Wellington Health

Dr. Jonathan Chung Specializes In A Gentle Approach To Chiropractic

Story by Ron Bukley

Photo by Abner Pedraza

Dr. Jonathan Chung of Keystone Chiropractic was drawn to his specialty in college when his friend’s father treated him for sports injuries.

“I had plans on going into sports medicine, and one of my best friends at the time was going into chiropractic because his father was a chiropractor,” Chung said. “I had been an athlete all my life.”

A Florida native, Chung grew up in Davie playing baseball. He graduated from Nova High School.

“When I was in college, I started learning more about chiropractic,” he recalled. “Chiropractic is all about the body’s natural ability to heal itself. It’s more about eliminating obstructions to the body’s ability to heal, using natural methods to promote healing within the body. I started getting adjusted by my friend’s father, and some of these aches and pains from playing sports started to go away.”

People come to Chung for a variety of ailments, but he is known for difficult-to-treat illnesses such as vertigo, chronic migraines and jaw pain.

“We also take care of a lot of people after a concussion,” he said. “Quite a few people come in to me for that, especially Wellington equestrians who fall off a horse. We also take care of people with low back pain, neck pain and shoulder pain from sports.”

A central theme in his treatment is atlas displacement, the way the head is sits on top of the neck.

“If there’s an abnormal sitting of the head on the neck, it can create a lot of these other symptoms,” Chung said. “By correcting that bad positon, we can restore function to the nervous system, improve circulation to the head and neck, and improve the joints’ ability to move, which has beneficial effects on the brain and nervous system overall.”

Chung employs a gentle, noninvasive procedure developed by the National Upper Cervical Chiropractic Association (NUCCA) to treat patients.

“There’s no twisting or popping or cracking associated with it,” he said. “It’s a technique focused on the neck, and it’s how we form a structural correction of the upper neck.”

This provides the necessary correction without harsher movements often associated with chiropractic.

“What most people feel is a series of gentle pressures against the top of the neck,” Chung said. “Hours later or days later they’ll actually start to feel the effects of the adjustment.”

Chung is one of only 300 doctors in the country who utilize the NUCCA procedure. He received his degree from the Life University in Atlanta.

A core philosophy of chiropractic is that a healthy human body is always trying to be as healthy as possible, he said, explaining that a lot of people think of a fever as a sickness.

“The fever, when we look at the core of it, is actually a mechanism in the human body to help get rid of viruses, to stop infections or slow them down. That is actually part of the healing process. Even though it doesn’t feel good, it is a part of what helps us get better and fight off illness. In chiropractic, we recognize this ability as part of the healing process. We’re here to try and promote the body’s own natural healing ability.”

Chung’s office offers classes to teach people how to strengthen their spine using exercise and corrective movements. They treat all ages, including infants and seniors.

“We have a state-of-the-art X-ray that allows us to measure the head and neck positon down to fractions of a millimeter,” he said. “Everything we do is objective and based in science, so not only will someone feel the difference from the type of work that we do, but they’ll be able to see the difference from when we first take an X-ray.”

Chung truly enjoys what he does for patients.

“It’s not just making someone feel better,” he said. “It’s knowing that we’re leaving the person in a physically better state than they were when they came in.”

Keystone Chiropractic is located at 420 State Road 7, Suite 170, near the Toys ‘R’ Us store. To learn more, call (561) 331-3162 or visit www.chiropractorcarewellington.com.

Wellington Health

Walk-In Medical Care And More At Ideal Family Practice

By Ron Bukley

Ideal Family Practice & Walk-In Express Care, which opened last year at the recently constructed Medical Groves Plaza on Southern Blvd., offers a holistic, preventative approach to healthcare.

“We are nurse practitioners, so, generally, we care for anyone kindergarten age and up for primary care, and anybody a year and up for urgent care,” explained Tina Dochniak, DNP, ARNP, who has partnered with Stephanie Wise, ARNP, to operate a clinic that can offer most primary and urgent care services of a doctor’s office, but on a more personal level.

Urgent care services include immediate attention that is often not available at a doctor’s office.

“Say you wake up and you have a sore throat,” Dochniak said. “You don’t have an appointment, so you just walk in. That can be anywhere from wounds and not feeling well to abdominal pain and chest pain.”

Dochniak and Wise are looking to serve families who need primary care, as well as flexibility.

“Kids are sick, you can’t get in to see your primary doctor because they don’t have walk-ins, or there’s a limited amount of walk-in appointments,” Wise said. “We have walk-in from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.,” Wise said. “You can still come in and get your physicals. There’s continuity of care in the sense that when you’re sick, you’re not going to one of the other urgent care centers where they may not know your blood pressure medicine. We’re all on the same system.”

Both Wise and Dochniak grew up and attended local schools, including college.

“We know the area, we know the people, we had a patient base in this area already,” Wise said. “The opportunity arose. We didn’t actually pick this spot; it kind of arose out of a need for a walk-in facility and an overflow-type of thing for the [doctor’s] office next door. We looked at it as a wonderful opportunity, especially to be out here in the western communities.”

Wise, attended the King’s Academy and lived in the Loxahatchee area. Dochniak attended John I. Leonard High School. They both attended Palm Beach State College and Florida Atlantic University, where they received their ARNP degrees, and Dochniak also received her doctorate in nursing.

“Nurse practitioners are trained a little bit differently than physicians,” Dochniak said. “We are trained from an RN level to look at the patient as a holistic person, so we treat not only from a medical model, but also, the goal of nurse practitioning is to keep the patient healthy. It’s a lot of teaching about how to stay healthy.”

Wise said their office is a model of healthcare that Florida is catching up to.

Dochniak noted that nurse practitioners in Florida are more restricted in what they can do than most nurse practitioners nationwide.

“Nurse practitioners in many parts of the U.S. have been in practices on their own for years,” she said. “The movement is coming to Florida.”

In Florida, nurse practitioners work with a collaborative physician who signs a protocol with the state that takes responsibility but doesn’t have to be directly in the day-to-day care of patients.

“I think we have the opportunity to have more time with the patients and get to know them on a more personal basis,” Dochniak said. “The way that healthcare is moving, there’s not a lot of physicians who do primary or family practice anymore, so nurse practitioners are filling that gap.”

Dochniak and Wise have arranged their schedules so one of them is always available when the office is open. “We take care of each other,” Dochniak said. “When one of us is not here, the other one is here.”

Ideal Family Practice & Walk-In Express Care is located at 13475 Southern Blvd., Suite 100, in Loxahatchee Groves, just west of Palms West Hospital. Call (561) 231-5200 or visit www.idealfamilypractice.com for more information.

Wellington Health

Story by Ron Bukley

Photo by ???

Dr. Bao T. Doan is a well-known interventional radiologist, but she was looking for a more gratifying practice that brought happiness for her patients through cosmetic medicine, so she entered into a partnership with Tipsy Salonbar, which has five locations, including one in Wellington.

“I do intervention and surgeries through the arteries and the veins,” Doan said. “That’s my profession. I do biopsies, and basically any endovascular surgery.”

She has been in practice for 12 years and is prominent in her profession, but she also finds cosmetic medicine very gratifying. “I like everything that looks beautiful, like design,” Doan said.

She has taken training in cosmetic medicine over the years to pursue her interest in making people feel good about themselves through their appearance.

“Mostly women, but more and more men, feeling beautiful, it’s all about aesthetic,” she explained. “I got interested in Botox, particularly, about 10 years ago, so I went back and took several classes. I wasn’t ready to leave my job as a radiologist, so it was a balance.”

Doan started out with a clinic to do Botox treatments, but it was in a medical building, which was not her concept of a spa. This led to her partnership with Tipsy owner Beth Nguyen to practice cosmetic medicine in her spas.

“I think it should be a one-stop,” Doan said. “It’s all about beauty. You can come here, feel good about your hair, feel good about your nails, your skin and Botox while you’re there. Botox and fillers is what I do most here.”

Botox treatments, once controversial, have become more widely accepted, she said.

“People spend all this time and money on makeup, which does work… but when I do Botox, it really helps the patient feel younger and more confident,” Doan explained. “I don’t think Botox is for everybody, but for people who believe in it, I think I’m always happier to give that joy to them.”

Doan said that the spa environment is not as intimidating as a medical environment, and patients feel at ease talking with her about beauty and things that will make them feel better.

“It’s a new vision, and I think it’s unusual for a doctor to be in a salon/spa setting, but I think that’s going to be the future, because Botox is becoming more of a commodity than a sterile surgical procedure,” she said.

One of her most successful procedures is lip augmentation to give volume.

“As a physician and an interventional radiologist, I know the anatomy, I know where the arteries are and know to avoid them, so I think I get good results by being very intrinsic with all the muscles of the face and how they move and mostly how the arteries and veins are, to avoid the bruising and other issues,” Doan said. “I’m very comfortable with my hands, because that’s what I do all day long.”

Doan can also prescribe low-cost, pharmaceutical-quality sunscreens and anti-aging creams, and can give medical-grade chemical peels. She said that there are many ways to treat wrinkles, and plans to expand into new cosmetic treatments, including laser, high-intensity light and minimally invasive liposuction.

“There are many ways to treat wrinkles, and I want to be there for all of it,” she said. “I’m hoping to have a clinic where people can come and sit with me and talk, and together we can build a beauty plan,” Doan said.

Doan received her degree from the McGill University Health Center in Montreal, and has done extensive postdoctoral training. She is the author of numerous research presentations and publications in her field.

Tipsy’s Wellington location is at 10120 W. Forest Hill Blvd., Suite 100, in the Pointe at Wellington Green near Stonewood Grill & Tavern. Call (561) 791-5603 or visit www.tipsysalonbar.com for more information.