When you search for a doctor near you in New York City on your insurance panel, ZOCDOC, Google, or Yelp, you can choose to filter by many factors including gender. You can even search for “female chiropractor near me!”

Though chiropractic is a male-dominated profession, you may want to consider finding a female chiropractor to best fit your needs.

Now, we may be a little biased here considering we are a female-owned and operated clinic. But here’s the deal: Check out our top eight reasons why a female chiropractor in NYC (and at Urban Wellness Clinic) may be just the right option for you.

1. We treat scars that only women experience including C-section scars and breast reconstruction scars after bilateral mastectomy. Why does this matter? You may feel a little funny asking a male chiropractor to massage into these very personal and tender scars. That’s when a female chiropractor may be the best choice for you. We perform Active Release Technique^® (ART) on scar tissue to increase blood flow, which encourages healing and decreases pain. It uses specific movements and massage methods to relieve scar tissue pain in as few as 4 to 6 sessions.

These kinds of scars can lead to an inability to fire your core. In fact, we’ve heard women often complain that ever since they had a C-section, they haven’t been after to feel their core, either to touch or lack of strength.

For women with breast reconstruction, double mastectomy, or implants, the scar tissue often pulls on the neck and the upper back, preventing our female patients from standing up straight when they first come in our clinic. This can lead to neck pain, nagging tightness in the shoulders, headaches, and disc herniations.

We can help alleviate this pain through soft tissue work at Urban Wellness Clinic, and taping can help loosen the scar while you’re on your own.

2. We treat problems that affect women differently. Women have wider hips and a different biochemical makeup (so we can give birth) and that affects our lower bodies differently. That’s why female dancers, yogis, and gymnasts have specific knee and hip issues. It’s also why female soccer players have a higher incidence of anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) tears.

I can’t emphasize this enough: We treat many female athletes, so we see lots of iliotibial band syndrome (ITB) issues from overly mobile hamstrings and internal torsion of the knees, plus low back pain and jammed sacroiliac (SI) joints from sway back and a lack of integration in the hamstrings

We offer women treatments and exercises that are specifically geared toward the female athlete’s anatomy and sport to relieve pain, improve mobility, heal injury, and prevent reinjury.

Hypermobility is often overlooked and always needs to be assessed. -Dr Emily Kiberd

3. We understand hypermobility issues that affect women. What’s the real story? Hypermobility happens when joints and bones extend beyond their normal range. It can cause hyperextended knees, an overarched sway back, and double-jointed elbows and thumbs. It makes it hard to maintain muscle mass and find your center of gravity, and it can cause pain in the joints. It can happen to women with Hashimoto’s disease, genital prolapse, and fibromyalgia.

We can test for hypermobility using the Beighton Score, in addition to other symptoms and signs. The Beighton Score assigns a point system to a series of joint movements, such as how far each finger bends backwards beyond 90 degrees.

We treat this with a solid strength training program to help support the sloppy joints and maintain muscle mass to avoid being what society calls “skinny fat,” but we call “low muscle mass.” This often goes hand-in-hand with Hashimoto’s since connective tissue diseases can turn our fast twitch type 2 muscle fibers turn into slow twitch type 1 muscle fibers, making the muscle hard to maintain.

We often start with these exercises:

Kettlebell Deadlift

90/90 Pri

Beast Plank

6 Month Supine

4. We know that menopausal women have different needs. Look, as you reach menopause, your risk of bone loss increases. Some of the cause is hormonal. But you can offset bone loss in menopause through proper strength training and weight-bearing exercise. We can help you craft a workout that’s right for you as your body changes through our personal training.

We don’t believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to exercise, ensuring that your warm-up and cool-down routines are just as personalized as your workout program. We also offer memberships to detailed online exercise videos to help you maintain proper form when you’re working out on your own.

5. We help new moms feel better, fast. We offer Birthfit workshops at our wellness clinic at 57 West 57^th These 30- to 60-minute meetings cover birth and postpartum plans, focusing on fitness, nutrition, chiropractic, and mindset relating to pregnancy, birth, and postpartum.

 We can provide workplace ergonomic assessments for pregnant women and corporate wellness evaluations for new moms returning to work after maternity leave.

That’s not all. We also help new moms overcome postural demands of breastfeeding and carrying the baby around through chiropractic techniques such as the Graston Technique and Dynamic Neuromuscular Stabilization (DNS), which breaks up scar adhesions and reduces inflammation.

6. We walk in heels, too, so we (literally) feel your pain. Sure, high heels look great, but they’re not great for your feet, legs, or back.

Here’s the deal: Wearing high heels shifts your weight, putting you off-center, increasing the workload on the hip flexor muscles while you walk, and limiting your ankle mobility and movement. This can throw you off balance, even sending you to the ground. It affects women in their twenties the most, and tends to cause injury to the ankle or foot the most, mostly in strains or sprains, though stress fractures and bunions often occur. 

We provide exercises you can do to offset a night spent in heels, ART for sore calves, and Anatomy in Motion (AIM) to assess weary feet.

7. We inspire women to get strong. Not only are we doing heavy-duty soft tissue work through ART all day on our patients, but when we show our patients how to deadlift, kettlebell swing, and breathe and brace, our patients are impressed and sometimes even surprised by our strength. The best part? If we’re strong, they want to be strong, too. And there’s no other city in the world that values strong women quite like New York City!

8. Studies suggest that women are better doctors. Wait, what? No, it’s true! A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine found that patients treated by female physicians had significantly lower mortality rates than those cared for by male physicians at the same hospital. The bottom line is that women practice medicine differently, counseling on preventive care and adhering to clinical guidelines more than men, reports The Washington Post.

Maybe it has to do with how we listen. New research found differences in the brains of men and women, including the area associated with listening, which is of greater volume in women. Some may say it’s our natural nurturing abilities and tendencies. Others just prefer a woman doctor. Bottom line: You might, too, so if you’re looking for a female chiropractor in NYC, call us!

If you’re looking for a female chiropractor in NYC, contact us today. Call us at 212-355-0445 or email us at hello@urbanwellnessclinic.com. We’re here for you!

Best in Health.

Dr Emily Kiberd