Charge Health and Chiropractic

06/08/2026

At this rate, how long will you be able to execute?

Happy Monday everyone!

I picked up an awesome book for the summer and the first couple chapters were so bang-on-point with what I teach in office that I wanted to expand and share.

One of the more interesting things I've noticed since starting Charge 3 years ago is how quickly people adapt, but not necessarily in the positive sense.

We all know that with enough consistency the body can become stronger, fitter, more resilient, blah, blah, blah. What fascinates me is how easily people adapt to feeling less than their best!

All too often, people that come see me have headaches a few times per week for years and barley mentioning them.

Another person starts waking up wrecked every morning and assumes that's just what adulthood feels like.

Someone else notices their patience is shorter, their energy is lower, or that they're relying on more caffeine than ever before. Instead of asking why, they simply accept it and move on.

After enough time passes, these things stop feeling unusual.

They start feeling normal.

I was reading a section from a book called *The Check Engine Light* recently, and one idea stood out to me. The author talks about how most people would never intentionally ignore warning signs from something they depend on. If a strange noise starts coming from the furnace, if water begins leaking through the roof, or if a warning light appears on the dashboard, most people understand that small problems tend to become bigger problems when left unattended.

Yet many of us take the opposite approach with our own bodies.

We ignore the headaches and the poor sleep. We shrug off the digestive issues. We ignore the stiffness and the fatigue. We normalize the stress.

Then, when somebody asks how we're doing, we laugh about it.

"I'm just getting old."

"Welcome to being a parent."

"That's just me. I'm wired that way"

Most of us have said some version of those statements before. I know I have.

The problem is that humor can sometimes disguise what should actually be a moment of reflection.

Because the body is constantly communicating with us.

Every headache is information.

Every energy crash is information.

Every recurring ache, poor night of sleep, or inability to recover from stress is information.

That doesn't mean every symptom is a catastrophe. Far from it. But it does mean that the body is trying to tell a story, and most people are either no longer listening or are actively trying to fix a leak with duct tape.

What makes this difficult is that our brains are wired to create a picture of "normal" based on repeated experience.

If you've felt exhausted for three years, exhausted feels normal. If you've had low back pain every morning for ten years, low back pain feels normal. If you've struggled with anxiety, tension, or brain fog long enough, you eventually stop questioning whether things could be different.

One of the most common things I hear from patients after they've been making progress for a few weeks is, "I didn't realize how bad I felt until I started feeling better."

Think about that statement for a moment...

Not, "I feel amazing." Not, "I'm perfect."

Simply, "I forgot what good felt like."

That is how powerful adaptation can be.

The people who seem to age well aren't necessarily the people who won the genetic lottery. More often, they're the people who paid attention sooner. They respected the small signals before they became large problems. They viewed their health as something worth maintaining rather than something to think about only when it started falling apart.

That's really the goal. Not perfection. Not obsessing over every sensation.

Just awareness and the pursuit of knowledge.

Pay attention when your body is trying to get your attention. Pay attention when your energy changes or when stress becomes harder to recover from.

Pay attention when your movement becomes more restricted and when you find yourself saying, "I've just learned to live with it."

Because you simply don't have to.

The whole point is to work toward more capacity and to develop a hunger for the WHY!

More capacity to be present with your family. More capacity to enjoy hobbies. More capacity to train, travel, work, and contribute.

More capacity to do the things that matter to you without constantly feeling like you're running on empty.

You only get one body. The quality of your future is being shaped by the choices you make with it today.

If you've been reading this and thinking:

"Honestly, I know exactly what signal I've been ignoring," reply with the word CAPACITY.

I'm working on a new coaching and accountability option for people who know they need more structure around maintenance, movement, nutrition, stress management, and strength training.

No obligation. I'm simply trying to gauge interest before I build it.

Have a great week!

Dom + Team

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06/01/2026

Clarity does not equal Function

Some of yall might read this and think: "Stay in your lane." Others I hope read with an open mind and try to relate the topic to experiences you've had or witnessed.

Over the last couple years I've started paying a lot more attention to people's eyes.

Not their eyesight. Their eyes.

I know that sounds strange coming from a chiropractor, but when adjustments fall short of fully resolving folks' headaches or shoulder tightness, I dig deeper and usually find some pretty telling info, so hear me out!

I can't tell you how many times somebody has walked into the office complaining about pressure at the base of their skull, neck range of motion issues, dizziness, difficulty focusing, brain fog, or simply feeling mentally exhausted.

A few weeks ago I was working with a patient who spent most of their day on a computer. They weren't sleeping great. Their neck always felt tight. Reading was becoming frustrating. They found themselves re-reading the same paragraph over and over because they couldn't stay focused.

Like most people, they assumed stress was the problem. And stress was certainly part of the equation. But after a few simple tests, it became obvious that their eyes were working incredibly hard just to do basic tasks.

Imagine driving your car down the highway and the front tires are slightly out of alignment. The car still moves. You still get where you're going. But the entire trip requires more effort than it should. Your hands grip the wheel tighter, your shoulders tense up. You constantly make little corrections without even realizing it.

That's what happens to many people when their eyes stop working together efficiently. The brain can still get the job done. It just pays a much bigger price to do it.

And this is far from a modern age problem.

During World War II, military physicians began noticing that some soldiers struggled with reading, target acquisition, and concentration despite having perfectly normal eyesight. The issue wasn't whether they could see clearly.

The issue was whether both eyes could work together.

Today we call one of the most common versions of this problem convergence insufficiency.

A fancy term for something that's actually pretty simple. Your eyes are supposed to turn inward together when looking at something close.

A book. A phone. A computer screen.

When they don't coordinate well, the brain starts burning extra fuel trying to make sense of the information coming in. That's where things get kind of crazy.

Many common symptoms can be from having an issues with convergence:

Poor focus. Difficulty reading. Mental fatigue. Headaches. Reduced concentration.
Feeling overwhelmed by visual environments.

Symptoms that can sometimes look a lot like ADHD.

To be clear, convergence insufficiency does not cause every case of ADHD.
But researchers have repeatedly found higher rates of visual coordination problems in people dealing with attention and concentration difficulties.

In plain English? Sometimes the brain isn't distracted. Sometimes it's exhausted.

There's a difference.

The more I study the nervous system, the more I believe we underestimate how much of our daily experience is shaped by vision. Most people think of their eyes as cameras. They're not. They're guidance systems.

Every movement you make. Every conversation you have. Your brain is constantly asking your visual system one simple question: "Am I safe?"

If the answer becomes uncertain, tension often follows. The body starts spending resources protecting itself instead of performing. And this is why I spend so much time looking at eye function, the brain listens to them so closely.

The encouraging part is that the visual system can often improve. Just like a weak muscle can become stronger, eye coordination can become better with practice.

Simple things like Brock string work, gaze stabilization drills, and short periods of eye patch training can create surprisingly meaningful changes for the right person.

This week, pay attention to something. If you get headaches after reading, feel pressure behind your eyes after screen time, struggle to stay mentally sharp, or constantly carry tension at the base of your skull, don't automatically assume it's a stress problem.

It may be. But stress to visual system is still stress.

So it might also be worth asking whether your eyes are doing more work than they should.

And if that's the case, the solution may be much simpler than you think.

If you think you struggle with convergence after reading this, ask about it at your next appointment or reach out and I can help assess and guide you towards making some positive changes.

Dom + Team

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05/26/2026

Can't buck the system forever you know?

I live in the health and fitness world so I hear this word a lot and its almost becoming taboo.

"Recovery." WTF is it? Does it really matter? How do I do it? Is it BS?

Its so interesting to see the wide variety of opinons on it and how folk response when talking to them about it.

Cold plunges. Saunas. Massage guns. Supplements. Stretching. Sleep trackers. Red light therapy. Some are spending more money/time on this stuff than ever before, yet a lot of them still feel beat up & tired.

That’s because recovery itself was never supposed to be the goal.

Adaptation is!

And how you approach it mentally creates a big difference.

A farmer doesn’t water crops because getting the crop wet itself is the goal. The point is growth! The water just creates the conditions for growth to happen.

Exercise or rehab must be viewed in the same way.

The purpose of training is not just to sweat, get your heart rate up, or feel exhausted afterward. The point is to slowly teach the body to tolerate more. More movement. Different movements. More force. More steps. More stress. (Wait, what?)

That process is adaptation. But adaptation only happens if stress and recovery have some sort of balance over time.

That’s where most people get lost. No plan. Just ram your face into the wall and hope it'll be ok in the end... Yea, how's that going?

Years ago, when railroads were first being built across the country, engineers learned something important pretty quickly. Steel expands under stress and heat. If they laid tracks too rigidly without enough spacing or flexibility, the tracks would eventually warp and crack.

The stress itself wasn’t the problem. Poor adaptation to the stress was.

Human beings are not much different. Too little stress and the body becomes fragile. Too much stress without enough recovery and the system starts breaking down.

A lot of people unknowingly (but often knowingly) live in that second category.

They train hard but sleep poorly. They work out consistently but eat like garbage.
They push through stress all week and then wonder why their joints hurt, their energy crashes, or their motivation disappears.

A simple example we see often is someone starting a training program after years of inconsistency. The first few weeks usually feel rough. Muscles get sore. Cardio feels embarrassing. Sleep can even temporarily worsen because the body isn’t used to the demand.

But then something interesting happens around weeks 3 to 6 if they stay consistent. Their joints stop aching as much. They recover faster between sessions. Their mood improves. Their confidence improves. Movement becomes less threatening.

Nothing magical happened. Their body adapted. That’s the whole point.

This is why I get frustrated when people treat recovery like it’s separate from training itself. Recovery is part of training. It’s the phase where the body actually rebuilds and upgrades itself after stress.

Without recovery, stress just becomes damage. But without intentional, PROGRESSIVE stress, recovery has nothing to adapt to.

You need both!

This is one of the biggest misunderstandings in modern fitness. People think they need to annihilate themselves every workout to get results. In reality, the body responds best to appropriately dosed stress repeated consistently over time.

That’s fitness.

At Charge and ReCharge, this is exactly why we focus so heavily on the full picture.

Not because recovery itself is trendy, but because adaptation is the actual goal.
We’re trying to build people that can tolerate more life without falling apart every couple months. And honestly, most people are far more capable than they think they are. They just haven’t had enough structure or consistency long enough to prove it to themselves yet.

If there’s one thing I’d encourage you to think about this week, it’s this:
Are you just trying to survive your workouts and your weeks… Or are you intentionally building a body that can adapt and handle more over time?

Big difference.

Dom + Team

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05/11/2026

Happy Women's Health Month!

We’re excited to invite you to our upcoming webinar hosted by Kelly O'Hara, Registered Dietician, where we’ll dive into the essential hormones and how they influence nutrition and performance. Join us as we discuss practical tips and positive changes you can implement to feel your best and avoid the discomfort that often comes with hormonal imbalances. It's a great opportunity to learn how to take charge of your health and well-being! We can't wait to see you there!

MAY 18 @ 12:00 EST - ZOOM format
Women Only
*Respond to this email for invitation to Zoom link*

Click here for an update from Charge Health & Chiropractic!

05/08/2026

Year 3 baby!

The year of brain based protocols, post op rehab, service streamlining, and full package delivery. We’ve helped athletes avoid surgery, built post op patients back to confidence, provided relief for exhausted parents, calmed down stressed out business owners, and had a ton of fun along the way.

What started as chiropractic leveled up to rehab. Rehab transitions to training. Training requires recovery. Recovery means education. And somewhere in the middle of it all, we built a culture.

There were long nights, mistakes, risks, ceiling leaks, schedule overload and moments where we questioned everything.

But there were also moments where people got their lives back.

Year 3 feels less like “we made it” and more like “we’re finally building this the right way.”

To every patient, athlete, member, coach, friend and supporter: thank you for trusting us. We wouldn’t be here without the love of the community around us, supporting us, and allowing us to keep doing what we love every single day. Thank you so much.

Here’s to Year 4!

Cheers to raising the bar for what healthcare & performance can look like in our city!

05/08/2026

Everything, Halleluiah

Three years ago today, we opened the doors to Charge Health and Chiropractic.

Honestly, I had no idea exactly what this place would become.

I knew I wanted to help people at a deeper level. I knew I was frustrated with rushed healthcare, over emphasis on quick fixes, and watching people bounce from place to place with minimal results.

I knew there had to be a better way, a different way! But if I’m being real, year one was a grind.

A lot of uncertainty. A lot of learning. A lot of trying to figure out how to blend chiropractic, rehab, strength training, recovery, stress management, and honest coaching into something that actually worked and that people understood.

And over these last three years, something became really clear:

Treatment is just the start. People need structure. They need guidance. They need someone willing to invest into their life and help them connect the dots.

The relationships that I've built with some of you through this process has been so special!

One of my favorite moments this past year was helping a senior football player avoid what was supposed to be a career-ending foot surgery.

He was scheduled for surgery just days before coming to us. Through online rehab, in-office treatment, laser work, PEMF, and a lot of consistency and trust in the process, he returned to the field in nine weeks!!

Not only did he get back out there, but he scored two touchdowns during the state championship run with his teammates.

That’s hard to put into words honestly... Such a cool moment for Alexis and I.

Another one that stands out was working with a post-operative ACL athlete who had already completed 12 weeks of PT but still lacked confidence, explosiveness, and trust in her knee.

Over another 12 weeks together, we rebuilt that foundation step by step. By the end, she was performing single-leg triple broad jumps with confidence and power and was mentally ready to return to martial arts training again.

That type of transformation matters to me a lot because fear changes people. And watching someone regain trust in their body again is one of the coolest parts of this work.

Truthfully, the biggest evolution at Charge hasn’t been the equipment, the systems, or even the growth. It’s been us!

Us as parents. As husband and wife. As friends. As business owners.

Being pushed and stretched constantly, fighting to deliver the best quality service possible while protecting our energy and sanity individually and for our family.

That stress changes you. It forces you to see the importance of structure and how to leverage it as your superpower.

Less guessing. Less bouncing around.
More clarity. More accountability.
More honest conversations. More ownership.

That’s what I’m most proud of. And none of this happens without you guys.

The referrals. The reviews. The trust. The patience. The conversations.
The energy you bring into the office every single day.

Some of you have been with us since the very beginning. Some of you found us recently. Either way, thank you for allowing us to be part of your story. It means more than you know!

To celebrate year three, we’d love your help continuing to grow this community.

If Charge has positively impacted your life in any way, leaving us a Google review would mean a ton to us. Those reviews genuinely help local people find us and feel more confident taking the first step toward getting help.

We also want to make it easier for your friends and family to finally get started.

So for the rest of the month, we’re offering a special discounted first visit for any new patient referred by someone from our community. MAKE SURE YOU TELL THEM TO LIST YOUR NAME AND WRITE "YEAR3" IN THE NOTES WHEN BOOKING!

AAAND, for the rest of the month, 60min massages are 50% off! (First come first serve as we will only be able to fulfill this as schedule availability allows)

If you know somebody struggling with pain, stress, movement issues, old injuries, or just feeling physically stuck, send them our way. We’d love the opportunity to help.

Three years down!!

Still learning. Still growing. Still building. Still trying to help people become more resilient humans.

Appreciate your love and support.

Dom, Alexis & Adam

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04/27/2026

Uncomfy Convo's

Getting straight to the point today ladies and gents...!

Two people.
Same goals.
Same access.
Completely different results.

One is moving better, sleeping better, feeling more in control.
The other feels stuck, frustrated, and honestly… a little pi**ed off.

And here’s the part none of us really want to hear. It’s usually not the exercises, or the program...

If you go back to how the medical or sports performance field evolved, the biggest breakthroughs didn’t come from “better ideas.” They came from better systems.

Doctors, coaches, clinicians, all the best do these: Measure. Track. Follow structure.

And once that happened, outcomes became predictable.

Fitness and rehab really are no different!! But most people still treat their body like guesswork.

I see this play out every single week. I have one patient right now who hasn’t missed a single nutrition target or workout in the last 21 days.

Not perfect. Still room for improvement in form, quality, timing, etc. But for now, she's consistent!

In that short window, her:
Sleep improved
Body composition shifted
Pain dropped
Mood stabilized

Nothing crazy. Just aligned effort.

Then on the flip side, I’ll see someone doing “a little bit of everything.” Some workouts. Some effort. Some intention. But no real structure, and unfortunately they stay right where they are.

So what actually drives results? Not hacks. Not secrets.

It’s five things working together. But more importantly, it’s how honest you are about them.

1. Compliance
This is the big one! Most people think they’re consistent… until they actually track it. Consistency isn’t what you do when you feel good. It’s what you do when you don’t feel like it.

2. Support
You’re not meant to figure this out alone.
Whether that’s a coach, a community, or someone keeping you accountable…
Your environment either pulls you forward or lets you drift.

3. Standards
This is where it gets uncomfortable. What are you actually holding yourself to?
Because soft standards create soft people. That's not us.
Clear standards create direction and provide purpose.

4. Environment
Most people try to rely on discipline. But your environment is stronger than your willpower, EVERYTIME! If your day is set up to make bad decisions easy… you’ll take them.

5. Small Wins
Progress isn’t built on massive breakthroughs.
It’s built on stacking small, repeatable wins that give your brain proof you’re moving forward. And that proof matters more than motivation ever will.

Honesty Hour
Most people don’t struggle because they don’t know what to do. They struggle because they avoid the conversations that would force change.

My mentor said something that I loved and sat with me, "The better version of you is on the other side of one to two uncomfortable conversations… and about six months of consistency."

That’s it. No magic. Just a decision to stop negotiating with yourself.

This is exactly why we focus so much on structure, accountability, and measurable progress at Charge. Not because it’s flashy. But because it works.

If you’re reading this and realizing you don’t know where to start… That’s normal. But don’t stay there.

Just reply to this email or book a visit and we’ll help you map it out. Or… Start simple.

Pick one thing from this email and actually follow through with it this week. That alone will put you ahead of most people.

Take control of what you can! That’s always been the point.

– Dom

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04/22/2026

Threat = Pain Amplifier

Good morning Errbody!

Quick story about common low back pain that I think will be helpful for those dealing with nagging issues.

I had a new patient come in who'd been managing low back pain for three years. She'd "tried everything." But when I asked her what she thought was wrong with her back, she said something close to, "It's just broken down. I'm 47. This is just how it is now."

That belief was doing more damage than any disc bulge could ever be!

Here's something that surprises most people: pain research over the last two decades has consistently shown that the intensity of your pain does not reliably correspond to the amount of tissue damage in your body.

A 2015 study in the journal Pain found that catastrophizing, meaning how much you believe the pain is terrible and uncontrollable, predicts disability better than the actual physical findings on an MRI.

Our understanding of pain shifted dramatically once researchers started mapping how the brain processes threat signals, not just injury signals.

What's actually happening is this: your brain functions as a threat-detection system, not a damage-detection system. When you've been hurting for months or years, your nervous system gets better and better at producing pain in response to smaller and smaller triggers.

Add in the belief that your body is fragile, broken, or past the point of repair, and your brain treats normal movement as a potential threat.

Eventually you move less, avoid more, and the pain sticks around not because the injury is getting worse but because the system protecting you has gotten oversensitive.

Soooo, if this sound like you, what the hell do you do about walking yourself out of this loop?

START HERE (seriously do it!):
1. Write down three things you used to do before the pain that you'd like to do again. Not a bucket list, just normal life stuff. Walking to the mailbox. Picking up your kid. Sitting through a movie. This exercise isn't wishful thinking. It starts reconnecting your brain to the idea that those things are possible again.

2. The next time you notice pain, try saying to yourself: "This is my nervous system being overprotective. It does not mean I am damaged." This is not positive self-talk. It is literally more accurate neuroscience than the story most people are running. The brain updates its threat output based on the information you give it!

3. Do one small movement today that you've been avoiding because it usually hurts, and go slowly and deliberately instead of bracing for the worst. Notice if the expectation was worse than the actual experience. Usually it is.

Try these out and reply to let us know how it goes. If you need help with HOW to get back to those things on your list, book a "Treatment" and we'll really dial it in.

Talk soon,
Dom

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04/15/2026

Pain, stress, and the people around you.

I had three separate conversations this week (It's Wednesday...) with people who had seen multiple providers, tried multiple treatments, and still dealing with life altering pain.

Different people. Way different histories, but very similar language coming out of their mouths.

Something to the effect of: "Nothing is really working, I'm starting to believe this is just my curse"

First off, hell no. Second, read on for why I wont accept that for anyone walking in our door.

THE RESEARCH NOBODY TALKS ABOUT
Back in 1984, researchers studied a large sample of patients with chronic low back pain. What they found was striking. The number of treatments those patients received had very little to do with the physical findings in their body. It was much more closely tied to their levels of distress and their beliefs about their condition. Failed treatment does not just fail to help. It actively shapes what a person believes is possible for them going forward.

That is the part that gets left out of most clinical conversations. Pain is not purely a physical signal. It is an output from your nervous system based on how much threat your brain perceives. And your history of treatment, the people around you, and how much stress you are carrying all feed directly into that threat calculation.

THE PEOPLE CLOSEST TO YOU MATTER MORE THAN YOU THINK
I deal with this one personally, so there is no judgment here.
When someone we love is in pain, the instinct is to protect them. Clear their schedule. Tell them to rest. Handle things so they do not have to.

And some of that is needed. But here is what happens when it goes too far.

When everyone around you treats your body like it is fragile, your subconscious gets that message too. Certain daily movement start to feel dangerous. Activity gets avoided. Strength quietly disappears. And the pain gets louder, not quieter, because your body has less capacity to absorb load.

I see the flip side too though. Partners and family members who understand what is actually going on, who encourage gradual movement and help someone stay consistent, can be one of the most powerful recovery tools in the room. The research backs that up.

The people in your corner either help you build capacity or quietly take it away.

There is not much middle ground in a chronic pain story.

THE STRESS PIECE
Think of your nervous system like a cup. It has a capacity for stress.

Physical stress, emotional stress, poor sleep, demanding job, hard seasons of life. All of it goes in the same cup.

When the cup is full, your system is running in a high-alert state. Pain signals get amplified. Recovery slows down. Injuries start to happen more frequently. Not because something new broke, but because there is no room left in the system.

Most people do not connect those dots. They come in with a flare-up after a hard week at work and assume they slept wrong. Maybe. But a nervous system under that much load is also going to be far more sensitive to inputs it would normally handle just fine.

That is not a mindset problem. That is a capacity problem.

WHAT WE ARE DOING ABOUT IT
First of all, words matter. A lot.

How I talk about pain or symptoms will either increase fear/worry, or reduce it and provide reassurance that this is recoverable.

Same goes for you, what story you tell yourself about your current condition will become reality for you. Because if you believe you can't recover, you're right, you won't. But if you do, and are willing to put in consistent effort, you can overcome just about anything!

We are leaning hard into this fact at ReCharge too.

The science is clear that the nervous system can be trained to tolerate more stress, recover faster, and stay regulated under pressure. Cold exposure is one of the most effective tools we have for that. But only when it is done right.

We are moving to fully coached sessions. Here is what that looks like:
1) Pre-session breathwork — We teach you how to downregulate before you get in the tub. Not just for comfort. Because the state you enter in determines the state you come out in.
2) Coaching through the shock — The first 30 seconds of cold exposure are where most people lose control of their breath and spike into a full sympathetic response. We walk you through it. That is the actual training.
3) Post-session recovery protocol — What you do after matters. We guide you through the integration so you get the full parasympathetic rebound.
4) Objective measurement — We test your parasympathetic activity before and after every session. So you are not just feeling better. You can see the actual shift in your nervous system on paper.

That last one matters a lot to me. Because one of the things that breaks down in chronic pain is trust. Trust in your body. Trust that things can actually change. When you can see measurable evidence that your nervous system just shifted states in under ten minutes, that starts to rebuild something pretty powerful.

WHAT THIS BUILDS OVER TIME
Every time you get in that tub and stay regulated, you are training your nervous system to handle discomfort without catastrophizing. And the coolest part is that skill does not stay in the tub!

It shows up when your back tightens after a long day at work. It shows up when a stressful week rolls through and your body would normally fall apart. It shows up as more capacity. And more capacity is the whole point.

ONE THING
If you have been to ReCharge yet, I want to formally invite you to go check it out and offer And if you have been coming in, I want you to try the coached version and tell me what you notice.
Reply to this email with one word describing what your stress cup looks like right now. Full. Half. Overflowing. Whatever is true.
That is all. No pressure. I am just trying to understand where people are at.

Talk soon,
Dom
Charge Health & Chiropractic

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