Healing from the Inside Out with Dr. Matthew Zaideman

In this episode of Infinite Spectrum, we sit down with Dr. Matthew Zaideman, also known as Dr. Z, to talk about the powerful connection between the brain, body, nutrition, and family wellness. 

Dr. Zaideman is a chiropractic physician, functional medicine practitioner, clinic owner, and host of Neurotrition, where he helps families better understand the links between neurological health, nutrition, digestion, behavior, and development. His work focuses on supporting children and families navigating autism, ADHD, anxiety, dyslexia, and other developmental challenges through a root-cause, whole-body approach. 

Throughout the conversation, Dr. Z shares his personal and professional journey, including how his experience as a father shaped his passion for helping families feel more informed, supported, and empowered. The episode explores why symptoms often tell only part of the story, how the brain and body communicate, and why parents deserve practical tools—not confusion—when searching for answers. 

Whether you’re a parent, caregiver, educator, or someone interested in holistic approaches to neurodivergent support, this episode offers an accessible look at how science, nutrition, and natural healing can work together. 

Topics include: 

•  The brain-body connection 
•  Functional medicine and root-cause care 
•  Nutrition’s role in neurological health 
•  Support for autism, ADHD, anxiety, and dyslexia 
•  Empowering families with practical, understandable information 
•  Dr. Z’s personal mission as a practitioner and father 

To learn more about Dr. Matthew Zaideman and his work, visit North Florida Spine and Wellness or listen to Neurotrition.
 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:07

Okay. Hi, I'm Dr. Matthew Zademan, and my son is on the autism spectrum. I am the owner and founder of North Florida Spine and Wellness, and I want to talk to you a little bit about my journey and you know what it meant to have my son go through his diagnosis and what I did about it, how we addressed it, and how I kept my business going. Now, for some of you who may have been going through that same experience, you get hit with this wrecking ball of you know, you're trying to go through the journey of maybe starting a business, running a business. Maybe you're just, you know, trying to uh keep your career and relationships afloat. And then you get hit with something you never expected. You get as uh a child with special needs. And I can tell you from experience, it's something that can uh really throw a curveball into your life, and it can be very hard to adjust to that. So I think it's really important that uh people like me um share this experience and can not only relate to different people, but also give you kind of a roadmap of what I did and and how you can can move forward. So maybe let's start about talking about um before the diagnosis, what was going on. So I'm a chiropractor. Um I was probably uh just about two years into practice when uh my son was born, 2014. And you know, things were going well, I was very excited. Um, you know, I am in alternative health, so I had been kind of thinking and knowing what I wanted to do. I kind of had this kind of roadmap into kind of what the perfect um process was to help my son develop and get him to where he needed to be. And so we did a lot of the things that a lot of people don't do. Uh, you know, we we had organic foods, we had um all kinds of natural things, we avoid toxins in the environment. You know, I kind of went thought we went over and beyond. And things seemed fine at first. You know, we didn't really have um the birth process was a little wild, you know, he came very quickly. Um it was kind of a wild experience there, but everything was fine. And then it was very suddenly at about, you know, maybe 18 months of age, where you know, he was starting to talk, he was kind of low as far as how many words he had. You know, he was on the lower percentile, but he was still coming along. And we didn't have a lot of concerns. But our journey was um not really unique. A lot of parents experienced this, but very suddenly um he, you know, to be very honest, he just lost all of his words. Um, he just stopped talking altogether. And that went on for uh a few months. And I immediately started saying, something is not right here. And we went to our pediatrician, we we talked to him about what was going on. All of his other developmental milestones seemed pretty normal at that point. And it was frustrating because it was very much, well, he's a boy, you know, boys do take longer to talk sometimes. And there was no sense of urgency. There was no sense of, hey, we should look into this, we should start uh doing some sort of therapies, we should start um looking as if there's anything more serious going on. Uh it was none of that. It was just wait and see. And I hated that. That made absolutely no sense to me. You're telling me that I need to sit here and just wait for my son to start talking again. Um to me, this was a huge, huge red flag. And so as we go forward, um, you know, we took matters into our own hands, we started uh getting about looking for evaluations and different things. And and by the time he was about two years old, um, he got evaluated for autism. Now, at that point, I was I was pretty sure what the diagnosis was going to be. Um, however, um I wasn't prepared for that emotional impact that it had on my life. And I'll be honest, you know, when I first got that diagnosis and it was on paper that he had autism, I was pissed off. I was frustrated. I thought I had done everything right. I thought we had been proactive in his health and his development. But, you know, I also didn't know what I didn't know. And I think that's an important thing to remember is that, especially with your first child, is that it's really important to trust your instincts, trust your gut. Because a lot of times you're going to get uh pre uh pediatricians who, you know, they don't necessarily are mean, they're they're they're going in good faith, I guess is what I'm trying to say. They mean well, but no one's gonna have that instinct and that uh ability to really know something is wrong like you do as a parent. And I think that's very important to listen to that, okay? Even if there's this part of you that also says, well, maybe I'm overreacting, maybe it's gonna be fine. Don't do that. Because the earlier you intervene, um, the better it is. And so we had our diagnosis, and the next step was all the traditional therapies that if you've had a child on the spectrum, that everyone gets. It's speech therapy, it's occupational therapy, um, it's maybe some ABA type of therapy, uh, maybe some physical therapy, depending if they have low muscle tone and some other, you know, uh different motor skill problems. But one thing that really struck me very early on was that none of these therapies were directed to try to change his brain or change his condition. Now, what a lot of people don't understand is that autism is not a genetic disorder. Are there genetics that can leave kids more susceptible to autism? Absolutely. There is some evidence for this, but it is not a genetic disease. Now, there are some genetic disorders out there where basically the child's brain does not develop, it's structurally different, and they end up with the same symptoms as autism, and they end up being diagnosed with autism secondary to a different genetic disorder. But that is a very small percentage. So, like, you know, let's say 90 plus percent of the kids diagnosed with autism do not have a genetic disease. They have structurally normal brain structures. And so, really, at its root, and I I kind of knew this coming into the diagnosis, that this is not this is not something that's their brain is just you know differently structured. It's actually an imbalance on how it's connected and wired. And so, in my mind, and and of course, I'm coming from a very different perspective than than others may be coming because I'm coming from more of a functional medical background, that I knew there could be some things that could actually help change how his brain was wired, but no one was offering me anything in that therapeutic realm that did anything like that. It was more like we were trying to help him cope with his dis with his disorder, with his disability, with his symptoms. No one was telling me how to change it. Okay. And I knew there had to be more. So at that point, um I just started researching and trying to find different things that um could help him. Now, in practice, I was only in practice, uh, so by this time I'm in practice three or four years by the time he gets diagnosed. Um I was, you know, working in a practice that actually did not only chiropractic, but what we call functional medicine. And so I had treated kids on the spectrum. You know, if you look up biomedical interventions, there's you know, detox methods and um working on the gut and working on inflammation and different things like that. And I had done that. I had done that with other um children and other families, and we did have success. But you know, there's one thing that, and I did that with my son as well. I did the same things that I knew to do at the time, but one thing I noticed was really missing was that, and then I noticed this with other kids that I treated, is that let's take the gut, for instance. And the reason the gut helps with autism is because there's this thing called the gut brain axis, where essentially the microflora of the gut, the health of the gut, can influence the neurotransmitters and the uh inflammatory state of the brain through a wiring through something called the vagus nerve. And so we had done that, and I had done that in other patients, but one thing I really noticed was that even though that helped other patients, it would at some point regress. And we would be basically doing the same process over and over and over again. And I really got me wondering was why is it that I cannot stabilize this gut on these patients and have long-lasting changes? And that's when I was given a book called Disconnected Kids. It's by a doc a doctor called um uh Robert Mulillo, um, who has been on my podcast uh before and uh frankly is one of my mentors. And he really explained this uh this concept of the imbalance of the brain and the disconnectivity of the different hemispheres of the brain and the immaturity of development in the actual neurology that end up making a lot of sense. You know, one thing that I think a lot of us forget, and when we think about physical symptoms, whether it's let's talk, let's let's stay with the gut, let's talk about maybe constipation or irritable bowel syndrome or uh food sensitivities, all these things we think as physiological symptoms, physical symptoms that we have or our children have physically. But we don't think about how all of these functions of the body are actually controlled by the nervous system. They're controlled by the brain. And so if you have a dysregulated nervous system, which we know is happening in autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders for that matter, then we also know that that's gonna send faulty messaging to all the organs because the brain tells all those organs, the gut, the liver, the heart, the um the immune system, everything. It tells it what's to do. So if you have a problem from the top mainframe, if your computer has a virus in it, it's gonna send faulty information downstream and create dysregulation uh throughout the whole system. And that really resonated with me. That was a whole different uh perspective that I really hadn't considered. So my next step was, you know, I was in a unique space where not only could I um explore this method, I could learn this method. I could get trained in this method, I could practice this method. And that set me on a whole separate journey. So here I am. I'm I'm, you know, at this point, I'm just about to purchase the practice that I'm working in. Uh I'm about to become an owner of a business. And here I am, you know, having this, and it was a very successful practice. You know, there was already uh running very, very well. Um we were successful, but now I'm in a point where, okay, I'm looking at not only um trying to run this business, and and you know what's interesting when you buy a business, you think, okay, it's already operating, you can just jump in it and run. But when you're uh you know buying it and essentially, you know, starting your own business within it, you know, you're kind of starting from scratch, but you're still having to uh keep that wheel running. Okay, you still have you don't have this down uh this downside of, okay, I've got to create a customer base and all this kind of stuff. I already had all that, but I still had to do all the foundational work of what every other business owner of starting all of your stuff from scratch. So um that was interesting. And at the same time, I'm also basically going back to school. Um, you know, it was over 300 hours of training that I did to learn this technique, learn this method, go through this. And it was not easy, but it was also incredibly rewarding, probably within six weeks. And, you know, by the time I learned all this, um, Jacob, who that's my son's name, was probably about four or five, maybe five and a half. It's all kind of a blur, to be honest with you, at this point. Um, but he's still not talking. He he's not, you know, he's maybe repeating some words here and there, but we're not having any real words, we're not having any real words in context, we're not having any conversation. Probably within six weeks of doing this, he starts talking. And I am floored and I am getting really excited about what the potential is for this. And so we keep doing it and we keep doing it, and we keep refining it as I get more proficient at it, as it takes experience and learning um the ways to uh do it in more efficient ways and et cetera, et cetera. And he keeps improving and keeps improving. And then suddenly I pivot to this point of this can't just be for my kid. I've I've got to get this to other people. There's so many people just like me who feel like they don't have any true options. They go through all these therapies that I mentioned before. And and don't get me wrong, like I love our occupational therapy. I have an occupational therapist who works for me who's fantastic. Um, speech therapists, they're fantastic. But where they're limited, they're their therapies are limited because they don't have any direct stimulation to change that connectivity of the brain. When they have that, their therapies are very, very effective when you add that that feature on. Um, so I really felt like all of a sudden I needed to. This came from just a mission to help my son to a mission to help other kids. And that was weirdly therapeutic for me because I'll admit, I like I mentioned earlier, I was pretty bitter about it. I was mad about um what had happened, that you know we had tried so hard to do everything right, and yet here I still have a son with special needs. And and I know no one asked for that, and there's plenty of people in my same shoes who who do all the things right, they're healthy, they go into to pregnancy, um, not expecting this. They don't really have a family history of this, and it still happened. So I'm not unique in that situation, but it was um strange how being able to share that with other people um really became therapeutic. And it really switched my whole model of how I operate within the practice. And so we started shifting this to uh getting it to other people. We started getting more results. And then this kind of thought process of how the neurology and the and the body were so interconnected, it got me to another stage in my business where I developed something called neurotrition, um, which is essentially just combining how the neurology of the brain and the physiology of the body interconnect. Because what was happening was I started realizing in my adult patients, for instance, who, you know, they didn't necessarily know they may have some adult ADHD or, you know, maybe they had dyslexia as a kid or something like that. But you know, they didn't necessarily have any kind of major neurological issue. But I started making this connection of these people who, you know, I would get better, but they would never really stabilize, um, but they were always really anxious, or they had brain fog, or um, they were kind of all over the place. You know, they had all of these, um, they had a they were living in fight and flight. There was all these things that, you know, I started to start to connect, like, you know, this is kind of what I'm learning about treating autism. And what I found is I started applying those same techniques and same uh, you know, treating those same imbalances within the nervous system. And all of a sudden, these same patients that I've been treating forever, who we were helping but never really stabilizing, all of a sudden they started to stabilize because we were balancing their nervous system as well. And so it's pretty incredible how something that seems terrible and frankly feels like you're kind of going into an abyss, um, dealing with uh a special needs child turns into almost a gift to give to everybody else. And I can't say I ever saw that coming in my life, but it put my business in a totally uh different direction. And I just feel very thankful and blessed that I was able to recognize that and utilize that instead of being stuck in you know my own self-pity and and everything else. And so we started doing this neurotrition, and it has um really taken off on how we make a very unique approach to um not only helping kids, and it's not just autism, it's dyslexia, it's ADHD, it's OCD, it's all the things you relate to uh different neurodevelopmental disorders. And also going into adults with chronic inflammation and um just not feeling well, fatigue, thyroid issues, gut issues. And it just opened a whole new door into what I can do and what how we could help people. And so I think one of the messages I want people to kind of think about and understand as they try to cope and deal with their child on the spectrum, or whether it's you know, maybe something else, you know, ADHD or or whatever, because all you know, it's just not just autism, it can be challenging. All of these things can be challenging, there's no doubt. But it's important to realize that maybe there's another message. Maybe there's the the universe or God or however you want to look at it is trying to tell you something else to put you in a different direction. And it's really about how you adapt. It's what you do about it, okay? And I would challenge everybody and parents to not just accept the status quo, don't just accept what they're telling you insurance is gonna cover. Start looking outside the box. There's so many things that are out there that can help your children. And by accident, you might find out they help you too. And that is something that I found in my life, and I think that is uh something that can happen a lot of people's lives if you just open up your heart and start trying to think of it in a way that you can um you're not just subject to this diagnosis, okay? You're not a victim to this diagnosis. You do have some control, whether it's limited. And and trust me, there um I'm not telling you my son's perfect. You know, he has made incredible improvement throughout the years with what we're doing. And I know most definitely, if we didn't do what we do, he would probably still be nonverbal. Okay. Um, I just consulted with a 23-year-old. Um, well, I consulted with a parent with a 23-year-old who with autism who's still in diapers. Okay. Um, and I'm not saying I thought he would be there, but there are situations that this gets really, really, really severe. And it's it's important to know that there are things you can do to change it, but you have to look for it and you have to advocate for yourself. And that's that's a big passion of my business now is trying to get this information. That's why I do the Neurotrition Podcast. So people know this damn stuff exists. Because a lot of people don't. And there's a lot of doctors, piatricians, and others that frankly are going to tell you that that's not real. This doesn't really happen. And this is not really an avenue that you can uh move forward on because it's not it's not evidence-based. And you know, that is really that that's a whole nother topic that really frustrates me is this whole concept of evidence-based. I am very science-based. Everything I do has literature behind it. Okay. When we talk about what evidence-based stuff is, you know, typically these are things that are pharmaceuticals who go through all these um robust clinical trials because they have lots of resources and and frankly money to fund these uh studies and they get FDA approval. And then, you know, a lot of times these things take 10, 20 years to come to market. You know, if I wait 10, 20 years for something to hopefully just cross my fingers that somebody researches them and does all this work and proves it beyond a reasonable doubt. Well, even if I wait that amount of time, guess what? I've missed my window to treat my kid. Okay? So that doesn't mean I don't need science behind it. I absolutely do. And there's been a lot of research, actually, a lot of research published by Dr. Malou himself, you know, over 50 papers, peer-reviewed papers, showing the effectiveness and the theory behind this type of process. And yeah, it does it have the amount of research that um is going to impress people at the FDA? Um, probably not. But there's a couple things I would think about. Is it safe? Does this kind of therapy show it's safe? Absolutely. Does it have a science-laid background that it makes sense is going to be effective? Absolutely. Does that mean I'm going to try it? Hell yes, I'm going to try it. Okay. I'm going to try everything I can to do to help my kid if I know it's not going to hurt them. And that's kind of how I weigh I operate as a physician. I'm not afraid to go outside the box. I think we have to go outside the box, okay? Um, you know, there's, you know, a lot of the medical guidelines right now are so outdated. You know, they're 30 years old, and the research does not match now what they're still doing. It just doesn't. And it's just because the guidelines haven't changed, because a group of people haven't met and changed them. And so that's a silly way to operate, if you ask me. And I think if anything, um, how medicine has has proven to ourselves over the last you know five, six, ten years is that they're not always interested in providing what is going to give the best result to the patients. Um, and that's unfortunate, but it's also, I think, very true. So, my message to you all is to really think about um the gifts that this diagnosis can give. And they're gonna be gifts that you don't really always expect they're gonna be, um, but they can be gifts, and I think that's really important for everyone to know, and I think that's uh really important for everyone to um work through the trauma of getting the diagnosis and start looking at where this gift can lead you. And I feel like I've done that, and I also, you know, I also want to say it doesn't mean my life is perfect with that. There's still a lot of struggle, and there always will be some struggle with it, but I it still gives me a lot of um, it really helps me to know that I can also share this gift with so many people and help so many people. So I hope this helps people. I hope this kind of gives everybody a vision into uh that there's more out there and that it's just not hopeless to have a child diagnosed, especially if you're very early on, because you can feel overwhelmed and kind of feel lost. But there's so much you can do, and the sky is a limit with these kids. So I hope this is helpful. And I also invite you guys to maybe check out my podcast, the Neurotrition Podcast, on the JDS Network. Um, we've been working hard at it, trying to cover not only topics with autism, but ADHD, um, also a lot of other everything from hormone imbalance to chronic fatigue to thyroid dysfunction. We kind of covered the gambut of different health issues. So I hope you check that out. You can check us out on the Neurotrition Podcast.com, on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. And I really appreciate uh being on this podcast, and I hope this message resonates with you guys.