June 9, 2026 • 44 mins
Skepticism!
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
All right, guys, welcome to another week Maximize Living Radio
with your host, doctor Greg O'Neil. Today, I'm going to
be talking about gepticism. Gepticism. Now, skepticism is not necessarily
bad thing. I just want to I want to throw
that out there because you know, you hear the words
chiropractic and the words skepticism can kind of go right
(00:21):
along with it, and some people would think that I
wouldn't like people who are skeptical. But I'm going to
kind of reframe that skepticism can actually be good because
it can protect you in healthcare, and you want to
be making sure that you're asking questions. You want to
understand what's going on, what's going into your body, what's
going on in your body, the type of doctor that's
(00:43):
taking care of you. You should want to know why
you're taking a certain medication, doing a procedure, getting an adjustment,
you know, surgery, supplement treatment. That's more wisdom. The problem
is when people like you can go on one extreme
or the other. We're going to talk about the two extremes.
Two extremes is like the old kind of the old
school way of looking at things with healthcare. It's like Okay,
(01:05):
whatever the doctor said, that's what I'm gonna do. If
the doctor says jump, how high do you want me
to jump? Or you might not even ask that as
as you would just do it. So and then the
other extreme is being so skeptical that you're like paralyzed
and you're not and you won't even do anything because
you don't trust anyone. And really you're masking skepticism with
(01:27):
just with just stubbornness. You're using it as a crutch.
You're saying, well, I'm a skeptical person, when in reality,
maybe you're a stubborn person, or maybe you're being a
lazy person, or maybe you're doing you're being a person
who doesn't want to take responsibility. So I really want
to frame what healthy skepticism is. Okay. So there's a
big difference between saying I want to understand this before
(01:50):
I make a decision versus I don't trust anything, so
I'm not going to do anything. Okay. One of those
protects you by wanting to under stand, and the other
one can slowly destroy your health. So again, in chiropractic,
I see this all the time. Someone has symptoms for years,
they have headaches, back pain, neck pain saattica, and I'm
(02:12):
just entingling neuropathy. They're not sleeping well. People know something's wrong,
but they're skeptical of every possible solution. They're like, Okay,
one doctor said this, one therapist said this, one chiropractor
said this. But in general, people don't want medication, they
don't want they don't want surgery. But then in some
(02:35):
cases they're like, well, I don't even want chiropractic. I
don't want to change my diet, I don't want exercise,
I don't want to get adjusted, I don't want to
take supplements. I don't want to look at my stress.
And eventually it's the real problem is not even that
they're skeptical, it's that they're stuck. So again, healthy skepticism
is you're asking questions, and questions are good. Unhealthy skepticism
(02:57):
you refuse to move. So and again, I've said this
a million times. When you're in healthcare, when you're talking
about health not doing anything is still doing something. When
people are like, I'm not changing a thing, you are
doing something by not doing something. So the time will
(03:19):
pass and you think that you're not doing anything and
your body's either going to be built up in health
or it's going to be broken down. So we want
to focus on asking questions, not being so stubborn that
we're not going to move and not do anything. So
let's give a real world example of this. And in no,
we lived through a large social experiment. If you don't
(03:42):
remember this, it was called the pandemic. And in the
pandemic it was skepticism, it was asking questions, and then
it was also you saw people just following along obedience mandates,
forcing people to do things or else, say, lose their job.
We all know the story. We all lived it, and
(04:04):
we got to see how healthy skepticism was a good thing.
When someone said, okay, and what was it six feet away,
wear a mask when you're walking into a restaurant, but
then when you sit down, take it off. And then
for people like me, it's like, okay, number one, that
doesn't even make sense, all right, it doesn't make sense.
Those alarm belts start going off. You start asking questions
(04:26):
when they say things like okay, if you don't take
this vaccine, then you're going to lose your job. And
it started off as okay, this vaccine is going to
prevent you from getting sick, you won't get an anymore.
It stops with you. Then the goal post move is like, Okay,
it's not going to prevent you from getting sick, but
it might reduce your symptoms and prevent other people from
(04:46):
getting sick. And then the goal posts start to move
in the more. It's like, Okay, it might just reduce
your personal symptoms, but you still want to stay away
from other people. Essentially, you still want a social distance
and wear a mask and do all this kind of stuff.
So the goal post kept moving and moving and moving,
and I saw personally just a wave of change in
healthcare since the pandemic, mostly for the positive and some
(05:08):
for the negative. Now, the positive was is people grew
a healthy, healthy skepticism of the medical field, asking questions like,
wait a minute, why do I have to do this?
What is the purpose of this medication? Why are you
recommending this treatment, Why are you recommending this surgery? Why? Why? Why?
Why why? And that really fit into Chiropractors thrived in
(05:30):
that because it's Chiropractors were used to people asking questions
because for many years, if not decades, chiropractic was looked
at through skepticism because it was so different. People didn't
understand it. There's a lot of ignorance. There's just a
lot of people not understanding. And then also there was
a conspired effort by the American Medical Association to contain
(05:53):
and eliminate the chiropractic profession. And this is well known
and well documented. I've done entire radio show on this.
But this issue went all the way to the Supreme
Court in the late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties, if
you want to look it up. It was actually a
chiropractor from Pennsylvania. His name was Chester Wilk Wilk and
(06:14):
him and a team of chiropractors sued the AMA for
a conspired effort to contain and eliminate chiropractic. It went
all the way to the Supreme Court of the United
States and it's called the Wilk versus AMA. If you
want to look it up. It's really interesting. And they
found the American Medical Association guilty of basically indoctrinating their
(06:37):
doctors as they're coming out of school. They would give
them these packets, they were called quack packs, with pamphlets
with basically propaganda telling them if you refer your patients
to a chiropractice that chiropractor is going to hurt your patients.
It was a lie. And so they had all these
medical doctors and people high up in the AMA under oath.
(06:58):
And if you really want to dig into there's all
these videos on YouTube, and they used to tell people, oh,
people can get hurt, people can get paralyzed, all these things.
And they asked these doctors under oath, did you ever
see someone that was that was killed by chiropractic paralyzed chiropractor?
And under oath they said no. They admitted that it
(07:18):
was a lie. But that lie did damage. It did
damage to the chiropractic profession so much so that you had,
you know, millions of people not go to a chiropractor
because of that ingrained skepticism and so. But on the
flip side, though, his chiropractors had to get really good
(07:38):
at explaining what they do through education so that people
would understand. And because people came in naturally asking questions,
and people naturally ask questions, you have to have answers.
So chiropractors are very good, in my opinion, the best
physicians of any sort with bedside manner and also patient education.
I actually don't even think it's very close with helping
(08:01):
people understand what's going on now in the medical field.
For years, it was like you didn't ask questions, it's
just whatever the doctor said you did. And then the
pandemic happens and people start to ask questions. And when
you start to ask questions, you start to get answers,
and you realize the answers that you're getting aren't quite
what you thought or wanted to hear in the first place.
(08:21):
So the answers are, well, just do it, or you're
going to get fired, take this vaccine, or you're going
to fire you wear this mask, or you're not allowed
in here, you know, comply or else through force. And
in general, people don't like that, and people start to
ask questions, and then they start to ask questions about
other things with healthcare, Well, why am I on this medication,
Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that?
(08:42):
And that's where people are tilting more and more than
ever before towards natural health care. So that's what I'm
getting at, is that that natural skepticism, healthy skepticism, can
be a positive for people so that they ask questions
and empower themselves with their health. What I'll share after
the break is that unhealthy skepticism and be a detriment?
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. Doctor Greg
(09:04):
O'Neill maximized Living Radio talking about skepticism in healthcare. Early
in the break, I was talking about healthy skepticism, how
asking questions is important. Now here's the thing and here's
the reality. And I know some of you maybe thinking this.
Let's be honest. A lot of people are skeptical because
they've been burned in healthcare. Maybe you were told just
(09:28):
take this medication and no one explained why. You walked
into a room, and instead of the doctor listening to you,
you noticed that the prescription pad was already filled out
before you walked into the room. They already had made
their decision of what was going to happen without even
listening to what was going on. I've heard that a lot.
Maybe you were rushed through an appointment. Maybe you were
(09:51):
told that your labs were normal even though you didn't
feel good. You're like, what the heck is going on?
I've been told that my labs are normal, but I
don't feel well. Maybe you try to treatment that didn't work.
Maybe you were given hope by someone who over promised you.
Those skepticism can basically come from experience. But here's where
you want to be careful. Just because one thing failed
(10:13):
doesn't mean everything is false. Okay. So unfortunately chiropractors we
kind of get that. The bad end of this is
like people generally understand if you went to Starbucks and
you got a bad cup of coffee, does that mean
that all Starbucks is bad? No? Okay, maybe the barista
(10:36):
had a bad day, maybe it was a bad mix,
you know, so on and so forth. People just realized
that stuff happens. Maybe you go to a medical doctor,
things don't go well, and you're like, well, I need
to get a new doctor, right. You go to a mechanic,
you don't like the service they provided, Maybe you thought
that they overcharged, Maybe you thought that they were finding
(10:57):
too many problems or weren't fixing the problem. Where you're like, well,
I'm not going to I'm going to go to a
different mechanic. The issue isn't chiropractic is. And I share
this with young chiropractors all the time. We don't necessarily
get the benefit of the doubt, especially from the older population,
because people are generally skeptical when they come in they're unsure,
(11:18):
and you, essentially, as a chiropractor, have one chance and
if you're not doctor perfect a lot of the times.
I know that sounds a little bit of you know,
hyperbole or whatever, but honestly it's true with a lot
of people. If you don't really explain things well, have
a good bedside manner beyond your game, people are out
of there. People are out of there. Here's a story
(11:41):
for you. Happened to a colleague of mine and chiropractic.
They had new patients come in. These patients were very skeptical.
They were they were wanting to come in because they
had tried everything. They've been to the medical doctor, physical therapist.
They are in all kinds of pain. They're finally okay,
they're skeptical chiropractic, but the they're going to try it out. Okay,
(12:01):
So they go to the office, they check in the chiropractor.
You know, he's working with the patients and his chiropractor
kind of it's like you got your two eyes and
two ears, but you got another ear. Like out maybe
in the waiting room you can kind of sense what's
going on. You know, when new patients are coming in.
You know when re exams are coming in. You have
a sense for the flow of what's happened in the office. Well,
(12:22):
the patients show up five minutes later. The patients leave
before their appointment. So the chi practice like, what just happened?
Like that? Are they okay? Is everything fine? So they
go to the front and they ask the staff member
what happened and they said, well, they went to the bathroom.
When they came out, they said the bathroom was dirty,
(12:45):
so they didn't trust our office, so they were leaving.
I was like, oh my gosh. Now, so here's the
two sides. Okay, the two sides of skepticism. So the
healthy side of skepticism asking quest essions for the sake
of that person. Maybe they go into the bathroom, maybe
it's dirty or it smells or something, and they're like, well,
(13:08):
if they can't take care of a bathroom, how they're
going to be able to take care of me. Okay,
I can understand that. But then on the other hand,
what if someone had just gone in and made a
stinky in there and it wasn't the doctor's fault, it
wasn't the staff's fault. Maybe it was something else right,
So again, it's just not getting that there's no benefit
of the doubt there. I thought. By the way, when
(13:29):
I heard this at a seminar, when they were sharing this,
I felt like so bad for this doctor because they're like,
really like my bathroom I guess stunk because someone else
went in there before and that deterred a patient from
coming away or from coming in. So I know that's
a funny story. But what I'm getting at is like
people can come in so skeptical, and I deal with
(13:52):
this all the time. It's honestly, it's gotten better. I've
been a chiropractor for thirteen years and it's improved a
lot and it's gotten better. But people can come in
some so skeptical that you have to, as a chiropractor,
beyond your game to really understand and connect with that person.
Like I can't go in tired and grumpy and groggy
and all that stuff. Like I can feel that way,
(14:13):
but I got to be like, Okay, now I got
to be on my game so that I can help people.
Because people don't know. People don't know what they don't know,
and that's that's where we want to be careful. Just
because one thing wasn't good in healthcare, doesn't mean everything
else is false. Maybe you've been to another chiropractor before
and you didn't have a good experience. That does not
(14:35):
mean that all chiropractors are bad. Okay. Just like you
have one bad cup of coffee out of Starbucks out
in uh, you know, Myerstown or something, it doesn't mean
that the coffee in Lytits is bad. Does that make sense? Okay?
So healthcare off people often do that. They're like, I
tried chiropractic once. I tried that before. I'm like, great,
(14:57):
But did you get a proper exam? Did you get
X rays if they were necessary? Did anyone explain your spine,
your nervous system, your posture, the structure, lifestyle, did you
follow a correct if plan, did you address nutrition, did
you exercise, your address exercise, stress, toxins? Or did you
(15:17):
go in two times feel a little better or not?
And then decide chiropractic doesn't work. That's not really a
fair test. It's not really fair to just say okay,
just because I didn't get the experience that I thought
I would get, like, because people will quite chiropractic to
like medicine. You take a medicine and a chemical can
change your body rather quickly, like a pain medication. You
(15:40):
take an oxycodone, you're going to start feeling different pretty quickly, Okay,
But you eat a salad for the first time in
ten years, you're not going to lose weight right away. Now,
adjustments are very powerful, and people get adjusted and their
pain goes away immediately in a lot of cases, but
also in a lot of care it takes time. And
(16:01):
maybe the problem's been there and it's been built up
and it's going to take time to break through degeneration
and scar tissue and muscle adhesions and all the things
that are happening. So again, you want to treat it fairly.
You want to give it a fair test. But you
want to make sure that you're going to a chiropractor
that is going to go through all this stuff and
find the cause. And like I said, Buy and Large,
(16:24):
especially the chiropractors in this area are great. I can
only speak for myself though, so what I look for
in a chiropractor for myself when I refer people, because
people will, I'll I get requests all the time. Hey,
can you find me a chiropractor out in Iowa for
my friend out in Texas? Down in Florida over in Oregon.
Like I'm referring people all the time. So I'll look
(16:45):
at that, I'll look at the Google maps, and I'll
search different search terms to find the best chiropractor. And
what I'm looking for is I want to see a
chiropractor that has the ability to take X rays, will
and will take X if clinically necessary, of course, to
see what's going on. I'm also looking for a chiropractor
(17:07):
who will formulate a plan for your spine. Now, so
many people are like allergic to plans in chiropractic, at
which I don't understand. You go to a mechanic, they
have a plan to fix your car. You go to
the medical doctor, they have a plan to give you treatment.
You hire a contractor, they better have a plan. Okay,
(17:29):
you have an architect, you have your contractor, you have
the H track guys, you have electricians, they're all following
the same plan. But yet in chiropractic, people just want
to go in one or two times. They're like, here's
what we're going to do. People come in and tell
me this, They're like, here's what we're going to do.
I'm going to come in one or two times and
blah blah blah blah blah. I'm like, that's nice. Now,
(17:49):
I don't say this, but it's like, you're not me,
You're not the doctor. I'm the one giving recommendations because
no offense. As a chiropractor, I know more than you
about practic I know what it takes to correct your spine.
Just like the plumber knows how to fix the plumbing
of my house. I'm not telling him what to do.
You know, in the mechanic, I might know a little
(18:10):
bit about cores, but he's going to know how to
actually fix it. Now I can I can look at
the plan, I can review the plan. I can understand
the plan, and ultimately I can decide whether or not
DON want to do the plan. That's your role as
the patient. But as far as coming up with the plan,
that's got to come from from the doctor and then
and in collaboration with you. So when someone comes into
(18:30):
my office, it's a pretty simple process. We sit down
and we go through an exam. So that's your posture,
your range of motion. This is really important. Like your
posture I look at someone, is your head coming forward
over your shoulders? Is your head tilting one way or
the other that tells me a lot. Is one shoulder
higher than the other, is your pelvis out of alignment?
(18:53):
Are your feet lined up properly, or is one turning
out or one turning in from the side your hips
over your knees and your knees over your ankles, or
are your muscles so tight that it's throwing that off
that I can even see that with your posture. Then
we check range of motion. Now the rubber really comes
to the road because people can really see how far
(19:16):
they're out because I'll do the range of motion first,
and my range of motion is really good, so I'll turn.
I'll say, I want you to look down like this,
look up like this with their neck lean one way.
And this is where people really notice it, because people
never lean their necks like leaning your left ear to
your left shoulder, lean your right ear to your right shoulder,
and people can hardly move. Now they'll say things, I
(19:40):
don't get this as much anymore because I'm now I'm
a little older. You know, I've been in practice thirteen years.
People used to look at me and say, well, that's
just because you're really young. Because you're young, you know,
when I was twenty five years old, thirty years old.
Shown people is say like, well you're a young guy.
You can do this now that I'm more experienced. You know,
I've been in practice for thirteen years, so you'll be
like the a look at my range of motion and
(20:01):
compared to themselves, they're like, oh uh, oh, there's a
problem here. There's a difference. Then I have people go
down to touch their toes without bending their knees, lean
back over their hips, and then lean side to side,
and it really gives me obviously information on what's going on,
but also people understanding, oh boy, there's an issue here.
(20:22):
And then we do what's called palpation, where I feel
what's going on with the spine, similar to a dentist
probing teeth. Many times you don't know a cavity is
there until the dentist pokes it. And then by by
going along the spine and feeling each individual segment and
testing it against motion, we're able to see which areas
are tender, which areas could have possible sublixation or misalignment
(20:43):
or the spine. And then, if necessary, the best tests
we take X rays and see where you're at compared
to normal and we do those on site. So if
you'd like to make an appointment out our office, very
simple process, give our office a call seven one seven
fix two seven zero three six again six two seven
zero three six five. All right, guys, welcome back to
(21:05):
the show Doctor Greg O'Neal Maximize Living Radio. Please check
out our website lit Its Family Chiropractic dot com. You
can fill out you can fill out a form there
to make an appointment. You can read about our office.
You can read about the five Essentials. You can check
out our biographies. You can see a picture of me
and my wife. Sometimes it's it's funny to hear people
(21:28):
on the radio and then you get like an idea
of what they look like, and then you see them
in person. You're like, oh, they don't look like that.
I'm not very tall. I'm only like five foot eight,
so some people look. I'll walk in the room and
some people immediately like, oh, I thought you were taller.
I'm like, oh, thanks, Happy Monday to you too. Some
(21:52):
people said I'm a handsome guy, so that's always nice.
People say that. I don't know if they're just being
nice or not after they call me short. But anyways,
all right, Moving on talking about skepticism today in how
we want to practice healthy skepticism, which is asking questions.
So I am big on even if people don't have questions,
(22:15):
I'm laying out answers for questions they probably thought they
didn't have. Let me tell you how we do this,
so I explained earlier, like our first appointment a new
patient exam, I'll go through your posture, range of motion,
how patient of your spine. Then we do any necessary
x rays. I take time to review everything, including the
(22:37):
x rays. At your follow up appointment, I'll explain exactly
what's going on. I'll also explain how where your spine
is that compared to normal, how I think your symptoms
are connected to that, and then how I'm going to
help you with an adjustment. So then I perform a
chiropractic adjustment. And that's always fun when people have not
had a first adjustment. One of my favorite things to
(22:59):
do is to adjust people who have not been adjusted before,
just to see, like especially when I adjust someone's neck.
Now people and again I say the word adjusting your neck,
and people will get like, oh my goodness, they get
like freaked out, like it's some big deal. It's not
people get adjusted. They like their eyes open up and
they're like, oh my gosh. It's like instant relief being imagined.
(23:23):
Like your neck is stuck, and many of you listening
right now, you don't even realize that your neck is
tight because you've just adapted to that, you've gotten used
to that. But imagine all of a sudden being able
to turn your neck more freely. Imagine your headache lifting,
Imagine the migraine going away. Imagine numbness and tingling down,
your arms goes away, Like just the relief and the
energy that comes with that. Because when your body is
(23:46):
in a pain state, when there's a lot of pain
receptors that are firing all the time, it really stresses
out your brain. This is a phenomena or concept called
no seception. So there's mechano receptors, there's nerve endings that
go out to your joints, and there's two types of
nerve endings. There's mecano receptors, which they detect movement or
(24:10):
mechanical movement and pressure. So your body, like you can
close your eyes, move your body around and you know
exactly where it is, Like you don't just lose sight
of your body. Because you close your eyes, you have
like an inborn awareness that's called mechano reception. You also
have what's called pain reception, or the fancy term is
(24:30):
called no seception. And so then that no seception is
like you someone you close your eyes and someone touches
your hand, you are able to feel that. Now on
an extreme extream, end you close your eyes, put your
hand on a hot burner, You're gonna move your hand immediately.
So those pain receptors. So when pain receptors are firing
(24:51):
off all the time, this is called like increase no
seception to the brain, where the brain is just getting
a lot of pain complaints constantly, constantly, and then this
phenomenon called dysponesis happens where it basically the brain is
stressed out and it starts to send out more stress
hormones to your body. It's basically saying, Okay, I'm hearing
(25:14):
a lot of stress coming from my body, so I'm
going to dump out stress hormones to try to help.
And when that's done, people's posture gets affected almost immediately.
This is one of the main things that help people
with is that people's shoulders when they're stressed and they
don't even know it will naturally come up. They'll elevate,
(25:35):
so the shoulders will elevate towards the ears. Why well,
when a dog is stressed, it tucks its tail between
its legs to protect its private parts and also protect
its internal organs and kind of crunch its body. That's
their stress response. A humans is to put their neck,
their head forward and elevate their shoulders. Why it's to
(25:57):
protect the neck, like the way that God designed that.
When when we're under stress, we want to protect the
most vulnerable area of our body, which is in our
which is our neck, so that if we were chased
by a lion or a bear, we automatically will do
that to protect that so that we're not getting our
throat you know, cut or whatever. So that's how that works.
(26:18):
But the problem is is just the little stresses that
happen throughout the day. You know, you're at work, you're
sitting at a computer, you're getting a stressful phone call,
you got to deal with a mother in law or kids,
or you know, money or whatever else. Naturally, your shoulders
are going to elevate. And when that happens over and
over and over again. That's going to lead to stress
on those muscles, and those muscles get stressed out and
(26:40):
the spine moves out of alignment, and more extra stress
and pressure are on the bones that diss and the joints,
and that's going to lead to more pain, and then
you're going to be looking for a relief. You try
to do a stretch, or maybe you go to physical therapy,
or you try yoga, or you go get a massage,
but nothing's really helping because those points are actually stuck.
(27:01):
And that's where chiropractic adjustment comes in and gets those
joints to move and then you get relief and you're
able to come back into them a more healthy posture.
At our office, we also offer rehabilitative exercises for your posture,
for your neck, for your back, for your mid back,
so we can get your spine back into alignment. And
when your spine gets back in alignment, like it's hard
(27:24):
to describe, like if you've never been adjusted before, you've
never got yourself back in alignment. It'd be like me
trying to explain what chocolate tastes like to you if
you've never tasted chocolate. Chiropractic One of the reasons people
are very skeptical is because chiropractic is experiential. Not experimental experiential,
(27:46):
you must experience it in order for it to happen.
In order for you to understand what it's like, you
have to experience it. Just like many things in life. Okay,
what's it like to be married, Well, get married and
find out. What's it like to have kids. You could
read and I read a couple of books before we
(28:07):
had children. Someone could sit and explain it to you.
You could babysit, you could read one hundred books in
a row. But until you have children, until it's your
own child screaming in the middle of the night and
you've got to get up with them and you're tired
and exhausted and you got to go to work the
next day, no one can prepare you for that. It
just can't. Now, to back that down a little bit,
(28:29):
the same thing with chiropractic, it's like, well, what's it
going to be like, what's it going to feel like?
It's like, well, I can tell you what it feels
like for me. I can tell you what it's like
for me or for other people. But in order for
you to experience it, you have to do it. And
that's kind of that leap that people have to make.
They have to step over their skepticism. They have to
step over their misconceptions, their fears, their ignorance, their laziness,
(28:51):
their stubbornness, all those things. You have to leave that
stuff at the door and you have to step forward
into making a better decision for your health. Okay, And
that's what I want to kind of to switch gears here.
Talking about skepticism, is that people think that doing nothing
is neutral, that there's like a third option. Okay. People
(29:15):
are like, okay, some people just say no, I'm not
going to do that, okay, and that's that's very clear.
And some people say like, yes, I am going to
do that. And then some people don't say anything and
they're thinking they're want to take the third option. There
is no third option. You're either building your health or
you're not, or you're destroying your health. Is it's it.
(29:36):
It's very black and white. So I'll give you a
few examples. If your spine is degenerating right now, doing
nothing does not posit makes you get worse. Actually, if
your blood sugar is rising, doing nothing does not stabilize it.
If your pasture is getting worse, doing nothing does not
correct it. If your muscles are weakening, doing nothing does
(29:57):
not strengthen them. If your stress is a overwhelming your body,
doing nothing does not calm your nervous system. So time
is either helping you heal or allowing dysfunction to progress.
A lot of people think they're being cautious. I'm asking questions.
I'm not quite sure. I'm just being safe. And sometimes
(30:18):
waiting is appropriate, right, Like sometimes you want to take
a breath and you know, take a minute and ask questions.
We talked about all that. But often waiting is just
fear addressed up as caution. Okay, it's like I'm people
say I'm skeptical. Really what they are is they're fearful. Okay,
I'm cautious. You're stubborn. I want to wait and see.
(30:41):
I want to be lazy. Okay, So people just say
I want to see. If it goes away on its own,
you might feel better. But what's really happened is your
body has adapted to the stress and you don't feel
it anymore. Okay, just like a mother who has five
screaming kids. All right, you send a mother, a young
(31:04):
woman who doesn't have children into a room with five
screaming kids. It's going to bug them out right, it's
going to be very stressful. Now have the mother of
those five screaming kids walk into the room, and she's
going to be more calm about it. Why she's adapted
to that stress. Okay. I used to live on a
very busy road with cars whizzing by, and you know
(31:24):
the big Harley Davidson motorcycles that'd be so loud, and
eventually I could sleep through that. Not that it wasn't loud,
it's just that my body had adapted to it. Okay,
So right now you're listening to this. You had back
pain before, and you know what, it got better on
its own. No, it didn't. The problem that caused that
pain is still there. You didn't do anything about it.
(31:47):
It's just now your brain has a new baseline for
what it considers normal because your brain just can't continually
tell you that there's problems. Your brain actually has natural
painkillers and things like that that it will eventually release,
But that doesn't mean that the problem went away. We
want to assess. That's why you always want to assess.
You this is why people go to the medical doctor.
(32:09):
They get blood work done, they get a year analysis done,
they get a full physical because we don't get to
know and we don't get to feel everything that's going
on our body. It's the same thing with our spine.
I say to people, how's your spine doing, They're like, wow,
it doesn't hurt, so it's fine and doesn't work like that.
Your posture, your range of motion, outpatient of your spine,
taking extrays. I told you those steps that need to
(32:31):
be done, and I would recommend for many of you
listening to give us a call to do that. So
stay tuned. All right, guys, welcome to the final segment
Maximize Living Radio for this week. Talking about skepticism. Talked
about healthy skepticism, unhealthy skepticism. Talked about how doing nothing
(32:51):
can still be a decision or is still a decision
that you've got to do something with your health. You
can't just be a bystander, you know. Seeing health like
a car. You want to be in the driver's seat.
You want to be driving your car. You don't want
to be in the passenger seat. Some people are in
the backseat, some people are in the trunk. You know,
with their eyes closed and covering their ears. You can't
(33:13):
bury your head in the sand. Life is happening to
you or it's happening for you. But at the end
of the day, you have to be the one making
the decisions. You have free wills, you have to make decisions,
you have to do things. All right, how do we
apply all this? How do we you know, turn this
into where's the middle ground? Talked about the unhealthy and
(33:34):
the and the healthy, but where's the where's the middle here?
So I want to I encourage people to be skeptical
in a healthy way. So this would be asking your doctor, chiropractor,
physical therapist, if you could apply this to anyone mechanic,
car salesman, whomever. So asking questions like what is the
(33:54):
goal of this recommendation? Is it correcting the cause or
just covering up a symptom? That's basically what we're getting
that Like why when a doctor says, okay, you're going
to be giving me give you this blood pressure medication,
and I would say, okay, what's the goal of this medication?
They might give you a funny look like well to
lower your blood pressure. I'm like, okay, well is this
(34:15):
going to be done for? How long? How long am
iney going to be taking this for? Is this correcting
the cause of the problem or is it just covering
the symptom? What is the role that I can play?
I literally coach people on going to the medical doctors.
They're like, well, I'm going for my physical what kind
of questions from should I ask? And I'm like, I
feel like saying, like, it's your body. Shouldn't you care
(34:35):
what you're putting in? You're just going to swallow a
pill that they are just going to give you and
you're just going to blindly take it. Don't you want
to ask questions? So? What are the risks of doing this?
What are the risks of taking this medication, of getting
this adjustment, of doing this therapy? But also though to
slip the other side, what are the risks of not
doing it? If I do do it or I don't
(34:56):
do it, what are the risks of that? Is this
based on a principle of health? Like what principle of
health would this be based on? And I can tell
you right now, if you're sitting in a medical doctor's
office and you're just swallowing a pill, that's not really
based on a principle of health. Principles of health that
I base my entire practice on is that the power
(35:19):
that made the body is the power that heals the body.
Your body is self governing, it's autonomous, and it's self
organizing and self healing, so much so that if you
cut your hand, it's going to heal. That same power
that's in your body that God put there can heal
your back pain, your neck pain, neuropathy, high blood pressure. Yes,
(35:40):
even cancer. I'm not saying I cure cancer. I'm not
saying chiropractic cure is cancer. And you know what, chemotherapy
doesn't cure cancer either either to surgery. Those things are treatments. Okay,
the body is what heals itself. Do you ever hear
about spontaneous remission? But people say, there was this person
(36:00):
who had cancer and they had tumors everywhere. Then they
went back a few months later the tumors were all gone.
It was spontaneous remission. Now what that makes it sound
like and the medical speak is this, it's like, oh
it just it just went away. I was lucky. No,
your body yielded, body got rid of it. You have
part of your immune system, part of the immune cells
(36:21):
in your body. They're called killer tea cells, and these
killer T cells they just roam around the body and
basically kill cancer. Many of you listening right now, like
we all right now, have hundreds t is not thousands
of cancer cells in our body right now, but the
vast majority of them are being targeted as you speak,
(36:42):
as we speak and killed. So what do we need
to do? We need to figure out what's causing these issues?
What's asking the doctor? What's causing this? Doctor? Why am
I dealing with high blood pressure? Why am I dealing
with these issues? Okay, another good question, another healthy question
asked is does this support the body's natural healing ability
(37:03):
or is it overriding it? So, when you're taking a medication,
is this supporting my body or is it just overriding it?
This supplement? Is this supporting my body or is it
overriding it? The adjustment? Is it supporting my body or
is it overriding it. I can tell you on equivocally
everything that we do at our office is meant to
support the body's natural healing ability. We're not here to
(37:25):
help the body. The body doesn't need help. This is
another principle of chiropractic, the body needs no interference. The
purpose of an adjustment is to remove interference. Is that
when the spine is moved out of alignment, when you
have poor posture, poor range of motion, the joints are fixated,
they're not moving well. That's an interference to your body's
(37:46):
ability to heal because nerve channels travel through that area
maybe become stressed out. So the adjustment helps to increase
motion in that area so that you regain function, and
function and structure in hand, the structure of your spine,
the function of your nervous system, your body starts to
heal better. So another good question to ask, and this
(38:09):
is going to hit the nail on the head for
many people. Am I avoiding this because it truly doesn't
make sense or because I'm afraid to change? So when
you're listening to this right now and you're like, I'm
skeptical of chiropractic, I'm not sure if I want to
go in. I don't know about this doctor, Greg, guy
I'm listening to on the radio. Are you avoiding this
(38:31):
because it does not make sense or because you're afraid
to change? Those are two different things. Because if you're
avoiding this because it doesn't make sense yet, great listen
to I have a whole podcast of all these radio shows.
You can go on the iHeartRadio app, and I have
all different topics. I title each show is the different topics,
(38:54):
so it gives you idea what I'm going to talk about.
And maybe your topic is there. Maybe it's back pain
or neck pain or gettism like today's show, or you know,
mindset exercise nutrition, and you can dig deep and you
can get those questions answered. That's why I do this
radio show. But for most people, that's not what they're
really saying. Most people are afraid to change. Most people
(39:18):
are not even as much afraid of failure because they
fail before. Like what if I do this and I fail.
A lot of people are afraid of success. What if
I do this and I need to now be responsible
where I need to get the junk out of my house,
I need to clear out my cupboards, I need to
get good food in there. Because failure is easy. Anyone
(39:41):
can fail. But to succeed, and to succeed sustainably, sustainably,
that takes responsibility. And I hear that every day and
the questions that people ask and One of the big
questions people ask is this. They say, well, if I
get adjusted, does that mean that I have to keep
doing it the rest of my life? And I'm like,
(40:03):
the short answer is no, I go through that. Of course,
you know, you can choose to do whatever you want
to do. Or people say, oh, when I get take
you know, eat start eating healthy, does this mean I
have to do it the rest of my life. It's like, well,
you don't. The real answer is you don't have to
do anything. I'm going to do it the rest of
my life. For me personally, I've been a justice since
I was twelve thirteen years old. I've been eating extremely healthy,
(40:27):
like really healthy since I was twenty five years old,
like really dialed in. But like, I'm going to continue
to do this. I know hundreds of my patients are
going to continue to do this because I know the difference.
I know what what I look like before, what I
felt like before, how I functioned before, and I know
the difference between men and now. I know that difference.
(40:47):
For hundreds of people who you know, functioned a certain way,
felt a certain way, change their lifestyle. Now they feel
and function this way. What most people don't realize or
don't want to face, is that health change has to
be permanent. You have to make permanent changes. And that's
something that many doctors are afraid to say because it's confrontational.
(41:11):
People don't want to hear it. That's why you don't
see many ads on TV. Like imagine me popping on
TV and I'm just like, hey, you got to eat
healthy the rest of your life, the rest of your life,
and then the commercials just over. People aren't gonna And
I was like, call this number if you want help.
(41:32):
How many calls am I going to get? I get thumbed,
don't get me wrong, but who's getting more calls? All
these what a peptides or semiglutide commercials here? Take this drug,
Stick it in your belly. You're going to not be hungry.
They should just say it like this. You're going to
take this medication and it's gonna change the hormonal balance
(41:55):
in your body so much so that you're not even
going to feel hungry. You're not even going to want
to eat. You're going to starve yourself. You're gonna your
face is going to look sunken in. You're gonna look
at big bags under your eyes. But you're going to
lose weight and your friends are going to notice and
they go say, hey, you're losing weight. What's going on. Oh,
I'm taking this, you know, expensive medication that I'm paying hundreds,
(42:17):
if not thousands of dollars for every month. Oh, but
I'm dealing with gallbladder attacks, which is a known side effect,
paying creative issues, hormonal imbalances, all kinds of different weight
gain issues if you stop. But people will do those
things because it's the easy answer, right, just take this pill.
It's so easy. You know, some people they'll complain about
(42:41):
big pharma, they complain about the medical doctors, they complain
about the systems that are in place. And yes, there's
some systematic issues, and I've talked about that at length,
but at the end of the day, they are there
because they're giving people what they want. And what people
buy and large want is easy, the easy road. Okay,
(43:03):
So the path of least resistance leaves rivers and men crooked.
The path of least resistance leaves rivers and men crooked.
We have to take the path like just like in
the Bible says we take the narrow road, the straight,
narrow path, the Highway to Hell is, you know, twelve
(43:25):
lanes wide, but also the Highway to cancer, to heart disease,
to early death, to morbidity, to mortality. It's one hundred
lanes wide and everyone's on it. You got to do
something different, you have to. And then people say, oh, well,
I'm not sure, and I'm skeptical, and I'm this and
that and the other thing. It's like, okay, I understand that,
(43:46):
but at the end of the day, you just got
to take a step, take a little step at first.
And for many of you, that step is making a call,
making a change, giving our office a call, giving us
a shot. As I know, do you give us a shot,
we will deliver. I will help you. So signing off
for this week, guys, have a blessed week. Doctor Greg
(44:06):
Maximize Living radio audios
All right, guys, welcome to another week Maximize Living Radio
with your host, doctor Greg O'Neil. Today, I'm going to
be talking about gepticism. Gepticism. Now, skepticism is not necessarily
bad thing. I just want to I want to throw
that out there because you know, you hear the words
chiropractic and the words skepticism can kind of go right
(00:21):
along with it, and some people would think that I
wouldn't like people who are skeptical. But I'm going to
kind of reframe that skepticism can actually be good because
it can protect you in healthcare, and you want to
be making sure that you're asking questions. You want to
understand what's going on, what's going into your body, what's
going on in your body, the type of doctor that's
(00:43):
taking care of you. You should want to know why
you're taking a certain medication, doing a procedure, getting an adjustment,
you know, surgery, supplement treatment. That's more wisdom. The problem
is when people like you can go on one extreme
or the other. We're going to talk about the two extremes.
Two extremes is like the old kind of the old
school way of looking at things with healthcare. It's like Okay,
(01:05):
whatever the doctor said, that's what I'm gonna do. If
the doctor says jump, how high do you want me
to jump? Or you might not even ask that as
as you would just do it. So and then the
other extreme is being so skeptical that you're like paralyzed
and you're not and you won't even do anything because
you don't trust anyone. And really you're masking skepticism with
(01:27):
just with just stubbornness. You're using it as a crutch.
You're saying, well, I'm a skeptical person, when in reality,
maybe you're a stubborn person, or maybe you're being a
lazy person, or maybe you're doing you're being a person
who doesn't want to take responsibility. So I really want
to frame what healthy skepticism is. Okay. So there's a
big difference between saying I want to understand this before
(01:50):
I make a decision versus I don't trust anything, so
I'm not going to do anything. Okay. One of those
protects you by wanting to under stand, and the other
one can slowly destroy your health. So again, in chiropractic,
I see this all the time. Someone has symptoms for years,
they have headaches, back pain, neck pain saattica, and I'm
(02:12):
just entingling neuropathy. They're not sleeping well. People know something's wrong,
but they're skeptical of every possible solution. They're like, Okay,
one doctor said this, one therapist said this, one chiropractor
said this. But in general, people don't want medication, they
don't want they don't want surgery. But then in some
(02:35):
cases they're like, well, I don't even want chiropractic. I
don't want to change my diet, I don't want exercise,
I don't want to get adjusted, I don't want to
take supplements. I don't want to look at my stress.
And eventually it's the real problem is not even that
they're skeptical, it's that they're stuck. So again, healthy skepticism
is you're asking questions, and questions are good. Unhealthy skepticism
(02:57):
you refuse to move. So and again, I've said this
a million times. When you're in healthcare, when you're talking
about health not doing anything is still doing something. When
people are like, I'm not changing a thing, you are
doing something by not doing something. So the time will
(03:19):
pass and you think that you're not doing anything and
your body's either going to be built up in health
or it's going to be broken down. So we want
to focus on asking questions, not being so stubborn that
we're not going to move and not do anything. So
let's give a real world example of this. And in no,
we lived through a large social experiment. If you don't
(03:42):
remember this, it was called the pandemic. And in the
pandemic it was skepticism, it was asking questions, and then
it was also you saw people just following along obedience mandates,
forcing people to do things or else, say, lose their job.
We all know the story. We all lived it, and
(04:04):
we got to see how healthy skepticism was a good thing.
When someone said, okay, and what was it six feet away,
wear a mask when you're walking into a restaurant, but
then when you sit down, take it off. And then
for people like me, it's like, okay, number one, that
doesn't even make sense, all right, it doesn't make sense.
Those alarm belts start going off. You start asking questions
(04:26):
when they say things like okay, if you don't take
this vaccine, then you're going to lose your job. And
it started off as okay, this vaccine is going to
prevent you from getting sick, you won't get an anymore.
It stops with you. Then the goal post move is like, Okay,
it's not going to prevent you from getting sick, but
it might reduce your symptoms and prevent other people from
(04:46):
getting sick. And then the goal posts start to move
in the more. It's like, Okay, it might just reduce
your personal symptoms, but you still want to stay away
from other people. Essentially, you still want a social distance
and wear a mask and do all this kind of stuff.
So the goal post kept moving and moving and moving,
and I saw personally just a wave of change in
healthcare since the pandemic, mostly for the positive and some
(05:08):
for the negative. Now, the positive was is people grew
a healthy, healthy skepticism of the medical field, asking questions like,
wait a minute, why do I have to do this?
What is the purpose of this medication? Why are you
recommending this treatment, Why are you recommending this surgery? Why? Why? Why?
Why why? And that really fit into Chiropractors thrived in
(05:30):
that because it's Chiropractors were used to people asking questions
because for many years, if not decades, chiropractic was looked
at through skepticism because it was so different. People didn't
understand it. There's a lot of ignorance. There's just a
lot of people not understanding. And then also there was
a conspired effort by the American Medical Association to contain
(05:53):
and eliminate the chiropractic profession. And this is well known
and well documented. I've done entire radio show on this.
But this issue went all the way to the Supreme
Court in the late nineteen seventies early nineteen eighties, if
you want to look it up. It was actually a
chiropractor from Pennsylvania. His name was Chester Wilk Wilk and
(06:14):
him and a team of chiropractors sued the AMA for
a conspired effort to contain and eliminate chiropractic. It went
all the way to the Supreme Court of the United
States and it's called the Wilk versus AMA. If you
want to look it up. It's really interesting. And they
found the American Medical Association guilty of basically indoctrinating their
(06:37):
doctors as they're coming out of school. They would give
them these packets, they were called quack packs, with pamphlets
with basically propaganda telling them if you refer your patients
to a chiropractice that chiropractor is going to hurt your patients.
It was a lie. And so they had all these
medical doctors and people high up in the AMA under oath.
(06:58):
And if you really want to dig into there's all
these videos on YouTube, and they used to tell people, oh,
people can get hurt, people can get paralyzed, all these things.
And they asked these doctors under oath, did you ever
see someone that was that was killed by chiropractic paralyzed chiropractor?
And under oath they said no. They admitted that it
(07:18):
was a lie. But that lie did damage. It did
damage to the chiropractic profession so much so that you had,
you know, millions of people not go to a chiropractor
because of that ingrained skepticism and so. But on the
flip side, though, his chiropractors had to get really good
(07:38):
at explaining what they do through education so that people
would understand. And because people came in naturally asking questions,
and people naturally ask questions, you have to have answers.
So chiropractors are very good, in my opinion, the best
physicians of any sort with bedside manner and also patient education.
I actually don't even think it's very close with helping
(08:01):
people understand what's going on now in the medical field.
For years, it was like you didn't ask questions, it's
just whatever the doctor said you did. And then the
pandemic happens and people start to ask questions. And when
you start to ask questions, you start to get answers,
and you realize the answers that you're getting aren't quite
what you thought or wanted to hear in the first place.
(08:21):
So the answers are, well, just do it, or you're
going to get fired, take this vaccine, or you're going
to fire you wear this mask, or you're not allowed
in here, you know, comply or else through force. And
in general, people don't like that, and people start to
ask questions, and then they start to ask questions about
other things with healthcare, Well, why am I on this medication,
Why am I doing this? Why am I doing that?
(08:42):
And that's where people are tilting more and more than
ever before towards natural health care. So that's what I'm
getting at, is that that natural skepticism, healthy skepticism, can
be a positive for people so that they ask questions
and empower themselves with their health. What I'll share after
the break is that unhealthy skepticism and be a detriment?
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. Doctor Greg
(09:04):
O'Neill maximized Living Radio talking about skepticism in healthcare. Early
in the break, I was talking about healthy skepticism, how
asking questions is important. Now here's the thing and here's
the reality. And I know some of you maybe thinking this.
Let's be honest. A lot of people are skeptical because
they've been burned in healthcare. Maybe you were told just
(09:28):
take this medication and no one explained why. You walked
into a room, and instead of the doctor listening to you,
you noticed that the prescription pad was already filled out
before you walked into the room. They already had made
their decision of what was going to happen without even
listening to what was going on. I've heard that a lot.
Maybe you were rushed through an appointment. Maybe you were
(09:51):
told that your labs were normal even though you didn't
feel good. You're like, what the heck is going on?
I've been told that my labs are normal, but I
don't feel well. Maybe you try to treatment that didn't work.
Maybe you were given hope by someone who over promised you.
Those skepticism can basically come from experience. But here's where
you want to be careful. Just because one thing failed
(10:13):
doesn't mean everything is false. Okay. So unfortunately chiropractors we
kind of get that. The bad end of this is
like people generally understand if you went to Starbucks and
you got a bad cup of coffee, does that mean
that all Starbucks is bad? No? Okay, maybe the barista
(10:36):
had a bad day, maybe it was a bad mix,
you know, so on and so forth. People just realized
that stuff happens. Maybe you go to a medical doctor,
things don't go well, and you're like, well, I need
to get a new doctor, right. You go to a mechanic,
you don't like the service they provided, Maybe you thought
that they overcharged, Maybe you thought that they were finding
(10:57):
too many problems or weren't fixing the problem. Where you're like, well,
I'm not going to I'm going to go to a
different mechanic. The issue isn't chiropractic is. And I share
this with young chiropractors all the time. We don't necessarily
get the benefit of the doubt, especially from the older population,
because people are generally skeptical when they come in they're unsure,
(11:18):
and you, essentially, as a chiropractor, have one chance and
if you're not doctor perfect a lot of the times.
I know that sounds a little bit of you know,
hyperbole or whatever, but honestly it's true with a lot
of people. If you don't really explain things well, have
a good bedside manner beyond your game, people are out
of there. People are out of there. Here's a story
(11:41):
for you. Happened to a colleague of mine and chiropractic.
They had new patients come in. These patients were very skeptical.
They were they were wanting to come in because they
had tried everything. They've been to the medical doctor, physical therapist.
They are in all kinds of pain. They're finally okay,
they're skeptical chiropractic, but the they're going to try it out. Okay,
(12:01):
So they go to the office, they check in the chiropractor.
You know, he's working with the patients and his chiropractor
kind of it's like you got your two eyes and
two ears, but you got another ear. Like out maybe
in the waiting room you can kind of sense what's
going on. You know, when new patients are coming in.
You know when re exams are coming in. You have
a sense for the flow of what's happened in the office. Well,
(12:22):
the patients show up five minutes later. The patients leave
before their appointment. So the chi practice like, what just happened?
Like that? Are they okay? Is everything fine? So they
go to the front and they ask the staff member
what happened and they said, well, they went to the bathroom.
When they came out, they said the bathroom was dirty,
(12:45):
so they didn't trust our office, so they were leaving.
I was like, oh my gosh. Now, so here's the
two sides. Okay, the two sides of skepticism. So the
healthy side of skepticism asking quest essions for the sake
of that person. Maybe they go into the bathroom, maybe
it's dirty or it smells or something, and they're like, well,
(13:08):
if they can't take care of a bathroom, how they're
going to be able to take care of me. Okay,
I can understand that. But then on the other hand,
what if someone had just gone in and made a
stinky in there and it wasn't the doctor's fault, it
wasn't the staff's fault. Maybe it was something else right,
So again, it's just not getting that there's no benefit
of the doubt there. I thought. By the way, when
(13:29):
I heard this at a seminar, when they were sharing this,
I felt like so bad for this doctor because they're like,
really like my bathroom I guess stunk because someone else
went in there before and that deterred a patient from
coming away or from coming in. So I know that's
a funny story. But what I'm getting at is like
people can come in so skeptical, and I deal with
(13:52):
this all the time. It's honestly, it's gotten better. I've
been a chiropractor for thirteen years and it's improved a
lot and it's gotten better. But people can come in
some so skeptical that you have to, as a chiropractor,
beyond your game to really understand and connect with that person.
Like I can't go in tired and grumpy and groggy
and all that stuff. Like I can feel that way,
(14:13):
but I got to be like, Okay, now I got
to be on my game so that I can help people.
Because people don't know. People don't know what they don't know,
and that's that's where we want to be careful. Just
because one thing wasn't good in healthcare, doesn't mean everything
else is false. Maybe you've been to another chiropractor before
and you didn't have a good experience. That does not
(14:35):
mean that all chiropractors are bad. Okay. Just like you
have one bad cup of coffee out of Starbucks out
in uh, you know, Myerstown or something, it doesn't mean
that the coffee in Lytits is bad. Does that make sense? Okay?
So healthcare off people often do that. They're like, I
tried chiropractic once. I tried that before. I'm like, great,
(14:57):
But did you get a proper exam? Did you get
X rays if they were necessary? Did anyone explain your spine,
your nervous system, your posture, the structure, lifestyle, did you
follow a correct if plan, did you address nutrition, did
you exercise, your address exercise, stress, toxins? Or did you
(15:17):
go in two times feel a little better or not?
And then decide chiropractic doesn't work. That's not really a
fair test. It's not really fair to just say okay,
just because I didn't get the experience that I thought
I would get, like, because people will quite chiropractic to
like medicine. You take a medicine and a chemical can
change your body rather quickly, like a pain medication. You
(15:40):
take an oxycodone, you're going to start feeling different pretty quickly, Okay,
But you eat a salad for the first time in
ten years, you're not going to lose weight right away. Now,
adjustments are very powerful, and people get adjusted and their
pain goes away immediately in a lot of cases, but
also in a lot of care it takes time. And
(16:01):
maybe the problem's been there and it's been built up
and it's going to take time to break through degeneration
and scar tissue and muscle adhesions and all the things
that are happening. So again, you want to treat it fairly.
You want to give it a fair test. But you
want to make sure that you're going to a chiropractor
that is going to go through all this stuff and
find the cause. And like I said, Buy and Large,
(16:24):
especially the chiropractors in this area are great. I can
only speak for myself though, so what I look for
in a chiropractor for myself when I refer people, because
people will, I'll I get requests all the time. Hey,
can you find me a chiropractor out in Iowa for
my friend out in Texas? Down in Florida over in Oregon.
Like I'm referring people all the time. So I'll look
(16:45):
at that, I'll look at the Google maps, and I'll
search different search terms to find the best chiropractor. And
what I'm looking for is I want to see a
chiropractor that has the ability to take X rays, will
and will take X if clinically necessary, of course, to
see what's going on. I'm also looking for a chiropractor
(17:07):
who will formulate a plan for your spine. Now, so
many people are like allergic to plans in chiropractic, at
which I don't understand. You go to a mechanic, they
have a plan to fix your car. You go to
the medical doctor, they have a plan to give you treatment.
You hire a contractor, they better have a plan. Okay,
(17:29):
you have an architect, you have your contractor, you have
the H track guys, you have electricians, they're all following
the same plan. But yet in chiropractic, people just want
to go in one or two times. They're like, here's
what we're going to do. People come in and tell
me this, They're like, here's what we're going to do.
I'm going to come in one or two times and
blah blah blah blah blah. I'm like, that's nice. Now,
(17:49):
I don't say this, but it's like, you're not me,
You're not the doctor. I'm the one giving recommendations because
no offense. As a chiropractor, I know more than you
about practic I know what it takes to correct your spine.
Just like the plumber knows how to fix the plumbing
of my house. I'm not telling him what to do.
You know, in the mechanic, I might know a little
(18:10):
bit about cores, but he's going to know how to
actually fix it. Now I can I can look at
the plan, I can review the plan. I can understand
the plan, and ultimately I can decide whether or not
DON want to do the plan. That's your role as
the patient. But as far as coming up with the plan,
that's got to come from from the doctor and then
and in collaboration with you. So when someone comes into
(18:30):
my office, it's a pretty simple process. We sit down
and we go through an exam. So that's your posture,
your range of motion. This is really important. Like your
posture I look at someone, is your head coming forward
over your shoulders? Is your head tilting one way or
the other that tells me a lot. Is one shoulder
higher than the other, is your pelvis out of alignment?
(18:53):
Are your feet lined up properly, or is one turning
out or one turning in from the side your hips
over your knees and your knees over your ankles, or
are your muscles so tight that it's throwing that off
that I can even see that with your posture. Then
we check range of motion. Now the rubber really comes
to the road because people can really see how far
(19:16):
they're out because I'll do the range of motion first,
and my range of motion is really good, so I'll turn.
I'll say, I want you to look down like this,
look up like this with their neck lean one way.
And this is where people really notice it, because people
never lean their necks like leaning your left ear to
your left shoulder, lean your right ear to your right shoulder,
and people can hardly move. Now they'll say things, I
(19:40):
don't get this as much anymore because I'm now I'm
a little older. You know, I've been in practice thirteen years.
People used to look at me and say, well, that's
just because you're really young. Because you're young, you know,
when I was twenty five years old, thirty years old.
Shown people is say like, well you're a young guy.
You can do this now that I'm more experienced. You know,
I've been in practice for thirteen years, so you'll be
like the a look at my range of motion and
(20:01):
compared to themselves, they're like, oh uh, oh, there's a
problem here. There's a difference. Then I have people go
down to touch their toes without bending their knees, lean
back over their hips, and then lean side to side,
and it really gives me obviously information on what's going on,
but also people understanding, oh boy, there's an issue here.
(20:22):
And then we do what's called palpation, where I feel
what's going on with the spine, similar to a dentist
probing teeth. Many times you don't know a cavity is
there until the dentist pokes it. And then by by
going along the spine and feeling each individual segment and
testing it against motion, we're able to see which areas
are tender, which areas could have possible sublixation or misalignment
(20:43):
or the spine. And then, if necessary, the best tests
we take X rays and see where you're at compared
to normal and we do those on site. So if
you'd like to make an appointment out our office, very
simple process, give our office a call seven one seven
fix two seven zero three six again six two seven
zero three six five. All right, guys, welcome back to
(21:05):
the show Doctor Greg O'Neal Maximize Living Radio. Please check
out our website lit Its Family Chiropractic dot com. You
can fill out you can fill out a form there
to make an appointment. You can read about our office.
You can read about the five Essentials. You can check
out our biographies. You can see a picture of me
and my wife. Sometimes it's it's funny to hear people
(21:28):
on the radio and then you get like an idea
of what they look like, and then you see them
in person. You're like, oh, they don't look like that.
I'm not very tall. I'm only like five foot eight,
so some people look. I'll walk in the room and
some people immediately like, oh, I thought you were taller.
I'm like, oh, thanks, Happy Monday to you too. Some
(21:52):
people said I'm a handsome guy, so that's always nice.
People say that. I don't know if they're just being
nice or not after they call me short. But anyways,
all right, Moving on talking about skepticism today in how
we want to practice healthy skepticism, which is asking questions.
So I am big on even if people don't have questions,
(22:15):
I'm laying out answers for questions they probably thought they
didn't have. Let me tell you how we do this,
so I explained earlier, like our first appointment a new
patient exam, I'll go through your posture, range of motion,
how patient of your spine. Then we do any necessary
x rays. I take time to review everything, including the
(22:37):
x rays. At your follow up appointment, I'll explain exactly
what's going on. I'll also explain how where your spine
is that compared to normal, how I think your symptoms
are connected to that, and then how I'm going to
help you with an adjustment. So then I perform a
chiropractic adjustment. And that's always fun when people have not
had a first adjustment. One of my favorite things to
(22:59):
do is to adjust people who have not been adjusted before,
just to see, like especially when I adjust someone's neck.
Now people and again I say the word adjusting your neck,
and people will get like, oh my goodness, they get
like freaked out, like it's some big deal. It's not
people get adjusted. They like their eyes open up and
they're like, oh my gosh. It's like instant relief being imagined.
(23:23):
Like your neck is stuck, and many of you listening
right now, you don't even realize that your neck is
tight because you've just adapted to that, you've gotten used
to that. But imagine all of a sudden being able
to turn your neck more freely. Imagine your headache lifting,
Imagine the migraine going away. Imagine numbness and tingling down,
your arms goes away, Like just the relief and the
energy that comes with that. Because when your body is
(23:46):
in a pain state, when there's a lot of pain
receptors that are firing all the time, it really stresses
out your brain. This is a phenomena or concept called
no seception. So there's mechano receptors, there's nerve endings that
go out to your joints, and there's two types of
nerve endings. There's mecano receptors, which they detect movement or
(24:10):
mechanical movement and pressure. So your body, like you can
close your eyes, move your body around and you know
exactly where it is, Like you don't just lose sight
of your body. Because you close your eyes, you have
like an inborn awareness that's called mechano reception. You also
have what's called pain reception, or the fancy term is
(24:30):
called no seception. And so then that no seception is
like you someone you close your eyes and someone touches
your hand, you are able to feel that. Now on
an extreme extream, end you close your eyes, put your
hand on a hot burner, You're gonna move your hand immediately.
So those pain receptors. So when pain receptors are firing
(24:51):
off all the time, this is called like increase no
seception to the brain, where the brain is just getting
a lot of pain complaints constantly, constantly, and then this
phenomenon called dysponesis happens where it basically the brain is
stressed out and it starts to send out more stress
hormones to your body. It's basically saying, Okay, I'm hearing
(25:14):
a lot of stress coming from my body, so I'm
going to dump out stress hormones to try to help.
And when that's done, people's posture gets affected almost immediately.
This is one of the main things that help people
with is that people's shoulders when they're stressed and they
don't even know it will naturally come up. They'll elevate,
(25:35):
so the shoulders will elevate towards the ears. Why well,
when a dog is stressed, it tucks its tail between
its legs to protect its private parts and also protect
its internal organs and kind of crunch its body. That's
their stress response. A humans is to put their neck,
their head forward and elevate their shoulders. Why it's to
(25:57):
protect the neck, like the way that God designed that.
When when we're under stress, we want to protect the
most vulnerable area of our body, which is in our
which is our neck, so that if we were chased
by a lion or a bear, we automatically will do
that to protect that so that we're not getting our
throat you know, cut or whatever. So that's how that works.
(26:18):
But the problem is is just the little stresses that
happen throughout the day. You know, you're at work, you're
sitting at a computer, you're getting a stressful phone call,
you got to deal with a mother in law or kids,
or you know, money or whatever else. Naturally, your shoulders
are going to elevate. And when that happens over and
over and over again. That's going to lead to stress
on those muscles, and those muscles get stressed out and
(26:40):
the spine moves out of alignment, and more extra stress
and pressure are on the bones that diss and the joints,
and that's going to lead to more pain, and then
you're going to be looking for a relief. You try
to do a stretch, or maybe you go to physical therapy,
or you try yoga, or you go get a massage,
but nothing's really helping because those points are actually stuck.
(27:01):
And that's where chiropractic adjustment comes in and gets those
joints to move and then you get relief and you're
able to come back into them a more healthy posture.
At our office, we also offer rehabilitative exercises for your posture,
for your neck, for your back, for your mid back,
so we can get your spine back into alignment. And
when your spine gets back in alignment, like it's hard
(27:24):
to describe, like if you've never been adjusted before, you've
never got yourself back in alignment. It'd be like me
trying to explain what chocolate tastes like to you if
you've never tasted chocolate. Chiropractic One of the reasons people
are very skeptical is because chiropractic is experiential. Not experimental experiential,
(27:46):
you must experience it in order for it to happen.
In order for you to understand what it's like, you
have to experience it. Just like many things in life. Okay,
what's it like to be married, Well, get married and
find out. What's it like to have kids. You could
read and I read a couple of books before we
(28:07):
had children. Someone could sit and explain it to you.
You could babysit, you could read one hundred books in
a row. But until you have children, until it's your
own child screaming in the middle of the night and
you've got to get up with them and you're tired
and exhausted and you got to go to work the
next day, no one can prepare you for that. It
just can't. Now, to back that down a little bit,
(28:29):
the same thing with chiropractic, it's like, well, what's it
going to be like, what's it going to feel like?
It's like, well, I can tell you what it feels
like for me. I can tell you what it's like
for me or for other people. But in order for
you to experience it, you have to do it. And
that's kind of that leap that people have to make.
They have to step over their skepticism. They have to
step over their misconceptions, their fears, their ignorance, their laziness,
(28:51):
their stubbornness, all those things. You have to leave that
stuff at the door and you have to step forward
into making a better decision for your health. Okay, And
that's what I want to kind of to switch gears here.
Talking about skepticism, is that people think that doing nothing
is neutral, that there's like a third option. Okay. People
(29:15):
are like, okay, some people just say no, I'm not
going to do that, okay, and that's that's very clear.
And some people say like, yes, I am going to
do that. And then some people don't say anything and
they're thinking they're want to take the third option. There
is no third option. You're either building your health or
you're not, or you're destroying your health. Is it's it.
(29:36):
It's very black and white. So I'll give you a
few examples. If your spine is degenerating right now, doing
nothing does not posit makes you get worse. Actually, if
your blood sugar is rising, doing nothing does not stabilize it.
If your pasture is getting worse, doing nothing does not
correct it. If your muscles are weakening, doing nothing does
(29:57):
not strengthen them. If your stress is a overwhelming your body,
doing nothing does not calm your nervous system. So time
is either helping you heal or allowing dysfunction to progress.
A lot of people think they're being cautious. I'm asking questions.
I'm not quite sure. I'm just being safe. And sometimes
(30:18):
waiting is appropriate, right, Like sometimes you want to take
a breath and you know, take a minute and ask questions.
We talked about all that. But often waiting is just
fear addressed up as caution. Okay, it's like I'm people
say I'm skeptical. Really what they are is they're fearful. Okay,
I'm cautious. You're stubborn. I want to wait and see.
(30:41):
I want to be lazy. Okay, So people just say
I want to see. If it goes away on its own,
you might feel better. But what's really happened is your
body has adapted to the stress and you don't feel
it anymore. Okay, just like a mother who has five
screaming kids. All right, you send a mother, a young
(31:04):
woman who doesn't have children into a room with five
screaming kids. It's going to bug them out right, it's
going to be very stressful. Now have the mother of
those five screaming kids walk into the room, and she's
going to be more calm about it. Why she's adapted
to that stress. Okay. I used to live on a
very busy road with cars whizzing by, and you know
(31:24):
the big Harley Davidson motorcycles that'd be so loud, and
eventually I could sleep through that. Not that it wasn't loud,
it's just that my body had adapted to it. Okay,
So right now you're listening to this. You had back
pain before, and you know what, it got better on
its own. No, it didn't. The problem that caused that
pain is still there. You didn't do anything about it.
(31:47):
It's just now your brain has a new baseline for
what it considers normal because your brain just can't continually
tell you that there's problems. Your brain actually has natural
painkillers and things like that that it will eventually release,
But that doesn't mean that the problem went away. We
want to assess. That's why you always want to assess.
You this is why people go to the medical doctor.
(32:09):
They get blood work done, they get a year analysis done,
they get a full physical because we don't get to
know and we don't get to feel everything that's going
on our body. It's the same thing with our spine.
I say to people, how's your spine doing, They're like, wow,
it doesn't hurt, so it's fine and doesn't work like that.
Your posture, your range of motion, outpatient of your spine,
taking extrays. I told you those steps that need to
(32:31):
be done, and I would recommend for many of you
listening to give us a call to do that. So
stay tuned. All right, guys, welcome to the final segment
Maximize Living Radio for this week. Talking about skepticism. Talked
about healthy skepticism, unhealthy skepticism. Talked about how doing nothing
(32:51):
can still be a decision or is still a decision
that you've got to do something with your health. You
can't just be a bystander, you know. Seeing health like
a car. You want to be in the driver's seat.
You want to be driving your car. You don't want
to be in the passenger seat. Some people are in
the backseat, some people are in the trunk. You know,
with their eyes closed and covering their ears. You can't
(33:13):
bury your head in the sand. Life is happening to
you or it's happening for you. But at the end
of the day, you have to be the one making
the decisions. You have free wills, you have to make decisions,
you have to do things. All right, how do we
apply all this? How do we you know, turn this
into where's the middle ground? Talked about the unhealthy and
(33:34):
the and the healthy, but where's the where's the middle here?
So I want to I encourage people to be skeptical
in a healthy way. So this would be asking your doctor, chiropractor,
physical therapist, if you could apply this to anyone mechanic,
car salesman, whomever. So asking questions like what is the
(33:54):
goal of this recommendation? Is it correcting the cause or
just covering up a symptom? That's basically what we're getting
that Like why when a doctor says, okay, you're going
to be giving me give you this blood pressure medication,
and I would say, okay, what's the goal of this medication?
They might give you a funny look like well to
lower your blood pressure. I'm like, okay, well is this
(34:15):
going to be done for? How long? How long am
iney going to be taking this for? Is this correcting
the cause of the problem or is it just covering
the symptom? What is the role that I can play?
I literally coach people on going to the medical doctors.
They're like, well, I'm going for my physical what kind
of questions from should I ask? And I'm like, I
feel like saying, like, it's your body. Shouldn't you care
(34:35):
what you're putting in? You're just going to swallow a
pill that they are just going to give you and
you're just going to blindly take it. Don't you want
to ask questions? So? What are the risks of doing this?
What are the risks of taking this medication, of getting
this adjustment, of doing this therapy? But also though to
slip the other side, what are the risks of not
doing it? If I do do it or I don't
(34:56):
do it, what are the risks of that? Is this
based on a principle of health? Like what principle of
health would this be based on? And I can tell
you right now, if you're sitting in a medical doctor's
office and you're just swallowing a pill, that's not really
based on a principle of health. Principles of health that
I base my entire practice on is that the power
(35:19):
that made the body is the power that heals the body.
Your body is self governing, it's autonomous, and it's self
organizing and self healing, so much so that if you
cut your hand, it's going to heal. That same power
that's in your body that God put there can heal
your back pain, your neck pain, neuropathy, high blood pressure. Yes,
(35:40):
even cancer. I'm not saying I cure cancer. I'm not
saying chiropractic cure is cancer. And you know what, chemotherapy
doesn't cure cancer either either to surgery. Those things are treatments. Okay,
the body is what heals itself. Do you ever hear
about spontaneous remission? But people say, there was this person
(36:00):
who had cancer and they had tumors everywhere. Then they
went back a few months later the tumors were all gone.
It was spontaneous remission. Now what that makes it sound
like and the medical speak is this, it's like, oh
it just it just went away. I was lucky. No,
your body yielded, body got rid of it. You have
part of your immune system, part of the immune cells
(36:21):
in your body. They're called killer tea cells, and these
killer T cells they just roam around the body and
basically kill cancer. Many of you listening right now, like
we all right now, have hundreds t is not thousands
of cancer cells in our body right now, but the
vast majority of them are being targeted as you speak,
(36:42):
as we speak and killed. So what do we need
to do? We need to figure out what's causing these issues?
What's asking the doctor? What's causing this? Doctor? Why am
I dealing with high blood pressure? Why am I dealing
with these issues? Okay, another good question, another healthy question
asked is does this support the body's natural healing ability
(37:03):
or is it overriding it? So, when you're taking a medication,
is this supporting my body or is it just overriding it?
This supplement? Is this supporting my body or is it
overriding it? The adjustment? Is it supporting my body or
is it overriding it. I can tell you on equivocally
everything that we do at our office is meant to
support the body's natural healing ability. We're not here to
(37:25):
help the body. The body doesn't need help. This is
another principle of chiropractic, the body needs no interference. The
purpose of an adjustment is to remove interference. Is that
when the spine is moved out of alignment, when you
have poor posture, poor range of motion, the joints are fixated,
they're not moving well. That's an interference to your body's
(37:46):
ability to heal because nerve channels travel through that area
maybe become stressed out. So the adjustment helps to increase
motion in that area so that you regain function, and
function and structure in hand, the structure of your spine,
the function of your nervous system, your body starts to
heal better. So another good question to ask, and this
(38:09):
is going to hit the nail on the head for
many people. Am I avoiding this because it truly doesn't
make sense or because I'm afraid to change? So when
you're listening to this right now and you're like, I'm
skeptical of chiropractic, I'm not sure if I want to
go in. I don't know about this doctor, Greg, guy
I'm listening to on the radio. Are you avoiding this
(38:31):
because it does not make sense or because you're afraid
to change? Those are two different things. Because if you're
avoiding this because it doesn't make sense yet, great listen
to I have a whole podcast of all these radio shows.
You can go on the iHeartRadio app, and I have
all different topics. I title each show is the different topics,
(38:54):
so it gives you idea what I'm going to talk about.
And maybe your topic is there. Maybe it's back pain
or neck pain or gettism like today's show, or you know,
mindset exercise nutrition, and you can dig deep and you
can get those questions answered. That's why I do this
radio show. But for most people, that's not what they're
really saying. Most people are afraid to change. Most people
(39:18):
are not even as much afraid of failure because they
fail before. Like what if I do this and I fail.
A lot of people are afraid of success. What if
I do this and I need to now be responsible
where I need to get the junk out of my house,
I need to clear out my cupboards, I need to
get good food in there. Because failure is easy. Anyone
(39:41):
can fail. But to succeed, and to succeed sustainably, sustainably,
that takes responsibility. And I hear that every day and
the questions that people ask and One of the big
questions people ask is this. They say, well, if I
get adjusted, does that mean that I have to keep
doing it the rest of my life? And I'm like,
(40:03):
the short answer is no, I go through that. Of course,
you know, you can choose to do whatever you want
to do. Or people say, oh, when I get take
you know, eat start eating healthy, does this mean I
have to do it the rest of my life. It's like, well,
you don't. The real answer is you don't have to
do anything. I'm going to do it the rest of
my life. For me personally, I've been a justice since
I was twelve thirteen years old. I've been eating extremely healthy,
(40:27):
like really healthy since I was twenty five years old,
like really dialed in. But like, I'm going to continue
to do this. I know hundreds of my patients are
going to continue to do this because I know the difference.
I know what what I look like before, what I
felt like before, how I functioned before, and I know
the difference between men and now. I know that difference.
(40:47):
For hundreds of people who you know, functioned a certain way,
felt a certain way, change their lifestyle. Now they feel
and function this way. What most people don't realize or
don't want to face, is that health change has to
be permanent. You have to make permanent changes. And that's
something that many doctors are afraid to say because it's confrontational.
(41:11):
People don't want to hear it. That's why you don't
see many ads on TV. Like imagine me popping on
TV and I'm just like, hey, you got to eat
healthy the rest of your life, the rest of your life,
and then the commercials just over. People aren't gonna And
I was like, call this number if you want help.
(41:32):
How many calls am I going to get? I get thumbed,
don't get me wrong, but who's getting more calls? All
these what a peptides or semiglutide commercials here? Take this drug,
Stick it in your belly. You're going to not be hungry.
They should just say it like this. You're going to
take this medication and it's gonna change the hormonal balance
(41:55):
in your body so much so that you're not even
going to feel hungry. You're not even going to want
to eat. You're going to starve yourself. You're gonna your
face is going to look sunken in. You're gonna look
at big bags under your eyes. But you're going to
lose weight and your friends are going to notice and
they go say, hey, you're losing weight. What's going on. Oh,
I'm taking this, you know, expensive medication that I'm paying hundreds,
(42:17):
if not thousands of dollars for every month. Oh, but
I'm dealing with gallbladder attacks, which is a known side effect,
paying creative issues, hormonal imbalances, all kinds of different weight
gain issues if you stop. But people will do those
things because it's the easy answer, right, just take this pill.
It's so easy. You know, some people they'll complain about
(42:41):
big pharma, they complain about the medical doctors, they complain
about the systems that are in place. And yes, there's
some systematic issues, and I've talked about that at length,
but at the end of the day, they are there
because they're giving people what they want. And what people
buy and large want is easy, the easy road. Okay,
(43:03):
So the path of least resistance leaves rivers and men crooked.
The path of least resistance leaves rivers and men crooked.
We have to take the path like just like in
the Bible says we take the narrow road, the straight,
narrow path, the Highway to Hell is, you know, twelve
(43:25):
lanes wide, but also the Highway to cancer, to heart disease,
to early death, to morbidity, to mortality. It's one hundred
lanes wide and everyone's on it. You got to do
something different, you have to. And then people say, oh, well,
I'm not sure, and I'm skeptical, and I'm this and
that and the other thing. It's like, okay, I understand that,
(43:46):
but at the end of the day, you just got
to take a step, take a little step at first.
And for many of you, that step is making a call,
making a change, giving our office a call, giving us
a shot. As I know, do you give us a shot,
we will deliver. I will help you. So signing off
for this week, guys, have a blessed week. Doctor Greg
(44:06):
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