How SoftWave Therapy Changed Dr. Jim Hankinson's Practice

Most people picture "shockwave therapy" as a single generic treatment. For Dr. Jim Hankinson, DC — who has practiced chiropractic in the Kirkwood and St. Louis, Missouri area for more than 25 years — one specific device, SoftWave, became the biggest change to his practice in a quarter-century of treating pain. He joined Mark Anthony on this episode to explain why: not as someone selling a machine he read about, but as a patient who used it to get his own shoulder back before he ever brought it into his office.

Hankinson's path into chiropractic started at 14, after a chiropractor got him back to pitching in a tournament within days when nothing else had worked. In his early 20s he herniated a disc in his lower back badly enough that a surgeon offered to schedule surgery without reviewing his MRI or examining him — he resolved it instead with six weeks of chiropractic care and never looked back. That experience sent him to Logan College of Chiropractic, and by the time of this conversation he had spent more than two decades serving the St. Louis region, most recently adding SoftWave alongside his chiropractic practice.

From a Torn Shoulder to a SoftWave Practice: Dr. Hankinson's Own Story

Hankinson's own introduction to SoftWave came through injury, not marketing. A lifetime of car, motorcycle, and bicycle accidents — including one in his teens that damaged the nerves around his shoulder — eventually caught up with him: an MRI showed a torn labrum and a torn supraspinatus muscle, with weakness in his arm severe enough that he couldn't sleep on his left side at all. Three rounds of cortisone injections and several rounds of PRP (platelet-rich plasma) helped only a little. His surgeon told him the cortisone shots couldn't continue without damaging the cartilage further and recommended an aggressive surgery that would keep him — a self-employed provider — off work for six to nine months.

Researching alternatives, Hankinson connected with Kyle Bowers, a national trainer for SoftWave, who told him it wouldn't fix the tear outright but would decrease inflammation and pain, increase mobility, and increase blood supply — Hankinson cited a figure of up to 300%. He also watched footage of a plastic surgeon in Georgia using SoftWave to help a diabetic patient avoid a foot amputation (more on that case below), which he described as the deciding factor. He bought a SoftWave machine in November 2023, ran ten treatments on himself by the end of that year, and was able to sleep on his left side again. Two years and roughly ten to twelve follow-up treatments later, he has full range of motion in the shoulder and is back in the gym — without a repeat MRI to check on the original tear, since he says the pain that would have prompted one simply isn't there anymore.

How SoftWave Works, and the Protocol Behind It

Hankinson described SoftWave as using a high-frequency acoustic soundwave — traveling into the body at roughly 3,500 miles per hour and penetrating about three inches deep — that reaches bone and activates what he called "dormant" stem cells there to help regenerate damaged tissue from the inside out, while decreasing swelling and pain and increasing blood supply.

New patients start with a "mapping out," or discovery, session, since patients typically feel a specific discomfort — self-rated between a 4 and a 6 out of 10 — right at the site of damaged tissue during treatment, which tells Hankinson where to focus future sessions. From there, his standard protocol is twice a week for two weeks, then once a week for four weeks, followed by two follow-up sessions about a month apart, adjusted per patient and condition. He listed the conditions he has personally treated with the device: TMJ, cervical and lumbar spine issues including disc problems, frozen shoulder and rotator cuff tears, tennis and golfer's elbow, plantar fasciitis, carpal tunnel, hip bursitis, and knee pain — in addition to the neuropathy cases discussed below.

Patient Outcomes Discussed in the Episode

Hankinson pointed to a 90-year-old patient with bone-on-bone knee arthritis whose surgeon had recommended a knee replacement. Instead, she did a full SoftWave program — an initial mapping session plus 10 additional sessions — and went from a self-reported pain level of 8 to a 1. At an 18-month follow-up, he said, she still reported no knee pain. He also described a runner who tore her hamstring mid-treatment during marathon training; after an aggressive course of SoftWave, she completed the marathon pain-free and the hamstring healed. Another patient who could raise his arm only to about 60 degrees regained full range of motion after a single treatment — more improvement, Hankinson said, than a year of physical therapy had produced — though that patient chose not to continue with SoftWave care afterward. Closer to home, Hankinson has used the device on his wife for plantar fasciitis, with what he called tremendous improvement, and on his 27-year-old son's bunion, which brings about 10 days of relief per session. He also mentioned that Dr. Joshua, an associate at his practice, treated a woman whose range of motion changed so much after one session that she broke down in tears.

On neuropathy specifically, Hankinson said the practice has treated about six patients in two years, all with type 2 diabetes, each of whom regained some sensation in their feet — improvement he estimated ranging from roughly 20% to 80% depending on the patient. Those treatments target the low back, the bottoms of the feet, the lower calf, and the ankle area to increase blood supply, alongside red light therapy and a vibration plate used on-site for the same purpose. Across the practice as a whole, Hankinson estimated close to 1,000 patients have gone through SoftWave treatment in the roughly two years since he bought the machine, with upwards of 95% reporting improvement.

Referral Pushback, Cost, and Getting Started

Despite those results, Hankinson said he hasn't seen many referrals from orthopedic surgeons, pain management doctors, or even his own primary care physician. He recounted bringing a brochure to an orthopedic surgeon who had previously given him cortisone shots, only to be asked, "So you're going to take my business from me?"

On the practical side: insurance does not currently cover SoftWave, though patients can generally use HSA or FSA funds, with the office providing documentation for reimbursement. Treatment plans are typically sold as packages of 8 or 10 sessions, and a single knee treatment runs about five minutes using roughly 500 soft waves. New patients can call the office or sign up through the practice's Facebook or Instagram ads; the first visit includes paperwork, a consultation about the problem's history, an exam, and — if needed — an on-site X-ray, followed by a walk-around before and after treatment so patients can gauge the difference themselves. SoftWave now makes up roughly 40% of the practice's volume alongside chiropractic care, Hankinson said, and on some days he sees more SoftWave patients than chiropractic ones.

Who This Conversation Is For

If you've been told surgery is your only remaining option — for a shoulder, knee, hip, or a nerve issue like neuropathy — or you're simply managing chronic pain and wondering what else is out there, this episode is a plain-language look at one chiropractor's non-surgical alternative, told by someone who tried it on himself before he ever offered it to a patient.