Dr. Cindy Howard: Patient Care, Functional Medicine and a Fascinating Life Journey

In this episode, we talk with Dr. Cindy Howard — a board-certified Chiropractic Internist and Nutritionist, DC, DABCI, DACBN, FIAMA, FICC — and the owner of Innovative Health & Wellness Center in Orland Park, Illinois. She’s also licensed in Florida and runs DC Consulting, where she helps practices strengthen communication, improve patient adherence, and grow their functional medicine and nutrition services.

Today, we’ll be talking about patient care, functional medicine, and Dr. Howard’s fascinating life journey.

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:06

Welcome to another episode of Back to Basics, the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association podcast, where we explore people, ideas, and strategies shaping the future of chiropractic. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Rush, president of the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association, and today we have the privilege of speaking to a leader, innovator, and educator in the chiropractic profession. My guest is Dr. Cindy Howard, a board certified chiropractic internist and nutritionist, and the owner of Innovative Health and Wellness Center in Orland Park, Illinois. She's also licensed in Florida and runs DC Consulting, where she helps practices strengthen communication, improve patient adherence, and grow their functional medicine and nutritional services. Dr. Howard has been a driving force in our healthcare profession, serving as Illinois' delegate to the American Chiropractic Association since 2011, past president of the ACA Council on Diagnosis and Internal Disorders, and currently Vice President of the College of Pharmacology and Toxicology. She's contributed to countless publications, served on medical advisory boards, and is a sought-after national speaker as a keynote and also on topics ranging from concussion, nutrition, GI disorders, and business leadership development for physicians. Her work has earned her numerous honors, including the Illinois Chiropractic Society's Chiropractor of the Year in 2020 and the Nutritional Professional of the Year in 2023. She's also the author of Positively Altered: Finding Happiness in the Bottom of a Chemo Bag, a powerful and personal account of resilience and gratitude through her personal journey with Hodgkin's lymphoma. Today we'll talk about patient care, functional medicine, and Dr. Howard's fascinating life journey. You can also hear more from Dr. Cindy. She is the host of the Positively Altered Podcast. Hope you enjoy my conversation with Dr. Cindy Howard.

unknown 2:03

Dr.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

Cindy Howard, how are you doing today?

SPEAKER_00 2:05

I'm fantastic. How are you, Chris?

SPEAKER_02 2:07

Fantastic as well. Thank you for joining me on a Saturday morning. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 2:12

Oh, it's my pleasure. Saturdays, you know what? They're great because they're quieter, right? That's true. So we've got all the time to get this going.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

Fantastic. So, like every guest, especially my chiropractic guests, I always like to ask the question what inspired you to become a chiropractor? And more specifically, what brought your interest to functional medicine?

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So I would love to tell you that I have this amazing chiropractic story of like it saved my life and I couldn't live without it. And unfortunately, I don't have that story. But it so it's it's a little bland. But the truth is, is I was in school. I was about to graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a degree in exercise science. And I had already done like the personal training thing, right? You know, and and you graduate, I think, at 22 years old and go, what like great, what do I do next? Right. I've got this degree, I don't know what to do. So I decided I wanted to become a physical therapist. That was the next logical step out of exercise science based on my experience. Growing up, and I was raised in a very allopathic home. You know, we saw traditional doctors. I had been to a chiropractor once in college when I was in a car accident, saw him a couple times. Yes, he helped me, but it was, you know, like not super, not that he wasn't inspirational, but it wasn't that inspirational event. So I applied to physical therapy school, and back in the day, and I have to admit I was not an amazing student. Back in the day, I couldn't get in. They wouldn't accept me. It was so competitive in the physical therapy space that every school I applied to to get a second degree wouldn't take me. And I kid you now, this is the most ridiculous part of the chiropractic story. But somebody said to me, Why would you want to go to physical therapy school and be told what to do by the doctors when you go to chiropractic school and tell the physical therapists what to do? And I go, Well, I love to tell people what to do. And we now know that that's changed, and physical therapists are very autonomous and do amazing, amazing work. But you know, back in the day it was a little bit more prescriptive, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:11

Definitely.

SPEAKER_00 4:11

And I'm like, oh, this sounds great. And not knowing too much about it, I applied to chiropractic school and got in, which might not say a whole lot about the the um amount of qualifications maybe you needed back in the day, either compared to physical therapy school. But I got in and I decided to go.

SPEAKER_02 4:28

Well, you had to take organic chemistry and they didn't. I'll give you that.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Oh my gosh. So two semesters in community college. You know, when when 30% is a pass rate in a in a topic, yeah, something's wrong. So I'm not sure how I truly I'm not sure how I passed that class, but I did clearly. And I hope I never have to do organic chemistry for any reason ever again in my entire life because it's horrible, horrible. Uh, so it's interesting. So then, so okay, so you fast forward, I'm in chiropractic school, and I'm taking a class called obstetrics and gynecology, which is very weird to me, right? Because again, I don't have a whole lot of reference coming into chiropractic school, except, you know, we take care of musculoskeletal conditions. And I wanted to be a sports chiropractor, like probably, you know, 80% of my class. That was the ambition. And Dr. Frank Straill, who turned out to be a very close friend and a good mentor of mine and who's no longer with us, taught obstetrics and gynecology. I was in his very first class. And while he's talking about like vaginal concerns, and I'm going, okay, where's my athletes, you know, so that I can adjust them and take care of them. There was this switch that just sort of flipped for me. And I'm like, this is really cool. Like, we can do this primary care approach to what we do in chiropractic. And it was really that sort of moment of that class that had me looking at things in the human body and the way we treat a little bit differently. And I went down this path of, you know, primary care, now what we call functional medicine. And that's how I practice today and really grateful for that experience. Because as much as I love sports and I'm grateful for those that take care of our athletes on the musculoskeletal side, now I get to do it on the metabolic side. And it's really been a fun adventure and one that, you know, I never thought I'd be in a physical therapy clinic. So really interesting how we wind up and grateful for it.

SPEAKER_02 6:12

Yeah, it's great how functional medicine has opened the doors for chiropractors to go beyond what traditional chiropractic is. As great as traditional chiropractic is, it there's a whole open door for other opportunities. So for those that are unfamiliar with functional medicine beyond just the term, how would you describe it?

SPEAKER_00 6:31

It's interesting because when I started practicing, we didn't even use the words functional medicine. You know, right? You know, my background and with my diplomat, I'm a chiropractic internist and nutritionist. So I always said I practice internal medicine, which gets you in trouble. Because when you say you do internal medicine, everybody automatically assumes you're a medical doctor, which I am not. I am a doctor of chiropractic and very proud. The the whole concept of functional medicine really has morphed. And if we break it down, it's about looking for the underlying cause of, let's say, a symptom or a disease by utilizing certain tests in order to get information in order to accomplish health. But I would take it really one step further, which I feel like a lot of people don't practice properly. And that is it's not just running a lab test and giving a supplement, right? It's really more than that. It's about understanding the inner workings of the body and the systems to understand how even a supplement may not work right because it doesn't metabolize right or it's not utilized correctly or absorbed correctly. And it's really understanding those mechanisms. I think I'm getting back to the science. I didn't ever want to learn again. But I think it's it's about understanding really those mechanisms in the human body so that we can affect metabolic health much greater than take this for that. Because if we look at it, in medicine, in all of medicine, we do that, right? You have a symptom, you have a disease, you take this for that. So in functional medicine, we take a lot of pride in the fact that we use natural supplements, right? Less side effects, a little safer. They're not all perfectly safe, but you know, safer, right? Less risks. But at the same time, it's still a this for that. And if we dive really deep, it's really about changing the metabolic chemistry pathway in the body to utilize what we should be getting through food in the right way in the first place to affect the body, to then heal itself, right? And avoid the symptoms and then therefore the disease. So I think it's the rabbit hole is much deeper than what most people think in that functional medicine space.

SPEAKER_02 8:31

Gotcha. So if we look at your practice, would you say, as a chiropractor that practices functional medicine, is your patient base more the traditional back pain, neck pain, shoulder joint pain, or is it more conditions that are, let's just say, functionally medicine based, like chronic fatigue and hormone imbalance, public health conditions, that type of thing?

SPEAKER_00 8:58

Great question. And it's interesting because I'll tell you, probably about 10% of my practice is musculoskeletal. But that's not really true. I'd tell you, probably 80% is musculoskeletal indirect, because I have a lot of chiropractors that refer to me that do all the structural work, but sometimes the patients get stuck. So they refer to me to do the metabolic work. And I never would not tell you not to go back and see your original doc, right? Like I want you doing the musculoskeletal work. It's brilliant. But the patients that would just walk in directly, yes, I mean, from doc, I'm tired all the time to my half flashes are killing me, to I have erectile dysfunction. And they don't always admit that, by the way. I have to drag that out of them sometimes. And, you know, autoimmune diseases, we co-manage can't patients with cancer. I mean, the entire gamut of anything that could potentially go wrong, we really accept and we see in the practice because again, it's getting to the underlying reason you have it in the first place. And a lot of times the patients that walk in, uh allopathic western medicine has failed them, or they don't want it, right? They know that there's other options and pathways to get to it, so they come in the office. So, no, we see a lot of and crazy stuff. I mean, I, you know, oh, doc, you know, I feel like there's bugs crawling underneath my skin and nobody can identify what that is. And sometimes I look at them like I don't know what that is either. We have to do some, you know, investigation. But we see we see very simple typical things people go through, and then some crazy weird symptoms that are really fun to investigate and try to figure out. You know, it's like a some people are a 10-piece puzzle, and some people are that thousand-piece puzzle.

SPEAKER_02 10:28

Well, it's interesting. This podcast could go on for hours because this topic is very interesting and it can get very deep, is not only what you treat, but how you integrate lab testing, health histories, and sometimes these conversations with patients can get rather lengthy. So I eventually want to get to the question of how a chiropractor can have a musculoskeletal practice and a functional medicine practice, because we all know that when we have a musculoskeletal case, those follow-up visits when you're under the course of treatment, they don't take a lot of time, but a functional medicine visit can be very time consuming. But maybe it doesn't have to be. We'll we'll keep that on the back corner. We'll come back to that. I guess I want to go to the question. So in traditional chiropractic care, chiropractic adjustments, exercise modalities is reached its limit with a patient. How do you transition that patient to the next level of functional medicine?

SPEAKER_00 11:24

Right. Well, in my office, it's easy because we introduce that right away, right? We explain that sometimes there can be nutritional components, metabolic components that can get in the way. And I think it's it's almost really kind of easy because we all know that what we do in our practice should work. It just doesn't always work, right? And the mindset isn't that chiropractic failed. It's that the body potentially wasn't in the right position, right? The right state to receive the work. So if we look at the body from a functional standpoint, now we have to go back to diet. And it's as simple as asking the patients those questions, right? Like I love to say, how do you eat? And patients will go, oh, I eat really healthy. And then I don't trust them because their concept of healthy may not really be my concept of healthy. And it's what did you have for breakfast, lunch, and dinner? Are you a snacker? What did you put in your mouth? What are you drinking? Oh, I have a couple alcoholic beverages. Okay, what's a couple? Oh, a six-pack every night. Well, okay, that's I mean, a couple to me is two. You know, a couple times a week is two. And some people are doing it every day. So it's diving in a little bit with some of those questions. Also, other questions, functional questions, right? You've got chronic low back pain, it's not getting better. What are your bottle habits? I mean, how many docs are really asking patients, how many times do you move balls? Do you feel like you're emptying? Is there any burping, belching, bloating gas, right? Where else could the pain be referring to? And yet we automatically assume it's just a low back condition, right? We've got a problem in the lumbar spine. What if we're constipated? And that could be one of the sole reasons that we're not getting patients out of all of their discomfort. So I think even just some simple questions about their lifestyle and their habits helps transition them into a different mindset to go, hmm, I wonder if there's something else going on in my world that's keeping the chiropractic care from really getting us to, you know, 100%.

SPEAKER_02 13:15

Gotcha. Okay, so you mentioned that you start functional medicine right away. What does that look like?

SPEAKER_00 13:20

So patient comes into the office, they fill out a bunch of paperwork ahead of time, which includes musculoskeletal questions, but it also includes questions about bowel habits, how often you go, sleep patterns, are you sleeping, waking up in the middle of the night, what is your energy level? We ask a whole bunch of hormonal questions. You know, if you're experiencing anything, you know, depending on the time of um life you're in, right? Because sometimes it it varies depending on your age. And that paperwork is all inclusive from the get-go. So I don't have to wait until you're not doing well to start asking those questions. I have all of that material. So even if you walk in and say, you know what, I picked up something heavy, I'm having a little bit of pain in my low back. Can you help me? I'm getting everything else at the front end. Now, where the focus goes will vary, right? Because if the patient is really only wanting to accomplish, get me out of my low back pain from something I did, the focus in the conversation is still going to be more geared toward that with little things thrown in. But when they fill out the paperwork, I always ask for their top five concerns. And it's amazing because even if they walk in, let's say, with a headache or low back pain, they'll also say, I'm tired all the time and I have hot flashes or I'm not sleeping well. And we approach it like they came in for all five of those things then, right? And sometimes we prioritize and put them in different order. But if it's a concern, why wouldn't we want to address it when we know we can actually affect it in the practice? So the conversation from the get-go is always about that. The paperwork helps. And I find for a lot of doctors who are so embedded on that musculoskeletal side, sometimes it's hard to know what questions to ask or they're not comfortable because they're not used to doing it. And I always say, take a good set of paperwork then, take a metabolic questionnaire, just make it part of your system so that when the patient fills that out, you can look at it and decide, ooh, how much of a role might this play, right? So if they give you a lot of information, now it's easy to take the conversation there. They really don't give you much. You don't have to spend much time there, right? You dive into, okay, what'd you lift? How did you lift it? Let's go over the proper biomechanics, get you out of your discomfort, and hopefully keep you there, right? So paperwork is a great tool to help guide you if you ask the right questions ahead of time.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

Hello, chiropractors and chiropractic technicians. It's time to discover your path forward at the 2025 Wisconsin Chiropractic Association Fall Convention. It's September 25th through the 28th at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in the Wisconsin Dells. We've got it all. Technique, functional medicine, holistic care, case management, nutrition, and CT certification all packed into one unforgettable convention experience. You're also invited to the WCA Legacy Awards reception Friday, September 26th from 5 to 7 p.m. It's complimentary for all convention attendees. The WCA Legacy Award honors distinguished doctors whose vision, leadership, and dedication have helped shape the chiropractic profession in the state of Wisconsin. Be there to hear directly from these inspiring recipients as they share their stories, wisdom, and lessons learned over a lifetime of service. This is more than just an award ceremony. It's an evening of inspiration, connection, and celebration with the people that have paved the way for the next generation of chiropractors. So let's raise a glass, share the moment, and leave motivated as we write our own legacy at the WCA Legacy Awards Friday night at 5 to 7 PM. So if you haven't been to the Kalahari before, it's a great resort style experience. Learn, connect, and unwind in comfort. The Kalahari offers premier lodging, diverse restaurants, and a world-class water park. Perfect for creating lasting memories with family and colleagues. So register today. Spots are filling up. Join us at the WCA Fall Convention, September 25th through the 28th, 2025, at the Kalahari Resort and Convention Center in Wisconsin Dells. We hope to see you there. Okay, Dr. Cindy, let's just say I'm a chiropractor. I have a musculoskeletal practice. I love practicing that methodology. I have an interest in functional medicine, but I don't have the knowledge to take that patient to that level. But I wanted them to have access. I have a patient that has a condition that I think you can help them. How do I connect that patient to you with you being in Illinois and me being in Wisconsin?

SPEAKER_00 17:50

Well, the good news is we're sisters, right? You're right above us, so we're really close. You don't have to travel too far across the country. You know, the greatest way really is just make that phone call to the office and we set them up and let's get them down here if we can, right? If they're willing to travel. Because obviously, being in the office, there's a greater connection. Uh, we're able then to also accomplish a physical exam as part of the visit versus just a really good history and advice and even lab testing, because that can always be ordered remotely. So, you know, legally, there's a really clean answer, and that is because I'm licensed in the state of Illinois and Florida, I would have to practice in those states, right? I am not licensed in the state of Wisconsin. However, as long as a patient travels down to see me, is present in the office initially, that qualifies, right? Anybody can come to the state of Illinois to see me because I'm practicing within my own state. If a patient is unable to travel, that doesn't work really well. I actually have two suggestions to fill that gap. One is we do have some doctors in the state of Wisconsin that practice the way I do. So that referral to doctors that also might even be closer, great. And listen, I'd love to take care of everybody, but I'm also happy to spread the wealth because we do have some great people across the country and certainly in your great state of Wisconsin. If that also doesn't work and you just have to have me, and I'm appreciative, but if that's the way you've got to go, you know, we convert those patients, if you will, a little bit to more like health consulting patients. So I become more of a health coach because understand that if they don't physically present themselves, we we limit what we can do based on the fact that I cannot perform a physical exam through the computer, right? So there are diagnostic tools that we would be eliminating, um, which removes itself from me being a really great doctor. So we can do it, and and we do do it. There are ways to facilitate telehealth visits without violating any sort of legality. But obviously, get down here if you can. And if you can't call me and then we figure out how to make it work. The beauty of this though, Chris, which I actually love, is we want people to continue the chiropractic work too. So it really is also about co-management. So even if they come down and see me, they're gonna come right back to you, right? And we can we can be in as involved as we want. I have some doctors that don't want to hear from me, they don't care. They're like, just fix them. Right, you know, we we work real hard to fix them. And then there are some who are like, I want to know exactly what you're doing, and let's communicate and co-manage. And I love that too, right? Because if I can share what I think is going on metabolically to help support the work that you're doing, sometimes both of us can help with that adherence of the patient because you're, you know, supporting the work I'm doing, I'm supporting the work you're doing, and the patient gets it now because they're hearing it from both of us. And that co-management can be really fun.

SPEAKER_02 20:35

That makes sense. Can you talk a little bit about common costs for the patient? Not necessarily asking you specifically what you charge, but what can a patient expect to spend with an initial consult for a functional medicine visit and follow-up lab work?

SPEAKER_00 20:50

Yeah, it's a loaded question because it really depends on what the patient needs. And, you know, fortunately or unfortunately, in this functional medicine space, a lot of us have become fee-for-service type practitioners. Because the challenge with insurance reimbursement, quite frankly, it's very sad because you have insurance and we'd love for it to cover everything, but it just doesn't. So a lot of us are in that fee for service space. You know, I think there's a huge variety, right? I mean, walking through the door, you might spend anywhere from a couple hundred bucks to almost a thousand with with some of us in this space. And laboratory testing is is really gonna vary. I mean, again, some tests are as simple as 50, 100 bucks, and you can spend thousands, you know, and and that's the challenge. And we get this question all the time, right? A new patient will call, we share our new patient visit. So we never want anybody walking through the door not knowing how much money to bring or what their commitment is. But at the same time, I don't know how in depth your case is going to be and what I'm gonna need. So after talking to you, we sit down, we give you an array of ideas from we can do nothing, we can do everything, and we can pick and choose somewhere in between and walk a slower path. And I always try to meet the patient where they are at. They're at not only emotionally but financially, right? Because everybody's got a budget, right? I love when people are like, I have a budget. Everybody has a budget. Nobody has infinite amounts of money. So we walk through then what those costs are and we work really hard. Where if you say to me, look, I have $500 to spend, that's all I've got. I've got $500, great. Let's figure out how to spend that $500 wisely. Where sometimes I do have patients who are like, I don't care if this costs five grand, I want to get well, I'll write the check. So I'd love to give you a very specific answer, but we also don't have a one size fits all plan where you walk into my office and I'm like, I'm doing these eight things, no matter who you are, what you are. I am very individualized in terms of like, okay, here's what I think is going on. I need these four things to give me the information to help you. What do you want to do?

SPEAKER_02 22:45

Makes sense. So it's not a cookie cutter approach.

SPEAKER_00 22:47

It's never. And it shouldn't be.

SPEAKER_02 22:49

Right.

SPEAKER_00 22:50

And truthfully, Chris, if you don't mind, I'd love to just throw this out. If you have patients you're referring to people in the functional medicine space that do have a cookie cutter approach, I don't know that I would be comfortable with that. Because what happens is we all wind up when we learn some of this material, we wind up going to classes where they do teach this is wrong, you give that, right? And we need to because it's a starting point, right? We need to understand that if you see, you know, elevated blood sugar, for example, we can use things like berberine and cinnamon and other products to help address that. So we get a lot of that textbook information. But those of us that do this well have taken it beyond the textbook to really individualize it still with the patient, you know, to understand. But I guess if we do have a cookie cutter approach, you'll get a certain amount of people well, right? You just will. It's it's kind of like even adjusting, right? You do the same adjustment on the same people all the time. Some people are going to respond, right? But we know sometimes we need new techniques or a different approach, or sometimes a more gentler approach, right? There's all different ways to treat that individual depending on what they're coming in for. And functional medicine is the same. So if the doctor does the same thing on the same people all the time, I'd probably find somebody else to work with.

SPEAKER_02 24:02

That makes a lot of sense. Now, not a cookie-cutter approach, but I'm sure there's common things that you see and you have a common approach to how you go about it. Are there common conditions that you would say these are by far the most common things I see? Like one might be someone who I just can't lose weight. I try everything, it just doesn't work. Maybe that's not a great example, but are there common things that are right in your wheelhouse in functional medicine?

SPEAKER_00 24:30

The easy ones are I'm tired all the time. Everybody's tired. They think it's normal, it's not. You shouldn't be tired all the time. So I think fatigue is a is an enormous one. And there's a lot of reasons we're tired, but fatigue is a big one. Sleep disorders is another. Um, you know, people who are not staying asleep, getting enough sleep, feeling rested. And we certainly we heal, we regenerate, right, while we're sleeping. So I think that's another really big one. Uh GI problems, like I know this is crazy. The record in my office for no bowel movement is 31 days.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Oh my.

SPEAKER_00 25:01

But typical, like common that we see is well, I move bowels every three days, or when I go, I don't empty. So a lot of bowel dysfunction, burping, belching, bloating gas, constipation, diarrhea. That's probably another really, you know, really tight, close one. Um, the weight loss in the hormones, absolutely. I mean, you know, most of us are walking around overweights. We want to be, you know, pencil thin. We're not happy with the the size that we are, so that that's very common. And I think the hormones play an enormous close role in that. And then I think just from a condition standpoint, the other thing that I see an enormous amount of is autoimmune disease. You know, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis. I I probably don't go a day in my practice without either diagnosing that or seeing somebody who has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder.

SPEAKER_02 25:46

Well, all right. Makes sense. Okay, Dr. Sydney, I'm just gonna throw out a situation and you can tell me how you would respond. A patient sees me for back pain, but they just happen to mention that they've got a skin condition where maybe they break out in some type of a rash. They've been to the dermatologist, they just can't figure out where it is. Doc, do you know anywhere I can go to get this figured out?

SPEAKER_00 26:10

So, Chicago. Chicago, we see skin conditions all of the time. And that still comes back down to first we got to ask questions, right? So, did you come into contact with something? Did you rub up against something? Were you bit by something? Did you change your laundry detergents in the last you know week that could have stimulated a rash? Always looking for something external, which makes the most sense initially, right? However, a lot of skin conditions are more internal in nature. So now we've got to get down to okay, are you sensitive to something? Are you overconsuming a food, let's say, that's now causing an inflammatory reaction in the gut, causing some sort of histamine reaction, allows you to break out in a rash? Are hormones fluctuating? Is there a possibility that now there's a change in your estrogen, testosterone, progesterone levels and associated hormones that could be causing some sort of skin disruption? What if it's your liver that's not clearing toxins well? And now as a result, you're breaking out because the detox pathways are not sufficient. And maybe we need to run some labs, let's say a CBC, to determine does this look like it's an infection? Does it look like it's an allergy or histamine reaction? Does it not look like any of those things? So it's like loaded question, right? Because it'd be really easy to come into my office and I say, oh, let's just put a salve on it. You know, we'll use a little bit to quell that. But maybe we actually need something like stinging nettles, which is an antihistamine, or maybe we need to regulate the estrogen by clearing it through the liver using like a dim or a calcium deglucurate for the liver to work better. Um, you asked a loaded question here, Chris, right? Because I've got, you know, 20 potential answers to what caused the rash in the first place. So what I love, and this is this just goes to show with the way we practice in functional medicine, is I don't want to just throw a salve at you, right? That's what the dermatologists typically do. Um, what if it's a yeast that breaks out in a rash, right? And we give you an antibiotic, but that's for bacteria and it's really a yeast, and we really needed an antifungal, which we have natural antifungals too, but now that rash broke out because you've overconsumed sugar, which is feeding the fungus, which allowed it to rear itself, right? So it's still getting to that underlying what caused the rash, and then we got to fix that.

SPEAKER_02 28:25

So that leads me to the question whether it's a skin condition or some other condition. Do you find yourself starting with lab testing or starting more with taking something away like sugar, gluten, alcohol, dairy, or the other path of starting with supplementation?

SPEAKER_00 28:46

It's a great question. And this goes back to I don't have a one size fits all. So, you know, we learned in school to listen to the patient, right? The history will tell you absolutely everything you need to know. So the more in-depth questions I get to, the more I can make that decision. So let's say a patient does say, Oh, I went on vacation, I didn't eat my typical diet, now the rash showed up. Hmm, okay, maybe it's really about food, and we explore what foods they actually consumed. Oh, you know, we had pizza every single night. I don't normally eat pizza. Okay, let's pull out the pizza, let's see if the rash goes away, right? That that can actually be kind of simple. The laboratory tests would be more in of like I have this rash, we can't figure out any sort of trigger for it, we really have no idea. And that's where I need lab tests, whether it's in blood work or food sensitivity testing, hormones, to determine what the underlying cause is. But again, I want to know where you are to find that. So if I have, let's say, a woman who comes in, she's walking through perimenopause, we know we're gonna get a change in estrogen levels. Could that rash be a result of the change in the estrogen levels? I might be more apt to run down the hormone pathway. Versus somebody who says, you know, I keep a really clean diet, um, I eat barely nothing, right? I eat barely nothing. I still don't understand why I'm having this issue. Maybe now we do some genetic testing to see if they're actually having trouble. That switch flipped on genetically, where they're getting a histamine or a mast cell response, even though they're eating healthy foods, those foods might be the trigger, right? So now I'm gonna do genetic testing instead of hormone testing. If I really have no idea what's going on, I might just start with some basic blood work again to help me see where something just might be askew to then know what the next test is. And if a patient says to me, I don't want to do any testing, I'm completely respectful. And I might just pull that salve off the shelf or the antihistamine off the shelf and say, okay, let's try this because I won't hurt you with it. And if it doesn't help, then can we take the next step? And if it does help, great. We win, I guessed correctly. I should never say guess as a doctor, but quite honestly, we do that, right? Like, let's be honest. Sometimes we're guessing, hopefully intelligently guessing, but you know, we guess, and as long as I can do no harm with the recommendations, we try it.

SPEAKER_02 31:00

Makes sense. So it's not a cookie-cutter approach.

SPEAKER_00 31:04

Never got it. Never.

SPEAKER_02 31:07

All right, I'm gonna switch ears on you now. So we're gonna get a little personal.

SPEAKER_00 31:12

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 31:12

So you had a journey through Hodgkin's lymphoma.

SPEAKER_00 31:16

I did.

SPEAKER_02 31:17

You eventually wrote a book. I did positively altered. Can you take us down that path a little bit?

SPEAKER_00 31:24

I'd love to. So oh boy, we're almost 12 years ago now, and I woke up one day with a swollen lymph node sticking out of my neck, and I thought, oh, that's weird. I must be getting sick. And I waited four or five days for the fever to come, and it didn't come. And I had what I thought were zero symptoms surrounding the lymph node. So I got a little nervous because I know better you shouldn't have a swollen lymph node for no reason. So I sent myself for an x-ray, and we found two lymph nodes in the neck. There were two in the chest cavity. So I ran some blood work on myself. And it was in that moment I learned you probably shouldn't be your own doctor. It's a little weird to do that, but I ran a bunch of blood work and there's a lot of markers in blood. We don't always tell patients this because we don't want to make them nervous, but there's a lot of markers in blood that start to make us think cancer, right? And especially if there's a lot of them that that trim. So I saw a lot of markers I didn't like, and I got really nervous, and I thought, oh boy, I'm I'm in trouble here, which is really weird because again, I felt fine, or at least I thought I felt fine. So I sent myself for a CT scan and I lit up, you know, lymph nodes all over the place. Eventually referred myself to the University of Chicago for a biopsy. The biopsy confirmed Hodgkin's lymphoma stage 2B. Went for a PET scan, which is really fun, the radioactive dye. You know, you really light up like, you know, a Christmas tree at that point, and um confirmed that there were lesions all above the diaphragm, thank goodness. So that's what allowed it to be stage 2B. And I tripped on on some weird, also um antigen or antibodies. So now I had a decision, right? It's interesting because practicing the way I do now 13 years ago, if you would have said, would you ever opt for chemotherapy, I would have told you you were crazy. I was not gonna put that poison in my body. I don't like, you know, I have this, it's not a good joke, but I have this joke that they kill you while they keep you alive, right? And not going that route. So I made a phone call to a very dear friend of mine, Dr. Michael Taylor. He practices in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Trust him with my life. And I said, Mike, I'm gonna pack my bags, I'm gonna get my practice covered, somebody will watch my kids. I was going through a bad divorce at the time. I said, I want to go to Germany and get care because there's a clinic over there that that does things very differently than we do here in the United States. And he said to me, You're going nowhere. And I said, What are you talking about? I'm not doing this. He goes, You're gonna stay home, you're gonna get chemotherapy, you're gonna take care of those kids, and you're gonna live. And I said, Mike, it's poison. And he says, I know, but Hodgkin's lymphoma is curable, right? So if you're gonna get a cancer, get a curable one, right? I suppose like there's there's the lesson that's so after a lot of self-reflection and internal arguments because I was gonna violate everything that I believed I would ever do, I opted for chemotherapy. Now, as a side note, I'd love to throw this in because I think it's really important. It is so easy for us all to judge what somebody should do with their health, right? We kind of do it every day as practitioners because we tell you what to do. At the end of the day, it was an amazing lesson for me because even though I always thought I wasn't judgmental, that probably wasn't the case. And now, even more so, I am here to give tools. You get to make the decision, right? And I even lost a couple patients over the fact that they learned that I did chemotherapy because they're like, Dr. Cindy, you know, you talk about all this natural stuff all the time. How can you opt for that? Well, when you're faced with something, you weigh the pros and the cons, you get the education, you make a good decision. So I did make a good decision. However, I also knew that because it kills you while it keeps you alive, they were gonna throw a parade in my body and I was gonna be the street sweeper and cleaned it up, clean it up. So I opted for high dose IV vitamin C the day before, the day out, the day after. I was popping about 150 pills a day of natural supplements. I was eating as perfectly as I knew how to do, because in this world it's very hard, but I was really good. And I co-managed myself, which sounds a little weird, with an oncologist, and I did opt for the chemotherapy. Six months of treatment. I missed one day of work because I fell down a flight of stairs and sprained my knee. I would get, uh I would go to work on Tuesday, I would get chemo on Wednesday, I would go to work on Thursday. By Friday at three o'clock, I was in bed. The kids had to make their own dinner because I was tired. I was back at work Saturday morning, and I only work three days a week anyway. So when I say I didn't miss work, I didn't miss work. And I got through six months of care, missing one day of work. You never would have known I was walking through chemotherapy if I didn't tell you, because the support that I gave myself really allowed me to be healthy through the experience. And I made a very conscious decision that I wasn't sick. So I decided to experience Hodgkin's lymphoma rather than have it. I didn't want to own it. And I experienced it for six months, got on the other side of it, and was able to really be very grateful that I took the chance on combining what I do with Western medicine. And it's now almost 12 years, and you know, at five years, it's considered cured. So there's no remission, there's right, there's none of that. Now, I will tell you, I fought with my doctors because there is standard of care even in the chemotherapy realm, and I didn't want to follow everything that they suggested, and I gave pushback and I made my own decisions. And one of those decisions was even in the follow-up. So coming out of a diagnosis of cancer, they recommend that you get CT scans and PET scans every six months for five years to make sure that there is nothing there. And I told them they were nuts. So I agreed to do the PET scan following the treatment to confirm that we nailed it and the PET scan was clear. And then I said, look, I found this through blood work. I'm going to continue to run blood work every three or four months, which I still do actually 12 years later. Um, because if cancer returns, I know that the blood is going to get affected at some point. And then I'll call you if I need you again. But I also believe that PET scans or CT scans every six months is an enormous amount of radiation. We know that radiation can destroy healthy tissue, which I believe leads you down that cancer path. And quite frankly, if you look in the literature, anybody who walks through Hodgkin's lymphoma, the sequela is usually leukemia 20 years later. And I was 46 when I diagnosed myself. So, you know, had I been 80, all right, you take your chances, right? Because although I want to live to be 112, so I still had to wait a little bit longer. But as a result of being 46, knowing that I've got a lot of more, I felt I had more years in front of me than behind me at that point. I chose not to do the scans because I don't want to walk through leukemia when I'm 66. So I'm 12 years in. So I guess, you know, you wait for those eight more years to prove them right or wrong. And I'm gonna do everything I can to prove them, you know, wrong that I'm not gonna wind up with leukemia. But I didn't want to do some of those things that I felt would contribute. And that's where, you know, my message in this whole story, which I share, I think is really important because there is this standard of care, and I get it, right? There's this standard of care, but that doesn't mean it's the right care for everybody. And again, that's that cookie-cutter approach, right? So people have to get educated on what they're walking through and what all the choices are out there, and then pick, right? And sometimes it's pieces of them that make the most sense. Now, if I'm wrong and I get leukemia, I'm gonna do this again, right? Like I'm gonna just I'm gonna plow through it again. I'll have another book, I guess, because you know there'll be more material at that point. And and and we do it another time if we have to. So I'm not really truly waiting for it to happen, but I am being proactive to prevent it, knowing that there is risk. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 39:06

It does, and it's a very fascinating story. And I want to get to the book here in a moment, but I have a question before we get there. You said a couple of key things in there that made me really think. First of all, you called your colleague Dr. Taylor in Tulsa. You already had a preconceived idea on what you were gonna do. You were going to Germany. I was and he helped you with the decision maybe not to do that, and you already had the decision that you weren't gonna do chemo, and then that changed. And then you said something else. You said you had to prove to yourself or you or you believe that you were not sick.

SPEAKER_00 39:39

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:39

Can you tell me how you said that again?

SPEAKER_00 39:41

So I'll give you the background to that a little bit. Once I knew it was Hodgkin's lymphoma, I was sitting and having lunch with my girlfriend Wendy. And Wendy's amazing, she does emotional freedom techniques, she's an amazing practitioner and a very dear friend of mine. And she was probably she was probably the first friend I think I told. And I said, Wendy, I have cancer. And she kind of looked at me like, no, you don't. And I said, Yeah, I have cancer. I said, but I'm not sick. I don't feel sick. I don't want to be sick. I don't want to look sick. And she said, then don't be. And it was in that conversation that I decided, okay, you're right. I'm not sick. I'm not sick. So it wasn't a lie, right? And I know there's people going, but you had cancer, right? So how could you say you're not sick? It's a mindset, right? So yes, yes, theoretically I had Hodgkin's lymphoma, but I didn't use that word have because that showed ownership. And I didn't want that to take over my body and my life. So I decided to use the words experience and walk through so that the brain understands something different. You know, I'll share with you a little side story, which was really powerful for me. At the time that I walked through this, my mother had been diagnosed with amyloidosis and multiple myelama, which is considered terminal. And the doctors had told her she had six months to live. And when you would call my mother, I would say, Mom, how are you? She lives in lived in Arizona. We did lose her eventually, but she lived in Arizona. And I would call my mom and I'd say, Mom, how are you today? And she would answer one of two ways. She would either say cured or fabulous. Now, this is a woman who was given a life sentence, right? I mean, we all have one, but you know, when we give when you're given the dates, it's a little different.

SPEAKER_01 41:16

Right.

SPEAKER_00 41:16

And although we knew she was not going to be cured, we never gave up that idea that you could. I mean, you never know what you discover and you find. But I'll tell you what, she really believed she was fabulous. We got to spend eight and a half more years with her.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

That's great.

SPEAKER_00 41:29

Eight and a half more years because her brain, and we know that our brain is wired to think negatively, and we believe what we think, right? We believe what we say. My mother believed she was fabulous.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

And she's going right down the you're going right down the path that I uh that I was leading one that you changed your your approach, then you convinced yourself that you weren't sick, meaning you were gonna beat this. And my question is, and you were already asked answering that question based on your beautiful story with your mother, is where does mindfulness come in healing from?

SPEAKER_00 42:01

It's enormous. It's enormous. We we actually know there's there's true neuroscientific research that says that we are wired to think negatively. 80% of our thoughts every single day are about looking for predators, right? So cancer is a predator, right? We're looking to protect ourselves so we think negatively. And if you even think about your day-to-day conversations, I mean, how many times do you complain about something? How many times do you think negatively about something that happened or a person or even your patients? You know, oh, I can't believe Susie's coming in today, but be prepared, right? You know, like Susie drives us nuts in practice, right? We're always going in those directions. And we have to work really hard to rewire that pathway because our thoughts automatically go negative. So we have to wake up consciously and go, you know what? We're gonna think differently today. And you and I started that actually. You asked me how I was, and I told you I was fantastic. Now, is that really true? And actually, today it is, but there are days that it isn't. But I don't ever answer that question, oh, Chris, I'm terrible. I don't answer it that way, right? Because if it is terrible and I answer terrible, I'm going to perpetuate that. But if I keep saying I'm fantastic, eventually, it's almost like I believe the lie. And patients will say to me, but doctor, you're lying. Well, am I? Or is it mindset shift to actually get to a space where we are actually fantastic and not terrible? So through my entire journey, and I'm not gonna, I won't lie to you, there were moments that I cried and I felt sorry for myself. And I'm like, who did I piss off and what did I do to get this horrible disease, right? I mean, I had those moments, but they were so short to allow me to to grieve, because I think the grieving process is really important. But then to say, okay, that's it, stop it, right? You had your moment of being a victim, stop it, and spend the rest of your day being Wonder Woman and get over this, right? And get on it. And if we make that conscious effort to change, I'll tell you something, Chris. When patients come into my office, and I really believe this, and it doesn't happen often because people spend a lot of money to see me. But there are a handful of patients where I actually say in the back of my head, this patient's not going to get well. Doesn't matter what I do, how much money I spend, the tests that I run, how good I am, they are not going to get well. It's like I can see that, right? They they they feed off being sick. And until that mindset shifts of I don't want to be sick anymore, I'm well. We can have the greatest tools in chiropractic ever. And some patients are just not going to improve.

SPEAKER_02 44:35

Yeah. That's great. Your your answer about uh being fantastic is really cool. And mindset is so important. Last Saturday, I was invited to go to a group fitness class where I didn't know what to expect, but I knew it was going to be difficult. And I knew also that I was going to know a lot of people were in that class and I didn't want to embarrass myself. So I went to the class, and the entire time I was driving, which was a 20-minute drive to get there, I kept saying to myself, I don't get tired. I don't get tired. I don't get tired. And I kept saying that to myself throughout the class. I don't get tired. I don't get tired. And if the instructor said to me, Chris, how you doing? I was going to say, I don't get tired. But I didn't want to be caught.

SPEAKER_00 45:19

I love it. I love it. May I challenge you on one thing?

SPEAKER_02 45:22

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 45:23

Okay, if you don't mind. And I'm not picking on you, but I this is some of the work that I love to teach about, right? In some of the keynote presentations that I do outside of chiropractic. It's still that don't and tired that the brain hears is a negative word. I would have changed that to I have so much energy today.

SPEAKER_02 45:40

That's great. I like it.

SPEAKER_00 45:41

Because even though I get it and I love what you did, the brain now hears I have energy versus I don't get tired. It's still thinking, don't get tired, don't get tired, right? It's like if a friend of mine the other day we were talking and she we were talking about this very subject, and she says it's like telling a kid, don't forget, instead of saying remember, right? Remember is a positive. We want to remember. That's a positive thing. When we say don't forget, we're implying that you're going to forget.

SPEAKER_02 46:06

Well, I'll definitely use that the next time I go to this class.

SPEAKER_00 46:10

Yeah. And you know what, Chris? And even if you do embarrass yourself, it's great material for laughter.

SPEAKER_02 46:15

It is. Well, the the back side of that story is throughout the whole class, I wasn't breathing hard the whole time.

SPEAKER_01 46:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 46:22

I didn't get tired. And I got through the class and I thought, I didn't get tired. But you know what? Two days later, I could barely get out of bed because I was so sore from that class.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Because you didn't say I'm not going to get sore.

SPEAKER_02 46:33

You just said you're not going to get tired.

SPEAKER_00 46:36

See, your brain wasn't prepared for that.

SPEAKER_02 46:38

But look back to that. I should have been tired.

unknown 46:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 46:41

If I was that sore two days later, I should have gotten tired throughout that class, but I did not get tired. It's a but next time I am going to say, I have so much energy.

SPEAKER_00 46:49

Right? And I'm my muscles are going to feel fantastic and thank me for this workout in two days.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_00 46:55

That's not always true. But then but then you come see me, and there's some good nutrition we can do to get rid of the delayed onset muscle soreness.

SPEAKER_02 47:03

Should have called you sooner.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Right.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Chiropractic friends, this is our moment. The Wisconsin Chiropractic Association has been in the trenches, meeting with lawmakers at the state capitol, building relationships, and advocating for chiropractic to turn ideas into action. And because of that work, because of years of showing up, we just scored a major victory. Starting in 2026, Wisconsin Medicaid will expand to cover extremity adjustments and therapeutic modalities. We're one of very few states to get this done. These are tools that help our patients heal faster, stay active, and avoid more invasive care. This is a huge win for our profession, and more importantly, a huge win for the people we serve every single day. Now we can't ignore what's happened across the border in Minnesota. Their lawmakers have made a decision to eliminate chiropractic in 2026 for all Medicaid recipients over the age of 21. What does that mean? In the state of Minnesota, patients who've relied on chiropractic that have Medicaid will be left with no coverage at all. Now let's be clear, if that happened there, it could also happen here unless we stay vigilant, united, and ready to act. The WCA will continue to be your voice in Madison. But advocacy takes resources, time, expertise, and yes, funding. That's why we're asking you to join our 25 and 25 campaign. If every chiropractor in Wisconsin gave just $25 a month to our political conduit at PyrrhStrong, we could keep supporting our chiropractic-friendly legislators, push for more victories like this, and keep chiropractic strong and protected in Wisconsin for generations to come. The work that's been done is worth celebrating. Wisconsin is one of the very few states in the entire nation to expand Medicaid coverage to include extremity adjustments and therapeutic modalities. This didn't happen by chance. It happened because of your support, your association, and your commitment to standing together. So pick up the phone and call the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association or go to the WCA website and join the cause. Because together we win and together we keep chiropractic strong. Okay, so there's a couple more things I want to talk about, but I want to talk about the book. Tell us about the book.

SPEAKER_00 49:22

Yeah, the book, the book was almost 10 years in the making. So during the journey, while I was walking through Hodgkin's, I kept a diary. I love to write. It's it's the way I tend to express myself when it's very personal. And I'm usually pretty transparent. If you ask me a question, I'll give you a true answer. But I kept the diary. And when I kept the diary, I realized there was a lot of good messages in there and actually a lot of humor. So I thought to myself, you know, you know, I'm not a big fan of bucket lists. I think if you want to do something, you just go do it instead of putting it on a list. But I always thought writing a book would be really cool. So years later, I pulled out, you know, what I would call my manuscript and I reworked it and I wrote some chapters, and I'm like, I really want to publish this. So it's funny, I reached out. I also am not a English was not my organic chemistry and English were not my good subjects in school. So I thought, I really need help. I've got to find somebody who writes to do this. So I went on LinkedIn and I found three people that do ghostwriting, editing, et cetera. And it was interesting. I sent all three of them the manuscript. The first one said to me, This is brilliant. I love it. You just need some punctuation. It's gonna cost you like $800. I'll clean it up, you're good to go. And as much as I was very flattered by that, I thought she was nuts because I'm not a good writer. I'm like, there's no way that this is impublishable material. The second woman I talked to didn't even want to read the manuscript, actually, even though I sent it to her. And she quoted me like $36,000 to basically rewrite it. And I'm like, I don't want it rewritten. I want it in my words because, you know, look, I'm not picking on anybody, but a lot of times people will slap their name on a book, and that's not what I wanted. I wanted it to be mine. And I really wanted to work with a woman who either walked through cancer or was had some experience that way. And I wanted her to be my best friend through the experience and then be done. Okay. The third the third person, I'm laughing because it's so funny all these years later. The third person that I interviewed was a man who wrote blogs about beer. Like, like there was no right, like there was okay. So I interviewed him, and it was one of those things where like I liked him, but there was no like huge connection initially. And he said, Do me a favor. He said, I want to rewrite 2,500 words of your manuscript and show you what I can do. And he goes, What do you want me to rewrite? I said, I don't care. Here's the manuscript. You pick. So however long it took him, I can't remember, days, weeks, he sends me back 2,500 words. I read them out loud, Chris and I started crying. He rewrote them in my words. They're my words, right? But he reorganized things so beautifully that was it. And I wrote him a check for $14,000, literally, to help me just reorganize the stories, put them in chapter form, help me with chapter titles. And now we have them, we have a book, right? And then you go down the path of a publisher and more editors, and it's really it's an amazing journey when you do it right, because I really did it right. And I hired somebody to design the book cover, and you know, and it took a very long time. And I have this beautiful book that we named, and when I say we, it was a joint effort to a degree, we named Positively Altered, Finding Happiness at the Bottom of the Chemo bag. Now, if you'll indulge me for another hot second here with the book, and maybe a hot minute, because you know I like to talk. The title of the book was so painful initially because I had titled it Pregnancy is worse than cancer. And I actually upset quite a few people with the title because they're like, how dare you say that pregnancy is actually worse than having cancer? Well, and I don't want to read it, you got to buy the book to read the chapter because it is now the chapter of the book. But for me, pregnancy actually was worse than cancer. I didn't have the mindset, and I was actually sick through my pregnancy. So it resonated with me, but it didn't resonate with a lot of other people. And when I was going through a branding exercise with a friend of mine, Johan, who was helping me rebrand the Dr. Cindy logo, he had me fill out this ridiculous questionnaire. I was really annoyed. I didn't want to do the work to do it. I'm like, just make me a pretty logo. And he's like, that's not how it works. And I'm filling out all this information, and I can't remember the question he asked me, but at the end of it, I said, I want to leave people feeling positively altered as a result of my message. And that was it, those two words. I was like, that is the name of the book. I want people to be positively altered. I don't know what that means for you, but that was the goal. And then my team, because I've got some people in social media and writing that work with me, um, we came up with the finding happiness at the bottom of a chemo bag because we wanted there to be some humor with that, right? We wanted you to know that it's it's a memoir about cancer or me walking through cancer. But there's there's funny in the book. It's not a sad cancer story, it is not a boring medical, here's how you do cancer book. It is truly just my walk through it. And within each chapter, and it's interesting because I always ask people when they read the book, what's your favorite chapter? And everybody gives me something different because there's a message in each one of those that truly can resonate with you in a way that I wouldn't even understand unless you share it with me, that is very unique. So you can open up the book, pull one chapter, get benefit from it without even reading it cover to cover. And I'm very proud of it. It's it's been a very fun journey to share it with people, and the feedback's been really great.

SPEAKER_02 54:38

That's an awesome story. You actually gave me the goosponse, and the moment that that happened is when you said the word happiness, when you restated the title of the book, because you put happiness and chemo bag in the same context.

SPEAKER_00 54:52

I need to get the fun, Chris. Nobody says that. We need to, we need to, right? Because there's and again, I'm not downplaying, please. So anybody listening, right? I am not downplaying ever the severity, the severity, the significance, right? Ever of that word. It's it's it's actually a very strong word. The the problem is, is we've made it such a negative word. And my experience, I had so many gifts walking through this, and it's not that the cancer was a gift, it was the experience was a gift, right? The disease is never a gift. But if you can approach it in a way, you know, I even look at my mother, you know, so many people lose important people to them quickly where they never get an opportunity, right? To say what you want to say. Having eight and a half years with my mother, there was nothing left unsaid. We hashed out crap, we said lovely, warm things to each other. Um, we decided she comes back to me as a flamingo instead of a bird or a butterfly, and she literally comes back to me as a flamingo, you know, if she has any control over that. Like we got it done. So knowing that you have challenges, instead of wallowing in the self-pity, look for the fun in it, right? And there really was happiness for me in cancer. And again, I don't want to, I don't ever want to do it again. But if I if you said to me, could you go back in time and not do that? I actually wouldn't say no. I would do it all over again. Wow, I really would.

SPEAKER_02 56:15

That says a lot.

SPEAKER_00 56:16

Yeah, I wouldn't have learned what I learned had I not walked through that.

SPEAKER_02 56:20

Wow, that's crazy. That but that makes sense. I understand. Well, how do we get the book?

SPEAKER_00 56:26

How do we get the book? Amazon. So you get the book on Amazon. And if you don't read, because some people are gonna be like, oh, I don't want to read, it is on Audible. I actually recorded it myself, so you are stuck with my voice for almost eight hours. All right, you don't road trip it. Um, I'm sure there's some bookstores that are carrying it, but Amazon is by far the easiest, and they love to discount my book, Chris. So you can get a deal because I have zero control over what they charge. I will get a check for about a dollar thirty-two. So I make probably no money off of Amazon, but I don't care. That's not why we did the book. But Amazon's probably the best place.

SPEAKER_02 57:00

Amazon and Audible, two great ways to get it. So absolutely. All right, Dr. Cindy, we're gonna go a different direction now, and we're gonna talk about Dr. Cindy Speaks. So you're out there in a lot of different formats, you do a lot of live teaching, you have webinars, you have a podcast, and I was first exposed to you with your speaking with the WCA. You've you've spoken at the Women's Forum, which we have in November of every year, and you've spoken at our conventions, and you are one of the featured speakers at our upcoming 2025 fall convention at the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells in the last week of September of this year. So you have a topic that will probably be very well attended. You're talking about sexual health. So I'm not sure if the Kalahari has a large enough room for you, but uh I would encourage people to sign up early because it's probably gonna be very well attended.

SPEAKER_00 57:56

Let's just be very clear there are gonna be no live demonstrations. So that may whittle down the room a little bit. All right.

SPEAKER_01 58:01

So okay, that's that's funny.

SPEAKER_00 58:04

So yeah, so put your cover up on, get out of the pool at the Kalahari, right? We're gonna we're gonna talk socks. No, that you know what this is great. So let me let me tell you how this was kind of born, if you will. And there were two main impetuses. Impotent, is that a word? Impetus, I was gonna say impotent. See, I'm on that sexual health thing. And don't edit that out, Chris, because those are good words. And the okay, so impetus for for, I think I'm using the word correctly. So clearly, I I did warn you, organic chemistry and English were not my strong suits, right? Okay. So two things. One is I I really felt that in this sexual health space, there are enormous amount of programs on hormones, right? We we can learn about hormones, there's lots of people teaching. It's valuable, we need it, it doesn't need to go away, but it's it's sort of limiting, right? And within this concept of sexual health, it's just a piece of it. It's just a tiny little piece of it. So I really felt that there needed to be something bigger. The other thing that I felt after teaching, um, I teach for the Dapsy program, the internal medicine diplomate within chiropractic, and I teach the male and female pelvic disorders. And what I realized was is we have doctors who don't feel comfortable having these conversations, right? Like they walk into my office and say, I'm struggling with erectile dysfunction, and if I can't look you in the face without giggling or smirking or making up words for erectile dysfunction, we shouldn't be having the conversation. So there was this need I felt in our space of chiropractic to be uncomfortable enough to be comfortable addressing this topic so we can get over it. Okay. So what we're gonna do in this presentation, which is great, is we're gonna touch a little bit about everything, right? So we might talk about the language we use, we might talk about sexual harassment. Well, not might, we're going to sexual harassment. We're gonna talk a little bit about hormones. I'm gonna explain to you what a normal period is for a woman because even women don't know what's normal versus what's common and how it's actually gonna relate to all of you who are doing chiropractic who go, well, but I don't practice like you do, Dr. Cindy. I don't do female health, I don't do gynecology. You don't have to, but you take care of patients. So when somebody comes in with low back pain, it's still important to make sure you don't miss something that, let's say, could be pelvic in nature versus musculoskeletal in nature. And those are the things that we're gonna hit. We're gonna have some laughs, I'm sure. Something inappropriate will probably come out of my mouth on accident and we'll laugh about it. And I want you comfortably uncomfortable in that room for the couple hours so that we can get over it and start having some really good conversations to help people in this topic.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:45

Awesome. Very cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:46

So let's fill the room, right? So I think Saturday.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:50

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:50

And all the little kids are gonna be at the water park anyway. So, you know, we need to be in the classroom learning. We can do that later.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:57

That's right. So be comfortable with it, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:59

I'm gonna help you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:00

It doesn't have to be weird.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:01

No, and if it is weird, let's embrace it and move through it because it and I don't want to ruin it. I'll share some stories that happened to me in practice that are definitely weird and uncomfortable, and I don't want to ruin it for anybody, so you got to show up. But I'll give you those examples, you know, because even I'm I'm super comfortable in my own skin having these conversations, but even in that, I've had some weird things happen that you have to figure out how do you respond.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

All right, fantastic. I'll be there.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:26

Okay, good. Front row, I hope.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

We'll see.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:29

All right, how do people get your information? So you have a website, you have a webinar, you have a podcast. Can you talk a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:38

Sure. So my so there's a couple different websites. If you want to learn a little bit more about my practice, my clinical practice, the website is Innovative HWC, which stands for Health and Wellness Center, but it's just innovativeHWC.com. You can check out the website. Uh, there's a lot of good information in there, but it's certainly not all inclusive. So if there's anything you want to know about, feel free to reach out. And the office phone number is 708-479-0020. If I can help in any way, please reach out either direction. The speaking website is dr Cindyspeaks.com. And Cindy is the old-fashioned way, C-I-N-D-Y. So D-R-C-I-N-D-Y-S-P-E-A-K-S dot com. There you can learn more about the book. You can join my community and get a newsletter. We don't bombard you every day, but we'd love to bring you into my world and what's going on with me and share some good information. And if you have any interest in having me as a speaker at your convention, or well, I'm already coming to Wisconsin, so all of you listening are probably going to see me anyway, or any other big corporate event. I love to do a lot of keynote type presentations as well that are not CE, so to speak, but inspirational and motivational in how to overcome your crap when it's handed to you, because it's coming and we can do it better. The podcast is called The Positively Altered Podcast. And I'm on Spotify and Apple and iTunes. So just, you know, rely on Google to get you there, I suppose. You can find me all over Instagram and Facebook under Dr. Cindy Speaks. And the webinars, I don't host those, so you're going to have to just kind of search the internet for those. The one I was talking about that I screwed up pretty massively was for MaxGen Labs, which is the genetic company that I use. And I've done some work for pro work for Protocol for Life, uh, which is a nutraceutical company that I use and professional health products. And I'm sure if you just go to YouTube, you're going to find a whole bunch of stuff from the last 15 years to uh learn a couple things, maybe. So I'm all over the place. If you just search Dr. Cindy Howard, I'm going to come up somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:46

All right, Dr. Cindy, I feel like we have just scratched the surface of what's in your brain. So there's a lot there. I hope we can do a part two podcast in the future.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

We can't. There is a lot in my brain, Grace. We might be in a part two and a part three, but let's, I'll tell you what, we'll commit to the part two. If people want more, then we can, you know, see if we can create a series. But part two for sure.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:08

I already know people are going to want more. So if you're up for it, we'll do it for sure. All right, this is Dr. Cindy Howard. She is a chiropractor specializing in functional medicine. She owns and operates a practice in Orland Park, Illinois, which is in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Practice name is Innovative Health and Wellness Center. She is available for referrals. Your patients can drive down and see her. She does some work over telehealth and virtual. If you want to see her live in person, she will be at the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association Fall Convention, which is going to be at the Kalahari in Wisconsin Dells the last weekend of September of 2025. Dr. Cindy, you've done so much. You were awarded chiropractor of the year in the state of Illinois in 2020. You've been through a personal journey, a health crisis of your own, which you've conquered. And like you said, you wouldn't trade that experience and you would do it all over again because of what you learned from it. It inspired your book, Positively Altered. So you've just done a ton. And I want to thank you from the Wisconsin Chiropractic Association and personally for everything that you've done for chiropractic. And I've thoroughly enjoyed this. And I can't wait to see you again in the fall at the WCA convention.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:25

Chris, I want to thank you for welcoming me into the Wisconsin family. I mean UW Madison graduates. So, you know, I get to come back and visit the great state. Well, being a part of the WCA family. It's been absolutely a pleasure. And if I just may, I would love to leave everybody with one thought. And that is just remember that until you take your very last breath, there is always something that we can do to become positively altered.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:48

Beautifully said. Thank you very much, Dr. City.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

You are very welcome.