John Pietila, DC, DACNB, FACFN
The NeuroTarget System was developed by Dr. John Pietila who is a doctor of chiropractic, has a diplomate of the American Chiropractic Neurology Board, and is a Fellow of the American College of Functional Neurology. He is one of only a few Chiropractic Neurologists and was the first DACNB in Minnesota. His unusual background is what lead him to invent and develop the NeuroTarget System. It started for him in undergraduate school at Bemidji State University where he excelled as a track and field athlete. He has been in chiropractic practice since 2002 working with athletes of all levels and types of injuries. He also was a track coach for St. Catherine University, the Academy of Holy Angles, and Minneapolis South High School. From 2009 - 2014 he worked on the medical staff of Fiorentina, a professional soccer team in Florence, Italy, where he had huge success implementing the NeuroTarget System for injury prevention and accelerated injury recovery. He was so successful that he was asked to join the Italian National Soccer team for the Confederations Cup in 2013 and then again in 2014 for the World Cup in Brazil.
His basic idea was to look at the function of all the different parts of the nervous system. Not looking for lesions like a normal neurologist, but looking for slight differences between the right and left. Parts that are working normally, but aren't 100% balanced with the opposite side of the nervous system. He uses the example of writing your name with the right hand and then the left hand. Both names don't look exactly the same, there is nothing wrong with one of your hands because it is normal. But, it is not balanced. It is this slight imbalance, which is caused by a slight imbalance in the nervous system that leads to loss of stabilization of joints and eventually injury. Correcting these slight imbalances removes the cause of the injury and can prevent an injury from occurring.
He believes that all injuries are caused by an inability to absorb force properly. Simply put, force is constantly entering our bodies and should be absorbed and mitigated by our muscles. As long as this process happens we can continue our activities with no problems. The problem begins when force enters our body and is not absorbed by our muscles. This force is allowed to transfer away from the muscle and enter into surrounding tissue, such as a tendon, ligament, cartilage, meniscus, labrum or a disc in the back. These structures are not primary force absorbing structures and force entering into them causes them to become injured. It may be a small injury such as tendonitis, or a big injury like a disc herniation or ruptured ligament. Either way, the cause was unabsorbed force entering the injured tissue.