STRENGTH AND CONDITIONING

The Evolution of a Problem Solver and Body “Re-Builder”

Doctors of Chiropractic are known primarily for spine care by the general public. But the field of chiropractic has grown and developed, like all other avenues of health care and sports sciences. To be sure, a very significant amount of evaluation and treatment of the spine takes place in the Walnut Creek chiropractor offices of Dr. Douglas Cancel. But, it has been his extensive training and deep involvement in strength training and bodybuilding that uniquely provided him with an equally significant amount of experience in the evaluation and non-surgical treatment of upper and lower extremity injuries. His ability to solve chronic and difficult problems subsequently attracted ballet dancers as well as participants in the sports of wrestling, football, soccer, baseball, tennis, weightlifting, golf, swimming, and endurance sports to consult him with their injuries and pain problems. Continued enhancement of his evaluation/treatment methodologies and the clinical success that followed caused his practice to evolve into a health care service that has been designed to provide many of the same treatment and rehabilitative methods used in professional sports to everyday people….all at an affordable cost.

Experience and Training Beginning In the “College of Hard Knocks.”

It is one thing to learn about pain and injury from textbooks and classroom study and it is quite another thing to experience firsthand those same injuries and personally confront the challenges of overcoming them. Dating back to his teenage years, sports chiropractor Dr. Cancel was heavily involved in sports, strenuous physical exercise, and weightlifting. What he might have lacked in athleticism he attempted to make up for in terms of desire and extra effort. As a result, he became the classic “overachiever.” But this came at the cost of a multitude of training injuries along the way. To be sure, Dr. Cancel sustained many of the training, overuse, and bodybuilding injuries that, years later, he now successfully treats every day.

It was a car crash that initially led Dr. Cancel to choose a career as a chiropractor. While in college studying chemistry and pre-med subjects, Dr. Cancel was driving an early model Honda Civic that had come to a stop on a foggy highway when he was struck from behind by a commercial vehicle. Not knowing anything about chiropractors, his whiplash neck injuries first led him to a hospital emergency room, his family physician, an orthopedic surgeon, and physical therapists at his University health center. Despite all of these treatment efforts, he continued to experience neck pain and stiffness as well as tension headache. Upon hearing of his continued difficulties, football players and basketball players in his University dormitory encouraged him to consult a chiropractor. Despite his mother’s initial reservations about doing this, Dr. Cancel proceeded to seek a chiropractor and experienced immediate and dramatic relief. This positive personal experience and also having heard various athletes describe benefits from chiropractic treatment caused him to choose this career path.

The Unique Experience Gained From A Road Less Traveled

Dr. Cancel graduated from the famed Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa in 1982. In 1983 he began practicing in a small Central Valley community that was under-served by health care professionals. Having few health care options available to them, patients in that community presented to Dr. Cancel’s office with a wide variety of injuries as well as undetected medical conditions that Dr. Cancel had uncovered. Realizing full well that that some of these patients needed treatment that he could not provide led Dr. Cancel to seek out the one physician and surgeon in that area for referrals and collaboration on cases. This set the stage for Dr. Cancel to expand his relationships with physicians in a variety of medical specialties for the good of his patients. To this day, and without hesitation, Dr. Cancel continues to utilize some of the area’s top medical specialists to ensure that his patients get the best possible care and the results they seek.

Dr. Cancel subsequently relocated his practice to the San Francisco Bay Area. Eventually, he was sought by representatives of certain businesses, industries, and school districts/government agencies to perform examinations of injured employees. Dr. Cancel was subsequently appointed as a “Qualified Medical Examiner” by the California Department of Industrial Relations and provided opinions on injury extent, causation, and disability, as well as recommendations for treatment and vocational benefits in contested injury claims. This provided Dr. Cancel with a unique opportunity to see how different injuries responded to the treatment of other chiropractors and medical specialists. It also inspired him to continually seek better ways of treating his own patients.

Following the passage of sweeping governmental reforms, Dr. Cancel elected to end his participation in the California Workers’ Compensation system because he felt that the changes created an increased and unnecessary adversarial relationship between injured worker and employer, with less emphasis on returning injured people to work as fast as possible. Stepping away from this work afforded Dr. Cancel greater opportunity to focus on his own patients and to pursue new goals.

Through personal training and chronic pain management programs, “chiropractor near me“ Dr. Douglas Cancel and team can help you achieve your health and fitness goals. We serve the residents of Walnut Creek, CA, and the nearby communities of Concord, Pleasant Hill, Danville and Lafayette.

Let Dr. Douglas Cancel help you reach your strength and conditioning goals. Contact us at (925) 945-1155 or use our Request an Appointment form to schedule your consultation.