Dr Joseph Cucci: Why this NYC Park avenue chiropractor thinks most of you have your health care facts wrong and how he became a leader in what many only regard as alternative medicine.
What counts for wellness and being and why is such information so often fraught with contradiction and inconsistency?
Enter Dr Joseph Cucci a Park Avenue stalwart (and doctor to NYC’s Broadway’s theater row) who makes a convincing case as to the benefits of chiropractic care and why sustaining a functioning central self free of drugs and surgery might be the more effective way of maintaining good health.
For the common person, visiting a chiropractor becomes a necessity when one experiences back pain, joint problems, arthritis but according to Dr Joseph Cucci you probably wouldn’t be experiencing any of these ailments and many more (head aches, disease and cancer) had you sought regular ongoing adjustment of your central nervous system.
According to Dr Joe Cucci, good health, respiratory well being is fundamentally aligned to (how well) the way our central nervous system works. It’s what regulates the machinations and kinetics of our bodies, rather than being an afterthought should be an integral part of one’s upkeep in the same way one pledges to eat healthy natural food over greasy food.
That said, why do most of us resort to ingesting ever more drugs and deem the process of manual supplication and bodily adjustment with a weary eye? Isn’t there something counter-intuitive about turning to drugs, prescription pills? And where does chiropractic care fit in in the grand scheme of ongoing well being and health?
Responds Dr Joseph Cucci: ‘In short I’m getting to the root of the disease and what makes people ill and providing an organic framework of inside out healing and well being,’
‘That’s not what drugs and most standard medicine does. That seeks to treat from the outside in.’
According to Dr Joseph Cucci much of the antipathy towards chiropractic care comes down to the way the public is educated as to how one attains good health and the belief system that wellness is often achieved by taking a pill or simply seeing a doctor when something feels off.
Which is to say Dr Joe Cucci questions the prevailing dogma courtesy of an ever growing and powerful pharmaceutical industry which (in tandem with the medical field) seeks to supply us with an ever growing cache of wonder drugs.
A prevailing wisdom that the media, greater culture along with most doctors continue to pay adherence to while the pharmaceutical industry (which retains large lobbying ties to Washington) continues, non coincidentally to get ever rich.
All food for thought as Dr Joseph Cucci motions me to the adjustment room (one of four) where I am asked to take my shoes off and lay on the adjustment board, my stomach on the bench, with my face resting through a hole, my arms by my side as I prepare myself for my very own spinal adjustment.
Explains Dr Joseph Cucci as he assesses the beguiled journalist in front of him.
‘It’s about wellness from the inside out. Not the outside in.’
‘It’s care from the brain, the central nervous system which regulates all of your bodies organic functions and the proper realignment of such organs, nerves (through the spine) which then allows the ongoing facilitation of the body doing what it was designed to do all by itself and naturally.’
Resting his hands on my lower spine and all the while moving them up as he begins pressing along my vertebrae…
‘All I do is make sure that your body is working efficiently and that’s the core of realignment, forcing the body out of bad habits and working optimally on its own naturally without outside synthetic intervention.’
Pretty heady stuff I wonder as Dr Joseph Cucci now taps his hands up and down my spine, then onto my shoulders, neck and ever so adroitly adjusting the spigot to the left and then to the right and relinquishing any angst or tension I may have been feeling.
I am now prodded to get up and lie on my right side.
Asked if he himself subscribes to drugs, Dr Joseph responds, ‘frankly it’s a miracle anyone get better from drugs.’
Not surprisingly medical research supports the chiropractor’s message, with research pointing to the ever increasing instance of deaths related to the use of prescribed drugs.
One report tells of nearly 52 percent of drug overdose deaths in America the result of prescription drugs. Which is a backhand way of saying legal drugs are more likely to kill you than illegal drugs.
So endemic has abuse of prescription drugs become, a report by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared prescription drug abuse an epidemic in America.
But there’s more, the same report shockingly cites a 2009 study in which for the first time in the US, more people were killed by drugs than motor vehicle accidents. That statistic has only continued to escalate in recent years.
Explains Dr Joseph Cucci: ‘There’s a serious misperception that the more medicine you take the better you’re going to be. In fact quite the exact opposite. Our bodies aren’t designed for it and it’s something the drug industry isn’t going to go out of its way to educate the public about.’
Lying on my side, Dr Joseph Cucci takes my corresponding knee and protracts it out before springing it back to my core, asking me get on my other side where he performs the same feat again with the other leg.
In all a 15-20 minute process that the doctor performs at least 40 times a day in his Park Avenue practice in NYC where according to his linkdn profile he has been practicing since the early 2000’s after graduating from New York Chiropractic College in 2000.
Along with being one of the most sought after chiropractors in NYC, Dr Joe Cucci also attends to his post as being President Emeritus of the New York Chiropractic Council where he continues to participate in ongoing discussions within the field of chiropractic care and development.
Sitting light headed (and in a good way) Dr Joseph Cucci goes over x rays he took of me earlier.
‘There’s still a chance for you’ he says without hinting any irony as he begins to outline the arc of my spine.
It’s no surprise that even a former athlete like myself is exhibiting his own wear and tear, years of bad posture and disregard for my own well being.
Motions Dr Joe Cucci: ‘You will want to start tending to your spine, the vertebrae over here is beginning to show signs of morphing and that has much to do with your central nervous system being able to help you send all your necessary body signals.’
Asked to respond to the claim that chiropractic care is akin to mystic healing, Dr Joseph Cucci retains a bemused expression before responding:
‘I’m not saying that Chiropractic can cure or prevent every disease all the time. But you can simply ask yourself the question would my body be more adaptable to preventing or curing a disease with a less healthy nervousness system or a more healthy nervousness system.
‘In fact, I have no problem saying that Chiropractic is far more effective in correcting neurological disorders than a neurologist. So much so that that I I feel if they didn’t beat is to the name Chiropractors would be called neurologists.’
Asked to comment on why chiropractic care retains a small percentage of overall health care in the USA, I get the following compelling and eye opening response:
‘It is estimated that there are only 44,000 Chiropractors in America and 70,000 collectively around the world. To put things in perspective there are about 80,000 Medical professionals in New York alone. We are simply out numbered and the differential in economic power is beyond unbalanced.’
‘The only reason Chiropractic has survived is because it is based on an undeniable truth. It works!’
‘That does not mean we have moved forward without any strife. In fact, Chiropractic has been split into two factions. A straight Chiropractor only uses his hands with the sole purpose of correcting Vertebral Subluxation. A mixer is one that has morphed into the ‘Medical’ definition of Chiropractic. Their primary purpose is pain relief and they often use any modality they can; laser, electrotherapy, stretching, massage.’
‘Alone all these treatments a valid but they cross into other professions; Physical therapy, massage, palates etc. They lost their profession in trying to fit into a medical model in which they were never meant for. The sad part is some Chiropractic colleges have been seduced into the expectance of the medical model in hopes that they could receive the blessing of the AMA.’
Continuing: ‘It is the ultimate quagmire. The Chiropractic truth will always remain the same. We are so powerfully out manned and underfunded our profession continues to be poisoned by the medical model, misunderstood and made to look as charlatans.’
‘The fact is our country takes the most drugs and undergoes the most surgeries than any other country in the world and yet we rate as one of the sickest countries in the world. Last I checked we were rated 37th by the W.H.O. One question, if the medical model worked how is this possible?
Asked what led to him wanting to pursue alternative medicine (which strangely is what chiropractic care is deemed) I am told that as an infant a debilitating condition led to his own mother taking him to a chiropractor and resolving what ordinary doctors had not been able to do.
‘It was an epiphany. I was suppose to become a priest. But I guess I am doing God’s work in many other ways.’
A statement I find myself compelled to believe as I stand up to make my way out, happier and savvier for being put straight whilst feeling invigorated, informed and stimulated into well being. A gesture that Dr Joseph Cucci holds dear as the natural healer opens up and hugs me before scurrying me off to the streets outside.
Dr Joseph Cucci can be found here in NYC.
