG: Your x-rays are unique and have lot of lines and markings superimposed on them.

CS: Chiropractors look at x-rays differently. A patient may come in and tell me their MD took an x-ray and told them everything looks fine. But MDs are looking for fractures or pathologies, they are not looking for structural alignments. The lines you are referring to help me to check for structural alignment. That said, I also look for pathologies when I do an x-ray to rule out any reason why I should not treat a patient. For example, they may have a tumor on their spine that needs to be addressed with traditional medicine. In that case I would suggest I do not treat them at this time. The whole process allows me to decide if it makes sense to treat this person and if they are the right person for my practice. If they are not, or if they are not comfortable, I want to make sure they get to the right practitioner for them and they reach their goals in life when it comes to their health.

MG: Where do you see yourself going with your practice? What’s in your future?

CS: Well, I recently brought another chiropractor into my practice. Dr. Samantha Garlick went to the same school I did so we come from the same philosophy. It was important to bring somebody in who was congruent and compatible because it allows us to grow. As far as my plans for the future, I want to continue with my practice. I love physiology. I love to see people maximize their life potential and be able to do the things they want to do. I want that 90-year-old who has never traveled to Europe, and always wanted to, to not be concerned about doing that. Whatever the experience my patients desire, I want them to be able to pursue it and live their life to the fullest. Anything I can do to help people get through their roadblocks to optimal health—this is my passion. I hope when I am 90, I am still adjusting patients. I may not be doing it at the pace I am doing it now, but I have such a passion for the human experience, I want to be able to share that with everybody.

To learn more about Dr. Craig Stoller, D.C. visit him online at alignchiropracticannarbor.com. His office is located at 1955 Pauline Boulevard, Suite 80 Ann Arbor, MI 48103. To make an appointment call (734) 418-7515.