November 14, 2024 • 43 mins
S3009 Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Jeff, the trailblazer behind High Performance Spine, as he shares his transformative journey from a devastating back injury to revolutionizing non-surgical back pain treatments. Dr. Jeff's story is not just about overcoming personal adversity; it's about breaking new ground in the understanding and treatment of herniated discs. We unpack the fascinating insights from a 2010 study that changed the game by revealing how specific movement patterns and increased blood flow can dramatically improve disc conditions. This episode promises to equip you with knowledge that challenges the status quo of conventional therapies and offers hope to those burdened by chronic pain.
Learn how innovative remote programs have changed the lives of people worldwide, including an inspiring story from Australia. Discover the power of addressing faulty movements and promoting healing through targeted exercises, even from the comfort of home. Dr. Jeff's methods have been put to the test with remarkable success, proving that recovery is possible without invasive procedures. We delve into stories of individuals who found relief after years of pain, highlighting the critical role of personalized treatments and the potential for complete recovery without surgery.
We also explore the holistic elements essential for long-term back pain recovery. Dr. Jeff discusses the importance diet, mindset, and how happiness are is integral to reducing inflammation and promoting healing. With a bold promise of improvement or your money back, Dr. Jeff's program stands as a beacon of hope for those who have exhausted all other options. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking a new perspective on healing and recovery, offering encouragement and empowerment to reclaim a pain-free life.
Vist www.highperformancespine.com for more information.
Was this episode helpful to you? If you would like to support my work on the show, you can buy me a coffee at https://buymeacoffee.com/bedbackandbeyond
Have a positive story of recovery to tell? Head over to https://bedbackbeyond.com/share-your-story/ to apply.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Because, like you said, you saw me on TikTok or
Instagram or YouTube.
I don't know where they see usbut I always say you don't call
the TikTok doctor first, right,you're calling him last and you
might not call him until you'reso desperate, you don't know
what to do anymore.
Like I'll call that guy that'swho I get, by the way but what
that means is everybody that ison my program has had back pain
(00:22):
for a long time and triedeverything before they finally
called me right.
So my point is the people yousee on there in the case studies
are people just like you.
What we do is we help peoplethat have not helped anywhere
else.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to Bed Back and Beyond, sharing positive
stories of recovery from seriousback or neck injury.
Stories of recovery fromserious back or neck injury.
Your host is CK, a fellowchampion, who draws on her own
experience with herniated discsurgery.
Join her as she talks withothers who have overcome the
physical and emotional trauma ofa painful injury and discover
(00:59):
for yourself how you can findhope and encouragement in
recovery.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hi and welcome to Bed Back and Beyond.
On today's episode, I am joinedby Dr Jeff.
I'm very excited to have him onthe show.
He is the founder of HighPerformance Spine.
He has a TikTok channel, whichis where I found him, and he has
a wealth of information toshare about healing your
herniated disc or back painwithout surgery.
(01:27):
Dr Jeff, thank you so much forbeing on my podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And thank you for having me and I love the name
Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Is that because, when you had back pain, you were
laying in bed?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Exactly Wow.
And then the beyond is gettingbetter.
You were laying in bed ExactlyWow.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And then the beyond is getting better, right?
Yeah, of course, Of course.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Living happy, vibrant , pain-free active life, exactly
which is what we want.
Now you have a personal storyof back injury, correct?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I did.
I did.
Do you want to hear the wholestory?
Because it's a long story, butI'll tell you.
It's important for everybody tounderstand why we do what we do,
because what we do is I don'twant to say it's different, but
it's not traditional, but it'snot like esoteric there's no
crystals or anything like thatit's really conventional
(02:22):
techniques that you can do athome to eliminate your back pain
.
So in 1988, I jumped off a cliffinto water and when I jumped
off the cliff, from the top ofthe cliff into the water, it was
85 feet.
And we did this for fun,because we thought it was a good
idea.
And when you go from 85 feet,by the time you hit the water
(02:45):
you're going 65 miles an hour.
So it's kind of like a littlecar crash, like you're really
going to hit the water fast andwhen you land you want to go in
straight, absolutely as straightas you can, because you know
you're going pretty fast.
But what I did is I landed myfeet a little bit in front of me
and I jammed my sacrum into myL5 vertebrae and I squashed the
disc.
(03:05):
And the problem is I was veryyoung and very naive and I
thought it would get better andit did not get better and I
tried some physical therapy andI tried a little bit of
chiropractic.
It didn't work.
And then eventually I found achiropractor that was doing some
work on the disc, and discrelated problems are different
than, say, sprain, strain, pullthe muscle, things like.
(03:27):
There's different types of backpain.
Right Disc is definitely morecomplicated and he did some work
and I started feeling a littlebit better and my pain went from
a seven down to like a four.
I thought you know what?
There's something to this.
I don't know what's going onhere, but I'm finally feeling
better.
So I decided at that point intime I would be a chiropractor,
and this is 1990.
And I still had pain.
(03:48):
My pain was about a four.
It really never got better thana four.
But my efforts going tochiropractic college were to
eliminate my back pain and learneverything I can about back
pain.
So I went to chiropracticcollege and I graduated.
And when I graduated I startedopening clinics in Chicago and
our clinics were we call themcenter of excellence.
It was a team based approach.
It was chiropractors, medicaldoctors, nurse practitioners,
(04:12):
acupuncturists, massagetherapists, nutritionists all
working together for the good ofthe patient and we only treated
back pain.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Which is the kind of practice many of us wish we were
going to after we haverecovered from this.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So we were really good at most, but the conditions
that we weren't very good atwere the disc related conditions
, and when I graduated- you knowI'd learned a lot and I was
feeling better, but my pain wasstill about a two.
So gone from a four to a two andwe were treating back pain and
again it was.
It was pretty obvious rightaway that we were really good at
(04:47):
the non-complicated.
But when it came to the discrelated problems, those were a
challenge Bulging disc,herniated disc, degenerated disc
, stenosis, all the things thatsort of come with the
degeneration.
We were struggling with some ofthose and we were doing a lot
trying to fix it.
We were doing a lot trying tofix it and really we weren't
very good at it.
During this time, between, say1993 and 2005, my back pain had
(05:11):
gone from a 2 to a 3 to a 4.
Eventually it had gone all theway up to a 7 or an 8.
Now it wasn't a 7 or 8 everyday.
Well, it was every day, but itwasn't all day.
I might feel okay in themorning and then as the day
progressed, by the end of theday the best I can do is go home
and lay on the floor.
And I had kids.
I had kids.
I had all the normal thingsright.
I had a family, I had kids.
I had a house.
(05:31):
I had to cut my grass.
I couldn't take care of thefamily.
You know, we went on vacationone time and I lay in bed for a
week, right, and that's like,that's like.
It's like torture, right, Imean especially at Disney.
So it was terrible.
So my back pain was gettingworse and we weren't very good
(05:52):
at my type of back problem.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So what did you try?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I had access to all the therapies.
I had all the chiropractic,physical therapy, acupuncture,
you know any medicine I wantedyou name it I could have had.
It Didn't help.
It was just getting worse.
So in around 2005, we startedlooking at the discs, saying,
all right, what can we do toheal the disc?
Because my disc had degenerated.
See, the longer you have thesethings and you have pain, the
(06:15):
thinner the disc gets.
So you know, a normal, healthydisc might look like this and my
disc started looking like this.
It just was degenerated andthat's that's on our website you
can see that as well.
But I wasn't getting better andI was getting worse.
So part of what we wanted to doin 2005 was if we increase
blood flow to the disc, can thatfacilitate any healing to the
(06:37):
disc?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Which I didn't think was possible.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
The general thought is discs are hard to heal for a
couple of reasons, but one ofthe main reasons is because
they're avascular.
There is no vein or artery thatruns through the disc, so it's
very hard to get the oxygen andnutrients into the disc.
Once the disc is damaged yougot a herniation, a bulge is
damaged, right, you gotdegenerations damaged, you got
(07:00):
to get healing at the disc.
So our thought was all right,maybe we can get more blood to
flow and maybe something willhappen.
So in 2005, we did a study andthe study was we did an MRI, a
treatment, and then an MRI, andthen we compared the MRIs to see
if we could get any blood flow.
And we were looking to see ifwe could get blood flow inside
(07:21):
the disc.
So we were looking at the MRIs,say what happened to the disc,
and what we found was there wasvery specific exercises,
stretches and a way of takingpressure off the disc that got
the blood to flow.
So we saw that we could getsome blood flow, but we didn't
know what that meant.
Does that mean people are goingto get better?
Is it going to heal the disc?
We did it one day, one day, onetime, and we were working with
(07:44):
a researcher out of Oregon StateUniversity.
He says well, good news issomething happened.
He says, but you don't reallyknow what that means.
So he says now what you have todo is you have to take six
people and put them through asix-month program to see if you
keep increasing blood for sixmonths.
If that changes the disc right,does that change the health of
the disc?
So what we did is we had sixpeople, three days a week, go
(08:06):
through a program and at the endof the program we were going to
do it was six months, at theend of the program we were going
to do a third MRI and on thatthird MRI we were looking to see
if we could increase blood flow.
Again, we're looking inside thedisc and we were looking at the
nucleus.
We looked at the annulus, theouter portion, but we're also
looking at the jelly on theinside.
What we found was we could getan 80% increase in blood flow
(08:28):
inside the disc.
But that wasn't the importantpart.
What we saw was two of the six,their herniations completely
went away.
Completely, completely wentaway.
Yeah, that's the same reactionwe had, and the bulges were
getting smaller and thedegeneration was starting to
heal.
You can see that there wasfluid inside the nucleus because
(08:48):
the degenerated disc.
There's no fluid in the nucleus.
We see fluid and we also sawthat the outside of the annulus
was getting a little bit thicker.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Yeah, degeneration, you would consider like dried
out, correct?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, it's a phase of drying, but yeah, the nucleus
dries out.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Can you describe a disc for us?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
the disc is like a jelly donut.
Outside of the disc there's athick material called the
annulus and inside the discthere's a jelly-like substance,
and that jelly-like substance isin the center.
It's like a jelly donut.
And what happens is that jellydries out and as it dries out,
what it does is it gets thinner.
Right, the disc physically getsthinner and it's and it's like
(09:26):
the air in your car, your tire,when you're, when you're, when
your tire runs out of air, thetire, you know, gets closer to
the ground.
Same thing that degeneration isa drying out of the nucleus and
what we saw was we were able toget more blood to flow into the
nucleus, so we're getting morefluid in the nucleus.
So the herniations two of, aregone, like completely.
And the interesting thing aboutthis is when we first did this
(09:47):
study, I was talking about theradiologist I'm like, cause we
had a medical doctor.
He was reading all the MRIs.
I said here's what we're tryingto do, we're trying to see if
we can increase blood flow.
He says what I said yeah, we'relooking to see if we could
increase blood flow.
He goes that's the dumbestthing.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I ever heard.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well, this is what we're going to try to do.
Do you want to read the MRI ornot?
He's like I'll do it.
So he did it.
And the funny thing is, when wesent those six people back for
the MRI, he called me and henever calls me.
I'm like, oh, what happened?
Cause I'm like does somethinghappen to the patient?
I mean, what happened?
He goes no, no, no, come overhere right now, come over.
And so I get over his office andhe's got the MRIs up and he
(10:26):
said what's going on?
He says look, what do you see?
I said I don't see anything.
He said that's the whole point,the herniations are gone.
And for him he even said hegoes, you know, I us that
herniations could go away.
So that was a paradigm shift.
That was the beginning of all.
(10:48):
Right, maybe we could dosomething to heal the disc right
For all the people that arestuck right.
It's the 20% of the people thatever have back pain.
Never, ever, ever, ever, everget better because they got a
bulging disc, herniated disc,degenerative disc, and
traditional therapies aren'tgood at that.
Most therapies are designed todecrease symptoms.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
There's symptom relief right, it's kind of a
quick fix.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
But in the end you have to rehydrate the disc,
reactivate the muscles.
There's a whole process to it.
But we slowly figured it out.
But once that started, then wespent the next five years trying
to figure this out.
So we said, all right, discscan heal, what else can we do to
heal the disc?
So we started doing a lot ofdifferent things and we sort of
put this protocol into all ourclinics and now we're treating
(11:30):
thousands of people.
We sort of became the discspecialist.
So we're getting all thesepeople in the program and we're
learning a lot.
We're confused, we'retroubleshooting, we have a lot
of meetings and you know, evenat our best we were only getting
about 45% success rate.
But that was 45% of the peoplethat had tried everything else
and didn't get better.
(11:50):
So that was progress.
But when you have 55% reallynot getting better and not
understanding why maybe they'renot getting better, it's a
challenge every day, even thoughsome people it's like a miracle
, the other people it's like, ah, just not getting, you're
really working, we're having alot of.
I don't want to say it's it'sit's, it's a challenge, right,
because it's like we're tryingto figure this out.
(12:12):
And then not only did 55percent, not get better, but
there was three to four percentthat they would get a little bit
worse.
And they would get worse, notpermanently, like it wasn't
permanent damage, but you knowit's like.
It's like if you've ever had aflare up and I, you know, I knew
you've had back.
I don't know how long you hadit, but there's always flare ups
, right, there's good days andbad days and you never really
(12:33):
know why.
Right, so we were, we weredoing parts of the protocol and
certain people would get it,would aggravate their condition,
you know it's, it's thatsqueezing of the disc and the
disc pops up, but we didn't knowwhy.
But we knew it was parts of theprotocol and we didn't know who
.
And the worst part about it waswe could have two identical
herniations.
It'd be, you know, fivemillimeter herniated right side,
(12:54):
pinching the nerve, causingsciatica.
Two of them.
Put them up.
They both look exactly the same.
Put them both in the program.
One got better, one got worse.
Couldn't got better, one gotworse.
Couldn't figure it out.
What were your next steps?
So, 2010, we started doing astudy and the study we did in
2010 was standing up.
So in chicago there's three MRImachines that you can stand up
inside of them.
They have them all over thewhole country, but we were
(13:16):
fortunate there's three inchicago, so we had people
standing up and when you standup there's more pressure on the
disc.
So maybe a simple littleherniation may be real small,
but then you stand up, there'smore pressure on the disc.
So maybe a simple littleherniation maybe real small, but
then you stand up it's real bigright, so you can see bigger
herniations, bigger bulges.
But what we did is we had themstand up and then we had them
bend forward, backward, side toside and rotate, and what we
(13:39):
were looking at was the disc.
What happens to the disc whenpeople are bending?
And what we found was certainpositions people bend into, the
herniations would get bigger andcertain positions people would
bend into the herniations wouldget smaller and even go back
inside the spine.
We've never seen that.
So that was the second thing.
(13:59):
So the first thing is we sawthat herniations can go away.
Couldn't figure out why itdidn't work on anybody,
everybody and then we found thatthere's these patterns of
motion that make the herniationbigger and then it feels worse,
by the way, and makes it smallerand you feel better, like I
feel better, my sciatic is gone.
So we discovered there's fivepatterns of motion.
Everybody has two, Everybodyhas two that make them better,
(14:22):
everybody has two that make themworse, and it's not the same
for everybody.
So you might bend forward, youget worse, I bend forward, I get
better, or vice versa, right.
So we discovered these fivepatterns.
It wasn't the same.
That was our first flaw.
We thought the biomechanics ofthe disc were the same for
everybody, right, but theyweren't.
We didn't know that, so wedidn't know that.
So once we discovered this, wewere also able to identify what
(14:45):
position people had to be in toget that disc back to the inside
.
So we knew what position theyhad to do exercises in.
Then we knew what position theyhad to take the pressure off
the disc in and it reallycreated.
It was like an aha, like allright.
That's why that was the missinglink.
It was like the Rosetta Stone,like all of a sudden it all made
sense.
That's why some people arebetter with yoga, some people
(15:07):
are worse with yoga.
That's why some people arebetter with Pilates or worse
with swimming in a pool.
You name it.
It was like it was why.
It's why it's worse when youstand and you walk and you sit
and in.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, it's like physical therapy People will
either love it or hate it.
It's the same moves foreverybody for the same guy.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I only see the people that hate it, by the way,
because they're like I did it.
It didn't make me better, Maybeworse, right, cause they will
give you exercises that make youworse, because in their mind
it's one size fits all oh, youhave a herniated disc, do this.
You have a herniated disc, dothis.
You have a bulging disc, dothis.
Right, it doesn't work that way.
Matter of fact, it doesn'tmatter what you call it, only
matters your pattern.
Because once you know thepattern, then we know exactly
(15:53):
what you have to do to fix it.
So once we discover thesepatterns, then what we were able
to do is put together astep-by-step process.
All right, we know whatposition you have to be in to
get it back to the inside, so wedeveloped a very specific
stretch for that position andthen, based on the pattern, or
what was causing the pattern wasweak muscles, tight muscles,
inhibitive muscles, tight jointsright, and weak muscles, like I
(16:15):
said that, but it's acombination of muscles not
working the way they should andthen joints getting tighter that
create this what we call faultypattern of motion.
So once we know the faultypattern of motion, we know what
stretch you need, we know whatexercises you need and we know
what the order is, and there's aright order and a wrong order.
And even though everybody sayssquats are the best exercise for
(16:36):
back pain.
Yeah, but if you have a hotdisc, it's the worst exercise.
Right, there's a time when it'sthe best exercise, but if you do
it at the wrong time, you'regoing to make it worse and I see
that all the time where peopleare like, oh yeah, I had a
herniated disc and I was gettingthese exercises the first week
and one of them was squats.
I'm like, ooh, in physicaltherapy, right?
Or where Chiropractor, itdoesn't matter who does it,
(16:58):
there's a right order and awrong order.
But we figured it out so oncecould come in, we'd identify
their pattern and then we'd putthem to the protocol based on
their pattern Do this, do this,do this, do this, do this and
they started getting better.
And these are all the chronics.
These are all the people thatfailed everything else.
Matter of fact, the averageperson on our program has back
pain for more than seven yearsand everyone has a disc-related
(17:19):
problem and by the time they getto us, there are still seven.
And then they go through ourprogram and this is all done in
the clinic.
They go through the program andthey get better.
So once we discovered thepatterns, our success rate went
from 45% to 95% and it didn'thappen.
Figure out all the missingpieces.
But once we figured them out,that's when we really were
making sort of some ground right.
(17:40):
So 2015, we did a study, andthat was with Oregon State
University and one of theresearchers that had done all
the research for us, and what hedid is he had 70 people with
sciatica herniated disc, bulgingdisc, degenerative disc go
through our program and 70people with sciatica same
condition herniated, bulging,degenerative Because that's
what's ultimately pinching thenerve.
(18:01):
It's the pinching of the nervethat exits, right.
So they went throughtraditional physical therapy.
So he compared our results totraditional physical therapy and
what he found was our programwas 10 times better.
And it was 10 times betterbecause to address the
underlying cause when youeliminate the cause, pain goes
away, doesn't come back.
(18:21):
So this was then published in amedical journal in 2015.
And as a result of it beingpublished, people then all over
the whole world would see thisstudy and they would say you
know what?
Maybe there's hope, becausewhen you have back pain long
enough or, for that matter,you've failed surgery, right, it
doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what you had.
If you've had it long enough,you feel like you've tried
(18:44):
everything.
Nothing's going to help you,and especially if you've tried
surgery and it didn't help thenyou're like no, you got nothing.
So.
So people would see this studyand you know, and, and when you
have back pain long enough, thehopelessness leads to like
depression, right, like my lifeis never going to be the same,
right?
So people would then see thisstudy and they would call us,
(19:04):
you know, they'd be sort of fullof hope again, like oh my God,
maybe there's somethingdifferent.
Like they call us, they're likeI don't know what you guys are
doing over there, but I'm comingin.
You know how are you gettinghere?
We're going to fly, all right.
So people would fly in and thenthey would stay in a hotel and
then they would go through theprogram slowly, slowly, slowly,
slowly.
Now the problem is when you'rehealing a disc it doesn't happen
(19:25):
.
It doesn't happen in a month,it happens in two months to
three months.
Right, it takes time.
And that was us being aggressive.
We had the fast track.
Like, all right, if you come infive days a week for two months
, that could be enough, right?
So people would stay in a hoteland do the program and some
people were pretty wellacclimated.
They came in, they were doingwork in a hotel room.
They could, you know, theycould still do their job, or
(19:47):
they had their families withthem and you know they had a
support group and everything wasokay.
But other people came bythemselves and they came to
Chicago and for eight months outof the year Chicago weather is
not very good, right, like,maybe the same where you live, I
don't know, but Chicago weatheris really pretty bad.
So they would fly thinking that, oh, I'm going to go see this
beautiful city, I'm going towalk around and see all these
(20:08):
beautiful buildings, but it'stoo cold to leave the hotel,
right, it's too cold, Right, andit's too cold.
It's cold here.
This is so.
They would sit around theirhotel room.
You know they would go totherapy during the day and then
at night they would go back tothe hotel room or they'd be by
themselves, right, and it's toocold outside, and their family's
(20:29):
far away, and after a whilethey were spending too much time
staring at the walls.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
That sounds pretty lonely for an already depressing
time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
People started having like panic attacks.
They were getting better butthere were too much time alone,
like there was just and weweren't over on the weekends so
they didn't have anything to doon the weekends.
I mean, there's so much TV youcan watch before you just had
enough.
So people were having panicattacks.
I was getting phone calls.
I got a phone call from a guyone time at two in the morning
having a panic attack in a hotelroom.
You can't say, look, sorry tohear about that, I'll talk to
(21:00):
you tomorrow.
Like you got to deal with thisright, these are heavy emotions,
these aren't like simpleemotions.
So I'm like all right, we'llhelp you out.
So I was spending a lot of timemanaging the emotions of the
people stuck in the hotel roomand I thought, man, this is too
much.
It was really going to be toomuch.
I said either we're not goingto do this anymore or we're
going to find a way to get thembetter faster.
So what we decided was, sincewe could figure out their
(21:22):
pattern it wasn't that hard tofigure out I said why don't we
just send them the exerciseahead of time, all the
introductory exercises?
It's like that way they couldget stronger.
Before they got here, we knowwhat they have to do.
Let's show them what to do andhave them do it.
So we showed them what they hadto do and they were doing it
and doing it and then after twomonths they'd fly to Chicago and
they, when they came in, theywere feeling a little better,
(21:42):
they had a little more hope,they were in a better mood and
we could get them to the programin a month, right.
So so they could see there waslight at the end of the tunnel.
So they were a little happier,right, a little less stressed
out.
But two months in a hotel roomstaring at the wall, driving
anybody it's like being in jail,right, just drive it crazy.
(22:02):
So so, then, so people arefeeling better.
And then, finally, there was aguy in australia and he had
tried everything 10 years ofback pain, tried everything hurt
, to walk hurt, to sit hurt,stand hurt, to lay down
everything hurt, couldn't serve.
He was a surfer, couldn't serve, couldn't do any of that.
And he's like I don't know whatyou guys are doing, but I'm
coming.
So we said hold on, we're gonnasend you exercise, you're to do
these every day for eight weeksand then you can fly.
(22:22):
That way you can be a littlestronger.
He's like all right, I'll do it.
So he did all the exercisesevery day for actually 10 weeks
and then he called us.
He's like look, this is thebest I've felt in 10 years.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
He's like.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
I can stand without pain, I can walk without pain, I
can lay down without pain.
I couldn't do any of that, sothis is absolutely the best I
felt.
He said the problem is I can'tsit.
I sit for an hour.
My pains are seven or eight, hesays.
But I can manage my lifewithout sitting because I have a
stand up desk.
I eat, I can sit down for acouple minutes and stand up.
(22:59):
I stand up a lot or I lay downa lot.
He says I don't have to sit.
He said my problem is I'mscheduled to fly to Chicago and
it's 24 hours on an airplane andI'm going to be seated for at
least 20.
He's like you know I'm notcoming.
He's like he's like he's eitheryou're going to have to come
carry me off the airplane or I'mnot coming.
I'm like we're not going tocarry you off the airplane.
He goes.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I don't really want to come anyway.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
He's like I, I don't want to have to go back to the
pain I was in.
He says I'm feeling so good andhe says I'm afraid that, you
know, after a month or six weeks, whatever your program, I'm
going to fly back home and I'mgoing to be in the chair again.
He's like is there any way Ican do this at home, using a lot
of equipment, pressure off thedisc and exercise and all kinds
(23:40):
of things?
I said I don't know.
I said I have.
We've never done that, I don'teven know if it'll work.
I said we're going to have tomodify the protocol.
I said but you know what?
I'm going to give it a try.
So we modified the protocol.
He did all the exercises and bythe end his pain was gone.
It took him, it took a longtime.
It didn't happen overnight, butwe worked with him.
He modified so he could doeverything.
(24:01):
No more pain sitting.
He was a surfer.
He could surf again, living hislife, stays active, stays fit,
keeps the muscles strong, nopain.
That was the first one that gotbetter.
Serious back problems.
When I say serious, you have aserious back problem.
If you've seen six doctors andyou didn't get better.
You went to Mayo Clinic orCleveland Clinic or wherever it
(24:21):
is.
You went Texas Spine Institute.
You didn't get better.
That's a serious back problem,right?
Because then nobody can helpyou.
So that was the first timeanybody ever got better, and the
only time we ever saw them wassomething like this where we're
doing video.
Never saw them in person, right, didn't put our hands on them,
didn't do anything.
So that was the first one.
So I said you know what?
Maybe we could do this, maybethey don't have to fly to
(24:43):
Chicago.
So I said let's get 10 morepeople, and then what we'll do
is same thing.
But I don't want 10 people withthe same pattern, because that
was a mistake we made in 2005,.
Right, we thought it was goingto work on everybody.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I said I want different patterns and I don't
want to put this out on theinternet.
It was not going to work,because that's just a bigger
headache right For me.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I don't want that headache, I don't need it.
So we had 10 more people gothrough the program.
They did all the work.
We modified the protocol.
They got better.
Chronic back pain herniated,bulging, degenerative disc got
better.
Never came to the clinic andall we ever did was a couple of
(25:27):
video conferences like this.
Couldn't believe it at home.
Was it just back painspecifically designed to address
underlying cause?
Faulty motion, lack of bloodflow and compressive load.
You fix those three things.
Pain goes away, doesn't comeback.
It's specific for a herniateddisc, bulging disc, degenerative
disc, stenosis, post-surgerydoesn.
It doesn't matter.
So that's what we have.
We have an online program nowspecifically designed to address
the underlying cause, and youknow we've been we've been
(25:49):
treating back pain for 30 yearsand we've been doing the online
since 2017 and it works, and itworks really well and, matter of
fact, it works so well.
We guarantee it.
So if we accept somebody intoour program and they don't get
better, we give them all theirmoney back.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, and the only reason we can do that is because
we know exactly what you haveto do and all our systems are
designed to make sure you do thework every day.
We know what you have to do andwe've done it thousands of
times.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Done it thousands of times Is there a patient story
you could share.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So we we had the study that was done in 2015.
And then we had another onethat was done in 2017.
Maybe I don't know what year.
It was somewhere around there,and it was a woman.
She had fallen down on the ice,and she fell down on the ice
when she was 15.
This is in Chicago, and sheherniated the disc in her back.
So this is when she was 15.
She herniated the disc, whichis kind of rare for a 15 year
(26:42):
old, but it does happen, right.
I mean I certainly see a lot of15 year olds.
But for her at the time she gotsome chiropractic and she felt
a little bit better, and thenthe pain came back.
And then she got somechiropractic and physical
therapy and then she felt alittle bit better.
But every year her pain wouldcome back, come back, come back.
And every year it came back itgot a little bit worse.
Because what's happening is youreally are getting weaker, the
(27:03):
disc is getting weaker and themuscles are getting weaker.
So now when it gets injured, ittakes that much longer to get
better.
And then, finally, whathappened?
30 years.
So she fell when she was 15.
Every year for 30 years untilshe was 45, this pain would come
and go, every year worse.
It took longer to get better.
Finally turned 45, you know, shesaid her back went out.
She did something to aggravateit and it never got better.
(27:24):
And all the treatments that shehad tried chiropractic,
physical therapy, acupuncture,injections, opioids, all the
things that have worked in thepast stopped working.
And so everybody her husband,her family's like you have to
get surgery.
Like you have to get thesurgery.
So even the chiropractor,everybody she worked with, said,
yeah, we can't help you, likeyou're not getting better.
We don't know what to do.
(27:44):
So she went to the surgeon.
Surgeon convinced her to getfusion she got fusion and her
pain went from like I think itwas like a seven, down to like a
four, which is better, right,and then two weeks later it went
to an eight and it was at aneight every day for two years
and it went from an eight to anine to a 10, eight to a nine to
(28:07):
a 10.
And the only thing that wouldtake the edge off was opioids,
and I think I think at the timeyou're only allowed to take five
a day.
She was taking 15 because Ican't imagine her depression.
So she was depressed, like likeclinically depressed, right.
I mean she was saying that youknow therapist, psychiatrist,
everything, and during that timeshe tried to kill herself three
(28:29):
times from the pain.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Three times, three times and finally, interestingly
enough, she, she, she, she'slike she was praying to God.
She said God, you know, give mea sign.
If you want to live, give me asign.
And then she saw somethingabout her program and she
figured that was the sign.
I mean, maybe it was, I don'tknow, but then so she saw that
and then she made a call.
(28:52):
We put her on the program, tookher about a year and a half a
year and a half about a year anda half pain gone.
That's amazing, Do you think?
With all that hardware in that,yes, yes, Pain back to a zero
and that's been over.
It's probably been eight yearsI don't know how many years it's
been, but even five years afterthe original uh, original
(29:17):
injury and treatment, theyfollowed up with her and she
still was out of pain and tothis day she's still out of pain
, because I follow her onFacebook and the other day she
was like doing a.
She was posting a picture ofher doing a deadlift and she's
in her mid fifties.
I'm like, oh, her name'sCarmelita.
I'm like Carmelita.
I don't think that's a goodidea.
She goes, don't worry about it.
I got this, I know what I'mdoing.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Okay, okay, so I have a Reddit community for
microdiscectomy.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
People considering or recovering from surgery and I'm
surprised at the reherniations.
People will reherniate prettyquickly and some even reherniate
a third time.
So you know I don't know whatI'm talking about, but to me
that feels like there's astability issue or something.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I tell you what talking about but to me that
feels like there's a stabilityissue or something.
I tell you what traditionaltherapies don't address the
cause.
So if you there's limits to howmuch load and motion a disc can
tolerate, and if you nevereliminate the faulty motion, you
(30:22):
always reherniate it becauseyou're doing the things that
caused it the first time.
But you're doing it and youdon't even know you're doing it
and nobody's ever told youyou're doing it.
One of the things that peoplelove the most is we have, we
have it's.
You know we call it the top 10tips.
It's 10 things that you doevery day that aggravate your
disc and you don't know you'redoing it.
(30:44):
It's how you sit in a chair, andprobably everybody knows that
one.
It's how you sit on a toilet.
It's how you get out of a chair.
It's how you get off the toilet.
It's how you get out of yourcar.
It's how you get out of bed.
It's how you sleep in bed.
It's how you take dishes out ofthe dishwasher All the things
(31:04):
that you might do that aggravateit.
There's a right way and a wrongway, and if you do it the wrong
way, part of it is because themuscles you need to do it the
right way, don't exist becausethey've gotten weaker, or it's
just a habit?
Just a habit you've had yourwhole life.
I've always done it this way.
Well, okay, maybe it was alwayswrong and now you got to fix
that.
That is why herniations alwayscome back and that is why even
people that had surgery can getbetter on my program, including
(31:25):
the woman that had the fusionRight, because we now with hers,
like when you have a fusion,very often what they do is they
fuse.
They put metal rods and screwsin.
Let's just say L4, l5.
They're going to fuse these tworight here.
They'll do do it in the back,but it's easier to see at the
front.
They'll put rods and screws inthere and what that does is it
prevents any motion to thatjoint.
Well, let's just say that jointhad too much motion because
(31:48):
that was the one you were usingto bend.
Then what happens is now youstart to bend with this one or
the one below they call thebubble syndrome.
What happens is those discsbreak down and if you're more
active, they say within threeyears you're going to need
another fusion oh wow, yeah andthat's a.
that's like you couldn't haveanything more invasive than a
fusion.
But what we do is we eliminatethat motion, we activate and get
(32:11):
you, get the blood flowing backto the inside.
Pain goes away.
It doesn't go back because whatpeople do the biggest problem
people have is they bend usingtheir spine, like if you've had
back pain long enough or if yousit for too long, the glutes,
which are the muscles in theback, become inhibited.
And when the glutes areinhibited then so it's like,
(32:31):
it's like a light, like you canturn the light switch down so
the lights aren't so bright.
Nervous system slows down theinformation being sent to the
muscles.
Called inhibition.
So it's not muscle weakness,it's the nerves aren't telling
the muscles what to do, orthey're telling you what to do
but they're not telling them.
You know high enough volume,right, we need more volume.
So part of what happens is whenyou sit for too long, glutes
(32:52):
become inhibited.
Well, when your glutes areinhibited, then you start to use
your spine to bend instead ofyour glutes, because the muscles
really aren't there.
The body's like I don't want touse that muscle, it's not
working, I want to use thismuscle.
And then all that constantbending on the disc causes the
disc to break down.
When you use your spine to bend, that's when the disc breaks
(33:13):
down.
So part use your spine to bend,that's when the disc breaks
down.
So part of what we have to dois retrain those muscles and
that's part of the program, soit's our.
It's a year.
We have a year-long program butit's specifically designed to
eliminate the underlying cause,which is the faulty motion, also
increase the blood to flow tothe disc and get the nucleus
back to the inside, which thenfrees up the sciatic nerve.
Like at least half the peopleon my program have sciatica and
(33:36):
they've tried every possibletreatment.
Didn't get better and they goto my program and they get
better and they never even go tothe clinic.
They can do it all at home.
It's how to take the pressureoff the disc, to get the disc
back to the inside and thenreactivating the muscles.
That's the key.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
And does your, does your program also include
nutritional guidance?
How important do you thinknutrition is to healing?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Interesting, interesting, interesting.
Interesting Because we trackthis, like if you start my
program and not too many peopledo this.
Matter of fact, we starteddoing this, probably like 2012,
in the clinics and it wasdramatic.
It was dramatic Because whenyou see a patient every day and
I don't know if you've been tochiropractors or physical
therapists how are you doing?
Oh, I'm feeling a little bitbetter.
(34:17):
Yeah, you know, I'm okay, youknow.
So a lot of times the patientdoesn't want to tell you they're
not getting better, or becausethey don't want to hurt your
feelings or whatever, becauseyou're really working hard,
right?
So until we started tracking it, we thought, oh, you know,
bob's getting better and Joanne,she's getting better.
And once we start tracking,it's like wait a minute, they're
not getting better, because youmight write notes.
Oh, patient came in, you know,less pain, whatever it is.
(34:39):
But when we really startedputting the numbers on paper,
it's like wait a minute, therewe thought they were getting
better.
How come they're not gettingbetter?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
and we talked to him like oh, we don't want to hurt
your feelings.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
So, but my point is we track everybody in the
program.
So when you start the, we knowyour pain level, we know your
disability level.
We track what's called OswestryDisability Index.
It's the gold standard fortracking disability as a result
of back pain, but we use it as agauge.
Are you getting better?
Is your pain getting better?
So we track everybody and weknow what you should expect.
This goes back to our guarantee.
(35:11):
We know you're getting betterand if you're not getting better
, we have like an interventionlike cause.
You're either doing too much ornot enough.
But my point is we track allthis and one of the things we
track is the overall effect offood on your body and it's
through a, a questionnaire forwhat we call leaky gut.
I don't know if you ever heardof that, but leaky gut is where
(35:32):
your intestines maybe aren'tdigesting the food the way it
should and then you're gettingundigested food in your
bloodstream along with someparticles of bacteria and
viruses and it creates this sortof inflammatory process.
The people that get better thequickest have the lowest score
and the people get better theslowest have the highest score.
(35:55):
Meaning diet is for the peoplearen't getting better, tends to
be one of the most importantthings.
Like they're all, they're alldoing the right work, but they
got a terrible diet or they'vegot such a bad leaky gut that we
have to balance that out andthen they start getting better.
So for us, if you had asked methree years ago how important is
(36:15):
it, I'd say it's kind ofimportant.
but I know now that there arecertain people on our program.
If we weren't tracking it wewouldn't know.
We would just said, oh, she'snot doing the exercise, or Bob's
not.
You know he's not participating, whatever it was, but he really
was doing the work.
But his you know, his food wasway out of balance, right.
So once we started balancingthe food out, they started
(36:36):
getting better.
So some people you know,because there's I've done videos
and, like there was one onpumpkin seeds I don't know if
you saw it, but on instagram ithad 20 million views pumpkin
seeds.
There's a 30 second video aboutpumpkin seeds.
Pumpkin seeds are really goodfor you, right, because they're
really high in magnesium, theyhave a lot of good fiber, heals
the intestines, right.
(36:56):
So it's kind of a thing.
But 20 million and everyone'slike I'm eating the pumpkin
seeds, I'm not getting better.
I'm like, all right, you'regoing to get better, but there's
exercises that you really need,right.
(37:17):
So, like, you can't just eatblueberries and pumpkin seeds
and drink green tea and coffee,because coffee brings down
inflammation, and expect, youknow, a massive herniated disc.
You know that's pushing way outand then you're bending all day
long aggravating it.
All right, there's only so muchthat you can do by decreasing
inflammation.
But when you do everythingright, food is very, very
important.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yes, so it sounds like when I was recovering I fed
my emotions with Dairy Queen.
That probably wasn't a goodidea when I was recovering.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I fed my emotions with Dairy Queen.
That probably wasn't a goodidea.
Well, as long as you got betterright.
Well, you know what?
There's a point where happinessis important too, by the way,
because when you're happy, youhave less inflammation.
I don't know if you know thator not, but that's true.
So if you're happy, you canactually improve right.
But I always say my program islike a lifestyle right, it's the
exercises.
You, you can, you can actuallyimprove Right.
So.
But but I always say my programis like a lifestyle right, it's
(37:56):
the exercises, it's thestretches, it's the
decompression, it's the movementpatterns, it's the food, it's
drinking the water, it's walking.
You know, when you have backpain and you're in prison and
you want to get out it'slifestyle, to get out right,
(38:19):
there's no quick fix.
And the reason people get stuckis because they have this
mentality.
It's a quick fix and it's nottheir fault.
It comes from the therapist,comes from the doctors, comes
from insurance companies.
Insurance companies they say oh, hernia, disc, 12 treatments,
12 treatments.
You're probably gonna make itworse because you're trying to
get them better too fast, right,right, or you're not doing
anything that encourages them todo the right thing, right.
I've always had a big problemwith that.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
So if I have a listener who has a failed back
surgery or a bulging disc andthey want to get better, where
do they go to find your program?
Speaker (38:43):
Highperformancespinecom is our website and if you go
there, we have before and afterMRIs of people who went through
the program, because we do MRIsnot on everybody.
We've done MRIs at the end andthen my MRIs not on everybody.
We've done MRIs at the end andthen my MRIs on there, so you
can see my degenerative disc andwe have people that went
through the program and everyperson on my program because,
like you said, you saw me onTikTok or Instagram or YouTube I
(39:04):
don't know where they see us,but you don't.
I always say you don't call theTikTok doctor first.
Right, you're calling him lastand you might not call him, you
know, until you're so desperateyou don't know what to do
anymore Like, I'll call that guythat's who I get, by the way,
but what that means is everybodythat is on my program has had
back pain for a long time andtried everything before they
(39:25):
finally call me Right.
So, my point is the people yousee on there in the case studies
are people just like you.
What we do is we help peoplethat have not helped anywhere
else, meaning if you've, andthat we pride ourselves on that,
like you know, and we guaranteeit that you know, if you have a
(39:45):
herniated disc and you've triedeverything and you get better,
we can help you.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
I'm sure it's very rewarding.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I love it.
I love it and I'm the underdogright.
Everybody's rooting against me,but I'm gonna win.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
It's sorry to say, people are benefiting benefiting
from your personal injury storybut you know it's funny because
for 15 years it was a curseyeah and I got better and it was
a blessing.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And now I get to start with the world, because it
has value now because, first ofall, we get like, if you go to
tiktok or instagram, there's alot of tips like what food to
eat and what exercises not to do.
They're making you worse,because I'll share this real
quick.
So, when you have a herniateddisc, what do we know?
We know that a lot of motionmakes that disc worse, right?
(40:31):
So one of the exercises theygive extra everybody, there's
two, the two of the worst onesdouble knee to chest.
Lay on your back, pull yourknees to your chest.
Well, what you're doing?
You're squeezing that disc sohard it's coming back out like,
oh, it hurts.
No, you're not doing it right,keep doing it.
That's number one.
Or the second one is they haveyou lay on your back and then
they have your knees up and thenthey have you go side to side
(40:53):
with your legs, like that.
That rotates the disc.
Herniated discs don't likerotation.
So those are two you shouldn'tdo, you shouldn't do and and so
our, our tiktok and instagramhas tips of things you can do,
but also, uh, our website wewere talking about that there's
videos of people who wentthrough the program.
(41:13):
Just watch their stories and Ipromise you their stories are
just like everybody I meaneverybody that has back pain
that's not getting better.
Those are the stories.
Tried everything, didn't knowwhat to do.
Doctor didn't know what to do.
Doctor said it was in my head.
Doctor said I wasn't tryinghard enough.
We had one woman.
She had a herniated disc L5-S,5s1, they told her she had
piriformis syndrome.
(41:33):
Piriformis there's a muscle inthe back that can squeeze the
sciatic nerve.
They say maybe 3% of allsciatica is piriformis syndrome.
It's very rare.
It's the easiest one to fixbecause it's really not a
structural problem.
It's just a tight muscle, right.
So usually a couple ofstretches reactivate glutamate,
that goes away.
But everybody says, oh, I havepiriformis syndrome.
So they had this poor womanstretching her piriformis.
(41:55):
Well, piriformis, you have tocross your leg and you pull your
legs up right because you'retrying to stretch that
piriformis.
Well, what is she doing?
She's doing this, she's doingthis, and she did that for three
years.
Three years.
By the end she couldn't get outof bed.
They said you're not doing itenough.
She says I do it all day long Ican't get out of bed, so we had
had her stop doing that.
She started following some ofthe tips and did some of the
stretches within a month, likeher pain was almost gone.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's kind of rare that's kind of rare.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
But my point is they were giving her the wrong
stretch and that's not uncommon.
They try to make it one sizefits all.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Right, which it's not .
Dr Jeff, I really appreciateyou putting some time aside to
be on the podcast.
I'm sure the people uh arelistening, are going to really
appreciate your information andjust for one more time, say,
your website for them.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Uh, high performance.
Spinecom Maybe not the greatestname, but it works.
It works.
Um, well, it it, and I am hereto give people hope, because
sometimes they run out of hope.
They've tried everything,didn't get better, don't know
what to do?
Call us.
(43:01):
You qualify, we'll put you inthe program.
You don't get better, we'llgive you your money back.
But I tell you what everybodygets better.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yep, and that's why I have my podcast to to give
people hope, and that's why Iwanted to have you on the show.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
That's awesome.
I appreciate you having me onyour show Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Right.
Yes, that's right.
Bed Back and Beyond.
That's my husband's idea.
He named it.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Empowered living.
I love it, I love it.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
If you are a listener with a positive story of
recovery and you would like toshare your story on my show,
head to BedBackBeyondcom andclick share your story.
Once again, Dr Jeff, it was apleasure meeting you.
Because, like you said, you saw me on TikTok or
Instagram or YouTube.
I don't know where they see usbut I always say you don't call
the TikTok doctor first, right,you're calling him last and you
might not call him until you'reso desperate, you don't know
what to do anymore.
Like I'll call that guy that'swho I get, by the way but what
that means is everybody that ison my program has had back pain
(00:22):
for a long time and triedeverything before they finally
called me right.
So my point is the people yousee on there in the case studies
are people just like you.
What we do is we help peoplethat have not helped anywhere
else.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Welcome to Bed Back and Beyond, sharing positive
stories of recovery from seriousback or neck injury.
Stories of recovery fromserious back or neck injury.
Your host is CK, a fellowchampion, who draws on her own
experience with herniated discsurgery.
Join her as she talks withothers who have overcome the
physical and emotional trauma ofa painful injury and discover
(00:59):
for yourself how you can findhope and encouragement in
recovery.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
Hi and welcome to Bed Back and Beyond.
On today's episode, I am joinedby Dr Jeff.
I'm very excited to have him onthe show.
He is the founder of HighPerformance Spine.
He has a TikTok channel, whichis where I found him, and he has
a wealth of information toshare about healing your
herniated disc or back painwithout surgery.
(01:27):
Dr Jeff, thank you so much forbeing on my podcast.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
And thank you for having me and I love the name
Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3 (01:39):
Yes.
Speaker 1 (01:40):
Is that because, when you had back pain, you were
laying in bed?
Speaker 3 (01:43):
Exactly Wow.
And then the beyond is gettingbetter.
You were laying in bed ExactlyWow.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And then the beyond is getting better, right?
Yeah, of course, Of course.
Speaker 3 (01:50):
Living happy, vibrant , pain-free active life, exactly
which is what we want.
Now you have a personal storyof back injury, correct?
Speaker 1 (01:59):
I did.
I did.
Do you want to hear the wholestory?
Because it's a long story, butI'll tell you.
It's important for everybody tounderstand why we do what we do,
because what we do is I don'twant to say it's different, but
it's not traditional, but it'snot like esoteric there's no
crystals or anything like thatit's really conventional
(02:22):
techniques that you can do athome to eliminate your back pain
.
So in 1988, I jumped off a cliffinto water and when I jumped
off the cliff, from the top ofthe cliff into the water, it was
85 feet.
And we did this for fun,because we thought it was a good
idea.
And when you go from 85 feet,by the time you hit the water
(02:45):
you're going 65 miles an hour.
So it's kind of like a littlecar crash, like you're really
going to hit the water fast andwhen you land you want to go in
straight, absolutely as straightas you can, because you know
you're going pretty fast.
But what I did is I landed myfeet a little bit in front of me
and I jammed my sacrum into myL5 vertebrae and I squashed the
disc.
(03:05):
And the problem is I was veryyoung and very naive and I
thought it would get better andit did not get better and I
tried some physical therapy andI tried a little bit of
chiropractic.
It didn't work.
And then eventually I found achiropractor that was doing some
work on the disc, and discrelated problems are different
than, say, sprain, strain, pullthe muscle, things like.
(03:27):
There's different types of backpain.
Right Disc is definitely morecomplicated and he did some work
and I started feeling a littlebit better and my pain went from
a seven down to like a four.
I thought you know what?
There's something to this.
I don't know what's going onhere, but I'm finally feeling
better.
So I decided at that point intime I would be a chiropractor,
and this is 1990.
And I still had pain.
(03:48):
My pain was about a four.
It really never got better thana four.
But my efforts going tochiropractic college were to
eliminate my back pain and learneverything I can about back
pain.
So I went to chiropracticcollege and I graduated.
And when I graduated I startedopening clinics in Chicago and
our clinics were we call themcenter of excellence.
It was a team based approach.
It was chiropractors, medicaldoctors, nurse practitioners,
(04:12):
acupuncturists, massagetherapists, nutritionists all
working together for the good ofthe patient and we only treated
back pain.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Which is the kind of practice many of us wish we were
going to after we haverecovered from this.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
So we were really good at most, but the conditions
that we weren't very good atwere the disc related conditions
, and when I graduated- you knowI'd learned a lot and I was
feeling better, but my pain wasstill about a two.
So gone from a four to a two andwe were treating back pain and
again it was.
It was pretty obvious rightaway that we were really good at
(04:47):
the non-complicated.
But when it came to the discrelated problems, those were a
challenge Bulging disc,herniated disc, degenerated disc
, stenosis, all the things thatsort of come with the
degeneration.
We were struggling with some ofthose and we were doing a lot
trying to fix it.
We were doing a lot trying tofix it and really we weren't
very good at it.
During this time, between, say1993 and 2005, my back pain had
(05:11):
gone from a 2 to a 3 to a 4.
Eventually it had gone all theway up to a 7 or an 8.
Now it wasn't a 7 or 8 everyday.
Well, it was every day, but itwasn't all day.
I might feel okay in themorning and then as the day
progressed, by the end of theday the best I can do is go home
and lay on the floor.
And I had kids.
I had kids.
I had all the normal thingsright.
I had a family, I had kids.
I had a house.
(05:31):
I had to cut my grass.
I couldn't take care of thefamily.
You know, we went on vacationone time and I lay in bed for a
week, right, and that's like,that's like.
It's like torture, right, Imean especially at Disney.
So it was terrible.
So my back pain was gettingworse and we weren't very good
(05:52):
at my type of back problem.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
So what did you try?
Speaker 1 (05:54):
I had access to all the therapies.
I had all the chiropractic,physical therapy, acupuncture,
you know any medicine I wantedyou name it I could have had.
It Didn't help.
It was just getting worse.
So in around 2005, we startedlooking at the discs, saying,
all right, what can we do toheal the disc?
Because my disc had degenerated.
See, the longer you have thesethings and you have pain, the
(06:15):
thinner the disc gets.
So you know, a normal, healthydisc might look like this and my
disc started looking like this.
It just was degenerated andthat's that's on our website you
can see that as well.
But I wasn't getting better andI was getting worse.
So part of what we wanted to doin 2005 was if we increase
blood flow to the disc, can thatfacilitate any healing to the
(06:37):
disc?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
Which I didn't think was possible.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
The general thought is discs are hard to heal for a
couple of reasons, but one ofthe main reasons is because
they're avascular.
There is no vein or artery thatruns through the disc, so it's
very hard to get the oxygen andnutrients into the disc.
Once the disc is damaged yougot a herniation, a bulge is
damaged, right, you gotdegenerations damaged, you got
(07:00):
to get healing at the disc.
So our thought was all right,maybe we can get more blood to
flow and maybe something willhappen.
So in 2005, we did a study andthe study was we did an MRI, a
treatment, and then an MRI, andthen we compared the MRIs to see
if we could get any blood flow.
And we were looking to see ifwe could get blood flow inside
(07:21):
the disc.
So we were looking at the MRIs,say what happened to the disc,
and what we found was there wasvery specific exercises,
stretches and a way of takingpressure off the disc that got
the blood to flow.
So we saw that we could getsome blood flow, but we didn't
know what that meant.
Does that mean people are goingto get better?
Is it going to heal the disc?
We did it one day, one day, onetime, and we were working with
(07:44):
a researcher out of Oregon StateUniversity.
He says well, good news issomething happened.
He says, but you don't reallyknow what that means.
So he says now what you have todo is you have to take six
people and put them through asix-month program to see if you
keep increasing blood for sixmonths.
If that changes the disc right,does that change the health of
the disc?
So what we did is we had sixpeople, three days a week, go
(08:06):
through a program and at the endof the program we were going to
do it was six months, at theend of the program we were going
to do a third MRI and on thatthird MRI we were looking to see
if we could increase blood flow.
Again, we're looking inside thedisc and we were looking at the
nucleus.
We looked at the annulus, theouter portion, but we're also
looking at the jelly on theinside.
What we found was we could getan 80% increase in blood flow
(08:28):
inside the disc.
But that wasn't the importantpart.
What we saw was two of the six,their herniations completely
went away.
Completely, completely wentaway.
Yeah, that's the same reactionwe had, and the bulges were
getting smaller and thedegeneration was starting to
heal.
You can see that there wasfluid inside the nucleus because
(08:48):
the degenerated disc.
There's no fluid in the nucleus.
We see fluid and we also sawthat the outside of the annulus
was getting a little bit thicker.
Speaker 3 (08:55):
Yeah, degeneration, you would consider like dried
out, correct?
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Well, it's a phase of drying, but yeah, the nucleus
dries out.
Speaker 3 (09:03):
Can you describe a disc for us?
Speaker 1 (09:05):
the disc is like a jelly donut.
Outside of the disc there's athick material called the
annulus and inside the discthere's a jelly-like substance,
and that jelly-like substance isin the center.
It's like a jelly donut.
And what happens is that jellydries out and as it dries out,
what it does is it gets thinner.
Right, the disc physically getsthinner and it's and it's like
(09:26):
the air in your car, your tire,when you're, when you're, when
your tire runs out of air, thetire, you know, gets closer to
the ground.
Same thing that degeneration isa drying out of the nucleus and
what we saw was we were able toget more blood to flow into the
nucleus, so we're getting morefluid in the nucleus.
So the herniations two of, aregone, like completely.
And the interesting thing aboutthis is when we first did this
(09:47):
study, I was talking about theradiologist I'm like, cause we
had a medical doctor.
He was reading all the MRIs.
I said here's what we're tryingto do, we're trying to see if
we can increase blood flow.
He says what I said yeah, we'relooking to see if we could
increase blood flow.
He goes that's the dumbestthing.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
I ever heard.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Well, this is what we're going to try to do.
Do you want to read the MRI ornot?
He's like I'll do it.
So he did it.
And the funny thing is, when wesent those six people back for
the MRI, he called me and henever calls me.
I'm like, oh, what happened?
Cause I'm like does somethinghappen to the patient?
I mean, what happened?
He goes no, no, no, come overhere right now, come over.
And so I get over his office andhe's got the MRIs up and he
(10:26):
said what's going on?
He says look, what do you see?
I said I don't see anything.
He said that's the whole point,the herniations are gone.
And for him he even said hegoes, you know, I us that
herniations could go away.
So that was a paradigm shift.
That was the beginning of all.
(10:48):
Right, maybe we could dosomething to heal the disc right
For all the people that arestuck right.
It's the 20% of the people thatever have back pain.
Never, ever, ever, ever, everget better because they got a
bulging disc, herniated disc,degenerative disc, and
traditional therapies aren'tgood at that.
Most therapies are designed todecrease symptoms.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
There's symptom relief right, it's kind of a
quick fix.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
But in the end you have to rehydrate the disc,
reactivate the muscles.
There's a whole process to it.
But we slowly figured it out.
But once that started, then wespent the next five years trying
to figure this out.
So we said, all right, discscan heal, what else can we do to
heal the disc?
So we started doing a lot ofdifferent things and we sort of
put this protocol into all ourclinics and now we're treating
(11:30):
thousands of people.
We sort of became the discspecialist.
So we're getting all thesepeople in the program and we're
learning a lot.
We're confused, we'retroubleshooting, we have a lot
of meetings and you know, evenat our best we were only getting
about 45% success rate.
But that was 45% of the peoplethat had tried everything else
and didn't get better.
(11:50):
So that was progress.
But when you have 55% reallynot getting better and not
understanding why maybe they'renot getting better, it's a
challenge every day, even thoughsome people it's like a miracle
, the other people it's like, ah, just not getting, you're
really working, we're having alot of.
I don't want to say it's it'sit's, it's a challenge, right,
because it's like we're tryingto figure this out.
(12:12):
And then not only did 55percent, not get better, but
there was three to four percentthat they would get a little bit
worse.
And they would get worse, notpermanently, like it wasn't
permanent damage, but you knowit's like.
It's like if you've ever had aflare up and I, you know, I knew
you've had back.
I don't know how long you hadit, but there's always flare ups
, right, there's good days andbad days and you never really
(12:33):
know why.
Right, so we were, we weredoing parts of the protocol and
certain people would get it,would aggravate their condition,
you know it's, it's thatsqueezing of the disc and the
disc pops up, but we didn't knowwhy.
But we knew it was parts of theprotocol and we didn't know who
.
And the worst part about it waswe could have two identical
herniations.
It'd be, you know, fivemillimeter herniated right side,
(12:54):
pinching the nerve, causingsciatica.
Two of them.
Put them up.
They both look exactly the same.
Put them both in the program.
One got better, one got worse.
Couldn't got better, one gotworse.
Couldn't figure it out.
What were your next steps?
So, 2010, we started doing astudy and the study we did in
2010 was standing up.
So in chicago there's three MRImachines that you can stand up
inside of them.
They have them all over thewhole country, but we were
(13:16):
fortunate there's three inchicago, so we had people
standing up and when you standup there's more pressure on the
disc.
So maybe a simple littleherniation may be real small,
but then you stand up, there'smore pressure on the disc.
So maybe a simple littleherniation maybe real small, but
then you stand up it's real bigright, so you can see bigger
herniations, bigger bulges.
But what we did is we had themstand up and then we had them
bend forward, backward, side toside and rotate, and what we
(13:39):
were looking at was the disc.
What happens to the disc whenpeople are bending?
And what we found was certainpositions people bend into, the
herniations would get bigger andcertain positions people would
bend into the herniations wouldget smaller and even go back
inside the spine.
We've never seen that.
So that was the second thing.
(13:59):
So the first thing is we sawthat herniations can go away.
Couldn't figure out why itdidn't work on anybody,
everybody and then we found thatthere's these patterns of
motion that make the herniationbigger and then it feels worse,
by the way, and makes it smallerand you feel better, like I
feel better, my sciatic is gone.
So we discovered there's fivepatterns of motion.
Everybody has two, Everybodyhas two that make them better,
(14:22):
everybody has two that make themworse, and it's not the same
for everybody.
So you might bend forward, youget worse, I bend forward, I get
better, or vice versa, right.
So we discovered these fivepatterns.
It wasn't the same.
That was our first flaw.
We thought the biomechanics ofthe disc were the same for
everybody, right, but theyweren't.
We didn't know that, so wedidn't know that.
So once we discovered this, wewere also able to identify what
(14:45):
position people had to be in toget that disc back to the inside
.
So we knew what position theyhad to do exercises in.
Then we knew what position theyhad to take the pressure off
the disc in and it reallycreated.
It was like an aha, like allright.
That's why that was the missinglink.
It was like the Rosetta Stone,like all of a sudden it all made
sense.
That's why some people arebetter with yoga, some people
(15:07):
are worse with yoga.
That's why some people arebetter with Pilates or worse
with swimming in a pool.
You name it.
It was like it was why.
It's why it's worse when youstand and you walk and you sit
and in.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Yeah, it's like physical therapy People will
either love it or hate it.
It's the same moves foreverybody for the same guy.
Speaker 1 (15:28):
I only see the people that hate it, by the way,
because they're like I did it.
It didn't make me better, Maybeworse, right, cause they will
give you exercises that make youworse, because in their mind
it's one size fits all oh, youhave a herniated disc, do this.
You have a herniated disc, dothis.
You have a bulging disc, dothis.
Right, it doesn't work that way.
Matter of fact, it doesn'tmatter what you call it, only
matters your pattern.
Because once you know thepattern, then we know exactly
(15:53):
what you have to do to fix it.
So once we discover thesepatterns, then what we were able
to do is put together astep-by-step process.
All right, we know whatposition you have to be in to
get it back to the inside, so wedeveloped a very specific
stretch for that position andthen, based on the pattern, or
what was causing the pattern wasweak muscles, tight muscles,
inhibitive muscles, tight jointsright, and weak muscles, like I
(16:15):
said that, but it's acombination of muscles not
working the way they should andthen joints getting tighter that
create this what we call faultypattern of motion.
So once we know the faultypattern of motion, we know what
stretch you need, we know whatexercises you need and we know
what the order is, and there's aright order and a wrong order.
And even though everybody sayssquats are the best exercise for
(16:36):
back pain.
Yeah, but if you have a hotdisc, it's the worst exercise.
Right, there's a time when it'sthe best exercise, but if you do
it at the wrong time, you'regoing to make it worse and I see
that all the time where peopleare like, oh yeah, I had a
herniated disc and I was gettingthese exercises the first week
and one of them was squats.
I'm like, ooh, in physicaltherapy, right?
Or where Chiropractor, itdoesn't matter who does it,
(16:58):
there's a right order and awrong order.
But we figured it out so oncecould come in, we'd identify
their pattern and then we'd putthem to the protocol based on
their pattern Do this, do this,do this, do this, do this and
they started getting better.
And these are all the chronics.
These are all the people thatfailed everything else.
Matter of fact, the averageperson on our program has back
pain for more than seven yearsand everyone has a disc-related
(17:19):
problem and by the time they getto us, there are still seven.
And then they go through ourprogram and this is all done in
the clinic.
They go through the program andthey get better.
So once we discovered thepatterns, our success rate went
from 45% to 95% and it didn'thappen.
Figure out all the missingpieces.
But once we figured them out,that's when we really were
making sort of some ground right.
(17:40):
So 2015, we did a study, andthat was with Oregon State
University and one of theresearchers that had done all
the research for us, and what hedid is he had 70 people with
sciatica herniated disc, bulgingdisc, degenerative disc go
through our program and 70people with sciatica same
condition herniated, bulging,degenerative Because that's
what's ultimately pinching thenerve.
(18:01):
It's the pinching of the nervethat exits, right.
So they went throughtraditional physical therapy.
So he compared our results totraditional physical therapy and
what he found was our programwas 10 times better.
And it was 10 times betterbecause to address the
underlying cause when youeliminate the cause, pain goes
away, doesn't come back.
(18:21):
So this was then published in amedical journal in 2015.
And as a result of it beingpublished, people then all over
the whole world would see thisstudy and they would say you
know what?
Maybe there's hope, becausewhen you have back pain long
enough or, for that matter,you've failed surgery, right, it
doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter what you had.
If you've had it long enough,you feel like you've tried
(18:44):
everything.
Nothing's going to help you,and especially if you've tried
surgery and it didn't help thenyou're like no, you got nothing.
So.
So people would see this studyand you know, and, and when you
have back pain long enough, thehopelessness leads to like
depression, right, like my lifeis never going to be the same,
right?
So people would then see thisstudy and they would call us,
(19:04):
you know, they'd be sort of fullof hope again, like oh my God,
maybe there's somethingdifferent.
Like they call us, they're likeI don't know what you guys are
doing over there, but I'm comingin.
You know how are you gettinghere?
We're going to fly, all right.
So people would fly in and thenthey would stay in a hotel and
then they would go through theprogram slowly, slowly, slowly,
slowly.
Now the problem is when you'rehealing a disc it doesn't happen
(19:25):
.
It doesn't happen in a month,it happens in two months to
three months.
Right, it takes time.
And that was us being aggressive.
We had the fast track.
Like, all right, if you come infive days a week for two months
, that could be enough, right?
So people would stay in a hoteland do the program and some
people were pretty wellacclimated.
They came in, they were doingwork in a hotel room.
They could, you know, theycould still do their job, or
(19:47):
they had their families withthem and you know they had a
support group and everything wasokay.
But other people came bythemselves and they came to
Chicago and for eight months outof the year Chicago weather is
not very good, right, like,maybe the same where you live, I
don't know, but Chicago weatheris really pretty bad.
So they would fly thinking that, oh, I'm going to go see this
beautiful city, I'm going towalk around and see all these
(20:08):
beautiful buildings, but it'stoo cold to leave the hotel,
right, it's too cold, Right, andit's too cold.
It's cold here.
This is so.
They would sit around theirhotel room.
You know they would go totherapy during the day and then
at night they would go back tothe hotel room or they'd be by
themselves, right, and it's toocold outside, and their family's
(20:29):
far away, and after a whilethey were spending too much time
staring at the walls.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
That sounds pretty lonely for an already depressing
time.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
People started having like panic attacks.
They were getting better butthere were too much time alone,
like there was just and weweren't over on the weekends so
they didn't have anything to doon the weekends.
I mean, there's so much TV youcan watch before you just had
enough.
So people were having panicattacks.
I was getting phone calls.
I got a phone call from a guyone time at two in the morning
having a panic attack in a hotelroom.
You can't say, look, sorry tohear about that, I'll talk to
(21:00):
you tomorrow.
Like you got to deal with thisright, these are heavy emotions,
these aren't like simpleemotions.
So I'm like all right, we'llhelp you out.
So I was spending a lot of timemanaging the emotions of the
people stuck in the hotel roomand I thought, man, this is too
much.
It was really going to be toomuch.
I said either we're not goingto do this anymore or we're
going to find a way to get thembetter faster.
So what we decided was, sincewe could figure out their
(21:22):
pattern it wasn't that hard tofigure out I said why don't we
just send them the exerciseahead of time, all the
introductory exercises?
It's like that way they couldget stronger.
Before they got here, we knowwhat they have to do.
Let's show them what to do andhave them do it.
So we showed them what they hadto do and they were doing it
and doing it and then after twomonths they'd fly to Chicago and
they, when they came in, theywere feeling a little better,
(21:42):
they had a little more hope,they were in a better mood and
we could get them to the programin a month, right.
So so they could see there waslight at the end of the tunnel.
So they were a little happier,right, a little less stressed
out.
But two months in a hotel roomstaring at the wall, driving
anybody it's like being in jail,right, just drive it crazy.
(22:02):
So so, then, so people arefeeling better.
And then, finally, there was aguy in australia and he had
tried everything 10 years ofback pain, tried everything hurt
, to walk hurt, to sit hurt,stand hurt, to lay down
everything hurt, couldn't serve.
He was a surfer, couldn't serve, couldn't do any of that.
And he's like I don't know whatyou guys are doing, but I'm
coming.
So we said hold on, we're gonnasend you exercise, you're to do
these every day for eight weeksand then you can fly.
(22:22):
That way you can be a littlestronger.
He's like all right, I'll do it.
So he did all the exercisesevery day for actually 10 weeks
and then he called us.
He's like look, this is thebest I've felt in 10 years.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
He's like.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
I can stand without pain, I can walk without pain, I
can lay down without pain.
I couldn't do any of that, sothis is absolutely the best I
felt.
He said the problem is I can'tsit.
I sit for an hour.
My pains are seven or eight, hesays.
But I can manage my lifewithout sitting because I have a
stand up desk.
I eat, I can sit down for acouple minutes and stand up.
(22:59):
I stand up a lot or I lay downa lot.
He says I don't have to sit.
He said my problem is I'mscheduled to fly to Chicago and
it's 24 hours on an airplane andI'm going to be seated for at
least 20.
He's like you know I'm notcoming.
He's like he's like he's eitheryou're going to have to come
carry me off the airplane or I'mnot coming.
I'm like we're not going tocarry you off the airplane.
He goes.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
I don't really want to come anyway.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
He's like I, I don't want to have to go back to the
pain I was in.
He says I'm feeling so good andhe says I'm afraid that, you
know, after a month or six weeks, whatever your program, I'm
going to fly back home and I'mgoing to be in the chair again.
He's like is there any way Ican do this at home, using a lot
of equipment, pressure off thedisc and exercise and all kinds
(23:40):
of things?
I said I don't know.
I said I have.
We've never done that, I don'teven know if it'll work.
I said we're going to have tomodify the protocol.
I said but you know what?
I'm going to give it a try.
So we modified the protocol.
He did all the exercises and bythe end his pain was gone.
It took him, it took a longtime.
It didn't happen overnight, butwe worked with him.
He modified so he could doeverything.
(24:01):
No more pain sitting.
He was a surfer.
He could surf again, living hislife, stays active, stays fit,
keeps the muscles strong, nopain.
That was the first one that gotbetter.
Serious back problems.
When I say serious, you have aserious back problem.
If you've seen six doctors andyou didn't get better.
You went to Mayo Clinic orCleveland Clinic or wherever it
(24:21):
is.
You went Texas Spine Institute.
You didn't get better.
That's a serious back problem,right?
Because then nobody can helpyou.
So that was the first timeanybody ever got better, and the
only time we ever saw them wassomething like this where we're
doing video.
Never saw them in person, right, didn't put our hands on them,
didn't do anything.
So that was the first one.
So I said you know what?
Maybe we could do this, maybethey don't have to fly to
(24:43):
Chicago.
So I said let's get 10 morepeople, and then what we'll do
is same thing.
But I don't want 10 people withthe same pattern, because that
was a mistake we made in 2005,.
Right, we thought it was goingto work on everybody.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
I said I want different patterns and I don't
want to put this out on theinternet.
It was not going to work,because that's just a bigger
headache right For me.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
I don't want that headache, I don't need it.
So we had 10 more people gothrough the program.
They did all the work.
We modified the protocol.
They got better.
Chronic back pain herniated,bulging, degenerative disc got
better.
Never came to the clinic andall we ever did was a couple of
(25:27):
video conferences like this.
Couldn't believe it at home.
Was it just back painspecifically designed to address
underlying cause?
Faulty motion, lack of bloodflow and compressive load.
You fix those three things.
Pain goes away, doesn't comeback.
It's specific for a herniateddisc, bulging disc, degenerative
disc, stenosis, post-surgerydoesn.
It doesn't matter.
So that's what we have.
We have an online program nowspecifically designed to address
the underlying cause, and youknow we've been we've been
(25:49):
treating back pain for 30 yearsand we've been doing the online
since 2017 and it works, and itworks really well and, matter of
fact, it works so well.
We guarantee it.
So if we accept somebody intoour program and they don't get
better, we give them all theirmoney back.
Speaker 3 (26:03):
Oh, wow.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Yeah, and the only reason we can do that is because
we know exactly what you haveto do and all our systems are
designed to make sure you do thework every day.
We know what you have to do andwe've done it thousands of
times.
Speaker 3 (26:15):
Done it thousands of times Is there a patient story
you could share.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
So we we had the study that was done in 2015.
And then we had another onethat was done in 2017.
Maybe I don't know what year.
It was somewhere around there,and it was a woman.
She had fallen down on the ice,and she fell down on the ice
when she was 15.
This is in Chicago, and sheherniated the disc in her back.
So this is when she was 15.
She herniated the disc, whichis kind of rare for a 15 year
(26:42):
old, but it does happen, right.
I mean I certainly see a lot of15 year olds.
But for her at the time she gotsome chiropractic and she felt
a little bit better, and thenthe pain came back.
And then she got somechiropractic and physical
therapy and then she felt alittle bit better.
But every year her pain wouldcome back, come back, come back.
And every year it came back itgot a little bit worse.
Because what's happening is youreally are getting weaker, the
(27:03):
disc is getting weaker and themuscles are getting weaker.
So now when it gets injured, ittakes that much longer to get
better.
And then, finally, whathappened?
30 years.
So she fell when she was 15.
Every year for 30 years untilshe was 45, this pain would come
and go, every year worse.
It took longer to get better.
Finally turned 45, you know, shesaid her back went out.
She did something to aggravateit and it never got better.
(27:24):
And all the treatments that shehad tried chiropractic,
physical therapy, acupuncture,injections, opioids, all the
things that have worked in thepast stopped working.
And so everybody her husband,her family's like you have to
get surgery.
Like you have to get thesurgery.
So even the chiropractor,everybody she worked with, said,
yeah, we can't help you, likeyou're not getting better.
We don't know what to do.
(27:44):
So she went to the surgeon.
Surgeon convinced her to getfusion she got fusion and her
pain went from like I think itwas like a seven, down to like a
four, which is better, right,and then two weeks later it went
to an eight and it was at aneight every day for two years
and it went from an eight to anine to a 10, eight to a nine to
(28:07):
a 10.
And the only thing that wouldtake the edge off was opioids,
and I think I think at the timeyou're only allowed to take five
a day.
She was taking 15 because Ican't imagine her depression.
So she was depressed, like likeclinically depressed, right.
I mean she was saying that youknow therapist, psychiatrist,
everything, and during that timeshe tried to kill herself three
(28:29):
times from the pain.
Speaker 3 (28:30):
I believe it.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
Three times, three times and finally, interestingly
enough, she, she, she, she'slike she was praying to God.
She said God, you know, give mea sign.
If you want to live, give me asign.
And then she saw somethingabout her program and she
figured that was the sign.
I mean, maybe it was, I don'tknow, but then so she saw that
and then she made a call.
(28:52):
We put her on the program, tookher about a year and a half a
year and a half about a year anda half pain gone.
That's amazing, Do you think?
With all that hardware in that,yes, yes, Pain back to a zero
and that's been over.
It's probably been eight yearsI don't know how many years it's
been, but even five years afterthe original uh, original
(29:17):
injury and treatment, theyfollowed up with her and she
still was out of pain and tothis day she's still out of pain
, because I follow her onFacebook and the other day she
was like doing a.
She was posting a picture ofher doing a deadlift and she's
in her mid fifties.
I'm like, oh, her name'sCarmelita.
I'm like Carmelita.
I don't think that's a goodidea.
She goes, don't worry about it.
I got this, I know what I'mdoing.
Speaker 3 (29:36):
Okay, okay, so I have a Reddit community for
microdiscectomy.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (29:41):
People considering or recovering from surgery and I'm
surprised at the reherniations.
People will reherniate prettyquickly and some even reherniate
a third time.
So you know I don't know whatI'm talking about, but to me
that feels like there's astability issue or something.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
I tell you what talking about but to me that
feels like there's a stabilityissue or something.
I tell you what traditionaltherapies don't address the
cause.
So if you there's limits to howmuch load and motion a disc can
tolerate, and if you nevereliminate the faulty motion, you
(30:22):
always reherniate it becauseyou're doing the things that
caused it the first time.
But you're doing it and youdon't even know you're doing it
and nobody's ever told youyou're doing it.
One of the things that peoplelove the most is we have, we
have it's.
You know we call it the top 10tips.
It's 10 things that you doevery day that aggravate your
disc and you don't know you'redoing it.
(30:44):
It's how you sit in a chair, andprobably everybody knows that
one.
It's how you sit on a toilet.
It's how you get out of a chair.
It's how you get off the toilet.
It's how you get out of yourcar.
It's how you get out of bed.
It's how you sleep in bed.
It's how you take dishes out ofthe dishwasher All the things
(31:04):
that you might do that aggravateit.
There's a right way and a wrongway, and if you do it the wrong
way, part of it is because themuscles you need to do it the
right way, don't exist becausethey've gotten weaker, or it's
just a habit?
Just a habit you've had yourwhole life.
I've always done it this way.
Well, okay, maybe it was alwayswrong and now you got to fix
that.
That is why herniations alwayscome back and that is why even
people that had surgery can getbetter on my program, including
(31:25):
the woman that had the fusionRight, because we now with hers,
like when you have a fusion,very often what they do is they
fuse.
They put metal rods and screwsin.
Let's just say L4, l5.
They're going to fuse these tworight here.
They'll do do it in the back,but it's easier to see at the
front.
They'll put rods and screws inthere and what that does is it
prevents any motion to thatjoint.
Well, let's just say that jointhad too much motion because
(31:48):
that was the one you were usingto bend.
Then what happens is now youstart to bend with this one or
the one below they call thebubble syndrome.
What happens is those discsbreak down and if you're more
active, they say within threeyears you're going to need
another fusion oh wow, yeah andthat's a.
that's like you couldn't haveanything more invasive than a
fusion.
But what we do is we eliminatethat motion, we activate and get
(32:11):
you, get the blood flowing backto the inside.
Pain goes away.
It doesn't go back because whatpeople do the biggest problem
people have is they bend usingtheir spine, like if you've had
back pain long enough or if yousit for too long, the glutes,
which are the muscles in theback, become inhibited.
And when the glutes areinhibited then so it's like,
(32:31):
it's like a light, like you canturn the light switch down so
the lights aren't so bright.
Nervous system slows down theinformation being sent to the
muscles.
Called inhibition.
So it's not muscle weakness,it's the nerves aren't telling
the muscles what to do, orthey're telling you what to do
but they're not telling them.
You know high enough volume,right, we need more volume.
So part of what happens is whenyou sit for too long, glutes
(32:52):
become inhibited.
Well, when your glutes areinhibited, then you start to use
your spine to bend instead ofyour glutes, because the muscles
really aren't there.
The body's like I don't want touse that muscle, it's not
working, I want to use thismuscle.
And then all that constantbending on the disc causes the
disc to break down.
When you use your spine to bend, that's when the disc breaks
(33:13):
down.
So part use your spine to bend,that's when the disc breaks
down.
So part of what we have to dois retrain those muscles and
that's part of the program, soit's our.
It's a year.
We have a year-long program butit's specifically designed to
eliminate the underlying cause,which is the faulty motion, also
increase the blood to flow tothe disc and get the nucleus
back to the inside, which thenfrees up the sciatic nerve.
Like at least half the peopleon my program have sciatica and
(33:36):
they've tried every possibletreatment.
Didn't get better and they goto my program and they get
better and they never even go tothe clinic.
They can do it all at home.
It's how to take the pressureoff the disc, to get the disc
back to the inside and thenreactivating the muscles.
That's the key.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
And does your, does your program also include
nutritional guidance?
How important do you thinknutrition is to healing?
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Interesting, interesting, interesting.
Interesting Because we trackthis, like if you start my
program and not too many peopledo this.
Matter of fact, we starteddoing this, probably like 2012,
in the clinics and it wasdramatic.
It was dramatic Because whenyou see a patient every day and
I don't know if you've been tochiropractors or physical
therapists how are you doing?
Oh, I'm feeling a little bitbetter.
(34:17):
Yeah, you know, I'm okay, youknow.
So a lot of times the patientdoesn't want to tell you they're
not getting better, or becausethey don't want to hurt your
feelings or whatever, becauseyou're really working hard,
right?
So until we started tracking it, we thought, oh, you know,
bob's getting better and Joanne,she's getting better.
And once we start tracking,it's like wait a minute, they're
not getting better, because youmight write notes.
Oh, patient came in, you know,less pain, whatever it is.
(34:39):
But when we really startedputting the numbers on paper,
it's like wait a minute, therewe thought they were getting
better.
How come they're not gettingbetter?
Speaker 2 (34:45):
and we talked to him like oh, we don't want to hurt
your feelings.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
So, but my point is we track everybody in the
program.
So when you start the, we knowyour pain level, we know your
disability level.
We track what's called OswestryDisability Index.
It's the gold standard fortracking disability as a result
of back pain, but we use it as agauge.
Are you getting better?
Is your pain getting better?
So we track everybody and weknow what you should expect.
This goes back to our guarantee.
(35:11):
We know you're getting betterand if you're not getting better
, we have like an interventionlike cause.
You're either doing too much ornot enough.
But my point is we track allthis and one of the things we
track is the overall effect offood on your body and it's
through a, a questionnaire forwhat we call leaky gut.
I don't know if you ever heardof that, but leaky gut is where
(35:32):
your intestines maybe aren'tdigesting the food the way it
should and then you're gettingundigested food in your
bloodstream along with someparticles of bacteria and
viruses and it creates this sortof inflammatory process.
The people that get better thequickest have the lowest score
and the people get better theslowest have the highest score.
(35:55):
Meaning diet is for the peoplearen't getting better, tends to
be one of the most importantthings.
Like they're all, they're alldoing the right work, but they
got a terrible diet or they'vegot such a bad leaky gut that we
have to balance that out andthen they start getting better.
So for us, if you had asked methree years ago how important is
(36:15):
it, I'd say it's kind ofimportant.
but I know now that there arecertain people on our program.
If we weren't tracking it wewouldn't know.
We would just said, oh, she'snot doing the exercise, or Bob's
not.
You know he's not participating, whatever it was, but he really
was doing the work.
But his you know, his food wasway out of balance, right.
So once we started balancingthe food out, they started
(36:36):
getting better.
So some people you know,because there's I've done videos
and, like there was one onpumpkin seeds I don't know if
you saw it, but on instagram ithad 20 million views pumpkin
seeds.
There's a 30 second video aboutpumpkin seeds.
Pumpkin seeds are really goodfor you, right, because they're
really high in magnesium, theyhave a lot of good fiber, heals
the intestines, right.
(36:56):
So it's kind of a thing.
But 20 million and everyone'slike I'm eating the pumpkin
seeds, I'm not getting better.
I'm like, all right, you'regoing to get better, but there's
exercises that you really need,right.
(37:17):
So, like, you can't just eatblueberries and pumpkin seeds
and drink green tea and coffee,because coffee brings down
inflammation, and expect, youknow, a massive herniated disc.
You know that's pushing way outand then you're bending all day
long aggravating it.
All right, there's only so muchthat you can do by decreasing
inflammation.
But when you do everythingright, food is very, very
important.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Yes, so it sounds like when I was recovering I fed
my emotions with Dairy Queen.
That probably wasn't a goodidea when I was recovering.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
I fed my emotions with Dairy Queen.
That probably wasn't a goodidea.
Well, as long as you got betterright.
Well, you know what?
There's a point where happinessis important too, by the way,
because when you're happy, youhave less inflammation.
I don't know if you know thator not, but that's true.
So if you're happy, you canactually improve right.
But I always say my program islike a lifestyle right, it's the
exercises.
You, you can, you can actuallyimprove Right.
So.
But but I always say my programis like a lifestyle right, it's
(37:56):
the exercises, it's thestretches, it's the
decompression, it's the movementpatterns, it's the food, it's
drinking the water, it's walking.
You know, when you have backpain and you're in prison and
you want to get out it'slifestyle, to get out right,
(38:19):
there's no quick fix.
And the reason people get stuckis because they have this
mentality.
It's a quick fix and it's nottheir fault.
It comes from the therapist,comes from the doctors, comes
from insurance companies.
Insurance companies they say oh, hernia, disc, 12 treatments,
12 treatments.
You're probably gonna make itworse because you're trying to
get them better too fast, right,right, or you're not doing
anything that encourages them todo the right thing, right.
I've always had a big problemwith that.
Speaker 3 (38:33):
So if I have a listener who has a failed back
surgery or a bulging disc andthey want to get better, where
do they go to find your program?
Speaker (38:43):
Highperformancespinecom is our website and if you go
there, we have before and afterMRIs of people who went through
the program, because we do MRIsnot on everybody.
We've done MRIs at the end andthen my MRIs not on everybody.
We've done MRIs at the end andthen my MRIs on there, so you
can see my degenerative disc andwe have people that went
through the program and everyperson on my program because,
like you said, you saw me onTikTok or Instagram or YouTube I
(39:04):
don't know where they see us,but you don't.
I always say you don't call theTikTok doctor first.
Right, you're calling him lastand you might not call him, you
know, until you're so desperateyou don't know what to do
anymore Like, I'll call that guythat's who I get, by the way,
but what that means is everybodythat is on my program has had
back pain for a long time andtried everything before they
(39:25):
finally call me Right.
So, my point is the people yousee on there in the case studies
are people just like you.
What we do is we help peoplethat have not helped anywhere
else, meaning if you've, andthat we pride ourselves on that,
like you know, and we guaranteeit that you know, if you have a
(39:45):
herniated disc and you've triedeverything and you get better,
we can help you.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
I'm sure it's very rewarding.
Speaker 1 (39:52):
I love it.
I love it and I'm the underdogright.
Everybody's rooting against me,but I'm gonna win.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
It's sorry to say, people are benefiting benefiting
from your personal injury storybut you know it's funny because
for 15 years it was a curseyeah and I got better and it was
a blessing.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
And now I get to start with the world, because it
has value now because, first ofall, we get like, if you go to
tiktok or instagram, there's alot of tips like what food to
eat and what exercises not to do.
They're making you worse,because I'll share this real
quick.
So, when you have a herniateddisc, what do we know?
We know that a lot of motionmakes that disc worse, right?
(40:31):
So one of the exercises theygive extra everybody, there's
two, the two of the worst onesdouble knee to chest.
Lay on your back, pull yourknees to your chest.
Well, what you're doing?
You're squeezing that disc sohard it's coming back out like,
oh, it hurts.
No, you're not doing it right,keep doing it.
That's number one.
Or the second one is they haveyou lay on your back and then
they have your knees up and thenthey have you go side to side
(40:53):
with your legs, like that.
That rotates the disc.
Herniated discs don't likerotation.
So those are two you shouldn'tdo, you shouldn't do and and so
our, our tiktok and instagramhas tips of things you can do,
but also, uh, our website wewere talking about that there's
videos of people who wentthrough the program.
(41:13):
Just watch their stories and Ipromise you their stories are
just like everybody I meaneverybody that has back pain
that's not getting better.
Those are the stories.
Tried everything, didn't knowwhat to do.
Doctor didn't know what to do.
Doctor said it was in my head.
Doctor said I wasn't tryinghard enough.
We had one woman.
She had a herniated disc L5-S,5s1, they told her she had
piriformis syndrome.
(41:33):
Piriformis there's a muscle inthe back that can squeeze the
sciatic nerve.
They say maybe 3% of allsciatica is piriformis syndrome.
It's very rare.
It's the easiest one to fixbecause it's really not a
structural problem.
It's just a tight muscle, right.
So usually a couple ofstretches reactivate glutamate,
that goes away.
But everybody says, oh, I havepiriformis syndrome.
So they had this poor womanstretching her piriformis.
(41:55):
Well, piriformis, you have tocross your leg and you pull your
legs up right because you'retrying to stretch that
piriformis.
Well, what is she doing?
She's doing this, she's doingthis, and she did that for three
years.
Three years.
By the end she couldn't get outof bed.
They said you're not doing itenough.
She says I do it all day long Ican't get out of bed, so we had
had her stop doing that.
She started following some ofthe tips and did some of the
stretches within a month, likeher pain was almost gone.
Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's kind of rare that's kind of rare.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
But my point is they were giving her the wrong
stretch and that's not uncommon.
They try to make it one sizefits all.
Speaker 3 (42:26):
Right, which it's not .
Dr Jeff, I really appreciateyou putting some time aside to
be on the podcast.
I'm sure the people uh arelistening, are going to really
appreciate your information andjust for one more time, say,
your website for them.
Speaker 1 (42:40):
Uh, high performance.
Spinecom Maybe not the greatestname, but it works.
It works.
Um, well, it it, and I am hereto give people hope, because
sometimes they run out of hope.
They've tried everything,didn't get better, don't know
what to do?
Call us.
(43:01):
You qualify, we'll put you inthe program.
You don't get better, we'llgive you your money back.
But I tell you what everybodygets better.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yep, and that's why I have my podcast to to give
people hope, and that's why Iwanted to have you on the show.
That's awesome.
Speaker 1 (43:14):
That's awesome.
I appreciate you having me onyour show Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3 (43:22):
Right.
Yes, that's right.
Bed Back and Beyond.
That's my husband's idea.
He named it.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
Empowered living.
I love it, I love it.
Speaker 3 (43:31):
If you are a listener with a positive story of
recovery and you would like toshare your story on my show,
head to BedBackBeyondcom andclick share your story.
Once again, Dr Jeff, it was apleasure meeting you.
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