Welcome to Suncoast Chiropractic & Wellness Center

Before chiropractic, Dr. Tom spent many years as an athletic trainer — working with high school, college, university and semi-professional teams, and in the clinical setting side by side with physical therapists. He was the one who ran onto the field when someone went down.

After several years in that work, he took a look at chiropractic. It redirected his career entirely. He enrolled at Parker College of Chiropractic in Dallas — now Parker University — one of the most prestigious chiropractic schools in the United States.

That was twenty-six years ago, and he is still adding to it every day.

Dr. Tom began his chiropractic career not in Florida but in Lima, Peru, where he stayed more than six years and ran two large offices. Chiropractic was rare enough there that he was one of only a handful of chiropractors in the entire country, and the demand showed it — he adjusted more than a hundred patients a day, six days a week. Some patients rode a bus for more than twenty-four hours to reach him.

His patients spanned the whole of that society. They included the Vice President of Peru and members of his family, a former Miss Peru, and several internationally known radio hosts. They also included thousands of children living in orphanages. He arranged shoes for more than 8,000 children, many of whom had never owned a pair.

And not everyone paid in money. More than once he was paid in chickens, or in ceviche. He has never once told that story with anything but affection.

After those years abroad, Dr. Tom returned to the Tampa Bay area and has been here ever since. Across his career he has now cared for well over 15,000 patients. He stopped counting a long time ago.

Dr. Tom has practiced functional medicine for over fifteen years. Functional medicine is a way of looking at the body by using lab tests to uncover and restore function, to address the underlying root causes that are driving many of today’s degenerative disease processes — instead of suppressing symptoms that are being caused by the disease.

He loves it because it turns the body into a puzzle full of self-healing pieces that, when caught early, can oftentimes recuperate — rather than a set of broken pieces that must be modified or removed as the system continues to deteriorate.

The nervous system is a key component to this type of work, because it is the master system that controls all other systems of the body.

If you have questions about functional medicine, ask him. It is one of his favorite conversations to have.

Dr. Tom worked alongside Dr. Michael Bennett, the founder of Suncoast Chiropractic, for seven years before taking over the practice.

He does not take that lightly. This practice was Dr. Bennett’s pride and joy, built over a career, and Dr. Tom considers it a genuine blessing to have earned the trust to carry it forward — and to care for the patients who have been coming through these doors for years.

Ask Dr. Tom what matters most and there is no pause at all: family. Everything else arranges itself around it.

He and Laura are the proud parents of three grown sons, two of whom went into emergency service:

His mother was a schoolteacher, and for a stretch of his childhood she was his schoolteacher. She was taken by cancer many years ago.

His father and stepmother proudly live in Plain City, Ohio.

His sister and her family live in Kentucky with their three grown children. Her husband is an award-winning robotics instructor.

Home is nearly three acres in Dade City, shared with three dogs and several dozen chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese. It is a full, noisy, well-fed sort of place.

As for Crystal River, he is fond of it for the same reason a lot of people are — the people, and the pace. The laid-back atmosphere here suits him, and it suits the way he likes to practice.