Dr. Nelson Gregory has been practicing chiropractic in Richmond, VA since 1988.
In addition to traditional chiropractic techniques, Dr. Gregory has trained extensively in rehabilitation, sports chiropractic and strength and conditioning coaching. This provides his patients with a broad selection of therapeutic options to fit their individual needs.
Education:
Texas Chiropractic College, Pasadena Texas - Doctor of Chiropractic – 1986
State University College at Oswego New York BA – 1976
Functional Movement Specialist utilizing Selective Functional Movement Assessment
Chiropractic Sports Physician, Logan College of Chiropractic 100 hr program.
Chiropractic Rehabilitation Doctor, Canadian Memorial College 300 hr program.
Licensure
Licensed to Practice Chiropractic, Virginia State Board of Medicine.
Memberships & Associations
National Strength and Conditioning Association
Virginia Chiropractic Association (Past-chairman of the Education Committee and Insurance committee member)
Specialties
Chiropractic
Strength and Conditioning
Rehabilitation
FMS (Functional Movement Screening) and SFMA (Selective Functional Movement Assessment)
CHIROPRACTIC PHILOSOPHY
Unlike conventional medicine, which focuses on attempting to treat disease once it occurs, Dr Gregory emphasizes improving your health
in an effort to reduce the risk of pain and illness. Most people would rather be healthy and avoid illness. This is one of the main
reasons for the popularity of the wellness aspect of my practice.
While prevention is the ideal, we recognize that most of our patients come to us with problems -- pain and lost function or performance. We take the time to understand your problems and goals in order to provide individualized planning and services that meet your needs.
Chiropractic rehabilitation applies the effective evidence-based Sports Medicine approach to recovery of lost function. Whether the problem is a sprained ankle, sciatica or the chronic pain of fibromyalgia we need to regain our ability to function in life the way we want. Life should be fun and fulfilling. We deserve to experience it fully.
Dr Gregory, his wife Shera and many of his friends have been runners participating in 10 K to Marathon races with the Sports Backers Marathon Training Team. This provides him with an increased understanding of patients' active lifestyles and the value they place on their abilities.
There is a constant back and forth communication/control between your central nervous system and the rest of your body. There are also direct cell to cell chemical signaling and hormonal controls working at various speeds to coordinate you within yourself and in response to your environment. Mechanical coordination is also strongly influenced by your fascial system that holds you together and allows you to move properly, your bones that transmit the compression forces and your joints with their cartilage interfaces that permit movement. Your muscles move you by contraction pulling your bones.
Our bodies are made to develop from a single cell into a functional human. Some of the information is genetic and epigenetic and some information is from neighboring cells and the outside environment producing emergent form and function. To become our best, we need a good environment, including having a mother who does not drink or smoke during pregnancy and loves and pays attention and talks to us once we are born. (You add a massive number of neurons during the first few years of your life. They need good input and feedback during development.)
Our bodies need movement and exercise which also affects our brains, preventing depression, increasing learning capacity, and preventing cognitive decline and Alzheimer's. Exercise (preferably 40 minutes per day but every little bit you can manage helps). It helps you sleep which is essential for preventing excess weight gain and recovering from more strenuous exercise.
You should understand the purpose of your exercise program. Marathon traing probably will not make you more healthy than someone who runs 3 miles 3 times pr week and it eats up a major chunk of your time and energy. It is great if you love running Marathons but not every runner benefits from 70 miles per week once they are 50 yrs old they might do better with 3 trainings per week focused on speed, hills and distance for example.
I recommend at least 8 hours of sleep per night but people vary. When we were distance-running we tried to nap at least an hour for every hour we ran. Children need more sleep. If your child is having problems with school or behavior, the first action needs to be getting to bed/lights off at the same time every day, and then try out 10 hours sleep. If you have not done that, then you may end up treating them with drugs for a problem that is secondary, and that is definitely not good. Bright lights before bed, especially computer or phone screens, can interfere with sleep, so consider reading a book with an incandescent rather than fluorescent / LED light.
Normal sensory input benefits brain function and decreases pain. Almost all of the signals from your body's pain sensing nerve cells go to other locations than the parts of your brain that identify what is painful. If the pain signals do not go to pain identifying regions, then what are they doing? Much of the signal goes to influence your autonomic nervous system that regulates your blood flow, heart rate, blood pressure, immune system, digestion, etc. This is one possible reason behind miracle cures of many diseases after using chiropractic or other body work. The benefits are often not predictable. You can correct movement quality and some unexpected things may get better, but you can't just manipulate a specific vertebra and expect to cure a specific disease anymore than you can get a date with a particular person just by being a nice guy.
Pain, and particularly chronic pain has predictable affects. if you are an injured animal, you naturally go into your safe burrow until you are strong enough to escape and compete for food. Pain is closely interactive with depression and anxiety with pain increasing them and depression and anxiety increasing pain. Decreasing pain decreases anxiety and depression and the reverse. People usually sleep better as their pain decreases during treatment. Normal movement decreases pain as well as depression and. in studies, has been as effective as antidepressants for depression.
For example, I have had a few patients who told me that they saw better after chiropractic care. They show up every year or three when they notice their vision becoming poor again. If I could predictably improve everyone's vision, I would not have to be concerned over getting patients to refer to me. I also would not have had to pay for Lasik surgery. The main point here is that it is important to maintain good quality, pain-free movement. It not only allows you to be active and not wear out your joints prematurely; it also helps in maintaining good overall health.
Stress is a major health problem, and most people think of it as related to their job and family. You can also be stressed by poor movement. Just challenge someone's balance with a test or exercise and they may begin to sweat - not from the little actual muscular work, but because their sympathetic nervous system controls sweating as well as blood pressure, etc. Have someone stand on one foot or go through some single leg yoga moves. If they are wobbling around it indicates that they are unstable with each step they take as well. This not only stresses their knee, ankle and foot; it also creates an increase in overall sympathetic activity even with simple walking. Temporary stress that you recover from after play or emergencies is a normal part of living as an organism. Chronic or overwhelming stress is a different issue that can wreck your health and mind through a number of mechanisms.
Most of us can't juggle, but if you ask whether we could learn with practice, we would say, "Probably, yes." Similarly, most of us can learn to significantly improve our balance and function with practice, and it is worth the effort. I use the Selective Functional Movement Assessment/Functional Movement Screen (SFMA/FMS) information to identify problems, help select correction exercises/activities and check to see if these have the desired effect. I want to know if you can perform movement patterns that relate to how you work in your life. If you can't, then I want to know whether it is a problem with your flexibility, strength, structure or neurological control. It lets me know what to do for you, what you have to do for yourself, and whether this is progressing to correct your problem as we work on it.
We may find that we have to approach problems from multiple angles such as sleep quality, nutrition, home, relationship and work improvements.