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ATLAS HEALTH AND WELLNESS STORY

Our purpose is to empower individual independence in the restoration and preservation of personal health and wellness including the physical, the psychological, and the social wellbeing.

Atlas Health and Wellness was created to empower those individuals that hold the world on their shoulders. Whether that be a mom of 3 kids, the individual that works 40 plus hours a week to see their business succeed, or the athlete that wants the full ride on an athletic scholarship.

At AH&W we are committed to using cutting edge technology and research in the field of Physical Therapy to address movement impairments that limit your ability to do the things you love. We have the ability to prevent injuries from developing as well as enhancing your performance and objectively measuring your progress.

Image by Victor Freitas

WHY ATLAS HEALTH AND WELLNESS?

At some point in our lives we as individuals decide to make a positive change in our lives to live healthier more personally gratifying lifestyle because we have often neglected our personal wellbeing for very good reasons. These reasons can range from starting/raising a family, pursuing a career, running/starting a small business, increasing our financial stability, and selflessly serving others that we love and cherish. By the time we decide to invest in our personal health we have neglected our personal health for years, and perhaps even decades. In most cases individuals seek personal training and fitness gurus to achieve said goals but often these individuals lack the expertise to ensure a client achieves their personal goals. While some may be successful at running their first marathon, or shedding 20 pounds to fit in that dress from 20 years ago, but it all comes at an unnecessary cost to our bodies in the form of degenerative joint disease and musculoskeletal injuries that further hamper the initial goal of living a healthier lifestyle. 

In the last few decades, the medical model for health care has changed significantly, especially in the prevention of cardiovascular disease. Insurance companies realized that annual medical physicals helped lower the cost associated with individuals who suffer heart attacks, cancer, and metabolic diseases like diabetes. However, Physical Medicine has not evolved in the arena of prevention or promoting an individual’s physical health. At this point in time, insurance companies do not see the value in preventing things like knee arthritis or back pain despite the massive cost to our healthcare system. This type of short sited thinking by providers and insurers leads to the unnecessary pain and suffering of individuals that are actively trying to try to live a healthier lifestyle.

AH&W is here to ensure you can safely and objectively reach your personal fitness and wellness goals. If you have the willpower to commit to the path less travelled AH&W is committed to empower you to reach the end of that path and share in the celebration of your personal achievements. AH&W will remove all the guess work of perfecting your personal health and be your personal guide to wellness.

The industry of Personal Training might advertise that they do “fitness evaluation” but they lack standardization in training/education that all Licensed Physical Therapists must receive to practice within the profession. Despite Personal Trainers being well intentioned and full of motivational energy they do not have the education, nor do they use or publish peer reviewed evidence-based research in human movement that is necessary to guide them in “training” you to reach your fitness and wellness goals. 

Physical Therapists are THE experts in human movement from birth to grave and are extraordinarily qualified to guide you in health and wellness goals. Why don’t you see many Physical Therapists offering health and wellness services? Like most health care professionals, they are “addicted” to insurance reimbursement to generate revenue, but such services are only covered when an individual has been injured and insurance companies including Medicare do not pay to prevent injuries from occurring nor do they pay for you to improve level of musculoskeletal health or fitness despite being trained to provide those services. More and more we have seen the best Medical Doctors refuse to take insurances including Medicare due to the rationing of care and the dilution in the quality of care due to dropping reimbursement rates. The Physical Therapists at Atlas Health and Wellness refuse to provide substandard care, and are breaking away from the “status quo” to ensure consumers like you have a choice in the quality and the type of care you receive. 

Atlas Health and Wellness was created to redefine the industry of health and fitness and to empower the consumer to gain, keep, and improve their health via the experts in human movement.

OUR TEAM

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DR. DAVID J HARTWIG D.P.T., P.T.

Doctor of Physical Therapy

Dr. David J. Hartwig is the founder and CEO of Atlas Health and Wellness. David received his B.S. in Organismal Biology at Salisbury University in Maryland and later attended the University of Maryland’s Eastern Shore where he earned his Doctorate in Physical Therapy in 2010.


Over the last 12 years he has been working towards mastering the art of rehabilitation of appendicular and axial musculoskeletal disorders. Dr. Hartwig was inspired to become a Physical Therapist when he was 19 and working in Brick Bodies Health Clubs in Baltimore, Maryland. After receiving his Doctorate in Physical Therapy and working in outpatient Physical Therapy for several years he realized that many of his patients wanted to progress towards weight loss and fitness goals, but insurance did not pay for improving the lives of his patients. Unsurprisingly, his employers were more interested in maximizing insurance reimbursements than they were in facilitating his patient’s long-term health or wellness even if the demand was there.

While living in Illinois with his future wife the Covid-19 pandemic began and was forced out of work in 2020 due to the lockdowns and the couple fled to the great state of Florida in January of 2021. After arriving in Florida his employment and livelihood were threatened yet again due to the Federal Mandates placed on health care providers to take experimental vaccinations to maintain employment. Dissatisfied and disenfranchised by the health care systems and the perversion of the public health system he decided that he could no longer in good faith participate in private or public insurance based Physical Therapy services as the system was antithetical to the very concept of health and evidence-based practices.  

 Dr. Hartwig opened Atlas Health and Wellness in July of 2022 to provide consumers with services they deserved and a service he could be proud of rendering. Dr. Hartwig set out to redefine the concept of health and wellness by providing highly skilled one on one Physical Therapy services to both patients with active inflammatory problems that impair movement as well as empowering patients to get fit, improve performance, and prevent injuries using evidence-based practices in the field of human movement.

Dr. Hartwig and his amazingly talented wife Anna also teach the social dance known as Lindy Hop (aka East Coast Swing) as well as hosting social dancing events. Dr. Hartwig met his wife through dancing and they both share the conviction that social dancing promotes physical, social, and psychological wellbeing that is second to none and hope to share it with the Treasure Coast and beyond.

WELCOME TO THE REVOLUTION

What is Atlas Health and Wellness? A message from Dr. David J. Hartwig DPT, CEO.

WARNING!

This link is only for those fearless in the seeking of truth......

Listening to the Podcast that we have linked below may cause you to question the entire medical system, pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, and government organizations we have entrusted with our wellbeing.

MISSION STATEMENT

Our purpose is to empower individual independence in the restoration and preservation of physical,  psychological, and social wellbeing needed to achieve a happy and fulfilling life and to connect them with a community of people with the same moral ambitions.

CORE VALUES

RATIONALITY

•“a commitment to the principle that all of one’s convictions, values, goals, desires and actions must be based on, derived from, chosen and validated by a process of thought—as precise and scrupulous a process of thought, directed by as ruthlessly strict an application of logic, as one’s fullest capacity permits.”-Ayn Rand

INDEPENDENCE

The virtue of using your individual mind, and your sovereign conscious judgment to think, and act on the objective facts of reality.

OBJECTIVITY

“Is a fundamental, self-evident truth… that identify the precondition of knowledge: the distinction between existence and consciousness, between reality and the awareness of reality, between the object and the subject of cognition. Axiomatic concepts are the foundation of objectivity.”- Ayn Rand

PRIDE

“the recognition of the fact that you are your own highest value and, like all of man’s values, it has to be earned—that of any achievements open to you, the one that makes all others possible is the creation of your own character”-Ayn Rand

HONESTY

The moral conviction to acknowledge reality as real and that objective facts are immutable. A personal commitment to adhere to reality and never evade, never fail to correct contradiction, and to maintain an active mind that is committed to maintaining personal integrity.

INTEGRITY

Is a moral conviction to stay true to one’s values. It is a policy of upholding one's values and translating them into reality regardless of opposition or threat from opposing parties.

PRODUCTIVITY

”is the process by which man’s consciousness controls his existence, a constant process of acquiring knowledge and shaping matter to fit one’s purpose, of translating an idea into physical form, of remaking the earth in the image of one’s values”- Ayn Rand

CREATIVITY

“the power to bring into existence an arrangement (or combination or integration) of natural elements that had not existed before. (This is true of any human product, scientific or esthetic: man’s imagination is nothing more than the ability to rearrange the things he has observed in reality.)” – Ayn Rand

INDIVIDUALISM

“-every man-as an independent, sovereign entity who possesses an inalienable right to his own life, a right derived from his nature as a rational being”.- Ayn Rand

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