Hello everybody and welcome to another amazing show of Chiro Secures Look To The Children and again, I want to thank Chiro Secure for giving us this platform and bringing you amazing information and I am super stoked today because I have my sidekick Dr. Eric Kowalke.

Got it. nailed it.

Yeah, nailed it, right? So, he is my, I don’t know if I should call you, is it co-host or co-partner?

I like co-host. I could co-host.

Yeah, we co-host on different days.

Yes.

So, Eric holds the Look To The Children’s show on the first Thursday of every month. So, if you have not listened to him yet, you better dive in and get his pearls of wisdom and thanks for joining us today, doc.

Yeah, this is going to be super fun. I got skipped this month because of Christmas. So, I still get to be on. So, that’s good.

Oh, you’ll be back February, the first Thursday in February, right?

Yes, for sure, yep.

Awesome. Well, Dr. Eric, he graduated from LikeU in 2011. He went out into the trenches, opened up his practice right from the get go and he has nailed it. He has got one of the biggest booming practices in the Midwest and one of the biggest pediatric practices around. I am super stoked that you’re going to be dropping some pearl bombs here. I’m going to put him in the hot seat you guys.

He sees about a third of his practice is pedes and he’s got, he’s cranking over 1200 visits a week. So, he is seeing some awesome cases and some awesome miracles in his office. He is the owner, founder, creator of an awesome app called SKED. So, if you want to take some blocks out of patient scheduling, patient compliance, you got to check out his… And what’s the website for that doc?

It’s Sked, S-K-E,D dot life, L-I-F-E.

Awesome, but we were talking before the show went live and some very cool things you can do with this app. So, really check that out and we’re going to get a little bit amped over his Amped program or his collaboration and Amped is a really amazing program where it’s bringing like-minded docs together to mastermind and take advantage of the newest and greatest in all realms of chiropractics. So, also checkout Amped at where doc?

That’s Ampednow.com.

Ampednow. Let’s get amped now. What do you say?

Let’s do it.

You’re awesome. So, okay, I’m going to drop. I’m going to get you from the right hook, how’s that?

Okay, let’s do it.

All right, let’s do this. So, you knocked it out of the gate from the get go. You’ve been in practice since 2011 and you have a kick butt practice going out there in Wisconsin? No-

Michigan.

Michigan.

Close to Wisconsin. I’m from Wisconsin originally.

That’s where I got that from. Okay. [crosstalk 00:04:03] Hopefully you’re not as cold as we. You’re cold out there.

It’s cold. Unfortunately.

Cold. Huh? So, all right. Since you’ve got to kick butt killer practice at a young age, and by the way guys he has six, count them, six little fiddle parts of his own and he looks so young. I feel like I could be your mom. Yeah, he’s got an awesome wife, six kids, kick butt practice. So, three pearl bombs. You can do more. I won’t hold you to three, but give these guys three pearl bombs of creating this awesome pediatric practice.

Yeah, that’s so interesting. When we started in 2011, I didn’t know really what I was doing at all. Back then it was you hire a coach individually to coach you and tell you what you should do or you start a franchise of somebody else’s program and we really didn’t want to do those. So when we opened, it was actually Friday before we opened on the following Monday, we opened August 1st, 2011 and I had zero people scheduled in the office. We didn’t even know you were supposed to do that. I mean, we didn’t have any guidance really. So, I did a screening that weekend and I got 15, 13 or 15 patients scheduled for the following week and in three weeks we were at 100 visits a week. So, how do we go from 15 people to 100 visits a week? Well, I took one guy with low back pain and through the education process turned into him and his wife and his four kids started care and then one little girl that I met that used to dance and now she couldn’t dance because she had vertigo, she was one of six kids.

So, then you have six kids and two adults. You take one little girl and now you have eight people and so, it just snowballed like that and I think a lot of chiropractors just get in their own head and it’s not so much they can’t do it, it’s just that they overthink it, they over complicate things and I remember when I was in school, I listened to a Reggie Gold tape where he sat down and he did a patient history with somebody and then once they got through the patient history, he tore it up, threw it in the garbage and said, “This is the last time we’re talking about symptoms,” and he would like say, “Okay, you bring your whole family or you don’t come at all,” and that really stuck with me and so, when I educate, it’s really if they really get chiropractic care and they really get why they should be adjusted in the health of the spine and the health of the nervous system and the fact that nobody else is even looking at that system of their body, why would you not bring your kids?

Why would you not want to get them checked or at least their nervous systems assessed for nerve interference? It’s not even logical to think like that and so, if you present it that way as it’s obvious to do that and you just remove the barriers of entry for them to get their nervous system assessed and their kids nervous systems assessed, it really just grows rapidly and you get tons of referrals because if you’re excited about it, they’re excited about it and they’re like, “How come nobody’s ever told me this before?”

And they just go tell everybody. So, they start referring people even if they haven’t even had a miracle or they’re not even better yet. They just had a tour of the office and their first initial consult they’re already telling other people because their experience was just really extraordinary and information that you shared with them was life changing, that they just want to tell everybody else too and then those people start coming in. So, it’s really just the passion of chiropractic and just loving what we do and knowing for certain that if I could just check them and remove nerve interference, they’re going to experience a better life and just communicating that effectively really helped us grow so fast.

Telling the story. So, okay, so let’s talk, we’re chatting with Alan a little bit and stuff beforehand, no matter how many people you see in your office, but with a high volume office and my California, my past life, I say my California office, I had a very high volume practice too. What is your feel on being able to have a neurologically based chiropractic practice at a high volume level?

Yep. So, I was a mechanical engineer. I don’t think I put that on there, but I used to be an engineer before I was a chiropractor. So, I went into chiropractic school very objectively like, “Okay, I’m just going to learn where every nerve goes of the entire spine and then I’ll just know what their symptom is and I’ll just fix the bone that’s putting pressure on the nerve going to that part of the body.” That’s what I thought when I went into chiropractic school and when I learned that, when I started going to the neurology stuff in chiropractic school and what I learned is like, “Oh my gosh, it’s just so much more complex than we can even imagine.” Even to think that our own bodies can learn how our own bodies work seems illogical. We don’t know. We know, but at some point the innate intelligence of the body is just so much smarter and capable of so much more than we’re really willing to give it credit for and can even understand that yeah, I just came to that realization when I was in it.

Anyways, we do torque release technique and what I like about that is the leg checks that we do are using the nervous system for information. So, we’re accessing the nervous system and it doesn’t, I mean, all of your techniques, everybody on this call probably knows 70 different techniques and as long as you’re being intentional about finding nerve interference and you have reliable indicators that can show you places and signs of nerve interference and your technique gives you an ability to remove the nerve interference and improve this function of the nervous system, however you choose to do that, you’re going to help people get better and there’s really no right or wrong way to do it. A lot of it’s intense too. What frustrated me so much when I was a student is as thinking objective, I wanted to know, “Okay, give me a technique that’s A, B, C, D, and if you see this, you do this. If you see that, you do this,” and it’s black and white. Once you learn and practice IS there’s no cookbook.

There’s no cookbook chiropractic, no.

There’s the art of it and sometimes I don’t know if you call it your intuition or sixth sense or whatever, but when you’re present with the child and you’re assessing them, things just show up and you see things and you analyze things through experience and everything else and you just are led to adjust certain things and areas of the spine as part of your technique and it just all comes together. So, I don’t think there’s a right or wrong way to adjust, but I think the key is to be really present and intentional whenever you are assessing somebody for nerve interference and that is even more important than like, “Oh, do you do this technique or that technique?”

Absolutely and I find because I work with a lot of special needs children, right? And kids and animals, they have that sixth sense. They’re there. They can figure out, figure you out really fast and they can figure out your intent and if you’re in there for the right reason and if you’re off, if you’re thinking about a text message or this or that, that they know and they will act up, they’ll respond to that manner. So, I think intent is very much key. You’re right on, spot on, on that and when we do the adjustment, it’s really resetting that information that the brain is processing and we know that now from so much of the research and so, I think whatever volume practice you can choose, if you’re doing it for the right intent, if you’re being specific, if you can reset that volume.

You know what else Monika? I think people are afraid that they don’t see a lot of kids. They’re afraid of pediatrics. I’m going to break, I’m not sure, what do I do with the kid? And I would say if anything, less is more. You can just way over adjust a kid and you’re not going to necessarily hurt them. You just won’t see them heal as fast.

Well, the adjustment’s so powerful and you have this big metabolic blast to the brain and they’re so overwhelmed sensory wise anyway and have these sensory gaps that you put that input into the brain, you put that adjustment and it’s extremely powerful and they can short circuit on you very fast.

Yeah and I think what’s really important is to understand because some chiropractors think that the mom or the parent is paying for what they’re physically doing on the table. So, the more I do is bringing value to what they’re paying for that visit.

And that takes us right back. You made it. That’s an excellent point because that brings us right back to how much we value what we do, right?

It is and you think you know what? My adjustment, I should get paid $90 a visit or $150 a visit. There really isn’t… I would pay $1,000 a visit if my kid needed it. I pay $1,000 to get him adjusted, I pay $10,000 if I knew what I know. There’s really no limit. It’s worth more than what you’ll ever get paid for it. It really comes down to finding something that you can serve people and that is reasonable. You’re getting paid, you’re getting reimbursed for what you should be to grow your business and market and expand, but ultimately we’re just, we’re in a service industry to serve people and they’re not paying for what you’re doing or paying for the results of what’s going to happen through your expertise in what you’re doing and it doesn’t even… That’s why there’s not a time thing.

Once somebody told me, I don’t know if this was an analogy or a story or what, but they walked up to Picasso sitting on a park bench and he was drawing something, a mural and they said, “Well, can you draw a mural of me?” And he just like in 20 seconds drew a mural of them and showed it to them and they’re like, “Wow, it’s amazing,” and he’s like, “Okay, $10,000,” and they’re like, “$10,000? It took you 20 seconds to draw that.” He goes, “But it took me a lifetime to learn how to draw that in 20 seconds.”

The more you learn, you think we’re just talking about the program that you have and I was super interested in it because I would like to know more about it. It’s basically a culmination of 30 years of your knowledge and information into that, which is exactly what it is. When you deliver an adjustment, it’s 30 years of your information and your knowledge and your experience into a few minutes or 15 minutes or however long it takes for you to assess and adjust that child. That’s the value. It’s not the physical of what’s happening and what you’re doing on that visit.

Yeah, exactly and the repercussions so profound of what we do. So, I think for young chiropractors, understanding your own value, it is very critical. So, if I were in an elevator with you and we’re doing the elevator speech thing. So, you have especially a new grad out there, somebody that’s wanting to or wanting to develop a pediatric practice or wherever they are in their career. Give me a ten second elevator speech of why we need to bring our kiddos in to get adjusted.

So, I have six kids. Four months old, three years old, five years old, seven years old, nine years old and 11 years old. So, it’s really easy for me to start conversations with parents that have kids. Once I find out they have kids, I just simply ask have you ever had their nervous system checked or their spines checked? And usually they’re like, “No I haven’t,” right? I’m like, “Well, you know what’s really interesting in the field of work that I do? That’s what I do, but it’s commonplace and common knowledge that we take our kids in and we get their heart looked at and we get the different systems of their body checked and maybe their blood drawn and we look for things and we do that proactively. We measure their height and their weight and we try to make sure that they’re staying healthy. When in their life do we look at the function of their spine or their nervous system?” And you can just let them respond and they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know. Probably never.”

Well, usually when they’re 35 and they have chronic low back pain and they come in and they have to generate a little lumbar spine and it happened when they were six when they fell off the park bench and they just never knew it because it took 30 years to happen or 25 years to happen. They’re like, “Wow.” So, what we do in our office, we have state of the art technology that allows us to assess the spine and nervous system, which is why we see hundreds of kids every single week because we can see is there an underlying dysfunction, something going on that we can be proactive with now help them stay healthy now so they don’t end up like that as an adult? And it really just allows us to see kids and optimize their health so they can live a long healthy life like we all hope to live too.

Awesome and we know now, we know from neuroscience, neurophysiology that chronic diseases, whatever label you want to give it, diabetes, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, they start 20 years before the symptoms show up and it’s all regulated by the nervous system and we know that the nervous system is the immune system. So, giving them that little tidbit as well as you give the analogy, they fell off the park bench and 30 years later they have degeneration, but also what other neurological compromise might they end up with 20 years down the road? And I get a lot that question like, “Oh my gosh, we can’t figure out why autism is on the rise,” and I’m like, “Really? I’m not a rocket scientist, but I study a lot and looking at all the stress factors that are on the nervous system now and we know that once that nervous system is dysregulated, the whole neurophysiological cascade from that.”

So, for you docs out there, I think tying that analogy as well as, yeah, 30 years from now we might see the neuro degeneration, degeneration, lumbar spine, but also what about other health consequences?

Yeah, you even talk about, I mean, most people, if they don’t have pain and symptoms, they don’t think there’s anything wrong.

Right.

So, you’re really educating them on pain and symptoms is just such a small indicator of nerve interference and a nervous system problem that if we can use objective findings and subjective findings to find and locate and remove, your function of your body’s just going to be better-

And the nervous system being able to adapt, when that adaptation, when we get narrow and narrow, now we can no longer take that extra stressor that’s coming in and the nervous system can’t adapt anymore and that’s when they see symptoms then. That’s when you start having the headaches or chronically getting sick or whatever.

And you know what else? Bringing that up, I think as chiropractors we’re used to seeing people come in with a condition or some sort of symptom and then we provide a solution to that symptom and it’s easy to sell them a solution to the symptom and the problem because they’re fighting it and it’s affecting their life. When the reality, if they really understood what we understood, they start care and they pursue care not to fix the symptom, but for the lifelong benefits of what you’re going to do and the side effect of what you’re going to do is probably going to help the symptom, it’s going to help so many other things for such a long time that just makes sense to do that, instead of just going to treat the symptom.

Exactly.

It’s just a mind shift, but if you can, you can get them to think before they even start care, then you don’t have to always be selling them on… You’re not selling them on we’re going to fix your problem and then, “Oh by the way, you should keep coming forever.” It’s selling them on what are we even doing and why are we even doing it? The side effect of that is yeah, your problem is going to improve probably and go away, but it’s even more important that we do this and this is really why you should be doing chiropractic.

Exactly and what I always tell him, I say what I want to do is you’re coming in for X, Y or Z, but most illnesses start 20 years before they show up as a symptom. So, what we want to do is take care of the hare now, but keep the train on the tracks before it derails because once it derails and it’s harder to get that train back on the tracks, that’s when you end up with something, the big, bad, ugly stuff that we don’t want to see and then when they think of that like that, especially when they’re starting their little fiddle farts out right at birth, how we want to keep that train smooth and on the tracks and not derailed and end up with some label that we all know, the labels that we hit now, the autism and ADD and ADHD and et cetera and they get that. Do you find that? They get, they understand that.

Totally. So, let me ask you this and I took your classes through the ICPA 11, 12 years ago.

A long time.

When you take them as a student, it’s like way over your head and so much information. You’re like, I don’t even, I caught 10% of that and out of all the things that you’ve learned over the years and your experience, how do you tie, what would your elevator pitch be without just going way over their head so they don’t even know what you’re talking about?

Oh, good question. I like to talk to them about how there’s a connection between the brain, the body and the body and the brain. The brain needs to be able to perceive the information that’s coming from their outside world and within their body and the body sends that information up to the brain so the brain can know how to respond appropriately. So, let’s say your little fiddle fart is sitting in class and needs to concentrate on math or getting information from the Blackboard and copying it down. The brain is expecting a certain amount of information from its environment, including its own, including the body to come up and then the brain interprets that information and sends a response back down in motor response. So, I know how to hold my pen in space, how to focus my eyes up and down to grasp that information.

When we have a subluxation, when there’s not that, the information coming into the brain is skewed from the world or the body, there’s a gap in that information and the brain wants to help the body be able to adapt to that gap so we can do what it’s supposed to do. So, what that might look like is your little fiddle fart has to move around a lot in class. So, we get enough of that information coming in or they like to pinch or push or pull, that’s getting that gap filled so that they can try to sit and do the tasks that they need to do and what chiropractic does, it helps build that gap and that really makes sense for a lot of people that I work with because so many of their kids are struggling with learning and behavior.

And that’s awesome and that makes so much sense. I think the parents explaining it like that. As an engineer, I love explaining it to people in whatever their profession is too. So, what’s fun is to find out what the parent does, but the parents in automotive or something because when they teach you in control systems and engineering, they have A-Farrant and E-Farrant communication back and forth to the control center. It’s the same. I took chiropractic school, it’s like, “Oh my gosh, they’re talking about A-fare and E-fare control. It’s a control system, but it’s just the brain and it can heal itself.” How amazing is that? But you could talk about, you can relate that to anything like as a car. Oh, there’s all these sensors on a car now that tells you whether you’re going to hit somebody or run in. If the sensor is not working properly and the car doesn’t know that you’re about to hit something and it doesn’t tell you and you’re relying on it, you’re going to run into something.

Absolutely. The latest one that I started using was that there was two planes that I forgot what airport and one was a Delta plane and it came and landed and wasn’t supposed to land because another plane was taking off. This was just a couple of weeks ago. Well, when it landed, it ended up blocking the runway of the plane that was going to take off and you heard the radio control back and forth from the air traffic control to the pilot of the plane that was blocking the thing, he says, “Oh, I thought you said I was cleared to land,” because there was almost going to be collision there. That’s what’s happening with the brain.

Totally!

And if you don’t get that good communication, you’re going to end up with a big crash at some point. So, I’ve been able to use that. People are like, “Oh, I get it.” So, there’s a lot of fun things and I think you do that in some of your programs. I do that in my programs and that’s what we’re really all about is how to bring it down and simplify it so docs can be as successful out there. So, if you’re listening docs pick up on some of this lingo, whatever resonates with you and start simplifying it, but also don’t lose value of the big picture of what you are providing. I think that would be… So, where do you see the future of pediatric chiropractic? What do you think?

Interesting. If you Google search pediatric chiropractic, you get just a ton of videos of people adjusting babies, which can be misconceived, perceived and totally taken out of context and used almost against our profession like it did in New Zealand. So, I think if you haven’t, have you seen the new Vacs 2 movie yet?

Yeah.

So, there’s enough research out there just like there’s enough research that proves that subluxation exists and what it does, but they’re always going to say there’s never enough research. Not saying we don’t keep doing research, but they’re always going to refute that or they can look at the research and say, “Well, it’s not the gold standard because of this,” but if you have, if you remember seeing all of those parents sign the bus for all their damaged vaccine injured kids, if you have enough parents and testimonials of people saying, they say, “Oh, that’s anecdotal,” but you get enough of it, if all of us, there’s 25,000 chiropractor’s email on this show. If all of them just did 10 testimonials a year, pediatric testimonials, that’s 250,000 pediatric video testimonials. If we did 10 a year and put them online, not what you’re doing and how you’re adjusting them and all of that stuff, but the parent with their child saying, “Here’s Johnny. This is what happened. This is what he was like. He got adjusted. He had subluxations removed. Now, this is what Johnny is.”

You times that by 10 years, you have two and a half million videos of people with testimonials in chiropractic. It doesn’t matter what they say that it doesn’t work. That’s just such an overwhelmingly amount of evidence to prove that enough that parents are going to like, “Man, maybe this is legit, maybe I should check it out.” So, I honestly think big mission vision wise, we need to just fix the perception of what chiropractic here is and that subluxation isn’t real and isn’t a thing. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t work and that we should just be focusing on low back pain and I think we do it through testimonials and video testimonials and social media and an online presence of truth and parents actually telling the story and showing what happened to their kids. I think that’s how we’re going to fix it.

Good job. In fact, I’m doing a workshop called Misperceptions. It’s open to the public and I’ll shoot you that link too doc and maybe I’ll put the link on this page too about brain-based chiropractic and again, a couple of weeks. So, how we can shift that perception and how we can talk about it differently and in that how we can do campaigns like this to really get the word out. That’d be awesome.

Yeah and what’s so interesting is it’s just learning. As a chiropractor it’s just learning how do I educate more effectively? How do I communicate the effectiveness and the power or what it is that I’m already doing? And as we were talking earlier, your program, developing minds, you were mentioning how you guys do clinical rounds where for a couple hours you all get together and talk about cases and stuff. Let’s just, the more you are so certain in your heart of certain things, you can communicate just with certainty. Like, “Hey, this is what I know. I can help you,” and give them hope. It improves your sign on rate, it improves your conversion and it improves your attention and it improves your-

It improves your outcomes overall.

Yeah, totally!

Where it’s at and that’s what you’re doing and I know Allen’s probably like, “We got to wrap this up a little bit soon,” but we could go on forever and ever, but thanks for taking time out of your Thursday, your third Thursday schedule and I’m sure we can revisit this again down the road, but thanks for the pearl bombs. Thanks for your first Thursday. Now I don’t have to reiterate that as I usually do at the end of the show, that makes sure you watch Eric’s show the first Thursday of every month and he drops pearl bomb after pearl bomb and we’ll definitely have to make this another round too one time.

Totally. I would love to and don’t forget that. I mean, a lot of you guys watch Monika, but what she’s doing and what she’s totally progressing with the profession is huge and so, she doesn’t really promote herself that much. It’s called Devminsu.com. D-E-V Mind. M-I-N, S-U.com. It’s their whole university she just launched in October and it’s awesome and I would encourage you to check it out and just continue to learn more to just serve more people. So, I’m giving you a plug because you don’t plug yourself enough-

It really is about certainty. You hit the nail on the head. The more we own it, the more certain we are, the more we can serve. So, certainty is serve, right?

That’s right.

Hey doc, you have an awesome new year, but we will come back and circle back at one point in time and get together again and again, don’t forget to watch Eric the first Thursday of February. He’s going to blow your socks off with some more information and again to Chiro Secure, thank you so much for allowing us this platform and really digging in to try and make a difference because bottom line is Chiro Secure, all the docs on this show, everybody is really out there with a huge heart and a huge commitment to chiropractic and to make a change. So, I’ll see you the third Thursday of February and until then you guys go out there and keep changing lives.

See you.

Bye.

Hello everybody and welcome to another amazing ChiroSecure’s Look To The Children’s Show. And again, I am beyond ecstatic about introducing you to our guest today. It’s Dr. Krista Burns. Hello there.

Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity of being here. I’m excited to connect today.

Oh my gosh, I’m so excited to have you here for many reasons, but we’ll get to that. You guys just hang on. We have some really exciting stuff to talk about. But Dr. Krista has two doctorate degrees, Doctor of Chiropractic and Doctor of Health Administration. She is the founder of the American Posture Institute. So you can find her at the americanpostureinstitute.com. She is the author of the textbook, The Posture Principles. She has been on Fox News, on Global Woman. She’s a TEDx speaker. She’s certified in postural neurology and ergonomics and and posture correction. She is amazing, and she’s here with us today. And today just happens to be, we couldn’t time this any better. We did not plan this, but as divine universal intelligence would have it, she has an exciting announcement today. So what do you have for us, Doc?

Well, thank you so much for this opportunity. I mean, we’re talking about looking to the children, we’re talking about pediatric care. And with this divine intervention, we actually just launched today the Chiropractic Pediatrics Virtual Summit, and Dr. Monika is one of our top speakers on this summit. So we would love it if you guys would join us over there as well. We’re going to have a great conversation today, talking all about pediatrics. If you want to follow up and learn more, please join us on the Virtual Summit. It’s completely free, so you can grab your free e-ticket.

And it is… You guys don’t want to miss this. I mean, she put together, talk about an amazing cast and crew, and the quality and, I mean, you guys really need to take advantage of this. And I think you’re going to put maybe in the comments a link where they can go?

Yeah, that’d be great. And if you just follow us on Facebook, facebook.com/AmericanPostureInstitute, then we’ll have the link right there on the Facebook page as well.

Oh perfect, perfect. So you guys don’t miss out. Like at 20 plus speakers?

Yes. 20 incredible, top pediatric chiropractic experts. Again, like Dr. Monika, our leader for today’s discussion, and everybody’s talking about how to help you increase your certainty when it comes to pediatric case management assessment and, of course, treatment protocols. So it’s a can’t miss, free. E-tickets available right now. We’d love to have you join us.

Yeah, guys, do it, do it. So we’re going to talk about posture, and I have to tell you, when you get around Dr. Krista… I got to meet her last year in Atlanta, right? We were in Atlanta?

Yeah.

Sometimes we go so many places, we’re trying to figure out where we actually got to meet in person. But you can’t help but stand up straight when you’re around Dr. Krista. So I’m sure you get that a lot. But I was sharing a little bit with you before we went on air, and I think sometimes the universe hits you with things so you can kind of experience things that you talk about, or lecture on, or whatever, but you really, until you experience it, you might not have that same ability to communicate it. But I was sharing with you that I’ve been working a lot. I’ve been off the road for about six weeks. So I’ve been home, and I’ve been working on my new Developing Minds Program. And I love to do research, and you know how that is. The research, the writing, you’re on your computer all the time. My husband drives when we’re commuting into the office because he runs the office. So I’m on my phone, reading extra research. I’m like, oh, that’s a great article, and I’m like this all the time and everything.

And I really started to feel crappy. I mean, I started to feel really crappy. My mood, but not only, my neck pain. And as a chiropractor, I’m like, come on Monika. You know better. But I love this. It’s my passion and I was so entrenched in it. But my mood. I started to not like myself. So we’re going to dive into, and I think it was a good ta-da moment. So I’ve made a commitment that I’m not doing that anymore. And the last few days commuting into the office, I’m looking at the mountains, and the snow on the mountains, and the beauty, and it really is enlightening. So I’m glad I had that experience.

Yeah. Just a quick comment on that. They’ve actually done a research study recently. I think it was in 2017. And they had two groups of people. And the only difference between these two groups, the control group and the variable group, was one group was sitting in upright posture, the other group was in stooped, slumped forward posture, as if looking at our device. And 86% of the group that was in poor posture, had negative recall of memories of themselves. So when they were asked to recall something about themselves, 86% in the poor posture group said something negative about themselves. Whereas the group in good posture, 87% said something positive.

So exactly what you’re saying right there is what we’re seeing in the research. I mean, it’s exactly what’s happening. And so when we talk about children… I mean, you’re educated so you know that you can have better posture and it’s going to help you have a better mood and feel better, and you can look to the mountains for a great view and reconnect with nature. But what really worries me is all the children and the adolescents growing up in the digital age, who don’t have that information yet. And they really need everybody who’s listening to our conversation today to really guide them and lead them in the right direction, because proper posture impacts not only their physiology, not only their function, but also how they perceive their body image of themself and their self-perceived leadership. So we’ll dive into all of that today.

Wow, that’s huge. So spinning off that on research, that’s a huge one right there. Any other key research that you want to communicate in regards to sedentary posture and the overstimulation with technology, and [inaudible 00:06:52] regards to pediatrics?

Yeah, specifically. so one of the things that we talk about at the American Posture Institute all the time, is that in the digital age, posture’s declining at the speed of technology. We’ve never seen such a rampant decline in human posture until the onset of the digital age. Now, here’s the thing that we cannot do. We can’t just blame technology. What we need to realize is that it’s the opportunity cost. So it’s not just technology’s fault. It’s what we’re not doing while we’re on our technology. So while I’m on a computer, while I’m looking down at my device, and I’m a hunched forward posture, now what’s happening is I’m not outside playing. I’m not moving, I’m not stimulating my brain in a meaningful way.

And what they’re showing now in the research, this is from 2019, the National Institute of Health, shows, they’re doing a ten year study, and they’ve released the initial research on this study following these nine and 10-year-olds. And what’s great is, after the decade, we’ll have the full research. But initially what they’re showing is that children who use devices more than seven hours per day, in a seated, sedentary posture, are showing thinning of the brain cortex. The brain is literally shrinking because of the over use of technology in sedentary posture.

And then we look at other research studies, and we’re showing that lower academic achievement and a decrease in grade point average is associated with increased screen use. That’s from 2018. Like this research is so new because it’s happening right now. And what worries me is, if we don’t take action, we have no idea just how bad this will continue to be. Another research study, again, 2018, 15 and 16-year-old kids who have a higher frequency of engagement with digital media activities, so devices, have significantly higher odds of having symptoms of ADHD. I’ll give you two more. Mobile phone use, even for five minutes, has a significant impact on memory performance. You guys, five minutes of device use can impact my brain. That’s from 2017. And then this last one, this one like hurts my soul. It shows that more hours of screen time are associated with a lower level of well-being for children and adolescents, age two to 17. Again, this research study is from 2018.

And so we look at this, and we go, oh my gosh, it’s frightening what’s happening. But at the same time, it’s this golden age opportunity that we’ve never been presented with in the past. As chiropractors, we’ve always wanted to help pediatric patients that were non-symptomatic. Like we wanted to have a reason to educate parents about bringing in their children, even if they didn’t express symptoms. Now, with the onset of the digital age, we can’t not educate parents about bringing in their children, because of the digital age and how it’s impacting their brain function, their physiology, their body function, their structure, and their mental well-being as well.

Wow. That is a load right there. If you guys missed that, you got to replay, replay, replay, because those are amazing studies. And I believe that last one, that this came out a few weeks ago, a few months ago, on the 2019. They were talking about thinning the prefrontal cortex, correct?

Yeah.

Our executive functioning mode. So we know when that executive functioning isn’t in play, we’re stuck in this limbic drive, and there’s a neuro-physiological cascade that happens then. And so it’s much more than just the bad posture, like you said. We’ve got hormones that go off. We got neuro-transmitters. We’ve got a whole domino effect. So that is huge.

So I love the thing you said, perceived, the way their body perceived themselves. So I’ve been in that sensory realm for 25 plus years now, and talk about sensory modulation disorders. So we know that the way the body perceives its environment, external and its internal environment, proprioception, vestibular function, that information comes from our spinal joints and surrounding muscles. So this is huge.

So I brought a little puppet right here. I want to give you a little puppet show. So one of the things I talk about with my little fiddle farts is I talked about… because I work with a lot of kids with learning… and I’m going to get your take on this… learning and attention, and like we all see these days. I talk about the brain needs to talk to the body and the body needs to talk to the brain, so that way you can sit still. Because they don’t like to not be performing well, or behaving well. So I use sometimes a little puppet, and I put on my. I said, “The messages for your body should come straight up to your brain, and then your brain sends them straight down to your body, and then your muscles know what to do, and your brain knows what to do. But when it’s like this, where are the messages going? They’re not going to your brain. They’re going off the track.” So puppet shows can be very good. How do you talk to little fiddle farts, or parents, about this?

One of the best examples that I love to give, is when I’m talking about posture and when I’m talking about productivity and the ability to pay attention, I love to give this example, because everybody can relate to it, because everybody, at one point or another, has fallen asleep in class, myself included. I hate to admit it, but I’ve been there. So what happens when you start to get tired in class? And so we’re talking to kids, maybe an adolescent, let’s say 12 years old. What happens when you start to get tired in class? Your posture starts to go in this position, don’t you? And you start to lean forward on your desk, and you feel really tired.

Now, if the teacher doesn’t want you to be sleeping in class, and they call your name, and you don’t want to get caught sleeping, what’s the first thing that you do? You instantly sit up straight. Why do we do this inherently? We naturally engage our posture system to wake up our brain. This is a natural response that we’ve always had, whether we were 12 years old falling asleep in class, or up through graduate chiropractic school. We instantly sit up straight. Why is this? The reason being is because we’ve all heard of the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system tells us what to pay attention to. So for example, if I say red car, you start noticing more red cars. If you want a red car for Christmas, you start noticing more red cars on the road. That’s the reticular activating system.

What people forget to tell us about the reticular activating system, is we also have a descending pathway. So reticular activating is ascending, up to the brain, for paying attention, but we also have the descending reticular spinal, reticular spinal, reticular spinal. It goes to the spine. And so when we engage our posture system, that’s the reticulospinal tract, when we engage the posture system, we sit up straight and now we feel more engaged. And so our ability to pay attention is directly impacted by the postural design and the physical structure of our body. It’s no wonder that when I’m hunched over my device in this hunched forward posture, that I go into a tech trance, a computer coma.

Research has shown that people, when they’re asked how much time they spend on devices, we naturally under-report ourself, our habits, by 50%. Meaning that you may have spent five hours on your device, but you are so zoned out, because you’re in this slumped forward posture and tuned into artificial stimulation coming from a device, that we under-report how much time we’re using devices by 50%. And not even because we’re trying to lie about it. Just because we go into a brain fog, a tech trance, a computer coma, and our brains are not paying attention to what’s going on. However, if we want to engage with the world, like we’re designed to do as human beings, we sit up straight, we look, we engage our visual system in the world around us, and now suddenly we have more productive posture.

Wow. Wow. That’s incredible information, Doc. You’re amazing. So we know that it also changes neurotransmitters, especially dopamine, and you can get that dopamine dysregulation. Give us a little tidbit about this digital dementia that we hear about these days. And particularly, do you have any association more with adolescents? Or what have we got there?

So what’s happening with digital dementia is when I’m seated in a sedentary posture and when I’m watching a video… for example, imagine a YouTube video… the back of my brain is being overstimulated. Why the back of the brain? Because incoming visual signals are interpreted by your occipital lobe in the back of your brain. So that’s bombarded with incoming visual stimulation from a video. Now, here’s what’s underactive. Your frontal lobe, because you’re not thinking, you’re not moving. Your parietal lobe is underactive because you’re not experiencing real sensation from the world, such as moving your joints, such as feeling natural sensations from nature. So that’s all inhibited. And then your cerebellum, you’re not doing precise movements. So your cerebellum is underactive. Your vestibular system, your flexor dominant, instead of being in upright extension, completely inhibited. Your visual system. You’re only looking right here instead of moving your eyes in orbit to scan the environment.

And so we see a sensory disassociation where the back part of the brain is overactive but the rest of your brain is underactive. And what this is resulting in is not only symptoms of brain fog but also poor memory recall. If you look on Alzheimers.org, if you look at the Alzheimer’s Association, how they define dementia is that dementia is not a disease. Dementia is a collection of symptoms associated with an inability of focusing, poor memory recall, and being forgetful in a way that impacts your quality of life. Well, I would say that when we put down our devices after five hours of being on them and we say, “Oh, I’ve been on my device for a couple hours.” What were you looking at? You’re like, “I don’t even remember.”

So we have outsourced our brain, we are demonstrating signs and symptoms associated with dementia, and it is impacting cognition. And here’s what’s really frightening, Dr. Monika, that we have to bring up. I just, last week, was in Malaysia speaking at the World Congress of Falls and Postural Stability, and they were all talking about this with dementia, how it’s impacting falls and lower cognition, when you have a stooped forward posture. What terrifies me is they were talking about that for geriatric patients. It is shown over and over again in the literature that if you have this posture, you have a decline in cognition. However, that was for geriatric patients in previous generations. Now we’re watching a whole new generation addicted to their devices in this posture, at an early age. We’re seeing an increase in ADHD, an increase in postural instability, an increase in falls, and an increase in what I call digital dementia. And of course, that’s impacting our cognition, our ability to pay attention, and have natural thought processes associated with better learning and development.

So here’s the cool thing. There’s not a pill for digital dementia, right? There’s not a pill for better posture. We love this opportunity. That’s like the best news we’ve ever heard. So we recognize that it could be daunting, realizing what’s going on in the digital age, but at the same time, this is a golden opportunity because we can position ourselves as the first line of defense against it, and help these children have natural stimulation that they need to their bodies and their posture systems to prevent digital dementia, to prevent postural decline, to prevent how this is then showing up later as developmental disorders. So we’ve got to work together to be the first line of defense against this.

Absolutely. And with that said, there’s a label now, diagnosis, called Developmental Coordination Disorder. Essentially what it is, is these children literally are falling out of chairs at school. They can’t manage stairs, maneuver stairs. They don’t have good core, their vestibular and proprioceptive systems. And certainly, what causes what. But you are 1,000,000% correct. We need to be on the forefront of this disaster that’s about to hit. Do you have some signs, a few signs of technology fatigue? What would you look for, especially in the little fiddle farts or the adolescents?

This is what I’m always telling parents to watch for, is three signs of tech fatigue. So the three signs of tech fatigue, number one is tech neck posture. Everybody knows what that is, where you’re looking down at your device, your ears are in front of your shoulders. You have a C-shaped spinal curvature, so a postural hyperkyphosis. You have [inaudible 00:18:40] shoulders and into a chest drop. So if you see tech neck posture, that’s sign number one. Sign number two is spending more than two hours per day on devices for recreational use. I very much understand that children these days are on devices more so for doing reports, for doing their homework. When they’re using their brains on technology, I’m okay with that. But when it’s more than two hours per day for recreational use, just mindless scanning, that’s where it becomes a problem.

And then number three is behavioral changes directly associated with devices. Let me give you an example here. So if ourselves, like if I left my phone home tomorrow, how would I feel? Would I feel like an addict going through withdrawals because I don’t have my phone that day? If we do, that’s a behavioral change associated with device use. So if you ask a child to put down their device or their video game and come to the dinner table, do they act out? Do they act strange? Are they literally shaking physiologically because they don’t have their device with them for a short period of time? So if you see a behavioral change directly associated with device use, then this is alarming to us. Those three signs, again, are tech neck posture, more than two hours per day on devices for recreational use, and behavior changes associated with device use.

Oh, great pearls. Great pearls. Everybody write those down. Have those ready for your… Put it on a handout. Do something.

And parents get that. Like parents can take that as homework. And then what’s cool about that is you say, “You let me know what you find when you check for these signs of tech fatigue.” Guess what happens? Mom comes back and goes, “That’s my kid.” And then it’s a very natural referral at that point, because now mom goes, “I need to take action to prevent this.” And of course, we understand that working with pediatric patients is all about prevention. It’s all about helping them early on, so they can have these natural habits, that helps lead to better natural healthcare.

Absolutely. And it’s all about balance. When their brain is expecting X amount of stimulation, [inaudible 00:20:34] information coming in… So let’s take, on the devices, they’re getting X amount, a higher drive of visual, a lower drive of vestibular and proprioceptive. There’s this mismatch. There’s these gaps in this information. And that is what we see expressed as inability to pay attention or behavioral issues. And their neuro expression is telling you, okay, what gaps might be going on. So this is huge. This is critical. This is us. This is cutting-edge us, chiropractic. So as chiropractors, with that said, because you have amazing pearl bombs, we could be here for hours, but I know you’ve got a crazy schedule, I get everybody’s got a crazy schedule, but as chiropractors, what are some pearls that we can do to be on the cutting edge, to help prevent some of these postural distortions that we’re seeing?

So number one is talking to parents and pediatric patients, specifically about device use. We have to bring that to a minimum. Number two is stimulating, and you mentioned it, the vestibular system. So the vestibular system controls balance and equilibrium, but also upright postural extension. So what happens when I’m flexor dominant? When I go into a postural hyperkyphosis with tech neck, I go forward with gravity. Gravity is pressing me down and I can’t resist it. And so I go into flexor dominance. Flexor dominance is a more primitive posture. We need to spend our life in upright extension.

Now what happens with pediatric patients is you tell them to sit up straight, and they’re like, “No problem, Doc. I can do this.” And they sit up straight for 40 seconds. You turn and walk to the door and back, and you come back and they’re back in this posture. They don’t have bony abnormalities of their spine, preventing them from having upright posture. What they have is lack of stimulation, on a consistent basis, to their vestibular system that brings them into upright posture, upright postural extension.

And so in addition to the incredible adjustments that you guys are doing already to help transform the lives of children, what I want you to do is some vestibular activities as well. Number one is one leg balance. Every child should be able to stand on one leg and balance for 30 seconds in proper posture. Number two is a Superman extension. So the patient’s lying face down. And if your patients are lying face down, like waiting for you to walk into the room, this is a great time to have them go into extension. So they’re lying face down and they lift their upper body up into that Superman position and they hold, and they’re engaging those paraspinal musculature into extension. So we’re going into upright extension. So balance to stimulate that part of the vestibular system, and then upright extension.

And then number three is posture breaks. So for every hour that a child is sitting in class or on technology, they need to do a 30 second posture break. Let’s perform it together. You just bring your arms out to the side, you drop your head back and press your chest forward. What this is doing is this is reversing the press of gravity. So where gravity makes us flexor dominant, C-shaped spinal curvature, we resist that and go into [inaudible 00:23:28] postural extension. Two things will happen afterwards. The child feels stretched out. They’re like, “Oh, I feel better. I can sit up straight.” But also, in addition to that, they can concentrate better now too, because we’ve just engaged that posture system. So when they go back to their school work, they’re more engaged.

And then also sitting on an instable surface. This, I cannot recommend enough. I know that children most likely cannot bring exercise balls with them to the classroom, because it could be considered disruptive. But if you give them a posture cushion to bring and put on their seat, this is such a good vestibular activation because it’s instable. So because it’s instable, anytime I move my body in relation to gravity, it activates my vestibular system to bring me back to center. So now I’m moving more, which is more proprioception. I’m actually engaging my core musculature, which is good strength and stability. But in addition to that, I’m stimulating the vestibular system every time my body position changes in relation to gravity. So now I’m activating my brain to balance my body upright. Whereas if not, I’m just sitting in a chair, in like the worst posture ever, sitting in class. So those are some activities that are super easy to implement with what you’re already doing, which is going to help transform the lives of these children.

Wow. Wow. Wow. Those are pearl, pearl bombs. And I cannot stress this enough to our audience. I’ve been accused of having a love affair with the [inaudible 00:24:45] and the vestibular systems. But the vestibular system is so profound. It has a direct correlation with anxiety, with depression, with scoliosis. I mean, with all these [inaudible 00:24:55] it really is. So those are absolutely must-haves. And a couple of things I’ve done, I know you said about the yoga physio balls. I get them on Amazon, and I adopt classrooms around my community, and I go [inaudible 00:25:12], because teachers [inaudible 00:25:14]. So these are great ways for us to get this information out there, be a part of a community, contribute to our community, and also let them know where we are and to find us if they want to come consult or whatever.

So Dr. Krista, I swear, we could be here for hours. We’ve got to do a round two one day.

I’d love to.

But from the bottom of my heart, that is such profound information, and I can’t thank you enough for being here. And I hope you have the happiest of holidays.

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

And again, you’re going to put the link in the comments, or they can just follow you at the American Posture Institute on Facebook.

Yeah, facebook.com/AmericanPostureInstitute. The link will be there. Plus, I’m very happy to post it in the comments, because we’re just getting started with this information. I really want you to hear Dr. Monika’s presentation on the Virtual Summit as well.

We talked a little bit about neuroplastic development, and that was a blast. Thank you for having me on that.

Of course.

It is a summit that you guys don’t want to miss, because it has got incredible amount of information, so make sure you jump on it. Today’s the first day launch, right?

Yes, exactly.

Today’s the first [inaudible 00:26:26]. And you can also find that link on the Intersect4Life. You’ll find it out there. Listen, get in there and let’s change some lives together. So again, Doc, have a incredible holiday season. Thank you for joining us from Puerto Rico. We will be meeting again soon.

And from all of us at Look To The Children’s Show and ChiroSecure, we want to wish you the happiest of holidays and all the most success in 2020. I’ll be back. You’ll have your regular host the first Thursday, Erik Kowalke. And as a little twist of a tidbit, I will be interviewing him on my show the third Thursday of January. So again, happiest of holidays, and thank you for sharing your information, again, Dr. Krista, and for all of you out there, make sure you share this information to your colleagues and your communities.

Yes, to the whole ChiroSecure.

Today’s pediatric show. Look To The Children, was brought to you by ChiroSecure, and the award-winning book series, I AM a Lovable ME. Make sure you join us next week, right here at the same time. See you next week.

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