The Crackin' Backs Podcast

AI in Healthcare vs. Human Hands: What’s Worth Saving?

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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What if everything you thought you knew about chiropractic — and healthcare itself — is built on a Foundation of tests, tech, and theory, not trauma-tested touch?

In this explosive episode of Crackin’ Backs, we sit down with Dr. Ti Pence, DC — a fearless chiropractor and with a degree in healthcare administration he is disrupting conventional wisdom on manual therapy education, clinical skills, and the future of hands-on medicine. With decades of real-world experience and a sharp eye for systemic flaws, Dr. Pence pulls no punches:

  • Why are top-tier schools producing weaker clinicians despite record-breaking board exams—now up to five national tests?
  • Is private chiropractic education doomed within a decade? And what does that mean for physical therapy and massage too?
  • Will AI replace the healer’s hands, or can traditional chiropractic endure like timeless martial arts?
  • Should all manual therapy training merge into one master discipline? Who wins—and loses—in that unified field?
  • What lessons can healthcare learn from the martial arts model—where a black belt signals only the start of mastery?

Buckle up — this isn’t your average health podcast. Expect provocative insight, passionate debate, and a clear-cut blueprint for how chiropractors and manual therapists can not just survive, but thrive in an AI-driven world. Whether you’re a practitioner, educator, patient, or curious listener, this episode will challenge your beliefs and redefine what future-ready healing looks like.

Tune in to discover:

  • The danger of test-driven training
  • Why private schools may vanish
  • How human touch combats automation

Don’t miss this bold, controversial deep dive into the evolution of chiropractic, physical therapy, massage therapy, manual therapy, healthcare education, and AI in medicine.


Learn more about our guest, Dr. Ti Pence:

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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

Dr. Spencer Baron:

What if we told you the future of healthcare may no longer include chiropractic or physical therapy or even massage therapy as we know it today, we will be cracking open a conversation that may rattle your spine and your belief system. Our guest, Dr Ty pence, a no bullshit, sharp tongued chiropractor with a background in healthcare administration and a vision for hands on healing that isn't filtered through red tape, watered down technique or AI generated protocols.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

All right, well, today we have the great, sharp and outspoken Dr Ty pence, chiropractor with the background in both Healthcare Administration vision future of hands on care and a practicing practitioner. And you know, with your hands on the pulse of medicine, both from your brother, we'll get into that. And you we're going to talk about the the the future of both our profession and healthcare in general, and where it must rise and where it's falling. So welcome to the show. Dr pence, thanks

Dr. Ti Pence:

guys. Really a pleasure to be here. Thank you guys for inviting me.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

It's a pleasure for us. Yeah, well, let's set off right with the hook. And let's start with the bold and possibly controversial topic. And let's talk about the schools are kicking out healthcare providers, and I think they're getting weaker on, especially since the pandemic, weaker on the hands on approach, because a lot of stuff was both chiropractic, PT, MDS, it's zoom, it's not a lot of hands on work. And despite the boom in technology and knowledge and increasing even an increasing number of national tests, we had one to two. Now there's like four to five. What do you think see this trend happening? And unfortunately, where do you see it going? Cool,

Dr. Ti Pence:

I somehow felt like this is where we were going to end up starting this conversation. Like I felt we were going to there was a couple options. This felt like where we were probably going to go first. So I think it started before the pandemic, but it just really accelerated with the pandemic in a in a trend away from the amount of reps required to really get good at the hands on piece and chiropractic. I'm not sure how the say, the physical medicine, the PT schools and other programs are approaching the same problem, but I've gotten to see it in chiropractic and seen what the turnout is as far as the product, and interviewed a lot of my colleagues as far as what they're seeing. And no one's saying that. Wow, from this school, they're turning out great hands on providers now, at the same time, there's been no better time where information is more information is more readily available to students, so those that really are committed to learning can learn faster than we were able to, like, we had to go get VHS tapes, or, like, travel all over the place to get, like, some doc who was going to show you whatever their crazy method was of adjusting. It didn't matter if it worked for you, but they were going to show you theirs, and you had to, like, stare really close as they went really fast. And that was like, what you got. And now you have, like, YouTube, so you can, like, single frame play over and over again to figure out how something's done. So the knowledge is out there more the desire to practice it is less. And that's that is problematic, because you, if you get out of school without a certain foundation of knowledge, as far as that technique, you're not going to have it. You're not going to be able to do that later in practice, or at least, it'd be very, very hard, because where are you going to get those reps?

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So do you remember, like, when we were all in school, it was amazing. You would say, hey, this event's going on, and you're going to have access to a higher athletes to get your hands on them. And there'd be, we would line up to work. Now, it's like, oh, do I get credit for it? I can't make it. It's on a weekend. Are you finding that kind of attitude is another issue? Because I'm seeing that across the board for all healthcare providers. And then you're hearing, you know, the medical profession talking about functional medicine now and biomechanics, and they're starting to see the picture. But what separates us that? Dr Spencer will always tell you, we have to be a black belt with our hands, and we're not even at blue belt level.

Dr. Ti Pence:

I love that. You said it exactly like that, because I think there are a lot of providers that think they are truly masters of this thing. And if you understand the basics of martial arts, a black belt is a starting point in a lifelong practice, not somewhere you arrive at and so many people. Walk out after they got out of school, and just knew they were better than the other students in school. And so they thought they were a black belt, which actually just meant they were a yellow belt, which is the belt after white belt, and they were just one belt better than everybody else. But you're still a beginner. You don't know anything, like even if you learned a lot of techniques, you haven't had time to practice and hone your craft, you don't know. And you don't know until someone who really is at that level comes and shows you just how much you need to still learn. But they don't have that experience. And I got to talk to my my oldest son is 18, and he pointed out in this very concise way, which I was very impressed with he's like, look everything now is on our cell phone. Like, the maximum effort we need to do is look in our cell phone to find something. You guys had to, like, Make effort to find stuff so it was valuable to you. We don't have to do that ever, even if we forget it. It's like a short effort on the phone to get the information back again. So it's kind of like this perpetuating problem of, we don't have people, we don't have any type of system to really qualify where someone is, as far as a belt goes as or skill level within martial arts. I mean within chiropractic, plenty of skill levels for martial arts, and then, if we're not calibrating it, and most people just go into their own practice, where they just become masters of their own dojo, like, you know, like they're not they're never testing their skill outside of it, and it's uncomfortable. And so if you put someone where you've got 100 1000 athletes, that's beyond their comfort zone, and they have they're not comfortable doing that, so they don't know how. And no one like they just don't have that type of, I need to go get it attitude. Now some do, but just not all of them.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So you mentioned the testing, they've added more to SEO when, when we're all there, like I mentioned earlier, is one to two tests. Now there's four to five. Do you think the testing system is still good? Do you think it's failing? Do you think there's a better way of doing it?

Dr. Ti Pence:

Okay, so there's you're doing good with these interview questions. I love this. I'm trying. I'm trying to offend the least amount of

Dr. Terry Weyman:

possible which

Dr. Ti Pence:

you anybody who knows me knows that's an effort for me. Let fly. So I don't know where the problem starts between the board, the board exams and the schools, but somewhere it's become this problem of the board is teaching and as far as hands on skill, and from like a background of martial arts, looking at this hands on skill, they're teaching such antiquated techniques and requiring you to study such antiquated techniques that the little time that students have in school to Practice are now having to practice things that are worse than moronic when it comes to actually demonstrating skill. In a in a clinical setting, you're never adjusting a listing system in a in a in a clinical setting, you're adjusting a patient with complaints and comorbidities. Can you do that? Or can't you? That's all there is to it. Could we make testing resemble that totally? Do we? No, the best we do is have someone pose. I mean, you pose in a position for a thing that is couldn't be achievable, even if we wanted to, as far as those listings, we've proven that to be true. Like we're just not that specific. We can be more specific if we if we work harder at it, but we're not so specific that we can somehow make vertebra spin. You know, it's not happening.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Wait time, I gotta interrupt you, because you You keep mentioning listings, and for those that don't understand it, oh yeah, right. So there's a technique that you would go and you would write down based off an x ray of what the vertebrae was. It would be l4 to the right, you know, whatever. I think that's where this because I forgot this listing. But they would write down this list. Well, I've had patients come into me for they have moved to the area and bring their listing to me, and I look at right in the eye, go, Well, if the chiropractor is good, wouldn't he have fixed this? Why would you still have the same problem?

Dr. Ti Pence:

I mean, there's different there's what. I've lost track of, how many different types of listing systems there are in chiropractic now, but they're all, they're all ridiculous, um, and, and who cares, even like, it's not moving in this range of motion causing this restriction in range of motion in the patient, you need to do something that will have the effect of improving that range of motion that. That's it. Yeah, like, why do we need to get more specific than that? If, if the students can't even demonstrate that level of skill,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you're absolutely right. And I gotta tell you on several points there, it's so glad and it's so refreshing to hear you comment on all these areas, because let's take the most severe things that we hear in chiropractic, that the the media loves to publish about stroke and death and things like that from a cervical manipulation. And I'm I'm really finding it fascinating that the medical profession is suggesting to a patient not to get adjusted under high velocity circumstances, and it is completely off because Dr Terry and I have been practicing. We've been practicing so long that we function out of instinct, not out of a listing, not out of you know, you know your symptoms, it's a whole different criteria. And not only is the art of the examination lost, but so is the art of adjusting. And people don't seem to you know, even the public doesn't realize that, because they get so consumed by what, what the Instagram or Tiktok posts of somebody cracking a neck that sound and everything, it's so far past that. And I'll tell you, Dr pence, you would totally understand this. I often refer to the correction as high velocity, low amplitude, which means, if we want to parlay that into a martial art, it's the Bruce Lee One Inch Punch. Yeah, it is taking that that range of motion to the fullest extent, and then delivering a little impulse move. But people don't. Our new kids don't get that. There are the new students don't get the public doesn't get that. The doctors, medical doctors, don't get that. Anyway,

Dr. Ti Pence:

that's my rant. Well, no, I mean, you're not off on the piece of nobody's getting it. Look at the public facing part of it. First all, of the social media, where we have chiropractors demonstrating stuff. We have chiropractors doing 17 different techniques to a cervical spine on a patient that is half their size and and then being impressed that something has changed in their in their neck, and you wonder why, like a medical doctor looks and goes, What in the world, and any of us who are watching is like that is not impressive at all. I understand that what you're doing is getting likes because, you know, people like to look at the people that are the patients in these things, but that's not impressive. Show me that you can do one move with very little force and get the range of motion improvement or the whatever objective measure that you were able to find. Show me that you can improve that immediately. If you can do that, I'll be impressed. And do it in someone 50 to 100 pounds bigger than you like, okay, that's impressive. Or with something else that's modified in their in their anatomy that you're working around, you know, like they've got spinal fusion or something, show me that that's impressive. Showing me that you can just go hard. That's not impressive. That's like, that's such a low belt who can't control their force that you have to be cautious of they always say, watch out for the white belts and the brown belts, right? Because brown belts still got something to prove, and the white belts don't know

Dr. Spencer Baron:

their force yet. So let me ask you, because of your background in martial arts, I think that you're the perfect person to to help the public understand that you know the technique you know being that chiropractic also has a very important part of its sequence of the the philosophy, the science and the art form, and it's, it's oftentimes you As a martial artist is a black belt, and certain in certain techniques is that you have to read the person that's coming at you, not okay, I'm going to do this move today, and the person comes at you and, yeah, maybe you knock them out, or you Hit them or anything, but you're not assessing what they're presenting you with. So in other words, you have a another sense of that you're using when a patient comes in, and that is, I'm gonna watch how they walk, watch how they breathe. I'm looking at their head tilt. I'm looking at the exam starts way before the actual examination. Does that apply in martial arts? Or how does that apply when you are in a competition or, or you're looking at an opponent or or an assailant,

Dr. Ti Pence:

so, I mean an assailant, everything's going to happen real fast. So you're not doing a lot of that. You're. It's mostly reflex, like your brain's gonna turn on, probably after the whole Party's over, but, but in anything less than that, gosh, where to start this answer? Okay, as you start training martial arts and get to a certain level of skill, then you'll start sparring against people who are of various levels of skill, you develop this sense of matching your energy to their energy. When you're sparring with them, you don't take someone who you have a significant skill gap on and just wail on them, or hopefully you don't that shows that shows something about your character as a person. In martial arts, you generally will tend to try to match that person's energy so that you're both sparring at the same energy level. Your techniques will be more crisp and more like inherently faster, but you'll be able to dial the force more and you'll be able to give them enough leeway so that they're not even if they throw uncontrolled punches or do something uncontrolled, they're not going to hurt themselves or you. So there is that skill, and then there's also, like the listening and seeing skill that you develop in martial arts, where you just notice things about how somebody moves, because you've just been used to it. You're watching it all the time. And that's true in chiropractic and martial arts, and they kind of feed on each other. You see the dominant foot, you see you see how something looks out of a line, or someone's not moving right. And you tend to hone in on that. Oftentimes in chiropractic, I mean, we all probably do the same thing. Someone's coming in for a low back or some other complaint, and we see him walk in and you're like, Well, tell me about this knee or this foot that's going wrong, because that looks ridiculous. And like, how did you know? And to anybody who's put the time in, it's like, how did you not know? Do you see yourself walk like you know, but, but you have to have, you have to develop skill, which takes a number of reps, in seeing people, in doing, doing the techniques, and then seeing the changes, and then seeing how they look afterwards, in matching someone's energy in a martial art and then sparring with them and seeing the outcome of matching their energy versus just trying to bowl through them.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Beautiful. No, I love that. I love that as a metaphor, because people understand, most people understand martial arts. And when you apply that to the world of chiropractic, it applies and it makes a lot more sense. Switch gears a little bit. I want to ask you about private chiropractic like and maybe even other you know, private medical schools, and your thoughts about how they may not exist in 10 years and why that's such a heavy prediction. So what's, what do you what do you feel is driving that possible or potential collapse?

Dr. Ti Pence:

So as far as chiropractic schools, I think that's very different than medical schools right now. I don't think any medical schools have an idea of what they're going to look like 10 years from now. They all know that they're going to change. Learning is going to change radically, because it already is. And how does that manifest in a school curriculum? We don't know there. There are some there are some new versions of how schools might start to integrate technology, as far as as an underlying principle within the school, and how that changes education. It's still being discussed, as far as carp. And just to give an idea of, like, what kind of students we can talk about here. I just got to listen to a talk on AI and healthcare at through Stanford, and one of the first year medical students at Stanford. Here's how she studies for her class, compared to, like a lot of other places like you could imagine, like our average curriculum, she'll take 100 page PowerPoint presentation, or 300 page whatever, she'll take that PDF, integrate it into notebook LM, which is an AI system that She then asked to make an outline of it, and it will generate a podcast based upon those that PDF. The podcast is two people talking to each other about that subject. Now she can watch that at two times speed on her way to school. She then takes that entire outline, drops it back into chatgpt, asks it to create flashcards. She then integrates that into Anki flashcards, which is a timed AI program so that it'll time you're studying of the flashcards to maximize your learning that material, once she feels she's got that she can then take all that material, go back to chatgpt say, generate possible test questions and then grill herself on that now, right,

Unknown:

right. No idea. Now,

Dr. Ti Pence:

where is where did? She learn all of this YouTube University? She didn't learn it at Stanford. She learned it by watching YouTube. So like, that's the level of caliber of some of the students. And then we don't even realize we're using AI all the time now, I mean, when you Google something, most of the time, you're using an AI chat bot to get you the answer at the top. And so it's it's really just the the average in intelligence is probably going to drop off as this group that's really using AI accelerates in chiropractic schools right now, I think we're seeing programs that are becoming much more integrated to the general university system as soon as students start getting options of major universities or private chiropractic colleges, and that's really an option for them. And these become very integrated where, like, you're working right next to PTS, or maybe there's no difference at some point where you're just choosing paths of techniques, either hands on care or rehab or something else, like you're just going to pick your path, and that's going to be the schooling. I don't think it's going to look like it does right now. I think if we let our hands on skill diminish, we are really adding challenge to our students that are graduating, because it's something that cannot be easily replicated by AI and I. It would be really sad to know that our profession has has lost the ownership of that.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

What's actually additionally sad, but you're bringing up some really great points that that our continued education, at least in Florida. I don't know about California or anything, but in Florida, they do not provide continuing educational units for manipulating, for adjusting, manipulation, anything that has anything to do with adjusting, which is our mainstay, and chiropractic, it's all clinical, it's all, you know, didactic information, and I mean, all that's great and all, but you know, you're right. We're we're losing, you know, touch, literally, touch,

Dr. Ti Pence:

well, and I teach these seminars. Often I get brought to teach hands on adjusting seminars, and what you see out of the crowd, most of the time, is most of the people sitting around, even in those situations, they're not practicing the reps. They think they've already got it because they've been out in practice. Now, there is something to be said if you've made it past the first five years in practice without getting injured, like significantly injured, you've made it crossed a significant hurdle that we don't talk about, because in the first five years of practice, there's a high risk that you're going to get injured because you practice bad techniques that you learned in school on real patients, and you hurt yourself. And it's likely going to be when you're doing side posture on the lumbosacral area, like, that's that's just where people get injured. In interviews with students, the most common answer when I ask them, What is the least confident area of the body for them to adjust? It's the lumbosacral area. They don't feel confident, and yet, that's the thing we're doing all the time. As far as like, what we should be doing and continuing it, man, instead of having those force plate tables that everybody loves at the very beginning of like chiropractic education to teach people, I mean, that's the equivalent of putting a force plate on a punching bag and taking a brand new student and having them punch a punching bag as hard as they can. That that is so like, I can't even start to describe how that's not a good idea. All you're going to do is create injuries and bad ideas. And first of all, punching bags. Don't punch back. Neither do force tables. Like, the force is the most insignificant thing. If you're going to put a force plate somewhere, put it on the ground and show me that you can generate force from one foot to another. That's way more predictive in my mind, than something on a table. But where those force plates would be awesome is in continuing ed places. Bring people in who are measure who are 3d videoing your form, have them measure how much force you can generate. Work with each of them in ways that's working with what they do already to improve their skill, that would be continuing it. Oh, we don't do anything like that, even though we are the owners of that.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I think we need Dr pence to be teaching just

Dr. Terry Weyman:

right. You know, it's interesting. We had a talk of this weekend, and one of the ideas was, when they're teaching a new technique, whether it's a hands on a soft tissue technique, or whatever is, the instructor would make everyone in the class stand up, pulled away the chair, and come and do two or three strokes, like, let's say it's a forearm soft tissue, two or three strokes on them, so everybody. Had to do it. You weren't allowed to get out of it. And then he separated the group that had stone hands versus the people had soft hands into two groups. And now he knew who he was lecturing to, and he could break it up and help the people with stone hands, because knowing that they were the ones that would most likely sit on the chair because they were too afraid to look like an idiot, but help them out and make it so their egos were involved that helped them out. And it was kind of a cool little concept, because when we started doing some of that, it was amazing, the touch differences that people had. What do you think about something like that? Yeah,

Dr. Ti Pence:

I've even tried to teach seminars like that where basically it's three people involved, so that I so that it's round robin, so that someone's watching while someone's doing and someone's like the patient and Okay, so even to step back before that, first off, if you're teaching technique class, you should not be teaching the way that works for you. You should be teaching the way that works for the student or the patient in front, like, figure out how that student moves and then maximize techniques that will work for them. Love that. This is, this is, like, we're in chiropractic. We're kind of at the beginning of the UFC, like, where everybody just was walking in with ridiculous techniques. And, like, you know, Sumos were getting their teeth knocked out and stuff. Like, we're going, we're going from that to, like, actual disciplines where it's like, it doesn't matter what you trained. You got to be able to win in this ring. And that's the same thing in chiropractic. The technique doesn't matter so much, is it? Does it work for the student, and can it get the outcome we need? And that's it. And if you can do that, you get away from some of the ego, but, man, it's hard, because we hold this stuff tight and close to us, and we don't want to admit that we might have something to learn. Because we've been telling our patients that we're we are the only master of this technique, you know, and that that's not true. There's always someone better. You're always good in martial arts, you know, there's always an opponent that's going to be better than you. Maybe it's just day to day, but you're going to find

Dr. Spencer Baron:

somebody actually. The beauty is having of having interns revolving in the offices. They're excited. They got great energy. They keep us old guys, like fired up about what we're doing. But more importantly, I'm seeing new techniques come out that I haven't seen before, that I'm thinking, wow, somebody's finally getting it. You know that old side posture where you're bringing your arm around, oh god,

Dr. Ti Pence:

oh yeah. Just, let's create an impingement test and then do it repeatedly throughout the day. Like, that was great when, when we were all huge and, like, gangly, like, long arm, big individuals that were doing chiropractic, but like, if you, if you're short and stocky, you're not going to do the same move as someone that's tall and gangly. Like, it's not going to be, like, there's different levers. And, yeah, I There are teachers still in this in these chiropractic schools, doing all they can to teach very good technique. They're just struggling at it because they're underpaid, way underpaid, and there's a lot of restrictions that they've got to be able to get these students to pass tests, and the students aren't that mo like you've got to get them motivated, like you were talking about in the classes where they're up doing the reps the whole time. You would never see that in a martial arts class. You would never see a martial arts class where someone talked for as long as any technique instructor talks in the in the beginning, and then when the technique instruct, when the teacher says, go ahead and practice. You did one or two times and then stood around in class. You're gone like you're not going to stay in that class. You better start doing exactly what the instructor said until you can demonstrate skill at it. You keep going until the instructor says we're going to do the next thing. Love that, and that does, that doesn't exist in chiropractic right now.

Unknown:

We have to

Dr. Spencer Baron:

get him out there at some of our sports programs because the adjusting, there's not enough of that style of teaching that's going on out there. I mean, it's some of it's good when it comes up. But I think we're gonna, I'm gonna rally Dr pence to teach for adjusting to everyone.

Unknown:

I

Dr. Ti Pence:

The purpose of me getting worked up about this is I've always been I was taught, and I think I was the first person that told me this was Claire Johnson in in chiropractic school. And she she was like, What are you going to do for the profession? Like great people have done tremendous things to get to the profession, to give you the profession you now have. What are you going to do to push this forward? She's the researcher, right? I mean, she did, she's she's really, she's amazing. But it was just that clicked in my brain of like, okay, however, I can maximally help. I'm down. And if this is the piece that, like, I can help with, then I'm totally down. But I definitely do frustrate people when I come and start talking about stuff, because. Is I'm ruining basic concepts that people are are coming in with the I'm going to fall on a patient idea is nonsense. You've never you've never seen someone actively try to throw the if you tell them to punch something as hard as they can. You've never watched them come off one leg to try to generate that force, it wouldn't happen. And yet, that's what we keep telling people to do inside posture techniques. You wouldn't go swinging your arm independent of your body. And yet, that's what every cervical spine technique looks like, completely independent. And I've had docs even willing to continue doing it, knowing they're hurting themselves because they don't want to change, even though I've offered that. Hey, it's not hard to modify what you're doing. You can still do the same move. We just got to modify it a little so that you can still do this technique, but not hurt yourself still. I get no no, yeses.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Let me ask you. Getting back to changes in education. You know, we talked about the lack of hands on in the schools, the increase in AI. But you know what's interesting? I tell a lot of tell a lot of my interns, it's so easy to be a great doctor, because most of them out there suck, you know. And you know, we take our time. You know, I told you about the art of the exam is lost, you know, because doctors are so quick, and I mean medical doctors or MRIs X ray, you know, let's do that. They don't do the they use that as the biggest piece of the puzzle, an MRI or any kind of diagnostic stuff. Anyway, my point is that the changes that are going on right now in the pharmaceutical injury, it's pharmaceutical industry based on what our current government is looking to do, is going to also affect not only TV ads magazines, but the schools, because they're so heavily funded. So I'm really curious about what you think in that area that's going to change in medicine, even with, I mean, it might give chiropractic a better chance, but if you have some thoughts about about that and the fact that insurance is causing doctors to struggle to see more patients, in fact, there was an article published Not too long ago that they did research on an insurance based practice can only spend on average of seven minutes with a patient. How do we How does a medical doctor figure out a condition in seven minutes when you know it takes us much longer to or we decide to take that time to figure it out. Your thoughts.

Dr. Ti Pence:

So, so look, there's great medical doctors out there trying to do all they can. And really, what? What the whole movement there is that direct payment movement where doctors are just going, No, we're done. We're just going to go and really just kind of reflect a chiropractic model, if you're going to pay us for our time as could be less than what we're what we had to bill it, but to insurance by a lot, and we're just going to go back to that good old fashioned form of taking care of people. So there are, as far as, what do I think are the the pressers or major influencers? Yeah, pharmacy may be part of it, but you have insurance companies that, I mean, I used to say that all of us in medicine have two opponents, and that's pain and suffering, and we should all, we're all in the same team. We're all fighting against pain and suffering. But that's not really true anymore. We have three opponents now. We have pain suffering and insurance companies, and we're all, we're all fighting against those, yeah, and I might rank them insurance companies suffering than pain in order of like, Oh, yeah. But when it comes to the major pieces, you've got insurance companies that are just destroying our healthcare system. You've got hospitals that are now operating at like 3% margins or less, which is insane, and you've got aI which hospitals and which, both hospitals and insurance companies are hoping does different things. But what it does do is give what they call a mid level provider, which no chiropractor likes to hear that we fit into that category, but as far as how much we charge, we fit into that category, it's not by our degree, it's just how much we cost. And we are directly facing the patient, us, plus AI is taking the place will will likely take the place of more educated doctors. And I'm not saying that. I. Practice aren't more educated. I'm just saying, where there would be a specialist, there is a thought that you can take a PA or a chiropractor or something else and augment that with AI, and now you have that. Now it's not true. That's not going to work out like that, but that's kind of where the push is. So having, will there be more of that push to something that's a like a PA type thing? Probably might, AI reduce curriculums entirely, because people are doing like what that first year medical students doing and learning super burning through the material super fast, and maybe that just shrinks the whole MD education. Or maybe they just start earlier. Maybe, maybe it's no longer you got to get all the way through four years of college. Maybe it's you do too or, or May, as soon as you decide you're now on, nobody knows, like that's the thing is, they're having discussions about this now, but nobody knows. There's too many variables that are there's too many wild cards in the variables that that could turn this a number of ways, and most are just hoping for. Are doubling down on things that create resilience, either in their practice or in their hospital setting or whatever. And that type of resilience, as far as us as chiropractors, is our hands on skill and our ability to interact with patients and that can't that will constantly progress us forward.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Let me ask you the there's regarding schools again, there's there's two things going on in chiropractic that are kind of fascinating. In the education part, there's, we just were able to achieve having a school in Pittsburgh up, yeah, medical school, which is a huge kudos. Chiropractic.

Dr. Ti Pence:

Now, good job, Dr Snyder and everybody.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, right. And then on the other end, here in South Florida, there's a technical school called Kaiser that has a whole chiropractic program. Now this is a tech school, so my thoughts are and it was met with a little bit of opposition. We have three schools of character, three chiropractic colleges in South Florida, Palmer national and now Kaiser, there's, there's some discomfort with a technical school adopting the chiropractic protocol and program. Where do you think this could go towards more absorbed more in the medical world as an acceptance or as a tech school

Dr. Ti Pence:

cool, I can tell you where, where I live, working directly with medical doctors all day. We're more accepted now than we when we've ever been. I don't, I don't think anybody considered we're just part of the team, unless we screw it up for ourselves. So I think it depends on what kind of person is going to go to, what type of those places, and how much the public wants to have that type of doctor, if the public will pay for that, and you're and you're okay with that type of curriculum, getting in, getting you into kind of a base level job within chiropractic, I don't think, I think the opportunities, if you go to a school that that doesn't have the reputation, it makes it harder each step of the way. And you've got, like, Man, you've got all kinds of options as far as financial aid and other stuff with larger universities that are harder and so I don't know if, if I was a student, I'd be looking at, I'd be looking at places that have, you know, major institutions, especially with everything going on that's disrupting major institutions in general right now. Like, I'd be looking for places that have stuck around for a while and have been through some stuff to know that they could probably get through this stuff.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Interesting. Can I interject for a second? You know, I'm still stuck on the Stanford person, and, I mean, I was like, how she navigated with AI, you know, I could see AI taking over telemedicine, because you can just tell your symptoms into a computer, and they'll spit out an answer. I could see AI creating a person do you think you're talking to that's actually AI generated spitting out an answer. Exams, having a walking in, having a camera you and tell you where your faults are. So I could see technology going taking medicine into a unique situation. The one thing I don't see AI ever doing is replacing your hands, your intuition and your thought process. So how does the chiropractor? Thick world, jump on that and now you cannot. You can love the administration right now, or you can hate them. But one thing I say about RFK is we're talking about food and healthcare for the first time since World War Two. So how do we take that thought process where we're actually looking at what goes in food and what goes into our health and what goes into our bodies and take advantage of the one thing that AI cannot replicate, and that's your hands.

Dr. Ti Pence:

Look, I, I work with engineers all the time, and I constantly get people who tell me, AI is going to take over what I'm doing with my hands. And I just laugh at them like that. That's That's so naive to even suggest that you're going to pull that off anytime soon. The last 100 years, what we've been able to do, as far as technology that mimics anything we do, is, what a diagnostic ultrasound. It's not as good as the electricity you're using to run the dang thing. Like, not an ultrasound machine, like it's a it's a magic wand that does nothing like you're going to go from that that you're just trying to, like, create heat, to something that can replicate a skilled hand, no, you're not. That's not coming fast, and something that can actually, like, discern what's going on on a patient and actually get the it's not going to happen. You that hands on skill and the empathy for patients is not going to be replicated. Now, there are people within AI, like within the realm of AI, that will cite that AI seems more empathetic than humans. Of course they do. Narcissists always seem more believable than someone who's being sincere. AI has no empathy. It is a thing with a personality disorder, by definition, it doesn't have any empathy. It can turn into a people pleaser if you run, if you run, if you ask a doctor to come up with differential diagnoses and then ask AI to run its own interpretation of those diagnoses based on the patient. It will tend to just agree with the doctors, even if the doctor was wrong. And so you got to know where the thing fails and it's going to fail. It does not have empathy. It may seem empathetic, like a narcissist seems empathetic, but it is not, and it may try to do things to your back, but God, imagine like we have seen all the nonsense technologies that have tried to mimic hands on treatment of the back, and it's not close, and patients don't like it. So if we're talking about the safety, I would say, we don't abandon AI. We've got to learn. We've got to learn, to become native with it like we have to learn how it's going to help us improve. If someone walked in with paper notes to your office right now, you'd be like, Who is this dinosaur that's still writing paper notes? Or at least, I would think that, let's say that you're welcome to take it, but AI is going to be exponentially worse than that, where, if you're not paying attention to AI and learning, where this can augment your practice, man, you're way behind. So using that with the skills that we have, I think that's where you stay way ahead of the curve, but you got to learn. The only way you learn that is the same way that you learn how to be good at Chiropractic. You gotta do reps with the stuff. You gotta learn where it's strong and where it's not, where it works for you and where it doesn't.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, I think this is a perfect time to add probably one of the most profound motivational moments that

Unknown:

you're

Dr. Spencer Baron:

bringing up, AI can certainly take over the medical world in a way that, you know, it's very linear, you know, tell me your problem or give you the symptoms, they'll kick back a few differential diagnosis, and then you write a prescription. It's very automated, but this could very well be the greatest time for chiropractic, not just because of RFK and all those changes, but because of what you keep saying, We're hands on. I we gosh, you know, we've seen all sorts of machinery that will try to imitate, you know, adjusting or imitate soft tissue work. But there is nothing like a hands on feel, as a matter of fact, with the way the world may be moving and shifting, we're the only ones that can put our hands on people, and that sense of touch is is missing. It's missing in relationships, because everybody's got their head, you know, in the iPhone that's missing. We are the only one, you know what. Thank you for bringing this up, because that was, that's a that is what I think every chiropractor should know and learn, hands on, communication. Yeah. Or, you know, communication, whether it's treatment, or whether it's empathy, whether it's motivation, you know, because I feel a doctor, it's must inspire their patient to heal. Whereas most doctors, and I mean that you know, generically, most doctor, they not most, but a lot don't have empathy anymore. They did. Oh, sorry, you have cancer. So it's nine weeks, you'll need to get radiation. Yeah,

Dr. Ti Pence:

well, and to spin on that, maybe AI could tell you what you what you tell them their your complaint is, but often, as we're listening to patients, we realize that the issue that brought them in has nothing to do with what they were telling us for the first 30 minutes,

Unknown:

right? Yes. So yes, yes, you

Dr. Ti Pence:

you've been talking about back pain and you, like, the patient's like, I don't care if I can't pick up my kid, right? Like, all right, then we don't care about this back pain at all. We want to get you to the pain level that comes down enough that you can pick your kid up. And we got to make you strong enough that you pick your kid up. But like, how is AI going to figure that out, read into it enough to be able to discern, like, Oh, we're making a total left here. We're not, we're not talking about the thing that they came in with at all. This is what they want actually out of this. And

Dr. Spencer Baron:

how many and how many times have you, you two figure out a patient's or the patient figures out their condition in the fifth or 20th treatment, they go, Oh, my God, I just realized that the chair I sit in at work,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

or the bed I'm sleeping in or the or the person

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I'm sleeping with, oh, Sorry.

Dr. Ti Pence:

Different provider, different provider. Yeah, poor Karen,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I realized, after I said that I'm going to hear it. I'm only joking. I'm only joking. No, but all these, you know, just these, these little nuances that the patient doesn't realize or or better yet, you know, I had a guy come in and tear come in yesterday, show me a torn bicep, and he goes, I didn't do anything. I just want to pick up a, you know, 10 pound dumbbell, and go, What did you do yesterday? What did you do the day before that? And it's like revelation that they, Oh, I trained biceps heavy. But who's gonna ask that? You know, right, right,

Dr. Ti Pence:

yeah, yeah. And it's a lot of education that you have to spend time educating the patient from their point of view of what happened, and they always just want you to tell them. And it's like, well, I'm not going to tell you. I'm going to tell you the mechanisms that resulted in this, and you're going to tell me what you did.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Yeah, another thing on that, Spencer, how many times have we heard, well, my next killing me. And you go back, and would you do what? You do, nothing, nothing, nothing. And then you keep going and going and go, Well, I had a car accident 30 years ago, but that's, that's all. It was resolved, and that has nothing

Dr. Ti Pence:

to do with what I have now. I only rolled over four times, right? That's fine, and they're all and I went to a

Dr. Terry Weyman:

car brand new, fixed it. I'm like so but you know, they think of what happened yesterday or the day before, you know, they only realized that fascia, muscle, bone, all stuff, has time. So you're and I don't think AI would ever ask those questions. I think in my

Dr. Spencer Baron:

expense, yeah, I have to laugh too, because Dr Pence was saying it's what you know you're giving them, you know, on your initial consult, you're giving AI all this information. I remember my fifth year in practice, a guy comes in with low back pain, and we're trying to figure it out why he's got low back pain. And I finally, you know, it was, it wasn't always immediate to shoot X rays, but I felt this was necessary. There's a freaking bullet lodged in his low back. You forgot to tell what? Wait, there's a bullet. Oh, yeah, when I was in the military, well, it's leaning right,

Unknown:

they were afraid to remove it, because that might be, you know, I think that's what's causing your pli.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

You should see, when I worked at the office in West Hollywood. You just seen the stuff we found with X rays.

Dr. Ti Pence:

Oh, God. Oh, God, I don't want to know

Dr. Spencer Baron:

the stories. You know, I Oh, go ahead, Terry, were you gonna ask? No good. You're good. Yeah. You know, this is a golden opportunity. I've been wanting to ask somebody about more about Qigong. Okay, you are familiar with Qigong? And I, yeah, I just a 10 second background. I was sent to China to the Olympic Training Center in Beijing to work with their their it was supposed to be an educational exchange. I had nothing for that. But. I got turned on to this thing called Qigong that was so blow away. Can you elaborate on that? Because they use it as a healthcare tool. Go ahead, tell me,

Dr. Ti Pence:

okay, yeah, that's a huge topic. All right, so there's different types of Qigong. There's like a martial aspect, a medical aspect, and then a spiritual aspect of that. So you would use this practice for different goals, really, if you lump it all together, it's the rehab arm of Chinese medicine. So that's that's really how that works, because Chinese medicine is built off of a completely different framework and understanding. And then you would have to have physical exercises you would give them at home, or things to do at home that would augment that. And, man, this is a deep rabbit hole, as far as, like trying to trying to overlay a different map of the body, and how that map could play a role in the patient's symptoms, because, I mean, to describe what they are, most of them look like some sort of what you would imagine a Tai Chi thing from a park, where someone's moving in kind of a slow way, but they're doing a exercise multiple times, like in an order, over and over and over again. And it could be movement of the hands. It could be truly just something in your mind and your breathing. It could be sounds. It could be some combination of all of that. And it might not be for what you think it is. It might not be for like your shoulder, even though you're moving your shoulder around. It might be because they're trying to affect your lungs, or the energy that that they associate with your lungs, or something else. And so it's, it's, it's easy to dive way down on in this. But that's the basics of it. Is it? It also promotes a really good listening skill, but it's also, it's also the thing that they would say creates that iron body in in Chinese martial arts, the same, same idea, is creating that as like spiritual practices. So

Dr. Spencer Baron:

to blow away our viewers and listeners, I will never, ever forget we were brought into a traditional Chinese hospital, and the medical the doctor, the oriental medical doctor, was brought in two interns, and to make a long story really short, he took a plug and put it into the electrical socket of the wall. The other two were cut off wires that were exposed. He had the two it. I got goosebumps. This was 20. This is like 30 years ago. He had the two interns. They asked everybody hold hands. There were 18 of us in that room. We all held hands. And of course, I had to hold the hand of the guy that was holding the exposed wires, yeah, and he was doing this to complete the circuit, and he finally went like this. And everybody lit up. Everybody in that room unlocked hands rigorously. It was like a blow away, right? So now they go into their Qigong state of whatever it is, and that the two interns are whole. One is holding one wire the other ones and they go, who has low back pain? Guy comes up, lays on the table, and they do electrical stim with their hands. Yeah. What is going on there? Talk to me.

Dr. Ti Pence:

I have, I have, I have, luckily, when I was at the exact same house, probably one of the similar hospitals, getting a very similar demonstration, I did not volunteer. Um, smart man, because I've learned enough. I learned enough before that in both martial arts and chiropractic, when someone asks you, you don't just stand still, you step a step back, just in case everybody else stepped back. And all I saw was like, Wow. They're willing to run current through their body in order to work on these people. And it's like, wow, you're running e stem through a person, which sounds cool. What that's doing to the body, man, we don't know most of what's going on in in Qigong, really, like we don't know. And as a clinician, I don't always need to know the answers. I need to know it works for certain patients. And if the if the risk is zero, and there's some level of reward, and we've ruled out anything else that can get me more reward. I'm totally willing to try that. Until we get to something where the risk is high, then the reward has to be really high. I would say electricity and wall. There's some risk. So I would need to know that the reward is, like, significant and like, we just had a translator there, so I wasn't able to get details on what the heck was going on. But it was pretty wild. And the patient, and this, the other students who got to experience that, got to they definitely said they felt fit the rest of the day. So I was like, I would ask some questions, like, does anybody have a pacemaker or something before I started

Unknown:

with. Come on.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Hey, hey, Ty on that. So you know, people will come and ask us, what do you think about acupuncture? What do you think about sugar on what do you think about chiropractic? And doesn't work? And I go, Well, these techniques have been around hundreds of years. Yeah, it works. Your lack of understanding is what's the issue? It's not that the technique doesn't work. It's lack of understanding. So we may not know we can feel the wind blow. We might not know how it's blowing, or why it's blowing, but we know it's there. So I think that's another thing that AI can't replicate. You know, just because it's big techniques, they've been around hundreds of 1000s of years, they work. It's just our depth of understanding is always we don't know. So I was trying to learn, you know, I don't think that can be replicated. I

Dr. Ti Pence:

don't know how you would replicate that in that leap of faith of it, just we seem to observe this in practice, and so we continue to use it. I never like to see when research is trying to take tools away from providers without giving them more tools. If you're just taking tools away, what are you doing? You're just giving patients less options. And often it's like to justify some something of their own ego or their they want to prove something. And it's like, that's not helpful if you're going to do something give us more tools as clinicians, or else, what's the use? So

Dr. Spencer Baron:

hey, dr, Terry, what do you think rapid fire questions?

Dr. Ti Pence:

Oh, gosh, I've been worried about this. All right. Rapid fire questions,

Unknown:

it's that time. Yeah,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

hey, Spencer, here's Ty instructor, and he just, he just went, oh shit, he's now in the front row. Come on. Let's

Unknown:

see what you got. Yeah, let's look at this as a pop quiz.

Dr. Ti Pence:

I love it. I love it. Let's do it. Let's do it. Let's see where I'm at

Dr. Spencer Baron:

all. Right, as far as the rules of rapid fire question, we usually ask a question that you have no idea about, and you have to answer it in a abbreviated period of time, which is why we asked these at the end of the show. So if you appreciate that question, number one, and I'm kidding, you can take your time. What is one lesson that everyone can get out of Tai Chi?

Dr. Ti Pence:

Oh, I would say, if you actually spent some time on Tai Chi, the lesson would be realizing how to use your hips to generate force.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That was good, all right. Question number one, is knocked out of the ballpark, ready? Question number two, you launched a telehealth in chiropractic early. But what was your funniest telehealth moment?

Dr. Ti Pence:

I would say most of the I don't even know if it was funny or eye opening, but what you end up seeing behind patients in their house, and you're just like, oh, this might be part of the problem. And it can be all kinds of things, like they haven't unpacked anything in their house, like it's still in boxes, or they're like any any reality TV show of individuals with interesting habits in their life, like, those things happen behind the camera like they're not filtering them out. So you end up looking and going, I think we're getting a clear picture of like, what's going on here.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

So have you guys heard that the show Phil? It's like, where's Phil, or something like that. He's a, he was a writer for TV, and he now goes around, tastes food, and it's all over the place. He's got eight seasons. Well, he's the Jewish writer that wrote for I'm gonna get everyone. Everyone Loves Raymond. Okay, so in the show, he'll be talking to his parents like this on a zoom call, and last night we were watching and he goes like, hey mom, I see you made the bed today. And she looks around, she goes, she talks to her husband, and they're in their 80s, honey. I didn't know they could see behind me.

Unknown:

Yeah. So awesome.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

That's very funny. And sadly, real question number three, what song instantly puts you in a good mood? No questions asked,

Dr. Ti Pence:

Oh, instantly in a good mood. I'd heard the other versions of the one song. Thing I would say my number one song is always going to be ramble on by Led Zeppelin. That's, that's my jam. But as far as in chiropractic, I would say body movement by Beastie Boys. It's the closest to a theme of what I'm trying to do with beige. Ins that it's in a song we need body rock and not perfection. Let me get some action from the back section, like, yeah, that's, that's,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I love that. First of all, the Led Zeppelin thing got me because now there's this whole resurrection of Led Zeppelin. They came together in the UK, and now I got my Spotify tapped in,

Unknown:

yeah, yeah.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Anyway. Oh, and I also saw that the becoming Led Zeppelin the movie. Oh, yeah. Is that great? I haven't gotten to see it yet. Oh so good. The only thing that really absolutely sad and not sad, it disappointed me. Of the whole movie, they they didn't play Stairway to Heaven the whole time. That's probably one of the great probably one of the greatest

Dr. Terry Weyman:

songs ever. You know that you're right. I didn't

Dr. Spencer Baron:

think about that. I was waiting and waiting and nothing anyway, but everything else was great. All right. Question number four, what was the last random act of kindness you did, or someone that did for you that really, really moved you.

Unknown:

That moved me? Man,

Dr. Ti Pence:

there's been so many. I mean, like, once you start looking for those, you see them everywhere. When you know, I think the one that got that sticks with me. And it probably wasn't the last, this was a while ago, but I was, I was I had major sinus infection because of a bad surfing accident, like I was in bad shape. I was on crutches because I had destroyed an ankle and in a martial arts class. And I'm here, I am walking on crutches through a store sick. This was before covid. So you're actually allowed in and and one of the store people actually just got the cart and, like, walked around with me, got me, got me get my food, got me out. I was like, Oh my gosh, that that is so huge. I am blown like, there was another one where some poor guy was stuck on the road in his car on the on ramp to the freeway. So like, two roads merge, and then that single road then comes onto the freeway in between on the far right one this guy, his car had died, and everybody was just honking at him. No one was trying to help him. So I got out behind him and just pushed his car into the middle as I'm trying to push there's still people coming. Like, cool. And so if you know you got both sides of it, it's like, All right, well, you know you could, you could choose to be part of that kindness and push it forward and hope that when you need it, there's someone else there. Or you could be a part of the people that's just bothered, you know?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Well, you won't find that in South Florida everybody. It's the most ugly city in the country. Anyway, people are just not nice. All right, that's great. Now, question number five, last one, if you could have dinner with or only dinner a dinner conversation with anyone alive or

Unknown:

from history, who is your guest?

Dr. Ti Pence:

Man, I love that you asked these that I've heard you ask that question before. I've thought about it. I've got two people, so I'm going to go with one that seems tacky because it's very chiropractic, but I want I've read that book that DD Palmer wrote, and I want to know what was going like. I have so many questions for him as far as how he started this profession, where his head really was at not like what people have told me these things mean, but some of the things that he talked about in that original work were, like, pretty impressive and, like, still relevant today. And I just want to know how he came from, like, some Canadian guy to, like, creating this whole thing and, and, like, some of the things he says is, like, did you really just rattle the cage on everybody? Like, just blow up every joint in the body. Like, what was that thing about? Like, getting hearing back and some guys mid back, like, Man, I want to know those things. And if it wasn't that guy, Nah, it would be that. I think, I think DD Palmer would be the one that I would like to grill a lot, because I just have so many questions for him.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Come on. You got a second one, another dinner guest.

Dr. Ti Pence:

Now that I said it, I've spaced his name, which is terrible, because there we go. It's back. John Muir would be my, would be my second one. That would be, yeah, that, I mean, that guy's stories would last well beyond dinner. I mean, how the things he described, as far as how he lived, I just have, again, so many questions and such a simple life, and how he was able to create so much that lasted past him. And I'm just a big outdoors guy, so what he did for for the environment and outdoors is awesome.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah. That's great. Dr, Terry, if you ever answered this question,

Unknown:

who you'd want to

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Well, he those two. I'm like, I mean, think about those two, but I'm like, that would those two would be incredible. And then, on the same outdoor thing, Ansel Adams how he can take a photo that has, you know, he's taken photos of like Yosemite Park that have been photographed probably a million times. And yet, when you look at his photos, you just, you feel you're right. Yeah, you're there. And how do you how did he actually think about that interesting, you know? And, you know, I look it's, I had a not to ramble, but I had an early idea of are our athletes nowadays is tough as the ones that first started the programs you look at, you look at the earlier climbers of Everest. They got dressed in a wool suit and tied a tie before climbing up a mountain, and you're like, what and and they were doing stuff without the modern technology. Look at runners. They were broke, broke back in the you know, records, and they were doing it on shoes that you wouldn't even get any runner on nowadays. I think so. I always think pioneers of anything, whether it's philosophy, sport or art, how did they like you just said about DD Palmer, how did they think different? And I think it'd be really relevant today we have aI telling us and info stillness, like you started this whole show with, like your son, you can pull up a phone, and everything is right there in front of you. How do we put that away and get that creativity back to have innovation?

Unknown:

Yeah, love it. Good stuff.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Well, Dr, Pence, I'll tell you what, man, it's been really just bringing up all this current information and what needs to be recognized and what it does. It gives chiropractic such a moment of truth and longevity, and it's exciting to hear. So thank you so much for

Dr. Ti Pence:

sharing. It's been a pleasure. Thank you guys.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

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