Photography: Dustin Ashcraft

This led Walker to move five years ago to the full spectrum practitioner he is today, changing his treatment to a wellness model that revolutionizes care for his patients. "This is proactive instead of reactive care," he says.

He focuses on teaching people to be well through an optimal functioning nervous system, nutrition, exercise and health education. "My goal is to help get people well and keep people well by guiding them on a journey to wellness."

According to Walker, the key to stress management is proper nerve function in the body. "Stress is the cause of all of our problems," he says. "There are three types of stress: physical, emotional and chemical.

"Our bodies adapt to the stress as best [they] can, but when we can no longer adapt, we start to express symptoms, dysfunction or disharmony. Unfortunately, we can't take the stress away, but we can improve function so that the body can handle the stress better."

His comparison is that stress can act on the body like a dimmer switch. When a light is dimmed, it's hard to see, and doing normal tasks like finding the right pair of socks in a drawer is difficult. When the light is on at its fullest potential, you can see better.

"We live our lives functioning at what we get used to," he says, "but if we can restore the full power to our nervous system, it's like the power has gone back on, and we can live at our fullest potential. It's really exciting to be able to do that."

His favorite example of the dimmer switch concept is a patient who came in because he loved to do yard work; it took him four hours to do his yard, and he spent the next day-and-a-half afterward so incapacitated that he would have to lie in bed to recuperate.

After a month of chiropractic adjustments, he went outside and finished his yard work in an hour and then took his wife to the mall, "which is when it hit him that he could never have been able to do that before the adjustments started," Walker says. "The stress on his body of doing the work didn't change, but his body was able to adapt and handle it without one to two days of recovery."

Walker's primary focus is on families. He says he sees a lot of kids who, in many cases, come in before their parents. And very often after parents bring their children in and see the benefits of his care, they become patients, as well.

One family started coming because one of the children was sickly. He had missed 22 days of school and almost didn't finish first grade. After receiving chiropractic care, the child only missed three days of school the next year and made it the whole year without antibiotics – this after spending his whole life on round after round of antibiotics before the chiropractic care. Now the whole family comes in for regular adjustments.

Walker takes care of his wife and his own three kids with regular adjustments, as well. "The last time one of my kids was on any type of medication was 10 years ago," he says.

The benefits of regular chiropractic adjustments, coupled with the high cost of health care, led Walker to recently launch a program in his office where patients can sign up for memberships to have unlimited access to chiropractic care.

He has always correlated regular chiropractic care to a gym membership. Just like the gym, the more you go, the better you feel, and you are able to receive the many benefits of regular exercise.

Patients who sign up for the program have unlimited access to the office by paying a low monthly fee. The program is available as individual, couple and family memberships, providing "more access for people, and making it easier for people to afford," Walker says.

So what exactly is involved in chiropractic care in his office? Walker says an initial visit begins with a nerve scan that includes a surface EMG scan to assess muscle imbalances and a thermal scan of the spine. This, along with palpation and posture analysis, allows him to see where problem areas are in the patient's body and treat accordingly. He then discusses the results with the patient.

"For example, I'll see a color change on the scan and tell them that oftentimes when there is nerve interference at this level, you may be experiencing symptoms like headaches or numbness, tingling, etc., and they are often amazed at how we can tell that from the scan, and how accurate it is," he says. "Most people don't know enough about what the nervous system does, and this helps them to see how out of balance their nervous system is."

Another assessment available in his office is cardio pulse-wave technology, which helps determine the pressure of the heart and the elasticity or resistance of the arteries. The results of this assessment are immediate, and a protocol is recommended that includes a specific supplement, exercise and chiropractic care.

Then Walker recommends a certain number of visits per week, based on the severity of the problems identified on the scan. The No. 1 treatment is an adjustment in which Walker uses his hands to realign the spine in the problem areas. He says this works "from the womb to the tomb": newborns to 94-year-olds.

The adjustment gets movement to the joints and takes the pressure off around the nerves, and a person does not need to have a pain or symptoms to receive care. The adjustments work to correct the misalignments caused by stress, and these are called subluxations. When subluxations are present, a chiropractor's job is to identify and correct them via the adjustment.

The initial visit may also include some nutritional counseling to see what the patient is eating and what supplements may be recommended. Walker also may recommend specific exercises to help strengthen and stabilize the spine and make the adjustment hold better.

After the initial visit, patients may stop by anytime during adjustment hours to get adjusted. This, according to Walker, eliminates the stress of scheduling and getting to an appointment, and his patients love the flexibility this allows them.

For Walker, it's all a dream come true. "My favorite part of my job is seeing people's lives change (especially families), knowing that I've improved their quality of life – to see them go from 'I'll just have to live with this' to a full life without limitations."

He says he has many "miracle stories," but his favorite is that of a 6-week-old whose mother brought him in because he was not thriving.

"He was listless and not eating, and when she picked him up, his head just flopped like a bobble-head doll," Walker says. "The other doctors she took him to, including their pediatrician, told her that there wasn't much hope for the child to have a normal life."

After an examination and an X-ray, he discovered that the top vertebrae was pushed all the way up by the skull as a result of the birthing process. He saw the child twice a day for the first week, and Walker says that the child cried in obvious pain, but after just a few weeks of treatment, he was happy and healthy and moving all over the place.

A relative sent him a DVD of the child's first birthday party, and he was running around enjoying himself like any normal kid. "I watched it and cried, I was so happy for him," Walker says. "People have misconceptions about what chiropractors do, and I just want them to know that this is not just for neck and back pain. This is a lifestyle that helps people live happier, healthier lives."

Dr. Scott Walker is also available to do talks on various health-related topics for businesses, schools and organizations for free as a part of his community outreach program. For more information about Walker and the Family Wellness Chiropractic Center, go to www.chirocareforlife.com, or call 361-994-0052.