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
From Federal Agent to Spinal Health Champion
What happens when a career in federal law enforcement comes to an abrupt end? For Dr. Stacy Neal, a workplace injury that left her dependent on a walker transformed into an unexpected gateway to a fulfilling second career in chiropractic care.
As the newest member of Activator Methods International's Speakers Bureau, Dr. Neal shares her extraordinary journey from senior special agent with Homeland Security Investigations—where she tackled human trafficking, narcotics, and financial crimes—to becoming a passionate chiropractor. After sustaining a severe injury during training that led to eleven surgeries and an implanted spinal cord stimulator, it was a workers' compensation chiropractor who convinced her she could walk unassisted again. That life-changing experience inspired her complete career transformation at age 41.
Dr. Neal brings a unique investigative mindset to patient care, applying her background in criminology and forensics to clinical diagnosis. This approach has proven invaluable, as she recounts a powerful story of helping a patient who had been dismissed by both emergency room and urgent care providers. Her persistence in ordering appropriate imaging revealed the true source of the patient's debilitating pain, bringing not just physical relief but profound emotional peace.
Now serving as an adjunct professor at Northwestern University, Dr. Neal has come full circle from student to practitioner to educator. Her story embodies resilience and purpose—demonstrating how personal adversity can reveal unexpected calling. Through Activator Methods' new Speakers Bureau launching in 2025, associations and organizations can request Dr. Neal and other speakers at no cost to share their expertise and inspire others in the chiropractic community.
Have you considered how life's unexpected turns might be directing you toward your true purpose? Share your thoughts or reach out to learn more about Activator Methods' speakers for your next event.
Hello, I'm Dr Arlen Ford, the Chairman and Founder of Activator Methods International. We want to welcome you today to our podcast, activate your Practice. And Activator is starting something new After the first of the year, in 2025, we're going to have a group of speakers and we'll have a Speakers Bureau for anybody that needs a speaker for a state association, some kind of a meeting. They can call our headquarters and we'll put it on our website, and so the good thing about it is Activator is going to sponsor this, so it costs the state associations nothing, and we are very happy to do this because we know things are changing day by day and we want to keep everybody up to date on what's going on in the world of chiropractic.
Speaker 1:Now, today I'm very happy to introduce to you one of our new people that's on our speaker bureau, dr Stacey Neal. I got to know Stacey when she was a student at Northwestern and then she went in with Dr Kathy Bloom, who was a clinical advisory member of Activator, and so Stacey's got a variety of things we'll talk about here today, but she is really into Activator for sure, and also helping students. That's one of her big things. She's just a really great instructor. So how are you doing today, stacey?
Speaker 2:Thank you for that introduction, sir. I'm doing great. Thank you for asking. How are you?
Speaker 1:Well, let's start a little bit. I happen to know you, so I know all this about you, but I want everybody to know how you got into chiropractic. And so you had another career, didn't you before chiropractic?
Speaker 2:I did, yes, I did.
Speaker 1:And what was it Tell us about that?
Speaker 2:So I'm actually a retired senior special agent with the United States Department of Homeland Security Homeland Security Investigations, so I used to conduct criminal investigations of crimes that were committed against the United States, primarily human trafficking, narcotics investigations, financial investigations and child pornography.
Speaker 1:And tell me, how did you get from that kind of a background into chiropractic?
Speaker 2:background into chiropractic. Well, I decided to become a chiropractor after sustaining a work-related injury. Actually, I was injured while at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Facility, which is in Glencoe, georgia, during a training exercise actually, and the injury led to 11 surgeries in four years and included fusions, an implanted spinal cord stimulator, years of recovery and then, ultimately, disability retirement. I was 41 years old at the time and had served my entire life in some form of public service, but it was my workers' compensation chiropractor, actually, who had convinced me that I could walk again without the aid of a walker or a cane, and he would say things like oh, hey, go leave your cane at the door. Go leave your cane at the door. And before you knew it, I left that darn cane at the door and they called me and said hey, come pick up your cane. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:Now are you applying some of the skills you learned in your other job-related industry to chiropractic oh my gosh, I am. Um, I think the biggest thing is being an investigator. So for me, my entire life has been in some form of investigations. So I have my Bachelor of Science in Criminal Justice and Criminology, my Master of Science in Criminal Justice with an emphasis in forensics. I was a medical legal death investigator, a firefighter, so my past life was all in investigations. So to be able to be able to take that investigations and build upon it and use it to help patients, I think is is that's my true passion. I am a diatognition at heart, so that's what I love.
Speaker 1:A dia, what? I didn't get that word, diatognition. So that's what I love A diet, what Diet I?
Speaker 2:didn't get that word Diet technician.
Speaker 1:A diet technician.
Speaker 2:Okay, let me ask you this If you were to describe yourself in four words, what would they be and why? If I could describe myself in four words, it would be Christian, wife, nurturer and chiropractor. Christian defines me, I believe it is having a heart that is willing to accept God's gift of grace and salvation through faith. Being a wife means that I'm living my life where I'm woven, together with my husband, so we have shared dreams, goals and aspirations. But a nurturer that offers food, shelter, praise, training, and that's really my bread and butter. I love my children, my grandchildren, my nieces and nephews and all of my bonus kids too. I love to feed them, dote on them whenever I get a chance. But last but not least, I'm a chiropractor. I'm a clinician who focuses on the body's ability to help heal itself. I take my Hippocratic oath seriously and dutifully serve my patients to the best of my ability, always. What aspect?
Speaker 1:in chiropractic do you find the most challenging?
Speaker 2:ways. What aspect in chiropractic do you find the most challenging? The aspect I think the one that I find most challenging is insurance. For sure, Working with insurance companies is difficult, but primarily with the centers of Medicare and Medicaid services. I think I'm thankful for our staff who help keep us informed on the latest requirements, but I would like to see chiropractors treated the same, or with the same amount of respect at least, as other professionals in the healthcare industry. I know our goals are the same, or at least they should be First, do no harm and serve with rigor. So I think if all of our goals are the same, then there should be some similance across the board.
Speaker 1:Tell me about a time that you disagreed with another clinician.
Speaker 2:Never disagreed specifically with a clinician, but I do find it challenging when another health care provider does not agree with chiropractic and I put that in quotations but or when they tell a patient to avoid chiropractic when they're in their care. I did have a case where, just recently actually, where a patient came into the clinic, he was like flexed forward all the way at 90 degrees, could not stand, and I was able to treat him, get him to at least stand up a little bit, get him to to be able to walk around the clinic a little bit more with a little more ease. But I did tell him if he were a sense he needed to go to the ER and my recommendation was that he get an MRI so that we can see what was going on. He had laid on a foam roller on his back on the floor and tried to give himself some cavitation and couldn't get up off the floor. After that, when he left my clinic, he went home and then he felt like, oh my gosh, I'm worsening. I literally I cannot sleep. So he drove himself to the ER. When he got to the ER, they refused to do an MRI and they told him well, we don't need an MRI to see a hot disc. So they gave, put him on pain medication and some muscle relaxants. He didn't get better.
Speaker 2:The next morning he went to urgent care and he was like well, I'm just going to go to a different place because the ER didn't give me an MRI. He tells urgent care I, I need an MRI, I need to find out what's going on with my back. And urgent care says, well, you have medical assistance and so we're not going to order an MRI for you. Go home and continue to take your pain medicine and maybe don't go to the chiropractor. Well, he came back in to see me the following day.
Speaker 2:I ordered him an MRI and it come to find out he had, you know, multi-level discs, were, you know, bulging, and he had osteoarthritis and some spurring. You can tell that he had some nerve impingement. But the calm that washed over that man's face when he learned that there wasn't anything that was killing him, he wasn't dying, he could get better, it was amazing to see that happen. And so, no, nothing grim, no diagnosis was grim in this case, but it helped guide the patient's care. So I feel like we still need to do better with interpersonal relationships. In this case it wasn't bad, but helping him made a difference. There was another time with blood clots. I mean it's just absolutely absurd to see that there's not a lot of love for chiropractors, it seems sometimes.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, you have to be around like me for over 50 years to see that for sure, and it has changed dramatically from when I first started. But most of that, somebody asked me one day why is that that we're accepted more today? Well, the answer to that is really quite simple we have data, and when you have data and you have papers, like Activator has really been fortunate. In the last four papers that we've published. They've been published in Scientific Report, which is a branch of Nature, and so when you get to the Nature level, that's about as high as you can get. But we had a call from Ohio State University the other day that they wanted us to participate in a research program because they saw that we had been published in nature, and so I think that's what's helped us gain credibility is being published in the scientific journals. How did you get involved with Activator?
Speaker 2:Oh well, how I got involved. Actually I did my first with the trimesters. There are 10 with Northwestern I'm not sure if it's the same across the board, but with T1, originally starting chiropractic school, I met up with a couple of the professors who said that, knowing I had an injury, that I might be interested in activator. I didn't know what it was at all, I had never heard of it, I had never been adjusted by activator, and then I came and seen Dr Kathy Bloom's clinic and I fell in love. I was like what is this tool? How is this working? I just couldn't even fathom that this could work, and so I really started to investigate it and I kind of became a little thorn in Dr Kathy's side. I would follow her around like a puppy.
Speaker 2:I came T1, T3. I probably came T4. I came back at T6. And then I wanted to work for her and become an intern, and that was really helpful because I stuck around. I was able to be here for T8, 9, and 10. And then she asked me if I wanted to work with her. I said yes, of course I do. So that's how I came to Activator.
Speaker 1:And you started from that with Kathy to teaching a class at Northwestern today. Is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's correct. I currently am an adjunct professor with Northwestern and I'm loving it, absolutely loving it. Tomorrow's our final, so it's going to be exciting.
Speaker 1:Well, that's quite a journey, and I think you're also slated to teach for the I guess you call it the homecoming, northwestern's homecoming in February, is that correct?
Speaker 2:Yes, that's correct. Yeah, yeah, they asked if I could put something together that would kind of highlight what an activator clinic looks like. So it'll be nice to show them that we are the same in, you know, in our diatognition. You know, to kind of diagnose a patient is the same, it's just the protocol is different.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 1:So, it'll be nice to be able to highlight that and you know, I just want to say again, here's a story of somebody that came up through a different profession completely and then was unable to continue, switched professions and became very successful and, by the way, her students love her at Northwestern. I've talked to a couple of them and they're so excited to have her teaching now and we're really looking forward to it teaching now and we're really looking forward to it. So just remember, activator Methods has a new speaking bureau and one of the instructors that you can tap is Dr Stacey Neal from Minnesota. So, stacey, thank you for your time today and we're looking forward to the future.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Thank you for having me, sir.
