Today we’d like to introduce you to Brianne Schroeder.
Hi Brianne, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I always knew I wanted to work in healthcare. It was a long journey to find my calling, but I have and I couldn’t be happier. Stay with me as I tell my story. Growing up, I was an overweight but active kid. I was constantly injuring myself, being called “clumsy” more than once. Walking into tables or stubbing my toe was a daily thing. I had knee and ankle pain by the time I was ten. In highschool, I began working at a gym and that is when my love for proper nutrition, fitness, and body health all began. It was then that I began weight lifting, but often got discouraged that, despite hitting the gym three times a week to lift, I never managed to increase the weight or my strength. I loved running and did it often, 6-8 miles, 5-6 times a week! Through college, I continued the running but as I got older, I noticed my knees and back hurting so bad afterwards that I would have to take 2-3 days off inbetween runs to recover. I would weight lift at the gym and have to follow it up with ice and ibuprofen. In the car on my way home from a vacation, I had a muscle spasm in my back that landed me in the ER. I was sent home with extra strength muscle relaxers and enough pain pills to help a horse–but it didn’t help. All the medication did was knock me out and take me out of work.
At the end of my two weeks off work, I called my doctor-“We would be happy to up your dosage of pain pills”. Fed up with being let down by Western medicine, I made an appointment with a chiropractor. Two spinal adjustments later, I was already back to feeling much better. My chiropractor looked at me and said, “why are you going to school for physical therapy?…..why not become a chiropractor?”. Three months later, I was accepted into New York Chiropractic College, and three years later I was graduating as a doctor of Chiropractic with a master’s degree in applied clinical nutrition. My journey was not as seamless as it sounds. My lower back was still hurting, so I saw the doctor on campus. After getting a clean xray, she diagnosed me with depression and put me on anti-depressants. After almost failing out of my first year of school due to the fatigue from the pills, I went cold turkey. Instead, I began getting adjusted weekly. My pain didn’t stop, in fact, it got worse. I began physical therapy where my PT asked, “are you hypermobile?–it seems you have some instability. I am going to send you out to get evaluated for Ehler’s Danlos Syndrome”.
At the time, I had no clue what any of that meant. A year later, and thousands of dollars later, I was officially diagnosed with HSD or “Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder”. HSD is a connective tissue disorder that affects the strength and agility of my ligaments, tendons, vasculature, and skin. With this disorder comes joint instability (too much movement), pain, and chronic subluxations or dislocations. NOW it all started to make sense. I wasn’t depressed. My knees and back hurt when I ran, not because I was out of shape, but because I didn’t have the supportive framework to absorb the impact. Chiropractic adjustments every day we’re making my joints more loose than they already were, causing my muscles to tighten up. It wasn’t my fault that I wasn’t getting stronger at the gym. It was a combination of lacking certain substances in my body needed to gain muscle and doing exercises that were not beneficial to me. YEARS of physical therapy in the past always brought me to tears because they were treating a “healthy 20 something years old”, not an individual who APPEARED healthy but was really suffering with an invisible disease. My whole life, I was called a hypochondriac who complained too much, but I wasn’t. I had a legit reason for my pain, yet it took until I was 31 for a doctor to diagnose it. After years of financial strain, time spent going to doctor’s offices, and many nights of pain and suffering, I am finally understanding the body I’m in. With this diagnosis came having to learn many basic skills all over again, such as how to walk or sit or stand properly.
Fast forward to today, I am still a chiropractor and also practice nutrition and acupuncture. I took it upon myself to find gentle, effective ways to treat others. It also should come at no surprise that I decided to specialize in the treatment of others with hypermobility. I have had extensive education and training on the disorder and currently mentor under one of the most knowledgeable individuals in the nation on this subject matter. You can find me at my office, “Hypermobility & Chiropractic Clinic of Austin” where I not only treat patient’s pain, but I also thoroughly explore their journey to come up with a comprehensive treatment plan that often involves coordination of other specialties, such as physical therapists, massage therapists and primary care doctors that are knowledgeable on hypermobility. I aim to provide a safe space where patients can openly discuss their symptoms without being judged, criticized, or gaslighted. In a world that can sometimes seem very bleak and heartless, I want to provide hope–hope that you can get better and live your best life. It may be different than others, or even different than you had originally envisioned it as, but it is possible–anything is possible and I am proof of that. I haven’t stopped here though. I don’t just educate my patients–I am in the process of creating educational modules to implement into chiropractic colleges and medical schools across the country. I want to help raise awareness, advocate for my patients and attempt to end medical homelessness one patient at a time.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Delivering chiropractic care is not an easy task. It requires a lot of strong stabilizing muscles, proper form, and stamina. Graduating from school, I had none of that. I had to find ways to tweak how I delivered adjustments so that I could not only heal my patients but not injure myself in the process. During chiropractic school, I had to learn how to work through flare ups, sprain/strains and dislocations.
Starting a business here in TX proved to be just as challenging. A day after getting on the road for TX, I began exhibiting symptoms of COVID, my husband two days later. While I was lucky enough to avoid being a patient in the hospital, I did spend the first month here in a hospital as my husband fought for his life. We both survived but it was a scary time, not knowing what was going to happen with his health or if financially I would still be able to follow my dreams of opening up my clinic.
There will always be struggles in life, but you just have to keep searching until you find the strength to put one foot in front of the next.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Hypermobility & Chiropractic Clinic of Austin?
My clinic is a woman-owned, woman-managed business, ran by yours truly. I consider all my patient’s family and treat each as if I were treating my best friend, my mom. I provide gentle, low force chiropractic adjustments to the spine and extremities (arms and legs). I also perform acupuncture, nutritional consultations and ARPneuro Pain Therapy. ARPneuro is a form of treatment that not many doctors do, but it is great in that it decreases pain, breaks up scar tissue, increases blood flow, all the while strengthening muscles that need it the most. In addition, I perform cupping, kinesiotaping, and myofascial release. I run a concierge-style practice, which simply means I spend time with my patients. Each patient interaction is 1:1. I don’t just treat the symptoms, but I take into account all aspects of their health including nutrition, diagnostic imaging, lifestyle habits and previous/concurrent treatments. The tagline for the office is “Where It All Comes Together”- your healthcare journey, your new healthcare team, and all the other missing puzzle pieces.
I specialize in patients with connective tissue disorders (hypermobility spectrum disorder, ehlers danlos syndrome, marfans syndrome). These patients are also called “double jointed”. I train under one of the best in this field and know many of top doctors in the nation who also specialize in this condition. While this is my passion & my specialty, I also treat patients of all ages and conditions. I love participating in local events and being one with the community.
When I am not in the office treating patients, I am working on a new virtual Hypermobility course called the Zebra Zone (offered to all newly diagnosed hypermobile patients) or working to implement various Hypermobility focused modules into colleges, schools, hospitals, and rehab facilities to better educate the health care field on how to recognize, diagnose and help direct treatment for these individuals.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Things are always changing, and usually pretty quickly. Take time to stop, breathe, and appreciate the people and things in your life that bring you peace, love and happiness. You will notice the big window and lots of natural light in my office–this is because I realized that even if I can’t be outside on a beautiful (or not) day, being able to take a minute to look outside provides me with at least a momentary spiritual reset. Tranquility in your world starts with you.
Contact Info:
- Email: hypermobilityaustin@gmail.com
- Website: www.hypermobilityaustin.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hypermobilityaustin/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hypermobilityaustin
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/Hypermobilitytx
- Youtube: https://youtu.be/WRiJ7ZAoHA8
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/hypermobility-and-chiropractic-clinic-of-austin-georgetown
- Other: https://hypermobilityaustin.janeapp.com/
