Our Story
It started with a question in graduate school: why do people get better?
Patients were improving. We could see it. But the explanations for why always felt incomplete. Pro Performance Care grew out of the search for a better answer, one that starts with the brain and works through every system it controls. Today we’re a small team in Needham, MA, working with people whose neurological conditions haven’t fit neatly anywhere else.
A lecture that changed the question
Dr. Joshua Helm was in graduate school at Northeast College of Health Sciences, doing clinical rotations at the VA, when a guest lecture by Dr. Robert Luckey of Pittsford Performance Care reframed everything.
Applied neurology looked at the body from the brain down. Reflexes, blood flow, eye movements, balance, even how the neck guards itself: all of it could be traced back to how the brain maps and controls the body. It kept the hands-on care he’d trained in, and added an objective way to measure what was happening and why.
He started shadowing Dr. Luckey and watched patients improve faster than he’d thought possible. That was the model he wanted to practice.
Dedham: building the foundation
Dr. Helm opened Greater Boston Performance Care in Dedham in January 2018, bringing that neurological lens to every case. Someone might come in for an ankle that wouldn’t heal and leave understanding how their brain was part of the picture.
One roof in Needham
In 2024 we brought both clinics together in Needham as Pro Performance Care. The building is bright and central, an easy trip from Boston and the surrounding towns.
It also puts us under one roof with each other, and next to providers we work alongside: vision therapy, optometry, speech therapy, GI, podiatry and dermatology. One team, in one place, talking to each other about your care.
Why we’re here
The line we hear most from new patients is “I wish we’d found you sooner.”
Many of them have spent months or years moving between specialists, each looking at one piece. They’ve been left to piece the answers together on their own. We want to be the team that holds the whole picture, from the eyes and inner ear to the neck, balance and blood flow, and works alongside your physicians to move you forward.
What we believe
Your brain can change. With safe, repeated, meaningful practice, the nervous system reorganizes. That’s the basis of everything we do.
You should see what we see. We show you your own eye-movement recordings and balance graphs and explain them, so your care makes sense to you.
Recovery isn’t a straight line. When setbacks happen, we don’t give up on you. We adjust the plan and keep going.
We’re a community, not a conveyor belt. Our patients know us by name, and we know them. That matters to us.
Where we’re headed
We want to be the place people in Boston trust when a neurological problem isn’t improving, and a partner local physicians are glad to refer to. We get there the same way we got here: careful testing, results shared openly with your medical team, and care built around the person in front of us.
ChiroPro Performance
In 2021, Dr. Helm took over ChiroPro Performance, the practice founded by Dr. Lynn Carlson.
The practice came with the tools that still anchor our exams today: video nystagmography (VNG), computerized assessment of postural stability (CAPS) and the Interactive Metronome. It also brought something harder to build: years of trust from patients with concussions and complex neurological conditions.
Adding tools as the training deepened
In 2022 we added transcranial Doppler ultrasound to see how blood flow to the brain changes when someone stands up or exerts themselves. It brought new clarity to post-COVID and post-viral cases, chronic fatigue and the most complicated concussions. Today it’s part of most of our neurological exams.
We haven’t stopped there. As our training grows, so does the equipment, because better measurement means better decisions about care.
Where ChiroPro began
Dr. Lynn Carlson, DC, DACNB, FACFN, FABBIR
Dr. Lynn Carlson founded ChiroPro Performance (Concussion Center of Massachusetts) in Acton, the practice Dr. Helm took over in 2021. She is a Fellow of the American College of Functional Neurology and of the American Board of Brain Injury and Rehabilitation, and has taught clinical neurology on the faculty of the Carrick Institute. The exam tools and years of patient trust she built are still at the heart of our care.