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Chris Duncan now sits in his assigned seat at Mountain Pointe High School.
There was a point when the pain in his back was so severe that he would ask his mom, Patty, who teaches at the school, if he could lay on the floor during her class.
Duncan, a junior at Mountain Pointe, has been living with pain since his freshman year when he first experienced numbness from the neck down after tackling a teammate during freshman year and went through five months of rehab while doctors ran tests and tried to figure out what was the problem.
Doctors could find nothing medically wrong even though Duncan vomited as much as three times a day. The 6-foot-2, 190-pounder returned to the football field the next year only to have the same thing happen again. Only this time the numbness lasted for 24 hours.
Duncan said doctors believed part of his problem may have been genetic since both his father and uncle have back problems. Despite not pinpointing an exact cause, doctors agreed Duncan shouldn't play football again.
His story was chronicled in an August 2000 issue of the Ahwatukee Foothills News, detailing his athletic accomplishments in the discus against a backdrop of pain. He surprised the Central Region field last spring to win discus with a mark of 160 feet, 2 inches, which still stands as his personal best. This past summer, Duncan threw 154-10 at the Junior Nationals and placed third.
Dr. Jason Kolber read the article from his Ahwatukee Foothills business, Inline Chiropractic, and immediately sensed an opportunity to help.
"When I read about doctors telling Chris it may have something to do with his genetic background, I knew I could help him," Kolber said.
This wasn't the first time Kolber's work had involved athletics. His research on the effects Network Chiropractic on athletes has included working with the baseball team at the University of South Carolina at Spartanburg. Network Care helps dissipate tension in the body and nervous system through gentle adjustments of the spine.
Duncan was all ears to what Kolber had to say.
"He explained the program to me and it made sense, so I thought I would try it," Duncan said. "I've tried everything else, I thought I might as well try this."
Before any treatments took place, Kolber and his wife, Dr. Elissa Katz, who co-owns Inline Network Chiropractic, hooked Duncan up to the Surface Electromyography machine, a tool which allows them to measure the body's nervous system. The SEMG quantifies if there is a healthy level of activity present in the motor or muscular system. The more color and less black there is to the graph, the healthier a person's system is.
Duncan's chart was dominated by black lines.
"It was off the charts," Kolber said.
His treatments began at Level One, where a patient, referred to as a practice member, is assisted to help the body recover from pervious stressors. One of the first areas Kolber and Katz touch when Duncan lays prone, face down on the therapy tables are the ankles. A photograph taken when Duncan first began treatments showed his feet pointed outward, awkwardly imbalanced.
"If the feet are imbalanced, there is something going on in the spine," Katz said. "We're feeling the tension in their Achilles. It's all connected."
Kolber and Katz observe the spine as Duncan lays on the table and make adjustments through light touches to the neck and lower back. The image of someone pounding on the body and manipulating tissue is not part of Network Care.
"The nervous system works like a computer network," Kolber explained. "If there is a glitch in the network, then there is an interruption of the message being sent and the same is true for your body."
When he first began treatments, Duncan noticed what appeared to be a minimal amount of work by Kolber and Katz to adjust him masked the major improvements he felt later.
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"The first time I came here, they adjusted me and I didn't think they had really done anything" he said. "But then later that night, it was like, "Wow.â I didn't feel any pain. You feel so much better and as you get adjusted again, it just feels better and better. Originally, it would hurt when I got adjusted, but then an hour later it would be fine."
During treatment at Level One, Duncan would visit the office four times a week and sometimes was adjusted twice a day.
"It was a choice I made to come that much," Duncan said. "My body just reacted to it better."
He began to run and lift weights in between his treatments, and the changes grew more noticeable.
"I haven't noticed a real strength increase, but I've noticed I can squat again, a really lightweight," Duncan said. "I wouldn't have tried that before. The coaches wanted me to, but I wouldn't." A squat is a lift in which the athlete positions a weight bar behind his neck and begins at a standing position with the bar resting on their neck. The lift lowers his body to a slight knee bend and then returns to the starting position.
Those are the types of mental victories which can play big in the mind of a 16-year-old, who for so long felt like he was constantly fighting with his body. When the flu swept through his household, Duncan watched his mom sidelined for 10 days and his sister for a week.
"I got it and I was sick only a few days," Duncan related. "Everything is doing better because of this."
Katz remembered Duncan coming in for a treatment when he was sick.
"He got adjusted and then we told him to wrap up and let his body work it out," Katz said. "He did it and came back so excited that he was able to do it on his own."
"We don't want him to rely on outside forces," Kolber added. "We want him to develop a trust with his body and develop inner healing."
Duncan recently moved to Level Two where he decreases the number of visits and the body's own self-maintenance begins to kick in. Kolber and Katz talk to Duncan about his diet as well, trying to eliminate sugars and the intake of fast food as much as is possible for a growing teen-ager.
"A lot of stress is chemical," Katz said. "So if you are eating things that are not good for you, you can feel the tone of the spine. The neck feels mushy."
Eventually, Duncan will move to Level Three where the body has become more self-corrective and adjustments drop to once a week.
"It's more of a fine tuning at that point," Kolber said.
For now he is pain free so there is no better feeling than that.
"It's strange how Network Care works, but it does work," Duncan said. "That's what's cool is you see the results. When you go to another doctor and they give you medicine for it and the pain is gone for a little bit, but this is ongoing. I haven't had any pain
in a long time. That's what's awesome."
Duncan is curious to see what effect Network Care will have when he begins throwing the discus next month.
"I think it will help," Duncan remarked. "Before, I was always thinking about the pain. I would throw and it would hurt real bad, but other times it wouldn't. But when it did hurt bad, that's all I though about. No, I don't have to think about it because it doesn't hurt. It doesn't get in the way."
It's enough for Duncan to want to rewrite the old adage, "No pain no gain,",â to "No Pain, Plenty of Gain."
"It's a breath of fresh air," Duncan said. "It's just nice to know that I am getting better."
Jim Powers can be reached at
(480) 496-0665 or by e-mail jpowers@aztrib.com
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