Meet Dr. Justin Hunter
Naperville native. Chiropractor for over 20 years. The only provider you will see at Pure Health & Wellness.
A Naperville kid who came home
I was born at Edwards Hospital. My dad was a Naperville fireman for 30 years, and I grew up at 95th and Book back when that part of town was still cornfields. We would ride our bikes into downtown as kids. My mom did her grocery shopping at Cee Bee's, and I would wander down Jefferson on my own, stopping at Oswald's for candy and the City Meat Market for a slice of bologna. Naperville was a small town then. In a lot of ways, it still feels like one.
When I opened my practice, there was not room for me in downtown Naperville, so I started out in Woodridge at Seven Bridges. About ten years in, the right space opened up here on Jefferson, across the street from Nichols Library and three doors down from where Lou Malnati's now sits. That building used to be a firehouse. My dad worked out of it. I played on that lawn as a kid. Coming back here to practice felt less like a business decision and more like coming home.
How I ended up doing this
I never planned on being a chiropractor. My undergrad is in graphic design, cum laude, from Bradley University. I wanted to be a Disney animator. I spent a year at Andersen Consulting in downtown Chicago after I graduated, hated it, and decided to go back to school to become a doctor. I went to DePaul for the science prerequisites, thinking I would go MD or PT.
Then I hurt myself working out, and nothing helped. I saw MDs. I saw PTs. Nothing worked. My mom kept telling me to try a chiropractor. I told her chiropractors were a bunch of quacks. She wore me down. I went kicking and screaming. Three or four weeks later, he had me fixed. He is the one who eventually talked me into going to chiropractic school myself. I ended up at Palmer College in Davenport, Iowa. I opened my practice as Hunter Family Chiropractic. Today it is called Pure Health & Wellness, but it is the same practice with the same doctor.
The week after I proposed, a phone call changed everything.
The week after I proposed to my fiancée in Jamaica, I got a phone call from my doctor that I tried to send to voicemail. He called five more times. I had an acoustic neuroma. A brain tumor. The most common kind, mostly benign, but still a brain tumor.
I had headaches and neck pain for months and ignored them. The hardest part was not the diagnosis. It was driving home that night and telling the woman I had just proposed to. She married me anyway.
I named the tumor Doug. You have to find some humor in something like that. Surgery was about six months later. I lost hearing in one ear and have a scar to show for it.
When a patient walks through my door in pain, I know what that pain feels like from the inside. I know what it feels like to be scared and to want someone to actually listen.
A couple years into practice, an older woman walked into my office, looked around, and said, "This is where I need to be." She was deeply religious and would quietly recite scripture while I treated her, every visit, for years. She shaped how I think about this work as much as Doug did. Treating someone the way you would want to be treated yourself is not a tagline. It is the whole job.
How sports became part of what I do
I see everyone. Kids, moms, dads, families, grandparents, weekend warriors, college athletes. Most of what walks through my door is back pain, neck pain, shoulders, hips, knees, the wear and tear that comes from bodies being used. That is the bread and butter of the clinic, and I love every part of it.
Sports just happened to become a bigger piece of what I do over the years. A pitching coach walked into my office one day and asked me to fix his back. He taught kids how to pitch out of his basement. Once I had him patched up, he started sending me his players. Little leaguers first, then high schoolers, then college athletes, then a handful of pros. Between his knowledge of throwing mechanics and my background in biomechanics, we figured out how to keep his pitchers from breaking down before they had a career. I have worked with players from the White Sox, Rangers, Indians, an NFL player from the Patriots, and a few Bears.
For years I have been the sideline trainer for the Naperville North girls field hockey team and I work with Canes Baseball, a local travel program. The kids working hard to make varsity or chase a college scholarship are some of my favorite patients. They show up, they do the work, and they want to get back on the field. But I would just as soon spend an hour figuring out why a 60-year-old cannot lift his grandkid without his shoulder lighting up. The diagnostic work is the same. The reward is too.
What I am trained to do
Sport-focused chiropractic physician
Two decades of practice built around how bodies actually move and break down.
Diplomate, Chiropractic Board of Clinical Nutrition
Over 900 hours of additional coursework on top of my chiropractic degree.
Certified in Veterinary Spinal Manipulative Therapy
I do not do much animal work now, but it shaped how I think about biomechanics in any species.
Most of what I do day to day is what you would expect from a chiropractor with two decades of practice. The practice also offers physical therapy, clinical nutrition guidance, and acupuncture with a licensed associate by appointment.
You get me. The whole appointment, every appointment.
I do the listening, the exam, the adjustment, the soft tissue work, the stretching, the rehab. There is no tech. There is no handoff to an assistant. There is no other chiropractor you will see next time. It is just me.
Most chiropractic offices run patients through a quick adjustment and out the door, or park them in a room to do exercises alone. That is not how this works. Your first visit takes about an hour. I listen to your story first. Then we do a real exam. Then I tell you what I think is going on, what I think we need to do, and we start treating the same day. No coming back for a second appointment just to hear results. No mystery.
I want you to leave knowing what is wrong and what we are doing about it.
A little about home
My wife Ann and I have a daughter who dives competitively for Naperville North and the UIC Windy City Program. She trains four times a week in the city. Our two dogs, Ruger and Luca, run the house. We are a Disney family.
Ready to figure out what is actually going on?
If you have been through other doctors and other treatments and you are still not better, I want to hear your story. Book a first visit and let us figure it out together.
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