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
What Happens When We Listen to the Spine-Brain Connection?
The connection between your spine and brain is far more profound than conventional medicine has recognized. In this eye-opening conversation, Dr. Heidi Haavik, Director of Research at New Zealand College of Chiropractic, shares revolutionary findings from 24 years of neuroscience research that completely transform our understanding of how chiropractic care works.
Forget what you thought you knew about chiropractic. Those old theories about "relieving pressure from pinched nerves" have given way to a sophisticated brain-centered model. Dr. Haavik's research team has consistently demonstrated that spinal adjustments directly change brain function, regardless of where along the spine the adjustment occurs. "We had to really rethink the entire model," she explains, "because it doesn't seem to be the nerve roots, but we're directly changing the brain when we're adjusting subluxated segments."
The mechanism? High-velocity, low-amplitude thrusts (whether from Activator instruments or manual techniques) stretch deep spinal muscles that have become atrophied around dysfunctional segments. These muscles play a crucial role in proprioception - your brain's awareness of body position. When they're not communicating properly, your brain operates on an incomplete "story" about what's happening in your body, potentially leading to countless downstream effects.
This explains why chiropractic benefits extend far beyond pain relief. Recent clinical trials reveal improvements in fatigue, anxiety, depression, and even how the brain processes sensory information like sound and visual input. Perhaps most remarkable are multiple studies showing significant rehabilitation benefits for chronic stroke survivors - an ironic development for a profession once wrongly accused of causing strokes.
For those considering chiropractic care, Dr. Haavik recommends at least three months of consistent visits. "Some of the neuroplastic brain changes don't necessarily show up straight away," she notes. "Some change immediately, but some you only see at about 12 weeks." Looking ahead, she's excited about emerging technologies that will make neurological assessment more accessible in chiropractic offices, along with big data initiatives that will better identify which populations benefit most from care.
Want to understand how your spine influences your brain and overall health? This conversation illuminates the science behind what chiropractors have observed clinically for decades - that spinal care influences far more than just back pain.
Hi, I'm Dr Arlen Frewer, the Chairman and Founder of Activator Methods International. Welcome to our podcast Activate your Practice. And today I'm really honored and happy to have the Vice Chairman, I guess, or the Dean of Research at the New Zealand College of Chiropractor, dr Heidi Helbig and Dr Helbig welcome.
Speaker 2:Thank you, alan. It's really really delightful to sit and talk to you. I could talk to you all day, as you know.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, we've known each other for several years and I've watched Heidi grow and I've seen her production and the production, I think, is the word, because she now has 35 associates, she told me, at the New Zealand College, working in the research lab, and so they're producing things that I'm just really excited about. We'll talk about them. You've done some groundbreaking research in what chiropractic care does to the brain, and so what first led you to this?
Speaker 2:I suppose I've always had a bit of a curious mind and so I graduated and I was adjusting and seeing these changes happening in practice and babies and animals and like it doesn't seem to just be a placebo effect. But the answers that we had back in I graduated in 99, the answers we had back then were very limited to the mechanisms and we still had this old theory that we were relieving pressure off squashed nerve roots. But it didn't really make a lot of physiological sense and there was no evidence to support that that was the right way. So we started to look at, you know, doing some research, looking at answering that question of what is it? How does it actually work If we're not relieving pressure off a squashed nerve root? What is it?
Speaker 2:And what we found pretty early on is we were finding direct changes in the brain and it didn't seem to matter where we were adjusting. We were getting these consistent findings in the brain. We were not finding any changes in the spinal cord level or even the brainstem level. So we had to really rethink the entire model really early on, because it doesn't seem to be that it's the nerve roots but we're directly changing the brain when we're adjusting subluxated segments. So that got me hooked. That was it. I knew we'd discovered something and this is in the early 2000s that was going to make a big difference to chiropractors people all around the world. So from then on I was hooked because I needed to know more.
Speaker 1:Well, it's interesting when you start seeing something happen and you don't know what it is, then that makes your curiosity go crazy.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and I think I understand that.
Speaker 1:Can you break down in simple terms how spinal adjustments influence the brain function and overall health?
Speaker 2:So what we've discovered over the last 24 years now of work is that one of the main ways that a chiropractic adjustment works especially if we're talking about the high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust so, for example, an activator or a manual adjustment or a drop piece or any high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, we know it stretches the deep muscles around that subluxated segment. So what we know happens with that subluxated segment too is that over time those little muscles can atrophy. They become fatty, infiltrated. There's all this maladaptive plastic change. It's not pathology per se, but these little muscles don't communicate with the brain anymore and it turns out that they're actually really important. Their function is really important for the brain to actually know what's going on in the core of the body. So this isn't just impacting the function of these little muscles which we activate with a high velocity, latitude, thrust, that them being able to that stretch receptor speaking to the brain seems to be important for the brain to realize where your arms and legs are. You know where all your muscles are, how they're functioning. But not just that.
Speaker 2:We've also shown in studies that it impacts how your brain interprets things like sound and visual information. You know and this goes right back to Harvey Lillard and the first adjustment right, they were always laughing at. Well, it's not possible to affect the ears with the spine. But it's not that we're affecting the ears, because the sound is coming in through the ears and going to the temporal lobe, the primary auditory cortex. But then when the brain starts to decide well, where is this sound coming from? You know, to sound localize, you need to know where you are to be able to localize a sound, and then the brain needs to make a decision Well, is this important to me? What do I need to do about it? So what we think we're actually impacting is that integration of all of the sensory inputs to the body, both from inside your body and from outside your body, and more accurately interpret what's going on and therefore more appropriately respond to whatever you're doing. So this can impact pretty much anything and it explains so much that we see in practice as chiropractors.
Speaker 1:Well, it looks to me like some of the old philosophy things are right, but they just didn't know the mechanism.
Speaker 2:I know, isn't it funny? Yeah, I know, I've laughed with my professor, bernadette Murphy, who was my PhD supervisor, many times because we never set out to prove BJ and DD right, but they were pretty spot on.
Speaker 1:Well, it sounds like, though we need to know why, yeah.
Speaker 2:I think it makes a big difference because, for example, if you designed a clinical study and quite a few clinical trials have been designed and then it looks like chiropractic doesn't work, but the thing is we don't know yet exactly how your subluxations are going to impact you symptom-wise. So you might enter my study on tinnitus and Alex might enter our study on tinnitus and we start adjusting both of you. But your digestion might improve and your sound and auditory processing might improve, but your tinnitus might not, and Alex might have less headaches and feel more energy and have less depression, but his tinnitus doesn't respond. So the study that's only looking at tinnitus outcomes is going to be a negative outcome. It's going to say chiropractic doesn't work because we haven't measured the right outcomes for you. If that makes sense, yes. So I think our future lies in big data, which is something that we're working on now, especially um, I don't know if you've heard of the organization chiropractic future no, it's a it's a voluntary organization.
Speaker 2:I don't know how I'm part of that or how I've managed to get in the position I'm in, but I've been working with them for three years now and we're literally looking at lots of different things. It's about the future of the profession. So how can we collectively come together? Ignore our disagreements, but come together about what we do agree on?
Speaker 2:And one of the big projects we're working on is this big data gathering the electronic, your electronic health records. Because if we start to get thousands of chiropractors' data, that means millions of patients we should then be able to see that, say, maybe 40% of people that come and see chiropractors, they benefit with their sleep. There might be another 60 might benefit with their auditory, visual processing. You might have a 90% improvement in back pain, neck pain, headache type things. But there's all these other benefits that we're not finding. If you're specifically going out there with a clinical trial because we haven't understood the mechanisms, and understanding how it works makes it easier then to design the right studies that will pick up on the actual benefits that are happening and that chiropractors see in their practices.
Speaker 1:Now you also say that it can impact neuroplasticity. I think you better tell us what neuroplasticity is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I used to talk about our research as being the contemporary model of chiropractic and it was a neuroplasticity model. But most chiropractors can't even pronounce neuroplasticity, so if you're one of those, don't worry about it. We now just call it the brain model. Makes it easier. But what's really exciting about the brain is even into adulthood and we didn't know this up till the 80s we didn't really know that the brain could continue to develop and change, and it does it can develop and change, especially if it's something that you're paying a lot of attention to and if you get good rest, because you need to consolidate those memories and you need alertness. So you need alertness and paying attention, and I think that's what's so remarkable about the adjustment is that it wakes you up. I think it's that it's a natural signal, but it's an unusual signal, if that makes sense. You know that adjustment and so it seems to wake up the brain's alertness systems. We call it the salience network and we can get into that if you like. But it sort of wakes up and it seems to then recalibrate, because one of the other things that we found in the last 20 years in neuroscience is that the brain likes to operate on its own story, its own memory, because if it pays attention to what's actually going on, all the millions of data inputs that are coming in all the time, it would take too much energy. So the brain creates a story about what's going on inside us and it lives off that.
Speaker 2:But this is where it can go wrong, because if the story is you know, because if it doesn't know what's happening in the spine because those little muscles aren't talking to the brain around the subluxated segments, then you don't know where the core of your body is, then all of a sudden you might not be sending the right messages to your arm muscles or your leg muscles and over time, you know, this can mean that you get a bit of pulling in the wrong parts, then you get microtraumas and then you can get inflammation and then you can get pain. So you might, for example, end up with chronic elbow pain or chronic knee pain, and it's actually a spinal subluxation problem and that isn't being communicated to the brain. So when the brain is sending messages to the elbow or the knee muscles, it's getting it wrong because obviously arms and legs attach to the spine.
Speaker 1:Well, many people think of chiropractic care as only in terms of pain relief.
Speaker 2:I know they do, don't they?
Speaker 2:And it's a really sad thing, especially again with the latest findings, when we're seeing things like improved accuracy and speed of interpreting sound and visual information.
Speaker 2:I mean, that's not, you know, a pain, it's not an aspect of pain seen in the more recent studies. I think because we are better understanding what we're doing and the impact it's having on the brain and then knowing the brain better. We've designed different studies, asking different questions and one of the more recent randomized controlled trials we did in the UK looking at four weeks of chiropractic care. We were recording these conversations in the brain, so these different networks. But we were also finding outcomes like improvements in fatigue levels, improvements in anxiety and improvements in depression, alongside improvements in pain. So there is more to chiropractic care than back pain, neck pain and headaches. But I think we fell into that trap because the clinical trials on the back pain, neck pain and headaches were bound to show up positive, because that's where we're directing our input, but we're not picking up on all of these extraneous changes until we start looking at the big data is my suspicion anyway.
Speaker 1:There are many specific conditions where chiropractic care shows promise, but it isn't widely recognized. That's probably because there's no data.
Speaker 2:Well, we've got very limited data and you know, alan, you know that I mean I don't know many people like you out there that actually you know, put funding into research because it's so important we don't have there's no pharmaceutical company that really wants to fund chiropractic research. So if we're going to do it, we're the ones that have to do it and it's very expensive. So I think we lack research support. Again, for those of you out there, if you want to help support, check out that chiropracticfutureorg. I'm a real believer that if we work together, collectively, we can make more happen. Right, we're stronger together.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think that's chiropracticfutureorg, chiropracticfutureorg.
Speaker 2:Thank you for that.
Speaker 1:What new research, innovation and chiropractic neurosciences are you most excited about right now?
Speaker 2:Well, right now I have about 47 projects on the go at the moment, but one I'm really excited about is a new baby study that we're doing. So we've got this amazing scientist coming up. She's doing her PhD now at Auckland University I'm blessed enough to be her co-supervisor and she's doing, I think, the world's first newborn baby chiropractic study where we're measuring both brain outcomes. So we're going to be measuring whole head EEG. We're also doing this functional near infrared spectrometry, which is blood oxygenation across the forehead of the baby's brain. We're also going to be monitoring their health outcomes.
Speaker 2:The babies that we're selecting for the study are these ones with some sort of asymmetry. You know the typical baby that comes to see a chiropractor because they can't breastfeed on one side or they can't turn their head one way, or they have that banana shape in their whole body or they've got the odd shape and skulls and things like that. So they're the babies that we're bringing on board and we're going to be looking at their biomechanics, their posture, if, if there are any changes to that, and we're looking at their breastfeeding so and their baby's quality of life, according to to mums, as well as the brain changes.
Speaker 1:We were talking before we started the interview and I mentioned to you that we had, by accident, developed a new pediatric tip. I know and I'm so excited about it. It was so funny because there was a lady in Italy that did the research on this and she said when a baby is zero to 90 days old, they should never have more than 20 newtons of force put into the Atlas. And we had just been working with Ted Carrick putting so many newtons of force into a rat and it happened to be 20 newtons.
Speaker 1:And so we developed a 3D printer to do the printing of the tip. That would do just 20 newtons. So we're going to be sending you an activator with a pediatric tip. So this person that's doing her study, she can feel free and comfortable to use that without harming a baby at all. So the results will be very interesting.
Speaker 2:Oh, I really can't wait, because I think that's a big deal. Like again, because if you're not using an activator like that, which I didn't even know existed until I talked to you today, you're not putting in the same sort of high-velocity force, correct?
Speaker 1:And you know, reproducible.
Speaker 2:I know.
Speaker 1:That's the big. Thing.
Speaker 2:That's why we like to use it in our nature study, because of that reproducibility.
Speaker 1:Well, and you know, now that we have an electronic instrument that's got an auto processor. So the guys at Baylor Medical School were just blown away that they could get it that accurate, because with the old mechanical ones we couldn't do that. So now we can.
Speaker 2:Now you're doing great things, Alan.
Speaker 1:If you could see one major shift in how the medical and scientific community is view chiropractic care, what would it be?
Speaker 2:I'm hoping they'll just pay attention because there's a lot more research coming out and it's coming out quite fast, faster than we've ever been able to in the past.
Speaker 2:There's new PhDs popping up left, right and centre. I can't even keep track and I thought I was doing quite well keeping track on what's out there in the research community in chiropractic. So I'm hoping that they will see at least the brain changes because if you can see the neuroplastic effect that we have and it's a very positive neuroplastic effect and there's more and more of this science coming out it's been coming out for 25 years now, but now there's more and more clinical trials coming out with the clinical outcomes alongside these neuroplastic brain changes. If they can see that, it would open up, like we've done studies, for example, I think we've done about five studies now and at least three of them were clinical trials in chronic stroke survivors. Like there are a lot of people out there that really need access to chiropractic care and you'll remember the days that we were blamed for causing the strokes. Not only do we not cause these strokes, but we could have a tremendous impact in improving their rehabilitation outcomes. But we could have a tremendous impact in improving their rehabilitation outcomes.
Speaker 1:I took care of, you know, for years in practice. I practiced 25 years, you know, in a small farming town in Minnesota and we had people come in and they were post-stroke people and we would have them doing things that their medical doctors never thought they would ever do again. And so they were lined up. You know it was like we'd have stroke afternoon, you know everybody could, but they'd all sit around and tell each other about how they were and when they started and what happened, and so we knew that there were the results that could be, could be having.
Speaker 2:I had some of my research team members in tears watching these human, because some of them are bioengineers. You know they're not necessarily used to working with human beings like we chiropractors are, and they were in tears looking at the life that we were giving back to these people. That sort of stuff isn't captured in a research article, so I love listening to them tell me these stories.
Speaker 1:Right, and you know I have a real goal in mind here, you know, because the geriatric population is going to be, you know, half the United States is going to be over 65 in 2030. You can't put everybody in a nursing home because we don't have that many, and so we've got to keep them mobile.
Speaker 2:And one of the best things I would imagine is going to be chiropractic care.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think that's where we really have a role to play of keeping those people so they can get around and do things on their own.
Speaker 2:Because most of these neurodegenerative disorders, if we can have a positive neuroplastic effect on the brain, well, that's Huntington's, that's Parkinson's, and I'm not necessarily saying or suggesting that we might be curing any of these people, but we can improve their quality of life and their functional ability. That I think we can make a difference.
Speaker 1:How can people determine if chiropractic care is right for them, and then what should they look for for a good practitioner?
Speaker 2:I'll answer the second part first. I think the best thing with chiropractic is to give it a go, because it's so impossible to know exactly what kind of symptoms, like we talked about before, that your particular spinal dysfunction is causing for you. So you might come in and see a chiropractor for reasons X, y and Z, but you might have A B and C change. I also think that it would be worthwhile giving it a go for at least three months and have at least two or three visits a week, because we now know we're working on these little muscles close to the spine. We know, for example, that we're really exercising those little muscles back into proper function. If they've atrophied in certain areas and there's full of fatty infiltration, we need to exercise those muscles back into function to be able to communicate with the brain. And we've seen this in some of our research studies that some of the neuroplastic brain changes don't necessarily show up straight away, but they do start showing up. Some of them change, some change immediately, but some only. You only see them at about 12 weeks. So that's why I'd say give it, give it at least 12 weeks and and several visits so that you can and when I mean exercise. I really mean checking and adjusting these subluxated segments, these dysfunctional segments where we know these little muscles have atrophied. And I'd also try and see someone that gels with you.
Speaker 2:I think that's really important, that that connection between the two of you, between you and your chiropractor very important, so much so I'm even designing a study at the moment, alan, where I finally ended up now with two whole head EEG systems so I can actually record from the patient at the same time as I can record from the doctor. And we know that there are studies like, for example, with meditation or where you've got a mama and a newborn baby. If mama plays with the baby, the baby's brain synchronizes with mom, and I have a feeling that this is what differentiates really good chiropractors from those that are maybe just mechanical, that don't really care. But if you get a really good chiropractor, they give a shit. And if you're connecting up then the patient with the chiropractor, I literally want to see if the patient's brain synchronizes with the doctor's, because that wouldn't surprise me either.
Speaker 1:That would be an interesting study, wouldn't it? You know we have, or I do have a theory that if we get people doing the same thing, so we have some standardization. Yep, so we now have 1,200 proficiency-rated activator practitioners. Do they do other things? Of course you know that's normal, but they do have a basic activator background. Last month, and we have the data to show this, we sent 17,000 new people to those activator practitioners.
Speaker 2:Just because they 17,000.
Speaker 1:17,000 last month, and so we now know that they're looking, because 96% of people don't go into a chiropractor's office because they don't want to get their neck cracked. That's just a known thing. That's why multidisciplinary practice is ever so popular and then once they put activator in the multidisciplinary, then they're home free because they don't get hurt, and so so you're starting with big data now. Well, yes, didn't even know it. We need to do some collaborations on this Exactly, I need that data.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:Are there lifestyle changes or habits that can complement chiropractic care to improve brain function?
Speaker 2:Yeah, big time, big time. There's a lot you can do. We know sleep it's like a dishwasher for the brain. So if you want to clear out toxins, if you get into deep sleep. So if you want to clear out toxins, if you get into deep sleep, there's a real classic study that's basically shown that you've got this glymphatic system now that can clean out the brains all the toxins and of course, the toxin buildup is quite well known to be influencing the neuroinflammation which is very known to be part of most of these chronic neurodegenerative disorders that we're getting more and more of these days. There's a lot of supplements that can help as well with nutrition that again can reduce inflammation. Very, very important. Some really excellent products that can help again specifically sharpen the mind. Exercise again. If you could bottle actual physical exercise it would be the wonder drug of the century again for the brain. But not too much, but not too little either.
Speaker 1:Well see, I have a perfect solution for that. I have two miniature schnauzers.
Speaker 2:Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1:And they have to be walked every day, exactly, and so they're not too big and they don't want to go miles, and so it works just right to go around a few blocks and everything. Exactly what we have to. I get my exercise.
Speaker 2:We have two little dogs.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that's why somebody said well, why do you keep those dogs? And I said well, number one, they're our children. Number two they keep me exercising.
Speaker 2:It's the unconditional love and getting me outside exercising every day. Exactly, I 100% agree, exactly.
Speaker 1:And so, what do you think the research has taught you about your own life?
Speaker 2:research has taught you about your own life. Well, being a scientist has helped me a lot, I think, because I'm not very good at listening to what anyone else tells me to do. I always have to double check it in the literature. But I met this really clever functional medicine doctor and he got me monitoring my own health with data, and that's the first person I actually listened to when he was telling me I was overdoing it.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, my wife will tell you that I'm a hypochondriac, you know. So I wear my watch to tell my blood oxygen level and so forth, and so everything I can measure. You know I have a patch so I can check my blood sugar and you know everything.
Speaker 1:But you know, I think it's good because, you know, one of our doctors wrote a book on how to get healthy and the number two thing was quit eating out. And I thought he was crazy until I put on a blood sugar monitor because when you eat out you don't know what you're getting and I thought I was eating salads.
Speaker 1:Well, it was the dressing in this salad and it would spike my blood sugar and I was like holy cow. We don't even know what we're doing to ourselves well, it gives you that responsibility back on.
Speaker 2:You, doesn't?
Speaker 1:it. Yes, well now, if you take responsibility yourself for your own health, yes, yeah yeah, and I needed data for that.
Speaker 2:So I wasn't good at just listening to someone to tell me what I should do, what the numbers. I have to look and see what the numbers are Well.
Speaker 1:What do you see? The future now? You know, I told you when we were talking about I have a dream of a robotic arm going down the spine, you know, telling where the subluxations are, and then a robotic instrument comes out and adjusts the spine. I think that's doable. I think well like you said, you've got enough people surrounding you that you can actually look at something like this and say it's possible.
Speaker 2:We're looking at wearable technology, and that's where I see the future.
Speaker 2:What kind Wearable technology, so all kinds of wearable technology. It's like you're saying with your little watches, but there's a lot of new technology, Like I've got some amazing bioengineers that work in my lab in New Zealand and there's all sorts of new technology where and it's really inexpensive stuff and it's again for the actual consumer, so this shouldn't cost the chiropractor anything. But if we can get this data from a lot of this wearable technology, along with the electronic health records, so that you're following what the chiropractor's doing, how they're doing it, what techniques they're using with the patients giving the patient-reported outcomes, and then we're getting this wearable technology. We're even working on things like a real simple cap that you can pop on the head with literally saline sponges, so you literally wet sponges and stick them in and you could do a five-minute recording in your office again inexpensively, works, with your iPhone, and from that five-minute recording of EEG, which again, your staff members should be able to do for you on for your patients on a regular basis, it can tell you so much, it's not even funny.
Speaker 2:So this is where I think the future lies in this big data and using a lot of the wearable technology, really sort of you know, low cost, inexpensive stuff, like it can fit on your glasses and on your bra strap and things like that. That's where I think we'll be able to in the future, using AI and these smart computers picking patterns. I know there's some dangers with AI as well, but it can be utilised, Technology can be utilised and it can give us a lot of information. So your booth, your adjustment booth, it's not too far-fetched. I just want this little thing coming down going. So your booth, your adjustment booth, it's not too far-fetched. I just want this little thing coming down going, monitoring your EEG for five minutes, you know, and you filling out a few forms, and then it can do its thing.
Speaker 1:Well, I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this interview, because we were thinking like-minded here and I think that well, things have come today that can work like this. You know, we're in a day and age where we've got that kind of equipment to do the job Things are changing. Yes, and so thank you so much. I can't thank you enough for being on the podcast and I hope even the people out there that aren't doctors, even the patients out there, got something out of this.
Speaker 2:Me too. I hope so too. I hope you've enjoyed it, and I've certainly enjoyed it, thank you so much for doing it. Yeah, thank you.
