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Date: 7/9/2015
HAMPDEN – Forty-five years after opening his family and pediatric chiropractic practice, business at Dr. Daniel Berneche’s offices in Hampden and Ware remains strong.
Berneche, a resident of Hampden, told Reminder Publications when he first was introduced to the concept of chiropractic care by physicians in Springfield during the 1960s, he was instantly intrigued. Prior to his introduction to chiropractic medicine he had planned to become a brain surgeon.
He added what struck him was the philosophy of the chiropractic care – the process of adjusting the spine to allow the nervous system to function properly without interference from the shifting spine using only trained hands and without the use of medicinal drugs.
“It’s an amazing field of healing,” he added. “We don’t do the healing – we just correct it … we’re dealing with cause and effect,” Berneche said. “The effect is the body not working right at times by way of the fact that you’re correcting the interference of neurological function.”
Berneche graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, IA, in 1969 and started his practice on the second floor of a building on Main Street in Ware the following year.
During his early years in practice, Berneche said he treated a blind woman with a very specific spinal adjustment on the atlas vertebra after discovering that it was partially dislocated.
“The woman proceeded to go downstairs afterwards with lots of hesitation and all of a sudden she outcried, ‘My God, I can see the clock!’ Anyhow, that woman she really pushed the growth of my practice because everybody knew her as a blind woman in town,” he explained.
Berneche said his treatment of the patient impressed upon him how spinal adjustment can correct other problems in the body via the central nervous system.
“Not to say that every blind woman is going to get corrected through chiropractic care, but it was just this one,” he added.
In 1971, Berneche’s practice moved to its current location in Ware at 246 West St. His home office in Hampden has open for years as well.
“It’s a beautiful profession,” Berneche said. “I can’t explain the feeling of getting people on the right track and not having to depend on outside medications or drugs to get along in life. It’s just a wonderful feeling.”
He added that he is against the recent trend in medicine to prescribe more medication than necessary.
“The evidence is portraying that – the evidence of recording the amount of medications is extremely abundant today,” he added. “Its overused and misused I do believe. It’s a dire shame that there’s a money factor involved. There’s the perpetuation of certain drugs that people depend upon.”
Berneche said chiropractic care is one of the only drugless medical professions in the world.
“It conquers many problems that are manifested with the use of drugs,” he added. “It could have made a stronger mark in the health world at an earlier time had it not been for the popularity of drugs at the time – we’re talking 1895 when chiropractic was discovered by Daniel David Palmer.”
During his more than four decades as a chiropractor, Berneche said he has had hundreds of patients and one rule of thumb he described as important to his profession is that a lack of back pain does not mean an individual isn’t in need of chiropractic care.
“It’s more of a preventive as well as a restorative type of approach to health,” he added.
Berneche said one of the best ways to maintain a healthy spine is to walk regularly and swim, as well as scheduling treatments with chiropractors the same as if someone were to make an appointment to have their teeth checked by a dentist.
Regular chiropractic care also helps with sleeping issues such as insomnia, he noted.
For more information about Berneche visit www.warechiropractor.com.