Activate Your Practice Podcast
The Activate Your Practice Podcast is hosted by the Chairman & Founder of Activator Methods, Dr. Arlan Fuhr. This podcast will cover a variety of subjects. Dr. Fuhr will interview guests from different backgrounds and professions, as well as talk about his 50+ years in chiropractic care.
Activate Your Practice Podcast
Elevating Geriatric Spinal Health: Dr. Douglas Gordon on Chiropractic Care for the Aging Population
Expert geriatric chiropractic care with Dr. Douglas Gordon as we explore the fascinating intersection of aging and spinal health. Our conversation sheds light on the critical necessity for chiropractors to adeptly serve the booming geriatric population, which is on track to reach a staggering 95 million by 2060. Brace yourself for a deep dive into the four M's of high-quality geriatric care – what matters, medication, mentation, and mobility – and discover how chiropractic interventions, particularly those enhancing mobility, can significantly improve the quality of life for our elders. This episode is a treasure trove of insights for anyone interested in the future of chiropractic practice or the well-being of the aging demographic.
Dr. Gordon, a seasoned expert in the field, joins us to discuss the intricate details of geriatric chiropractic care and its burgeoning role in managing low back and neck pain, which plagues the elderly as the second most common neurological ailment in the U.S. We also give listeners a sneak peek at the new continuing education module, "Geriatrics and Non-Textbook Advanced Tests," set to elevate chiropractic techniques for the unique challenges presented by geriatric syndromes. If you're a chiropractic practitioner aiming to refine your approach or simply someone who cares about the comprehensive health of the older generation, this conversation is an invaluable resource that will enrich your understanding and practice.
Hi, I'm Dr Arlen Foer and I'm bringing Activator Practice to you this morning, the new podcast by Activator Methods. And this morning we have a guest that has a lot of experience in the geriatric world, dr Douglas Gordon from California. And we just shot a whole geriatric course here just two weeks ago at our platform in Las Vegas, and I said to Doug I'd like to have a little preview of what's going to be coming up this fall in the geriatric area. And so, good morning, dr Douglas, glad to have you. Good morning, dr Thor, I'm glad to be here. Well, the first question that I'm going to ask you is what is geriatrics?
Speaker 2:Geriatrics is the branch of medicine or social science that deals with the health and care of older people, and is there an age that's considered geriatric? In the US, we usually consider it to be 65 and older.
Speaker 1:Okay, and how much of an increase in the geriatric population will there be in the near future?
Speaker 2:Well, according to the Administration of Aging, 17% of people in the United States, or one in six people, were 65 or older in 2020. So that is more than 55.8 million adults, and that number is going to increase to 95 million by the year 2060.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I heard and that was the shocking thing. And you know, we never thought about being prepared for geriatrics when we started Activator, but I mean it couldn't be a better technique, which is a low-force technique for an older person. But I heard something like 2030, almost half the population is going to be over 65. And so it's quite a group of a cohort of patients out there that will be ready for tarp-rated care and they don't have enough nursing home facilities and so forth, so it's going to be in-office, in-home care. And so what is the responsibility for the increase in the Americans' older population?
Speaker 2:Well, in the US it is pretty much the baby boomer generation that was born between 1946 and 1964, and they are reshaping America's older population.
Speaker 1:How can chiropractors be involved in a high-quality care that's required for well-being of the geriatric population?
Speaker 2:adhering to the four pillars of geriatrics through providing a set of four evidence-based elements of high quality care to older adults in your practice, and these are known as the four M's what matters medication, mentation and mobility and we can have a big responsibility in providing for these.
Speaker 1:Say it over again the four pillars, the four.
Speaker 2:M's. What matters is what we find out in our history Medication, which is an important component of understanding how our patients are functioning, and we deal with that in this new module under polypharmacy. Mentation, which is the mental activity of our patients, and then mobility, which is what chiropractors can very much enjoy doing for their patients and bringing back better mobility enjoy doing for their patients and bringing back better mobility.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I heard here on the television the other day that there's not going to be enough nursing homes and so it's going to go to in-home care, and so that's why chiropractic will play a huge part keeping people mobile. That's a big part of that 4M. So what is the new module that Activator will be including on continuing education credits this next time around?
Speaker 2:This new module is titled Geriatrics and Non-Textbook Advanced Tests, and what will be the outline? Well, there's going to be 10 sections to this module. No-transcript chapters of this module are going to be dealing with advanced tests, and those will include in the pelvis and hip, lumbar, thoracic and ribs, cervicals and advanced knee, foot and ankle tests.
Speaker 1:Why is it important to understand these non-textbook advanced tests when treating a geriatric patient?
Speaker 2:It's important for one main reason, and that is for proficiency in treating these older patients, because they are likely to develop different kinds of health problems, and these are known as geriatric syndromes, which are problems that usually have more than one cause and involve many parts of the body.
Speaker 1:So how did these tests become part of the activator methods technique?
Speaker 2:These tests have been confirmed to be consistent in finding a particular anatomical dysfunction or subluxation by numerous amounts of practicing activator chiropractors over an extended period of time, and these new advanced tests had been presented before at live seminars in what had been known as the pink notes.
Speaker 1:The pink notes. Yes, you know I look back on how we kept adding things and I have to give credit to our practitioners out there because I became kind of an editor and there were so many people out there that had found things that work. And you know, I think that new things are found in the field. And I was just talking about this the other day because somebody said now why did I find setting number two and the old two so good? And I said because it worked. And in the five, you know we did a lot of research on that because we could only get up to about 84% of our half sine wave and we wanted a perfect half sine wave. So when we started with Dr Liebschner, our biomechanist from Baylor University, he said let's do electronic and then we'll put an auto processor in it and we can then adjust it. And I never will forget the first results we got back. He said it's too perfect, I have to do it again because it followed the half sine wave to perfection. So he did it over and over and over and he said the reason this works is because the speed. And he said it's the perfect speed and that's what makes it be the perfect half sine wave.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, it was doctors out in the field. And here's something I've learned over the years Practitioners, clinicians, will not use something that doesn't work and they'll throw it away. I mean, if an instrument survives that test, then they'll support it and they'll use it and they'll be on it. So Thank you to all the people out there that found something that worked and sent it in. We included it in these notes. Why is it important to use activator instrument in treating the geriatric patient Number?
Speaker 2:one safety. 69% of chiropractors using the activator instrument in the US and Canada reported safety as a reason for its use.
Speaker 1:Well, that makes sense, doesn't it, when you've got people. You know, we just had a paper published.
Speaker 1:Our research team from Madrid, Spain, had a paper published in a very prestigious journal called Nature and it was the scientific report of nature, and I sent them a clinician's wish here about five years ago. I said I'd wish to know if I'm hurting an osteoporotic patient. And so they started. And I don't know if you know this, but the only place in the world that osteoporotic rabbits are produced is in Los Angeles, california. So we ended up shipping 20 rabbits all the way to Madrid Spain, by the way, at $1,000 a rabbit, and they started the trials. Now here was the outcome and this is why Nature published it. They found out not only was it safe to adjust an osteoporotic bone, but also, after two weeks of treatment, the trabeculum in the bone started growing. And this was shocking because nobody had seen anything like this from any kind of treatment before. That's why it got published in Scientific Review. So it was helping the clinician out there. Know, yes, it's safe.
Speaker 1:And number two, and I had a one of my old friends. We had a big reunion and he was telling me this is why when people come in, they're on walkers and six months later they're walking around without it. They were restoring the trabeculum in the hip. The trabeculum are the little fibers in the hip joint that make it stable. And you know, many times people said that they fell. Older people had a fall. Their falling down syndrome is a big problem, and so they wondered why did they fall? Well, they actually broke their femur head before they ever hit the floor. So we've learned a bunch of new things. What is the number one reason that older adults seek out chiropractic care?
Speaker 2:That is, low back and or neck pain, and according to the National Institute of Health, back pain in the US is the second most common neurological problem. The most common is headaches. Interesting.
Speaker 1:Well, dr Gordon, thank you, and I know you've done a lot of work on this because, as I said, we just shot a whole continuing education section on this which will be approved here shortly in the fall that's shortly. It takes time to get everything done, but by next year we'll have a geriatric program out for the field, and it was a beautiful program because Dr Gordon took some 650 slides and brought them down to 170 that we could use, and so I want to thank you for being on Activate your Practice and for everybody out there that's looking forward to caring for the geriatric patient. Please look at Activator, because you'll be safe and not sorry, thank you. Thank you, dr Fork.
