WAUPACA COUNTY POST

May 29, 2003

 

Leean takes the helm at Waupaca Chiropractic Center

By Robert Cloud, Post Editor

 

            A chiropractic office that has been in Waupaca for more than 20 years now has a new owner.

            Dr. Miriam Leean purchased the Waupaca Chiropractic Center, 700 Hillcrest Drive, from Dr. Claire Frisbie in April.

            Leean has been with the Waupaca Chiropractic Center since January 2002.

            “Dr. Frisbie needed some help after her husband died, so I took the opportunity to come back to Waupaca and start working for her,” Leean said.

            A 1991 graduate of Waupaca High School, Leean earned a bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, then earned her doctorate after four years of study at Life University, a chiropractic college in Marietta, Ga.  She is the daughter of Joe and Ginny Leean.

            “We’re trying to keep things the same as much as possible,”  Leean said.  “Many of our patients don’t realize that the practice has been sold.”

            Leean said she maintains all the files of the center’s patients.  The location and phone number remain the same.

            “Even though Dr. Frisbie has retired, we’re still here,” Leean said.

            Dr. Charles Wolter, who has more than 30 years of experience in the field, has been with the Waupaca Chiropractic Center for three years.  The center also has two massage therapists, Simon Weller and Mary Booth, on staff.

            Leean’s own personal odyssey into the field of chiropractic health care began when she was 18 years old and received care from Frisbie for an injury.

            While an undergraduate student in Eau Claire, Leean began working at Stukky Chiropractic.

            “I’ve never been one who likes to take medications and painkillers.  I saw this as a more holistic approach to health,” Leean said.  “I expressed an interest to the doctors in Eau Claire.  They took me under their wing, mentored me, sent me down the path to school in Georgia, and here I am.”

            Leean said chiropractic health care works with the body’s ability to express health.

            “The nervous system controls every function in the body,” Leean said.  “When it’s affected by malpositioning or  dysfunction of one or more spinal bones, it causes what chiropractors term “dis-ease” within the body, which leads to the disease processes.”

            Leean said that chiropractors find misalignments within the spinal structure, correct its positioning and “allow the body to express its health.”

            She said hundreds of chiropractic techniques have been developed in the more than 100 years since it was first developed.

            Leean tells the story of how chiropractic health care was discovered.  D.D. Palmer was a researcher in Davenport, Iowa, who was working with a deaf janitor.

            “D.D. Palmer was feeling the back of the janitor after asking him how he went deaf,” Leean said.  “He noticed something that didn’t feel right and asked the janitor if he could make an adjustment to that area.  He did and shortly afterwards, the janitor regained his hearing.”

            Leean said that Palmer initially thought he had found a cure for deafness.  People came from all over the world to have their deafness cured, but Palmer’s success was never repeated.

            While their deafness may not have been cured, these early patients brought with them other conditions that were clearing up as an apparent consequence of Palmer realigning their spines.

            “D.D. Palmer in his quest for knowledge began doing research.  He found through his research and that of other researchers a correlation between the body and the nervous system,” Leean said.  “He went on to found the first chiropractic college in Davenport, the same college that Dr. Wolter attended.”

            Leean said the common perception is that chiropractors deal only with back pain or neck pain.

            “But we really deal with a host of concerns, with the body’s health and its optimum potential,” Leean said.  “No chiropractor will tell you that we can cure anything, because we can’t.  Only the body can.  We just allow the body to express itself, the way it was meant to.”