Westwood Family Chiropractic Celebrates Four Decades of Practice

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Photo courtesy of Westwood Family Chiropractic. Dr. Peter Kervorkian and Dr. Patti Giuliano held a party on May 20, 2022 with clients, celebrating Westwood Family Chiropractic and forty years of practice as chiropractors.

To help a new patient understand what chiropractic adjustments do, Dr. Patti Giuliano, a chiropractor, often gives the analogy of the human body as a circuit box. The brain is the power company. The spinal cord is the main cable. Nerves are the wires that branch off to different neighborhood streets. 

Using such imagery, she explains that bodily misalignments can cause blockages to the flow of electricity. This in turn can result in reduced energy or other health complaints and problems. As a chiropractor, Dr. Patti makes adjustments to correct bodily misalignments.

The circuit box analogy is one with which Dr. Peter Kevorkian, Dr. Patti’s husband and practice partner, can agree. Dr. Peter briefly worked in environmental engineering. But sitting behind a desk was not Dr. Peter’s calling – he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with that. He wanted greater interaction with people. Dr. Peter soon left engineering behind for chiropractic studies.

“What a chiropractor does is very much looks at the body structurally. . . . Having an engineering background, you really witness the brilliance of life as it manifests within the human engineering within the physiology already. So in many ways, it was the perfect background to go to chiropractic school,” says Dr. Peter.

In contrast, Dr. Patti’s path to chiropractic school may be less surprising. She had a background in physical education before heading to chiropractic school. She had also grown up in a family in which going to the chiropractor regularly was an expected part of life, ever since she was six months old. Her father, born in 1928, was going to a chiropractor at age fifteen. Dr. Patti, herself, remembers going as often as once a month as a child.  While other families may have relied on their pediatricians to a greater degree, whenever Dr. Patti or another sibling got ill, their mother made sure that all siblings were examined by a chiropractor.

Recently in May, Dr. Peter and Dr. Patti celebrated forty years in chiropractic practice, most of it spent as partners at Westwood Family Chiropractic. They graduated from different schools in 1982 and met near the beginning of their respective careers. They married soon after. The two opened Westwood Family Chiropractic in 1985. They had two children, Katie and Christopher, who are by now grown. Katie is a massage therapist and Christopher is an electrical engineer.

Photo courtesy of Westwood Family Chiropractic. Pictured above are Dr. Patti Giuliano and Dr. Peter Kervorkian, married chiropractic practitioners and owners of Westwood Family Chiropractic.

Over the years, Dr. Patti and Dr. Peter have continued to share an approach to chiropractic practice that recognizes the inborn wisdom of the body. “Anything that interferes with the body’s circuitry is a reason we have problems. Our job is not to treat, but to help the body maximize its adaptability,” says Dr. Peter.

“A core value of chiropractic approach is that life has already got things figured out. The genius and intelligence that has created the body has designed it to adapt to the world. And anything that interferes with the body’s ability to either perceive the world or adapt to the world is very often the reason we have so-called problems," says Dr. Peter. "The goal of an adjustment, of what a chiropractor does, is not so much to treat a condition as it is to optimize the body’s ability to adapt to the world.”

For example, a common problem they come across in patients is lower back pain. The chiropractic doctors will evaluate the patient's spine to check if anything is interrupting signals of communication between the brain and body. 

Lower back pain can be analogized to light bulbs and plugs not working, says Dr. Patti. Analogizing the work of a chiropractor to an electrician, the check should be not on the light bulbs and plugs, but rather the circuit box, i.e., the spine to brain connection.


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“Bones of the spine are designed to protect those nerves. Sometimes things can happen where they lock into position, misalign, and interrupt those signals of communication, so the brain doesn’t perceive the body as well or can’t control the body as well. . . .We’ll give an adjustment, that’s what we do. And the brain and body can perceive each other better. And very often symptoms go away,” says Dr. Peter.

"What we are trained to do is to make sure your circuits are all in the working position," says Dr. Patti. "We do that using our hands, very gently, and we access the spinal structure through your muscles," she says.

According to Dr. Peter and Dr. Patti, childhood chiropractic appointments should be made as preventative measures, similarly to the way one schedules regular visits to a dentist or eye doctor. Patients of Dr. Patti and Dr. Peter include newborns, babies and children under the age of fifteen. Together, this young group makes up approximately thirty percent of the practice of Westwood Family Chiropractic. 

Perhaps the best time to get checked is after birth, says Dr. Peter, because the birth process is one of the most traumatic experiences a person's body may go through. The newborn’s spine can be checked for interference that could hinder the body from working optimally. This early check could help prevent problems through life.  

Photo courtesy of Westwood Family Chiropractic. Gathering for family-friendly fun, including balloon animals, friends help to celebrate forty years of chiropractic practice of Westwood Family Chiropractic.

A preventative perspective would also advise pregnant women to seek chiropractic care. Dr. Peter and Dr. Patti note that prenatal chiropractic care has led to better births and can correct breeched positioning. In a small survey of chiropractors, a chiropractic technique, called the Webster Technique, reportedly helped resolve breech presentations in 92 precent of responses.

“We adjust throughout pregnancy so the pelvis is in an ideal position,” explains Dr. Patti.

It was Dr. Patti’s idea to open a practice with the goal of treating whole families. Since her childhood, her entire family had made regular visits to their family chiropractor. Dr. Patti’s mother was a believer in the efficacy of chiropractic treatment, having a brother (Dr. Patti’s uncle) whose dimming eyesight was saved and corrected, Dr. Patti's mother believed, by visiting the chiropractor. 

“His problem was an interruption to nerves,” says Dr. Patti, explaining that her uncle had previously suffered a hit to the head.

Now, after recently celebrating forty years of practice, thirty-seven of which have been together at Westwood Family Chiropractic, Dr. Patti and Dr. Peter note that they have over two hundred longstanding clients whom they have treated for a period of over twenty years. Many of these clients visit about once a week.

Not only humans benefit from their chiropractic skills, but anything with a spine could potentially receive treatment. The two have have had animal patients including not only dogs, cats, and a few horses, but also hamsters, gerbils, ferrets, squirrels, birds, pig, fish and at least one goat.

What’s the secret to their successful practice?  First, “Tell the truth. Be totally transparent,” Dr. Peter says. “My goal with every person is to have a lifetime relationship.” Second, “Take care of people like they're family. Make every decision like the person is your child, your spouse, your brother, your sister, your grandma, your grandpa, your parents. You'll never make a wrong decision.”

Photo courtesy of Westwood Family Chiropractic. In front of an ice cream truck, Dr. Peter Kervorkian and Dr. Patti Giuliano stand to left and right of "40" celebratory balloons. They are flanked by friends and staff of Westwood Family Chiropractic.

Another contributor to their long success could be the early implementation of a unique fee structure which has helped the business be sustainable. Dr. Peter and Dr. Patti started Westwood Family Chiropractic with a fee structure based upon membership, similarly to the way concierge medical practices bill their patients. This membership business model was something novel and original when they introduced it at the beginning of their practice. It's something for which Dr. Patti feels a sense of accomplishment. 

“Being able to create a fee system and healthcare access for people that takes care of them like we would want to be taken care of. . . If I go in the garden and I'm straining my body, I want to be able to come in and let Peter check me, even if I just got adjusted yesterday. . . . We wanted that for our patients,” she says. “If we want to care for babies and parents for a lifetime, we needed a means to sustain us, balanced with that which was affordable.”

Yet another contributor to their longstanding success as small business in Westwood could be their perspective, which is an uplifting one.

“I feel like our greatest job is to empower people that they have the ability within them to be able to be the best person they can be on all levels - emotionally, physically, spiritually, chemically,” she says. Dr. Patti and Dr. Peter both emphasize the innate power and wisdom of the human body.

"I like giving the power back to people," says Dr. Patti. “My adjustment flipped the switch, and your body was able to take whatever we did and do something wonderful that it was already designed to do inside of you," she says.

From the perspective of Dr. Patti and Dr. Peter, healing isn't the accomplishment of a medicine -  just as intelligence isn't the accomplishment of a teacher. Rather,"Your teacher gave you some tools, but you had to do the work. You're the one that created your brilliance. It comes from the inside of you," says Dr. Patti.


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