Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
Bringing Together Local Businesses & Neighbors of Cooper City
Good Neighbor Podcast: Cooper City
EP #327: Arrow Health Center with Mark Laudadio
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Sciatica, knee pain on a run, chronic neck tension that never quite leaves you. Those problems can feel random until you understand what your body is trying to tell you. Jeremy Lolf sits down with Dr. Mark Laudadio from Arrow Health Center in Davie, Florida for a grounded conversation about chiropractic care, mobility, and why “quick fixes” so often disappoint when it comes to back pain relief and long-term function.
We talk about what actually happens in a modern chiropractic office beyond adjustments. Dr. Mark walks through a whole-body approach that can include electrical muscle stimulation, heat and cold therapy, infrared therapy, ultrasound therapy, neuromuscular re-education, plus targeted exercises and stretching. The theme is simple: you’re not a diagnosis in a bin. Care should be tailored to the individual, and progress can look different even for the same person at different times.
Dr. Mark also explains the spine and nervous system connection in a way that clicks, why spinal mobility matters, and how to think about pain as a signal instead of something to mute and ignore. Jeremy brings in the real-life challenge most of us face: consistency. Knowing the “blueprint” is easy; staying accountable is hard. They dig into falling off routines, starting again, and building habits that keep you moving.
You’ll also hear Dr. Mark’s personal story, including a serious car accident and chronic neck pain that pushed him toward chiropractic, plus some lighter talk on hockey, workouts, and Disney. If you’re in Davie, Cooper City, or anywhere in Broward County and want smarter next steps for musculoskeletal health, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share this with someone dealing with back pain, and leave a review with your biggest takeaway.
For more information visit https://arrowhealthbroward.com/.
Welcome To Good Neighbor Podcast
SPEAKER_01This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Jeremy Lolf.
SPEAKER_02Hello, hello, hello, friends, family, wonderful community. We are back for another installment of the Good Neighbor Podcast. You know, I'm 46 years old, and I have had several issues with my back over the course of that time. Uh, most recently coming off a bat with sciatica. Uh, and my my skin has been saved, so to speak, several times by chiropractors. And as luck would have it, we are sitting here with a chiropractor today. I'm here with Dr. Mark Ledatio. By the way, Mark, I love that name, Ladatio. Fantastic.
SPEAKER_00Thank you.
SPEAKER_02Uh Mark Mark joins us from Arrow Health Center, right down the road from us in lovely Davy. So should I call you Dr. Mark? Dr. Ladatio. Dr. Mark is good.
SPEAKER_00That's ever since I've been working down here, it's been Dr.
Jeremy’s Sciatica And Meeting Dr. Mark
SPEAKER_02Mark. That's it. Beautiful, beautiful. All right, we'll go with Dr. Mark. Thanks for joining us today. Uh, looking forward to getting into this and learning a little bit more about uh how you serve our great community. So without further ado, I think everybody uh probably has some kind of idea as to what a chiropractor does, right? Unless you've been living under a rock for some time. Uh, but I think that from my experience, a lot of different chiropractors have different niches and different areas of specialty and different ways they operate. So why don't we start there? Uh tell me a little bit about your practice, uh how you operate, how you differ, and the types of services that you provide to our community.
What Chiropractic Treats Day To Day
SPEAKER_00All right. So um obviously um I'm a chiropractor, chiropractic uh physician. We are a primary care doctor um in the state of Florida. Um we treat uh the spine primarily. Uh we we treat all the other joints as well: shoulders, knees, elbows, wrists, ankles. But uh our main focus obviously is the spine. Um my business is Aero Health Center. I'm in, like I said, in Davy off a university in Griffin in that Publix Plaza. Uh I've been here for a year and a half, and um but I've been practicing down in South Florida for the past 18 years. So um since 2008, early 2008. Um I offer chiropractic services as well as physical therapy modalities in my office, and what that means is you know, you don't only get adjusted, um, you also get other therapies such as um electrical muscle stim, um heat, cold packs, uh infrared therapy, ultrasound therapy, neuromuscular re-education, exercises, and stretches. It it's we do the whole thing. We we chiropractors see the body as a whole. Um, we don't just treat a symptom. Um, so that's what you get when you come. I don't do anything different necessarily than other chiropractors because chiropractic has existed since 1895 and since its inception, it's been practiced pretty much the same way um since then. So we're going on 200 years of um existence. Well, no 200 let's just say 150 years of of existence. Sorry.
SPEAKER_02So um I I like how you said how you talk about this this whole body approach to care. I think I think too many of us nowadays in the society that we live in, I always say this over and over, we live in an instant gratification, quick fix society. Uh so more often people aren't willing to do the work, they're looking for that magic pill, that magic fix. And I think like they associate the idea of a chiropractor with going in and just getting adjusted. Like I have a problem with my back, let me come see you, you can crack my back, and then poof, like that, I'll be fine. Uh, that's just not how the human body works, right? You have to do hard work and conditioning.
Modalities Beyond Adjustments
SPEAKER_00100%. Um, the reality is the medical model wants give pill A, receive, you know, a fix for symptom B, right? Take Tylenol, get rid of the headache, take advil, get rid of your pain. Whatever. The reality is, I said, we're all individuals, and even within an individual themselves, for example, you come and see me for lower back pain, and it takes us, I don't know, let's say, let's just give it like 10 to 12 visits, and you got better, and then we just got you back into some sort of maintenance treatment. You come back another time and you've got the same low back pain, it came back. It takes you 20 to 30 visits to get better within the same person, not just the population, your body's gonna react differently to the treatment every time. And that's what frustrates um, I guess, the medical community, because it it's not concise. Let's say it's we can't predict how you're gonna react. But if you think about it, and I know that the population now is really starting to understand like more a more holistic approach to all of our bodies, functional medicine, you know, everybody's an individual, everybody responds differently to care. Therefore, we need to tailor um treatment to the individual and not put them in a bin and hope to get a result. So that's why um I say chiropractic is is is very much centered on the individual and the individual's needs at the time of their need or their pain. So um we do our we we I said we're primary care physicians, we do our analysis or evaluation of the individual every single time they come in. Um and based on that, we modify how we treat the patient. Um, but we always use again the I say natural or non-invasive ways of treating the patient with our hands, or if we we can use activator adjustments or other tools that we use that are are even lower touch. We call it we call it uh high um high tech low touch. Right? So we we use technology that's available to us to do the physical therapy modalities, but our touch is very low end, low key. You know, uh we don't we we're not invasive. It's very gentle. Correct. We use our hands, we uh we use other tools that don't hurt the individual. All of this to treat the the the individual and their nervous system. That's what I wanted to say earlier. Was um chiropractic treats it's the only profession that treats both the musculoskeletal and the nervous system. So your brain and your spinal cord is the master controller of your body. Without a brain or a spinal cord, you can't think, talk, walk, whatever. You can't function. It's the only organ in your body that's completely 100% encased in bone. It's your skull, your brain has is in your skull, and your spinal cord is in your vertebral column or your spinal column. So to be able to access it, you need to break bone. So makes it the most important organ of your body. Um, when you even at birth, there are things that happen where you can get some imbalances, um, muscular, ligamentous, tendinous imbalances, which cause misalignments in in your spine, um which then affect your nervous system directly by irritating the nerves that come out. You know, if you think of your spine as a breaker box uh with wires coming out, so in your neck, they'll go everywhere to your head, all the way to the tips of your fingers, your lower back, they go all the way down your legs to your toes, and then your torso, they go to the musculature in your torso or thoracic area, as well as the vital organs on the inside. So if you're irritating nerves that go to any one of those places, you can have issues not only with the musculoskeletal system, but wherever those wires go to. Nobody's saying, well, you have a problem in your thoracic, and um now you're gonna have a heart attack. That's not how it works. But again, the same wires that feed that heart, you you kind of want them to work 100% all of the time, not 60%. Yeah, you follow? So that's what we fix in chiropractic. We allow proper mobility in the spine to free up those nerves to do what they need to do 100% all of the time. So we're not curing you of anything, we're not we're just allowing your spine to operate to move well so that your spinal nerves can operate 100% all of the time.
Why Care Plans Aren’t Predictable
SPEAKER_02Training the body, can you hear me okay? I had a little bit of uh I hear you. Hold on one second for me. So Dr. Mark, so many, so many things that you say that you said there resonated with me. Like it never ceases to amaze me how fascinating the human body is. We talked about nervous system regulation. For me, I I I often do uh quite a bit of breath work and quite a bit of physical activity. Uh, I do lack in the mobility and the like the stretching, uh, and I've had a hard time continuing that and conditioning myself there. But I notice that I find it difficult to determine when I'm actually having an issue, right? When there's actually some kind of underlying problem versus my body, I call it maybe my bitch voice, right? Where it just tells me like the alarm bells go off because I'm training, maybe I'm running and I feel something in my knee, right? But is it really hurt? Or is it just my body, my mind screaming out saying, well, we don't want to run anymore, so we're gonna give you a phantom pain in your knee. And the more I focus on pain, the more I get caught in that thought loop, and the more the pain intensifies. When in reality, if I just focus on something else, often the pain just goes away. Like, how do you determine it whether there's an underlying issue there? Is that line completely blurred and it just goes back to you gotta have proper conditioning, you gotta do all the stretching, you gotta do all the things, all the mindset stuff, it all works together, and uh ultimately you know you'll have less of that if you do all these things.
Spine Mobility And The Nervous System
SPEAKER_00Well, I I do I do agree with you where you know um you may have some issues when you're starting to work out and you're not in shape, and you know, you have aches and pains everywhere, but pain is a signal that your body sends to you to let you know that there's something going on there, like it's not just a random thing, you know. The body will prevent actually will help prevent you from feeling anything, and usually by the time you do feel something, it's been going on for a while, and it's just going, Hey, I I know you want to do this, I know you want to start running, and but it there was something there that you I I kind of like prevented you from feeling, but now I can't because you're you want to do this intense stuff. Well, pay attention. So, yeah, it's a signal. It doesn't mean that you're in like that doesn't mean you have a massive problem, but that that's a signal to you to like get it checked, you know, something to just kind of pay get it evaluated, yeah. And yes, the chiropractors will evaluate um that as well, you know. And any symptom we're trained, uh you know, I said I I can I can go into how how you become a chiropractor. Um uh it's when I was when I was studying, I I had to do my bachelor's in medical, like in science. I had to have a science bachelor, and then I did my master's in neurophysiology, and then eventually uh I got myself into a five-year chiropractic program, and I got my doctorate. So we are trained uh to diagnose not only musculoskeletal issues, but um other issues, be it cardiovascular, uh pulmonary, renal. You know, we we can see those, and we have what we do at that point is we refer you out to the proper doctor, medical doctor, uh specialist, your primary care doctor, uh, to attend to those symptoms which are not related, let's say, to a musculoskeletal problem. So, yeah, to I was I guess it was kind of long-winded into telling telling you that the pain's a signal, so you just gotta pay attention to those. Um, and uh most likely, like you would probably imagine, uh, it'll be nothing really, or it'll be something minor that a little bit of treatment could just help keep move you along.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. More up more often than not, it's the the body just letting you know, like, hey, you need to pay a little bit more attention to this. Like, for instance, I just got back from uh from Argentina. I was in I went on a hiking trip in Patagonia. We did three days, we did a over a little over 36 miles, uh about 14,500 feet of elevation gain. And I don't, I mean, I trained a little bit, but I didn't train really hard going downhill, and my knees got completely trashed to the point where like I was questioning, I was like, did I actually damage my knees? I was on the plane coming home and I like I had to get up every hour or so because I had so much pain. Uh, thankfully, they're getting better. But again, that to me, that's like, okay, that's my body saying, all right, you need to work more on exercises regarding mobility and obviously strengthening and things like that. And and I think that for a lot of people, we have all the resources available nowadays, right? With with uh everything you need to know is available with AI. The problem, I think, with most people nowadays is just the accountability side, right? And being consistent in doing the work. Um, I know that's that's been a struggle for me doing these things every day, consistently, day in, day out. Any words of advice to someone like me out here who who again feels like they have the blueprint, so to speak, on what needs to be done. Um, but just kind of I almost feel like I need to go get a physical therapist or work with somebody that can guide me through to hold me accountable.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no. I mean, that that's obvious. I mean, the biggest issue is always well, I it's it's often an issue because again, you're an individual. I don't know how your body will respond to care. And that becomes an issue for every single individual because they're like, well, you know, you're telling me it's gonna take me about 10 visits to get better, right? And to get back to normal. And I I have to make all these visits, otherwise, I fall behind, and I you know, I have to be consistent, and it's gonna cost me this much XYZ to do so, and to maybe not have the results I want. It's it's a mindset, it's a way of thinking that you know, all of us, I mean, I was born in the 70s. It's like I'm of the old way of thinking until I got here, where it was like, you know, tell me how quickly I can get better. And it's just we've learned it's just not the way it works, it's it's really not. It's like I said earlier, it's it's you, it's you have to put the commitment in to getting better. I'm gonna tell you what, in my experience, having worked 25 years in chiropractic, I know what I've seen has worked. You're the one who has to take it upon yourself to follow my guidelines and then get better, have your body get better on its own. Embody the work, do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that's that's that's the thing I think, like across the board when it comes to the human condition that we all struggle with is just staying consistent, right? It's like you're we all have the expression new year, new me. You get a membership to the gym, you go, maybe you do a month, two months, three months, whatever it is, but inevitably something happens, life happens, and we get derailed and we fall off. I think the trick, I think it's gonna happen inevitably. The trick is how quickly could you get back on when you fall off and not allow it to pull you back and actually just recognize what it is, what it is, what it is, and just take it for what it's worth and just begin again and just start. Um yeah, no, I just read an just finished an excellent book by uh a guy I know named Manny Rosendo. It's called The Power of Starting, and it talks about these type these types of ideas and just getting going and stop getting in your head and just do take action, just move forward. No matter where you are, just begin. And that's what life is all about.
SPEAKER_00I I agree and I agree also. I I'd heard I don't know where I heard this, but um it sounds pretty uh trivial, I guess. But life is made to be lived. So, like, what are you waiting for? I I mean, and it really struck something with me because I was like, you know what? It it if you don't do it, what are you putting off? Like if you are injured, why are you putting it off? If you are feeling like something that you felt for a long time and you're not prioritizing, maybe ask yourself why you're not and get going. Start doing it because what's the point of sitting at home or just avoiding it? You it's it'll come out, it'll come out later. So, yeah, live live the life. I love it.
SPEAKER_02I'm getting the conversation is like jacking me up. I remember like I'm ready to finish this recording and go for a run, or just don't do something and just move my body and get going. Uh that that's one thing I've learned always. Uh, no matter where I'm at, like when I get stuck in my head, when I get uh anxious, whatever it is, like just move my body, right? Because sitting there and just sitting in that sometimes it freezes you. And then when you go and it's always you go to the gym, you exercise, whatever it is, whatever that looks like for you. When you just start moving and taking action, all of a sudden, uh the thoughts start rearranging in your head and magic starts happening.
SPEAKER_00Yes, it does.
When Pain Means Get Checked
SPEAKER_02So speak speaking of living your life, what do you like to do for fun when you're not working? What uh what are some of your hobbies, some of your passions in life?
SPEAKER_00Well, I'm originally from Montreal, Canada. Oh yeah, and um I played hockey my whole life, so I've been playing hockey since I was four, and so that's one of my hobbies. It's playing hockey.
SPEAKER_02You still have all your you still have your teeth all your teeth, I see.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I I was uh yeah, I had the mouth guards and everything inside, and you know, and I wasn't really a fighter on the ice, so I I was more of a I was usually the captain of my team, so you know, I didn't get into many fights. I was more a finesse player, let's put it that way. Yeah, yeah, I play at the Pines Ice Arena. Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So my son loves my son loves ice skating.
SPEAKER_00He's yeah, it's great whenever he can. It's it's great. That and then um I do enjoy uh my my other hobby, which is um working out. So I just that that's what I do for fun. For me, that's a lot of fun. Yeah. Um, I mean, and then obviously I have a 20 year old daughter and a 16 year old son, and uh since since I've been with my wife now for 30 years, uh, we do love uh Disney. So that's another hobby.
SPEAKER_02All the years you love Disney. No, no. Normally, see for me, every year 11 and 13 year old kids, they've already outgrown. I shouldn't say my son still goes to Disney from time to time, but they're not like they're not Disney. Yeah, and like um it's just not not my thing anymore. I don't know what it is, uh, but I know some people are like diehard Disney for life. Yeah, it's still fun. Don't get me wrong. It's weird.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I know it's a little bit weird. It's like a Disney adult, but my wife and I, it's just it's been it's been our life. I mean, you know, we used to travel down to Florida every year, um, and just come to the beaches and to come to to Disney. And then we, you know, it was 2008 when we moved here. So um uh, but like ever since then, we haven't stopped. You know, we were annual pass holders and we just go, so that's another see.
SPEAKER_02If you have the annual pass and you can go anytime makes sense. If you do like one-offs, it could be very, very pricey. It's super pricey. So, what's is is Disney the Magic Kingdom your favorite park, or which is your favorite?
SPEAKER_00Uh, I like Epcot. My wife's is Magic Kingdom.
SPEAKER_02I always say that I'll out of all of them, I enjoy Epcot the most. Yeah, I think they have a lot of really good food in the different food world sections. It's the reason I mean around a lot, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. It's the shocking part to me like like like Disney just does it all so well, but they're they're still terrible at the food, unless you go to Epcot.
SPEAKER_02Unless you go to Epcot, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, I'm I'm I'm a fan. Yeah, so out of all of them, I I agree Epcot is the way to go for sure.
SPEAKER_00Um maybe if I yeah, go ahead. No, no, please, F you Well, I just wanted to tell you why it is that I am a chiropractor, and um uh I became a chiropractor because the chiropractor is the only person that helped me get over my neck pain. So I I was in an accident when I was 18 years old. It was pretty bad. Um I got hit from behind, it was like over 60 miles an hour, so the whiplash was just insane. Um, but being a hockey player, I didn't get any treatment. Um, I just popped pills just so that I could keep skating and playing. Um seven years go by and I I've just got chronic neck pain, just never going away. So I end up seeing one of my best friends became a chiropractor. Like he was a couple years older than I was, and uh, so I went into his office and he x-rayed me, and we found that my neck was arthritic to the point of uh of having a neck that looked like an 85-year-old man's neck.
SPEAKER_02Ouch.
Consistency, Accountability, And Starting Again
SPEAKER_00And I was 25. So um at that point, for me, it was there's no such thing as getting rid of all of the pain because you you're not gonna go in there and chisel away the arthritic changes that occurred, but you can maintain the proper mobility of the spine and reduce that pain. So for me, instead of having a constant four or five or six out of ten every day, it was down to you know where it is now, about a one or two out of ten. But that's chiropractic that did that for me, not medical, you know, like not pills or anti-inflammatory medication that will just mask the pain. So I ended up, let's say, kind of fixing my my issue uh with chiropractic. And so that's what got me into uh studying chiropractic and becoming a chiropractor.
SPEAKER_02So so great. Thanks for sharing that. I actually meant to ask you that when we were talking earlier and I glossed over it. Some some interviewer I am, right? Um but it's I know joking. So I often find that with a lot of professionals where they have a life experience, something that touched them deeply that got them into their profession. And when you can enter a profession from that lens, uh really does change the whole perspective because you know something like that touched you on a deep level, and then you're out there trying to help people through similar issues. So that's really special then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you'll find that normally, like whatever chiropractor you go see, is it's usually the case. Like most of us, it's always been an experience we had when we were younger with a chiropractor, and then it just made us want to uh share it and study it and do it ourselves to help others. It's it's um, you know, I mean, it's a beautiful thing, man. Pan it is a nice thing, it is a nice thing. It's great.
SPEAKER_02So, for anyone out there that's listening, that maybe they're struggling, maybe they got uh some pesky back pain, maybe they're just not feeling well uh from a mobility standpoint. What is the best way to connect with you? I know you mentioned your location, but please tell us again where you're at, uh, maybe your website, your contact information, however you would like people to reach out, please check out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, I'm um I'm in that. Uh if you know where in Davy, where Griffin University is, it's like right next to Cooper City. Um, it's in the Publix Plaza, right next to uh like there's a Starbucks, um, there's the big whiskey restaurant. I'm right there in that plaza, right next to the podiatrist and the UPS store.
SPEAKER_02So shout out to Dr. Shout out to Dr. Lauren to Baccaro.
SPEAKER_00Debacarov, she's fantastic. She's phenomenal number one. She's amazing, super nice lady, too.
SPEAKER_02I actually do a podcast, I do a podcast with her.
Hockey, Working Out, And Disney
His Crash And Why Chiropractic Worked
SPEAKER_00Oh, amazing. She's she's just so great. She she's full of knowledge. Um, yeah, and then you can also go to my website, which is uh uh arrowhealth broward.com. I'm you know it is being updated, but you can still find me there, arrow ar o w healthbroward.com. And they can also call me at 954-832-3500. Um they and they can reach me anytime because uh when I'm not in the office, that just gets directed to my personal cell. So they can catch me anytime uh at that number and I'll answer. Um yeah, so you know I I can't you I never talk. I a lot of people ask me, like, what do you specialize in? There's there's no specialties necessarily in chiropractic, like it's not the way it works. You know, some guys study more, uh, let's say they get certifications in X-ray or or radiology. Some of them get neurology special spec certifications. Um, but chiropractic is not, there's no such thing as a um uh like the you know, you see a neurologist, you see a renologist, you see a uh nephrologist, you see uh uh cardiologist. We have certifications in those areas. So I'm really a general chiropractor. I have obviously I have a a little bit more uh uh of a let's say certification or specialty in the neurological side because I did my master's in neurophysiology before ever doing my chiropractic. But we are all trained for the whole body and all the systems. Um I see a lot of since I've been practicing down here, I see a lot of car accident victims. Victims, I mean that have pain, not that have died. But uh yeah, so I I I do see a lot of them. I I see a lot of walk-in patients, cash patients. Um and I also uh have a let's say we'll call it a certification in um what we call hypothalamic reset. What is that? It's a technique that some chiropractors use. So the hypothalamus is the brain inside your brain, it's like the control center that regulates everything that comes out of your right and left brain and goes to the rest of your body to operate all of the sim systems. But if your right and left brain aren't communicating properly because of a problem with the hypothalamus, um, there's a technique in chiropractic uh that addresses that. And obviously it's not invasive, um, it involves muscle testing. And um, but if anybody's interested in that um and finding out more about that, they can call me and um I can set them up and have them be seen. Um but it's just another level that I add to treating the body as a whole.
SPEAKER_02All right, very cool. We will we will, of course, drop a link in the description below to all of your contact information. So anyone out there that's listening that wants to reach out can do so. And as always, if you found this conversation useful, appreciate everybody for joining us. Don't forget to like, subscribe, let us know your thoughts if we missed anything, if you've had any of your own experiences, let us know about it in the comments. We'd love to hear your feedback. Until next time, everyone, take care. We appreciate you joining us, and we will catch you next time in the next episode of the Good Neighbor Podcast. Dr. Mark, it's a pleasure. Have a great day, brother. Pleasure. Thank you very much, Jeremy. Of course.
Contact Info And Closing Requests
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