The team at Main Street Wellness & Chiropractic staff includes, from left, Dr. Jill Burns, Dr. Brian Bigelow, Dr. Jerrilyn Sullivan, Dr. Sarah Churchill and Dr. Sean Jordan.

NASHUA – The term “one-stop shopping,” rarely applies to wellness and physician’s care, but with several doctors in its practice, Main Street Wellness & Chiropractic, 382 Main St., is just that.

Located in a bright and beautiful office on South Main Street, MSWC’s founder and chief physician Dr. Jerrilyn Sullivan touts that their office, which uses a multi-pronged approach to wellness through nutrition, physical therapy, regenerative medicine and acupuncture to name a few medical tools, is cleaner than most places, as the office and all equipment are regularly cleaned and sanitized, putting their clients’ minds at ease during the pandemic.

Sullivan said during the pandemic, chiropractic medicine may not be something that necessarily dawns on patients in terms of care.

“When the crisis first started, we made it aware to all of our patients, because we’re practitioners and weren’t closing,” she said. “The governor deemed us essential from a muscle-skeletal point of view. We’re essential because we don’t have these patients going to emergency rooms.”

Sullivan has been in practice for 27 years and for most patients, the doctors at MSWC are their primary physicians.

“They don’t go to other doctors unless there is something critical going on,” she said. “In the first week with the announcement of COVID-19, everybody was stressed and afraid. But after that, our visits are pretty much up to where they were before. Yesterday, our clinic saw about 100 people come through the front door.”

MSWC strictly adheres to all CDC guidelines and many patients haven’t been in a while, working at their dining room table or in another environment that may not be good for health or posture.

“Our concern was that a week before COVID hit, we had a lot of patients that were acute, who couldn’t walk or had trouble getting in or out of the car. We had a meeting and said, ‘How are we going to take care of these people?'”

Sullivan said that through treatment and education, their patients recognized just how essential their services are.

“It’s not just chiropractic care,” she said. “Because we’re a wellness center, we’re also giving them nutritional advice and how to improve their immune system. A lot of people don’t realize that your spine houses your nervous system. And you have the muscles that protect your spine, which is why physical therapy and chiropractic and acupuncture go very well together.”

Sullivan said the majority of patients coming in have the concern of getting sick. And while the practice can’t prevent that, they can keep them as healthy as possible.

“From an essential standpoint, the biggest thing is keeping people healthy and not letting things get worse,” said Dr. Sean Jordan, whose resume includes being the head physical therapist with the Boston Bruins and assistant physical therapist with the New England Patriots. “I have a handful of people who were post-surgical, and some physical therapy places had to close down due to different reasons. And those people were out on the street, for lack of a better term.”

Jordan added that not getting that range of motion care, or manual therapy care that they need to get to reach a certain outcome is a high priority for his practice.

“Coming from a recovery aspect, whether it’s surgery or getting injections, that’s never usually the total fix,” he said. “There’s a course of action, whether its chiropractic maintenance or whether it’s massage, that’s why we decided we would stay open.”

Jordan also did a large number of tele-health therapy appointments so that his patients could continue with their care program and keep from regressing or from using an emergency department.

Dr. Sarah Churchill, whose expertise includes chiropractic medicine and acupuncture, said while the office is accepting new patients, they are triaging the ones who are in more acute situations.

“If somebody is coming in interested in acupuncture but not really an indication, I might ask them to wait a few weeks. But most people coming in have acute muscle or skeletal things or high levels of stress. And when you’re stress levels are high, you are more at risk to end up catching something because your immune system is not functioning at a high level.”

Churchill said with the COVID pandemic, patients struggling with insomnia, who are fearful of going to the doctor, it’s good to “realign things using different meridians and get their body to function on a higher level, it’s definitely beneficial.”

Dr. Jill Burns said education is key when illustrating the correlation between wellness and chiropractic care.

“We as doctors teach our patience,” she said. “And one of the aspects that we do teach is that we are effecting the nervous system through the spinal cord. That in itself is enough to relieve a lot of pain and boost the nervous system. And with these different adjuncts that we have, we can help it even more to allow the patient to have an easier life.”

For Dr. Brian Bigelow, his patients recognize the multi-tiered levels of chiropractic benefits and said word-of-mouth is his biggest convincing tool to make those who have never been to a chiropractor feel more at ease.

“Most of my patients are referrals from my other patients,” he explained. “So, by the time they come in, they’re already trusting of the whole situation because another person they know gave them their opinion.”

Bigelow also stressed the importance of educating patients about the many gains that their practice preaches.

“We talk a lot about how the spine effects the nervous system and how they’re interrelated,” he said. “And we talk about how chiropractics is very safe – even though there’s been misinformation out there. If people are examined properly, the risk is infinitesimal, which has been proved in major studies.”

Bigelow cited a study in Canada, where they evaluated people there during a 10-year period of having chiropractic care and compared that to medical doctor visits and the low-risk levels were exactly the same.

Sullivan noted that many people seeking treatment are those now working at home without proper posture or workstations.

“That’s been a huge problem,” she said. “And if a patient is a little afraid of coming in, I tell them that our office is cleaner than the grocery store. Everything is wiped down. Everything is sanitized. Everybody is wearing masks. We’ve always kept our equipment and office spotless, so that part is nothing new to us.”

Structure dictates function and ergonomics are very important, according to Sullivan.

“I just heard one of Dr. Jordan’s patients because they’re a neutral patient who sees Dr. Jordan for the physical therapy and sees us for the chiropractics,” she shared. “And she said, ‘I couldn’t wait any longer.'”

Once the pandemic hit, that patient was struggling physically to do the most mundane of activities. Sullivan said that staying home and doing nothing for four weeks took its toll on that patient’s body.

“She was a mess when she came in,” she said. “There’s macrotrauma, as in getting hit by a truck and then there’s microtrauma, which is sitting uncomfortably at your dining room table on your laptop working from home. That’s where we can help. We’re even seeing kids come in.”

Sullivan said it is a team approach that makes MSWC such a success.

“We work together, and we all have our area of expertise,” she said. “I never mind helping one of my colleagues, but we’re not afraid to say, ‘You know, I may be able to help, but Dr. Jordan might be better on this,’ for example. ‘Or maybe you need acupuncture.’ That sort of thing.”

Sullivan noted that “chiropractics is an art, a science and a philosophy. And the art is the way that we each treat our patients. I tell them, it’s like a hug. You get a hug from your wife. You get a hug from your kids. You get a hug from your mom. And they are all different.”

She added that the mind-body connection is something that most people know, but not everyone practices.

“When you have physical activity, whether it’s physical therapy or a massage or acupuncture, your body actually releases healing chemicals and endorphins,” Sullivan said. “Everybody should get adjusted. They say, if you have a spine, you should be at the chiropractor.”