Dr. Craig Cohen adjusts a patient. He has also adjusted his office to provide medical as well as chiropractic care.
By Tim Callahan
“He’s a card, isn’t he?” asked an observer while watching the Tasmanian Devil that is chiropractor Craig Cohen.
“Yes, he is.”
What else could one say?
Part doctor, part comedian, part counselor, part friend, part nurse, Cohen is ALL about improving the health of his patients. And, he does it quickly and efficiently.
To help him do his job even better, he said, he has teamed up with two nurse practitioners and a massage therapist and is one year away from being certified as a registered nurse himself. He has been earning his stripes, so to speak, in the emergency room at the hospital the past year and a half.
Cohen is the owner of Inlet Physical Medicine off Inlet Square Drive. His business name change, from Carolina Family Spine and Health, says it all. Combining chiropractic services and medical services in the same building is what makes his practice unique, he said.
“It’s an integrated practice,” he said. “Chiropractic, medical, and rehab. The patients we couldn’t help before we can now help.”
Cohen was a biochemistry major at Salisbury University (Md.), and then attended chiropractic school in Marietta, Ga. After working with doctors in Atlanta and Charlotte, he decided to start his own practice in 2008 in the Murrells Inlet area, where his family had moved to about a decade before.
He is married and his wife, Corrie, helps out at the practice. They have a daughter. He won’t tell you where he is from, he joked, because that would tell which side of the Mason-Dixon line he comes from.
Craig’s interest in chiropractic care came from his own childhood, a time filled with ear infections, asthma and chronic pain. Doctors and meds didn’t seem to help so his uncle suggested a chiropractor. Skeptical, his family tried one and was miraculously able to chuck his inhaler. He ended up playing football at Elon.
But, doctors and meds can help people where chiropractic care doesn’t and vice-versa, Cohen said, which is what he is trying to do with his rejuvenated practice.
“Patients can get better faster,” he said.
One patient, Steve Smith, 63, of Garden City, said he has been going to a chiropractor for 15 years. Smith worked for the departments of defense and homeland security, he said, before moving down here two years ago.
“I never went to one,” he said, “but I had serious back problems and was headed to surgery. A neighbor went to a chiropractor, so I tried it. I could barely walk.” Smith was saying this as he was standing and riding an elliptical trainer with a weighted head rest on his head.
Cohen said he is also proud to offer patients food and chemical sensitivity screening, and the ability to treat peripheral neuropathy, a condition that affects millions and comes with symptoms like burning feet, electric shocks, pins and needles, pain and numbness. The treatment is safe and effective, Cohen said, and highly effective for most people – even diabetics.
“That is not everything we do,” he said. “These are just the highlights.”
The real highlight was watching him work the rooms.
(To call for an appointment, Inlet Physical Medicine’s phone number is 843-652-5678)
