The Rich Roll Podcast - Holistic, Preventive & Functional Medicine

Episode Date: June 14, 2013

Today on the show, my main man Dr. Shay Shani — founder of Shani Clinic in Westlake Village, California– the guy who keeps me injury free and my body functioning at 100%. As a board certified chiropractor, he makes sure I'm always properly aligned. But to say he's just a chiropractor is to vastly understate the scope of Shay's gifts. With advanced post-doctorate training in Functional Blood Chemistry and Functional Endocrinology, an unparalleled compassion for his patients and acute ability to get results, he is a rarity in the medical community for his keen focus not on treating symptoms but rather on uncovering the root cause of ailments, utilizing the most advanced non-invasive and all natural treatments to help patients with all varieties of chronic disease that do not improve in the current medical model. Having Shay in my life has undoubtedly made me a better athlete. And more importantly a better man. I'm proud to call him my friend. And even prouder to help share his powerful message with you. So do yourself a favor. Strap in. Open your ears. Learn. And enjoy. Thanks! Rich

Welcome to episode 36 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Dr. Shai Shani. The Rich Roll Podcast. Hey people, welcome to the show. I am Rich Roll. This is the Rich Roll Podcast. Who am I? I'm an ultra endurance triathlete. I'm an author, author of the bestselling book, Finding Ultra. I am a plant-based nutrition advocate, a wellness advocate, a lifestyle entrepreneur, and a family guy. I've got four kids just trying to figure out how to be as healthy and fit as I can in this modern day and age. healthy and fit as I can in this modern day and age. So now I guess I'm a podcast host too. What do we do here? Well, we go deep. I go long form, bringing to you some of the brightest

minds, some of the most forward-thinking, paradigm-busting personalities and thought leaders in all aspects of health, fitness, diet, nutrition, alternative medicine, spirituality, what have you. So we have had doctors, we have had nutritionists, dietitians, world-class athletes, world champion triathletes, MMA fighters, runners, marathon runners, entrepreneurs, all different kinds of people, each of which brings a unique and compelling perspective based on their life experience when it comes to maximizing health, fitness, nutrition, diet, and living authentically, which is a big theme. Because my goal with this podcast is to, by way of these long-form conversations, kind of recapturing this lost

art, I guess you would call it, of going deep and really exploring ideas in depth, is to empower you. Empower you to take your health and your fitness into your own hands, to take self-responsibility for that in hopes that you will then be fortified with what you need to discover, unlock, and unleash your best, most authentic self. And today's guest is right up that alley, I guess you would say. Dr. Shai Shani is a good friend of mine. We met several years ago. And if you read my book, Finding Ultra, you may recall that I gushed on him, gushed over him in my book. He's been very instrumental in keeping me healthy and injury-free during my training. He's taught me a lot about how to

avoid running injuries, deal with running injuries, and to sort of perform at my peak. What he's great at is sort of looking at the body and saying, well, here you're only operating at 70% or 80% and let's make it better. So even if I'm not injured or I'm feeling fine, he always has ways of kind of notching it up for me so that I can be firing on all cylinders. And I've been wanting to bring him on the show for quite some time because he is a wealth of information on all aspects of holistic health. He's a chiropractor by trade, but what he does is so much more. And through his Shawnee Clinic out here in my neck of the woods out in West Lake, California, which is in the West Valley, kind of west of Los Angeles, 25 miles or so outside of town, out in the mountains, out where we live out here. interesting wellness center that, like I said, extends far beyond his specific expertise, which is chiropractic, chiropractic, chiropractic, being a chiropractor, however you say that.

It's truly a holistic preventative medicine clinic with an approach to health that really extends far beyond just adjusting your spine or kind of taking back x-rays or dealing with back pain and massage to non-invasive, non-surgical, and all-natural treatments for a whole array of conditions, particularly and especially chronic diseases. So, he deals with patients that are pre-diabetic or diabetic or have heart disease and are obese or have food allergies and food sensitivities, basically the entire spectrum of challenges and difficulties, physical and chronic. And so, what I wanted to do is let him talk a little bit about where he sees medicine right now, why what he is doing is unique and special and different. I mean, my hope would be that there would be a clinic like this in every

city, on every corner, if I had my way. And I realize that not everybody has access to somebody like Dr. Shai or a clinic that kind of does what he does, although they tend to be, they seem to be cropping up more and more, which is great. But give him a microphone and let him kind of tell you what he's all about and what he sees are ways that all of us can notch things up and dial in our health and our fitness and our nutrition to help stave off these chronic diseases and keep us firing, like I said, on all cylinders. He's a great guy. In addition to being a chiropractor, he also has advanced degrees in functional blood chemistry and functional endocrinology. And we talk about how all of those things come into play when he diagnoses and

treats his patients. And this is a guy who's treating people from all walks of life. I mean, he's got people coming into his clinic that are diabetic, like I said, or obese or have chronic back pain or persistent injuries. He also gets lots of athletes in there. A lot of the cyclists, He also gets lots of athletes in there. A lot of the cyclists, triathletes, marathon runners, MMA fighters out in our area all go out. Our patients at the clinic, it's not uncommon for me to go in there and see David Zabriskie or Ivan Dominguez, two of our, our local, uh, pro cyclists. Um, and, uh, our mutual friend, Greg, Greg Anzalone just told me a story about how Christian Vandervelde was training with Dave in town here. And if you're not a cyclist or you're not a fan of pro cycling or don't follow it, you might not know who he is, but he's one of the top American, uh, pro cyclists, uh, an amazing athlete.

And Greg introduced him to Shai in his clinic and he was calling it body porn. Like he was loving all the sorts of things that he could do to tune up his body and maximize his performance. So this is a special guy, Dr. Shai, with a special message. And I can't wait to share it with you. Before we get into it though, a couple of quick announcements. My paperback, Finding Ultra, now available. Father's Day is coming up. You got to get dad something, right? Hey, it's cheap. It's a cheap and easy way to check that box, right? How are you going to do it? Well, you're going to go to richworld.com. You're going to go to the podcast page. You're going to see the Amazon banner ad.

You're going to click it. That will take you to Amazon. And then you can pick up the paper back there. Or hey, maybe you already have it. Maybe you're not interested in reading my book, which is totally fine. But you're probably going to buy something on Amazon anyway for Father's Day. Or just because. Just because lots of people shop on Amazon anyway for Father's Day or just because, just because lots of people shop on Amazon. Well, the banner ad on my site is a great way to support the podcast. It doesn't cost

you a cent extra in anything that you're purchasing, but Amazon kicks us a little bit of loose change and that keeps us happy. Smiles on our faces, the lights on and the bandwidth flowing. So we appreciate all of the support in that regard. Lots of people have been making their Amazon purchases through the banner ad and we greatly, greatly appreciate it. Particularly also the people that have used the donate page on richroll.com, which is amazing uh some of you out there have actually spending some of your hard-earned cash to support the show by subscribing which throws you can choose you know throw a couple bucks our way weekly monthly or one-time donation of your choice uh hey but you

don't have to podcast is free we love it when you do and we appreciate everybody who has done that it means the world but please know and understand that the podcast will always be free uh thank you everybody who's reached out and sent emails and tweets and all that kind of good stuff uh please know that i get all the emails i love getting the emails i do not have time to respond to all of them. It's simply impossible. I'm definitely losing the email war every day. I mean, unless I sit down and just respond to emails all day long, like I just, I can't stay on top of it. It's impossible. So I do the best I can.

Please know that I read them, but if I don't get back to you, don't take it personally. My intention is to get back to everybody, but I generally fall short of that. But know that I got it and that it means a lot to me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time.

It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care, especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at

recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself. I feel you.

I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. So enough with that. Let's get on with the show. Again, Dr. Shai Shani, he's an inspiration. He's a forward thinker. He's a paradigm buster. And I'm very proud to call him my friend and very pleased that he took time out of his busy day to sit down with me to share his important and powerful message with you guys. So, without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Sh. Sean. So thanks for taking the time out of your busy day on a weekday to drop by the podcast studio. It's an honor to be here.

Yeah, I appreciate it. You know, for those who have read Finding Ultra, you probably remember me praising Shai for all the help that he gave me during my training, my preparation for my races. And I wanted to bring him on the show because he has a very unique perspective when it comes to treating patients from a preventative perspective, as opposed to a simple sort of diagnose and prescribe perspective. And I think that that is a critical kind of hot button topic of discussion right now in the medical community and for consumers in terms of know, tell me a little bit about kind of, uh, you know, how you, how you work it. Like what is, tell me a little, well,

I guess just give me some background on, on your clinic and what makes it different from maybe a typical medical office. Yeah, sure. Well, we, you know, the clinic was built in 2000 the end of 2002 beginning of 2003 in west lake i love the community i love the people i love the the health and wellness approach and lifestyle that people have there and it started as a chiropractic clinic and we did a lot of good for a lot of people and uh we did that up until about 2008 and at 2008 there was a little bit of a shift

in my mind where I realized that although we do a lot of good for a lot of people there are some deficiency there are some people that needed more than we could do within my scope of practice and people needed more solutions and more answers and I always wanted to be on top of the latest research, latest technology, have the best of the best in my clinic and kind of be, I remember in 2002, I said to myself, I want to be soon, as fast as possible, the leader in health and wellness in our community. And in 2008, there was a shift where we integrated the clinic into this medical model. And although it's medical by license, we choose to operate on the other side of the fence and do things naturally and holistically, non-invasively. things naturally and holistically, non-invasively. How does that work in terms of kind of regulatory guidance and kind of what you can and can't do? I mean, when you say go the other direction, I mean, if you sort of hold yourself out as a medical office, how is that different in terms

of the scope of what you can offer as opposed to saying, well, we're a wellness clinic? Right. Well, I mean, I think the wellness is what we preach and what we deliver to our patients, and we'll talk about the product of what that means for the patient, for the human body. But from a service perspective, you can do a lot of other things. You have more tools at your disposal, and we have different licenses coming together.

So, you know, if before i was just a chiropractor and i was doing a lot of good for a lot of people now uh some people come in and they need other things and they may not need necessarily see me and on our team we have a medical doctor we have a nurse practitioner we have i mean we have a lot of moving parts we have two chiropractors and physical therapy and acupuncture and massage therapy and hypnotherapy and a lot of different moving parts. And it's just a more comprehensive, well-rounded approach where the patient comes in and they'll get, they'll see whoever they need to see on that visit.

Right. I mean, I remember I was first introduced to you by our mutual friend, Greg Hanselone, a couple of years ago. And I was having a persistent kind of recurring running injury. And he was like, you got to go see Shy, man. You got to go see Shy. I was like, I don't know. I had never been to see a chiropractor. And I was very kind of as open-minded as I, you know, sort of tend to pride myself on being, I was never somebody who wanted to go and have his back cracked. And I was like, well, what does that have to do with anything? Like, how is that going to, you know, impact what I'm trying to achieve here? Like, and I was nervous. Like I don't want to, you know, I've never had

back problems. I don't have lower back pain. I don't have any pains. I'm just having, I have a, I've never had back problems. I don't have lower back pain. I don't have any pains. I have an injury in my calf that keeps flaring up. And what is going to a chiropractor have to do with any of this? So I went in kind of with low expectations and not really, you know, I was kind of doing it because Greg told me to. Not because I was like, oh, this is the solution to my problems. I was like, oh, this is the solution to my problems.

And you ended up in very short shrift, like figuring out why I was having this issue and helping me to resolve it by getting to the actual cause of the injury as opposed to treating the symptoms. I mean, it would be easy to massage it, say, hey, put ice on it. We got to, you know, whatever, stop running. I mean, that would be kind of the expected predictable kind of protocol from an orthopod or somebody like that. And instead, you're like, hey, we're going to take, let's take an x-ray of your spine and see what's going on. I'm like, well, what does that have to do with anything? So kind of walk. Do you remember when this was back in like, this was a couple of years ago now. Yeah. Right? So explain how that kind of plays into preventive medicine. Or just walk, I guess let's just walk through what that protocol looked like from your perspective. Yeah.

So I'll tell you this. You know, when patients come in, what we pride ourselves on and what we're known in the community for is for our solution oriented approach, meaning somebody's coming in with a problem. We are really good at identifying where the problem is coming from. So the root cause of the problem, so to speak, and going at it and fixing permanently whatever is causing the pain. And I'll tell you that, you know, in the last, I'd say, eight to ten years,

there's been a shift, dramatic shift in my practice where we, I'd say now, if I divided my practice in half, there's definitely two kinds, completely different kinds of patients. The ones that come with a problem, they have a problem, and they want to fix whether it's back issues or sciatica or arthritis or whatever, they have a real problem. And they tried everything and nobody could give them a solution. So they come to us and say, hey, here we are, let's do it. And then the other 50% or so are athletes, they're, you know, they're doing great. There's nothing wrong with them. They're cyclists, they're, you know,

You know, they're doing great. There's nothing wrong with them. They're cyclists. They're, you know, runners. They're boxers. They're MMA fighters. And they recognize that they need to do more for their body to achieve the next level. And it's fascinating and exhilarating for us to be the vehicle to allow them to do it. I think I told you or Greg told you just the other day we had a gentleman that well two of them one flew in from san francisco and and we're sitting down and talking

i said wow what are you in town for uh you know i'm trying to plan how much time i have with this guy and how i'm gonna fix his problem which he had a very similar problem to yours he had you know he couldn't run because of his calves and this is what this guy loves to do he loves to run he he's an athlete he's a triathlete so he had to to just minimize the cycling what that's not what the hell he wants to run so you know i'm planning on what to do with him and and i say how long are you in town he says well today in fact i'm here for two hours and i said what are you kidding me this you know no pressure right and i said what are you in town for you in town for business or is it like no i'm in town for you we're here to see you got his priorities straight i said okay uh and you know long story short he he's heard about us through you he read about us in your book and he's a follower and he's

you know probably listening to this podcast. Dude, that's great. I love that. And that's one example. And another person who came in, and I said, what can I do for you? Talking about the 50% of people with real problems, the other 50% of people who are just fine. There's nothing hurting them, but they realize that they've got to service their body and get more out of it. And we're sitting down, and I said, what can I do for you? them but they realize that they got to service their body and and get more out of it and you

know we're sitting down and and i said what can i do for you says well i'm here to i don't know you tell me you tell me yeah look at me and tell me what i need to do and i said is there anything you have any problems any pain any you know headaches i mean i'm fishing for it man he's like no i got nothing and he you know, here's something funny. I went to my doctor, to my primary care physician, and I went in and I said, you know, there's nothing wrong with me. And I just want to be better. Can you help me with that? And he looked at me like I had two heads.

And he, you know, we joked about it. He's like, well, I mean, I get what you want, but we're not set up for that. We're set up for disease. And if you don't have anything wrong with you, there's not much that I can do other than a checkup, a check your blood, and tell you that you're not sick. Right. I mean, I think the thing that happens a lot or the sort of prevailing conventional wisdom is when you have a have an issue uh you go to your doctor and your doctor knows all you know the doctor is is oz you know that's right and oz is going to tell you exactly what's wrong with you no matter what it is and and whatever he comes out of his

mouth is the holy word right and what people don't realize is that doctors only know so much. They specialize early. And particularly when it comes to preventative measures and nutrition, they're just not, I mean, most of them, not all of them, I would say, predominantly are not specifically trained in those areas. They're set up to diagnose a condition and prescribe. And that's really it, right? I mean, that's how the system is set up. Yeah, I mean, to a certain extent, I think that that's very true.

I do think that there are a lot of physicians nowadays that are well-trained and they're open to alternative methods. Anytime I go to… More and more so. Yeah. And they have to because people are looking for that. Patients are coming in and they're not necessarily buying

what their doctor is telling them anymore. They go online and they learn and they research and they go and get second or third and fourth opinion and they're not necessarily abiding by what they're being told to do and and that puts pressure on the physicians to go and get to further their education and not just

go off of what they've been told in medical school and i do it all the time you know i'm trained in functional medicine functional medicine is is gaining huge momentum where explain what functional medicine is basically functional medicine is is huge momentum where… Explain what functional medicine is. Basically, functional medicine is post-doctorate training. It's a more sophisticated way to look at the human body and figure out how to make it work better. So one example, and perhaps I'm oversimplifying it, but one example would be you're going to your doctor and you're getting your blood test, you're early checkup, and there's some markers that are flat. So let's say your cholesterol is high. Well, in a traditional model, we would look at that cholesterol and say, you know what, your cholesterol is high. That's not good. And we know that if it's

going to be high for long enough, you're going to get a heart disease and you're going to die. And we know that if it's going to be high for long enough, you're going to get a heart disease and you're going to die. Well, that's a very simple, simplified way to look at it. And the approach would be in the traditional model to say, here you go, here's some cholesterol medications. Let's bring it down as low as possible. In functional medicine, we look at the not so obvious. We look at the same marker and we say, all right, your cholesterol is up. Let's figure out why. We look at the same marker and we say, all right, your cholesterol is up.

Let's figure out why. And if we can figure out what other systems in your body are contributing to that and causing it to come up high, maybe we can fix it without using medications. And then we use herbal medicines that are put together at high therapeutic dosages. We prescribe them based on what we see on the test results after we do a complete analysis and this is incorporating blood tests it's incorporating um hormonal tests uh saliva tests and so on and so forth we figure out for that patient what they need to get better and then and then we prescribe it and miraculously the body's working better right amazing amazing how that works i mean you know i mean how many do you have any like how many people are on statin medications in america it's i mean do you know and it's got to be through the roof right yeah and the truth

of the matter is well first of all statins work they bring your cholesterol down um they're certainly effective in that regard but but what they but they're not treating the cause of what's raising your cholesterol, right? And it would seem like your protocol should be the first thing. Let's look at what's causing it and address those causes and treat this in a holistic way to bring it down. Now, maybe responsibly, some people still have to be on their statins until you get to that point. I don't know. You're the expert in this, not me. But to just prescribe statins and say, well, eat better and exercise

and send people on their way, that's not going to solve their problem. It doesn't work anymore, man. People don't buy into that. They understand that there's a lot more to it. And our body inherently has the capacity and the capability to fix itself it does it doesn't all the time every day and the human body is incredibly resilient when you treat it right i mean you know like if if anything like my experience is a testament to that like i abused myself horribly forever and was able to repair it like it's such

an incredible machine that when you kind of pop the hood and get into it and go, all right, well, let's really get into what's going on here and address those causes and tweak it. You can get on a completely new trajectory. So true. Pop the hood. I'm going to remember that. That's great. We pop the hood in all of our patients and we figure out what's going on inside how to make it better it is um it is the way it should be and patients i feel don't buy into this anymore here's some and some do unfortunately and we get patients coming in with neuropathy they have numbs and tingling in their feet and nobody told them that perhaps the statin drugs that they're on are playing a role in it you know we have a patient who's come in.

He's a very successful producer, and he's on the go all the time. And, you know, his markers came out okay. He did a blood test with his physician, and nothing came up. He's all within the range, within the zone. And he says, listen, I know that my tests are fine, but I feel like shit. He said, I can't, I have no energy. I'm losing my sex drive. I'm gaining weight.

And in my position, I just can't have that. So let's do it. What are we going to do? And in functional medicine, we look at different ranges. So if you think about a blood test and you can envision what it looks like on the far left side these are the biomarkers right these are the things that we're checking for sugar and cholesterol and thyroid and so on and so forth on the far right there's the range and we're and then somewhere in between are your results

and we're assuming because we've been told so, that if your number fits within the range, anywhere within the range, then you're fine. You're seemingly healthy. Is that true? Not necessarily. It depends on who established the range. And what we've learned in functional medicine

is that that range is typically established based on the people that go to the lab simple average statistical analysis creating a range that is way too freaking wide for healthy people so if i'm comparing you to that population then you might be okay right but i'm not trying to figure out if you're sick i'm trying to figure out how to make rich roll better how to make you healthier how to increase your performance how to make your machine work more efficiently so we can't compare to that population right i don't care about them i want to compare it to a healthier population and in functional medicine we look at a much tighter stricter range that was based on normal values for healthy people.

Right, so using this producer guy as an example, he comes in, his numbers are fine, but he's like, I feel lousy. So what do you do? Like, how do you assess what's going on with him and then develop a protocol to improve his energy levels or whatever it is he's looking to do? So particularly for this patient, he's been evaluated by myself, by our medical doctor,

by the nurse practitioner, and by the acupuncturist. That was his day one. And he went home and we sat down and had a team meeting. And in the team meeting, it looks cool. I wish I would have taken a picture of it to show you, but we sit together and we talk about that particular person every day for every single patient. And we talk about labs, we talk about pain, we talk about functional medicine, we talk about how to get that patient to transform their life as fast as we can using as many avenues as we can. So for him particularly,

in addition to making his pain go away we started with a complete blood analysis it was a very very wide panel in addition to it we ordered saliva tests to check his um his um testosterone levels his adrenal glands um we did urine analysis and we compiled all that data i'm sorry in addition to that we ordered a test called micronutrient test there's a very very very um well-known lab that is gaining momentum it's called spectra cell and they allow us to take the blood and look for the micronutrient absorption rate so we take all of us are eating and drinking green things and swallowing a bunch of supplements and spending thousands of dollars

a year and trying to get the right nutrition into our body but nobody knows what the heck is getting absorbed yeah right it's a guess i hope that it's what are what are the things that impact the bioavailability of what you know we're all taking these things and i know i've been reading about that that sometimes it just goes right through you not just the supplements but even the foods like if you're if you're uh you know gut flora is off or you know your your intestinal lining is you know covered in goop or whatever this stuff's not getting in right so what is that all about? So there's so many things that would affect and alter your body's ability to absorb that nutrition.

And a lot of people put too much focus on the quality of the supplement and the herbs that they take in. And of course, that's important. That's the first line. But like you just said, there's so many other things in your body that unless your system is working clean, it doesn't matter what you swallow. I can't tell you how many times we take x-rays of patients just to figure out

what's wrong with their back. And we see pills completely undissolved, undigested, sitting in their intestinal tract. That shows up on an x-ray? Yeah. Wow. Just waiting to come out. And that's exactly, you just hit the nail on the head. That's what we do in functional medicine. We start from scratch and we figure out, we collect all the data and we analyze it and we say, okay, here's what we're going to do for your spine and nervous system.

We're going to do one and two, these three things to get your body and your system to work more efficiently on a cellular level. We're going to completely change your diet. And here's a customized diet protocol for you based on these test results. you based on these test results in addition to it based on these micronutrient absorption analysis in addition to the blood test and the hormonal test this is what we prescribe for you and it really is not surprising but extremely rewarding and and fascinating to see how quickly patients respond to it and they're shedding medications they're getting rid of it, not because we tell them, but because they don't need them. A lot of our patients come back to us and they say,

well, what should I do with all this crap? And I said, I don't know. Just go back, give it to your physician. It would go back to their physician. And this is a matter of fact. We do a before and after test, meaning blood test, and we're working off of objective data. This is not an assumption.

This is not today I feel good, tomorrow I feel crappy. You know, what should I do? Who cares? We're looking at objective data. And if your cholesterol has normalized, you don't need the medications anymore. If your thyroid is working the way it should work, you don't need that anymore. And it's up to the physician to make that decision but i can tell you that we're gaining so much momentum and recognition in the in the community that doctors are happy to do it doctors

are i know that there is the feel that you know patients feel that they say my doctor only wants to prescribe medications and post that stuff. That's not true. Doctors want the best for their patients. Yes, they're busy. Yes, they have to make money. Yes, they have to treat us as a business. But that's okay. They still want the best for their patients.

And as we're getting the results for our patients, as they're getting better and they don't need the medications, their doctors are gladly removing them off their medications. Interesting. Yeah. That's interesting. And, you know, it's interesting that you, I mean, you come from this chiropractor background, but you also have an advanced degree in like endocrinology, right? Functional endocrinology and functional medicine.

And so for the layperson, explain what that is and how that comes into play and how you assess and treat your patients. So we usually co-treat patients. If patients come in, in my office, we do not provide primary care. Yes, it's a medical organization. But the kind of patients that we take in are not leaving their physicians. We co-manage the patients. We look at the test results if they have them. And we figure out how to do things naturally, non-invasively.

We don't stop them. We don't tell them to stop taking medications. We don't cross paths with their physician. We do what we do in a parallel route. with their physician we do what we do in a parallel route and as we get to the results they go back to their physician and they're and they're they're a better operating machine and their doctor has to by by law to change their medications right interesting i wanted to get back to my personal sort of initial story with you, and I did talk about it a little bit in the book, but I came into you with this persistent calf injury. And the first thing you did is take x-rays

of my back, which I thought was bizarre. And, uh, and I'm thinking you're going to, you're going to tell me, I will put a lift in your shoe and, you know, go on your way, ice it and don't run for a little while, which is, you know, kind of the kind of protocol that i sort of received over the years when stuff would flare up and uh you did the x-ray and you and together we looked at my spine which was all curved right and you diagnosed me with spondio how doesis. Yes, exactly. And so then we worked on a protocol to straighten that out. And you looked at my leg lengths and basically said, well, this is why one of your legs is slightly longer than the other.

And simply attributable to that, that's why you're having this persistent injury because there's an imbalance. There's a lack of symmetry in your body. And when you're just running all the time, persistent injury because there's an imbalance there's a lack of symmetry in your body and when you're just running all the time of you know eventually that lack of symmetry is going to contribute to something that's not going to be right right so that's a perfect perfect example of treating the cause of the problem as opposed to hey let's put a lift in your shoe and even it out

and then you're fine that's like giving somebody viagra or giving somebody statins right right and you know and this is a perfect example too of how how deep we investigate so you came in with a calf problem and we could have just looked at a calf through right and we just focus on the calf and and rub it and massage it and and do whatever the heck we do to it right but but that was just a small piece of the puzzle you're a whole structure you're a kinetic chain your body whatever your head is doing will affect your feet and the other way around everything is moving through that kinetic chain so we treated your calves if you remember we injected it with serapine and serapine right you know for your audience if they don't, it's just a natural compound that we inject instead of using cortisone

that would essentially do the same, would wind down inflammation and pain, but it's not medicine. And the question is, why don't you hear about it more? It's probably because it makes less money to doctors, but we use it, and we use it with great results, and we treat your calves, and we treat your spine as well. We use it, and we use it with great results, and we treat your calves, and we treat your spine as well. And this would be a great example, too, of what I said when we started talking.

A lot of patients or a lot of athletes coming in with an injury. This gentleman coming in and flying in from San Francisco had a very similar injury. We treated him in a very similar way. But then what we do to maintain that, whether it's cyclists or runners or moms and dads or people who just use their body every day, we maintain that level of health by keeping motion into the spine, keeping your nervous system in check. And to me, it just makes sense for a lot of our patients. They just get it. Right, and also prescribing exercises to strengthen the supporting muscles around the imbalanced area or whatever

to create greater stability, right? Like I go into your clinic and there's people all over the room pulling on cords and doing exercises in the middle of the room, like, you know, pulling on cords and doing, doing exercises in the middle of the room. And, uh, and, you know, I think that's a key core aspect of, of, you know, what you're advising people to do. It's, it's, it's basically saying, look, I'm going to do so much, but you're going to have to do your end of the, this bargain as well and take responsibility for your condition. That's right. You know, this started, our rehab department started with just a couple of stretch machines.

I mean, they're great, but it started with a posterior machine. You've seen those and Greg has them too at his house, right? Posterior machine that you just sit on and it helps you stretch the both back, the hamstrings and the lower back. And there's an anterior machine. And at the beginning, I thought, well, that's cool. You know, we are a wellness facility, people should be able to stretch. And, and it's just one more piece of technology that I have at the office, I didn't think much of it. And when I saw the results that patients would get from it,

just by unlocking their hips and getting more flexibility that's by the way why people do so well with yoga they're all locked up in their pelvis and it affects the entire spine going up it affects their lower extremities and if you think about it when your body is locked up and you use your body kind of every day then if you're if you're operating at 70 and you don't even know it i mean it's kind of sad some some people are getting 50 out of their body and they have no idea that they can get more out of it so to touch back on what you said rehab and strengthening is a huge part of what we do after we fix the structure structure, we fix whatever it is, the disc, the arthritis, whatever it is, we use a protocol to strengthen the body and make sure that whatever we fix

becomes permanent. And as our patients progressing through the different phases of care, we are shedding dropping pieces of the puzzle. We don't need as many tools. Their office visits become shorter and more efficient, and they can at that point incorporate into their lifestyle. And I can tell you how exhilarating it is to see patients coming in, you know, moms and dads picking up their kids from school, stopping in, doing what they need to do, whether it's spinal decompression to pull fluids back into the discs or just a chiropractic adjustment for their kids. I mean, this is really why I do what I do. It's just having a conversation with my staff.

We had a team meeting. And I said, I want to talk about something that is not so obvious. And they looked at me like, oh, here it goes again. He's becoming weird again. And they kind at me like, oh, here, here it goes again. He's big, he's getting, becoming weird again. And, you know, they kind of tuned in and said, listen, you know, we are really known in the community for fixing problems, right? We're really good at it. Somebody's coming in with back pain or sciatica or severe headaches and nobody could figure it out and we here we are we fix their problem and they walk out the door and they say thank you uh thank you for taking

care of me i love the care here it's wonderful right i said well that's the obvious they're buying a product you go to the store you go to costco you buy a tv well you come home and you have a tv that's the product. But what's not so obvious, and I said, and this is what I get off on, this is what's so exciting for me, is the effects of what we did for them on that visit go well beyond the physical perimeter of our office. These people would go home, and because they have less pain and because they're,

because they have more energy and because they have, they're going to be nicer people. They're going to be better moms and dads. They're going to be better members of the community. They're going to be better lawyers the next day and better doctors. We have a lot of doctors and physicians that come in to get treated in our office they're going to be better people this is not just giving them the product that they want this goes well beyond that and i think that that's what's so exciting for me to do what i do every day right and i think beyond that what it it's it's sending them on their way with this message of uh that that is empowering in that people have more control over their bodies and their systems than they realize.

So they come in with this issue, you help them resolve it, but you're also giving them these tools like, look, you're going to have to do this, you do this, and then people do that. They incorporate it into their life, and that equation gets solved. Like, oh, hey, when I take care of myself or I do these simple things that aren't even that time-consuming, everything in my life shifts for the better.

That's true. Right? And I love the idea of the guy you were talking about who came in and basically didn't have any problems and just said, I want to be better. You're talking about people that people unknowingly are operating at 50 or 70 and it's hard to know that you can feel better or function more efficiently um if you never have been before right you think it's fine it's sort of like you know when i was eating fast food and doing whatever i was doing i felt a certain way every day you acclimate to that you adjust to that that's what's normal to you and the idea of feeling

better or different doesn't really occur to you because it's not part of your daily life. So, you know, and I have to remind myself of that all the time. Like I'll run into you occasionally, you're like, you haven't come in in a while. You got to come in. I go, and I'm like, yeah, but I feel okay. And you're like, no, that's not the point. You know, let's, let's get better. Right. So the guy who comes in, he's like, I just want to be better, knowing that you can always raise that ceiling by doing simple things. And like you said, I think it's awareness. It's being aware of what your body can and cannot do.

How much more can you get out of your body? What would that mean to you, to your whole daily operation, if you slept better? What would it mean if we did something for your body that would allow more oxygen to get into your tissues? Well, that would mean that your body is going to work at a higher level. That means that your heart is going to have to push not as hard because more oxygen is getting into the tissues. That means that you'll be sharper and smarter and quicker in your decision making.

I mean, that means so much. And I have to say that, you know, going back to that same patient that we're talking about, who came in and said nothing is wrong with me that was my personal growth too in my clinic and i had to change procedures and technology and train staff medical staff in a way that they can handle it because you know if you if you go back five years and a patient would have walked in and said, I'm here just because I want to be better, and one of my practitioners would sit down with him, I'm sure they would come back to me and say,

okay, we have a weird guy here. We don't know what the hell to do with him. We don't really have a test or an x-ray to figure that out. The be better test. What's that? The be better test. Be better test. I mean, there's no x-ray to figure that out. The be better test. What's that? The be better test. Be better test. I mean, there's no x-ray that would show that.

There is no neurological test that we can do. And as the environment changed, as there's a huge movement, I feel, in the nation, but especially in our community, towards health and wellness, I had to change my daily operation, my clinic procedures, the tools that we use, the tasks that we use to be able to accommodate it. This is not uncommon.

People, excuse me, come in all the time and say, I'm fine. I want to be better. I heard about what you guys do. Okay, let's go. Let's do it. We know how to handle it. And we have phenomenal results with it too. Yeah. I mean, it's, that guy is just, is sort of indicative of this movement that you were

speaking about. I mean, people really are interested in taking their health and their wellness to the next level. And, and that's being kind of advanced through the internet quite a bit. I mean, there are companies like Wellness FX, you know, you don't want to say, so it's sort of like you can get your blood test done. You have this dashboard or panel on the internet where you can look at all your markers. And, and I think that cuts both ways. Like in, on the one hand, it's fantastic because it's giving people the ability to take control of, of their health and look at it and educate themselves and see those markers and those numbers and work on it like a project. At the same time, they're kind of doing it in a vacuum without somebody like yourself as sort of a guiding force to say, well, you shouldn't worry about that. You should worry about this or whatever.

I mean, do you see some danger with those kinds of things or do you think that's a good thing? You know, it's interesting. I didn't think about it until you brought it up, but I do see a lot of these patients. They come in with a blood test that they ordered online. And the way it works is there is a medical director to those labs and they typically would oversee the results. And unless there's some major, major red flags,

they're not going to say anything. It's not their job. That's not what they're getting paid to do. It's a very dangerous model, I think, because a lot of people would do that just so that they can check off, here we go, I did it, I did something. Look, honey, I did it, I'm fine.

Well, are you? Maybe, maybe you are. Maybe you are perfectly fine and that would fly. Maybe that blood test that showed nothing wrong with you is okay. But maybe somebody who is trained can look at that blood test and say, hey, listen, Rich, I see some things here and these are not a big deal to fix now. In fact, they're fairly easy to fix. But guess what? You do nothing about it, and in 10 years, you will have a problem.

That's what we do in functional medicine. We can predict off of blood tests, not off of a hunch, but we can predict issues coming up 5, 10 years down the line. The most common of them would be pre-diabetic state. Right, and I want to get into that in a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just getting back to kind of the internet blood testing thing, and I look at WellnessFX and I think, wow, this is amazing,

how empowering it is for people. But I do think you're right. If you're going to be like a biohacker and you're super into it and you're looking at those tests and you're like, well, let me see if I can get this to change by doing this, and you're keeping a log and you're super into it and you're looking at those tests and like, well, let me see if I can get this to change by doing this. And you're keeping a log and you're, you know, you're super into it. You know, I think that there's a, there's a great place for that, but I think you're right. Like you just get it and either you think you're fine or, you know, you get overly worried about something that, that shouldn't be of concern and you don't have

somebody like yourself who's actually trained to help guide somebody through that i could see how that could become problematic yeah let's let's talk about diabetes diabetes is huge i just had a friend of mine um who's who's a pretty young guy uh who just told me last week you know he's overweight and struggles with his diet and he's like yeah i might you know i've got type 2 i just found out and this guy's like don't know, 36 years old or something like that. I mean, when I was a kid, the idea of people with type 2 diabetes, I mean, that was like you didn't hear about it. It was a rare thing. And now it is like an epidemic, like crazy.

So I would imagine you're getting a lot of people, either pre-diabetic or diabetic coming to your clinic. I mean, what are the things that contribute to this? How do you look at it and how do you begin to treat it? Because I think you have a different perspective on how to treat these patients than the norm. And first I have to say that we all look at diabetes as this bad thing that you don't want to have, right? And I remember going back to my graduate school. There was a physician who was teaching this class.

He was an ER. He was a chief ER physician. And he said something that I'll never forget. He says, once you have diabetes, you have everything. something that i'll never forget he says once you have diabetes you have everything and it's i find that a lot of people are now are more aware of it but a lot of people just you know they they truly believe because they have been told uh or they read somewhere that you know it's because they have it in the family and they just first of all. Well, first of all, what does that mean? Like, if you have diabetes, you have everything.

What was he trying to say by that? He was trying to say that diabetes is such a horrible chronic disease that the nature of it, your blood sugar is going to be high. The tissues, the heart and the lungs and the brain and the nerves and the organs can't survive that environment. So it's just a matter of time until things start falling apart. It creates a domino effect that makes you susceptible to all sorts of other conditions.

Yeah. And when I talk to people and I say, one of the most favorite questions that I ask them, for me, maybe not so much for them, but when I start talking to them, I say, do you know why you have diabetes? Or do you know why you're in a pre-diabetic state? Did you ever ask yourself that question? Or did you ever ask your physician that question? And they look at me like I have two heads. What do you mean why? I just, I don't know. I just have it. Why? Where did that question come from? And there's a reason for it.

Of course, genetics would play a role, of course. But I'm telling you, it's a very, very small piece of the puzzle. There are so many other things that play in, like thyroid, like adrenal glands, like, of course, the way we eat. And this goes back 20, 30 years before the actual diagnosis of diabetes. It unfortunately gets diagnosed way too late. And what is extremely frustrating for me and for patients once they finally get it is let's say they went to their checkup. And the early checkup with their doctor. And the doctor said, you know what? You have prediabetes, man.

You got to wake up. You got to lose some weight, and you got to do something about it and tell you what, let me see you in one year, and we'll see where you are. Wrong thing to do. And unfortunately, patients take that, and they go home and like, honey, listen listen this is bad good news and bad news uh you know the the bad news i have pre-diabetes but the good news is just pre i'm not diabetic yet so i just need let's just go on a walk and let's you know let's not have sugar and i think i'm going to be okay this is not good and bad this is bad and bad this is this is a critical point in anybody's life if they have pre-diabetes it can happen in your late 20s it can happen in your early 30s for sure

and there are simple things that can be done to derail to get patients off that train before the train was even assigned a destination. It is simple. And it involves a lot of different things as far as tools, but we can make radical changes if somebody is in a pre-diabetic state instead of waiting for them to become diabetic and then try to bring him back, which makes absolutely no sense. What would some of those things be? Well, we're going back into functional medicine.

So we're not assuming that somebody has diabetes just because they have it in their genes. We dig deep to uncover some of the reasons that would be appropriate for them, that would be relevant for them. And it's different for every patient. I mean, I can't say what it is, but what I can say is that a very, very common occurrence or trend happens. And I see it with teenagers too. I see it with kids where elevation spikes of blood sugar.

Okay. blood sugar okay so if you can imagine a range a certain range let's say a normal blood sugar range would be 85 to 100 on on a functional level if you eat something sweet or or any any carbs that would spike your blood sugar and that's okay and that's normal our body can handle it and what will happen is our body will produce a hormone called insulin and that that that insulin its job is to bind to the sugar carry to the cells and allow it to get into the cells and do its job and its job is to make energy that's what glucose will do okay well and that's normal but typically what happens is if you have a lot of these spikes over a period of time because of bad diet, because of drinking soft drinks, because of eating a lot of carbs,

because of having not enough protein and having processed foods, all of these things combined cause way too many spikes of blood sugar. Our body just gets exhausted there's so much insulin produced those insulin surges over time over a long period of time would cause insulin resistance and insulin resistance means that that sugar coming into the cell won't be able to get in to make energy right so essentially your pancreas just says, like, I'm over it. Like, I'm just tired. Like, leave me alone. I'm done.

And the pattern can be broken, and the sooner the better. And identifying the pattern and fixing it is not difficult. But I am telling you, the patients that come to us, whether they're diabetic or in a pre-diabetic state, see enormous changes within a short period of time. Some of them are Aurea and insulin, unfortunately. These are more difficult cases to treat. They have to inject insulin. Most of them are medications. And as they get better, they drop significant amount of weight without even trying. We just change their diet. We tell

them what to do. We tweak their supplements. We tell them what to put in their body. And within 30, 45 days, 60 days, they have a completely new body. Amazing. So what are some of the more dramatic kind of turnarounds that you've experienced with patients in your office? Oh my God, there's so many amazing stories, but you know, there's a couple that come to mind. And there's this gentleman whose name is Larry, and he came in and he says, listen, I have heard about what you guys do. And he would travel all the way down from San Diego to see us. And at the beginning, he had to come frequently.

I mean, that's talk about a commitment, man, twice a week. He was on two kinds of insulin. He was injecting short acting insulin long term long acting insulin he was all you know about 65 66 years old and he's been diabetic for a long time and on top of the medicate on top of the insulin he was taking oral medications as well and things were just spiraling out of control he had neuropathy in both his feet he lost sensation in his fingers. He couldn't get dressed by himself.

Good looking guy, you know, was an executive and it just hit retirement. And here it is, hit him in the face. And he was probably one of the most rapidly improving patients that we had, where within 60 days or so, he was completely off of his insulin. Not because we told him, but because his doctor recognized that it's not necessary anymore. In fact, when he was injecting the insulin, it would lower his blood sugar way too low. So they had to take him off. And within, I'd say, four to five months, he was completely off of his medications again

because he was just told by his physician. He just transformed his life. And once in a while, we check in, he's still doing okay you know that's incredible yeah that's incredible and tell me about uh food allergies because i think this is like this is this is something that people are getting more and more interested in and there's more and more tests available and you know the obvious one is like now everybody's all about being gluten-free. Right. It's probably the biggest example. But I think that we all have sensitivities and certain sometimes undetectable allergies to the foods we're putting in our body that are causing us to not function at 100% like we were talking about. What is your perspective on that and what are you seeing these days?

First, I think we should establish that there is a huge difference between an allergy and a sensitivity. So an allergy is immediate reaction. For me, if I touch a horse and I touch my face, I break out. That's an allergy. Or the difference between being celiac and just being somebody who gets inflamed when they eat gluten. Correct. So what you just said is called uh delayed reaction okay and the later reaction is a different part of our immune system that kicks in

three to five days later after the exposure that's critical to understand so i may be allergic to peaches and yet i would have sensitivity to coffee or to chicken or to tomatoes. And I'd eat a tomato, nothing's going to happen to me, I'll be fine. And then three to five days later, there's going to be inflammation. Inflammatory markers in the body or inflammation in general are going to wreck our body. And it's been linked to so many different things that it is just an unbelievable amount of information that is coming for these tests. Because here's why. If you have inflammation in your body because of a delayed reaction, delayed sensitivity, that can lead to arthritic pain, that can lead to inability to lose weight and obesity. It can lead to, you know, it's been linked to ADD. ADHD has been linked to GI problems and depression and the list goes on. And there's a lot of

different companies or labs, I should say, that do these tests. But the one in particular that we use in our office is called Alcat. And patients would come in, we would draw their blood and send the blood to the lab. And what they do essentially is expose their blood to different allergens. And it wouldn't necessarily be environmental allergens. It could be what you eat, everything that you have in your fridge right now. If we went to your fridge and pulled it all out, that's what they do. They take each one of these things and expose particles to your blood.

And they look for the white blood cell migration to it. And they quantify mild, moderate, or severe. And then patients know. They get this booklet with a wealth of information. And they open it up. It's like, wow. I guess I'm severely allergic or sensitive, rather, to these things, and these happen to be things that I eat every day.

They take them out of their diet, and they clean up their body, and sure enough, they feel better. Right. So inflammation is kind of more and more is coming out about this, as you mentioned, and it really seems to be kind of the underlying consistent theme when it comes to disease-provoking, right? Like if you're inflamed, not as an athlete, you should be concerned about this because the more inflamed you are,

the more run down you're going to feel, the slower you're going to recover in between workouts. It degrades your sleep, but it also creates an environment where you're more likely to get sick. And in a protracted state, you're more likely to kind of head down the highway towards some of these more chronic diseases. I mean, is that accurate? That's very true, yeah.

Yeah, so there's a lot of changes that take place systemically in our body when you have inflammation. So the obvious ones, people think about inflammation as a swelling in a joint. Yeah, so there's a lot of changes that take place systemically in our body when you have inflammation. So the obvious ones, people think about inflammation as a swelling in the joint. Okay, well, that's easy. That's arthritis or an injury, acute injury causing inflammation in the joint. But inflammation can be systemic, and there are markers that we look at in the blood to check inflammation. For example, tying into what we just talked about a minute ago inflammation can cause elevated blood sugar well that's something that we need to know if we're trying to get

somebody better we have to find out why they're why they have inflammation in their body so the inflammation actually if it's causing elevated blood sugar then that's leading towards diabetes right yeah absolutely and inflammation just to be completely elementary about it it's it's an immune system response to what well inflammation is not necessarily a bad thing it's a normal physiological response right your body is saying there's something yeah something's wrong we need to send these white blood cells here correct to address that correct and and and the key thing is not to suppress the inflammation you could do it short term but you have to figure out what's turning

up the fire and unless you do that the fire will will continue to burn and fire in our body is obviously not a good thing so you know heart disease and and diabetes and they all have inflammation as one of their contributing factors right so the the the more that we can get at what's causing this inflammation and reducing the inflammation the more optimal we're going to be functioning yeah absolutely so these these tests for allergens or i should say sensit, is one good way of doing it. It's one way, yeah. Yeah. What else?

You know, we talked about the micronutrient testing. We talked about the blood panels that we do. We always look for inflammatory markers. And, you know, it's interesting that patients have been trained, people have been trained just because of what we see on TV, just because of what we read online TV, just because of what we read online and books to think about cholesterol, this evil, you know, it's this evil marker that if it's going to come up, my God, I know, you know, I'm just, I know that I'm going

to get a heart disease and die. We're really, the focus should be on inflammation because inflammation in our blood, inflammation in the arteries is, is, is the one that is going to cause some micro tears inside the arteries. And that's what's going to allow the cholesterol to latch in and narrow the blood vessel. So, you know, it's all about guidance and education for patients. Don't assume that what you've been told, just common knowledge is true. Yes, cholesterol is not good, but you know what? Cholesterol does a lot of good things too.

All of our hormones in our body are made out of cholesterol. You have to have cholesterol because our brain needs it. The conduction of the nerves, the way the brain communicates with our body, you have to have cholesterol to allow the electricity to run through our nerves. Right. But when you say that, then I think people get confused, right? Like, well, I thought cholesterol was bad and now you're saying it's not bad. So can I eat my steak for dinner? Or how do you translate that message into responsible action that's going to lead somebody in the right direction? Because I guess what I'm getting at is you know there's a lot of sort of different perspectives on diet out there from you know there's a there's a all this kind of hype right now about being low carb and ketosis

and all this kind of thing and and you know from what i understand if you're following these protocols to a t they're very effective at what they do. But my fear is always that people hear half of it and they hear the part they want to hear like, oh, I can have bacon for breakfast. But they're not doing the other things, right? And so then they get into trouble that way. So I guess what I'm saying is how do you kind of take what you're saying, but implement it responsibly so somebody is really kind of on the proper trajectory so so just to touch on what you said cholesterol is not bad cholesterol is in our body because it needs to do a job high cholesterol out of control cholesterol is bad and there are

things that are guaranteed to elevate the cholesterol eating meat every day is not not only bad for you but it's definitely going to increase your cholesterol. But low cholesterol is bad too. I have patients that come in with a whole host of issues and their cholesterol is in the low 120s and their doctors are ecstatic about it. They love it. The lower, the better. No, not true. Not the lower, the better. It needs to be within a range. So the answer to your question is a balanced diet, one that makes sense for that particular patient that is customized to them, that would keep their numbers, whether it's cholesterol or thyroid or other markers, in the normal functional range is the way to go.

All right. You can't argue with that. No, you can't. So we haven't even talked about your background. We've got to get into your crazy life story a little bit. I guess it is crazy. Well, I don't know, crazy, but interesting. Definitely unique. I mean, you grew up in Israel, right? I was born and raised in Israel, yep. And a lieutenant in the Israeli army. Yeah, yeah. So explain how that kind of works in growing up in Israel and how you end up in the army. You know, great childhood I had growing up in Israel

is very much like growing up in L.A. if you just minimize the size of everything, the streets, the cars, the houses. I mean, everything is much, much smaller, but it's very Western, and it's beautiful, and I loved it. And when we hit 15, 16 years old, we start getting ready for the military. It's such a huge part of our social environment because our fathers and our grandparents have been to the military.

It is a part of society. And that's what we do. So we start training that early on, which I guess is a good thing because our focus is not so much on drugs or partying or drinking. Our focus is on that, on something bigger. And now reflecting back, I think it a a huge part of my success now because i was very very very focused on what i wanted to do from an early early age and and 18 years old we get in and you know four years later i got out and it seems like the day after I was here, I came to visit my uncle here in California

and I fell in love with California particularly and the U.S. in general, and I just stayed. And since then, that was my journey. I've been here most of my adult life. I've been here 17, 18 years now. So you really came here right after you got out of the military. Yeah. Interesting. But getting back to the military aspect of that, I mean, I feel like in today's

age out here, it's for kids, it's video games and distractions and television and all this kind of thing. We could use a little of that structure. You know what I mean? I think it's a great thing, man. You know what I mean? you know i mean i had it through swimming which you know was something that i was passionate about when i was young was very structured it was a lot of hard work it required my focus and you know my life kind of revolved around that for better or worse but it did it did teach me how to be focused and how to work towards a goal and be part of a team. And, you know, unless you're

involved in sports as a kid these days, you know, there's not as there, there isn't that kind of structure. And so how do you feel like that, um, beyond the kind of obvious, well, it made me focus. Like, how does that, how did that experience help inform what you do now? How did that experience help inform what you do now? You'll talk to 10 different people that have gone through a similar experience, and you'll get 10 different stories. But I think the consensus is, for me, looking at the qualities that I have now as a doctor, as a dad, as a business owner. And looking back into my experience, I can't imagine having it any other way. That was for me.

And there's a lot of people who've gone through a similar experience who hated it. They didn't get out of it. I mean, you know, not all of us are fighters in the military. You know, there's some logistics, there's some computers, there's some engineers. There's a lot of different people that make it into a career. But for me, what I've gone through, I definitely think that it shaped me to be who I am now,

and, you know, for better or worse. You know, I mean, you talk to my wife, she might tell you that but but i think that you know if i could have my kids here which there's no way in hell it's going to happen but if i could have my kids go back and go through the same experience that i've gone through i would do it in a heartbeat my wife wouldn't agree to it but right but i think it's a great experience and i do think that the focus, the discipline, identifying what's important for you is enormously important. Life tools. Yeah. Life tools.

I mean, is four years the typical tenure? Were you there longer than you needed to be? No, so men go for three years and women go for two years. And I was there an extra year because I became an officer. So when I finished, I was a lieutenant. And then I was supposed to have a career out of it. Right. And I actually signed on to stay in the military. Then you made the grave mistake of coming out to California.

Yeah. There's no way I'm doing this. This is nuts. I'm not going to wear a uniform for the rest of my life. I did four years. I did the best that I could. I did a lot of good. And I wanted to get the hell out.

Yeah. And so you're in California. When does the interest in getting involved in medicine and wellness start to creep in? You know, I can't say. I'm talking to other friends of mine who are physicians. And they're, you know, whether it's the medical community or the natural holistic. And a lot of people had that calling early on in life and it sounds great, but I can't say that I was, you know, seven, eight, 12 years old. And I said, you know what? I think I wanted

to be a doctor. I want to heal the world. No, that wasn't the case for me i always knew that i wanted to be helping people in some sort so i guess you could argue that somewhere inside i knew that i wanted to be a doctor but uh but that that came on through my military experience and and i saw some things and i started gaining more recognition and more appreciation to the human body, and I wanted to help people. I just didn't want to help him with drugs and surgery. I wanted to have a different approach. So for me, that was a natural.

When I got here and I started going to school, that was just the natural path for me. And then I fell in love with it, And I fell in love with helping people. And I fell in love with the results. And I fell in love with hearing their stories when they come back, whether they're athletes or whether they're kids that just came back and said this. And kids wouldn't say much, right? They're kids.

An adult, you coming in and going back and saying, you know, that was awesome. You fixed my back and I can run and I can do. Well, that's great. But when kids come back and they get treated and something happens. And I'll say this. I never, for my kids, for my girls, they're six, Aviv is six and Sylvie is four years old. I never pushed what I do on them. They've always gotten treated, and they've always gotten adjusted just to keep their spine in check.

But I never pushed my philosophy on them. It's just, you know, they're kids. And then one day, not too long ago, I think it was maybe four or five months ago, Aviv, which rarely, rarely gets sick. I mean, this kid is six years old. I think she has been sick once, like literally sick to the point that she had to be on antibiotics. So she has a very strong immune system. And she woke up and she said, Daddy, feel i don't feel good i i i said what's wrong honey and i check her and she has a fever and her eyes are all glassy and she says

could you fix my back would you adjust me and i looked around i was like holy did anybody hear that i didn't tell her that i didn't tell her that by fixing her immune system i mean i mean i'm sorry her nervous system she has a better chance of fighting it off naturally i never said that i do say it to my patients i lecture about it right she's never heard me that was her body telling her and i thought that that was and i wish i could have recorded it but that was was beautiful. Yeah, it is a beautiful thing. I mean, and I think you're spot on. You can't create a home life

where you're sort of pointing the finger and saying, do this, telling your kids it has to be this way and because I do this, you have to do it my way. You have to just lead by example. I mean, you can't expect your kids to kind of follow behind if you're not

walking your own walk, right? Very true. So, it starts with your own behavior first and it trickles down, I think. In what you've learned in your clinic like how does that kind of filter down into how you raise your kids on a day-to-day basis um i i do feel that what i preach to my patients for me it's easy to practice it because that's something that i believe in but it definitely affects our life at home. And my girls understand what I do. They understand when I put my biking gear on and I go and do something because it's good for my body and it's good for my soul.

And they understand exercising and they understand eating healthy. And they are not judging me when I use the Vitamix to make weird green drinks. And they get it. And they will, I believe, that when they see me do that, they will partake when they're old enough to understand. They start now, but it will become their lifestyle as they get older. Right. Yeah, I agree with that.

I mean, oh, Julie wants the car keys. I think I put them, oh, you know what? They're in my pocket. It's not a live radio show. We can take breaks. You have to go to the bathroom. Are you okay? All right.

Okay, man. So you could have, you know, I think what's interesting is that you could have stayed just being a simple chiropractor. But at some point, a switch was flicked and you thought, well, there's more that I have to offer here and maybe there's a way to provide more comprehensive preventative care to my patients. I mean, was there anything specific that happened that kind of led you down that path or is it just a natural progression of your pursuit? I know, I think that the evolvement in my head came from my patients because that's what they wanted. I would hear the same story, patients coming in and saying, you know, I've had this problem forever and I've seen my primary

care physician who referred me to an orthopedist, who then referred me to physical therapy. I've seen this chiropractor. He did some good. And so on and so forth. And I'd hear it over and over and over again. Patients would say, you know what? I wish that these doctors, these smart people would talk to one another. But of course they don't.

Because if they did talk to one another, I would get better. And that's when something clicked. And I wanted to do more for my patients. And I didn't want my license to limit me. I didn't want my scope of practice to limit me. Listen, we're in a great community. And who am I to say that I'm better than any other doctor in the community? There's really great doctors, great chiropractors, great physicians in the community.

But I know that what we do, this comprehensive approach, using multiple licenses, different heads coming together, all for the sake of making a better diagnosis, better treatment plan, more accurate treatment plan for the patients would get them from point A to point B. And I'll tell you going back to what we started talking about when we started this podcast is those 50% of my patients, maybe we said there's two kinds of my patients, the ones that are in corrective care, they have

a problem, they want the damn thing gone. And there's this other group who are either perfect, there's nothing wrong with them, but they want more out of their body. But also in that group, there's those people who finished their treatment plan. We fixed their problem. And they're looking back and saying, you know what?

I never want to go back to how I felt back then. I want to be, I want to take care of my body. I want to stay well. And I'll tell you, this is so fascinating because medicine is built on pain and disease, right? Pain and disease pays well. It is more lucrative. It is more financially rewarding to establish your practice just based on pain and disease. But for me and for my team, it's much more exhilarating to keep people well and and and

help them achieve their health goals and that's what we do yeah it's a beautiful thing i mean the the kind of the consistent theme that i'm preaching on this podcast i guess preaching may not be the best word but that health is more than just your blood markers or that, you know, feeling good is more than, you know, the workout that you did that day or what you ate that day. Like to be truly healthy means to be balanced in a very holistic way between your mind, body, and your spirit. And in order to get to that place, you have to take a step back and look at everything from 10,000 feet and approach it as one, right? As one cohesive unit. It's sort of like as opposed to taking a very specific condition and just treating that.

Or, hey, I'm calcium deficient, so I'm going to take a calcium supplement. You're not looking at it at the whole system and how that specific component integrates with the rest of it. And so I love the idea of the whole, you know what I mean? Because that's how we're truly going to be functioning at our best, remaining disease-free, and being at our peak, really, right? Absolutely. And just to add to that and stay on the same topic, I do feel that what we provide to patients is extremely valuable.

But this is not it. I always tell patients, you need more. You need to take care of your body. You need to take care of your soul. You need to rest. You need to eat well. You need to drink a lot of water. You need to sleep well.

You need to do yoga. You need to meditate. There need to drink a lot of water you need to sleep well you need to do yoga you need to meditate there's a lot that goes into health and we are one piece of the puzzle a big piece but there's a lot more to it well because you have to take a personal responsibility for that stuff outside the office you're not going to solve all these problems you can you can help them you can provide tools You can do the adjustments and beam the lasers at them, which I want to talk about in a minute. But ultimately, when they leave, they have to do it themselves. And they have to want to. You know what I mean? There has to be a commitment, I think. All right, the lasers. I can't let you out of here without talking about

these. So when I came in with my calf issue, we did a number of things to help get me straightened out and on the right path. But one of the more interesting protocols that Shai had me do was to go into this room and point this laser gun on my muscle, right? Like it's basically a red, red you know kind of looks like those barcode scanners but in a little handheld pen device and you said what did you tell me like you're gonna you're gonna you're gonna go in here for 10 minutes and we're gonna we're gonna aim this thing at your affected muscle tissue right and what's gonna happen so laser therapy, I mean, lasers are everywhere now, right? And they're not all the same.

Surgeons use them. Dentists use them. Veterinarians use them. And the difference between them is the wavelength. So the laser that we use on you, and honestly, I cannot imagine my practice without it, is a class four laser. A lot of people coming to the clinic and say, oh, you know, I've had laser before. I'm not sure that it worked for me. Maybe it did, maybe it didn't. These are typically cold lasers. They're not all the same. A hot laser is FDA approved and it does primarily two things and

it does them very, very well. Number one, it winds down inflammation. So it makes the pain go away of whatever the heck we're lasering and the other thing that it does very well is it excites the mitochondria which is a part of a cell any cell in the body that is responsible for regeneration and regrowth so we're making the pain go away and promoting new tissue growth of whatever we're lasering so i would say we use it a lot, all day long, on chronic cases, meaning somebody who has low back pain, neck pain, headaches coming from their neck, arthritic hands, carpal tunnel syndrome, worn out knees. These are chronic cases, but I'm using it a lot as well on athletes. You know, they run run they're cyclists they have knee pain or shoulder pain or whatever it is it's acute injury happened last week happened

a couple of days ago it's it's a hot disc it's inflamed and you want to quickly get them back into their game that is hands down the most efficient tool and it beats you know a lot of other alternatives you really don't want to take anti-inflammatories unless you absolutely have to you want to avoid the oral route a pill that is going to go through your stomach get absorbed in your whole body and somehow miraculously go into that joint and wind down inflammation and of course it will work but at what cost with the laser it's non-invasive the laser beam is not harmful to the body um and and it will get the job done rather quickly yeah it's amazing like i i wouldn't think you know i'm a guy who's like if i don't feel the pain nothing's

happening you know like i go in and you're like oh we're gonna do an adjustment click okay you're done now we'll go laser and here's a few exercises to do and go on your way. And I'm like, that's it? I want to hurt. You've got to make me hurt here. But it worked. It was amazing. I was like, all right, I'm going to do this wacky laser thing.

I had low expectations of it. But miraculously, it was incredibly effective. It's a great tool, yeah. And do you get, is there blowback from the community like the medical profession i mean are there people saying oh that's just wacky you know shy he's doing this wacky stuff over here you know when you want to get real come over here and i'll give you a pill i mean do you get any of that or have you found support it's it's been supportive yeah no the opposite man we we i, not to brag or anything, right?

No, brag. This is your chance to brag. Come on. We'll call it a humble brag. No, I mean, we get, I mean, this is a great community. The physicians that we work with understand what we do. They appreciate it. This is not a wacky thing.

This is well-researched, FDA-approved. And when patients when uh doctors refer their patients in and we constantly get referrals from family practitioners from internal medicine doctors neurologists uh surgeons this is not unusual and it was flattering for me when we first started getting them but now it's just that's what happens right and they don't send them for a particular service they send them in here you go here's rich roll evaluate what's wrong with this guy and fix him and that's what we do so we may use the laser we may use decompression we may use acupuncture we may use the nurse practitioner to do injections we may see the

medical doctor it depends but typically when we get referrals from other physicians in the community community they would refer the patient here you go fix him send him back to us right that's what we do great and you know obviously there's a lot of athletes that that listen to this podcast and and not a day goes by where somebody doesn't come up to me and say something like oh you know i wish i could run i you know i don, you know, I don't know how you run all those miles. You know, my knees are shot. You know, I used to run all the time and now my knees are no good. Or, you know, I have this persistent IT band problem. I've tried everything. I can't make it go away. You know, what would you say to those people? I mean, not everybody has a clinic like, you know, not certainly if you're

in the Los Angeles area, I would implore all of you to come down and, and see shy directly. But, you know, most people listening to this don't live in LA and maybe there isn't an analogous type of clinic in their, in, in their vicinity. So what would you say to somebody like that? And what kind of tools can you kind of convey over the airwaves to try to help empower people to address and solve these problems for themselves? You know, one of the first things that I hear from athletes coming in, or maybe they're not athletes anymore. They used to be athletes, but because of an injury, because of bad knees, they stopped

doing it and they kind of lost hope that they can go back to it. And they come in and they'd say, okay, well, here, this is me. Tell me what I'm not allowed to do. And the first thing that I say is this is a horrible approach. Don't use me for that. I'm not here to tell you what not to do. I'm here to fix your problem so you can go back and do what you want to do completely different perspective right and

people like that and appreciate it they think I'm a little weird but but they roll with it and you know I'd say that for chronic conditions for athletes with, we use a variety of tools. One of the more common tools of use for worn out knees is an injection of something called hyaluronic acid. And it's just acts as a lubricant. It goes into the joint. It opens up the knee joint. And essentially, it's like WD-40 being sprayed into a rusty hinge. It gets you more life out of that joint. And a lot of patients have to do it once and they're done.

And some people have to do once every six months and they're happy to do it just to avoid their knees getting hacked off and replaced with metal. But going back into your question of people that don't live in our community and they're listening to this and they're wondering, gosh, I mean, where the heck would I go? The answer people that don't live in our community and they're listening to this and they're wondering gosh what i mean where the heck would i go the answer is i don't know but um you know but there are things that you want to look out for and for our for your audience who would go on our website they can always send me a question say here's where i live see if you can refer me to the right clinic and I'll tell you that having a clinic with a beautiful website, that doesn't necessarily mean anything. There are certain things that you

need to know to look for, and I'll be happy to guide them. Yeah. And the website is Shawnee Clinic. I'll put that, shawneeclinic.com, and I'll make sure that that's in the show notes to the episode. So people can go there, they can send you or your staff an email directly. Yeah. And we'll, we'll help them find the right place for them for sure. And are there other online resources that are directories for, you know, clinics like, like yours or should they just. You know, the specialty is called physical medicine. And I think if you Google physical medicine, you'll be able to get, would it be the same?

I don't know. I'd hope so, but you'll be able to at least start somewhere and look for a specialty that is multidisciplinary, integrated, that's what physical medicine is. Right. All right, and of the people that come into your office, I mean, what is the most kind of typical malady? Like, what are you seeing a lot of right now?

And specifically when it comes to things that you see a lot that you could say, hey, you know, if people just knew this one thing or these two things, they could easily start to implement positive change in their life. One of the most common conditions that we see is, you know, typical herniated disc, bulging disc, sciatica type thing, pain shooting down to the legs and feet, numbness and tingling, burning sensation in the feet. That's called neuropathy, by the way. Neuropathy is nerve, diseased nerves or nerves dying out. And so we're extremely successful with these cases. Funny, quick, quick, funny story. I just met with a local doctor in the

community. He's a surgeon. He wanted to know. We just went to lunch. Nice guy, very, very sharp, great doctor. And, you know, he's heard about us and we wanted to get together. I've heard great things about him. And he said, you know, I know they have a very busy practice and I've heard they guys do great. But, you know, I'm sure that some patients need to be referred out to surgery, and I'd like to be your guy. And I want to know, how many patients do you typically send out to surgery? And I said, honestly, not that many. And we were looking at my numbers, we were looking at my schedule and you know we're fairly high volume clinic and yet not a lot of people are going to surgery some people absolutely need it and we do send them out but it's a very very very small percentage

and um it was fun for me to have that conversation with him and and look back and like wow we are good in fixing those problems. So the success rate for these common degenerative discs, arthritic discs, whether it's from getting older or whether it's from lifting or being really hard on your body, kind of like what you did, pounding, running, pounding the discs, they eventually shrink and degenerate. This is one of the most successful um the most common conditions that we see and the ones that we have greatest the greatest success with right and that comes through the adjustments that you're doing the exercises that you're advising um and where does where does acupuncture and yoga kind of fit into that i mean what are the that i know that those are kind of tentacles of what you're advising yeah right so that yeah i mean i always recommend yoga to

patients and a big part of their office visit with us is stretching whether they do it on their own on our stretch machines that i was talking about before the posterior and the anterior machine or it's one-on-one with our physical therapy aids or it's manual therapy so i always encourage patients to stretch all the time and there's kind of an anti-stretching movement going on right now are you aware of this yeah at least in the running community i mean there's a lot of people saying you know now there's this thing like well you shouldn't stretch and stretching is bad i mean where did where is your perspective? I mean, you're pro-stretching, obviously. I strongly disagree.

I think it's a huge part of increasing blood flow to the muscles as a general maintenance of our body or before and after an exercise routine, especially a run or a bike ride. I can't imagine myself cycling without getting a regular program to stretch my muscles i just can't imagine that so yeah i'm a strong believer in stretching i've always been pro stretching but maybe that's because i'm flexible yeah i don't like it but uh yeah no it is interesting kind of watch this debate unfold but i always come down on the pro stretching end of it absolutely probably get some probably get a bunch of comments now on the website.

Anyway, all right, man. Well, we've been going for like an hour and a half. I don't want to take up too much more of your time. But I think what you're doing is incredible. It's inspiring. And I wish that there were more people like yourself out there practicing in the way that you are in this holistic and preventative manner. Because I think that's what people want right now. That's a need that needs to get filled.

And it's not about just going in and getting your prescription and being diagnosed with whatever condition it is. It's about being proactive about your health. It's about getting in front of the problem, getting to the underlying cause. Right? Right, absolutely. You're not going to disagree with me on that, are you? I was just sitting here quietly listening and smiling. No, I would agree with everything that you said,

and I'm excited for your audience because this is wonderful. This is information that people need to hear, whether it's what we just talked about or all the other podcasts. I think it's phenomenal. I'm excited for you and your success. Yeah, man. Well, I'm excited for you and your success. And I appreciate you coming down, taking time out on a weekday, man. Come on. You got to get back to your patients are waiting for you, right? Yeah. All right, man. Thanks for stopping by.

Thank you. All right. Peace. Plants. Thank you. you you you you you