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Minnesotan To Meet: Dr. Josh Sandell

MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – When your car needs a tune-up, you take it to a mechanic. When you need a tune-up, you head to the doctor.

But when a professional athlete needs a tune-up, it's sometimes a little more complicated than that.

That's where Dr. Josh Sandell comes in. He combines physical therapy with chiropractic work.

His unique approach and dedication to helping people is what makes Sandell a Minnesotan to Meet.

When you walk into Orthology in Eden Prairie you might just run into a pro-football player, like Matt Kalil of the Vikings!

"He's always trying to find a way to make it better," Kalil said. "Make it so you don't feel pain."

Sandell knows sports injuries. He dislocated his knee playing football at University of Minnesota in Duluth.

"[I] ended up having four surgeries and months and months of rehab after that," Sandell said.

It's how he became passionate about treatment while studying human biology and sports physiology.

That's when he was introduced to a chiropractor.

It lead to Sandell developing his own practice of working on the nervous system, the muscle system and the skeletal system all at the same time, instead of just surgery or just physical therapy.

"I wasn't taught this, so I had to develop it," Sandell said. "It was a little trial and error."

He opened his first multi-faceted practice 15 years ago. After treating Larry Fitzgerald, word of mouth spread between other pros.

Now, he's up to more than 500 pro athlete patients. Proving the methods work, even if the process is hard!

But Sandell will say his greatest achievement was Whistler Olympics 2010, where he worked with Lindsey Vonn.

"You have these athletes working for four years for one day on the biggest stage competition in the world," Sandell said. "I still getting goosebumps. It was the most amazing experience of my life."

Sandell said he thrives on pressure and looks at the athletes like his own kids.

"That's their livelihood. That's how they make a living, that's how they feed their family," he said.

"We make fun of him because he's so good at his job. We'll be here for three-and-a-half hours because he's not going to let us leave until it's 100 percent perfect," Kalil said.

He now has an exclusive agreement to treat the Minnesota Vikings.

"They're the most difficult patients given their size, the volume and intensity of their word load," Sandell said.

He is a doctor with a sense of humor. But when he's not getting to the bottom of patient's problems, he's a parent.

"He's a smart boy. I'm really proud of him," Sandell said.

He's a single dad to 8-year-old Grant.

His method is showing such good results that more Orthology clinics are opening up on the east coast. There are 20 in fact.

But since he grew up in Minnesota, he plans to stay here.

Orthology, if you're wondering, is a combination of two words. "Ortho" for Orthopedics and "thology" means the science of or study of.

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