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Lifestyle Strength
We discuss ideas, principles, and tactics that help people improve their position in life. With a background in fitness, Lucas strives to empower others by sharing amazing stories of challenge, transformation, and growth.
Lifestyle Strength
Dr. Ben Ozanne Pt 1
Join us on Lifestyle Strength as we welcome Ben Ozanne, a seasoned chiropractor with over 14 years of experience, who shares how a twist of fate and encouragement from his wife led him on a fulfilling path from aspiring spinal surgeon to chiropractic care advocate. With personal insights drawn from his own recovery from a whiplash injury and his father's progressive stance on holistic treatments, Ben offers a unique perspective on the value of conservative care before surgery. Discover how prioritizing both personal well-being and professional dedication can transform careers in healthcare and explore the nuances of chiropractic as a vital element in achieving health and well-being.
Our conversation ventures into the intriguing realm of radiographic exposure, where Ben introduces the idea that low doses of radiation, like those from X-rays, might actually offer benefits to the body. We clear up lingering misconceptions about radiation risks and guide you on what to seek in a quality chiropractor, emphasizing the importance of tailored treatment plans that include X-rays for tracking progress. Learn how holistic approaches, such as integrating complementary therapies and empowering patients with home care routines, can enhance your spinal health journey. Whether you're a chiropractic enthusiast or simply curious about holistic health, this episode promises valuable insights and practical advice.
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Welcome to Lifestyle Strength, your guide to mastering health and well-being in the real world.
Speaker 2:I'm Ariel, a massage therapist with over a decade of experience in holistic health, and I'm here with Lucas, a seasoned fitness coach, who's transformed the lives of hundreds in Northwest Arkansas.
Speaker 1:We're here to share real stories and expert insights about embracing a healthy lifestyle while balancing the everyday hustle.
Speaker 2:Join us as we explore practical ways to achieve wellness and thrive amidst life's challenges.
Speaker 1:Let's dive in.
Speaker 2:Well, hey y'all, we got Ben Ozan in studio today. How's it going, Ben?
Speaker 3:It's great.
Speaker 2:Thank you. How are you, guys Good?
Speaker 3:Thank you for joining us. Thanks so much.
Speaker 2:Usually we like to know a little bit about you and what you do, and then we kind of dive in and learn all your secrets.
Speaker 3:I'm just kidding. Yes, right, roast me.
Speaker 2:Right, we're good at that.
Speaker 3:Just slightly sassy, yeah Well, so any specifics that you want to know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I want to know what you do for work.
Speaker 3:What are you?
Speaker 2:doing in the community.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I'm a chiropractor Been in practice helping people with health and wellness for over 14 years Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I didn't realize it's been so long. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 3:Time flies. You know when you're having fun. Love what you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I met you like 10 years ago, uh-huh, because it was my very early 20s. I'd had a car accident and I'd been referred to. I can't remember who referred me, but I had whiplash and I know that you're a whiplash specialist, right. Is that kind of your wheelhouse?
Speaker 3:I mean, that's definitely one of the things I love, love helping people with Uh. It's part of uh. You know, my journey my own health journey was recovering from a whiplash injury myself.
Speaker 2:Okay. So is that? Were you already a chiropractor by then, or you chose chiropractic after your injury? Is that where you already a chiropractor by then, or you chose?
Speaker 3:chiropractic after your injury. Uh, I actually. Well, I chose chiropractic, uh because my wife didn't know. Yeah, Lucy, uh, I wouldn't say a strong armed man to it. But uh was definitely like, hey, you should consider this.
Speaker 2:Why was she so adamant about it?
Speaker 3:Well, uh, chronic back problems since she was like 11 years old. Wow, um, and so did chiropractic care for herself. Um, her brother-in-law is a chiropractor who practices in Bryan, arkansas. And uh, so she saw a lot of the benefit from from chiropractic and um I was considering going to medical school and becoming a surgeon, a spinal surgeon actually.
Speaker 3:Uh, my dad is now retired but he was a practicing orthopedic spinal surgeon and so he did that for years. I got to actually go in when I was younger, observe surgeries with him and get exposed to kind of that world and liked it. And then she was like well, you know you're not as dedicated with school as you need to be, and you know you're not as dedicated with school as you need to be, and you know, which would be an honest statement, but my wife is awesome.
Speaker 3:She she'll tell you, tell you straight and tell you how she feels. You know. So she was very honest and blunt with me. Like you know, you are slacking and you're undergrad and I think you should consider chiropractic, because good luck getting into medical school.
Speaker 2:Are you sure she just wasn't like it would be so nice to have a husband that's a chiropractor?
Speaker 3:so I could get adjustments all the time. Okay, that's great it was probably partly that as well. No, I mean, she wanted the best for me and she also saw like as a surgeon, the years that it takes to get there and then even the hours that you have to hold, like my dad was on call a lot. You know, so it's not an easy life, Right right as far as, like, the dedication you have to get there, but then even the requirements that you're kind of involved.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you've got to maintain Uh-huh afterwards, and so got exposed to it loved it. My brother, her brother-in-law, worked four days a week and I was like okay, no calls no surgery, three-hour surgeries, five-hour surgeries, and loved the idea concept.
Speaker 2:And so.
Speaker 1:I had actually never been adjusted before, like even considering chiropractic.
Speaker 2:Okay, I mean you were far removed from that.
Speaker 3:Yes, and not anything. You know like I had nothing against chiropractic. My dad actually in practice referred to chiropractors too. So you know he was a little more open-minded as a surgeon. Like he would refer people for acupuncture. He got acupuncture himself. He did massage regularly. He referred people to chiropractors.
Speaker 1:I think it's pretty unique in the medical field. Sometimes it's a lot more combative yes, where you know this is just treatment versus uh, preventative. Yes, a lot of times, yeah, and my, my dad was a great surgeon uh, a lot of the reason why is because he was conservative.
Speaker 3:So when you look at statistics, even when it comes to PAC surgery, a lot of people are recommended surgery but they don't go through a lot of the necessary alternatives conservative care before they consider it. Except all options, and so then the reoccurrence and need for future surgeries skyrockets. Or the failure like they didn't get any better, or they're worse after surgery.
Speaker 1:Um so he had to, you know, in order to even have surgeries.
Speaker 3:He saw a lot of people and so had a lot of people come in. Well, no, you need to go do chiropractic or physical therapy or you need to go lose weight.
Speaker 2:You need to get off.
Speaker 1:You know smoking, cigarettes type of things, and you know if you don't stop smoking and if you don't lose x amount of pounds. I'm not going to do surgery on you wow that's a great doctor yeah, that's a great surgeon. You don't hear that even now.
Speaker 3:Oh yes, well, and I wish there was. You know more of that, and I think there's some of that.
Speaker 2:But that helped me too to be just open Like all right.
Speaker 3:I was never closed off to the idea, and so chiropractic just kind of got put it in my lap and I've rolled with it, which has been awesome.
Speaker 2:I have a question. So, just like in massage therapy, we have modalities, we have routes, you can take routes, you can take Um and I've seen all the letters past your name, not knowing what any of them mean other than, uh, I know you're a whiplash specialist and you said, obviously an injury happened, that kind of steered you that way. But how do you navigate, once you're a chiropractor, what you're specializing in or what you're doing? Because I know currently, like you adjust me, you just me, when I was pregnant, you adjust my baby, but you're a whiplash specialist, but I mean your hands are in everything. So, like, how did you navigate that and what does that look like? Because I don't know in the field of chiropractic.
Speaker 3:Well, so we have a bunch of different chiropractic schools. The blessing and the curse of my profession is we almost don't have an identity. It is we almost don't have an identity.
Speaker 1:It's become part of the problem, because you can go to this chiropractor here. Have one experience and go to this guy over here and have a completely different experience versus like if you go to a dentist, you know exactly what they're going to do for you. Like I'm going to get my teeth cleaned.
Speaker 3:I'm going to get x-rays. Look and see if I have any cavities. And if I need them, I'm going to get them filled and maybe I need to have X, y and Z done.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Or if you're going to go to an orthodontist. But even like in the medical community, which I think does a disservice. But they've specialized.
Speaker 2:Right, so you go to the foot doctor, the knee doctor, the hip doctor.
Speaker 3:And then so our profession as a whole. We view ourselves as trying to be holistic. Yeah, so viewing the body as a whole and trying to take care of the whole person versus you got a hip issue, that's my focus um and main focus.
Speaker 2:Or, you know, even my dad is a back surgeon.
Speaker 3:That's it, that was his I'm gonna do surgery, I do surgery. Yes, that's my main focus and if I can't help you, okay, I'll refer you somewhere else. So in our profession we're exposed to a lot, so you can. In school too, you have the main course, learning to adjust, learning to be a primary care physician, and physiology and biology. So you get a good wide training and then you do electives too.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you can get exposure to like all right sports medicine versus pediatrics, geriatrics and they encourage you in school too, like, all right, you got your base track and then you need to get exposed to other things too, because you're not going to learn everything that you need to just through school.
Speaker 2:Right, and so that's what I did.
Speaker 3:I went and chatted to other doctors and I went to seminars while I was in school and then, after I'd been in school, too, so one of the certifications I have is through chiropractic biophysics, and so again, this is the most researched chiropractic technique on the planet. They have hundreds of peer-reviewed articles, double-blind, placebo-controlled studies like legit, and so their training, though, is phenomenal, and it looks a lot at the structure, biomechanics, how the spine functions, what's normal, what's abnormal and then even the variances too, like stuff we didn't learn in school, like, okay, congenital anomalies will happen.
Speaker 3:How does that change what this person's spine is supposed to look like Okay, yeah. And that's critical, or there's even variances in okay, because your tailbone is shaped this way, then you're actually not supposed to have as deep of a lower back curve.
Speaker 3:Good to know Because your sacrum is shaped this way, you should have a very deep curvature, or like up here in the, the rib cage at the top here. How wide or narrow it is will even determine the slope of your neck as well, okay, so even that is important when I'm sitting with someone and evaluating them, taking their unique physiology into into play.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:Okay, here's what the research says. But because of X, y and Z in your body. This is what we're shooting for. So you're still not healthy, but we're not trying to get this for you, we're trying to get this for you Right.
Speaker 2:So that makes me think, because we're on the topic, I mean, this is what you do. I have so many people who are like, well, I don't want my neck adjusted but, and I always say, let's start with the hips and something about starting with the biggest portion of the body.
Speaker 2:They're like I'm willing to try that, yeah, and then that's how I ease them into like, and then guess what, 10 sessions in with you're so comfortable and you trust him. But this specific training that you took, it kind of sounds like, like you're saying there's so many peer reviews, I mean like it's the safest, and you're taking into account the individual person in their anatomy. So, um, would you say, do most chiropractors have that? And and would you say, because I'm, you know, we refer our clientele to you. Um, that is a something I could say like, hey, just know, he's taking into account your, your anatomy, you know who you are, how you were born. And the reason I said that too is because sometimes clients are like, oh, but you know, I've seen a chiropractor before he never does x-rays Right, and this makes so much more sense to me. And I think I remember asking you at one point you said. I said you know why do you choose to? And you said I, um, I can't work on what I don't see.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I thought and now this even makes more sense based on your training You're saying, listen, I could do the standard thing for everybody, but what if it's a disservice to your anatomy?
Speaker 3:100% Well, and there's even radiograph phobia, so a lot of people get like oh, radiation and it's a bad thing. They have done studies on okay radiographic exposure, Like if you go and get a plain film you know, at a chiropractor, at a primary care, at the hospital, what is your level of risk?
Speaker 3:Um and so there's this thing they call, which is a hormetic effect. So um, radiation and low dosage like what you get at my office, um actually has some benefit to the body and helping it 's that you can view it? I wouldn't. This is the best example. It's kind of like a nutrient that your body's deficient in and so having some exposure interesting there's natural radiation, that were exposed to just the way that God created the planet.
Speaker 3:Yes, the planet emanates radiation yes so there are safe levels that were kind of supposed to be exposed to, and so plain film is one of those. Like you would have to take hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of plain film x-rays in a very close amount of time right in order to actually have a negative impact on someone's body.
Speaker 2:Wow.
Speaker 1:So when I was there the other day, I got a little nutrient boost, yes, so I'm curious you mentioned earlier, since the chiropractic field is, so I don't know if unregulated it's obviously there's regulations, but it's so gray in what you're going to get at one and what you're going to get at another To the layman person who you know, somebody like in a health field, is going to kind of pick up on some of those things what, what's something that, like somebody who didn't know, could look out for and like is this, am I getting the general treatment? Am I getting the good? Are they? Because I I've had several different experiences chiropractors where they did x-rays and I thought I was getting maybe specialized treatment, yeah, but I still wasn't sure, and I'm in the health and wellness field as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, one and, and it depends on your flavor too. So like there's several chiropractors that choose, I'm gonna adjust. I'm gonna kind of treat your symptoms and they like to do that and people are happy with that. Cool to me and and what I know it if they're not taking x-rays, you're going to already be down and wrong in level of specificity and customized care, and then, number two I'm a big fan and believer of a well-rounded approach.
Speaker 3:So, having referrals as well. Like, hey, I'm going to work on x, y and z. I'm great at working on the spine and doing rehab and helping to heal from injuries, but like you need to address the muscular system as well, so let's get you over and get some massage work done and then you know the rehab side too. So if they're not having you do things at home on your own, I think that's also a big disservice as well.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Like I like to say, we're going to empower you to take control of your health and take care of yourself. One of the things I tell people is okay, do you guys brush your teeth every day?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Okay, so you have probably good oral hygiene for the most part, right? What do you do? Brush, floss, yep, all of it. How's your spinal hygiene? What do you do every day?
Speaker 1:I mean I train but like you know, yeah, you do so many things Absolutely yeah, like most people are just I don't know, we don't know. I sit all day Right.
Speaker 3:What are you doing to take care of your nervous system, your spine and just? You know good holistic whole body hygiene as well, you know. So it's like, okay, oral hygiene again. The dentist dentists have done a great job, like people know like I need to brush my teeth and I need to go get checked regularly for cavities. Um, and then, yeah, we ignore like so much of the rest of our bodies. It's like, okay, we spent all this time taking care of our mouth.
Speaker 3:Right, I mean, you want to smell good, but we don't take care of a lot of the other stuff as well, so even even trying to train people like here's some specific stuff for you to have good spinal hygiene, but then, too, like one thing that we do as well as pre and post x-rays, for example. So if we find abnormalities in someone to me, okay, yeah, you're better, but are you better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you actually want to know, you want to visually show them.
Speaker 3:Yeah, okay, and then to like upkeep, like all right, we've accomplished this. Are we helping you? Stay there?
Speaker 2:too, and are you?
Speaker 3:doing the things necessary to help your body adapt to stress and to stay healthy and well. So in chiropractic, you know there's definitely levels, but having you know a plan, how long is it going to take, what do I need to do, what am I doing at home, and then kind of an end goal too I think is important, and then also follow up.
Speaker 1:So having not just subjective measurements, but objective measurements. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. We want to invite you back next week as we continue the conversation and be sure to follow us on social media to get all of our content and clips and anything you might have missed Again.
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