Frank Caristo

My 20 year career as a manual therapist (Chiropractor) has taken me to many wonderful places. I am an inner west born and bred. After completing the 5 year chiropractic degree in Chiropractic in 1998, I started a musculoskeletal healthcare clinic in Swansea and an associate position in Blackalls Park, both in Lake Macquarie.  The clientele were certainly different from where I did a lot of my work experience or what I considered a traineeship under Rodney Steventon in Burwood.  Lake Macquarie involved working with a diverse range of patients mainly those in chronic pain and severe arthritic conditions, primarily because of the demographics.

Two years had passed and the boredom had well and truly kicked in, so my wife, Laurelle Gradwell, and I sold up and moved to London. There I had gained experience working in interdisciplinary clinic alongside physiotherapist, acupuncturist and massage therapist, at Remedy Centres Windsor, Berkshire and West London Chiropractic clinic. Both the UK clinics, fortunately were very evidence based and closely affiliated with local private hospitals and specialist. I learned a lot working under the guidance of these two experienced ethical based chiropractor, learning from their past mistakes, listening to their recommendations and experiences in both diagnosis and treatment.

Unfortunately 3 years flew past and those pesky visa issues brought Laurelle and I back to Sydney, where we decided to settle for Concord.  In December 2003, we started what was then Inner West Chiropractic. Our business plan was simple; provide the community with evidence based protocols, combined with a treatment that a longer consultation, muscle therapy, gentle specific movements of joints, assessment of sleeping posture and work conditions.   A mix of my personality and a thirst for other practitioners’ knowledge, lead me to working in Concord part time and with my remaining available hours, I did locums, which involved covering for other chiropractors while they were on leave. The experience that I gained while working in clinics, where some had been established for over 30 years, was invaluable.  I utilised the good bits in Concord practice and forgot about the rest.

In 2011 an opportunity had risen to work part time as an Injury Prevention advisor for Patrick Stevedores, Port Botany. Something that I had never done before, treating on site amongst heavy machinery, developing workplace injury prevention systems and gaining extensive experience with workers compensation and return to work cases.

The year 2013 brought my next venture, to find a medical device that does the action requested by most my clients. The phrase “I feel like I want to be put on a rack and stretched” is one heard about 4 times a day.  After extensive research and desire to implement the latest researched technology, I recently embarked on an international tour exploring the latest and greatest developments in non-invasive and non-surgical spinal decompression system. In other words, a safe, computerised, sophisticated rack. During my travels, I meet David Cuccia, a New York based chiropractor/researcher/inventor of Extentrac and the M3D method. I have observed, treated and was certified in the technique by David. I am the proud TGA (Therapeutic Goods Administration) sponsor of Extentrac and the first practitioner to introduce this researched manual therapy technique to Australia.

My continuing education primarily involves muscle work, rehabilitation and decompression. I believe that muscle work complimented with specific joint movements can solve a lot of society’s aches and pains. I am an APHRA (Australia) and GCC (UK) registered chiropractor. I am a member of the Chiropractors and Osteopathic College of Australasia.