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
Transformative Power of Chiropractic: Dr. Kent Greenawalt on Innovation, Collaboration, and Opioid Detox Prevention
Can chiropractic care be the answer to your chronic back pain or a pivotal defense against opioid addiction? Join us for an inspiring conversation with Dr. Kent Greenawalt, the CEO of Foot Levelers, as he takes us through the transformative journey of his father, Monty. Surviving a near-fatal vaccine mishap during World War II, Monty found his path to recovery through chiropractic care, which ultimately led him to innovate life-changing products like spinal pelvic stabilizers and the revolutionary foam casting kit. This heartfelt story not only highlights the personal impact of chiropractic but also the broader implications for patient care.
We also explore the exciting collaborations behind the development of orthotics tailored for court sports, including pickleball and tennis, featuring insights from Dr. Christine Foss and the team at Ohio State University. Discover why chiropractic care should be your first line of defense against opioid dependency and how the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress has grown to become the largest organization in its field. With a focus on mutual respect and collaboration among chiropractors, this episode underscores the importance of research-proven techniques and the philosophy of love and service for achieving the best patient outcomes. Don’t miss this episode packed with innovation, collaborative triumphs, and a deep commitment to improving lives through chiropractic care.
Hi, I'm Dr Arlan Ford, the chairman and founder of Activator Methods International. Welcome to our Activate your Practice podcast. Today we have a special guest, dr Kent Greenewald, who is the CEO of Foot Levelers. Now our history goes back and we were just talking about it and I said I've known you, kent, now for about 60 years goes back, and we were just talking about it.
Speaker 1:I said I've known you, kent, now for about 60 years and yes, it's uh, it's been like, uh, we've been cousins. You know almost 100, because his dad practiced in iowa and I practiced in southern minnesota. So I first knew monty. And I'm just gonna ask you a foot levelers is 71 years old. What's the story?
Speaker 2:story. Well, thanks for asking, arlen, and really great to be here because you know you're a legend and it's just such a pleasure to spend time with you. You're such a great guy and you've done so much for the profession. But to answer your question, you know you may or may not know this, but Foot Levelers was born out of tragedy. It wasn't born out of success or anything like that. It was born out of strategy.
Speaker 2:And here's why when my father Monty they had World War II going on and he went into the military, well, they went through the standard military induction process and he got all the typical shots and physical examination stuff. But there was some bad vaccine shots and physical examination stuff, but there was some bad vaccine and 150 people died. Over 150 people died from this bad vaccine. It put my father Monty in an iron lung and for those of you you know, we know what they are. But for the younger group, you know it's kind of like a tanning bed that you lay in, that helps you breathe and he couldn't survive without that. So he tells the story how he'd lay in this iron lung for about six months and he tried to break a sweat, moving his little finger. He really couldn't hardly do anything. So he said he laid there and prayed to die. Well, that didn't work. Thank God I wouldn't be here and prayed to die. Well, that didn't work, thank God I wouldn't be here. But he said, you know, whatever did work, I dedicate my life to the rest of it. So one day my grandmother who lived to be 103, takes him into a local chiropractor. They carry him in. He has the adjustment and we had a miracle of chiropractic event happen. He walks out with help. Now remember, he's been in this lot of atrophy going on here, but he had a miracle adjustment that changed. He wanted to be a neurosurgeon. He changed from neurosurgery to chiropractic.
Speaker 2:Enrolled in Lincoln College of Chiropractic, got out in 1948. Had a practice in the basement of a bank no store window, no, anything. Yet it was buried. You could hardly even find the guy and that's where he had his practice. Next door was a young podiatrist and they became friends. They were buddies.
Speaker 2:When my father noticed that they had bad feet, badly pronated, he'd refer them to the podiatrist. Noticed that they had bad feet, badly pronated, he'd refer them to the podiatrist. The podiatrist would make an appliance for them. But unfortunately it made the patient worse, it aggravated their back pain. So my father went to his friend. He says listen, I love you, but you're wrecking my practice and I don't have much to wreck here. I've got to stop this and I don't have much to wreck here, I've got to stop.
Speaker 2:So he quit, referring to the podiatrist, and he said you know, if something can maybe hurt you, maybe we could do something differently and help you. So now you had a period of time with what I'll call the Thomas Edison experimentation Try it fail, try it fail, try it fail. Finally he discovered what I'll call the magic sauce and how to do this Kind of like. When they make Coca-Cola, they figure out how to do it special. And he did that.
Speaker 2:And the miracle of what he did is he found out that when you put this under a patient's foot it helped their adjustments hold better.
Speaker 2:He gave a good adjustment.
Speaker 2:He really thought he did everything proper, but when they got up, walked out, went to pay their bill, it wasn't holding.
Speaker 2:How did he know that? He had a plumb bob in his clinic? He had a mirror and, dr Fore, I know you know what they are At a plumb bob with a mirror. You could look at the mirror at a 45-degree angle and look behind and see your spine, and the patient would be lined up perfectly with the plumb bob. He'd have him walk around the table a couple times, have him stand in the mirror, look, the patient could see where their spine wasn't to where it used to be. And so that's how this started one patient at a time. And, by the way, arlen, back then they didn't call it an orthotic. A foot leveler's orthoticotic was called a spinal pelvic stabilizer, which actually in my opinion is a far better name than an orthotic. But in today's world, with the internet and that sort of thing, we do that. But that's how it was kind of a mishap of tragic situation that got the whole thing started well, but also I remember he invented the phone that you stepped in.
Speaker 1:Is that correct?
Speaker 2:No, that's 100% right. In the beginning he had something called the metascope and the doctor had to take a lot of measurements of the foot and, as Monty used to say, they had to think and by doing that it was not easy, it wasn't fun, whatever. He invented the foam casting kit. As you said. Yes and bang. Now it was easy and we could get a person in beverly hills, california, have their feet arrive in dubuque, iowa and make the custom-made spinal pelvic stabilizer I just happen to remember that, because he was famous for developing that foam thing that you stepped into, I guess you, what did you call it?
Speaker 2:well, we follow it. It's a phenolic foam, was the name of it. It's like floral foam, what they use at the florist. Okay, but uh, uh, we could only get it made at that point in time in Canada.
Speaker 1:Oh really.
Speaker 2:And, uh, that was very hard to get and he did get a patent on it also and so patented, revolutionizing that thing and and actually I don't know if you know this, arlen, but he really created the orthotic industry. There really wasn't anything really going on until Monty got going.
Speaker 1:I did not know that. Yes, well, you did some series of research on having an adjustment hole too. Yes, we did, I remember. Can you tell about that?
Speaker 2:Well, sure, we've had 37 different studies published, and you, among all the chiropractors in the world, probably have one of the best understandings of research that I know, and you know how important it is to have the peer reviewed, refereed, going over of the research. And we've done that. We have 37 studies now that are published that show, in a variety of ways, how the adjustment holds better, how you can have better athletic performance, how you can create stronger muscles, all these types of things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those are called clinical trials, yes, and they're not easy and they're not inexpensive. Yeah, you're right about that. So yeah, I do know, but I wanted to bring that out because you know there's a lot of people pushing orthotics out there. You know the good feet and all that kind of stuff. They have no data to show anything, and so that's why I brought that up.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a very good point, arlen, because you know there are a lot of people out there pushing orthotics and what they're doing is they're making something where one size fits all and it's off the shelf and, frankly, it doesn't do what the orthotic needs to do. It doesn't create the proper proprioceptive response.
Speaker 1:I've been. You know I read the advertisements and things that come out in corporate economics and so forth, but it looks like you've got a whole new line. We do Tell me about that.
Speaker 2:Well, what happened is that we, you know, I think there's a fitness craze going on in America right now.
Speaker 2:Covid caused a lot of people to start exercising at home, and that Peloton and all these different things people did to want to be more physically fit and, as a result, whether it's as basic as walking, which is a tremendous good form of exercise, to all the sports that involve cleats and running and side-to-side motion. So now we have orthotics for training, we have them for skiing, golf, the cleat sports, anything where you look at your shoe and it's got the things on the bottom. And we even have a slide afterwards which a lot of the people wear when they're done exercising and they just want to have more freedom in their foot and kind of relax. But, as you know, when that soft tissue is elongated, when it stretches out with normal activities of daily living use, no matter what we do, we can get things in proper alignment, but the moment it's not supported, it goes back out of alignment and that's why we developed all these things to keep the patient healthy.
Speaker 1:You know we as activator practitioners. It worked perfect with us because we're into the balance of the body, exactly. You know, making everything level and then adjusting it and making it whole. But I looked at this and you had them for pickleball.
Speaker 2:We did the court sports Exactly.
Speaker 1:That was pickleball and what else.
Speaker 2:Well, pickleball and tennis, see, we have a court orthotic, so that would be everywhere, from basketball court, you know, to pickleball court, to tennis court. So all those sports that require fast acceleration, de-acceleration, left and right motion, is what this orthotic is geared to to help with that specific activity.
Speaker 1:Who helped develop the pickleball one.
Speaker 2:Well, we have a director of education who is actually an Olympic doctor oh okay, Her name is Dr Christine Foss and through her contacts and through her patient base, et cetera, she's an active practice. In addition to working with us, we developed these through the input of many, many patients, trial and error and learning what they really needed to perform best. So it was a group effort. No one can raise their hand and say, well, I did that. That's not true. A lot of people had a lot of ideas to make it work.
Speaker 1:Well, there's a word that chiropractors have no idea what it means. It's called collaboration.
Speaker 1:I have been hot on collaboration here for about 10 years and be surprised how far you can get. We'll be coming out with this soon. But we got a call the other day from Ohio State University and they wanted to know how to put force into an animal because they're doing a study. And somebody referred them to us and here we are now with Ohio State University Medical School Congratulations, wonderful. Isn't that great for chiropractic? You bet that's beautiful. What's the Journal of Compensation Benefits?
Speaker 2:Well, as you know, in today's world there's a journal for about everything, and the Journal of Compensation Benefits is a publication that is read by the top HR professionals in our country. So, for example, if you were an HR professional for one of the Fortune 500 companies an HR professional for one of the Fortune 500 companies you'd probably get this publication to read about trends in HR proper hiring practices. Maybe there's legal issues and naturally, one of the things that HR is purposed with is providing the best benefit coverage possible for the least amount of cost. The CFOs want to make sure they're spending the money properly and the HR people want to make sure they're getting the right value. So recently I submitted a paper to that journal and the executive summary is basically this I stated all the facts about the number one cause of lost time worldwide and injury worldwide not USA worldwide and, as you know, it's back pain.
Speaker 2:That's the number one thing. And then I went through and addressed the common methods of treatment of this situation and all we did is cite reality. We talked about the use of painkillers, the use of muscle reluctance, the use of surgery, pt, all these things, and then we did a comparison of chiropractic. You probably know this, arlan, but you know that there are over 197 million people, 197 million opioid prescriptions written annually, annually. Do you know that of those, 20% are from back pain? So 20% of the 197 million, let's round it up to 200 million, just to make the math easy. So two times two is four, so you got 40 million people that get an opioid prescription. 20% of those get addicted. So two times four is eight, so now you got 8 million people that are addicted to opioids for back pain.
Speaker 2:So the crux of my article is basic. And then I cited how every year in Yankee Stadium, if you filled it up, that's how many people die from opioids. And it wasn't war against that, it was the suggestion to the HR department to say why not avoid a potentially deadly solution to a relatively simple problem and why don't we do chiropractic first at a very low cost with a highly proven, research-backed outcome, and if that doesn't work, make a referral and see if they might need something more invasive? But for heaven's sakes, let's stop hurting people, literally killing them, and let's do something that's less expensive than hundreds of thousands of dollars spinal surgery, which a lot of times half of them don't work Exactly. So that was the. I'm very proud of that article. That's a very prestigious journal and we were very clear what the right answer is, and that is go to a chiropractor.
Speaker 1:Now, you have always been a giver and I remember Monty was too back to the profession. I think I modeled myself after you guys because you have given a lot back. And I remember at the FCA when you did the million-dollar match yes, and how much money did you end up raising for the foundation?
Speaker 2:Well, we did the following we got a million dollars for the foundation that night with what I gave them, and then there was another million-dollar match I said I'd do. Of that we raised $600,000.
Speaker 1:That's what I was asking.
Speaker 2:There's still $400,000 left to do, which, as you know, we're at the Parker Seminar, and we hope to get that whittled down even more.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:We turned 70 years old a year ago and Don Peterson with Dynamic Chiropractic was interviewing us and he wanted to know what our annual or what our yearly lifetime lifetime rather contributions were. And we really didn't know, so we put somebody in all the file room for a couple weeks. Arlen we were shocked 34 million that's what I was. We gave 3434 million and we knew it was a lot. I thought it was more around 20. It was 34.
Speaker 1:That's fantastic. I mean, you know, so many times even the academics take the business world for granted, and so I have tried to educate the academics that say you know, yes, if you don't have any money you're not going to be doing anything, and you know an R01, it takes a lot of time, energy and so forth to submit to the government and there's a lot of. I mean. I remember getting the first NIH grant in chiropractic.
Speaker 2:I do too, and it was 1986.
Speaker 1:It was for $50,000. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven, and what I didn't know about research has cost me another $50,000 out of my own pocket to finish the project. However, chiropractic now was on NIH's list.
Speaker 2:That's right. And suddenly we had a new start. You were the pioneer and broke that ground. Yes, that's right.
Speaker 1:What's the future for chiropractic? What do you see?
Speaker 2:I think the future is really quite bright. The thing that's so nice is that we're starting to come into the limelight. You just gave an example. You just said how we're now on the NIH grant list. We were on the NASDAQ. You know, in New York you go to the NASDAQ and you see that big sign they have in Times Square, new York Stock Exchange. Well, sherry McAllister, our president, was on there because they had dedicated that day to chiropractic.
Speaker 2:Now think of this. Arlen, I grew up. The reason I even started the foundation is I was in a swimming class when I was probably seven or eight years old and they do a roll call and I raised my hand. They said Greenewald. I raised my hand. He says oh, yeah, your dad's the quack. And we've gone from quack. And I says oh, by the way, no, I says no, no, my dad's a chiropractor. He says no, yeah, yeah, quack. And I said that is bright.
Speaker 2:We're going to be doing a lot of things. You know we have 37 000 members of the foundation for chiropractic progress. So in my knowledge, I don't think there's any other chiropractic organization that has that many members. I agree, and they're in and we're getting. We're to. We just have a program with Forbes magazine now where they've kind of adopted us and we're going to be going on book tours with them. We have a PR agency in New York called FINN F-I-N-N, which is a very, very high level agency that's going to help carry the torch farther. What do we have to do? Not be so much a secret, but the one way I think we even get better. Arlen and this is in your heart and soul, I know by golly respect each other If we're licensed and we have the right to practice chiropractic. Love your brother or sister.
Speaker 1:You're 100% right. Remember when I said collaboration is a word that chiropractors don't know Exactly. Exactly when you collaborate, you learn a lot from the other side and the other side learns a lot from you, and pretty soon your friends and you're making the whole profession better.
Speaker 2:Exactly so. The best of us is ahead of us. It's one of my favorite sayings, and the way we do that is we continue to work together and continue to get the positive results, whether it's using a wonderful technique that's research-proven, like Activator, whether it's using wonderful spinal pelvic stabilizer orthotics that are research-driven and proven, whether it's nutrition, whatever it is that's going to get a better patient outcome here at Parker and you and I both knew Jim Parker very well, and one of his underlying themes is something we must never forget love and service. Love your patient, don't worry about the money. Love your patient, everything else takes care of itself. Get the best outcome.
Speaker 1:We're going to stop right there. Okay, that was perfect, okay.
