Koch Natural Health
May 31, 2012 04:39PM ● By Beth Davis
Since opening his private practice 25 years ago in Elm Grove, chiropractor Dr. Dennis Koch has focused on natural health care. Believing in the chiropractic philosophy that the body has the innate ability to heal itself, he is passionate about helping and empowering patients to increase their health potential and enhance their overall quality of life—and it shows. Throughout his career, he has studied and observed thousands of patients and woven together the most effective components of dozens of chiropractic techniques, the principles of acupuncture, nutrition, mind/body and other natural healing methods into a unique, natural healing and health-maintenance system.
With such dedication to helping others, it comes as no surprise that his son, Alex Koch, was inspired to follow in his dad’s footsteps. “Growing up with a chiropractor for a dad, I got to see many people feel better and appear happier with natural treatments and was fascinated by it,” explains Alex. He decided to enter the natural healthcare field to study acupuncture. While in college, however, he discovered that his true passion was for nutrition.
“I found that nutrition is a critical and immensely powerful way to support health and healing,” he says. “I saw time and time again that I could do many good things to improve my health—such as relax, exercise or get more sleep—but until I learned to eat real food, I never felt as good as I could.”
Four years ago, the father-and-son duo formed Koch Natural Health, in Elm Grove, where they offer a variety of healing methods and modalities designed to help people regain and maintain health. “Our whole emphasis is to allow the body to heal itself; that is the underlying philosophy,” notes Alex. “Our patients come in with various symptoms such as chronic pain, headaches, every kind of digestive problem and hormonal imbalances, but the goal remains the same: help people to get healthier and improve their overall function. We emphasize improving health, rather than diagnosing or treating disease.”
He says that although five people may come in with the same problem, it’s important to find the individual root cause of each one, so it can be treated properly. “Those five people may have five different causes for the same problem, and require five different treatment methods in order to get well,” explains Alex. “Everybody is different. People need individualized care, specific to their unique health challenges.” With that in mind, the Kochs focus on gentle, non-invasive ways of analyzing the body to determine what is creating an imbalance, and then prepare an individualized treatment or recommendation, based on their findings.
What many people don’t realize, he adds, is that most symptoms are actually caused by food sensitivities, environmental toxins and accumulated stress (or some combination of the three); therefore, the potential for better health is there through making dietary changes, cleaning out toxins and helping the body recover from stress.
“I have found that a vital missing link in restoring health is first to restore well-being,” notes Dennis. “Well-being is a steady state of inner content, happiness and fulfillment, in spite of the challenges that come and go throughout life. Chronic, ongoing stress, along with past, unrecovered stress stuck in the body and mind—often subconsciously—will rob us of our natural state of well-being and eventually cause a loss of health.”
Also offered is Nutrition Response Testing (NRT), a non-invasive system of analyzing the body to determine the underlying causes of ill or non-optimum health. According to Alex, NRT works because it gets the patient’s body in a better position to heal from the inside out. “It allows the practitioner to quickly and accurately find where the problem is, what is causing the problem, and what specific dietary change or specific whole-food supplementation is needed to handle the problem,” he says. “Given the right support, the body is able to recover on its own from many health problems.”
As an acupuncturist and nutritionist, Alex believes much of the suffering and disease people experience can be greatly alleviated and prevented with the proper understanding and commitment to diet and lifestyle. In addition to NRT, he uses unique dietary approaches and a modern understanding of acupuncture to help patients achieve optimal health naturally.
He explains that although acupuncture has been effective for thousands of years, it has only been in the past 20 years or so that we have been able to actually see with modern technology what acupuncture does in the body. “We now know that acupuncture affects the nervous system and how the brain regulates pain and healing throughout the body,” Alex says. “Acupuncture offers a safe alternative to chronic muscle tension and pain, and best of all, like all the natural therapies we use, there are no negative side effects from treatment—just improved health.”
Koch Natural Health is located at 1055 Legion Dr., Elm Grove. For more information, call 262-784-8232 or visit KochNaturalHealth.com.
