We shed light on common misunderstandings about chiropractic care. After 15 years in the field, Dr. Bryan and Dr. Jason separate Chiropractic facts from fiction. Discover the answers to your underlying questions about chiropractic; including why professional sports teams have Chiropractors as a part of their healthcare team.
Introducing Chiropractic Facts Versus Fiction
Dr. Bryan: All right. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Here we are, Dr. Bryan Joseph and Dr. Jason Hamed.
Dr. Jason: How you doing?
Dr. Bryan: Coming to you from the Wellness Connection Podcast, where our intention is to try to share some of our life living tactics and strategies and wisdom that we’ve accumulated, if we have.
Dr. Jason: We have. Yes.
Dr. Bryan: With those of you that may have spent their time and energy gaining expertise in other subjects besides health. We’re here to try to share some of the things that may benefit your life in terms of natural healthcare and how you can actually get yourself well and keep yourself well over the course of the life. Because at the end of the day, that’s what we all want, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah, 100%. I think that’s what people want. I mean, I think they say it, but it’s like making sure that people can have the access to the information and the actions to actually have that health.
Dr. Bryan: I have yet to meet somebody on the street that tells me, “I love feeling like crap.”
Dr. Jason: That’s well said. Well said.
Dr. Bryan: But, maybe there are some people that like that, but for the rest of us that don’t like that feeling, or don’t want to feel like we have no energy or we’re lethargic, or dragging throughout the course of the day, and actually want to spend the life that we have with some sense of quality behind it, this is for you. Trying to make it so that you actually can grab some life skills and put it under the sidewalk and walk with it.
Misunderstandings around Chiropractic care
Dr. Bryan: All right, so today, the foundation for all of us here at the Wellness Connection is after we went to our undergrads, we went on to Chiropractic college to get our doctorate’s degree, and it’s amazing, 15 years later, there’s a topic that just seems like it shows up about every, I don’t know, 30 days, 40 days?
Dr. Jason: Yeah, something like that.
Dr. Bryan: Three days? Two days?
Dr. Jason: Yeah, maybe.
Dr. Bryan: That is all the different misunderstandings behind Chiropractic care.
So today in this episode, what Dr. J and I would like to do is try to pick apart some of the common misunderstandings associated with the profession of Chiropractic.
Why it’s gotten some great reputations in some aspects, and why it’s gotten a not so great reputation in other aspects, and see if we can’t answer maybe some of the underlying questions that you’ve asked yourself so that you know when this modality or when this treatment is best for you.
How can we better communicate what we do?
How can we better communicate what we do as Chiropractors
Dr. Jason: You said 15 years we’ve been doing this, and it’s amazing. I know you and I, when we first started out in practice, we weren’t working together, but we would be talking to each other often about, “Oh my gosh, how can I better communicate what we do to people?”
Because people would come in and here you and I are, just dedicated the last almost eight to nine, ten years of our lives to get this degree, and we’re so happy and proud to help people, and yet people walking in, they had all these misconceptions.
So before you could even help someone, you had to actually get through the misconceptions, which you know what? If we’re going to be very honest, which we always will be, initially I didn’t appreciate the perspective of the population because I had grown up with a chiropractor in my family. I dedicated my entire life and for my kid, didn’t want to be in healthcare and specifically Chiropractic. This was just a path that I knew.
Dr. Jason: I think one of the things that we’ll do today, which is of immense value is one, just be transparent, but also recognizing some of these thought processes are just really incongruent. There’s really no basis for them, but I still respect people when they come in with these thought processes, because they don’t know any better.
Inside vs. outside views
Dr. Bryan: I think, just like every profession, there’s kind of like an inside world and an outside world. There’s the world that when you dive deep and you’ve studied it and you really understand it, and you know what you know, then you expect everybody else to kind of know that.
Dr. Jason: You call it the curse of knowledge, right?
Dr. Bryan: Yeah.
Dr. Jason: It’s like you think everyone else should know it?
Dr. Bryan: But the reality is, on the outside, when you haven’t studied or gone to school or spent years kind of deep into textbooks or going into seminars and learning your craft, then you can see how there’d be a leap of misunderstanding or a gap between what we know and what we expect other people to know, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Myth: Chiropractic is only about fixing people’s backs and necks
Dr. Bryan: So maybe we’ll work our way through this and try to see if we can fill that gap a little bit, because I know firsthand, when I went to Chiropractic school, or before I did,
My perception of Chiropractic and what it was good for was for fixing people’s back and neck and that’s it. Period. Right?
Dr. Bryan: I don’t know about you, what was yours?
Dr. Jason: You know, honestly it was little bit of the opposite spectrum, because my uncle would come home, he was my mentor, as you know, for the listeners, they may not know this, he was a chiropractor, and he would talk about how it would help with my ear infections or my breathing issues.
I just recall as a kid, before there was any bias, before anything, I just remember as a kid getting an adjustment, and that’s the … for those of you who don’t know, that’s the treatment term for Chiropractic, where we move the bones and establish better movement and alignment in the spine. He provided an adjustment. I just remember I could breathe better. As a kid, literally my nose would run.
Dr. Jason: So, for me early on, I was just like, “Well, Chiropractic is great for health.” That was my upbringing in it. I didn’t know how or why, I just knew that I got an adjustment, I could breathe, and my nose started to run. That was it.
Dr. Bryan: All right. Time for some Kleenex.
Myth: All Chiropractors are practicing the same way
Dr. Bryan: All right. Let’s start here. First thing that comes to my mind that I understand to be a misunderstanding at this point, is that all chiropractors are not necessarily created equally. What I mean by that is, just because we hear the work Chiropractic or you’re a chiropractor, it doesn’t necessarily mean that we all practice identical or we all see things from the same perspective.
Dr. Bryan: One analogy that comes to my mind, and then we’re going to expand on this, is it’s almost like how you see in a dental profession, or even the medical profession, just because you have the name dentist, doesn’t mean that you are a specialist in orthodontistry or endodontistry or periodontistry, or if you’re a medical doctor, that doesn’t necessarily mean that you know how to do surgery. There’s so many different variations of specialty.
I think one of the misunderstandings that everybody, or a lot of people come in to our practices with, is that all Chiropractic is identical, or should be.
Dr. Bryan: So, when they come and they get a different flavor than the person or the experience that they had before, they’re concerned. Let’s have you, from your perspective Jay, is break down some of the different types of specialties that you’re aware of within the Chiropractic space. And then maybe what is it about that specialty, so if someone’s looking and saying, “Look, hey man, I’m really looking to know which chiropractor I should go to for this particular issue or this condition,” or “I only want someone that’s going to crack me real quick.” What are the different variations of flavors that you’re aware of?
Old School Chiropractic
Dr. Jason: Yeah. That’s a really good question, a really relevant question, and a really deep question. I think we could answer that on an entire podcast in and of itself. But, I’ll do everything I can to keep it brief. So, from a standpoint of from a consumer perspective, as well as clinically, what I believe is out there … well, first and foremost, you’re going to have a certain type of chiropractors that are just what you said. Maybe … and I mean no disrespect to any of you out there that are docs or maybe listening to this, because I believe everyone has a choice in how they choose to practice. As well as consumers, if you resonate with one of these, great. By all means, it’s awesome.
Dr. Jason: But there’s still, if you will, the old school chiro, right? Where you just … he’s a small town guy, or there’s a more of a easy feel to it. You’ll walk in, there’s very little testing done, and you get a great adjustment. “Pop”, right? That serves that doc and what he’s looking for and what he believes is helping his patients as well as his consumers, then great.
Benefits of general or old school Chiropractic
Dr. Bryan: So, who … again, not from the doc’s perspective, but from the consumer, the patient population, who would benefit from finding one of those type of doctors? Because everybody’s … there’s a benefit to each, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah. If you’re … to be very open with you, my intake in that is someone who has just a perceived need for a quick pop, that they’re really not looking for any type of long term health goals or a strategy, or there’s not a perceived need for any major rehabilitation.
Dr. Bryan: All right. Perfect, perfect. There’s a lot of people out there that there’s not right or wrong.
Dr. Jason: Right. None.
Dr. Bryan: Everybody sees things differently, but there’s a lot of people out there that truly are … they’re riding a tractor, or they’re playing football in their yard with their kids and they throw their back out, and they just want someone to fix it now and just give it a manipulation and make it feel better.
Dr. Bryan: Now, does that guy have a name, does it have a category?
Dr. Jason: General Chiropractic, maybe?
Dr. Bryan: General Chiropractic or even manual manipulation is a pretty general title for it.
Sports specific Chiropractic
Dr. Jason: Well, the next one that pops in my head is up from that, is there’s a specific, a sport specific chiro. It’s really popular, especially with the advent of things like Cross Fit, the level of intensity that our youth sports has gotten over the last 10 to 20 years. We’re seeing a large prominence of this type of chiropractor within the sports field, hanging out with pro teams, high level college teams as well. That doctor’s going to be really specifically based on how can I improve performance on a sport field. And again, they’re going to use a lot of muscle work. They may use some adjusting. They may do a lot of rehab, but it’s going to be short intense type of care.
Dr. Jason: From what I’ve experienced in working with colleagues that do this, also with patients that have gone, that I’ve referred out to, because we refer out to those type of docs too, is you got to have one goal, and the goal is, “I’m going to get this person recovered from this injury within one to two, three weeks, get him back on the playing field as quick as possible.
Optimizing and staying at peak level
Dr. Bryan: So, some of those people also, they utilize that version of Chiropractic care to optimize and stay at a peak level, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah. Exactly right, exactly right.
Dr. Bryan: That’s so cool actually. Before we jump into another category that you may be aware of, that brings up a cool topic and a misunderstanding, is people say, “Does Chiropractic really work?”
Dr. Bryan: You would think, if Chiropractic is invited into the sidelines of professional sports at the best level, then there has to be some more validity than what the average person might believe, because they can hire anybody to be on the sidelines to care for them, and they’re including Chiropractic care as their professional team.
Exposing faulty thinking
Dr. Jason: Yeah. I think … we go sidebar a little bit on that, because I think it’s an important topic. You’ve heard me say this to people on, and again, I am very open with people in communication, because I respect where they’re coming from, but also at the same time, I also want to expose some of the faulty thinking. If you had a bad experience with dentistry, you wouldn’t stop dentistry, right? You would just find what?
Dr. Jason: Another dentist, right?
Dr. Bryan: Right.
Dr. Jason: So to say that all Chiropractic is not valid and yet like you just said, because of one experience or someone that you knew had an experience that was awkward or bad or wasn’t great, and then six, seven, eight, nine, ten persons removed, you’re right. That really holds no weight, because like you said, the best in the world have chiropractors as part of their healthcare team. This is 100% valid. This is a scientific black and white chiropractic fact.
Mismatched expectations
Dr. Bryan: So, going back to what we were talking about just a minute ago, of there’s endodontists, orthodontists, periodontists, sometimes a misunderstanding or a misconception can take place when a particular patient walks into a Chiropractic office with the expectations that they’re in an orthodontist’s office, and they want braces, and they’re really not in an orthodontist’s office, they’re in a general dentist that’s going to do a teeth cleaning, and there’s a misunderstanding there that creates some frustration or problem.
Dr. Bryan: Same thing for Chiropractic. If you’re looking for the adjustment from the small time doc that’s going to give you that manipulation after you hurt yourself, [crosstalk 00:12:15].
Dr. Jason: And then see you when I see you.
Dr. Bryan: But you’ve lined up and happened to go to the one that’s closest to you, and that one happens to be magnificent in peak performance, and optimizing how to get the human body to operate at the highest level, and they take that so serious, they may be giving you completely different recommendations than what you’re excited about, what you’re wanting.
Dr. Jason: Exactly. 100%. I don’t think it’s a fault to either one. I think someone walks in off the street with a certain expectation, and if they’re not given a chance to understand, they walked into … it’s like a car dealership. You walk into a Mercedes dealership, and you thought you were walking into a Yugo dealership. They’re both selling cars, but it’s an entirely different experience.
Dr. Bryan: Right.
Horses for courses
Dr. Jason: And it’s no shame or wrong for the consumer or the guy selling Mercedes versus Yugos. It just is what it is. I mean, let’s draft off of what we said in regards to the different types, because if you gotten all the general, hey very open, come on in, again, no disrespect, but the small town type of chiro situation, where you come in for a quick adjustment, manipulation, pop, whatever you want to call it, and see you when I see you.
Then you’ve got the sport specific or performance specific chiro. Then from there, you’ve got also structural based chiros, in regards to chiropractors who have a goal of, “Yes, I want to help someone get out of pain, but also inherently also want to help to strengthen the structure. I want to maximize alignment, maximize movement, and be able to do subsequent testing to actually see that we’ve done that.”
Dr. Jason: That group also has a great deal of research supporting its approach, too. In regards to that’s more the orthodontic approach, as you alluded to a few moments ago, Bry.
Different mindsets at play
Dr. Bryan: I think, before we even go to any more types, philosophically, if we’re going to define these in general terms, instead of giving the title and say you have this credentialing behind your name, or you’re this kind of specialty, is there seems to be three philosophical approaches that people deliver regardless of their technique.
1. Patient centric mindset
Dr. Bryan: One of them have a patient centric mindset that says, “I’m here to relieve their symptoms only.” Very similar to what happens in traditional medicine, when you get medication and you just want to feel better ASAP.
2. Symptom centric mindset
There are other people that specialize on taking that one step further, kind of like an orthodontist, but they not only have an interest in helping that patient relieve symptoms, but they want to help to understand why those symptoms have developed. Some of them being structural alignment issues like you just shared, or some of them could be other factors, but they want to correct some of these imbalances.
3. Wellness mindset
Dr. Bryan: Then I guess the third philosophical viewpoint would be the people that first want to relieve the symptoms, second want to correct the imbalances, but then are ultimately interested in keeping their patient base as well as possible, and therefore they’re developing some kind of protocol, similar to getting your teeth cleaned on a regular basis to prevent cavities, but they’re developing a protocol for their patients to stay well.
Dr. Bryan: I think if we could categorize just generally, all the different subtypes of Chiropractic that we see into really what camp of philosophy do they attune to, then I think that might match up better to what the consumers might understand.
Dr. Jason: I would agree, and it’s really well said, really well said.
Dr. Bryan: Because unbeknownst to most people, there’s probably what? 75 or 100 different types of chiropractors?
Dr. Jason: Oh yeah.
Dr. Bryan: So, if we just say, “Okay, gosh. If you’re looking for a quick fix, then maybe find someone that’s got a relief oriented philosophy. If you want to take your body to the next level, take a corrective philosophy. If you want to stay well, and prevent future problems, find a wellness related doctor.”
Dr. Jason: Yeah. I would agree. I think that’s well said and very succinct, and it helps the consumer, because again, I think that you and I both know yeah, you’re right. I could probably talk on this for hours, and just be so didactic, but when it comes down to it, yeah. Just those three things. That’s well said.
Doctors of Cause
Dr. Bryan: So, here’s a couple thoughts that come to my mind that may also share and benefit other people from hearing, is I think at the core of all of it, when we go to Chiropractic school, it’s funny, because at the end of our name, it says DC, and they say that’s Doctor of Chiropractic, but really the other alternative that you’ve heard it stand for is Doctor of Cause, right?
Dr. Jason: Oh yeah, yeah.
Dr. Bryan: Which ultimately, I think we’re all kind of have the same foundational thought process, is we got to start asking the question, “What’s causing some of these issues?” Right?
Dr. Jason: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dr. Bryan: Chiropractic in general, and I can’t speak for everybody, but when we practice Chiropractic, it’s really wondering what’s causing the problem in the first place. Because you can’t solve an issue if you don’t get to the bottom of what’s causing it in the first place, right?
Dr. Jason: Right.
Dr. Bryan: Do you want to take a stab on any more types? Or is that kind of a general umbrella?
Relief, correction, or wellness
Dr. Jason: No, I think it’s good. I think you summarized it. I think we could have, I could beat that one to death and have a bunch more types out there, but I think that’s more than enough for the consumer to recognize either relief, correction, or wellness.
Dr. Bryan: Yeah. And just so you know, if you’re listening to this, there are subtypes, where chiropractors will specialize in just working with kids, just working with pregnant women, people that’ll focus on soft tissue injuries, people that focus only on reconstruction after an auto accident, I mean, the list goes on and on and on and on. For the purpose of today, we’re not going to take that any deeper.
Dr. Jason: Yeah. That’s good.
Myth: Once you go, you got to go forever.
Dr. Bryan: All right. Here’s a big one when it comes to chiropractic facts vs. fiction. Help me with this.
Dr. Bryan: How many times have you heard once you go to a chiropractor, you have to go forever?
Dr. Jason: I hear that. I heard it a lot, especially when we were first starting out. Very openly, now I don’t hear it as much, because I think we discuss and we do a great job of trying to educate our people as to why would you do that in the first place? And we make it safe for people to make it a choice. Did I hear it a lot when we were first starting out? I heard it all the time. All the time. And I guess, you know what? Openly, I think now when we’re out in a social setting, if it comes up that I’m a chiropractor, that’s oftentime when I’ll hear it too. It’s, “Oh yeah. Once you go, you got to go forever.”
Dr. Jason: I think it’s just, again, it just comes down to a misconception.
Dr. Bryan: Part of that, what would you say? Misunderstanding or misconceptions, everybody wants things to feel better instantly without putting any work or effort or energy into it. The reality is, anybody that’s built muscle on their body, or went through a process to lose fat from their body, it didn’t happen instantaneously. As gifted as many, many chiropractors are, nobody, very, very, very, very, very few people have the capability of pushing one spot in your body and having that make up for the 42 years of neglect.
Dr. Jason: Very few? I’m thinking zero. I think that was completely correct. I’ll do it for you. Nobody can do that. How’s that? There we go.
Designing he best recommendations
Dr. Bryan: And so it’s not so much you have to go forever, it’s usually just trying to figure out how we design the right recommendations to heal the symptoms that the person would come in with, and then if they choose to have us help, or have anybody get help on taking it to the next level of correcting it, then what recommendations will allow you to correct some of these imbalances?
Dr. Jason: I think you used two very important words there, though. You used the word have. You don’t have to do anything.
Dr. Bryan: Right.
Dr. Jason: That’s just it. Once you go, you have to go forever? Absolutely not true. False. Lie.
Dr. Bryan: You’ve never handcuffed anybody and actually pinned them to the wall in the office and said, “You have to stay here forever?”
Recognize there’s a choice
Dr. Jason: Never. No. No. You don’t have to do anything. What you have to do, you have to breathe. That’s it. And that’s all you got to do. Breathe. Here’s the other thing you said, choice. You have to recognize there’s a choice.
Now here’s the deal. The reality though, you mentioned about weight loss or muscle, we’ve even used the analogy in the office before about finances and saving money. It’s like once you lose weight, you don’t go back to the same behaviors that you had that made you not happy with your body weight in the first place. You keep the weight off. If you saved all this money, you don’t go back to behaviors that would make you spend your money.
You would actually do more things continually to save more money. Because again, look, we have stress, so if there is a have, you have to realize that as long as you’re alive, you are dealing with stress.
Stress reducing strategy
Dr. Jason: If you don’t have a process, a system, a strategy to help mitigate stress’ effects on your body, and again, I know I’m passionate about this from the years of doing it and the research I’ve done and the research I’ve studied, and Chiropractic is a wonderful adjunct or a wonderful part of a stress reducing strategy. If you don’t choose to have that, then you have to be okay with the consequences of a body that is no longer moving or breaking down or becoming arthritic, etc., etc., etc.
Dr. Jason: Again, the choice is just this. You have a choice of what you do with your body, and I know you do this, and I know I do this. I honor people’s ability to choose. But just because we choose one thing doesn’t give us the opportunity to not have to, have to face the reality of that choice.
Patient philosophy matters, too
Dr. Bryan: Well I think the same way we can categorize chiropractors by having a philosophy like that relief, correction or wellness, patients have philosophies, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: It comes down to how you want to care for your own body. Very similar to what you were saying. I think you said that very well, is if you’re someone that it’s, “If it ain’t broke, I ain’t fixing it.” Then you’re probably not going to be the same person that’s very preventative in trying to do all sorts of things in your daily activities or weekly routine to stay well. You’re probably going to wait until you have a disease and then to take care of it.
Dr. Jason: Right. And that’s fine. That person, as we just said, that person has a right to that.
Dr. Bryan: Correct.
Dr. Jason: That’s 100% their right, and I honor that.
Dr. Bryan: Well, that’s good. Because sometimes it’s not just once you go, you actually have to go forever. Some people have, I guess misunderstandings of what it really takes to try to change some of yesterday’s behavior.
Putting in the work
Dr. Bryan: I don’t want to have to go for two weeks, four weeks, three months, five years, whatever it might be, and I could understand that. I mean, none of us want to put in that much work.
Dr. Jason: No. I get it. I mean, I get it.
Dr. Bryan: But we also didn’t design the body.
Dr. Jason: We did not.
Again, if you don’t put work, energy, love and expansion to anything, it doesn’t grow. Including your body and your health.
It doesn’t mean three times a week for the rest of your life, but if you don’t do something, if I stop telling my wife I appreciate her and I love her, then guess what? The marriage isn’t going to grow. Same thing with your body. If you don’t continue to do things that support it, it’s not going to be able to grow in a stress-filled, aging environment. It’s just not going to happen.
Myth: Chiropractors aren’t “real” doctors
Dr. Bryan: So, you brought up a good point where you said you have to do something to mitigate stress if you want to have a good quality of life, one of the chiropractic facts is that it’s a great resource or tool to use to mitigate stress. One of the misunderstandings that makes me … that comes to mind on that topic, is when you hear people say, “Well, you’re not a real doctor. What are you? A stress reduction doctor? Or you’re a back doctor?”
Dr. Bryan: What is the qualification of a real doctor? How did that happen? Are chiropractors real doctors in your mind?
Dr. Jason: Well of course. If the word doctor is teacher or healer, then yes. I mean, yeah. So someone’s got a Ph.D. are they not a real doctor? They’ve dedicated 10, 20, 15 years of their life to being an expertise in something? Yeah, I’m a real doctor. And no, I’m not a doctor who prescribes medications. We have friends, we have patients that are medical doctors. I honor what they do. They’re a medical doctor. I’m a doctor of Chiropractic. Yeah, I am pretty blunt when I handle that one too, about the real doctor thing, because it’s like, “Oh, that’s just silly. I’ve heard that before. Come on, let’s get to the real issue. What do you got going on?”
Dr. Jason: That’s it. It’s just a misconception. Yeah. I’m not a … I don’t prescribe meds. If that makes me not a real doctor, then guess what? I guess I’m not a real doctor. But I don’t see that as such.
The education it takes
Dr. Bryan: Well, let’s back up a little bit. For the education, the schooling, with physiology and anatomy and everything that goes with earning a doctorate degree, equally compatible of medicine or [crosstalk 00:24:03].
Dr. Jason: Yeah. You know what? That’s a good point. I’m glad you brought that up. Yeah. I think that’s an absolute misconception as well, that we’re just showing up to school, maybe we went to YouTube University or something, and it’s not at all that.
I mean, you think about the four years, just under four years alone in Chiropractic school that we spent. And then the four years prior to in undergrad. The hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours studying x-rays, and human body, and cadavers, and cells under a microscope, and organic chemistry, bio chemistry, viruses and parasites, and all the things.
Again, I think that we saw there was a research study done that demonstrated the comparison between medical studies and Chiropractic studies, and they demonstrated that when it comes to actually the human body, study of movement, study of tissues and study of rehabilitation, that we outmatched them as far as hours in that type of study.
Dr. Jason: Where it differed, is they started to do more of the pharmacological study, which makes sense because they’re prescribing meds, and more in the viruses and bacteria stuff which again, makes sense because that’s what they’re trying to fight. That’s a really big misnomer. Yeah, we have a ton of hours and many years just studying the human body.
Earning a doctorate degree
Dr. Bryan: What I would say, just to follow that up, is yeah, you and I both know, and so do the rest of us that have put in the work to earn a doctorate degree, is it’s not a matter of just the education that we got in formal schooling, but it’s what you do after, and it’s how depth … how deeply interested are you in actually teaching and helping another human? Because ultimately that’s what a doctor is designed to do. Doesn’t matter what diploma you have on the wall or what school you went to, if you don’t care, and you don’t keep on investing in yourself to try to learn on what it is that can make you that much better to help people, then you can call whomever you want a real doctor, right?
Dr. Jason: Yeah.
Dr. Bryan: But I think that there’s plenty examples of every profession that people that they got a diploma and a degree, and then they quit, they stopped.
Mapping out the game plan
Dr. Jason: Man, I can tell you, you just opened up a rabbit, or whatever, Pandora’s box on that one, because I just think, and it may be off topic a little bit, but not really. I remember a recent patient interaction I was having a discussion with a patient, and they had been to other chiros in the past, and they had had an objection where,
“I had been to other places. What’s going to make this place different?”
Dr. Jason: I just walked him through. I educated him, as we do here, in regards to … and give her power in regards to choosing. “This is your body. What do you want? I’ll lay out the game plan, but you have to tell me. You’re not off the hook. You have to tell me what you want. And then what you want, based on what you want and what we found clinically, I’ll map out a game plan.” And I walked her through it, and she was like, “All right, yeah.” She was all excited, and we began treatment.
It’s a matter of intention & integrity
Dr. Jason: I’ll never forget. She said something along the lines of,
“You know, I’ve been to so many chiropractors before, and yet in just a short period of time, I feel so much better with you.” She said, “Why is that?”
Dr. Jason: And I’m saying this, and I mean this from a place of this is not me ego, but this is going along the same lines of what you just said. I said, “Listen, if you go to a dentist, I can give two dentists the exact same degree, the exact same drill, the exact same dental chair, but based on their heart, based on their intention to want to help their person, and based on really their integrity with their self and what they were trying to provide for a patient, they’ll get a dramatically different results.”
I said, “I’m not here to say anything against who you experienced in the past, I just know this, with the right intention and the right integrity, just because the name is chiropractor, you’re going to have two totally different results if the intent is different, if the integrity is different, and your focus is different.”
Different flavors & finding a fit
Dr. Bryan: One of my all time favorite movies. But look, I think we’re just scratching the surface here in terms of Chiropractic, it’s depth of what it can assist and a lifestyle that goes with it, that can benefit other people.
Yes, there’s more misunderstandings and more misconceptions that we can go deeper on, but I think today, we use this as just scratching the surface to get people to understand that there are different flavors of Chiropractic. There’s different flavors or chiropractors.
They are certainly real doctors. The education and the knowledge is equally, if not more adequate than the peers in other fields of doctorate degrees. But at the end of the day, it comes down to matching up your goal, Mr. Patient, Mrs. Patient, with the right type of physician, regardless of the specialty, that’s going to help you get to the goals that you have in your heart.
Dr. Bryan: In terms of today, why don’t we just call that a break and say, there’s a lot deeper discussion that we could have on this topic of Chiropractic, because there’s so many questions that have been asked in regards to this. Is it safe? Who goes? Is it scientific? Is it just for back problems? What other conditions?
Dr. Bryan: We’re going to have to break this down a little bit deeper on another podcast episode.
Dr. Bryan: But for today, I think that hopefully this gives people at least a clearer picture that there’s different versions of philosophies that you got to try to match yourself up to with your goals.
Dr. Jason: Yep. Sounds great, guy.
Dr. Bryan: All right. Until next time.
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