Bed BACK and Beyond
Sharing positive stories of recovery after a herniated disc or other spinal cord injury. Join herniated disc champion CK as she has informative and encouraging conversations with other back injury survivors. From people who elected to have back surgery (microdiscectomy, laminectomy, fusion, etc) to those who used more conservative methods, plus all things in between, join our podcast, and let's talk about how life can move beyond the bed after injury. If you are dealing with the isolation and despair that often accompanies a serious back or neck injury, then you'll love being a part of these stories of hope and recovery.
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Bed BACK and Beyond
How To Heal A Herniated Disc Without Surgery: Dr Jeff's Aproach
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S3009 Join us for an enlightening conversation with Dr. Jeff, the trailblazer behind High Performance Spine, as he shares his transformative journey from a devastating back injury to revolutionizing non-surgical back pain treatments. Dr. Jeff's story is not just about overcoming personal adversity; it's about breaking new ground in the understanding and treatment of herniated discs. We unpack the fascinating insights from a 2010 study that changed the game by revealing how specific movement patterns and increased blood flow can dramatically improve disc conditions. This episode promises to equip you with knowledge that challenges the status quo of conventional therapies and offers hope to those burdened by chronic pain.
Learn how innovative remote programs have changed the lives of people worldwide, including an inspiring story from Australia. Discover the power of addressing faulty movements and promoting healing through targeted exercises, even from the comfort of home. Dr. Jeff's methods have been put to the test with remarkable success, proving that recovery is possible without invasive procedures. We delve into stories of individuals who found relief after years of pain, highlighting the critical role of personalized treatments and the potential for complete recovery without surgery.
We also explore the holistic elements essential for long-term back pain recovery. Dr. Jeff discusses the importance diet, mindset, and how happiness are is integral to reducing inflammation and promoting healing. With a bold promise of improvement or your money back, Dr. Jeff's program stands as a beacon of hope for those who have exhausted all other options. This episode is a must-listen for anyone seeking a new perspective on healing and recovery, offering encouragement and empowerment to reclaim a pain-free life.
Vist www.highperformancespine.com for more information.
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Healing Herniated Discs Without Surgery
Speaker 1Because, like you said, you saw me on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube. I don't know where they see us but I always say you don't call the TikTok doctor first, right, you're calling him last and you might not call him until you're so desperate, you don't know what to do anymore. Like I'll call that guy that's who I get, by the way but what that means is everybody that is on my program has had back pain for a long time and tried everything before they finally called me right. So my point is the people you see on there in the case studies are people just like you. What we do is we help people that have not helped anywhere else.
Speaker 2Welcome to Bed Back and Beyond, sharing positive stories of recovery from serious back or neck injury. Stories of recovery from serious back or neck injury. Your host is CK, a fellow champion, who draws on her own experience with herniated disc surgery. Join her as she talks with others who have overcome the physical and emotional trauma of a painful injury and discover for yourself how you can find hope and encouragement in recovery.
Speaker 3Hi and welcome to Bed Back and Beyond. On today's episode, I am joined by Dr Jeff. I'm very excited to have him on the show. He is the founder of High Performance Spine. He has a TikTok channel, which is where I found him, and he has a wealth of information to share about healing your herniated disc or back pain without surgery. Dr Jeff, thank you so much for being on my podcast.
Speaker 1And thank you for having me and I love the name Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3Yes.
Speaker 1Is that because, when you had back pain, you were laying in bed?
Speaker 3Exactly Wow. And then the beyond is getting better. You were laying in bed Exactly Wow.
Speaker 1And then the beyond is getting better, right? Yeah, of course, Of course.
Speaker 3Living happy, vibrant, pain-free active life, exactly which is what we want. Now you have a personal story of back injury, correct?
Speaker 1I did. I did. Do you want to hear the whole story? Because it's a long story, but I'll tell you.
Speaker 1It's important for everybody to understand why we do what we do, because what we do is I don't want to say it's different, but it's not traditional, but it's not like esoteric there's no crystals or anything like that it's really conventional techniques that you can do at home to eliminate your back pain.
Speaker 1So in 1988, I jumped off a cliff into water and when I jumped off the cliff, from the top of the cliff into the water, it was 85 feet. And we did this for fun, because we thought it was a good idea. And when you go from 85 feet, by the time you hit the water you're going 65 miles an hour. So it's kind of like a little car crash, like you're really going to hit the water fast and when you land you want to go in straight, absolutely as straight as you can, because you know you're going pretty fast. But what I did is I landed my feet a little bit in front of me and I jammed my sacrum into my L5 vertebrae and I squashed the disc. And the problem is I was very young and very naive and I thought it would get better and it did not get better and I tried some physical therapy and I tried a little bit of chiropractic.
Speaker 1It didn't work. And then eventually I found a chiropractor that was doing some work on the disc, and disc related problems are different than, say, sprain, strain, pull the muscle, things like. There's different types of back pain. Right Disc is definitely more complicated and he did some work and I started feeling a little bit better and my pain went from a seven down to like a four. I thought you know what? There's something to this. I don't know what's going on here, but I'm finally feeling better.
Speaker 1So I decided at that point in time I would be a chiropractor, and this is 1990. And I still had pain. My pain was about a four. It really never got better than a four. But my efforts going to chiropractic college were to eliminate my back pain and learn everything I can about back pain. So I went to chiropractic college and I graduated. And when I graduated I started opening clinics in Chicago and our clinics were we call them center of excellence. It was a team based approach. It was chiropractors, medical doctors, nurse practitioners, acupuncturists, massage therapists, nutritionists all working together for the good of the patient and we only treated back pain.
Speaker 3Which is the kind of practice many of us wish we were going to after we have recovered from this.
Speaker 1So we were really good at most, but the conditions that we weren't very good at were the disc related conditions, and when I graduated- you know I'd learned a lot and I was feeling better, but my pain was still about a two.
Speaker 1So gone from a four to a two and we were treating back pain and again it was. It was pretty obvious right away that we were really good at the non-complicated. But when it came to the disc related problems, those were a challenge Bulging disc, herniated disc, degenerated disc, stenosis, all the things that sort of come with the degeneration. We were struggling with some of those and we were doing a lot trying to fix it. We were doing a lot trying to fix it and really we weren't very good at it.
Speaker 1During this time, between, say 1993 and 2005, my back pain had gone from a 2 to a 3 to a 4. Eventually it had gone all the way up to a 7 or an 8. Now it wasn't a 7 or 8 every day. Well, it was every day, but it wasn't all day. I might feel okay in the morning and then as the day progressed, by the end of the day the best I can do is go home and lay on the floor. And I had kids. I had kids. I had all the normal things right. I had a family, I had kids. I had a house. I had to cut my grass. I couldn't take care of the family. You know, we went on vacation one time and I lay in bed for a week, right, and that's like, that's like. It's like torture, right, I mean especially at Disney. So it was terrible. So my back pain was getting worse and we weren't very good at my type of back problem.
Speaker 3So what did you try?
Speaker 1I had access to all the therapies. I had all the chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture, you know any medicine I wanted you name it I could have had. It Didn't help. It was just getting worse. So in around 2005, we started looking at the discs, saying, all right, what can we do to heal the disc? Because my disc had degenerated. See, the longer you have these things and you have pain, the thinner the disc gets. So you know, a normal, healthy disc might look like this and my disc started looking like this. It just was degenerated and that's that's on our website you can see that as well. But I wasn't getting better and I was getting worse. So part of what we wanted to do in 2005 was if we increase blood flow to the disc, can that facilitate any healing to the disc?
Speaker 3Which I didn't think was possible.
Speaker 1The general thought is discs are hard to heal for a couple of reasons, but one of the main reasons is because they're avascular. There is no vein or artery that runs through the disc, so it's very hard to get the oxygen and nutrients into the disc. Once the disc is damaged you got a herniation, a bulge is damaged, right, you got degenerations damaged, you got to get healing at the disc. So our thought was all right, maybe we can get more blood to flow and maybe something will happen. So in 2005, we did a study and the study was we did an MRI, a treatment, and then an MRI, and then we compared the MRIs to see if we could get any blood flow. And we were looking to see if we could get blood flow inside the disc. So we were looking at the MRIs, say what happened to the disc, and what we found was there was very specific exercises, stretches and a way of taking pressure off the disc that got the blood to flow. So we saw that we could get some blood flow, but we didn't know what that meant. Does that mean people are going to get better? Is it going to heal the disc? We did it one day, one day, one time, and we were working with a researcher out of Oregon State University. He says well, good news is something happened. He says, but you don't really know what that means. So he says now what you have to do is you have to take six people and put them through a six-month program to see if you keep increasing blood for six months. If that changes the disc right, does that change the health of the disc? So what we did is we had six people, three days a week, go through a program and at the end of the program we were going to do it was six months, at the end of the program we were going to do a third MRI and on that third MRI we were looking to see if we could increase blood flow.
Speaker 1Again, we're looking inside the disc and we were looking at the nucleus. We looked at the annulus, the outer portion, but we're also looking at the jelly on the inside. What we found was we could get an 80% increase in blood flow inside the disc. But that wasn't the important part. What we saw was two of the six, their herniations completely went away. Completely, completely went away. Yeah, that's the same reaction we had, and the bulges were getting smaller and the degeneration was starting to heal. You can see that there was fluid inside the nucleus because the degenerated disc. There's no fluid in the nucleus. We see fluid and we also saw that the outside of the annulus was getting a little bit thicker.
Speaker 3Yeah, degeneration, you would consider like dried out, correct?
Speaker 1Well, it's a phase of drying, but yeah, the nucleus dries out.
Speaker 3Can you describe a disc for us?
Speaker 1the disc is like a jelly donut. Outside of the disc there's a thick material called the annulus and inside the disc there's a jelly-like substance, and that jelly-like substance is in the center. It's like a jelly donut. And what happens is that jelly dries out and as it dries out, what it does is it gets thinner. Right, the disc physically gets thinner and it's and it's like the air in your car, your tire, when you're, when you're, when your tire runs out of air, the tire, you know, gets closer to the ground.
Discovering Patterns to Heal Herniated Discs
Speaker 1Same thing that degeneration is a drying out of the nucleus and what we saw was we were able to get more blood to flow into the nucleus, so we're getting more fluid in the nucleus. So the herniations two of, are gone, like completely. And the interesting thing about this is when we first did this study, I was talking about the radiologist I'm like, cause we had a medical doctor. He was reading all the MRIs. I said here's what we're trying to do, we're trying to see if we can increase blood flow. He says what I said yeah, we're looking to see if we could increase blood flow. He goes that's the dumbest thing.
Speaker 2I ever heard.
Speaker 1Well, this is what we're going to try to do. Do you want to read the MRI or not? He's like I'll do it. So he did it. And the funny thing is, when we sent those six people back for the MRI, he called me and he never calls me. I'm like, oh, what happened? Cause I'm like does something happen to the patient? I mean, what happened? He goes no, no, no, come over here right now, come over.
Speaker 1And so I get over his office and he's got the MRIs up and he said what's going on? He says look, what do you see? I said I don't see anything. He said that's the whole point, the herniations are gone. And for him he even said he goes, you know, I us that herniations could go away. So that was a paradigm shift. That was the beginning of all. Right, maybe we could do something to heal the disc right For all the people that are stuck right. It's the 20% of the people that ever have back pain. Never, ever, ever, ever, ever get better because they got a bulging disc, herniated disc, degenerative disc, and traditional therapies aren't good at that. Most therapies are designed to decrease symptoms.
Speaker 2There's symptom relief right, it's kind of a quick fix.
Speaker 1But in the end you have to rehydrate the disc, reactivate the muscles. There's a whole process to it. But we slowly figured it out. But once that started, then we spent the next five years trying to figure this out. So we said, all right, discs can heal, what else can we do to heal the disc? So we started doing a lot of different things and we sort of put this protocol into all our clinics and now we're treating thousands of people. We sort of became the disc specialist. So we're getting all these people in the program and we're learning a lot. We're confused, we're troubleshooting, we have a lot of meetings and you know, even at our best we were only getting about 45% success rate. But that was 45% of the people that had tried everything else and didn't get better. So that was progress. But when you have 55% really not getting better and not understanding why maybe they're not getting better, it's a challenge every day, even though some people it's like a miracle, the other people it's like, ah, just not getting, you're really working, we're having a lot of. I don't want to say it's it's it's, it's a challenge, right, because it's like we're trying to figure this out. And then not only did 55 percent, not get better, but there was three to four percent that they would get a little bit worse. And they would get worse, not permanently, like it wasn't permanent damage, but you know it's like. It's like if you've ever had a flare up and I, you know, I knew you've had back. I don't know how long you had it, but there's always flare ups, right, there's good days and bad days and you never really know why. Right, so we were, we were doing parts of the protocol and certain people would get it, would aggravate their condition, you know it's, it's that squeezing of the disc and the disc pops up, but we didn't know why. But we knew it was parts of the protocol and we didn't know who. And the worst part about it was we could have two identical herniations. It'd be, you know, five millimeter herniated right side, pinching the nerve, causing sciatica. Two of them. Put them up. They both look exactly the same. Put them both in the program. One got better, one got worse. Couldn't got better, one got worse. Couldn't figure it out. What were your next steps?
Speaker 1So, 2010, we started doing a study and the study we did in 2010 was standing up. So in chicago there's three MRI machines that you can stand up inside of them. They have them all over the whole country, but we were fortunate there's three in chicago, so we had people standing up and when you stand up there's more pressure on the disc. So maybe a simple little herniation may be real small, but then you stand up, there's more pressure on the disc. So maybe a simple little herniation maybe real small, but then you stand up it's real big right, so you can see bigger herniations, bigger bulges. But what we did is we had them stand up and then we had them bend forward, backward, side to side and rotate, and what we were looking at was the disc.
Speaker 1What happens to the disc when people are bending? And what we found was certain positions people bend into, the herniations would get bigger and certain positions people would bend into the herniations would get smaller and even go back inside the spine. We've never seen that. So that was the second thing. So the first thing is we saw that herniations can go away.
Speaker 1Couldn't figure out why it didn't work on anybody, everybody and then we found that there's these patterns of motion that make the herniation bigger and then it feels worse, by the way, and makes it smaller and you feel better, like I feel better, my sciatic is gone. So we discovered there's five patterns of motion. Everybody has two, Everybody has two that make them better, everybody has two that make them worse, and it's not the same for everybody. So you might bend forward, you get worse, I bend forward, I get better, or vice versa, right. So we discovered these five patterns. It wasn't the same.
Speaker 1That was our first flaw. We thought the biomechanics of the disc were the same for everybody, right, but they weren't. We didn't know that, so we didn't know that. So once we discovered this, we were also able to identify what position people had to be in to get that disc back to the inside. So we knew what position they had to do exercises in. Then we knew what position they had to take the pressure off the disc in and it really created. It was like an aha, like all right. That's why that was the missing link. It was like the Rosetta Stone, like all of a sudden it all made sense. That's why some people are better with yoga, some people are worse with yoga. That's why some people are better with Pilates or worse with swimming in a pool.
Speaker 1You name it. It was like it was why. It's why it's worse when you stand and you walk and you sit and in.
Speaker 3Yeah, it's like physical therapy People will either love it or hate it. It's the same moves for everybody for the same guy.
Speaker 1I only see the people that hate it, by the way, because they're like I did it.
Speaker 1It didn't make me better, Maybe worse, right, cause they will give you exercises that make you worse, because in their mind it's one size fits all oh, you have a herniated disc, do this. You have a herniated disc, do this. You have a bulging disc, do this. Right, it doesn't work that way. Matter of fact, it doesn't matter what you call it, only matters your pattern. Because once you know the pattern, then we know exactly what you have to do to fix it.
Speaker 1So once we discover these patterns, then what we were able to do is put together a step-by-step process. All right, we know what position you have to be in to get it back to the inside, so we developed a very specific stretch for that position and then, based on the pattern, or what was causing the pattern was weak muscles, tight muscles, inhibitive muscles, tight joints right, and weak muscles, like I said that, but it's a combination of muscles not working the way they should and then joints getting tighter that create this what we call faulty pattern of motion. So once we know the faulty pattern of motion, we know what stretch you need, we know what exercises you need and we know what the order is, and there's a right order and a wrong order. And even though everybody says squats are the best exercise for back pain. Yeah, but if you have a hot disc, it's the worst exercise.
Speaker 1Right, there's a time when it's the best exercise, but if you do it at the wrong time, you're going to make it worse and I see that all the time where people are like, oh yeah, I had a herniated disc and I was getting these exercises the first week and one of them was squats. I'm like, ooh, in physical therapy, right? Or where Chiropractor, it doesn't matter who does it, there's a right order and a wrong order. But we figured it out so once could come in, we'd identify their pattern and then we'd put them to the protocol based on their pattern Do this, do this, do this, do this, do this and they started getting better. And these are all the chronics. These are all the people that failed everything else. Matter of fact, the average person on our program has back pain for more than seven years and everyone has a disc-related problem and by the time they get to us, there are still seven.
Speaker 1And then they go through our program and this is all done in the clinic. They go through the program and they get better. So once we discovered the patterns, our success rate went from 45% to 95% and it didn't happen. Figure out all the missing pieces. But once we figured them out, that's when we really were making sort of some ground right.
Speaker 1So 2015, we did a study, and that was with Oregon State University and one of the researchers that had done all the research for us, and what he did is he had 70 people with sciatica herniated disc, bulging disc, degenerative disc go through our program and 70 people with sciatica same condition herniated, bulging, degenerative Because that's what's ultimately pinching the nerve. It's the pinching of the nerve that exits, right. So they went through traditional physical therapy. So he compared our results to traditional physical therapy and what he found was our program was 10 times better. And it was 10 times better because to address the underlying cause when you eliminate the cause, pain goes away, doesn't come back.
Speaker 1So this was then published in a medical journal in 2015. And as a result of it being published, people then all over the whole world would see this study and they would say you know what? Maybe there's hope, because when you have back pain long enough or, for that matter, you've failed surgery, right, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what you had. If you've had it long enough, you feel like you've tried everything. Nothing's going to help you, and especially if you've tried surgery and it didn't help then you're like no, you got nothing.
Speaker 1So. So people would see this study and you know, and, and when you have back pain long enough, the hopelessness leads to like depression, right, like my life is never going to be the same, right? So people would then see this study and they would call us, you know, they'd be sort of full of hope again, like oh my God, maybe there's something different. Like they call us, they're like I don't know what you guys are doing over there, but I'm coming in.
Speaker 1You know how are you getting here? We're going to fly, all right. So people would fly in and then they would stay in a hotel and then they would go through the program slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. Now the problem is when you're healing a disc it doesn't happen. It doesn't happen in a month, it happens in two months to three months. Right, it takes time.
Speaker 1And that was us being aggressive. We had the fast track. Like, all right, if you come in five days a week for two months, that could be enough, right? So people would stay in a hotel and do the program and some people were pretty well acclimated. They came in, they were doing work in a hotel room. They could, you know, they could still do their job, or they had their families with them and you know they had a support group and everything was okay.
Speaker 1But other people came by themselves and they came to Chicago and for eight months out of the year Chicago weather is not very good, right, like, maybe the same where you live, I don't know, but Chicago weather is really pretty bad. So they would fly thinking that, oh, I'm going to go see this beautiful city, I'm going to walk around and see all these beautiful buildings, but it's too cold to leave the hotel, right, it's too cold, Right, and it's too cold. It's cold here. This is so. They would sit around their hotel room. You know they would go to therapy during the day and then at night they would go back to the hotel room or they'd be by themselves, right, and it's too cold outside, and their family's far away, and after a while they were spending too much time staring at the walls.
Speaker 3That sounds pretty lonely for an already depressing time.
Remote Program Success for Back Pain
Speaker 1People started having like panic attacks. They were getting better but there were too much time alone, like there was just and we weren't over on the weekends so they didn't have anything to do on the weekends. I mean, there's so much TV you can watch before you just had enough. So people were having panic attacks. I was getting phone calls. I got a phone call from a guy one time at two in the morning having a panic attack in a hotel room. You can't say, look, sorry to hear about that, I'll talk to you tomorrow. Like you got to deal with this right, these are heavy emotions, these aren't like simple emotions. So I'm like all right, we'll help you out. So I was spending a lot of time managing the emotions of the people stuck in the hotel room and I thought, man, this is too much. It was really going to be too much. I said either we're not going to do this anymore or we're going to find a way to get them better faster. So what we decided was, since we could figure out their pattern it wasn't that hard to figure out I said why don't we just send them the exercise ahead of time, all the introductory exercises? It's like that way they could get stronger. Before they got here, we know what they have to do. Let's show them what to do and have them do it. So we showed them what they had to do and they were doing it and doing it and then after two months they'd fly to Chicago and they, when they came in, they were feeling a little better, they had a little more hope, they were in a better mood and we could get them to the program in a month, right. So so they could see there was light at the end of the tunnel. So they were a little happier, right, a little less stressed out. But two months in a hotel room staring at the wall, driving anybody it's like being in jail, right, just drive it crazy. So so, then, so people are feeling better.
Speaker 1And then, finally, there was a guy in australia and he had tried everything 10 years of back pain, tried everything hurt, to walk hurt, to sit hurt, stand hurt, to lay down everything hurt, couldn't serve. He was a surfer, couldn't serve, couldn't do any of that. And he's like I don't know what you guys are doing, but I'm coming. So we said hold on, we're gonna send you exercise, you're to do these every day for eight weeks and then you can fly. That way you can be a little stronger. He's like all right, I'll do it. So he did all the exercises every day for actually 10 weeks and then he called us. He's like look, this is the best I've felt in 10 years.
Speaker 3He's like.
Speaker 1I can stand without pain, I can walk without pain, I can lay down without pain. I couldn't do any of that, so this is absolutely the best I felt. He said the problem is I can't sit. I sit for an hour. My pains are seven or eight, he says. But I can manage my life without sitting because I have a stand up desk. I eat, I can sit down for a couple minutes and stand up. I stand up a lot or I lay down a lot. He says I don't have to sit. He said my problem is I'm scheduled to fly to Chicago and it's 24 hours on an airplane and I'm going to be seated for at least 20. He's like you know I'm not coming. He's like he's like he's either you're going to have to come carry me off the airplane or I'm not coming. I'm like we're not going to carry you off the airplane. He goes.
Speaker 2I don't really want to come anyway.
Speaker 1He's like I, I don't want to have to go back to the pain I was in. He says I'm feeling so good and he says I'm afraid that, you know, after a month or six weeks, whatever your program, I'm going to fly back home and I'm going to be in the chair again. He's like is there any way I can do this at home, using a lot of equipment, pressure off the disc and exercise and all kinds of things? I said I don't know. I said I have. We've never done that, I don't even know if it'll work. I said we're going to have to modify the protocol. I said but you know what? I'm going to give it a try. So we modified the protocol. He did all the exercises and by the end his pain was gone. It took him, it took a long time. It didn't happen overnight, but we worked with him. He modified so he could do everything. No more pain sitting. He was a surfer. He could surf again, living his life, stays active, stays fit, keeps the muscles strong, no pain.
Speaker 1That was the first one that got better. Serious back problems. When I say serious, you have a serious back problem. If you've seen six doctors and you didn't get better. You went to Mayo Clinic or Cleveland Clinic or wherever it is. You went Texas Spine Institute. You didn't get better. That's a serious back problem, right? Because then nobody can help you. So that was the first time anybody ever got better, and the only time we ever saw them was something like this where we're doing video. Never saw them in person, right, didn't put our hands on them, didn't do anything. So that was the first one. So I said you know what? Maybe we could do this, maybe they don't have to fly to Chicago.
Speaker 1So I said let's get 10 more people, and then what we'll do is same thing. But I don't want 10 people with the same pattern, because that was a mistake we made in 2005,. Right, we thought it was going to work on everybody.
Speaker 3I said I want different patterns and I don't want to put this out on the internet. It was not going to work, because that's just a bigger headache right For me.
Addressing Root Causes of Back Pain
Speaker 1I don't want that headache, I don't need it. So we had 10 more people go through the program. They did all the work. We modified the protocol. They got better. Chronic back pain herniated, bulging, degenerative disc got better. Never came to the clinic and all we ever did was a couple of video conferences like this. Couldn't believe it at home. Was it just back pain specifically designed to address underlying cause? Faulty motion, lack of blood flow and compressive load. You fix those three things. Pain goes away, doesn't come back. It's specific for a herniated disc, bulging disc, degenerative disc, stenosis, post-surgery doesn. It doesn't matter. So that's what we have. We have an online program now specifically designed to address the underlying cause, and you know we've been we've been treating back pain for 30 years and we've been doing the online since 2017 and it works, and it works really well and, matter of fact, it works so well. We guarantee it. So if we accept somebody into our program and they don't get better, we give them all their money back.
Speaker 3Oh, wow.
Speaker 1Yeah, and the only reason we can do that is because we know exactly what you have to do and all our systems are designed to make sure you do the work every day. We know what you have to do and we've done it thousands of times.
Speaker 3Done it thousands of times Is there a patient story you could share.
Speaker 1So we we had the study that was done in 2015. And then we had another one that was done in 2017. Maybe I don't know what year. It was somewhere around there, and it was a woman. She had fallen down on the ice, and she fell down on the ice when she was 15. This is in Chicago, and she herniated the disc in her back. So this is when she was 15. She herniated the disc, which is kind of rare for a 15 year old, but it does happen, right.
Speaker 1I mean I certainly see a lot of 15 year olds. But for her at the time she got some chiropractic and she felt a little bit better, and then the pain came back. And then she got some chiropractic and physical therapy and then she felt a little bit better. But every year her pain would come back, come back, come back. And every year it came back it got a little bit worse. Because what's happening is you really are getting weaker, the disc is getting weaker and the muscles are getting weaker. So now when it gets injured, it takes that much longer to get better. And then, finally, what happened? 30 years. So she fell when she was 15. Every year for 30 years until she was 45, this pain would come and go, every year worse. It took longer to get better.
Speaker 1Finally turned 45, you know, she said her back went out. She did something to aggravate it and it never got better. And all the treatments that she had tried chiropractic, physical therapy, acupuncture, injections, opioids, all the things that have worked in the past stopped working. And so everybody her husband, her family's like you have to get surgery. Like you have to get the surgery. So even the chiropractor, everybody she worked with, said, yeah, we can't help you, like you're not getting better. We don't know what to do. So she went to the surgeon.
Speaker 1Surgeon convinced her to get fusion she got fusion and her pain went from like I think it was like a seven, down to like a four, which is better, right, and then two weeks later it went to an eight and it was at an eight every day for two years and it went from an eight to a nine to a 10, eight to a nine to a 10.
Speaker 1And the only thing that would take the edge off was opioids, and I think I think at the time you're only allowed to take five a day. She was taking 15 because I can't imagine her depression. So she was depressed, like like clinically depressed, right. I mean she was saying that you know therapist, psychiatrist, everything, and during that time she tried to kill herself three times from the pain.
Speaker 3I believe it.
Speaker 1Three times, three times and finally, interestingly enough, she, she, she, she's like she was praying to God. She said God, you know, give me a sign. If you want to live, give me a sign. And then she saw something about her program and she figured that was the sign. I mean, maybe it was, I don't know, but then so she saw that and then she made a call. We put her on the program, took her about a year and a half a year and a half about a year and a half pain gone.
Speaker 1That's amazing, Do you think? With all that hardware in that, yes, yes, Pain back to a zero and that's been over. It's probably been eight years I don't know how many years it's been, but even five years after the original uh, original injury and treatment, they followed up with her and she still was out of pain and to this day she's still out of pain, because I follow her on Facebook and the other day she was like doing a. She was posting a picture of her doing a deadlift and she's in her mid fifties. I'm like, oh, her name's Carmelita. I'm like Carmelita. I don't think that's a good idea. She goes, don't worry about it. I got this, I know what I'm doing.
Speaker 3Okay, okay, so I have a Reddit community for microdiscectomy.
Speaker 2Yes.
Speaker 3People considering or recovering from surgery and I'm surprised at the reherniations. People will reherniate pretty quickly and some even reherniate a third time. So you know I don't know what I'm talking about, but to me that feels like there's a stability issue or something.
Speaker 1I tell you what talking about but to me that feels like there's a stability issue or something. I tell you what traditional therapies don't address the cause. So if you there's limits to how much load and motion a disc can tolerate, and if you never eliminate the faulty motion, you always reherniate it because you're doing the things that caused it the first time. But you're doing it and you don't even know you're doing it and nobody's ever told you you're doing it. One of the things that people love the most is we have, we have it's. You know we call it the top 10 tips. It's 10 things that you do every day that aggravate your disc and you don't know you're doing it.
Speaker 1It's how you sit in a chair, and probably everybody knows that one. It's how you sit on a toilet. It's how you get out of a chair. It's how you get off the toilet. It's how you get out of your car. It's how you get out of bed. It's how you sleep in bed. It's how you take dishes out of the dishwasher All the things that you might do that aggravate it. There's a right way and a wrong way, and if you do it the wrong way, part of it is because the muscles you need to do it the right way, don't exist because they've gotten weaker, or it's just a habit?
Speaker 1Just a habit you've had your whole life. I've always done it this way. Well, okay, maybe it was always wrong and now you got to fix that. That is why herniations always come back and that is why even people that had surgery can get better on my program, including the woman that had the fusion Right, because we now with hers, like when you have a fusion, very often what they do is they fuse.
Speaker 1They put metal rods and screws in. Let's just say L4, l5. They're going to fuse these two right here. They'll do do it in the back, but it's easier to see at the front. They'll put rods and screws in there and what that does is it prevents any motion to that joint. Well, let's just say that joint had too much motion because that was the one you were using to bend. Then what happens is now you start to bend with this one or the one below they call the bubble syndrome. What happens is those discs break down and if you're more active, they say within three years you're going to need another fusion oh wow, yeah and that's a.
Speaker 1that's like you couldn't have anything more invasive than a fusion. But what we do is we eliminate that motion, we activate and get you, get the blood flowing back to the inside. Pain goes away. It doesn't go back because what people do the biggest problem people have is they bend using their spine, like if you've had back pain long enough or if you sit for too long, the glutes, which are the muscles in the back, become inhibited. And when the glutes are inhibited then so it's like, it's like a light, like you can turn the light switch down so the lights aren't so bright. Nervous system slows down the information being sent to the muscles. Called inhibition. So it's not muscle weakness, it's the nerves aren't telling the muscles what to do, or they're telling you what to do but they're not telling them. You know high enough volume, right, we need more volume. So part of what happens is when you sit for too long, glutes become inhibited. Well, when your glutes are inhibited, then you start to use your spine to bend instead of your glutes, because the muscles really aren't there. The body's like I don't want to use that muscle, it's not working, I want to use this muscle.
Speaker 1And then all that constant bending on the disc causes the disc to break down. When you use your spine to bend, that's when the disc breaks down. So part use your spine to bend, that's when the disc breaks down. So part of what we have to do is retrain those muscles and that's part of the program, so it's our. It's a year. We have a year-long program but it's specifically designed to eliminate the underlying cause, which is the faulty motion, also increase the blood to flow to the disc and get the nucleus back to the inside, which then frees up the sciatic nerve. Like at least half the people on my program have sciatica and they've tried every possible treatment. Didn't get better and they go to my program and they get better and they never even go to the clinic. They can do it all at home. It's how to take the pressure off the disc, to get the disc back to the inside and then reactivating the muscles. That's the key.
Speaker 3And does your, does your program also include nutritional guidance? How important do you think nutrition is to healing?
Speaker 1Interesting, interesting, interesting. Interesting Because we track this, like if you start my program and not too many people do this. Matter of fact, we started doing this, probably like 2012, in the clinics and it was dramatic. It was dramatic Because when you see a patient every day and I don't know if you've been to chiropractors or physical therapists how are you doing? Oh, I'm feeling a little bit better. Yeah, you know, I'm okay, you know. So a lot of times the patient doesn't want to tell you they're not getting better, or because they don't want to hurt your feelings or whatever, because you're really working hard, right? So until we started tracking it, we thought, oh, you know, bob's getting better and Joanne, she's getting better. And once we start tracking, it's like wait a minute, they're not getting better, because you might write notes. Oh, patient came in, you know, less pain, whatever it is. But when we really started putting the numbers on paper, it's like wait a minute, there we thought they were getting better. How come they're not getting better?
Tracking Progress and Healing Back Pain
Speaker 2and we talked to him like oh, we don't want to hurt your feelings.
Speaker 1So, but my point is we track everybody in the program. So when you start the, we know your pain level, we know your disability level. We track what's called Oswestry Disability Index. It's the gold standard for tracking disability as a result of back pain, but we use it as a gauge. Are you getting better? Is your pain getting better? So we track everybody and we know what you should expect. This goes back to our guarantee. We know you're getting better and if you're not getting better, we have like an intervention like cause. You're either doing too much or not enough.
Speaker 1But my point is we track all this and one of the things we track is the overall effect of food on your body and it's through a, a questionnaire for what we call leaky gut. I don't know if you ever heard of that, but leaky gut is where your intestines maybe aren't digesting the food the way it should and then you're getting undigested food in your bloodstream along with some particles of bacteria and viruses and it creates this sort of inflammatory process. The people that get better the quickest have the lowest score and the people get better the slowest have the highest score. Meaning diet is for the people aren't getting better, tends to be one of the most important things. Like they're all, they're all doing the right work, but they got a terrible diet or they've got such a bad leaky gut that we have to balance that out and then they start getting better. So for us, if you had asked me three years ago how important is it, I'd say it's kind of important.
Speaker 1but I know now that there are certain people on our program. If we weren't tracking it we wouldn't know. We would just said, oh, she's not doing the exercise, or Bob's not. You know he's not participating, whatever it was, but he really was doing the work. But his you know, his food was way out of balance, right. So once we started balancing the food out, they started getting better. So some people you know, because there's I've done videos and, like there was one on pumpkin seeds I don't know if you saw it, but on instagram it had 20 million views pumpkin seeds. There's a 30 second video about pumpkin seeds.
Speaker 1Pumpkin seeds are really good for you, right, because they're really high in magnesium, they have a lot of good fiber, heals the intestines, right. So it's kind of a thing. But 20 million and everyone's like I'm eating the pumpkin seeds, I'm not getting better. I'm like, all right, you're going to get better, but there's exercises that you really need, right. So, like, you can't just eat blueberries and pumpkin seeds and drink green tea and coffee, because coffee brings down inflammation, and expect, you know, a massive herniated disc. You know that's pushing way out and then you're bending all day long aggravating it. All right, there's only so much that you can do by decreasing inflammation. But when you do everything right, food is very, very important.
Speaker 3Yes, so it sounds like when I was recovering I fed my emotions with Dairy Queen. That probably wasn't a good idea when I was recovering.
Speaker 1I fed my emotions with Dairy Queen. That probably wasn't a good idea. Well, as long as you got better right. Well, you know what? There's a point where happiness is important too, by the way, because when you're happy, you have less inflammation. I don't know if you know that or not, but that's true. So if you're happy, you can actually improve right. But I always say my program is like a lifestyle right, it's the exercises. You, you can, you can actually improve Right. So. But but I always say my program is like a lifestyle right, it's the exercises, it's the stretches, it's the decompression, it's the movement patterns, it's the food, it's drinking the water, it's walking.
Speaker 1You know, when you have back pain and you're in prison and you want to get out it's lifestyle, to get out right, there's no quick fix. And the reason people get stuck is because they have this mentality. It's a quick fix and it's not their fault. It comes from the therapist, comes from the doctors, comes from insurance companies. Insurance companies they say oh, hernia, disc, 12 treatments, 12 treatments. You're probably gonna make it worse because you're trying to get them better too fast, right, right, or you're not doing anything that encourages them to do the right thing, right. I've always had a big problem with that.
Speaker 3So if I have a listener who has a failed back surgery or a bulging disc and they want to get better, where do they go to find your program?
Speaker 1Highperformancespinecom is our website and if you go there, we have before and after MRIs of people who went through the program, because we do MRIs not on everybody. We've done MRIs at the end and then my MRIs not on everybody. We've done MRIs at the end and then my MRIs on there, so you can see my degenerative disc and we have people that went through the program and every person on my program because, like you said, you saw me on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube I don't know where they see us, but you don't. I always say you don't call the TikTok doctor first. Right, you're calling him last and you might not call him, you know, until you're so desperate you don't know what to do anymore Like, I'll call that guy that's who I get, by the way, but what that means is everybody that is on my program has had back pain for a long time and tried everything before they finally call me Right.
Speaker 1So, my point is the people you see on there in the case studies are people just like you. What we do is we help people that have not helped anywhere else, meaning if you've, and that we pride ourselves on that, like you know, and we guarantee it that you know, if you have a herniated disc and you've tried everything and you get better, we can help you.
Speaker 3I'm sure it's very rewarding.
Speaker 1I love it. I love it and I'm the underdog right. Everybody's rooting against me, but I'm gonna win.
Speaker 3It's sorry to say, people are benefiting benefiting from your personal injury story but you know it's funny because for 15 years it was a curse yeah and I got better and it was a blessing.
Speaker 1And now I get to start with the world, because it has value now because, first of all, we get like, if you go to tiktok or instagram, there's a lot of tips like what food to eat and what exercises not to do. They're making you worse, because I'll share this real quick. So, when you have a herniated disc, what do we know? We know that a lot of motion makes that disc worse, right? So one of the exercises they give extra everybody, there's two, the two of the worst ones double knee to chest. Lay on your back, pull your knees to your chest. Well, what you're doing? You're squeezing that disc so hard it's coming back out like, oh, it hurts. No, you're not doing it right, keep doing it. That's number one. Or the second one is they have you lay on your back and then they have your knees up and then they have you go side to side with your legs, like that. That rotates the disc. Herniated discs don't like rotation. So those are two you shouldn't do, you shouldn't do and and so our, our tiktok and instagram has tips of things you can do, but also, uh, our website we were talking about that there's videos of people who went through the program. Just watch their stories and I promise you their stories are just like everybody I mean everybody that has back pain that's not getting better. Those are the stories. Tried everything, didn't know what to do. Doctor didn't know what to do. Doctor said it was in my head. Doctor said I wasn't trying hard enough.
Speaker 1We had one woman. She had a herniated disc L5-S, 5s1, they told her she had piriformis syndrome. Piriformis there's a muscle in the back that can squeeze the sciatic nerve. They say maybe 3% of all sciatica is piriformis syndrome. It's very rare. It's the easiest one to fix because it's really not a structural problem. It's just a tight muscle, right. So usually a couple of stretches reactivate glutamate, that goes away. But everybody says, oh, I have piriformis syndrome. So they had this poor woman stretching her piriformis. Well, piriformis, you have to cross your leg and you pull your legs up right because you're trying to stretch that piriformis. Well, what is she doing? She's doing this, she's doing this, and she did that for three years. Three years. By the end she couldn't get out of bed. They said you're not doing it enough.
Speaker 1She says I do it all day long I can't get out of bed, so we had had her stop doing that. She started following some of the tips and did some of the stretches within a month, like her pain was almost gone.
Speaker 2That's kind of rare that's kind of rare.
Speaker 1But my point is they were giving her the wrong stretch and that's not uncommon. They try to make it one size fits all.
Inspiring Hope for Back Pain Recovery
Speaker 3Right, which it's not. Dr Jeff, I really appreciate you putting some time aside to be on the podcast. I'm sure the people uh are listening, are going to really appreciate your information and just for one more time, say, your website for them.
Speaker 1Uh, high performance. Spinecom Maybe not the greatest name, but it works. It works. Um, well, it it, and I am here to give people hope, because sometimes they run out of hope. They've tried everything, didn't get better, don't know what to do? Call us. You qualify, we'll put you in the program. You don't get better, we'll give you your money back. But I tell you what everybody gets better.
Speaker 3Yep, and that's why I have my podcast to to give people hope, and that's why I wanted to have you on the show. That's awesome.
Speaker 1That's awesome. I appreciate you having me on your show Bed Back and Beyond.
Speaker 3Right. Yes, that's right. Bed Back and Beyond. That's my husband's idea. He named it.
Speaker 1Empowered living. I love it, I love it.
Speaker 3If you are a listener with a positive story of recovery and you would like to share your story on my show, head to BedBackBeyondcom and click share your story. Once again, Dr Jeff, it was a pleasure meeting you.