Dhru Purohit Show - Bad Posture Is Making You Look Older and Aging Your Body – Here's How To Fix It

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Birch Living, and Maui Nui. Poor posture doesn’t just lead to stress and pain—it can also make you look older. So, how do we counteract this in today’s modern, desk-bound world? Today’s guest shares simple, effective habits you can build into your daily routine to help you stay vibrant, mobile, and pain-free—even if you spend most of your day sitting.   Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Dr. Grant Elliott to discuss posture, back and neck pain, and the common misconceptions surrounding them. Dr. Elliott explains the importance of movement variability and staying active throughout the day, without falling into a fear-based mindset. He highlights what traditional practitioners often overlook when they rely solely on imaging, emphasizing the value of understanding a patient’s story and lifestyle to uncover the root causes of pain. Looking for simple exercises you can do at your desk? Dr. Elliott shares those, too. This episode is a must-listen for anyone looking to prevent or address back and neck pain. Dr. Grant Elliott is the owner and founder of Rehab Fix, an online program designed to help people around the world overcome low back issues. He holds a Doctorate in Chiropractic and a Master’s in Sports Science and Rehabilitation from Logan University. Dr. Elliott is passionate about teaching people how to relieve pain through better movement and self-reliance—rather than dependency. Through his Online Low Back Program, he empowers individuals to take control of their recovery, believing that healing is most rewarding when people can do it themselves. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Elliott dive into: Exercises to reverse poor posture—and how often to do them (00:11) The impact of holding one posture for too long vs. staying mobile for optimal alignment (6:15) How a hunched-over posture can age us faster than we realize (8:20) Core principles and common myths about joint movement (13:45) The ideal movement routine for long-term health (16:05) Neck pain: causes and exercises that actually help (17:40) How to address and relieve lower back pain (27:20) Why standard imaging alone falls short—and the benefits of movement-based testing (30:36) Red flags to watch for when choosing a provider (41:30) Neck cracking, the truth about stretching, and picking the right pillow (45:32) How diet and mobility are more connected than you think (52:36) Why physical inactivity is the new smoking (1:01:36) Stretches and postural tips to improve hip and lower back mobility (1:05:43) Dr. Elliott’s personal journey and what led him to this work (1:11:33) What causes sciatica and how to handle muscle tension effectively (1:17:48) The link between tight hips, lower back tension, and stubborn hamstrings (1:23:44) Dr. Elliott’s best advice for managing and preventing back pain (1:31:51) Final takeaways and closing thoughts (1:37:13) Also mentioned in this episode: Vivobarefoot shoes For more on Dr. Elliott, follow him on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, and his Website. This episode is brought to you by Momentous, Birch Living, and Maui Nui.   Optimize your energy and mental clarity with the Momentous Three: Protein, Omega-3s, and Creatine made by and used by the best. Head to livemomentous.com and use code DHRU for 35% off your first subscription. Get 20% off your Birch Living mattress during their Summer Sale—just head to birchliving.com/dhru today!  Right now, Maui Nui Venison is offering my listeners a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/dhru to secure your access now —but hurry, supply is limited! Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dr. Grant Elliott, welcome to the podcast. Let's talk about bad posture. Not only does it contribute to stress and pain in the body, but it honestly also can make you look older and less confident. Everybody knows this when you see somebody with bad posture. But the good news is you have a few exercises that you literally are going to walk us through to start off the podcast that can help us reverse a little bit of that clock and that wear and tear that's happened. but also potentially bring some relief to the body. So let's jump into it. Let's say you cannot leave your chair. You're stuck in a meeting. You're back starting to hurt yet. You can't get up and leave. There's two very simple things you can do

without even getting out of your chair to begin to work on the two most important areas that become very stressed and locked up from sitting. So if you're sitting for a long period, typically your low back is in a flexed rounded position. Your midback is in a flexed round of position. It starts to make you look like a shrimp as some memes might show.

So without him leaving, one simple thing that you can do, just take your hands and unlock your fingers, put them behind your neck, and then we're going to perform what's called a thoracic extension. So focusing on moving through the midback, you're simply going to hinge over the back of your chair as much as you can and the returning back to neutral

to them repeat this multiple times. The key is not to just hold it, but to do it over and over attempting to push further each time. because it's helpful to unlock your joints further if you perform a repetitive movement, not just a static hold movement. So, hinging into this in and out, you might get some pops, but we will certainly feel taller and straighter with some relief after. Then secondly, the other area we mentioned is the lower back.

Can't do too much sitting in a chair, but what you can do is you can perform pelvic tilts. So now focusing on the lower back, focusing on your hips, you can simply arch your back as much as possible, push your butt. back and now tuck it under you as much as you can. So when you tuck it under you and you flex your glutes, that's a posterior tilt. And then when you extend it behind you, creating an arch in your lower back, that's an anterior tilt. And if you try to arch back and forth between these motions, just sitting, it is moving fluid throughout the discs and joints of your lower back, obviously improving circulation as well,

and just getting your lower back and hips into different positions when they might have otherwise been stuck in one for a very long period of time. So you can do these without even getting out of your chair. It will get you through the day. It will get you through some pain and stiffness. Now, if we can get out of the chair, there's two more advanced versions of achieving these same goals, but by using our chair and getting more emotion.

So we're going to get up out of our chair, which you should try to do more of in general, take more breaks, get up and move, get a standing desk, alternate up and down. These are things we want to do anyway. So now, let's grab our chair we're going to kneel on the ground. We're going to put our elbows on the chair.

And now we're going to sit back, pushing our chest towards the floor, getting into that thoracic extension position that we're achieving and to see the position. Once again, performing this repetitively. This is going to provide a much greater stretch and release through that midback, as well as through the shoulders, opening up the lats and opening up the shoulders too. Now remember, the second part was the lower back. Our lower back is in this flex position most of the time.

We want to get more extension into it. So you can perform this laying on the ground, but if you want to lay your whole body on the ground, if there's germs and dirt or what I have you, and you want to get on the ground, that's fine. What you can do is you can scoot your knees back, lean your upper body on your chair as to lock out your upper body, and just let your hips sink forward and down towards the floor

to get into this extended position. This is also stretching your hip flexors, which are going to get tight throughout the day. But most importantly, it's getting the opposite motion into your lower spine that you're not getting enough of. You're getting a lot of flexion. You're getting a lot of bending, but you're not getting much extension,

and this can help reverse a lot of that stress that you're accumulating throughout the day, throughout the weeks, throughout the months, throughout the years. And this will help you feel immediate relief, better and we'll get you through the day. Those are awesome. Thank you for that, man.

Thank you. All right. You have this powerful quote, which is that most of us sit all day. A lot of times it's unavoidable. Many people listening to this podcast, they sit, you know, six hours a day. But not doing anything about it is avoidable. We can do stuff like these exercises that you just showed. for the person who's listening today who's worried about aging aggressively,

looking older than they are because they have bad posture, for those exercises that you just showed, how many times a day should they be doing that? At what intervals should they be taking breaks to bring in some of those movements? So the best answer, but not the most practical, is as much as possible. The reason why that's not the best answer is because people do not do good without structure. If you say as much as possible,

then it being not enough. Totally. So instead, let's make a very simple, applicable prescription. Simply morning, afternoon, night. Just structure it that way. Three times a day, if you can get on the chair and do the second variations, the more advanced variations,

if you could do 10 reps of both of those, just simply at the start of your day, middle of the day, end of your day, you will feel and see a drastic improvement, and your spine health and positioning posture throughout the day, for sure. You know, one of the big things that you talk about is that let's say somebody has bad posture. They're walking down the street or you're sitting down and you're slouching. And somebody, maybe your loved one or a coworker comes up to you and said, hey, sit up straight,

right? And if you've had that happen enough times to you where somebody's corrected your posture, you think that the solution and the answer is you always have to sit up straight, which is not only tough, but actually might be counterproductive. Can you talk about that? Yes. So although we just covered some methods to improve your spy mobility, to improve your posture, that's not saying that we need to have a perfect posture,

which is a total arbitrary determination anyway. There is no good or bad posture. There's only the position you've been in for too long. So let's connect those dots a little bit more. Let's say I were to hold my elbow in a closed position for eight hours straight. Would my elbow feel good if I held it like this for eight hours? Definitely not. No.

Now what if I held it completely straight for eight hours? No. Okay, what if I held it in this position for eight hours? Also not great. But it would feel decent throughout eight hours if I just did this and moved it normally. Yeah. Right. So my spine.

All right. We don't want to be slouched forward in this position for eight hours. Right. I would feel bad if I was in this one position for eight hours, correct? For those that are listening, you're hunched over in the classic sort of computer position. Yeah, what people label as bad posture. But now, using the elbow analogy, if I sit perfectly straight, perfect, military posture. But if I hold this position for eight hours, how do you think I would feel?

Not great either. Not great either. So the key, just like my arm, you want to move it throughout many motions. That's what helps it feel okay. your back is the same. There's nothing inherently wrong with being in a slouched forward position, something that most of society would deem as poor posture. There's actually nothing wrong with that at all.

The only reason why it would be wrong is if you stayed in that one position for too long. So get out of that and then sit straight for a little bit and then go in the middle and then lean to one side and lean to the next side. The best posture is the one that you're in for the next five minutes. Powerful. powerful it's a whole different approach to this conversation which is an important conversation now in our western society because of modern day furniture chairs computers etc is it fair to say that most people are holding one posture too long and that's a hunched over posture yes and how does that posture age you quicker than you should be aging in a perfect world we'd get all the nutrients we need for high level

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upgrade your sleep in 2025 with Birch. One, if we are in that position too long, generally speaking, you're going to become stiffer for sure. And it's a result of not moving enough. So I like to say, you know, age is just a number. You can stay as young as you want to, depending on how often you move. So if you're not getting enough moving throughout the day,

it's implied that you're sitting in that same position for too long. So not only is it aging you purely from a physiological standpoint, like if our joints aren't moving enough, then they age faster. If our muscles aren't being used enough, they age faster. So from that standpoint, too much sitting, lack of movement. aging in that capacity. But also visually speaking, you see many individuals in older years. Sometimes it's unavoidable, but many will start to hunch and have that kind of slowly

forward shifting type position. And many times, not all the time, but many times it's because we've allowed ourselves to reduce our movement, reduce our movement, reduce our movement, and lose that mobility, lose that extension throughout our spine that we need. and we start to collapse for it and develop more stiffness as a result. So visually, we start to look older as well because we're not staying mobile. Yeah, which is so unfortunate when you see that. But the reason that we're doing this podcast with you now is that if we catch these things early,

not only can we avoid pain that often is a downstream effect of being in some positions too long and not having enough moving in our life. but hopefully we could also preserve our youthfulness in the way that we stand and show up in the world, which has all sorts of implications in our confidence, how we show up. There's a lot of science in that whole area. You know, your mission is to help people with low back issues primarily that come and find you, recover without drugs or surgery, and you have a whole platform dedicated to this mission, including a super popular YouTube channel, which everybody should subscribe to.

As part of that mission, one of the things that you help people do is understand the core themes and myths that are preventing them from having relief, feeling better, and also looking younger. And one of the first themes that's evident in all of your content, Instagram, YouTube, etc., is that a lot of your issues that we're all facing, I've faced them at some point in time in life, you face some of these issues at some point in time in life, come from the fact that most of us are not moving enough and are not in enough different positions throughout the day. Is that right?

Movement variability is key. You want to move individual joints in all the ways that they were designed to be able to move. Imagine it's raining. You're in your car. Use your windshield wipers to clear out the rain. But we all know those corners in the top, those aren't getting touched, right? They kind of remain rainy. that same thing happens with your joints.

So imagine when you move your shoulder or your spine around, it's doing that same thing. It's getting the dust or the rust off of the joint, so to speak. But if you don't take it to the furthest range, those corners are going to gather dust and gather rust over time and slowly that can creep down to the rest of the joint, the less and less you rotate through that. So by maintaining full movement variability,

as many different movements as you can maintain, in the extent of the range of motion that you're able to take them, it will keep your joints maximally cleaned, if you will, like the windshield analogy, to maintain optimal health and fluid throughout them to prevent injury and to improve longevity. So if you think about any joint in your body, maybe you're having pain somewhere else other than lower back,

but we can reference the lower back. Your spine moves forward, backwards, side to side, and it rotates both ways. So you want to be doing exercises, and movements and stretches that take it to the extent of each one of those. As far forward, as far back, as far to the right, as far to the left, rotating each way. Maintain full movement variability of your joints.

So a lot of people listening today are individuals who are committed to, I'm not going to be the standard sedentary American especially. So I go to the gym, maybe sometimes with the trainer, you know, two, three, four days a week. And I also try to get in the 10,000 steps here and there. And if I need to, I'll stretch a little bit. And that's the gist of my routine. Is that enough?

Well, it could be for some depending on their situation. Not enough for others. So I think optimally is more. as much as you're able to. But like, I mean, as you know when it comes to movement, health, it's always like context dependent. But realistically, yeah, everyone should be getting in 10,000 steps. We all need to have some form of cardiovascular exercise in our life.

But we definitely need strength-based training. And many individuals do not have enough strength-based training in their lives. Maybe part of it is fear. Maybe some of his is ignorance. Maybe some of is, I think I'm going to start to look a certain way. when in reality we all look better with muscle, we all feel better with muscle in maintaining adequate muscle mass,

especially to later years in your life, is extremely important. So everybody needs to have a core strength-based routine. And then, of course, additionally, the layers of cardiovascular-based movement and then getting in their steps per day. You keep in those things, you have a relatively low-inflammatory diet,

you don't overeat. You're going to be looking pretty good and feeling pretty good. Now, you took us through a few exercises that are related to improving our performance. posture. And on the topic of aging, one of the things that people see is when they get into their mid-30s, 40s, right around that time period, they start to notice that certain parts of their body are creaking a little bit or more tense. And usually I've seen that the neck is one of the

first things that people notice. You had this fantastic video where you talk about how to fix your neck pain in your chair, even if you don't remember it exactly, talk to us about the neck. And what are the most common pain points that people have with the neck? And are there things that we can be doing on a daily basis to help correct? Yeah. So there's an amazing neck exercises, like the gold standard intro for pretty much anyone with neck pain, truthfully. And I'll demonstrate in just a moment.

But neck pain is extremely common. It's amongst the top five disabilities in the world that affects massive populations. and yeah, it's a very common pain point for a lot of people. We've all woken up with a crank in your neck or sitting at the computer too long. It starts to really affect us in many ways. So the injuries that can occur in the neck, however, are not far off at all from the types of injuries that occur in the lower back. So the same type of joint restrictions and joint pain can occur in both regions respectively. Same dynamic.

Disc issues, very common in the neck. If you are having neck pain and you're also having some traveling symptoms into the shoulder or down the arm or numbness or tingling into your hand or fingers, that's also associated with neck pain, then you likely have a disc bulge that could be impacting a nerve or irritating a nearby nerve and causing radiation down the arm. Now, if you are listening to this and you just heard me say that and you're thinking, oh my gosh, I have those symptoms, I might have a disc bulge. Take a deep breath. Disc bulges and disc herniations are incredibly common. although most of society deems them to be a very scary word, they're not scary. They're highly, highly recoverable. 97% of lumbar disc herniations can be completely resolved without injection.

However, the vast majority are being pushed towards invasive procedures, and that should not be the case. But the point of this discussion is that don't be afraid of the word bulge, although that can be causing these radiating symptoms into the arm. So if you're dealing with common neck pain, or maybe some of these symptoms that are radiating down, we think we have a disc bulge. One very, very simple exercise that we can do that is built on the principle of do the opposite is referred to as a chin retraction or a chin tuck. So the explanation behind this movement is very important. So I'm going to turn away from the camera to give a side view here, but just envision that I'm in a typical forward-based position working at my desk. So based on the anatomy of my neck, the top of my neck by the base of my skull is looking up.

It's getting really tight. I'm in an extent. ended position. The bottom of my neck is actually in a forward-based position. So bottom of my neck is forward, top of my neck is up. So I need to do the opposite. I'm getting a lot of this. Let's provide joint and movement variability. So if I simply take my chin in a retracted position, I do the opposite. It looks like I'm doing a double chin right now. I'm taking those two areas of my neck and I'm completely shifting them the other direction. So now the top of my neck is straight as is the bottom. So I've taken them from these positions to these positions. So by doing this repetitively, a chin or traction, you can use your fingers as a cue to push you back into it. It's not

necessary. It does help some people while you're sitting back and relaxing in your chair. You don't want to be tensing your shoulders or shrugging or flexing anything. You just want to be gliding that as far back as you can, you'll feel a light tension in the front of the neck. You'll feel a nice stretch in the back. Before that, 10 reps, three different times per day, morning, afternoon, and night. And as an entry point into self-rehabilitation,

that is an absolute gold standard home run for various neck-related issues that you can start with, and it's so simple. What are the top things that you see in people's lifestyles that are contributing to this neck pain that so many people deal with, especially as they're getting older? Well, the answer that I would provide to that would actually be the same as low back pain, maybe not quite as complex, but very, very similar.

Not enough movement in general throughout the whole body. Number one. Yeah, for sure. Like, when it comes to any musculoskeletal issue, movement is going to be an absolute core component for any of this. So it's movement and also believe. Once again, these answers are so similar for neck pain and low back pain, low back pain, once again, a little bit more complex, a few other layers. But if you're not moving enough, if you're not exercising, if you're not using your body, you're going to have more issues.

Motion is lotion, rest is rest. So for neck pain, none of people are exercising. None of people are moving their neck through enough ranges of motion to keep those joints free and clear. and then also the belief of pain and experiencing pain as a whole, the belief of this. So maybe the individual who might be experiencing some neck pain or low back pain, maybe they had a few cousins or friends that developed neck pain. And now they're always talking about their neck. And they're getting x-rays and MRIs with all these scary things on their neck.

And they hear that, hey, people who experience neck pain, it's just kind of there. And now they've got to take time off work. And they have this association, that one when they start to feel some pain, that it's going to be something bad. It's going to be something scary. And this catastrophizes that experience, and they start to snowball the wrong direction. And that type of thought pattern

regarding any type of pain produces more fear, less movement, less strength, because now you're not moving, you're not going to use these regions. You're going to start to decondition. Your joints are going to become stiffer because now you're using them less and less and less and less.

And then what's the result of that? More pain. So you do even less movement and then you have more pain and then you do less movement and you start to really close your walls in on this condition, start to identify with it, and then that's where chronic pain lives. That's a super sad downward cycle. And unfortunately, as you mentioned, the modern medical system largely out of lack of knowledge, they have the, you know, good intentions, most of the time, but sometimes they don't.

And you've shared a quote, which is that one of the worst things a doctor can tell you to is to stop exercising if you have pain. And that's just a simple lack of awareness of the idea that motion is lotion of the body. So it feeds into this fear that so many people have that I can't do this activity because I have pain. And sure, there probably are things that people should be more careful of doing when they have pain. Everybody's situation is unique.

But the idea that you're just going to completely wind down or dramatically reduce your activity level or your training level because you're dealing with this ongoing persistent thing is probably not a good idea. Is that your message? Taking a quick break here to share about our amazing sponsors who help support our mission and help me keep this podcast free for listeners. Okay, guys and gals, how many times have you heard an expert on my podcast talk about the importance of getting your protein in? But we're all looking for the magical trifecta when it comes to looking for a protein rich snack. Healthy is one, great tasting, and bonus, if it's something that can help restore balance to our ecosystem.

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in acute episode or any form of episode is to maintain as much of their normal activities as possible. Even if their normal activities are a daily walk, a gym session, a swim, a run with their friend, whatever it might be, maintain absolutely as much of that as possible, even in the middle of an episode. The worst thing someone can do is remove all activity from their life. Is I'm experiencing pain. So I'm going to, yeah, I'm going to call home from work.

I'm going to not move. I'm going to lay my bed all day. I'm going to just put myself on bed rest for a week. that's the absolute worst thing that you can possibly do because of all the reasons I mentioned a moment ago and creating fear avoidance behaviors. I'm under the impression that if I do X behavior, it will make my pain worse. So I will therefore avoid that. It could be something as advanced as a worker at the gym or it could be something as small as bending over to pick my shoes up off the ground. And if we do that long enough, if we tell ourselves to avoid certain movements

and certain behaviors long enough, then our nervous system, our brain will rewire to believe that those activities will then cause us pain. So then when we attempt to go back into those, we have flare-ups. That's not because you're actually damaging your tissue again. It's because your nervous system has learned

that those movements, that they should cause pain because we've avoided them for so long and that's how we've rewired ourselves. So we need to keep moving to the extent that we're able, regardless of where we're at in the episode. With the key understanding that many people ask questions, they're in this frame of like,

if I have back pain, should I modify things at the gym? Or if I have back pain, what can I do in the gym? The way these questions are framed is it's under the assumption that their back pain isn't going away. So when I get these questions, but now my response is somewhat short and concise and a little bit blunt, which is don't worry about modifying or what you can do, just fix it. Back pain is very recoverable if you have a proper plan. Don't have this notion that you need to now shift your life around the pain to work with it, fix it, and then you will be able to get back to anything you want to do without issue.

And that's where that quote comes from. The worst thing a doctor can tell you to stop exercising because there's millions of doctors that don't even lift themselves, by the way. they should not be providing advice for people who that is their related goal. They're not seeing the wrong provider. But if they're telling me to stop exercising, which is extremely common, especially with back pain, hey, low back pain, you have a dyspulge.

Okay, stop going to the gym, stop running. Yeah, you're not going to get back to these things. Oh, you want to go back to rock climbing, whatever your passion is. Yeah, that's not going to happen. People are told this every single day. And that's why they begin to frame their life lens in a way that has to work around it. when in reality, no, they can fix it and they can get back to these things 100%. So when somebody finally understands, okay, hey, the approach is to fix it,

what's the first step in that process? Because some people think, hey, I was told or this is something I've been dealing with for a while, the first step is I need to go get imaging done and actually find out what the issue is. Talk about that and then talk about what your around. recommendation is on the first step through your methodology of fixing this. Yeah. So you are absolutely right. Sadly, very sadly, that is how our health care system operates. I need to know what the diagnosis is. I need to see it. I want to see what the problem is. That is such a problem. And that is causing way more harm to people. That is causing way more pain. That is causing way more people to go to surgery.

than if that was not the notion. And so what the heck, how is that possible? Grant, how is seeing what the problem is, how is that harming anyone? How is that causing surgeries? Well, here's why. There's an abundance of asymptomatic findings that can be found within imaging.

So statistically, anyone that were to get an MRI that does not have pain, 50% of them would have a disc bulge. So there's 50% of the population walking around right now. they have a lumbar disc bulge in absolutely no pain. They have no problem. They're doing what they want to do,

and they likely will not experience pain associated. But let's pretend that person who has had this disc bulge for years. No problem, no issue. It's not causing any harm. It's a part of getting older, literally. You will just see things on your body. We age on the outside. We age on the inside, too.

It would be weird if an 80-year-old got an MRI, and they had the spine of a 20-year-old. That doesn't make any sense. their body internally should represent their external age as well. So it should not be a surprise to see normal age-related changes on imaging. But what Western medicine is done is they've taken normal age-related changes on imaging and turned those into diagnoses. That's super impactful.

Like I want everyone to like rewind this and like listen to what I just said. So if there was someone who had a disc bulge or other normal findings, and then they have a very normal episode of low back pain. They slept wrong or they had a really stressful week and they weren't moving enough. They were sitting too much that week and they were really tired and maybe they went to the gym and lifted and their body wasn't recovered enough to do that.

And they just had a very common strain. But now their beliefs kick in because of what society's told them. Oh my gosh, I have back pain. I got to go see what the problem is. So they go to the wrong provider. Typically, well, there's wrong providers in all areas. So I'm not going to call a single one out. But the first step is imaging.

Let's see what the problem is. So they take an MRI. They see a disc bulge. The same disc bulge that has been there the last 10 years never caused a problem, was never going to cause a problem. But now they have something to blame. Oh, there it is. That's it.

There is the reason for your pain. Oh. And guess what, Mrs. Jones? Yeah, disc bulge, that's it. Like, you're done. You're not going to go to the gym again. Say bye-bye. Your job, that's a little bit too demanding.

The only way to do this is if we cut that out. That happens all the time. Where in reality, if they had a proper narrative about back pain, if they didn't seek, I need to see what the problem is. And they just maintain normal activities. Nine times out of 10 within a week,

their pain would be completely gone and they'd be fine. And they wouldn't be in the situation that would be otherwise if they ran and got imaging first. And the wrong thing is blamed. What about the person who feels like, hey, I've been dealing with this thing on and off for years? right lower back pain neck pain maybe a little bit of both what about for that person who ends up looking for how do i get relief in this situation where there's a reoccurring chronic issue

that they're dealing with yeah so to get a proper evaluation that is not based on imaging so there there's one there's one component that um i did it totally address in your last question which was like then what what should they do like you know imaging or how do you approach them versus your methodology. The answer to that is to get a movement-based evaluation, to get a proper history taken, to have movement testing to see what someone's restrictions are, what they can do, what they can't do, what triggers the pain, what doesn't trigger the pain? Because a person, a novel idea, actually listening to somebody in front of you is going to give you a lot more information than a picture of them. Imagine if you had a whole story and a whole history to provide me,

that I could also combine with evaluating your movement, looking at what your triggers are, understanding what changes your triggers. Imagine if I discounted all that. And I went, all right, Drew, I'm not going to listen to you. I'm just going to take a picture of you, and I'm just going to look at this picture that can't talk to me, and I'm going to make 100% of my judgment on this.

That is crazy, but that is 99% of health care. So even if you have pain, have had pain on and off for years, if you're not matching a necessity, a clinical criteria that indicates imaging, then you don't need imaging. And you just need a proper evaluation for someone who's actually willing to listen to you and assess you. So one component of that, okay, well, when do I need imaging? I have a pain for years.

You're telling me I don't need imaging. Well, necessity for imaging, there's criteria for these things. So if you have red flags, then you need imaging. what are red flags? These could be things that tell us something more serious might be going on. So imaging is primarily designed for fracture, infection, or tumor. Fracture, infection, or tumor. Someone's going to have very clear signs of one of these things,

if you're with a provider that has some degree of what they're talking about. But let's excuse those, so those are more obvious red flags. Let's go to low back pain. Okay, well, there's other things that can be going on with low back pain. I know if I need this low back issue investigated. If someone is developing what's referred to as progressive neurological deficits or progressive motor deficits, then they should pursue imaging for that. What are those?

Neurological deficits are going to be lack of sensation, numbness or tangling. So if I'm getting numbness in my toes, let's say, because I have a back issue, on paper, that's not a big deal. We get people who we have consultations with around the world online every day who have some degree of numbness and their leg or foot. That's not a big deal. It's not nerve damage. It's not doing that. Context matters.

If that person had said, hey, 24 hours ago, I didn't have any numbness. Now, my whole foot's numb. And then 24 hours after that, my whole foot and my lower leg is numb. That's rapidly progressive. Okay, let's pursue imaging for sure. or motor weakness. So strength. Hey, my toes feel like a little bit weak are very quickly.

I'm like, foot's weak. Now it's like I'm really having a difficult time picking my foot up. Yeah, go to imaging. Go to go to more intensive testing. But if someone is not possessing concerning signs, then really there's no indication for imaging and they should be managed conservatively without that unless it's clinically indicated.

And what type of person should they be seeking out that would be doing that, you know, face to face, asking the right questions, going through a proper assessment, measuring sort of degree of mobility, what kind of exercise you could do? Who do they seek out? Yeah, that's the toughest question is because it's not the label of the profession of who they should see. It's the individual within that. So I'll paint with a broad stroke and then I'll get more.

more specific. So if we just purely look on paper on like what degrees have the most amount of training in spine-related disorders, cowbroctors are number one, physical therapists are number two, and then basically all they're like orthopedias, general medicine, like that's going to be kind of branched out from there. But let's look at the most common entry points. Entry points of care, general provider, uh, chiro PT. Kair's going to have most training in spine disorders, PT second, general provider third. So based on that, okay, go to who has the most training in it. But that's not true. It's not true because there are some general providers, although much less, that could be absolute killers who look at the evidence, who study the evidence, who know how to

manage low back pain from evidence-based standpoint. They might not be a rehab specialist like I am and know how to actively fix it, but they might be totally aware of a majority of what we talked about today, how to triage appropriately, how to not prescribe rest, prescribe movement, refer to someone who can do that, that would be an excellent person to see as a first entry point because they're not going to put you down the wrong path. But a majority of general medicine does not possess that. Very few will. Now, the same example applies to chiroz and PTs. Mostly are chyros and PTs, you know, conservative and promoting, you know, forms of medicine that are non-invasive? Yes, but not all. Many different chiroz and PTs are still part of the old dogma of rest and don't do this and don't do that.

you're not going to be able to do that again. It's the worst I've ever seen. There's still a ton of that in these professions too. So I wish it was as easy as, well, who should they see? And I could just say a profession. But that's not true because everybody's going to practice differently. Everyone has a different skill set. It's just a name of a profession. What the individual provider does within their profession is completely up to them and completely to their own initiative to be the best in a particular the area that they can be. So you're basically looking for cues that this person is open-minded and understanding of how to support the body's natural ability to heal itself.

Or if the body can't heal because there's, you know, some other deeper issue that's there to point you in the right direction. I used to have this hack way back in the day, which was when I was looking for a healthy restaurant, I'm visiting a new city, I would go to Yelp. and I would search in quotes, organic eggs. Because usually if a place had organic eggs, not that I'm biased and don't eat, you know, I eat non-organic eggs too,

but I was usually an occasion they were a little bit more mindful about the menu. And then I would see, okay, great, they have grass-fed steak or they have this, or they're not cooking in a ton of, you know, seed oil or whatever it might be, right? Do you have cues like that that people could be asking? I found some great people in Los Angeles.

Angeles that helped me over the years with different things that I've working through. But what could the person who's listening? What should they be asking for or looking for? That's a phenomenal tip that you brought up. That was beautifully articulated, looking for cues of what could be a good provider. So let's just, let me just go through a few, like very, very standard, but very common scenarios. So if you're going to any provider, I won't even say an individual one. If you go to a provider and you don't like, okay, you're in pain.

Sure, you're in pain. But you don't feel like you're staring surgery in the face. And the very first recommendation is drugs and imaging. Like, that's a red flag. Like that, like, if there's minimal evaluation, and it's just, what do you hear for today? Back pain, how long has it been going on, you know, X months or X years. Okay, like, here's your prescription, go get imaging.

That's a red flag. If you go to a provider in the first thing, they goes, we're going to get X-rays to look at your spinal alignment and just try to purely correct your spine alignment. That's a red flag. We know based on the evidence that no one's spine is going to look the same, no one's body is going to look the same. We're born asymmetrical.

There's no evidence that shows that the degree of our spine curvature or our spine shape will cause pain that is not supported by the evidence. So if someone's first step is imaging and treating you based on that, that's a red flag. if you see a provider. And the first step is just all passive therapies. You have back pain. All right, just lay on the table.

You're not going to have to do any work. So non-movement-based prescriptions. No work. You're just going to lay there. Here's your heat pack, your ice pack. We're going to use some e-stem. We're going to use some ultrasound and massage. And we're just going to do this every week.

Okay, those are all super basic passive therapies. Passive meaning it's being done to you. You're passively receiving it. all form of musculoskeletal therapy should be based on active therapies. So active, you are actively doing it or participating in it. You need to be doing work.

If you are not being required to do work in your treatment plan, then it's not a very good treatment plan. Anybody that comes to you and promises, I'm going to fix the situation and you don't have to make, you know, much of an investment or any investment,

maybe except for your pocketbook, that is usually a red flag. Absolutely. Because ultimately, if we don't get you doing like you showed us some of those exercises, you're not going to be in a position to correct some of the things that put you in there in the first place. It's not sustainable. It's not sustainable. So if you have a provider that's providing you a natural form, a drug-free pain relief,

that's great. Like, hey, go see some cheap provider that's just giving you passive therapies overtaking drugs. sure, but they're not much more than that in that scenario because you have to keep going to them to maintain the temporary relief just like I'm popping pills to maintain temporary relief. We don't want you to keep taking pills. We don't want you to keep going back to a provider. It's the same scenario.

So if the only way you can get your relief is by receiving a therapy from a provider, then you are dependent on them. And the goal should always be to turn a patient fully independent so they do not need you. That should always be the goal. And the only way to achieve that is by teaching them how to fix themselves through coaching, through guidance, through direction, yes.

But teach them how to fix themselves. So they have command and control over their own body. That's extremely healing alone, feeling like they're in charge and can control this thing. And then they have the tools to maintain it and then resolve it in the future if it were to ever creep back again. Makes sense. All right. I have a few questions about your own journey.

But before we get into that, I want to do a little bit of a lightning round around some top questions that people have. Okay. One of the biggest questions that people have is, when I have neck issues, should I be cracking my neck? Yeah. So my response to that, sure, if it feels good. It doesn't really matter. We have these polarizing opinions over, oh, I've heard, like, if you crack it and it cause more issues or cause arthritis or whatever. No, like your body's so strong, like you're resilient.

If you crack your neck every once in a while and it feels fine, like, that's not a big deal. Is there, is there a better way to crack your neck if somebody was going to do that if they felt like, oh, it's tense and sometimes I have to sort of do my own thing to it? Is there a better way that is less likely to be causing some downside? Well, if you were to see a chiropractor that does that all day long and can potentially do it in a, lesser aggressive way than you might find yourself doing or in a different way to help joints that you're not appropriately addressing, then yeah, that could be a better way. But what I would say the best would be is if you're someone who feels like you always have to crack your neck, then there's another issue going on. And if you're just cracking it, feel good for a few hours

and you want to do it again, you need to address some other component. So either start to implement some strengthening movements or some other movements of your neck to provide you longer relief. I would seek a different plan. But if the question just, purely what's a better methodology of cracking at myself or maybe a professional who does a lot of that well probably a professional does a lot of that but once again what's better than both of that is not feeling the need to so for myself i haven't i haven't been cracked or had anything adjusted for like years but like people are like well but grant like you're a carpenter so don't you like believe in that and do that and it's like well no i don't need to if i'm doing what i need to and and putting in my body what

I need, then I really shouldn't need that. Now, I'm not advising against that. Like, if that feels good to you and it's a way to keep you mobile and you like the way it feels, then great. Do that. But, like, I don't think anyone should have the necessity to feel like they need to get cracked all the time. There's something else that they're missing.

Another thing a lot of people feel is that I know I should be stretching. And because I'm not stretching regularly, that's why I have X, Y, or Z pain or issue. Is there any truth to that? So like a little bit. If when they say I know I'm not stretching, that if they're just meaning they're not really doing anything and they're also not stretching, then just simply doing any form of stretching

could be some movement-based activity in their life. Like get moving to some capacity. But when we talk to people with specific low back issues, disc bulges, sciatica, that need a more specific plan, and they are relatively active people, maybe not as much anymore because they have back pain, And they make that comment to us, hey, I know I just need a stretch more.

Our response to that typically is, no, you don't because you don't know the stretches to do. So this isn't just like, oh, I'm dealing with this specific disc issue or this specific nerve issue. I just need to do general stretches and I'll be fine. That's typically not the case. We need to find the right movements for your situation. So you know which ones to actually invest your time into instead of just like guessing like which stretches to do on the internet. I love that. And you have a ton of really great free content on this on your YouTube page.

And then obviously you have your whole community and your individual coaching that you do as well too. Right. Do you want to mention your website just in case people want to check that out right now? We'll come back to it later on too. Yeah. So our YouTube channels popular, our Instagram, that's probably our number one platform for people to get more information about what we do, to see what we provide, to actually get some relief. And then that usually prompts people to reach out for further help, which they can message us

on Instagram for help. If you're going to go to our website to apply to our platform, to our platform. program and to look at more testimonials. It's the rehab fix.com. Great. All right. Another top one that people have or feel my issues, I think, are coming from my bed or my pillow. It seems to be causing a lot of my issues. What are your thoughts on that? My response is, stop blaming your bed. If you have a back issue, pretty much anything's going to hurt. you develop the back issue externally from the bed. The bed didn't cause your pain,

so buying a different bed isn't going to replace it. We've had clients where they've spent 25 grand in the last year on new bed cycling just to try to find the bed that's going to magically cure their pain. When we talk to them, I go, okay, well, how about we just fix your back issue and then your bed won't hurt anymore? So if I develop back pain and I'm a runner,

and now I'm running, and now running hurts, I'm not saying, oh, running caused my pain. So I just need to find like different shoes or like a different running path. Like, no, I fix my back pain and then I can get back to running to do that. Your bed's the same. It drives me crazy. We've been where we spend all this money on beds. It's like, no, like fix the issue and then you can go right back to your bed.

Your bed's not going to hurt you anymore. All right. Well, I have one thought on that. I have one thought on that. And it's specifically about pillows. Okay. Generally, my neck feels good at home. But let's say I travel sometimes, I stare at an Airbnb or hotel, and they're not known for having, like, great pillows.

A bad pillow, I feel sometimes will, like, mess my neck up for the whole day. And so I've gotten used to just now traveling with my pillow. And if I have my pillow, which kind of keeps my neck leveled, it's not too high, it's not too low, I generally feel like I can avoid any kind of neck issue that might come up the next day. Is that bad? Is that good? Is it indifferent? Well, that's a different control. Because Drew, what you're saying is I have an established pillow at home that I'm the most comfortable with.

That's your baseline. And then when you go outside of that, now you potentially experience symptoms or pain as a result. Okay. But now, imagine if you had that pillow and you were fine for a year, two years, three years, and then all of a sudden you had back, your neck pain. And then you said, oh, my pillows are probably needed a new one. it's the same pillow. It's been there the whole time.

So it's a different study. So if someone just got a new bed and the only variable that has changed is I know back pain, just bought a new bed, now I have back pain. That could be related to their bed. But that's like none of the scenarios.

The scenarios are you probably had a bed for three, four, or five years. And in the midst of that, oh my gosh, I have back pain. I need a new bed. Nothing's wrong. It's the same bed. something changed with you.

So let's resolve you. Your bed's the same, though. Makes total sense. Makes total sense. All right, a few more of these if you're open for it. A lot of people are wondering, does my diet have anything to do with some of the chronic back pain, neck pain,

even things like just general tightness and not having a lot of mobility? What's the connection between diet? and is there any connection at all? More and some less than others. For everyone, you need to have a movement-based plan as your core operation. So if you're neglecting movement, you're neglecting rehab, and you're only trying to address nutrition to resolve a musculoskeletal issue,

it's not going to go great. The most amount of your effort and time needs to be in a movement rehabilitation plan. But when I said more and some less than others, there are certain individuals who have more inflammatory components going on within their body than others. And those are the individuals where diet will play a bigger role. So let me give you a couple great examples. Majority of our clients, vast majority, 99% of our clients, we get them pain free. We don't talk about diet at all.

Not a discussion. They're coming to us for back issues, for a rehab plan. That's what we're addressing. We're not talking about their diet. Now, when we get them out of pain, if they need help with other, aspects of health and life and optimization and they want to consult with us regarding their diet, then sure, of course, we'll help them. But we're a low back rehab program. Now, there are some individuals where they are in the plan and they should be responding to certain movements

and they're not. And then that prompts us to dig deeper into other aspects of their health. So we're like, okay, you should be responding to these. You're not. The type of sense, symptoms you're experiencing as a result of certain habits are a little bit of an outlier. We think there could be more of an inflammatory component going on. Let's pursue some blood work to look at XYZ markers. And in that person, if those results come back and it's like, yeah, they're dealing with inflammatory components of pain, then they either need to go to rheumatology or address diet or both.

That could be a significant component of their symptoms. Another category would be where someone isn't needing, you know, full-fledged management by a rheumatologist or anything like that. But they are a more in flame state and simply making dietary modifications can be the icing on the cake for their program. So there's this one amazing client. She was out Alabama. She's just the sweetest teacher ever. And she did incredible in our program. She was 90% sciatica free literally within six weeks.

It was amazing. But her progress was so fast. And then it plateaued at like 90%. It's like there was 10% left, which she was stoked with. But it was like, I was kind of staying here. And we got there so fast that it was like one week, two week, three week, four week, five weeks went by, trying different things, trying different movements and addressing different areas.

And it was still like staying in 90%. And she was like, I'm just like, I don't know. Like, why am I just sticking 90%? Why can't I get that last little bit? And so we said, all right, well, there's a couple fast tracks that we'll try. Some people will say, don't have any sugar for a week. Other people will have, don't have any gluten for a week. Those are usually like the top two that we'll try.

And so she eliminated gluten and then the rest came immediately. So like, okay, so you have used some gluten intolerance. Now, if there's other people that don't have a gluten intolerance, that will not affect them as much. So remember, some and more, less than others. But for her, there ended up being a dietary component. That was the last little layer. And so that's what we did for her. And she's good.

super interesting story reminds me of my dad many years ago was open to like cleaning up his diet a little bit more and we suggested um almost like a whole 30 type program it wasn't for any specific reason it was just like hey do this thing an elimination diet and introduce these foods back in and let's see if you notice a difference and he generally was feeling pretty good a little bit more energy and after he had been doing it for a little while and then you reintroduce certain foods back in he reintroduced you reintroduced you know, gluten in particular, all of a sudden he didn't even realize it, but this chronic lower back pain that he had came back. That he just felt was normal, a part of aging, wasn't something that he was even doing the

diet for, like an elimination diet. He wasn't doing it because of that. He just was doing it to see if he felt any different. And then he came back. And then since that time period, he doesn't go 100% gluten-free. He definitely has significantly cut down his gluten intake because he saw the difference. difference for him over there. Yeah. Super interesting. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, generally speaking, like people with spine pain, muscular skeletal pain, we're all going to feel a bit better with a

lower inflammatory diet. Yeah. So if you're just trying to cover your bases and you have low back pain, movement base plan, rehab, structure plan, number one, behind the scenes, just go ahead and go on a anti-inflammatory diet. Yeah. That's great. Another big concern that a lot of people have is technique, right? A lot of us, are on our phones throughout the day. And it's not uncommon that, you know, if people are watching this on YouTube or on Spotify video, that you'll catch people, kids, adults, everybody is kind of looking down and they're looking at their phone like this and you're there for longer periods of time. And so you have individuals to develop a very strong line here in the middle of the

neck because our neck is hunched over all day. And then also this a little bit of a hunched over feeling. And it takes a lot of thoughtfulness and reminders to sort of pull you out. of it. What's your recommendation of how to break out of this pattern? Number one, we know is even if you're not experiencing any sort of pain, we want to get the movement up overall. One thing my trainer has told me, shout out to Mark, is that, and I've seen this firsthand, I didn't really grow up training, like resistance training, all the things. I played sports and stuff like that, but I wasn't really into lifting any kind of weights. And then once I turned 40 and I got into it, and I started working with really good trainers, the stronger my back muscles got, the stronger that my lats got,

the less effort it took me to maintain good posture. Because my entire frame was just a lot stronger. And it was almost like good posture came a little bit more effortlessly. So what are your recommendations and solutions for people who are worried about tech neck and it making their neck look older and they're worried about the long-term impact on their spine. Do you have any resources or thoughts for them? So initial reaction is the same explanation of good bad posture.

Don't fear it. Being in a text neck like position inherently isn't going to kill anybody. But if you're in that position once again for too long, as you've already covered, and I'm not going to be super rude on it, we just want to move in and out of that position as much as we possibly can. But if there's some action steps that someone could take, we've already covered two of them today. Perform more chin retractions throughout the day.

Get the opposite of that particular position. Perform that thoracic mobility movement. Anyone who's in a text neck position for too long, that's going to create restrictions in a forward-based position in their neck and thoracic spine. So we need to undo that stress with retractions. Yeah, retractions with extensions, even, and then thoracicic mobility too,

to just unlock these areas, and you can reverse a lot of that stress. So the example here is if I was in a Tex-neck position, and also, I'm genuinely speaking just not a fan of the labels. Like, telling someone you're going to get Tex-neck is a form of a diagnosis. So, like, I don't want to make people afraid of certain positions or afraid of, like, developing things because it's just another position. But if they're not that too long, eight-hour straight, aren't doing things to reverse it, then, yeah, it can become a problem.

But if they find themselves in that position and they're taking frequent movement breaks to perform the exercises that you and I have gone through today, then they really shouldn't have anything to worry about. Yeah, which to be honest, is unfortunately and increasingly, it's few and fewer percentage of people that are there. Maybe kids do a little bit of a better job. Sometimes I'll see my, you know, family members, you know, cousins, et cetera, that have young kids. It's natural. You're a kid. You're kind of hunched over. You're on an iPad.

And then they're rolling around. They're playing around outside. They're doing something else. You know, they're having a lot of that variation that's there. It's not a big deal. Maybe if they're in that position for a little while. But naturally, we sort of head towards more of a sedentary lifestyle, which it doesn't have to be that way.

It doesn't have to be that way. But that's a great reminder. Okay, here's another big one that you talk about. And it follows on this theme. But I'm going to say it in the way that people have heard it so that you can address it. Sitting is the new smoking. What are your thoughts? on that. Yeah, not sure at all. Not moving enough is a new smoking. So, and we've been on this theme so much,

right? Movement, movement, movement. It seems so like general, but it is the key. So we don't want to make people afraid of sitting. I sit all day. I'm the low back dude. Like, oh, great, you're probably on, you know, doing this and doing all these things. No. Okay, do I have a standing desk? Do I have an under the desk treadmill that I use for movement variability? Yes. But there's, absolutely days, multiple days start a week where, listen, I got a business, I work hard, I love to work, I'll be sitting in that shrimp-like position for many, many, many hours straight. I do that, but then what do I do?

I take movement breaks, and then I go to the gym every day. That's all that I need to counteract that. So any one position, any one activity is not inherently the new smoking. It's doing only that in not dedicating and not. any of your time to what can easily reverse that. So if someone were to sit, let's say six hours, let's say the only sitting they're doing is six hours, but then outside of their six hours,

they're doing nothing else, nothing else with their life at all. Could that be their version of smoking? Yeah. Let's say there's someone else, and they sit 12 hours straight, twice the amount, 12 hours. But every two hours, they take a five-minute movement break, and at the end of every day, they're going to the gym for an hour.

That would not be smoking to them. that's enough balance for them. So it's context dependent. Love that. All right. Here's one. We were chatting a little bit about it. So I kind of feel like you probably have some thoughts about it.

But are my shoes contributing to some of the pain that I'm feeling? What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, they can. A very classic one is a lot of our female clients, they want to get back to wearing their high heels. And they've noticed that, man, I develop back issues. But I feel like I can't wear high heels anymore because it puts me in a more stress position for sure. That's an extreme example. We get all of our female clients back to high heels,

by the way. So yes, your shoes can contribute. Once again, is that going to be my very first focus? Am I going to demonize shoes? No, our bodies are adapting machines. They're incredible. They can adapt to all different types of things. But if someone is noticing that when they're doing active related things, and let's say they do have a movement-based plan for their back, let's say they do have that core component, but they're noticing when they're going on runs or being on their feet long periods or whatever, that that type of thing where they're in certain shoes tends to relate to their pain experience, then yeah, we would want to look at what they're wearing. And if they're wearing a common, I'll just say commercialized shoe with a super thick soul, it's like they're walking on pillows.

Yeah, that's not going to be great support. And for that type of person, we might advise a more minimalist-based shoe to remove that so their body can be more ground. to the floor and actually use their trunk and their stabilizes the weight that they're meant to. And sometimes that can be significantly beneficial. Yeah, I had this chronic knee pain for years. And I just thought, okay, maybe I'm just dealing with it, aging, other stuff, you know, try different stuff. I was seeing a chiropractor. It would still be there.

And then I had a friend who was visiting from the UK. I've shared the story before. My dear friend, Dr. Rung and Chatterjee, this was like almost like five years ago. And he was like, look, I have seen that a lot of people improve their knee pain just by sometimes switching and giving their, you know, feet a little bit more opportunity to spread out a little bit. And when you came in, you were like, oh, dude, I love the vivos. And you were rocking yours as well, too. Yeah, baby. And that was the trick that did it for me.

That was for that specific issue. Yeah. That was there. And I'm a big fan of the company. Shout out to them. So, yeah, free the feet. Free the feet, baby. Free the feet.

Free the feet. Free the feet. Can we take a little movement break right now? And are there some things that you can walk our audience through that are some additional stretches, postures, or anything else that picks up on any of the themes that we talked about today? So you already gave us some for the neck. Is there anything that you can show us that could support the lower back or any other parts of the body? Yeah.

I can give one general demonstration with an evidence and study to, support how basic it is. And then I can provide two additional more specific stretches for the hips and lower back. Fantastic. Can I stand up and demonstrate? All right. So here's what's so great about this, is that this is not going to impress anyone. This will impress nobody.

But I'm going to discuss the science behind this. So there was a cool study that was conducted where they were using MRI to measure disc height. So disc hydration at the start of the day. and at the end of the day, amongst common office desk workers. So what they did is they, from someone who's sitting most of the day, doesn't have any intentional breaks, they did a pre-work MRI and a post-work MRI.

And they saw reduction in disk height of the lower disk, L4.05, L5, L5S1, which where most of us are going to suffer bulges and herniations. It's the most common levels. And then what they did is they did another study where they tick those individuals, and they still did the pre-MRI, and then they had them implement a super basic strategy that I'm about to show you, and then did the post one again, and they saw there was almost no change in disc height or hydration at all at the end of the day.

And this isn't some mind-blowing trick. Here's all they did. Every 15 minutes, all they did was they told the individual to stand up, ready for this amazing exercise. They bent forward for five seconds. they went backwards for five seconds, they went to the right for five seconds, went to the left for five seconds.

And they sat back down. Now was it. 20 seconds. Every how many minutes? 15 minutes. Every 15 minutes. They get up. 20 second break.

And take a 20 second break. 20 second break. And it showed no change in their disc height or hydration from beginning of the day to the end of the day. Now, I'm not suggesting that it has to be every 15 minutes or it does nothing. perhaps for some individuals, it could be every 30 minutes and they could get the same benefit.

The point is those were no special exercises. That was nothing fancy at all. It was 20 seconds. Like, that's the power of movement. And wait, sorry, I'm a little confused. He said it showed no change, but they did get relief from doing it. What I mean is prior to implementing that strategy. Yeah.

When they compare their pre-imposed MRI, start of day, end of day, they had significant disc height loss and hydration loss. but when they implemented that basic strategy there was no change got it so they went from having this loss which was a bad thing correct to having no loss and no hydration loss yeah just from doing those simple movements yeah for back side side five seconds that's great that's super easy that's it so so easy so i showed that first to prove the point that for general relief for general health not related to a specific condition or specific protocol which we provide a lot of our clients with more specific issues, you can get massive benefit. You don't have to overthink it.

You don't have to do anything fancy. Now, if you want to get just a little... You do have to be consistent. You've got to be consistent. Yeah, you've got to be consistent with movement, as with anything. But if we want to get a little bit more specific to additional exercises, I talked a lot about your back being in a bent forward position and wanting to do the opposite. Let's not forget the hips as well within that.

Because the hips in low back, they're like best friends. When one's upset, the other one is two. and the hips are super important. So what I'm going to see to position, we all know our hips are in like a 90 degree position. Our hips are in what's called flexion. So we want to get our hips in the opposite position too, which is extension.

So very simply, I can stand up and you don't have to get on the ground even. You can just stand up and just simply lunge back, right? Nothing fancy here, nothing fancy at all. Now I'm in hip extension. And once again, repetitive loading joints like repetitive loading more. So I can simply lunge forward, feeling a stretch, in my hip, flexing my glute to increase that stretch, linging into as far as I can,

and then out. This is also giving me a low back extension at the same time, which is promoting more of what I want to, the opposite. So very, very simple. You can stay at your desk standing if you want. You're not really going anywhere before 10 reps one side, 10 reps the other side. But now here's another one I can do to unlock my upper back and midback. These will be a little bit similar to what I showed on the chair earlier. But I can step away from the wall. I can lean into the spongy wall. Is it cake? And I can push my chest down. So I'm going to feel this release in my midback for sure and through my shoulders. And then once again, to get a little back extension, I can push my hips forward into the wall, arching back as far as I can, alternating back and

forth. So simple, but it's going to get you more of what you're not getting enough of throughout the day. I love those. Straightforward, practical, very easy to do. Super easy. Yeah. You're super passionate about this whole topic. You've mentioned you're a chiropractor, but even beyond that, you have this enthusiasm for not just being an educator, but for providing people with relief, which I really appreciate and it comes through all of your content. So congratulations on that and also thank you for doing the work that you do. Give us a little bit of the background and the history that led you to dedicate your life's work to this mission. Yeah.

So throughout my adolescence, my parents absolutely encouraged us to be in sports and to be fit. And sometimes our punishments would be, hey, you got to run a mile, do 50 pushups, do 50 squats, whatever. incorporated exercise, not a negative connotation, but like, hey, we're like, we're going to get fit as a result. It was, it was in a good spin. So we were always fit and athletic growing up. And so I knew I wanted to like do something like fit health related, but I didn't know exactly what that was going to be. When I was in high school, I was a highly competitive cross-country mountain bike racer. And I was, I did that for three, four years. I was good. I started to get scholarship opportunities to get my school paid for. And my last year, when my races got more intense for longer, so like all out

two hours straight, I started developing low back pain. And like many, the way this develops, it's you just slowly start to notice it. That's how this happens to most of us. Every once in a while, you might be in the gym, squatting, dillifting, or sneeze, you feel a pop. Oh my gosh, that could be the feeling of a more acute scenario. But for most of us, I just kind of noticed this back pain came around and now it's not really going anywhere, and now it's affecting me more. Well, that was me. And the thing that it was affecting the most was my races.

The thing that were fulfilling me at the time and we're potentially going to pay for my schooling. So that was getting worse and worse and worse. And then my dad was like, all right, we need to do something about this. So we went to see who we believe was the best for low back issues, a chiropractor. But what we now know is what we would refer to

as a more old school traditional chiropractor. So what I referenced, earlier. No examination, no movement analysis, no history at all. High new patient. Okay, x-rays, your spine's crooked. Come back three times a week. Okay. So I did that. Wow, I didn't get any results. It's shocking. And so my back just got worse. I started bailing out of my races, stopped racing my last season, lost my scholarships. All right. Well, I want to be competitive in something. I'll just get into the gym. Whatever. I got to do something. A couple years later, There was someone at the gym I saw.

He was doing some cool mobility, like activation type stuff. And I was like, I've never seen movements like that. Like those are interesting to me. When stroke a conversation with him, he was a chiropractor. He said, you're talking and doing things that like I haven't like seen before. Like I don't have this connotation. So he said, hey, come shout at me. So I went and shouted him.

And so I'm doing rehab and movement and soft tissue and teaching people things that they could do on their own. And I was like, oh my gosh. I didn't know that this is what it should. be, but this is not what I got. So even though my first experience with the chiropractor was a negative one, that then positive experience inspired me to become one so I could help more people be with a good one. And so that was my mission to be the best that I could possibly be within this realm. That made me heavily, heavily involved with rehab. Everything I did was rehab focused, evidence based. That's where I put all of my time and attention to. Really nothing I do now was talking about.

to me in school. All of it was the second school I went to, which was all the additional seminars, shadowing opportunities, mentorship. That's where I spent all of my time, not in what classes taught me. So I became very rehab focused. A little over halfway through school in 2017, I realized, hey, you know what? I'm just going to go to traditional brick and mortar, work for some of my first year. I need to have like a portfolio of some kind, something to kind of like show what I do. So I'm to start posting on social media to just put some stuff out there. And then I started to get some views and get some questions. And I was like, oh, that's kind of cool. And I'm a very growth-focused person. I'm addicted to growth in any area. I'm addicted to results. And so then that just started to pull me in

in regards to, hey, like, let me post more videos. Let me see if I can get more questions. Let me see if I can get more views. Growth just purely for the sake of growth. That was it. I had no intention, no end game at all. Let me grow this. And then I tried to make my content better, tried to make it more specific, see how many views I could get. And then I heard a podcast

and where they were talking about if you really want to grow your social media, you just got to post every day. It was about a year out of graduation at that point in time. And I said, all right, I'm going to post every day for a year and just see what happens.

So I did that, and then I had 100,000 followers on Instagram. At that point, I was posting about everything. neck pain, shoulder pain, knee pain, hip pain. I was rehab guy. I could fix anything. So I posted about fixing anything.

And then once I started getting some business mentorship, at that point, I realized, you know what? I have, I'm sitting on something. I don't know what it is, but I have something. Maybe I don't need to go, just work for someone right out of school. And I spoke to someone and they basically said, just look at what your audience is telling you and niche into that and be the best at that one thing. So I took a look at my posts.

And every time my low back, sciatica, discarnation posts were always the most viewed, always the most questions. Majority of my DMs, all the people reaching out for help was about low back pain. And I'm freaking good at low back pain. So I said, okay, I'm going to stop posting all the rest. I'm just going to post on low back pain. See where this goes. So devoted all of my attention to that.

And then shortly after learned about the comments. concept of helping people anywhere in the world through these issues with a movement-based analysis, movement-based program, which I can tell anyone to do anywhere they're at because it's movement-focused. And then that just turned into more evaluations, develop here, develop here. And then I ended up building a program. And now we have the number one online Lubeck program in the world. And that's all we do. Incredible.

Incredible. Let's take a couple of things that you said and just connect it back to the education piece for what you've been sharing with our audience today as we wind down on today's interview sciatica we haven't talked about it specifically why does it happen and again i know you talk about a movement-based program being the sort of unlock for it but is there anything that you can say more about sciatica in terms of how often the traditional things that people are doing may not be offering them relief there's a lot i can talk about sciatica so if you want to shorten me at all at any point you can.

So first, what is sciatica? Ciatica is a general term that just refers to pain, rating down the back of the leg, following the track of the satic nerve. Well, what is the saddic nerve? The static nerve is the largest nerve in your body with a diameter of up to two centimeters that is comprised of multiple nerves

exiting from the lumbar spine and sacrum. When this nerve is impacted, or when a nerve root is impacted, that branches, to this nerve, it can create pain anywhere along that nerve. So someone could experience pain in their low back, in their glute, in their hamstring, in their calf, in their foot, or in their toes. Commonly, when this nerve is being impacted, they will notice a varying degree of symptoms.

It could be a burning sensation, an electric shock-like sensation, numbness or tingling anywhere in the leg, most commonly foot or toes, or a tight rubber band pulling like sensation. They might say, oh, my hamstring, it just feels like it's going to pop. It's tight all the time. That is nerve tension. That is your sciatic nerve. So what I've described so far are symptoms in the leg. This is very important what I'm about to say.

What I've described is symptoms in the leg. The problem is in the low back. The static nerve branches from everything in the lower back. So if someone is experiencing sciatica, 99% of this. it's a low back issue that is causing the symptoms in the leg. So if someone has static pain in their glute, hamstring, calf, or foot, and when they seek help, they're only focusing on where the pain is, they're going to be misdiagnosed and mistreated all the time.

And this happens. We'll get clients where they say, yep, I have planar fasciitis. And we go, okay, well, describe your pain. You have pain in the bottom of my foot. Okay, what else? Yeah, I have back pain, some numbness and tingling. in my toes. I think that's coming from your back.

Let's work on your back a bit. Oh my gosh, my planar fasciitis is gone. It was a it was sciatica. Or if they have a hamstring issue and they think, oh yeah, I've been diagnosed with a hamstring strain. Well, how long has your hamstring been strained? Remember, muscles recover quick. You break some tissue down.

Muscles recover fast. So how long have you had a muscle injury in your hamstring? Four months. Okay. Well, that doesn't align at all with the. physiological recovery rate of muscle. What else are you experiencing? Yeah, sometimes it's a burning sensation.

My back hurts when I sit too long. Okay? Let's address the little back. Hamstring pain is gone. So the problem is in the back. So what problem in the back causes sciatica most the time? Disc bulges. A disc will bulge out.

And the anatomy of a disc is there's an inner gel-like substance called the nucleus poposa and there's a hard outer ring. a fibrous ring called the anilous fibrosis. And when that outer ring is compromised or torn, the inner gelic substance can bulge through or herniate through that could then potentially impact, directly impact the nerve root, or create a site of inflammation close to the nerve root, which can then irritate the nerve root,

which then will cause symptoms to go down the leg. So to address sciatica, you need to address the low back. What are we addressing the low back? we're typically addressing a disc bulge. We address the disc. We help work the disc back where it came from. We help it reduce the inflammatory mediators that are around that area. We regress it so it's no longer pushing on the nerve.

Then your satica, the symptoms of the leg, then those will go away. Got it. Makes sense. And what are people typically doing for sciatica? That isn't relieving. Great question. Typically what they're doing is they're doing things that are addressing the leg. So when it creates this tight pulling like sensation, their instinct is something feels tight.

So I should stretch it. And most people, because we, I mean, this is all we talk about. We have over 200 consultations a week with people who have back pained and sciatica. And majority of the time, this will make them feel worse. I'm stretching this leg, but it's like flared up and woken up the rest of the day, but it feels so tight. I think I just really need to stretch it. No, a sensitive nerve does not like two things.

It does not like tension. and it does not like compression. We've heard the term of pinched nerve. Pinched nerve is being pinched by a disc, compressing it. Nerves don't like compression. If a nerve is being compressed against a disc and you pull it and you're creating tension, you're just pulling it across the disc.

It's not going to like that. So typical hamstring stretches, periformis stretches can irritate a nerve further. But then also compression. So if I'm sitting on a foam roller, on a lacrosse ball, really trying to roll where those symptoms are, that's putting direct pressure on a nerve

that is hypersensitive and that could flare them up further. As well as additional treatments that are just misguided so if I'm getting acupuncture on my hamstring, massage on my hamstring, ultrasound on my hamstring, once again, nothing's wrong with my handstring. It's referral for my lower back.

It's the nerve that's irritated for my lower back and those treatments are just going to go without results at all. The upstream issue causing the downstream effects. Yes. Okay, let's go to another one. Tight hips. A lot of people feel, especially if they are sitting a lot, their hips are tight.

Is that the reason that the hips are tight? Is that there's too much sitting without enough counter to counter the sitting? Yeah. A phrase I say a lot is the low back and hips, they're best friends. If one's irritated, then typically the other one is too. They're usually button heads. So if your hips are not moving adequately, something's got to give. So imagine if I ask you,

to squat in really tight leather pants that didn't stretch. You can imagine you would probably be in some like awkward position trying to squat down. Well, that's what it's like when you're moving around life with tight hips. You're going to compromise typically in the spine. You're going to bend more through the spine because you're not moving through the hips. So not all the time, our hips a big focus, but yes, many times the hips will absolutely be a focus of our clients' programs to ensure we have optimal mobility and strength in all. all ranges of motion of them.

And in other times, it becomes the primary focus. So they might have primarily low back pain. And we're doing our most common low back interventions. And they might not be getting as much improvement as we would anticipate. We start to explore the hips more, the hips more, then find much more specific hip-related issues that are referring to the lower back or that are causing this compensation in the lower back. We spend more time on hip function.

and then their low back pin goes away. So the hips are super important for not only low back issues, but also general athletic movement. The best athletes have the best hips. All right. One more here. Tight hamstrings. I've always felt that I've had tighter hamstrings than my wife,

you know, some of my friends. And it's always been interesting for me because I feel that in other areas, I have a lot of mobility. What's going on with people? who have tight hamstrings? There's quite a few things. So I made a video actually went like really, it did really well.

I think it has like 4.5 million views or something like that on my Instagram. And it goes through the three most common things that could result in someone having tight hamstrings. I'll cover what each of those steps were in just a moment. The concept of tight hamstrings cause low back pain, not true, not supported, not based on evidence. Many times people will have tight hamstrings

if they have back pain. or sciatica for all the reasons I mentioned earlier. It can refer to the hamstrings, cause these muscles to lock down from nerve tension. Now they have tight hamstrings because of the nerve. They think, oh, my tight hamstrings are causing my back pain. I need to stretch my hamstrings. It either makes them worse or produces no results. So we don't want to flip-flop those.

Now, if someone has back pain, maybe it's not hitting a nerve, but they also have tight hamstrings and they just want to improve the tightness of their hamstrings in general. There's three main areas that we really want to look. look at in regards to improving hamstring flexibility and looseness overall, even if you don't have pain. So first is actually your core. Core function can completely change the way other areas in your body might move. So there's a phrase called proximal stability equals distal mobility. What that means is if my center stability is not grounded, my body will not want to move my arms and legs to the extent that I could because it senses instability and I'm going to go outside of a range that I can control.

So something that you can do is one, check how far you can bend forward. So you can do this as a test. Anyone listening watching, you can do this real time with me is you can stand up, bend forward to see how far you can go. Get an idea for where you're at. one rep. Just one rep. Get a baseline. Get on the ground. Rest your feet up on a chair or couch. So you're on your back. Fe rested up. Hips at a 90 degree angle. And you're going to let your low back sink into the floor, low back flat into the floor. And you're just going to gently belly breathe for three to four minutes. So one hand on your chest, one hand on your belly. Focus on your bottom hand moving. So when

you inhale, your belly's going to get big. Hand goes up. You exhale, hand goes down. Don't let the top hand move. Debelly breathing through to five minutes. Then after that, after we've kind of got the new breathing pattern down, transition to a core movement, we're just going to call it a dead buck, even though it's not a full dead bug. Remove the chair, remove the couch. So now your legs are still in that up position. And I'll just drop one leg at a time,

tapping one foot on the ground. while keeping that low back flat into the floor, keeping the air in your belly. Do you just do five reps each side with that? If you're not sure what I'm describing, just type in Debug exercise, you'll find something very similar. That's it.

Stand back up, redo your toe touch, and see if it's changed. For some people, when it's a motor control issue, if their tightness and their hamstrings are because their body does not have optimal stability around their core, they'll immediately improve, like, drastically.

in their flexibility and the feeling on their hamstrings. So doing a core-based movement, breathing core movement, can immediately take their hamstrings from tight to loose. So that's one. Two is making sure that low back is not referring to the hamstrings. For all the reasons I mentioned earlier, someone might not even have significant pain, but there could still be a disc bulge that could still be irritating nerve roots

that could be causing restrictions downstream. So the extension movements I showed earlier, or more common one, a cobra pose, lay on the floor, push your chest up off the ground going into extension. Perform that 20 times. Do 20 reps of that. Don't squeeze the glutes. Don't squeeze the low back.

Just push up as far as you can, back down. Push up as far as you can, back down. 20 reps, stand back up, recheck your toe touch. If you significantly improved your toe touch, keep in mind that exercise, what I've described, that's not stretching your hamstrings at all. that's going backwards. The only thing I'm moving is my lower back.

If all of a sudden, your hamstrings are drastically looser, it's because there was an issue in your lower back that was referring down to your hamstrings. Big check mark. If those two things don't work, the last thing I would do is load your hamstrings themselves via exercise, loading the actual muscle tissue. A very powerful movement is eccentrics.

Hamstring eccentrics. Ecentrics is when your muscle is contracting in a lengthening motion. A simple way you can do this at home is find a tile or hardwood floor, put socks on, get in a glute bridge position, push your hips up off the ground, and then slowly slide both of your heels away from you so that eventually your legs are straight, trying to keep your hips off the ground as long as you can. Once you get to the furthest position, relax, pull your feet back close, bridge back up,

slide the feet out. It's going to be a strong contraction in your hamstrings. Hamstring eccentrics is what we're doing. Perform eight to ten reps of that or as many as you're able to. Stand back up. Recheck your toe touch. If your hamstrings are drastically better because of that, because they're under-trained and you need more load on your hamstrings

and to adapt your hamstrings differently. Those are the three main checkpoints that would go through. Majority of people, they're going to find one of those immediately. unlock their tight hamstrings. Grant, you've covered so much in today's podcast. There's so many more things that we could absolutely go into. But I think, you know, we're going to keep the people wanting more a little bit.

And it would turn into a six-hour podcast if we went through all the things that you know about all these different items. I want to give you an opportunity. Are there any things to touch on that you feel that are important that we didn't? And if not, take us out with some. important closing thoughts. And especially for people who feel like, you know what, I've just tried so many different things.

I'm a little jaded. I don't know if I want to put in the effort and energy to look into or trying something new. I don't feel as hopeful. What do you want to say to that person? Yeah. So what you just mentioned there at the end is the one thing that I want to touch on is my life is built around low back pain.

That's where my entire career is. I've spent all of my time, all of my energy, all of my money has gone into helping people with back pain since I graduated since I started working. That's my entire life. And one of the number one reasons people stay in back pain is because they lose the belief that they can get better and they stop trying. And so I love this audience. This is my life.

And so I can speak very honestly to them, which is if you have an expectation that the first thing you try is going to work, you're going to be disappointed. It's not easy to find good health care. It's going to take multiple tries. If you have the expectation that the first thing you try should fix your pain and you should be good, then I don't know who you're going to see. Well, you're probably going to see us the first try. That's what you should do. But that's not going to be a majority of scenarios. So what happens to so many people is they try one or two people. And then they label themselves as, well, I tried Cairo, it didn't work. I tried PT. It didn't work. So those things don't work. No, you saw one provider with the label of Cairo. You saw one provider who is a PT.

You didn't try PT. You didn't try Cairo. You did what one person said. That doesn't mean you can't get better. In any area in life, the first thing you try, if it didn't work out, that doesn't mean you say, oh, that didn't work. It's not like if I went and got a bad haircut. I went, oh, never getting a haircut again. Haircuts don't work for me. That doesn't make any sense. I know it's a trivial example,

but it still compares. So what happens to so many people with back pain is they try a couple things, and then they say, I've tried it all. I've tried it all. Where are you any different? And they develop skepticism, and they become jaded with health care.

And all that mindset does is it hurts themselves. It keeps them, trapped, it keeps them from trying something, and they lock themselves in a box. And you got to stop doing that, people. You got to stop doing that because you can't get better, but you have to believe that you can get better. And you have to understand that it might not be your first try. It might not be your fifth try.

But if you keep trying, you will then find the solution eventually. Let's pretend someone out there has been struggling. They've seen two providers. Let's just say in their journey, if you could see where they're at, their fifth, attempt, their fifth attempt is going to be the one that leads them to the promise land, a pain for your life. If they quit on step two, they're not going to get to step five. But the quicker you try five options, the quicker you get to the solution. So you need to move fast. You need to keep moving forward. You need to keep trying. Don't become jaded. Don't become skeptical. You have to give yourself

a chance and opportunity to get better. It's so important. And then while doing that, Just understand the overarching theme of today's message is that low back pain is very common, but it's highly recoverable. It's so recoverable. Disc issues, super recoverable. You need surgery. sciatica, it's very painful. Many doctors will tell you that you're going to be stuck with this and to live with it.

And that's not true. You can recover. Do not rely on rest and passive therapies. Find a movement-based plan. Move more. Your spine is strong. Your spine is resilient and need to use that. And do not be afraid of pain.

Understand that hurt does not equal harm and don't be afraid of the sensations that you have. Move and get a structured rehab plan and you can get better and you will as long as you believe you can and you take action on that. It's fantastic. Mention the business and the website again and then just quickly for those that are interested. I'm assuming you have a team and then that's how you end up taking on. 200 different consults in a week. So people can go online. They can fill out information.

Of course, you have a ton of free content, which I mentioned previously. Instagram is a great place. YouTube is a great place. But if people want to take the next step, they go and fill out an intake. And then what? You get scheduled with the one-on-one call. You're absolutely right. So there's many ways to do this on my Instagram.

We have many different links that you can follow or just simply messaging us. We can conduct a conversation with you, get you on a free consultation. There's also an application form on my website, the rehab fix.com that you can submit to schedule a free consultation with us so that we can go over your situation, ensure you're dealing with a common type of lower back issue that we can help you resolve and successfully avoid drugs, injections, and surgery. Great. Amazing. Well, we'll link to all of that in the show notes for anybody who wants to check it out. Grant, this has been fantastic. I'm so glad that our mutual friend, Sean, connected us that I got a chance to deep dive into your

work. I've already been trying out some of the stretches that I've seen on your Instagram and YouTube. And I think that you provided a ton of value to our audience today. And I want to thank you for coming on the podcast. Thank you for having me. It's an absolute pleasure. I love doing this and I will continue to do this for decades to come. Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do

to support this podcast is share it with a friend. Share with a friend who would benefit from listening. Number two, before I go, I just had to tell you about something that I've been working on that I'm super excited about. It's my weekly newsletter, and it's called Try This. Every Friday, yes, every Friday, 52 weeks a year,

I send out an easy-to-digest protocol of simple steps that you or anyone you love can follow to optimize your own health. everything from nutrition to mindset to metabolic health, sleep, community, longevity, and so much more. If you want to get on this email list, which is, by the way, free and get my weekly step-by-step protocols for whole-body health and optimization, click the link in the show notes that's called Try This or just go to Drew Perot.com. That's D-H-R-U-P-U-R-H-I-T-com and click on the tab that says, Try This.