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Meet Dr. Shelia T. Payton

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Shelia T. Payton.

Dr. Shelia T. Payton is a practicing Chiropractic Physician, Health Care Commentator, Associate Professor and Runner. She is a graduate of Clark Atlanta University, where she earned a B.S. in Biology and Chemistry. She continued her studies at Life University’s School of Chiropractic, where she holds her Doctor of Chiropractic.

After completing her residency, she decided to practice in Great Britain, where she became the first African American, principal Chiropractor in the largest multidisciplinary health clinic in the United Kingdom. While in the U.K., Dr. Payton was awarded a Chiropractic fellowship with the esteemed College of Chiropractors. The Bredar Trust, a philanthropic organization in Aberdeen, Scotland, appointed Dr. Payton to be their Alternative Health Consultant, thereby giving her responsibility for the rehabilitation of physically disabled children. Dr. Payton later accepted a Chiropractic fellowship in Accra, Ghana. Working with a team of other Chiropractic professionals, their wellness discipline was widely introduced to the country.

After returning to the United States, Dr. Payton settled in historic Decatur, GA and 12 years ago, opened Wellspring Health and Wellness focuses on, not only providing care for the musculoskeletal system but, for the last few years, she devoted her time to teaching patients how to make Small Changes on their way to better healthier lives through using food as medicine. Dr. Payton’s unique blend of effective treatment techniques has helped hundreds of her patients improve their overall health.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
The craft of Chiropractic and Functional medicine are the easy parts. Being an entrepreneur, navigating business and maintaining focus on things that matter seems to have been the areas where I’ve learned the most. Sharing with patients my knowledge and meeting them where they are feeds me both professionally and spiritually. Getting the correct balance or finding the correct balance between work-life logistics fiscal priorities, social media marketing has been again my biggest area of growth.

We’d love to hear more about your practice.
I am a practicing Chiropractic Physician for the past 20 years now. I am passionate about the spine and nutrition. Chiropractic is so much more than being free of back pain neck pain. The ideology of this modality started with the understanding that the body is a self-healing self-replicating an organizing entity. The brain is always controlling or directly overseeing every process. With that being said, it is easy to understand that if there is clear communication between the brain and the rest of the body. The organism is more effectively and efficiently run.

For example when your body is experiencing a cold and you run down to the chemist for sudafed it is there to mask the symptoms while the immune system deploys white blood cells to tag antigens and to phagocytize or in engulf foreign invaders. If instructions from the brain to the rest of the body are clear and precise, the body is more effective and efficiently run again.

I am also a lifelong believer that food is medicine and that we should eat to live. I believe that alternative practitioners such as chiropractors must continue to educate and preach the good news of good food, we are what we eat. Especially in the times of COVID-19, more than ever are we needed to educate, to assist our fellow humans prepare themselves for this fight. I wholeheartedly believe in functional medicine and functional foods.

Functional medicine addresses the underlying cause of mental, physical and emotional “dis-ease.” It combines the objective study of neurology, biochemistry, genetics, and physiology with environmental and lifestyle factors. In other words, practitioners of functional medicine are “looking under the hood” to better determine the emergence and progression of disease. Rather than covering up symptoms with drugs, the goal is to find natural solutions to restore balance.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
One of my all-time favorite memories is sitting on the back porch with my grandfather at two years old sipping coffee and eating oysters.

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Meet East Atlanta Series Sponsor:

T’Mil Curtis aka the Navigator: I’m a marketing and brand strategist, co-owner of a record label, content curator, speaker and social media influencer that’s been helping churches, small businesses and brands up their social media game during this pandemic.

 

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