Dr. James Amato, or Dr. Jim as he is called by patients, joined The Joint Chiropractic family in 2018 and splits time as local chiropractor for the Glendale North and Pasadena East locations. A graduate of San Jose State with a degree in math, he also studied music before getting his doctorate from Los Angeles Chiropractic College in 1979.
“The best thing about being in the chiropractic field is the opportunity and ability to heal people from their ailments,” Dr. Jim says. “I also love the opportunity to grow as I talk to people, engage with them,and get to know them, and share my knowledge with them.”
Born and raised in the San Francisco Bay area, Dr. Jim has worked in the central California towns of Fremont, Merced and Las Pinas, and also spent a while working in the Philippines.
He enjoys dancing, playing piano, and still gets out occasionally to bowl in his spare time.
Dr. Jim has three children and two grandchildren. His son, Albert, was an Oregon chess champion in 1980 at age 13, and now is an engineer while son Andrew has a successful carpet cleaning business, and daughter Laura is an administrator at UC San Diego.
He is thankful that he was willing to change course in his career path.
“I was a computer programmer but never saw the results when my programs went into use,” Dr. Jim says of his path to chiropractic. “After awhile, it was boring, unrewarding, and I needed a bigger challenge, and chiropractic is the perfect challenge because everyone is different. My dad, who was a chiropractor, suggested it to me and I thought it was a dumb idea. Then he showed me some results and I was amazed at what I saw. I went to school to become a chiropractor to see the results in changing people’s lives. You get the rewards every day when you help people.”
Dr. Jim really enjoys working at the two locations he serves in Southern California. “It shows me what I can do,” he says. “It’s a challenge because you have to get the best results in a convenient amount of time, and then you need to know when to not go overboard. The Joint is a new model for me that requires me to buckle down and know what I’m doing, and I’ve been able to learn things about myself and what I can do.”
In Case You Didn’t Know
Dr. Jim says the one thing he must have in his refrigerator is tomatoes. “I eat them the most,” he says. “I like them in salads or in sauces. There’s so many things you can use them for.”
A couple of music icons would be among the guests who would comprise Dr. Jim’s perfect dinner party, though they would take a back seat to his first choice, Winston Churchill. “He was so sharp and never gave up,” Dr. Jim says. “He brought England back to a normal state and was ridiculed for it, but an amazing person to talk to in any shape or form. John Lennon was the epitome of a songwriter, No. 1 in my book, and he does so gracefully and easily. Elvis Presley, the king of rock and roll gave teenagers the ability to rebel against society safely. Rock and roll was something the average teenager needed. And then the chiropractic genius, B.J. Palmer, the person who made chiropractic go crazy. He founded the first chiropractic college in Davenport, Iowa, and then started something really magnificent. That would be an amazing table!”
Dr. Jim says the coolest thing he ever did was a particular riff at the piano. “There was a time when I could play the piano pretty well, and one song that I remembered that I could play well was called ‘Bumble Boogie,’” he says. “It was the ‘Flight of the Bumblebee’ in boogie form. It was really cool.”
