New chiropractor in town has locals' backs

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JULIA WADE

28 Feb, 2022

 

New owner of a well-known health practice has got locals backs after discovering Mangawhai was more than just a great place to spend the summer.

For chiropractor David Gabrial, the decision to own his clinic just clicked into place after spending the last six months commuting from Auckland to work two days at Mangawhai Vitality Centre on Molesworth Drive in the Village.

Now renamed Mangawhai Chiropractic, and commuting three days, Gabrial says while he was steadily building up his client base last year, he recognised the area as ‘a real go-to destination’ and jumped at the chance to buy the practice in January.

“I saw it as an amazing opportunity… I really started to love the clinic, the area and community,” he says. “Mangawhai is just growing, it’s such a beautiful place, and chiropractic slots in perfectly.”

Based on what he has witnessed since working in the area, with clients opting for a laid back lifestyle and being ‘very health conscious’, chiropractic treatment could benefit everyone here he says ‘whether you’ve got pain or not’.

“Essentially the principles of chiropractic is to ensure the spinal mechanics are operating correctly, if the spine is moving well, there is no reason for ailments like lower back pain or headaches to occur,” Gabrial says. “That’s how chiropractic can enhance the wellbeing lifestyle which people seem to embrace when they move to Mangawhai.”

He says a number of elite athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan choose the health practice not because they are injuried from their sport but because they want to perform at their ultimate best, ‘gets them running efficiently at 100 percent’.

Daily poor posture from an ongoing activity such as working constantly at a desk can have a negative flow-on effect to your health he says with the cause being changes to the spines position.

“This puts pressure on the nerves, which are there to tell the posture muscles to hold your back. That pressure switches the muscles off and then people start to adopt the posture, which is very hard to come out of without taking that pressure off the nerves… this is how a chiropractor can help sort out client aches and pains.”

Wearing back braces may help in the short term, he says however for long term benefits the real cause needs to be figured out and treated.

“Chiropractor treatment is sort of progressive, we start off quite frequently then wean it off, and if a client wants to maintain their spinal health, we recommend coming once a month or every six weeks for a bit of a warrant of fitness.”

The two full-time chiropractors at the clinic treat a wide range of ailments from tradies who have hurt themselves at work, sport injuries and seniors with osteoarthritis, ‘one of the main causes of morning stiffness and back pain while putting your shoes on’, to clients with structural issues like ‘scoliosis’, a deviation of the spinal column away from

the midline, causing the spine to look like an ‘S’ shape with the afflicted often standing slightly crooked, and children as young as six months old.

“Infants can benefit from chiropractic too as the birth process is one of the most traumatic things for a spine, although its very malleable and soft, the process of being delivered can cause a lot of distortion to the cervical spine (neck),” he says. “Parents tend to find their child struggles to latch on for breastfeeding, have trouble sleeping or they can’t get comfortable in certain positions, so all these things can be a sign of a misaligned spine and pressure being put on the nerves.”

Working with infants is very different to adult treatments, with practitioners using softer techniques like a ‘touch and hold’ adjustment, ‘basically an applied pressure no more than what you’d apply to an eyeball’.

For those who have a wariness of the proverbial ‘cracking’, renowned to chiropractic, more gentle methods are available like the ‘activator’ – a spring-loaded, hand-held mechanical adjusting instrument, and the ‘drop-assist table’, ‘which uses the force of gravity to administer a controlled drop in a segment of the treatment table, to settle the patient’s spine into place’. The equipment is also beneficial for fragile clients like some elderly, children from eight to 15 years and even animals.

Offering supplementation is also a part of Mangawhai Chiropractic’s health care.

“We find if we can get people’s backs moving a little bit more, getting them more mobile, they find their aches and pains overtime dissipate, and they can start functioning at their optimal potential… in chiropractic, that is the ultimate goal.”

New owner of soon-to-be rebranded Mangawhai Chiropractic, David Gabrial has locals’ backs. The Village clinic on Molesworth Drive has two full-time chiropractors and a full-time massage therapist on board. PHOTO/JULIA WADE

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