A Spinal Solution Sans Surgery

JORDAN PYSZ / iFoundMyDoctor.com
Marty Picciano

Buffalo, the second largest city in New York, is best known for paralyzing lake-effect snowstorms, tangy chicken wings and the Bills, its professional football team. It is often referred to as the “City of Good Neighbors,” and Marty Picciano is happy to call it his hometown.

“I love Buffalo,” Marty says. “It’s a great city. My mom and some family members still live there, so I get up there a couple of times a year. The only reason I left Buffalo was for professional reasons.”

A graduate of nearby Niagara University, Marty became a certified public accountant in 1992. But Marty says that jobs in corporate accounting, his chosen field, were hard to come by in western New York at that time, so he was eventually forced to move south.

“In the early 1990s, Buffalo was still primarily a blue-collar town,” Marty explains. “It was trying to make the transition to white collar work, and the people who had those jobs weren’t leaving them. There was very little turnover.”

In 1993, one of his friends relocated from Buffalo to Atlanta. Marty soon followed the same path. It was a brilliant move.

“Things just exploded for me professionally and personally in Atlanta,” Marty exudes. “I met my wife there, we bought a house and had a kid – and the rest is history.”

Marty lived and worked in Atlanta for 15 years. In 2008, he took a job in Tampa, and eight years later moved south of the Sunshine Skyway to Manatee County.

“I still do independent consulting with a Tampa-based firm,” the 57-year-old shares. “I typically work with a couple of clients at a time, helping them with a variety of corporate finance challenges.”

Accountants tend to spend a lot of time sitting behind a desk. That has certainly been the case with Marty, whose job occasionally calls for extensive travel – sometimes to Europe and Asia – which required that he spend even more time sitting.

All that chair time, Marty says, led to some painful back problems.

“I struggled with low back pain for a long time,” Marty recounts. “Toward the end of 2022, the pain was starting to become rather debilitating. I thought it was a sciatic nerve issue because the pain ran down my leg into my foot.

“Then, at the beginning of 2023, I started getting these shooting pains where I would literally have to stop walking or whatever I was doing and take a minute until the pain passed. I had to grab a table, the back of the couch or something else nearby to hold myself up or I might have fallen over.

“The pain became so bad that I had to give up riding my bike and exercising. It also kept me from falling asleep at night. It was a consistent eight on a scale of one to 10, and I was taking lots of ibuprofen to help me get through the day and fall asleep.”

At his “wit’s end,” Marty eventually began searching for a medical doctor to treat him. Soon after, he received a copy of Florida Health Care News in the mail. On the cover was an article about Craig S. Aderholdt, DC, the founder of Back Pain Institute of West Florida, and a novel spinal decompression treatment called VAX-D® therapy.

“I wasn’t really keen on going the medical route because I wasn’t interested in any kind of back surgery,” Marty recalls. “To me that seems very invasive, and I’ve heard stories about the types of procedures that are done such as spinal fusion. I’ve also heard it can be quite limiting when they fuse the vertebrae together. I didn’t want that.

“But in visiting with Dr. Aderholdt, I got a better understanding of his treatment and what it does. He also showed me a video about VAX-D therapy. It made sense to me, but I didn’t commit right away. I went home and did some independent research on the therapy. Then my wife and I talked about it, and I decided to give it a try.”

As part of Dr. Aderholdt’s initial examination, an MRI was performed that showed Marty was suffering from several herniated discs as well as spinal stenosis.

Spinal discs act as cushions between the vertebrae. A herniation occurs when the inner gel-like core of a disc protrudes through the tough outer layer, typically due to wear and tear or injury.

Stenosis is a narrowing of the spinal canal due to age-related degeneration, herniation or thickened ligaments, among other factors.

The herniation and narrowing can irritate or pinch spinal nerves, causing back pain that can radiate into the legs.

“Dr. Aderholdt took some x-rays and shared the results,” Marty remembers. “I shared with him my suspicion that my problem was a sciatic nerve issue.

“But it turns out that the sciatic nerve problem was a byproduct of the herniated discs and the stenosis.”

To treat Marty, Dr. Aderholdt recommended VAX-D, or vertebral axial decompression, a patented, FDA-approved therapy for alleviating pressure on spinal discs. Dr. Aderholdt describes VAX-D as a “very gentle treatment” that works differently than traction devices and achieves substantially better results in patients with lumbar and cervical pain.

“Chiropractic adjustments alone can relieve the pain for many patients,” according to Dr. Aderholdt. “However, for select people with conditions such as sciatica or herniated, bulging or degenerated discs, VAX-D therapy has proven to be an extremely successful treatment option.”
-Dr. Aderholdt

VAX-D therapy also helps alleviate numbness, tingling and pain that radiates from the spine into the arms and legs.

Because of the intense lower back and leg pain due to his herniated discs, Marty was considered an excellent candidate.

Negative Pressure

A typical VAX-D session begins with the patient lying down and relaxing on a computer-controlled table. The patient is then secured by a pelvic belt or patented cervical collar, depending on the area of the spine receiving treatment.

Carefully specified tension and pressure changes guide the use of VAX-D, allowing the therapist to focus decompression at precise levels of dysfunction. The computer program enables the table to make subtle but targeted movements that create a powerful vacuum within the disc space. This vacuum gently draws the disc back to its proper orientation, pulling in nutrient-rich spinal fluid and stimulating repair cells that effectively mend the disc.

“No other treatment can create such a powerful vacuum,” Dr. Aderholdt declares. “There are imitators, but VAX-D’s vacuum effect is the most powerful. That’s what makes VAX-D such a valuable tool for pain relief. Further, VAX-D doesn’t allow the muscles to contract the way other machines can. In fact, it is the only nonsurgical treatment that has been clinically proven to reduce disc pressure to negative levels.

“In my opinion, VAX-D is one of the most effective nonsurgical treatments for low back pain, neck pain and sciatica. This innovative technology is one more tool I can offer patients as we work toward relieving pain and maintaining the health of the lumbar and cervical spine.”

Studies show that VAX-D has been effective in treating more than 88 percent of patients, Dr. Aderholdt discloses. Many patients report a significant reduction in back or neck pain after only a few treatments, but Dr. Aderholdt stresses that actual healing takes longer because repositioning bulging or herniated discs requires a full series of sessions.

“Some patients think they will get relief after a handful of sessions and can just quit, but that’s not the case,” he contends. “Patients must follow through with all of the required treatments to get the full benefit.”

Another advantage of VAX-D therapy is that it can eliminate the need for surgery.

“Many patients with severe neck or back pain, including Mr. Picciano, want to avoid surgery, and that is something VAX-D allows them to do,” Dr. Aderholdt notes. “With surgery, there is the potential for serious complications, including bleeding and infection. Because VAX-D is a noninvasive and effective treatment, those complications are avoided.”

JORDAN PYSZ / iFoundMyDoctor.com
Following a successful course of VAX-D therapy, Marty received Dr. Aderholdt’s approval to return to some of his activities, including riding a bike.

“Zero to One”

Marty is one of those patients who received positive results from VAX-D therapy early in his treatment. But he followed Dr. Aderholdt’s advice and completed the prescribed sessions.

“Within the first few treatments, I started feeling some relief,” Marty confirms. “I didn’t have as much pain. I wasn’t feeling that shooting, throbbing pain that stopped me in my tracks as frequently. And I wasn’t taking as much over-the-counter ibuprofen.

“My pain level now is a zero to one out of 10. Actually, it’s mostly stiffness now rather than pain. I really don’t have any pain, and I make sure to perform the daily exercises that Dr. Aderholdt taught me to ease the stiffness.

“The exercises are not very intensive and they only take about 15 minutes. They focus on building up my core muscles and stretching out my low back to continue elongating my spine.”

Dr. Aderholdt recently gave Marty permission to resume some of the activities he enjoys, including riding his bike and working out. Without the debilitating pain, Marty is sleeping peacefully again as well.

A grateful Marty says he thinks highly of Dr. Aderholdt. He refers to the chiropractor as “a genius” and says they get along well.

They also have something in common that helped solidify their constructive doctor-patient relationship.

“Like me, Dr. Aderholdt lived in Atlanta at one time,” Marty elaborates. “His chiropractic school is based near there. It’s a very well-known school called Life University, and it is very close to where I lived in Atlanta.”