Can the joints be moved too much?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:00:06] All right, here we are with the most common questions asked by chiropractic patients to chiropractors, and it’s funny because we were going back and forth and what those questions are going to be in. Ben had a topic and I kind of changed it up because having been in this for a long time, that’s one question that one of them that we’re going to answer that I get all the time. So the first one is, can the joints be moved too much? I actually got this one today. Ben was crazy. The guy comes in with his son and he says, I’m afraid you’re going to create a dependency. For my son. So meaning that eventually, the joints move too much and they need to be kept moving all the time. So go ahead, Ben, and then I’ll chime in.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:00:51] So as chiropractors, one of the things that we’re looking for, right? If the nervous system is like a waterfall travelling from your brain all the way down and the restrictions in your spine are like DAMPs on that waterfall, right? Damson that waterfall, we as chiropractors would be targeting those. Dams, right, we’d be targeting the restricted segments. We’re looking for the segments that are putting the most stress on the nervous system. And so we wouldn’t even be targeting the segments that are moving too much. We’re looking for the segments that are not moving enough so we can take as much pressure as we can off.

And even so, like when we’re looking on x-ray, which we do often with most patients will x-ray to see where it is that the patient is most restricted and why. And actually, if you don’t restore the motion in the segments that aren’t moving enough, it can lead to degeneration above and below where it’s moving too much. So we want to make sure that everything is moving together with as little strain on the nervous system as possible.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:01:58] Yeah. So one of what I told this gentleman is a great explanation for Ben with the waterfall. I like it. I use a different one as well. Like I told this gentleman, I said, imagine you’ve got 24 vertebrae in the spine. There are seven in the neck, 12 in the middle back, five in the lower back. And you have your sacrum as well. So imagine that’s a company. But within that company, you’ve got five employees in different departments of that company that are out on sick leave. So for us as chiropractors, those are the vertebrae that aren’t moving well, right? You know, I just hate to use the word out of alignment, but you know, we use that most oftentimes with patients.

So what happens the other? Employees, the 19 other employees, because there’s 24 total, five or sick have to work harder in order to maintain the same level of productivity. Right. And the body has a certain level of productivity that is optimum for our body to be able to adapt to everything in its environment. And as soon as the productivity goes down, then our ability to adapt goes down and we start having issues. So guess what, if the five that were sick do not come back, the 19 others feel overworked, and that’s exactly what happens in the spine.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:03:17] Where you have some vertebrae is not moving enough and some moving too much. We leave the ones that are moving too much alone, right? And if we did not leave them alone and we started moving those, then yes, because they’re already moving too much, we’re moving them even more. But we’re focusing on the ones that need to move so that the ones that are moving too much start to calm down because they don’t feel the need to move in excess because of the ones that are not moving enough. Now, bear in mind, you can get some osteoarthritis and degeneration from either one.

You can get degeneration from vertebrates that are stuck in degenerative because they haven’t moved for a long time. And then you can get degeneration from the ones that are moving too much because they’re wearing and tearing, right? So both can be problematic, but typically we move the ones that aren’t moving enough. So you cannot move a joint too much when you are a chiropractor that knows how to palpate and find the joints that are moving enough?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:04:18] Absolutely. Yeah. And so definitely like to add the question. Oh, and to add the question that like, you know, what about for the patients Dr. Roach that have like Marfan syndrome, right? Those types of patients who actually have, you know, superb joint laxity? Right. They can still have restrictions on their spine. Like it doesn’t stop because they have certain areas that are like, does it stop them from having their spines adjusted if they have a condition like Mark?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:04:49] Fans know so Marfan is it’s a cartilaginous issue where the cartilage is very lax and they have hypermobility, but within that person that’s in general hypermobility, hypermobile. There are some joints that will still move less than the others. So those patients typically require us to change our techniques a little bit. We can be overly aggressive because the joints actually, even though you find one that’s moving less in general, they’re still moving more than the average patient. Right. But what you want to do is restore symmetry in each joint inner segmenting to make sure they’re moving equally because even in the Marfan patient, you can still have vertebrae that are moving enough and others have a move in excess to compensate. Absolutely. Typically, there’s a change in technique, though.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:05:39] Yeah, and I was about to say, definitely, if you’re approaching every patient, you’re going to approach them a little bit differently. And that’s another question that we’ll address later on in this conversation. Yeah, something as well. Another condition is as well Down syndrome, right? Or trisomy twenty-one where it’s known now that the S.O.S. one is actually quite lax. And so that’s the first joint actually between your occipital, which is the base of your skull and your first cervical vertebrae. It’s very lax. And actually, individuals with Down syndrome tend to have lax ligaments and joints anyhow. They’re very hypermobile. And so when you’re adjusting a patient like that, you have to be aware of the known fact that these individuals might have a looser joint up top.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:06:28] Yeah, the same can be said about people with rheumatoid arthritis, right? Like the occupant outlets joint. There’s a lot of movement there that can be had because of the inherent effects of the condition, like rheumatoid arthritis Down syndrome. So we need to be aware of that and we want to make sure that we take that into account when we take a look at the whole person, right? Yeah. All right. Question number two. Our coverage is safe. Hey, what do you think, Ben?

Are chiropractic adjustments safe?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:07:02] Well, I mean, I wanted to put this fun fact in here just at the bottom chiropractic adjustment, since it’s an effective treatment that’s performed one million times every business day in the United States. So, yeah, I would say that chiropractic adjustments are quite safe, definitely. And actually, when we’re putting force through an adjustment with an adjustment, we’re putting a lot less force than you would if you turned your head all the way and extend it back. We’re putting less force in that through your spine while it’s being adjusted. And again, there are certain techniques that we use as chiropractors to determine whether an individual might need an adjustment that would be a little more.

That may be a little bit, I would say a bit faster, right? An adjustment that doesn’t require a drop piece, maybe a softer adjustment, one that’s a little more aggressive. And I don’t like to use that word, but maybe a little more invasive, for example. And so there are different ways to approach it. You know, we adjust people, we adjust children all the way up to older adults in the elderly. And so you have to be able to taper your adjustment to meet that, to meet that need.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:08:15] Right? I mean, maybe we can talk about the Purple Cow in the room, right? I think one of the things that people think about sometimes when people come to a chiropractor is the once upon link between chiropractic and strokes. Some of you might not know that link, but some of you definitely have. We’ve voiced that. You know that question. We deal with it all the time. And you know, what would happen is, you know, patients would visit a chiropractic office and they would leave. And, you know, a day after two hours after three days after even up to a week after some patients would get a stroke.

Now you can imagine when we see treatments that perform around a million times every business day, the more people we see, the more likely we are to have patients that have events that don’t necessarily cause and effect, but just a correlation with timing in terms of where they were. You know, you can go to Wal-Mart and you stay there long enough. Eventually, somebody takes a heart attack at Wal-Mart. Is it because they were at Wal-Mart? No, it’s because eventually when there are enough people that are there, just like you can have a hockey player, you don’t have a heart attack during a hockey game. So here’s what would happen, right? People come in.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:09:37] One of the first symptoms of a stroke is a headache and typically a very, very bad headache. So if we were seeing a patient with headaches and they’ve come in many times with a headache and one day to come in, they say, Geez, you know, I’ve got a bad headache today. Well, the first instinct, if there are no other symptoms, is not to think, Oh my gosh, you’re having a stroke. She’s come in many times or he’s come in many times with a headache. We go ahead and do the regular thing that we normally do. We give them an adjustment because there aren’t any other symptoms at the time.

Now that patient leaves and they didn’t know that they were having a stroke. We didn’t know they were having a stroke. And by the time they get to their home, they’re starting to have paralysis. They’re starting to have other symptoms. Lo and behold, they say something’s not right. They go to the emergency room and they’re told they’re having a stroke. Well, what’s the last thing they remember that they did while they went to the chiropractor? And in their mind, the only thing they came in with was a headache. Well, the headache was actually a stroke is just that nobody knew that they were having a stroke.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:10:48] So many times, chiropractors were caught being part of the timing of the stroke. But not necessarily be the cause of the stroke. So that created a lot of confusion in the past, but we’ve done many, many research studies and all that. And you know, now it’s at the forefront that we’re part of the timing, but not in every part of the cause and effect. So that’s been put to rest or cases. Unfortunately, that happen and the chiropractors were blamed so on and so forth, and misinformation is still being passed on, unfortunately, because, you know, we don’t profess to know every drug interaction because we’re not in that field.

Just like medical doctors might not read all the current research. You know, concerning chiropractic, they might be left going by what they’ve heard in the past, which obviously at this point is not true anymore. So again, just wanted to hit the Purple Cow in the room because some of you might be wondering, Geez, I wonder why, you know, I’ve heard that chiropractors could cause strokes. Well, it’s not that we caused them, it’s just that we’re just part of the trajectory. You know, the patient could have been at Wal-Mart. They could have been on the ice. It could have been anywhere. And that stroke would have happened anyway.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:12:02] Absolutely. If you want to check out some of the more recent information, there was a huge, huge review that was done in Ontario by some of the leading chiropractic researchers here in the country that basically summarizes all the information of the case studies over the last two years, 20 or 30 years. He’s doing a ton of research randomized controlled trials done under MRI actually of how much pressure chiropractor places on the vertebral artery during the adjustment. That’s when I said earlier, you know, we actually put just as much as chiropractors actually less pressure on the vertebral artery, than an individual would if they turn their head all the way and lean back.

Yeah, so it just goes to show you just how safe a chiropractic adjustment is. And if you look at the risk-benefit ratio and that’s something that you should always consider, right, whenever you’re undergoing any sort of treatment, look at the benefit and the risk associated with that. And when you look at that risk-benefit ratio in chiropractic care, there’s definitely a lot more benefit to having your body adjusted in general. Yes, fine. Does it than the actual risk that that is associated with it?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:13:21] I mean, I’ve had people get vertigo and get dizzy from having their hair done right there, putting their head back into that sink at the hairdresser and compressing an artery carotid artery where there’s already some plaque in there and it blocks the blood flow for a while. So again, you know, any neck movement, you know, and you consider the fact that you can go in a car accident at 80 miles an hour and you’re not dead and your neck is that resilient? You know, there’s a lot of force at the neck can take.

It’s not as fragile as we think it is, but obviously, it all comes to the fact that chiropractors do a thorough examination, thorough health history. So we mitigate that risk by knowing a lot about the patient before we even start, you know, choosing the technique we’re going to use on that patient. What areas of the spine we’re going to go ahead and put pressure on? So a lot of the information that we take in is for that reason to make sure that everything is safe and you can have a great chiropractic experience.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:14:24] Absolutely. Great. Cool.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:14:28] Oh, man. Why do I need to go to the chiropractor when I can drive my own back? I hate the word crack.

Should I crack my own back?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:14:35] Oh yeah. So one of my patients, I came in for an initial and unfortunately it didn’t work out. I’m not sure how he’s doing now, he or she is doing now, but he was saying, you know, what’s the difference between what you’re going to do in the chiropractic office? And by the way, this is when I was at CMK. What’s the difference between what you’re going to do here and what I and my buddies are doing at the rugby field, right? And he’s talking about when they walk up behind each other and they give each other a big hug and then they just shake them.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:15:13] Hope they don’t poop their pants when they’re giving them a big hug.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:15:16] Exactly. So should I crack my own back? Well, clearly we’re the chiropractors. The answer is no. And here’s why. So chances are when you are going to give yourself a neck adjustment, for instance, right? I see people try and give themselves neck adjustments. Chances are, you’ve adjusted the same segment over and over and over again. Right. We talk about this issue of hypermobility, a phenomenon known as hypermobility, where the joints are moving too much. When you’re delivering that adjustment to yourself over and over again, chances are that same segment is being moved. What’s happening to the rest of the segments, they’re not being moved enough. So when you consider that segment moving too much, that’s where you’ll see more degeneration at that level where they were moving that segment far too much.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:16:09] I’m going to add to that. I’m going to say that if you are able by a twist of your own neck. To hear a noise, an audible. Those vertebrates are already moving too much. So you’re actually moving the ones that are already moving too much. Ok. In order to move the vertebrae that are stuck, you physically have to put your finger on it and move it quickly with the chiropractic adjustment because they are stuck if they can be easily moved by you twisting your neck. Those are the ones that are compensating, and they’re moving too much for the ones that you should be showing up at the chiropractor for. Let the chiropractor move. And what I’ve noticed is that the people that do that, often it becomes a habit, right?

Once they start chiropractic care and accept the fact that we know a little bit more about what they know and our adjustment is a little bit more specific and actually targets the proper ones. At one point they come back and say, I haven’t had to crack my own neck. Why? Because the ones that you were moving excessively have now calmed down because we’ve moved the proper ones. So don’t do that. It’s OK to do a passive stretch. And if you hear a noise here and there, that’s fine, right? That’s just going to happen. But do not give your head a quick turn or twist or poke. We go to school a long time to figure out exactly which ones need to move to remove the dam so that the waterfall can start flowing properly, right? Just like the analogy of the Ben news.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:17:48] Absolutely, and so, you know, we reduced the need for you to crack your own neck and prevent you from damaging your joints later on. You know so. Exactly right. So what I’ve been explaining to people as well is that when you’re adjusting your own neck or adjusting your own back, you’re doing that under tension. You’re doing that under stress on your body. As chiropractors were looking to remove the stress on the nervous system, not simply, you know, getting audible from the joint. Right.

So when we’re adjusting our joints, we’re adjusting in the position where you feel like you have the least amount of tension that we can get right to the joint and attack the root cause of the problem. When you’re adjusting your neck, your muscles are all under tension, you’re forcing that that adjustment to happen. And that’s just not right for your nervous system and it’s not right for your joints.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:18:43] And a sub-question to that was, Hey, Doc, you know, when you’re cracking my neck, which I say, when I’m adjusting your neck, and they say Is it my bones that are cracking, so I’m like, no. So the actual noise that you’re hearing when we’re doing the adjustment is actually gas that’s being released from the joint capsule because the capsule is a closed volume. So there’s gas and there’s liquid inside the joint synovial fluid. And when you gap that joint one-two millimetres, you’re going to get inaudible, just like you’re opening up a can of pop. And when that noise is close to the ears, like in the neck, it sounds a little louder.

That’s why the neck adjustments are a lot louder than the lower back adjustment, although I’ve heard some loud, lower back adjustments as well. But the neck ones are really loud, right? So that’s what that noise is. So if you’re enjoying this conversation so far, as always, give us a thumbs up and a heart, maybe both. And yeah, so thank you so much for being live tonight with us. We’ve got a lot of people live, which is great if you’re on YouTube with us. Hit Subscribe. Get a hold of all our episodes. Binge watch them with your girlfriend, with your husband, with your dog.

Lots of discussions. And more importantly, guys, please share these episodes because God knows there’s always, you know, somebody out there that needs to hear a little piece of information that can help them jump on the other side of the fence and actually take action on some of the issues they’re having. And hopefully, down the road help them gain a better quality of life. All right, Benny.

Is everyone adjusted the same way?

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:20:26] Yeah. So chiropractic questions. Is everyone adjusted the same way? Right, so again, right, everybody is different, like you might come in with the same kinds of problems, you might work the same kinds of jobs. But the way that you present with pain, the way that you explain your pain, the way that you feel about your pain are completely different from person to person. So each and every single adjustment that we deliver to the spine? Yeah, there might be an audible pop, that close vacuum that opens when we adjust the joint. But the amount of depth, the amount of pressure that we place on your body, on your skin, on you is completely different from person to person.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:21:15] And you could be watching two people that I adjust and you’ll say, Oh, you did the same thing, but realize my hand can be a centimetre below on the second patient and you would have never noticed that. And instead of my hand being on eight, the hand is on to seven or instead of being on L5, it’s on L4. So you know how we push, how we pull. There are different techniques that to the naked eye unless you’re a chiropractor. It would look the same. So all you put me on my right side put me on my left side. And sometimes it’s funny because I have that because they’re coming from another chiropractor. And I’ll say, So what did your old chiropractor used to do?

Well, he put me on my right side and I put my leg up and he’d push on me and then he’d go on the other side and put my leg up. And then he’d do it on both sides and then two or three times on the spine. So if it’s funny when I veer off that routine, like, but that’s not what he used to do, although that was their perception. You know, we have to go by what the individual is like that day. But their exam showed so that we know exactly like you said, you know, the depth, the speed, what the body can handle.

This is their osteoporosis is there, you know, a joint that’s fused on one side and not on the other. So there’s hypermobility on the opposite side, and what’s happening will determine what the therapy or what the action is that we’re going to take as a chiropractor.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:22:35] Absolutely. For example, a patient with osteoporosis may take a much longer time for that joint to release and have an audible click. Then an individual who’s young and an athlete, for example, I had a patient who has been seeing me for almost two weeks now, and just yesterday we had adjusted and I used to drop piece, which is different again, a different technique for patients who may need softer adjustments. And I use that dropped piece and I got an audible click through the thoracic spine, and this was the first time this patient has ever felt. They’re there. Mid-back move. Right? Right. And so again, just tapering the technique, moving the technique and being, you know, being more fluid so that we can get patients better the right way. And not just using a trial by fire. Yeah.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:23:32] I’ve got a question here from Nader. Nader asks I have an inversion table and sometimes I hear the cracking noise same as adjustment. Is it harmless or is it harmful? So funny inversion tables compared to decompression tables like we have a decompression table in our clinic and the decompression table because of how it pulls in the spine incrementally. It avoids what’s called a Golgi tendon reflex, so basically, when you start to pull in the spine very quickly, the muscles want to contract to stop you from pulling the spine apart. So the way that you can do that without engaging those muscles is by slowly creating traction in the spine.

When it feels a tension our decompression table automatically stops pulling until the contraction is gone, and then it starts to pull again. And eventually, it arrives that the number of pounds of pressure that you set on the table. So you can pull you can set 70 pounds of pressure or seventy-five pounds of pressure, and then it gets to that point and then it releases it with the inversion table. So let me back up a little bit on the decompression table. We’re actually creating negative pressure on the spine, so the negative pressure on the disc allows for a vacuum phenomenon to happen where you’re pulling the disc back inside.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:24:49] So at the outside of the disc over time can heal. In an inversion table, you’re actually creating a positive fiscal pressure because you don’t have that mechanism where you’re preventing the Golgi tendon reflex from occurring. Because you’re just boom, you’re going upside down and the muscles all of a sudden get jolted and they start to try to tug. So the inversion table, I’m always very, very careful telling somebody that they can use it because if you have an undiagnosed disc bulge, which a lot of people do because you don’t necessarily have pain from a disc bulge, you could actually hurt yourself.

You could actually create a larger disc bulge or go from a bulge to a herniation on an inversion table because of the amount of pressure it puts on the disc. That’s not negative as a positive, positive disc of pressure. So when people say I went on an inverted inversion table, I feel great. They probably had an AC joint problem, but they didn’t have a disc problem. Always, always be careful of a disc problem on an inversion table. Unfortunately, you might not even know you have a disc problem, so I’m always wary of an inversion table.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:26:05] Yeah, absolutely, and the last time I went on to an inversion table and I don’t usually do them anymore, I actually got a wicked headache afterwards just it flipped around too fast too soon and my body just could not adapt to that change. So if you are going to try something like that, you know, make sure that it’s safe for you and that you can handle that really quick change in body pressure.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:26:34] Yep, we got a lot of good questions tonight, guys. Appreciate that. Chanel is asking, does someone wearing orthotics change or adjust your treatment? So one, why are the orthotics there, right? So is there a true foot problem? And again, we talked about this in a previous episode. We want to make sure that the issue that your orthotics were prescribed for is not actually correctable. Sometimes a lot of authors don’t know that manipulations can be done to the foot. If you have an ankle mortise joint issue. In other words, your rear foot is not functioning very well, then your midfoot is going to be hyper prone and have hypermobility, which could create an arch that’s going to fall.

Sometimes your thought it could be misprescribed, so to speak, just because the podiatrist doesn’t have an understanding of what a chiropractor might do. So basically, it becomes a crutch forever, so that’s something to entertain. I always say that if there’s an arthritic that was prescribed to correct a leg length discrepancy that was functional and in the functional issue, gets fixed by a chiropractor because you might have a pelvis, it’s sort of alignment. Then that leg is not short like it was when the orthopedic was prescribed. So sometimes it’s very, very advantageous to be reassessed by a podiatrist after being seen by a chiropractor for a while because it could change your prescription in terms of how much correction is in that orthotic.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:28:03] And as to the second question was what are other ailments or problems that you can go to a chiropractor for? Because she mentioned having a shoulder problem and, you know, she didn’t know if she should talk to me about it, and all of a sudden her shoulder got better because of something that we did. I always see if there is a joint issue, it is worth your while to ask the chiropractor because we can adjust an extremity, shoulder, elbow, wrist, and many times those extremity problems can clear up faster than the spine. Because amazingly enough, our extremities aren’t used as much as a spine, which is there.

Whether you’re sitting, bending, lifting, it’s always being used. So, you know, as Ben alluded to today, miracles do happen in the extremities as well or something. I’ve been having a wrist problem all my life. And you do a wrist adjustment. All of a sudden, the wrist pain is gone, right? So definitely keep that in mind, and you’re always better off asking and having our say, No, we can’t fix that, then always wondering or never getting help and taking medication. And all this time we could have been able to help you. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. All right. Cool.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:29:16] Yeah, great questions tonight.

Do you have to go for the rest of your life?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:29:18] I love it, very interactive. We love interactive groups. Absolutely. You have to go for the rest of your life. Yeah. Want to start that one? Ben and I’ll chiropractic questions.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:29:31] Do you have to go for the rest of your life? Well, so you guys see the photo that we have in the back there. So that’s a that’s just a little tree. It’s a little plant, right? You can think of it the way that you want. Our spine grows just like that and our spine will grow in. The nervous system will get stronger and stronger with the least amount of resistance that’s placed upon it and the nerves exit from the spine. They go right to your organs, so your organs ability to function properly and your brain’s ability to function with all of the information that I can have depends on whether you have more restrictions or fewer restrictions in your spine and back and the pressure that’s placed on the nervous system.

And so your body is always going to be under some level of stress and depending on how you handle that stress is how your spine is, then going to heal and function and how you’re going to behave. And so, again, we’re always going to have stressors in our life, and one of the best ways to clear a stressor or restriction is by having your spine adjusted. Now the frequency of how you’re going to receive your adjustments is going to depend on how quickly everything resolves, how quickly you can remove these stressors.

Some people are always weary, like when we first start care and we start more frequently, in the beginning, to clear up some of the acute issues, some of the symptoms that you’re feeling. And then as your body begins to get stronger and as your structure begins to change, you require less treatment similar to how a dentist would go in and do an examination and clean your teeth out.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:31:11] Like I like to say to a patient, you know, it’s almost like we’re cleaning out your spine, we’re clearing your spine and cleaning it of restrictions caused by stressors in your daily life. And when you do that, your body’s ability to function, to move, to do the things that you want to do pain-free, become so much better, become so much cleaner. And so, yeah, I mean, I definitely get adjusted once every couple of weeks for sure. If I have a really stressful week, I’ll be adjusted that week. And definitely, it makes your body healthier. It makes your body stronger. You know, we look at athletes, for instance, they’re at the tip-top of their performance at the top of their game, right? And even if they’re feeling great, their bodies still could feel a little better.

They could still feel a little better. That’s why they get their adjustments done. The same can be said for any regular individual. It doesn’t matter if you know if you’re sweeping a floor every day or you’re sitting in an office or you’re out on an oil truck, delivering fuel from house to house, your spine deserves to be taken care of. And that’s the reason why you should be seeing a chiropractor on a regular basis and have regular checkups because you never know what could be wrong.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:32:27] So great answer. I’ll say that you know, I always like to answer the questions with another question. And when people ask me, do you have to go for the rest of your life? I say, Well, what is your goal? Right? Many things in the medical field are done with a start and a stop. If you take antibiotics right, you’re going to take an antibiotic for seven days, 14 days, 10 days. Whatever it is, you start and then you stop. You take another prescription. Take three times a day for 20 days, right? There’s a start and there’s a stop. Many of the procedures that we do are based on symptoms going away.

My question is, what is your goal? If your goal is to be to, it’s to come to a chiropractor until the pain is gone, which is really at that point, a medical procedure because you’re coming to see us with the pain and the pain goes away. There’s a start and there’s a stop. But when you have an understanding of. The cause of that pain, then you realize that the pain going away does not necessarily mean that the issue is gone right? So if you’re coming in for pain relief? Yes, there is a start and there’s a stop if you’re coming for nervous system expression, quality of life.

Really, when do you stop brushing your teeth, right? Do you get to a point in your life or you can say, my gosh, I brush my teeth for 20 years, I’m done right? Well, if that was the case and you continue to eat what you have to including sugars while you start to have decay because you’re not keeping up with the brushing as much as you’re taking in sugar.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:34:14] Sugar, in that case, is the stress. Well, what is the stress to our spine? Well, let’s see. Sitting, bending. Lifting. The sheer fact that we live on this planet and there’s a gravitational force of the Earth pulling us down every single day. Let alone been on cell phones and texting and all that stuff. That is our stress. We can even argue that her spine has more stress than our teeth because we don’t eat all the time. But our spine is exposed to stress every single second, whether you’re bending, lifting, sitting, doing whatever you’re doing.

Unless you manage that stress equally to how it’s coming in and you’re encountering it, if you don’t adapt, you will decay. So no different than decay for your teeth is called a cavity. We have decay in her spine that’s called osteoarthritis, and you get osteoarthritis because you didn’t keep up, not because your grandmother had it. And it’s in the family. It’s degenerative, it’s not inherited. So for me, I’ve been adjusted by a chiropractor since I was 18 years old every two weeks.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:35:19] Right. Because I understand the toll that my body takes and the stress that my nervous system takes and the demand for it to adapt to everything that it encounters every single day by me doing what I’m doing, and not even as a chiropractor, just laying in bed, right? Just the pressure, the gravity, the bending that requires maintenance. And if you don’t maintain it, that’s OK. But if at one point you get to a point where there’s pain and there’s an acute episode, understand that it’s probably not what you did yesterday, but it’s what you didn’t do for a number of years. And even when the pain goes away, you did not fix the problem, you messed it.

Unless you continue to find the cause and you remove the cause, you never get to a point where you can actually maintain a higher level of health. You’re always putting out a fire. And that’s unfortunately what medical care does with medications where you’re on and off, medications taking care of pain and symptoms. So what is your goal? Do you want to get rid of symptoms? It’s a start, and it’s a stop. Do you want to magnify your life and quality of life and life, expression and potential? It’s a lifestyle and it’s a procedure, not it’s a process, not a procedure. So that would be my take on that.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:36:47] Oh, absolutely. Yeah, and so definitely the lifestyle component of chiropractic is something that everyone is sort of interested in, especially when you first start care, you’re running well. What is the lifestyle approach to chiropractic care? Well, it’s about reducing those stressors, right? Those stressors on your spine, those things that caused that pain in the first place, whether it be an acute injury, right? Try to approach that and decide, OK, well, how can I avoid that in the future, right? That would be like an occupational thing or sort of looking at the environment, deciding, OK, how can I change things or cause most of your stress from the food that you consume?

It could be a diabetic issue. The reason why you have such poor joint health, right? Absolutely. System health, right. So looking at that lifestyle and trying to change the little things is the process that we’re always going through, right? Just trying to get better. That’s the lifestyle of coming into the clinic and learning and staying focused on your goal like nobody ever says. Like, I’m really, really, you know, like nobody ever comes out and an amateur golfer like us. Nobody, no good. No golfer comes out and says, Well, I’m an amazing golfer. You know, it’s like, it’s something that you have to work on that you’re progressing. The game is always changing. The course is always changing. Where you are in your life is changing. You just have to make your body more resilient in those changes.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:38:06] And I know, like sometimes the patients will say, you know, and I know they didn’t get it at that point because they’ll say to me, I’m going to take a break now, and you know, I feel pretty good and I’ll come back when I need it. And that’s when I know they’re in the mentality of start and stop because the reason they want to stop is that, you know, they don’t have the symptom anymore. They don’t have that hook that brought them in. And I know they’re appreciative of where we’ve brought them. But then the next time I see them, I know I have to re-educate them because they’re going to think that they did something that week that provoked it again.

Meanwhile, when they thought they were good here today, they’re not really good. The structure is still wrong and we then penetrate at the very bottom to solve the cause of the issue. And we just masked it. So initially, you know, we tell them, you know, all this and they nod, but they don’t always get it because once the pain is gone. We go back into our medical thinking that because a symptom is gone, we have health. We love our chiropractors. I don’t have back pain anymore. See you later. And they come back when they have an acute episode again. You don’t fix it that we are always putting on fire. Just be aware of that.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:39:18] Yeah, for sure. I think this was a great conversation tonight, what do you think?

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:39:23] I love it. I love it. So we had a lot of questions, which is what I liked, right? I love the engagement. Yeah, my tooth doesn’t hurt, I don’t think I need a filling next time, it needs a root canal. Same idea. Absolutely. And I’ve actually used that one before. And you know what? Many times people say, OK, I’m done my structural care and then we’re just going to do maintenance care, and I’ll use the analogy that you’re taking the braces off. What happens if you never wear your retainer?

Well, the correction goes away and you start to have crooked teeth again, and now you have to spend $5000 again, right? Like why? Why do you do that? So you know your body is worth it like you’re worth the investment. Because if you were to fast forward 10 years from now. Who you are, the things you’re able to enjoy, the people you’re able to hang around with, whether it be your kids, all that those people and some of them might be even younger than you. Your ability to do that is because of the little things you’re starting to do today that you’ve done before today. It’s the little things that you do repetitively. Those rhythms in your life like going to the chiropractor, going to the gym, walking 30 minutes a day, like meditating.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:40:36] Chiropractic is not everything, but make it part of your routine and, you know, feel worthy enough to have a routine. That’s the number one thing. Have a routine that drives you towards health and not sickness because you cannot be idle. You can’t sit there and say, Well, you know, I’m just, I’m cruising here. Well, the only way to cruise is to go downhill because you can cruise on a flat surface. So if you’re cruising, you’re going downhill. So every year you’re getting a little worse. Your blood pressure is going up a little bit. Your sugar levels are going up a little bit. You’re starting to have a little bit more pain.

You’re starting to lend because your knee starts to bother you. Guys, it’s not always like that and doesn’t always have to be like that, it’s not because at one day you were old, right? People say, Oh, I hit 60, well, how are you when you’re at 59? I was perfect. No, not really. It was a slow trending process. If you’re to map it out, you’re going downhill. Stop the insanity, take care of yourself one step at a time that one step could be a chiropractor, so. Great Segway into October was the promotion we’ve got going on in October

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:41:42] Ben, so in October we have referred a friend month so a month, October, refer a friend.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:41:48] And so we only do that three months out of the year. Ok, October, I believe March and July. So three months. So what happens there? Refer a friend for three months, so

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:42:01] Refer a friend for free. The month is essentially you refer a friend, family member to the practice. Dr. Roach and I will do a complimentary chiropractic examination, full

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:42:12] Kit and caboodle.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:42:13] Full thing. So we’ll get the scan orthopedic exam, the weight distribution. We will also do be sending some a video as well. And then you’ll also get the full chiropractic report with that exam. And so that is complimentary at the practice and as a thank you to those of you who referred the friend over, you will offer you a complimentary chiropractic treatment adjustment at the practice.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:42:39] Yeah, so the exam is worth eighty-five dollars, so we find out everything right posture of full chiropractic, orthopedic exam, full health history. We talk, we actually sit down and listen, that’s the first thing that we do, what your goals are and what you want to do. And that’s eighty-five dollars, right? So your friend, whoever family member that comes in, gets that at no cost. And then we throw a credit on your account as Ben said as a thank you. That happens month of October. Coming up, so if you’ve got friends or colleagues, whoever they are, we’ll ask them when they come in who they were referred by so that we can put a proper credit on whoever’s account.

We don’t need to do this, guys, but we make it an opportunity for you guys to tell your friends and family members. Sometimes cost is an issue and it is a consideration, so we want to be there for them as well. And we hold out for three months out of the year and hopefully they get the same results as you do because obviously if you’re referring to them, you got good results because if you think of good results, you wouldn’t even be referring them. And that’s what we want to start is that family circle that understands the benefits of chiropractic care. So the month of October, refer a friend for free. Tell your family members. You know, share this video. A great way of doing the video.

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:43:56] Great way to start care too, right? Awesome way to start care starting on the right foot.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:44:01] Yeah, you understand the number of people that I have today that came in on a refer a friend for free. Many of them never having even considered chiropractic care. Why are you here? Well, you know, it’s like a free thing. You know, my friend comes here and all of a sudden their chiropractic patients for life living a better quality of life, happier whatever results they get. So again, chiropractic care. Never underestimate what it can do for you and your family. So everybody here just press share on this episode. Ok, you can press the share button. We really appreciate you when you do that, and I love you and appreciate it.

As always, thank you for the questions I Ben said. It makes life that much more entertaining. So what happens next? We are going to cut this episode up. Ben does that. We post the snippets all week long, so you don’t have to watch the whole episode. But if you are watching it on YouTube, you know, great. That’s where you can find us there with all our episodes from one to forty-one. And while you’re there, just hit subscribe.

For those of you tonight that are here live, if you haven’t gone to our YouTube channel, please do that. Just go ahead and just click Subscribe. Makes us feel better. You know, we always look at those subscriber numbers and like, Oh, we got another one, oh, we got another one. So we always like to see more subscribers on there, and you’ll get notified when you get a new episode.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:45:24] If you miss one, it’s a lot easier to find on YouTube as well. So listen, that’s all I got. I think that’s all that Ben has as well. Thank you so much for being a part of our family, a part of our practice. I’ve been in practice for 16 years. I got a hold of this little fellow here that I’m looking at right now. It’s been a great, wonderful addition to our practice practices from the bottom of his heart. The master adjustor doing very well and has allowed Roach Chiropractic Centre to help more people. Thank you for that and thank you to everyone that is a part of that. So love you and appreciate you.

We’ll see you next week for Humpday Conversation Number forty-two. Have a great night! We will see you next week or later on this week if you have an appointment with us. All right. Take care of guys and we’ll talk to you soon, guys. Bye. What’s up, guys? Listen, if you like this episode, you’ll probably like the other ones. Chances are pretty good, so here’s what you need to do. You need to like us and follow us on Facebook. Following means, you get notified when these two guys are alive. Next, family, friends. You need to share these episodes because you never know you might help them because they need this information as well. And guys, if

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:46:34] You ever miss an episode,

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:46:35] Make sure you subscribe to us on YouTube. That way, you can watch the episode

Dr. Ben Boudreau: [00:46:38] Over and over and over again.

Dr. Clayton Roach: [00:46:40] Guys, we love you and appreciate you. Take care.