One way to spark the amygdala of the brain for a holiday mood boost. Dr. Joe Pelino

Welcome to a special Thanksgiving edition of the Crackin Backs Podcast! This week, we're joined by the renowned Dr. Joe Pelino, a chiropractic care specialist with over 30 years of experience in sports medicine and groundbreaking therapeutic techniques. Dive into an enlightening discussion that explores the incredible connection between chiropractic adjustments and cognitive functions.

Join us as Dr. Pelino takes us on a journey through the nervous system and the brain. Discover how chiropractic techniques not only alleviate physical discomfort but also potentially influence areas like the amygdala, offering insights into emotional regulation and stress responses. It's a conversation that blends science and holistic well-being in a way that's both insightful and accessible.

Dr. Pelino's profound personal and professional transformation, from stepping away from his practice to making a powerful comeback. Learn about his time teaching hockey in Inuit communities, and how these experiences enriched his approach to chiropractic care, teaching valuable lessons in resilience, gratitude, and holistic health.

With his unique perspective gained from working with diverse clients including athletes from the NBA, NHL, OHL, and even celebrities, shares how the balance of exercise, nutrition, and self-treatment plays a crucial role in managing stress and enhancing overall well-​​​​​​being.

Dr. Pelino's innovative approach to patient care at his state-of-the-art Pelino Athletic Performance Centre, featuring advanced technologies and treatment methods that have revolutionized sports medicine and Chiropractic​​c care.

A Thanksgiving Celebration of Healing and Health In this episode, we blend the spirit of Thanksgiving with a deep appreciation for the body's incredible capacity for healing and balance. Prepare to be inspired and educated as we delve into the science and heart of chiropractic care with Dr. Joe Pelino.

Join us on the Crackin Backs Podcast for this not-to-be-missed episode, where we align more than just spines – we align lives with the spirit of Thanksgiving!

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Transcript

Dr. Spencer Baron: 0:00

Welcome, Welcome everyone, to a special Thanksgiving episode of The cracking backs podcast. And today we're serving up a feast for your mind and body. As the leaves fall and we gather, we give thanks. We're joined by a remarkable guest, Dr. Joe Pollino, a chiropractic wizard, who's delving into the mysteries of the mind and spine. Can a simple adjustment do more than just relieve pain? Can it actually reboot your brain? We're about to find out. Dr. Pollino goes deep into the nervous system and the brain. Today, he'll unravel how chiropractic techniques can tap into the amygdala influencing not just our bodies, but our emotions and stress responses. It's about alignment, not just of the spine but of the soul, and talk about a journey from walking away from chiropractic care to a profound comeback. Dr. Polino story is nothing short of inspiring. His time teaching hockey in the Inuit communities wasn't just about sports. It was a lesson in life, healing, and holistic well being. What can we learn from his unique experience? So grab your pumpkin spice latte, settle in, and let's crack into today's episode filled with stories of healing, giving and gratitude. This is cracking backs podcast, where we align more than just your spine. We align your spirit with Thanksgiving cheer. Well, Dr. Joe Pollino man it is great to have you on. You know I understand now I'm in Florida, Dr. Terry's in California and you are way up in the Great White North is that we're real Niagara

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:57

Falls, Ontario.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 2:00

Niagara Falls very nice. All right, must be freezing.

Dr. Joe Pelino: 2:05

We have a confusion of all our American friends. We have to qualify Niagara Falls, Ontario, not Niagara Falls, New York. So we're right on the border. I grew up in welland, Ontario 15 minutes from here. And Niagara Falls is an international location that has great collaboration with Western New York. So we have this kind of culture that's very, very, but you know, by national and so typical, Americans do not understand my accent, because they don't have the classic Canadian. Oh, a boat boat. Because I'm I'm very Americanized notwithstanding, I you know, live and travel through the states. But yeah, that's home, Niagara Falls.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 2:51

I love it. While you're freezing. You know, Spencer and I are nice and warm. And our tropical areas. You know, I went no beach this morning, and he was in the beach this morning. And, and then you probably have more snow outside,

Dr. Joe Pelino: 3:04

we don't have snow. And I don't mean to slam you guys. But in July, we get Americans coming across the border with their skis, thinking it's an hour drive to a mountain with snow, like big bear. And I don't get it. But that's what what we do have, interestingly, is on the shores of Lake Erie on the Canadian side, where we look at Buffalo, we have 30 or 40 or 50 kiteboarders. And wind surfers in December, January, February, in full warmth, rubber, obviously, for all suits. And they you know, we all innovate to the environment we're in and we'll get into that a little bit on my my podcast because I do. I do represent a very cold climate, people that we don't identify with down here in southern Ontario, we call it Southern Ontario. But I work to represent the last 40 traditional elders, that's where it's cold. I've been in minus 50 degrees Celsius, which is, you know, 50 degrees below zero below freezing. And the joke, the joke is that it's a dry cold. But that does make the difference.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 4:24

Like it's best for his face. He just went I don't understand anything below 60. I've been up I've been up to the great, great, great north, high Alaska, all the way up into the Antarctic, so I can kind of I can kind of understand some of your cold. So I do like that. So so well. Yeah, we'll get into that. So all right, Spencer, let's go.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 4:46

All right. Listen, I've done ask you about your work with chiropractic adjustments and its impact on cognitive function. I mean, please share the science because this stuff is so Oh,

Dr. Joe Pelino: 5:01

the the history for me around cognition is an example of a professional hockey player whose career was ended by a punch to the back of the head. Now I have his blessings and permission to talk about the case, his name is Jeff, boom, boom, five, five time Stanley Cup winner. And this was years ago, where another player for a player punched him in the back of the head, and you can Google it, you can see this, and you can see that he is unconscious before he hits the ice. His career ended and some years later, after an after his worker's comp, claim settled, and he got a settlement, he still could not finish a sentence. So where were in it, is it an argument that that is cognition, the fix for him at that time was a RT centric, it was rectus capitis, posterior minor, which, as we know, has direct attachments to the dura. And that tension. Not only is the muscle in a position to protect the dura and the brain, in that case, but it also can cause some havoc. So by treating trapezius, and the nerves that exit this cranial nerve function to trapezius SCM. Within four visits, he was able to finish the sentence. And that's one of the infinite ways that any of us as chiropractors can influence cognition. What is it doing? My theory or guess, is that it's affecting blood flow. But today, now moving 20 years later, that the narrative is that it's somehow voltage regulating, maybe it's, it's not neural tension, or dural tension. So So that's that part of what I would sort of rank into the cognition. Now, moving chronologically through a career of a lot of AR T, with those same structures, digraph Strik, SCM rectus, capitis, posterior minor, the entire suboccipital triangle, where we are taught by Mike Lee and AR T myofascial to, to to gain tension, and reduce resistance into those structures, so the person is more free. And, and, you know, I must add, must admit that I was not necessarily exclusively doing that I would, I would also, you know, butter them up with that before I would do an adjustment. The typical adjustment for me back then would be, you know, top of the top of the ladder for me at that time, was Atlas, cervical spine Atlas. So colleague of mine in New York, put together a technique called stress relief method. And his narrative was all about the amygdala, and how on twisting tension throughout the body, with or without chiropractic adjustments, and, and now I have, you know, a litany of pro athletes and celebrities that I treated with that technique, again, collaboratively, and, and in, you know, integrated with my, my default, my default was AR t. So here's where I land today. I realized now looking back on 34 years as a chiropractor, that much of it had to do more to do with my belief system and what I thought I could help where, where my confidence would lie in regard to that. And kind of what really put that together for me is Joe Pollino 2023. The contemporary version of myself is by having learned zone technique taught by Pete Goldman. So a shout out to Mike Leahy, a shout out to Jim Kiernan, from New York for the stress relief method, and a shout out to Peter Goldman who learned zone as it was taught originally in 1930. By Thurman fleet at a San Antonio, why the heck didn't I get that at the beginning of my career? Why wasn't that taught to me at CMCC as DD Palmer's original concept, I must confess, I always felt like chiropractic was a knockoff of of osteopathy and Andrew Taylor's Still 1874 I mean, I can quote the twit trivia board. But DD Palmer was always brain centric cognition, the brain does two things. It picks up signals from the spinal cord and it sends down messages one in two, positive charge, negative charge. So now, with, with the cognition at hand in my belief system, my belief is that if I balanced the systems by stimulating the spinal cord fluid, they have normal homeostasis of the power of the commander in charge, which is the brain. And that's kind of my vomitus over view of how I'm how I'm thinking and doing things, all of which is very athletic centric. And, you know, I look at MSK this way. Now I look at, I look at it that way. Now my new clinic here in Niagara Falls, we have medical grade, hyperbaric oxygen chambers, we have all the metabolic medical PRP peptide, and we have all that, but I have red light beds, I have this I have that. And I have this big system of micro gate equipment. Again, from a chiropractor interestingly, and none of it compares to you know, Spencer, your brain and Terry your brain being in command of your spinal cord. Of course, then there's the whole functional medicine side of the gut. So when I when I find a concussion symptom case, in Ontario, we are not within our scope of practice to diagnose concussion or return to play. So we play by the rules, it's for everybody's safety, but we treat the symptoms of and in doing so, I will default to checking c zero C one on a functional palpation experience, and then I go up higher than C one up to a MIG doula with Jim Kiernan. Then I go back down to Z zero, C zero, with what Francis Murphy taught me out of Dallas, which is this Oh, tz adjustment, which really bothered Leonard Fay, when I flew to LA to visit my mentor, Leonard, he was bugged for a year that it and because I tried to tell him, it's not an occipital lift. It's not the ring dagger, which I love watching that. And sometimes I do that. But it's not that it is a non vector manipulation of c zero. And I'll tell you boys, it does like that. They hear it in their skull. And I'm like, I'm like like this, I go, did you hear that in your neck? Or did you hear that in your, in your skull, and they say that in my skull. Now I've seen CFL players, Canadian Football League, NFL players, NBA players, and it blah, blah, blah. And in one adjustment, they have range of motion established, and then they run for their trainer, or speed coach and they can move? Well, cognition is movement. Cognition is what I think of myself. Cognition is my you know, cognition is my definition of cognition is, you know, it's kind of everything. It's, it's, it's whatnot. But so, so that's kind of the map I've all been, I've been all over. And none of that would be philosophically available to me. Had I not sort of been born to I think we all as DCS feel we're born to it, to what chiropractic is whatever that is.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 14:06

Let me ask you, to back up a little bit, because I think it's really important that we address a particular point you made and that is that there are so many small suboccipital muscles, I think there's like eight or four pairs, and one that you mentioned that attached to the dura, the splenius capitis long as mine represents the one that you said capitas

Dr. Joe Pelino: 14:31

and post like this, my habitus is probably and there's an anterior one, but I don't know how to get at it. But the one back here.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 14:40

Yeah. And when I was lecturing when concussion was like the the big, hot topic, you know, I was urging chiropractors to be part of the triage because if you said after a concussion, or a body slam or what have you that you had had a headache and you went to the neurologists, they would automatically, you know, refer, they would diagnose it as a concussion, and it was a brain trauma, and they put you in a dark room for hours, days and all that stuff. Anyway, point is, I think what you started to say about that particular that one muscle is attached to the dura if you can elaborate on that, and what you actually do when you get in there.

Dr. Joe Pelino: 15:25

Right. So, you know, in anatomy lab, we get an overview of all the structures. And I've always said, and I will continue to say that the highest virtue of what Dr. Les, he taught us with active release techniques was a confidence and knowledge in the anatomy. And so rectus capitis, minor posterior minor, coming off of the C one posterior tubercle. In the way I'm sitting, it goes, it goes back to the right, or back to the left, and there's a pair of them. And together, when they shorten, they raise the head, hence the name, they rotate. Okay, but see zero on one, that it attaches from one to zero rectus capitis posterior major goes from the spyness of C two to skull, and is, you know, what we have that befit spine of C two, well, that's actually a continuation of that muscle. And that is the powerhouse of raising the skull up were minor is the sort of the fine tuning of it. But because there was an anatomical report done, that shows fibers of the muscle actually go right in and attach directly to the dura, we know that that is a direct connection between the muscular skeletal system and the brain, when those muscles are tight, or taunt, they are either doing that too, to be in concert with an articular subluxation. Or they're stopping it hence the definition of subluxation. And what ends up happening in our thinking is that that is pulling putting tension on the dura and it can pull on the dura and mimic and also cause the feeling of headache that's up here where we might otherwise have only blamed greater occipital nerve at at semi spinalis, which is more superficial. So superficially, you've got trapezius semi spinals, then you get under the skull, and you've got rectus capitis major than rectus capitis minor, second part of your question, patients laying on their back, and I scoot my hand underneath this a single finger, and I back it up with my other finger. And then I dig straight up going post going, going directly in to that space between Scotland and two, because you can't really easily feel it, I hook and then I will shorten them with some extension rotation. And then if I if I really focus my patient motion on Upper Cervical mechanics, it's it's a wow factor hurts good. Digging in there, no slip, no slide. One or two passes, it either works or it doesn't. And so it's not the typical three times a week for the next three weeks, then we're going to decrease you to two times a week. And then one time went on. It's if you're going to be in the dressing room. If you're going to be the referred guy where the players fly in and see you you better fix it and one or two visits.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 19:01

Yeah, absolutely. And also, I want, if you don't mind, can you elaborate now, for the listening audience that's not medically inclined? The I would like to make reference to the amygdala as an emotional center and responsible for your emotions. And so how does what you do affect the amygdala. And if you can explain how, you know, chiropractic technique can influence that area. So

Dr. Joe Pelino: 19:34

the amygdala has a right and left. And the Greek word amygdala is almond. So it's an almond shaped structure. The stress that limbic system, emotional center hub, all of our stress as taught to us by Hans Selye a to Canadian, the father of the stress model, you have two kinds of stress, you have distress. And you have you stress E. U 's, I believe you stress. Okay, good stress, good stress is, boy, I really liked that picture behind you. Anything that takes our focus, oh, I really liked those shoes. The bad stress is anything that is stressful to us anything now that stress can be chemical, physical, most of it is emotional. And when that when any stress form happens the way it was explained to me, and the way I buy into it, is that the right sided amygdala is fired. And when the right side of the amygdala gets fired constantly, too much, then it sends a message down, and the right side of the body becomes activated. Okay, so where does that take us, we've all observed that whether your handedness is right or left doesn't matter, most people carry a backpack on their right shoulder. And they are easy to kind of hike up that side because it's already tight. So I spent a decade checking every single student or patient on every single structure that came my way to find out if their right side was tighter than their left side. Now, certainly I was led by that bias, I was leading the witness, I was the witness. And it was remarkable to find this out. And I have years of solace, you know, testing their psoas and thinking it was one thing when really it's just this thing called the twist, drift twist, driven by the amygdala. So when I stretch a person and open their shoulder girdle pack, or hip flexor girdle back, or upper cervical spine in any meditative physical way, I focus on the right side, I back off big time on the left side. What that does is it floods them with nitric oxide. And it was studied once Jim Kiernan did one article on it. And it showed that if you do that one, chin to chest stretch heavy on the right, laid on the left, they can measure an increased nitric oxide, we're just guessing about its involvement with the amygdala. But it's all part of that stress world in a perfect world, which it is, I'd love to have a high tech canon Quilliam CT scan, which can take a picture of the Quilliam. I'm going to, I'm going to humbly nothing humble about me, but I'm going to say 1000 times better than any MRI that exists, I have a lot of working knowledge in this particular area of imaging. But the cat that particular CAT scan, the level of detail is so profound, that we can actually take pictures of the of the brain intervene with a course of treatment, take another picture. And what might we see we might see an equalization of the size of the amygdala, we might we do know, we do know that the female brain has an amygdala right side is 1.5 sizes to one. And we know that because they're better at being wired for stress, then then then we are there. They're tougher in the brain than there than we are. So if I hope that's a compliment, not not, you know, but there are gender differences in in the body and in the brain. So So Spencer, that's that's the approach to the amygdala. Now the source of that work is Dr. Boyd from Ireland, who is an osteopath. The technique that he he coined was bio cranial technique. It was brought to North America by Bill de resti, a chiropractor in New York City changed the name to cranial release technique. And it was under good, a good relationship between the two gentlemen. And then it was it's taught as a as a manual technique. And then Jim Kiernan integrated it into what he called for a time stress relief method. I mean, he spent 20 years doing this in Manhattan, to the same people and, you know, the right after 911 and it was taught to me and then I brought it to the NHL alumni and to the NHL Players Association, and it's one of my go to tools to untwist not unwind, not a cranial sacral unwinding language, but to untwist the physical body all All of it is second to really, you know, we work with the body, but we're really addressing the idea in their head, and the ether, the etheric, the astral and the corporeal. And that's kind of where I'm having the most fun. Right now at at sort of taking all this understanding my own belief system and an all and applying it to chiropractic one on one, but what level do you treat? And which way do you go? That's great stuff.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 25:31

The

Dr. Spencer Baron: 25:35

this functional neurology was always fascinating to me, because of their insight in you know, I movement patterns as well. And how we add, there's a machine called a second arm, it's a simple machine, it's a second ometer, and it flashes, red lights at different areas of the wall, and You Your eyes are supposed to follow it and cameras are looking back at your eyeballs. And when we the adjustment is so powerful that we don't we most chiropractors don't realize how it does affect cognition, how it affects the brain. And I had a functional neurology chiropractor Tell me about a guy whose Hemisphere was was so was not functioning as high as the other hemisphere. So he goes, and he tells me to adjust, just adjust one side and go, How do you adjust one site because No, just to just, you know, right shoulder, elbow, wrist and hip and SI joint and all that. And I did and we retested it's a 92nd test, and it showed how it affected and brought the the hemisphere that was functioning sub optimally back up to the same level as the right side and he had a concussion three years earlier. And it was on the side where the hemisphere was not as functioning as well. So what you're saying is so potent and so powerful, I wish more chiropractors knew how they can impact well, they will say Well, no

Dr. Joe Pelino: 27:09

it because we're talking about it, that's why because the three of us and secondly is the you know, to be a chiropractor is to innovate, and it's to innovate right back to where we started from corny as that sounds, but you know, the, the saccadic eye movement testing, we have we you know, there are tools out there, you can go inexpensive, you can go very expensive, but when we see these things, it's giving us a better emotional feeling of of, of that were making that difference, or it worked and something might not have worked it's it's that objective subjective kind of play. And so we use right eye, and it it's, it's we have right i here, and we have a functional medicine doc, and he does stuff that is as fascinating to me, as in a simple little adjustment that changes books. He could finish a sentence or somebody could bend over and pick up their dog or whatever example however, however elementary it is, we already know we are we are already doing this but having more empirical evidence for it, that's the world we're in we have we have to be able to prove what we know every time and there's nothing like I've movements up. I follow. One of my mentors is lowest Laney, Dr. Laney and she is a dental hygienist with a PhD in neuro. And her company is restorative breathing. And I said to her once, no, everybody's got a breathing mechanism, breathing book now everybody's doing breathing, like and you're not doing the same thing they're doing. I've known her for 15 years and I'm like, you're in a we're in a narrative. What is it that you're doing that's different than everyone else? She goes, Oh, that's easy. I'm doing cranial nerve sequencing. And it's like wow, because she is. So how we breathe affects the eye movement, how we have communication between our spinal cord and the brain and affects our eye movement. And 80% of our brain function 80% of our our voltage in this is the cranial nerves afferents coming in, and 99% of that 80% is visual. And so if oak so the other cool thing is Dr. Stowers, cranial facial release, he's deceased. It's also known as NRT neck nasal release technique, we do it here. But the sphenoid has, like the eye, the eyes have five, six muscles, per i, five of those attacks the sphenoid. Well, it turns out Boyd's bio cranial technique was simply to affect the sphenoid bone, Stowers, it's cranial manipulation is to affect the sphenoid, bone bone. And anything I do is to affect the shape change function of the shape of the skull. That's chiropractic. And all of it shows up in eye movement, either their eyes still find the target, but it's at some cost of energy, or their eyes find the target. And it's efficient, and at no cost to them. No, no added cost of energy, or their eyes don't find the target, and they have a delay. And if they have a delay, they don't see the attacker coming. They don't see their teammate, and they're there. I have five concussions, well, really, they only have one, it was the first one, and they never recovered in the first place. So it pisses me off, because Pardon the language, because because you know, we have methods of measuring eye movement, brain speed, micro gait from Italy, is that platform, they use brain HQ, we play these games here in the clinic with all these algorithmic lights, not non algorithmic lights, I won't name them. But there's three big light companies out there. And it's just a blinking light, it blinks faster, it blinks slower, where micro gate, if you're pretty fast at it, Spencer, it speeds up to nurture you more. And if you're pretty slow, it slows down to nurture you more, because it's responding to the millisecond speed reaction that you showed in a cycle of 30 repetitions, we do it on the treadmill, where every single step the person takes, they're looking at visual based biofeedback. And they're making a correction. And I liken it to, well, you give a golf ball to a golfer, he hits the ball, puts it in the pond, you give them another balls to tell them take them all again, he hits it, he puts it on the green, what the hell did I do, I did nothing. He made all these complex, simple corrections. And every step you take, can be that Mulligan, if you if you know and that's how we affect cognition during gait. And we know that adjustments, corrections of any technique to relax the system, decrease the stress, it can show up, you see it in the psychotic movements of have your your your eyeball test. It's like a treadmill for the eyes. And but you know, this is why my my gait guys is playing behind me because it's just a fun. You know, it also looks like a goalie. My son was a pro goalie. So that's I'm loving the goalie in it. But yes, the cognition is the is the key word that I think our profession, and even notwithstanding the sports chiropractors, they've been they've been right in that space all this time, whether they knew it or not. I certainly look back and realize I was, but I didn't know it at the time. And it's all these people that trained techniques and methods, technologies and equipment that is in my kitchen. And I'm the cook and chef and while that and somehow it all lands to my new clinic is called the Gordie Howe Institute. So the the Howe family have given use of Gordy's name Gordy was a patient of mine, and hopefully it inspires and attracts people to come and learn and people to come and get in treatment and most importantly, for people to find Chiropractors and other non chiropractors out there that do these methods that you know, move the needle corny as it sounds, but you know, drugless functional medicine, but not necessarily. You know, the the last ditch effort should be, you know, allopathic and not us. We live in the alternative medicine space, perhaps I don't know.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 34:52

Tell us about the regenerative breathing. I understand. You're passionate about it. You mentioned it just a moment ago, but go ahead.

Dr. Joe Pelino: 34:59

So Lois Lane Any her company has restorative breathing. And the example is if you take a breath in through your nose, and you hum and you exhale during your, your, your hum during your exhalation, when you get to your end of your exhalation, and you simply swallow, you will find more people than not have difficulty generating the single most cranial nerve, parasympathetic driven function, which is to breathe, hum and swallow. Just having that concept. So the breath work for anyone is breathe through the nose as much as you can. If you can squeeze and pressure your entire tongue, to the ceiling of your mouth, it's not the roof of the mouth. That's a misnomer. It bothers me. But it's the ceiling of the mouth. And breathe with your lips together, but your teeth hairy lightly touching, if at all, you have done everything that you can do right then and there to, from a physicality point of view, from breathing point of view, abate the sympathetic nervous system overload because the teeth are the single most inner innervation of the sympathetic nervous system. So in, in our system here, every single person comes into our treatment or our training facility, same facility, and they we spark their cranial nerves with lemon juice on one part of the tongue to spark the cranial nerves. Vinegar on the other part, we swab all around the inside of the mouth, we say ah, to try to see if the, if the, the size of, of the exhalation exhaust pipe can be man if it can be equal, and big enough. And then we put a popsicle stick between their teeth, behind their front teeth lips together. And when they train as much as they can. They that's their, that's their breathing mechanism, mechanism. So if you're going to train, if you're going to get treatment, or if you're going to learn the voltage regulation of the brain maximizing it is Bruce Lee. Easy breathing, no chest rising. So this is the kind of thing that Lois teaches. But then when she sees the deficits, she can plot a solution around reconnecting some of the reflexes. So that's her programming, and her curriculum. A classic example that she was able to blow my mind away, was she said, when you do this, you'll light up all crane, all 13 cranial nerves. I learned 12 How many of you learn? Right? Same cool. So I went, I let her finish because I, you know, she gems are coming to me from her. And I said, Okay, go back to when you said 13. She goes, Oh, yes, oftentimes, nervous term analysis is labeled in the literature as C and zero, or C and 13. And it's a big, fat succulent nerve that sits next to the olfactory nerve, and it's responsible for the mate, you pick. Boom. And it's part of the pheromone endocrine system. And if you are induced as a pregnant female with Pitocin, it kills that nerves function. It's gigantic in the fetus and the neonate. So I looked it up. I went to Google, and it's everywhere in the literate literature, 13 cranial nerves. So we don't have to know everything. But we can affect many things. But when we know something, and we're a little bit more fascinated, our belief system goes up. And I'm the kid in the candy store. You know, so So when, when you asked me about restorative breathing, and then I challenged her to say, What the hell are you doing? Because everybody's got a breathing program? Why is yours different? Because Oh, that's easy. I do cranial nerve sequencing. And so the the She's She's world famous. She teaches her course she'll teach it to anybody and everybody go learn it. She loves chiropractic is fast. Who doesn't?

Dr. Terry Weyman: 39:55

Cool. All right, I might, I might go back to But you when you very first started, and we kind of started out, we talked about the cold. And I kind of did a little reading about you. And kind of you had this major personal and professional transformation that kind of took you up into the cold areas and you spent a lot more time up with the Inuits and all that then of course I've ever done and you came down. It's almost like Moses coming down off the mountain, you know, you came down with, with some new knowledge and some new thought process was kind of regenerated your whole path of thought processes in life, can you for those people, they're starting to burn out a little bit and and that are going through some tough times. This is going to come out about the time to holiday. Can you talk about that? Yes,

Dr. Joe Pelino: 40:43

I'm honored to do so Terry. I represent the last 40 traditional Inuit elders whose who were raised on the land in the way that their great grandparents and greater great grandparents were. My path to getting there was to follow my older brother Mike Pollino, who's a famous hockey coach. And we were running our own hockey school as young men in our 20s Down in the universities. Here, we played hockey at the University of Toronto, Brock University chiropractic college hockey. My brother went on to coach professional hockey, but during the time of our hockey school, we would get kids to come to our hockey school, they'd pay to come there and we would coach them in on ice coach them off ice and that kind of thing. And we had a cadre of very superstar very famous NHL players. Eric Lindros had just signed his contract with the Philadelphia Flyers and then he was our superstar for the week Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe so one day, a nine year old boy from Nunavut way up if you check your map in a place called Pangnirtung, which is up in Baffin Island next to Greenland, if you look at a map, and and this little boy, his mother's Inuit, or Eskimo and his father's a white guy, a commoner from Southern Ontario who grew up loving Gordie Howe, so he named his kid Gordy. A lot of people that happens a lot. And if I have time, I'll tell you about Gordy son, who married a woman who was named after Gordy's wife because the woman was born a man, female. And so the father was so disappointed that he couldn't name his child Gordy. He named the child Colleen. And then Colleen grown up and that Marie Howe and met and they got married and Dr. Marie Howe, son of Gordy is married to Colleen. And when they were playing when when when they got together, she said, You know, when I told you my name, you may have kind of a funny face. Don't you like the name? Calling? And he goes on the contrary, that's my mother's names to it. She said, Well, I was named after this hockey players wife. Well, they're happily married to this day. So anyway, so Gordy came down. The nine year old Gordy Higgins last name is Higgins came down to our hockey school in Guelph Ontario might have been Peterborough. We were in two different locations. We've run hockey schools in Lake Placid. We run hockey schools all over our companies called Ken M hockey group. Okay. So Glen says to my brother, Hey, Mike, can you come up to the Can you send someone up to the north? We have a lot of issues up there. And it seems like youth sports would help youth hockey would help. And my brother said, Yeah, I'll go. And he said, No, Mike, we can't afford a superstar coach like yourself. Can you send one of our coaches? He goes, No, no, no, I'll go, you don't have to pay me I'll go. So my brother goes up there in the dead of winter. It's about 35 to 40 degrees below zero. And he goes up to the small town, they have an arena, they look like every small town. And all the kids come out with their equipment and they're on the ice, and he takes them through hockey drills and skills. And at the end of the trip, three day trip, they they take him out on the land, so to make sure that he has some exposure to the real world. They take them on a dog sled, run through the tundra for about four hours and he comes back comes back home, says to me, Joey, you got to come up there with me. Now I'm a chiropractor in downtown Toronto. At the time. I work at the oldest sport medicine clinic in all of North America and University of Toronto, and I work for the Toronto Raptors and I know nothing about basketball. And I work for the NHL alumni and I run a private practice NHL Players Association. So I go up there with them the next couple months later, and I get up there and this little girl's mother comes up to me this outfitter named mica Mike and shakes my hand and tells me later that when she shook my hand, she knew that I had something to do with People, but it was make us agenda to make sure that anybody that comes to the Arctic is cared for the way the Inuit always took care of people for safety. When you come into our lands, our responsibility is to make sure you're safe, even though we know you're going to rape us, and take all of our resources, and steal from us. This is what they know, all First Nations people know this. So mica made sure that I knew a little bit about the wind in the caribou and the mystery of the north and how it wasn't. So we started, we started doing this hockey school, and this hockey camp, and we learned that they were going to tear down the arena to build another arena on the other side of town. And the elders had already told mica and mica told me that when they tear down the arena, the new arena is going to be built on faulty land, and it won't work. And it all happened. They built it anyway. It cracked, they've never put ice in it since it's just an open arena. But at the same time, all of us saved the original arena that was on the other side of town. How we did it. We said well, we have to do a summertime hockey school, because if we can bring more attention to the north, we can only do so by bringing real live active NHL players. I called my number one player, patient Rob examiner. Rob couldn't go that summer he called another guy. And those he called another guy and two young men. superstars in the NHL flew up there. In the summer. We ran a one way COC school, the local airline flew all the kids in from the 13 communities on Baffin Island. We don't know where they stayed. We don't know what they ate, they just showed up. And we took them through the passion of hockey, Wade Redden quarry cross with the two players. And for 25 years we've been going up there in the summer, we don't tell anybody about it. But here's the most interesting thing. We did it because of the high rate of suicide up there. And in the second year, the elders communicated their wishes. And they told us, don't talk about it. It's a self fulfilling prophecy. Focus on the positive. So in our third summer, we created together a tagline, Nunavut, stars, hockey, sharing the land, the people the game, we kept the positive, and every trip up there. Mica would take me on the land, I would take the coaches, and she would teach us about living in harmony. Okay, part two of the story, part two of the story. One day, she said to me, what do you mean you have kids? Where where are they? How come they're not here with you. So the next summer, I brought my son, he was six years old. He's 27. Today, my daughter's came up in the following years. And we always brought our kids up there, we brought my father up there, my father's now, my father's Italian, my mother's Croatian. We're not Inuit at all. And now, one day, when my kids were up there, mica told us that there was a prophecy of the elders, that they decided to collect everything they know about living in harmony with the animals in the land, the project is called to suck toute in the in the season of the moon or vice when the land freezes, and the people can come together, they can share their good news, their knowledge, who died, who lived who was born. And today, the youth of Nunavut only know that to substitute is the word for November. What they do not know is the living the living language of the word. When I heard this, I got involved to help. So the story goes, were we in 2010, we filmed the elders that were still alive at the time telling their envisions a future generations with the prophecy that one day, the world is going to need to know how to recode itself to live in harmony with the land and its animals. This is 2010. I have all this on film. And if I can ever finish the film, the producers of the film or the Inuit, not me, the elders. And so we have this somewhat captured. They had said they had set a plan as a consensus keyword. So I've got At 25 years of using the word consensus, and where they would collect everything they know, now you can imagine, the three of us are having this conversation for them, they have 40 elders, they have to have translators, they have a consensus of the translation. And the sixth gathering of the elders was the last, they never finished the next 18. But number six, they collected everything they know about the polar bear. And I know, a tip of the iceberg of what they know, of the about the polar bear. And it's, it's nothing that you're being told down in the south. There are, it's magnificent. So we have some beautiful, harmonious doctrine around respective territories, respective boundaries. You know, this whole, everybody wants their PhD in something, but they have no experience out in the real world actually doing it. And, you know, I have become less cocky, Caucasian, and adopted more of a, a practice of indifference. And a practice of, of that's okay, too. So, I have stories that, you know, I shouldn't have, but I have them.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 51:35

Tell me about your work with NHL alumni. So

Dr. Joe Pelino: 51:39

so my first order of business in working with with pro a pro hockey was an individual player, one at a time, based upon the player, keeping it quiet from the team, knowing perhaps he's injured and he's got to get traded. So he's got to hide the injury. They play, they play broken, they play hurt, no problem. But when it becomes a higher need, they have to get better. So that was my start. It was one player. And that player would bring me to the different teams he got traded to. And then I would treat the next guy, the next guy. So I'm that guy that's been snuck into a hotel room, hidden from the team. Management, hired by the GM. You know, I have done all of those versions, paid, paid by the team as a consultant, etc. So that's the player, and then it goes to the players union. So in 2010, I was hired by the NHL Players Association. So I haven't answered your question Spencer, not the alumni, not the retired players, but the active players. So the Players Association have an annual vote, where they talk about their issues. They have represent representative from North America and from non North America per team. And they decided that they wanted a network of providers available to them. That was not so much clandestine, but certainly discreet and private, such that the teams would not know about it, the medical staff would not know about it, the leak didn't matter. The league didn't care anyway. So the head of the players union was Bob good now at the time, and he hired a physician to be the Medical Director of the NHL players in and John and John, Dr. John Reese, those hired me as part of the directive. My job was not to jump on a plane and fly all over the place and see players and make that famous and whatever my job was to call each NHL city and find a provider. Now this was active release centric. This was because of the effect we were making on return to play and pain reduction using soft tissue treatment as per air team, excuse me. So we created this network. And I would call up a colleague and say, you know, see the player. See them high level customer service, after hours if can't go to their hotel if you can, one second. But under no circumstances are you to think for a second that this will get you a job with the team. In fact, serve the visiting team. Player because They're not under such scrutiny when they're on the road. They don't have all the responsibilities of the family to go home to. So when they're on the road, they might have more time serve that guy. And, you know, Bill for it, I'll help you, Bill, I'll show you how they're covered and how they're not covered and all that. So this is not workers comp claims. This is just performance. And it was kind of hard for some of the guides because now they wanted to be the players best friend. But whatever you do, make the sanctuary most important, do not become their friend, be their doctor. And it was shocking how most of them fell apart, star studded struck. But the bottom line is we served very well. And the players got to the point where the cat was out of the bag. And now all the athletic therapist, physiotherapist trainers for the teams all signed up, because they figured they have to anyway, even though they don't know how to do the method they don't know how to do what I described to you at the beginning of this podcast is how you get to rectus capitis posterior minor, which is what all the AR T instructors were so skilled at. They're just wonderful Doc's that, you know, share their knowledge, so to speak. Right? So that was the the NHL Players Association task. Now, I thought it was really cool if I could tell the story. But one day, I said to John Rios, he's an emergency room doctor. And I'm telling some of my secrets. But I guess that's the good stuff. And I said to him, John, why would Bob good now hire you? And he smiled. And he goes, because I don't know anything about sports medicine. So I'm not going to be a threat to that team doctor, I can take a bullet out of a chest. But I don't know, I don't know how to do knee surgery or anything else. So I thought, huh, be with the smart guy in the room, and you'll learn something. So I thought that was a real eye opener to me on the understanding of culture. And ironically, I weave that back to the Inuit boundaries, territories, sharing knowledge, not not competing with somebody, like let them have let them have their victory. And you'll have yours anyway, because we're all going to be taken care of. So that was the NHL Players Association. And then, when I discovered the method of stress relief method, and what it could do, I showed it to the then president of the NHL Alumni Now bear in mind, there is a group of alumni. And then each team has its own alumni. And sometimes they don't play nice. So I showed the president of the NHL alumni because he's in my jurisdiction in Ontario in Toronto. I showed him another method to reduce stress that might help move the needle on concussion symptoms, and cognition. I demonstrated the technique to him. He was blown away by it. He played 1400 games in his career. He's been to chiropractors and his entire career. And he said, I need this to be available to all the guys. Can you teach this to 100 cities? And I said, Well, let me find out. So I called Jim Kiernan. And Jim said, No, I don't want to teach it. So that players so that people take the course, just so that they get a brand attention to the NHL alumni, he wanted people to come to it kind of organically, and from a spirit of neutral, and not from an ego amygdala driven. And I thought, so then I had I had colleagues of mine, tell me, Joe, just change the name Teach Yourself. And this is no, I'm gonna do that. Like, he doesn't want to talk. He's not going to be taught. So that's when the gentleman I'm talking about Mark Napier said to me, Well, why don't we do something that's not technique based? Why don't we do something that's technology based. So then I scoured the earth for stuff, that would be really good. And I found a whole collection of stuff and it's all sitting in the new clinic, and the program for the NHL alumni fizzled out, but the equipment we have it and we you know, put us on a course of, you know, some years later, back to the drawing board things are meant to be and they've while Ah, that's French. That's Canadian for. Here we are, look, look and see. And now we have this first order clinic here in Niagara Falls, named after my parents and it's the Gordie Howe Institute and And we will roll this out to be a sharing knowledge network where people can come here and learn a technique. I will host techniques. My days of teaching are over all host. Leonard Fay will be here February 4 To teach motion palpation Dr. Mani Francis, who is one of the instructors of the Carrick institute will teach a nine part course on cognition, from concussion to cognition, doing functional medicine and eye movement will teach Dr. Peter Gorman, owner of micro gait will teach a micro gait centric brain speed, bounced timing, coordination, brain speed, and I hope all these guys fight a little bit. Because, you know, I have to, I have to kind of maybe I'll get a referee shirt.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:00:52

It sounds interesting. I won't be going up there because it's too cold for

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:00:57

me. But it's cool. It's cool. It's cool. But

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:01:01

you got me excited about the program. That'll be great. Well, based on time, we're going to dive into one last thing, and that is our traditional rapid fire questions. We'll only have time for three of the five. But that requires you to answer very briefly, which sometimes we get hung up and ask more about your answer. So if you're ready, are you ready? All right. Dr. Joe, what is your favorite team? Oh, look at that. What's the one habit

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:01:37

you wish? staying up too late past 10 o'clock, because growth hormone is turned on at 10? Even if you're my age.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:01:47

Good one. Where do you wish you could buy a one way ticket to

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:01:51

around the world?

Unknown: 1:01:55

Oh, that was a good one. That was a good answer. Like prompt probably a

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:01:59

brute. So where my dad was born, punch and throw. That's a great question. Thank you. Nice.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:07

You're welcome. All right. You know what, we have time for two more? Yeah.

Unknown: 1:02:13

When you are stuck in a rut,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:15

what do you do to get yourself up and take a

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:02:17

breath? Breathe? Think through move. That's three things.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:02:22

Nice. That's all right. That

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:25

works. That works. It was a sequence where n number five the last one when you travel? What is the one thing you always have

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:02:33

in a perfect world? My children?

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:02:36

Oh, oh, that's great. Okay,

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:02:41

I mean, really? That was perfect. That was a perfect.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:02:45

Alright, Joe, I'm gonna I'm gonna finish with this. You were fantastic. And thank you so much. So I am going to finish with this last question. And because of the NUS because of what you've gone through the all the transformations you've gone through, you're a man of wisdom for this question. And that is what advice do you have for the doctor that's burned out? That you could we can leave on their mind is the last thing they

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:03:06

call me personally never quit. Ah, why did that? I was down people pick me up.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:03:19

Yeah, that's what it's all about, man. I appreciate that.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:03:23

That was that was from the heart. That was really cool. Thanks, Joe. All right. Hey, we look forward to me as well.

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:03:29

Thank you, gentlemen, to everybody.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:03:31

Yeah, and this is a nice way to meet you where Spencer doesn't get cold and he can still say hi to you. I

Dr. Joe Pelino: 1:03:36

will come to you, young man. We will always rescue you. The annual taught me no matter what you think is happening. We will come back for you. And I'll tell you that story sometime because it happened to me. They won't we will come back for you.

Dr. Terry Weyman: 1:03:54

All right. Well, we might have to Yeah, to coin specialist favorite thing. We might have to have you back so you can tell your story. So I love it. And you know what, Joe? Thanks for everything you do for our profession. Yeah, you're kind of a light and when somebody needs to lighten out there, your god yeah, that kind of guy. So we really appreciate you keep doing what you're doing as well.

Dr. Spencer Baron: 1:04:19

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at crackenback podcast. catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time.