542: Crack the System: How Chiropractic Heals Without Drugs

Chiropractic care is often misunderstood, but this episode of the Learn True Health podcast sheds light on its powerful benefits, scientific backing, and the extensive education chiropractors receive—often exceeding that of MDs in classroom hours. It uncovers the historic smear campaign by the AMA, the profit-driven motives behind health insurance limitations, and how targeted chiropractic adjustments can improve brain function, support neurodevelopment, and offer real solutions for chronic health issues. This conversation challenges old beliefs and makes a compelling case for including chiropractic as a core part of your wellness journey.

Highlights:

• Chiropractic school requires more classroom hours than MD training, emphasizing anatomy, physiology, and diagnosis over pharmacology.
• Chiropractors can specialize—such as in pediatrics or upper cervical care—even if public perception doesn't reflect this.
• Chiropractic adjustments impact the brainstem and can restore communication between the brain and body.
• Dr. Heidi Haavik’s study proved that only specific spinal adjustments activate the prefrontal cortex—validating precise chiropractic care.
• Insurance companies rejected preventative, lifestyle-focused plans despite cost-saving data because they profit more from sick-care claims.
• The AMA historically ran a smear campaign against chiropractors, which led to a major antitrust lawsuit that the AMA lost.
• Malpractice insurance for chiropractors is drastically lower than for MDs, proving the safety of chiropractic care.
• The military still does not allow chiropractors to serve, despite overwhelming support and recognition in other health systems.
• Parents are urged to consider chiropractic for kids with ADHD before using stimulant medications like Ritalin.
• Many chiropractors develop unique healing approaches—like activator methods or gentle nervous-system work—that support emotional and physical wellness.

Intro:

Jennifer Saltzman:

Hi, my name is Jennifer Saltzman and I am the Head Coach at TakeYourSupplements.com. I wanted to share with you a testimonial that I received from a client of mine—one of the many success stories that I have—but this one is very close to my heart because she’s young and has struggled so much to regain her health. She has had such a phenomenal, overcoming testimonial that I really wanted to share it today.

She writes:

My name is Angela. I am 25 years old. I have been on a health journey that consists of an autoimmune disease, fibromyalgia, and other issues that left me feeling defeated and debilitated every day for 15 years. 

I have seen eight different specialists and many doctors. I have been in and out of physical therapy, dealing with symptoms I thought would leave me wheelchair-bound and in diapers by the time I was 30. Well, I am now 25, and after everything I've learned through Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com, that definitely won't happen.

Some things doctors have said to me have crushed my hopes. I was told to lose weight and that my pain would go away. So I lost 90 pounds and the pain was still there. My days were short, and after a five-hour work shift or even a day of running an errand or two, I was left debilitated.

The doctors told me the pain was all in my head because I was previously diagnosed with fibromyalgia—the only diagnosis so many doctors agreed upon because they couldn’t think of anything else despite me having some form of an immune disease, I felt hopeless and as if life was going to pass me by.

There were times when I tried hiking one or two miles and I was unable to walk or function for days after. I was missing out on trips and adventures. As embarrassing as it sounds, I was having BM bathroom emergencies so frequently it was ruining my daily function. I could go on about the ways I was ill and what it kept me from, but honestly, after the progress I’ve made, a long list of symptoms I used to have has become a blur of the past.

When I finally decided to check out TakeYourSupplements.com, recommended through the Learn True Health podcast, I was immediately connected with Jennifer, who kept track of my overwhelmingly long list of complex symptoms and thoroughly created a personalized, step-by-step plan. Her recommendations have changed my life, and the changes were practically instant.

She put me on a complete digestive activation complex that has taken away all of my stomach pain, unnecessary bloating, and gas. She explained to me that the formula supports every stage of digestion—from breakdown to absorption—designed to optimize stomach acid, bile flow, and nutrient assimilation.

She recommended a cellular repair-focused diet, which not only has helped my stomach, but the food gives me energy and makes me feel really good. It reduces inflammation in my body—something no doctor ever told me about when I first started with Jennifer.

I took the TakeYourSupplements.com health evaluation and I scored a negative 32. I just retook it and scored a 69. That’s 100 points better in five months.

Still room for progress, but my life nevertheless has been changed and I am so happy. My days have been much longer and full of adventure. I have hiked the 4,000-footer mountains of New Hampshire—something I never thought I would be able to do. I have had successful days of workouts, errands, and work.

The Learn True Health podcast and Jennifer at TakeYourSupplements.com have done more for me than any doctor ever has, and it all started with validation. I am now 25 and feel my life is just now starting.

It’s really hard to put into words just how much has changed for me, so I’ll keep on living as actively as possible and learning as much as I can so I can finally take part in the beautiful things of life. I can't wait for the adventures to come with the hope I've been given through this program.

If anyone out there hears this and feels their doctors are taking more than they’re giving, give this a try. Thank you, Ashley and Jennifer. Your knowledge and expertise is a gift I cherish every day.

Ashley James:

I love it. It’s so amazing to hear all the testimonials that come from the people who go to TakeYourSupplements.com. My life was transformed. My life was transformed from TakeYourSupplements.com, from the same protocols that are used through TakeYourSupplements.com, and I’m just so grateful that we can spread this information and help those people who are praying for answers.

Shame on the medical industry for holding back this information. It is so sad. But when you look and you dive into why is it that medical doctors—who are well-intentioned—are not even taught how to help people heal their bodies. Medical doctors are not taught. That’s not in their education. They pay close to half a million dollars in education and they’re not even taught how to help you heal your body and reverse and heal chronic illness.

TakeYourSupplements.com and the amazing holistic health coaches that work there are trained by outstanding experts—these naturopathic doctors and research scientists who have developed these protocols that support your body to heal itself. That’s what I love. It’s a totally different concept. It’s not drug-based medicine. We’re not treating symptoms. We’re supporting the body’s God-given ability to heal itself. 

So thank you, Jen, for coming and sharing that testimonial. It is one of thousands of testimonials and stories that we get from people whose lives have been transformed. Thank you for sharing that inspiration, because I know when I was sick and suffering, hearing the success stories of people’s lives transformed through holistic health is what kept me going and drove me to keep seeking these answers.

So go to TakeYourSupplements.com. It’s free to have a consultation and they can work with any budget. They’re amazing there. It truly is their mission.

Jennifer Saltzman:

One of the things that really sets our program apart is that we take the time to understand the different categories of nutritional deficiency in an individual, design a program specific to that, follow up with them, and help them fine-tune it as necessary, so nobody feels they’re out there figuring it out for themselves. They’re coached through the process of onboarding, adjusting, and then eventually, hopefully moving to more of a maintenance program for extended well-being.

We watch their health score over the 90-day time elevate greatly. Like this young gal I just read—her score went up 100 points. We did it at the five-month mark in this case, but I always do the health evaluation after three months, and I always see people’s scores elevate.

So wherever somebody is, they’re going to get supported help that is specific to their situation, with a program that is so foundational and so thorough that we don’t miss things that other doctors miss.

Ashley James:

You brought up this term “nutrient deficiency,” and a lot of us do not realize that the root cause of our cellular dysfunction is nutrient deficiency. I’ve covered this in several interviews. In fact, when you go to TakeYourSupplements.com and work with Jen—she gives you resources. So if you want to go down that rabbit hole and learn more, you can learn why we have nutrient deficiency.

In a world where we're eating too much—we just have access to so much food—you wouldn't think you'd have nutrient deficiency. And yet, that has been the root cause all along.

When you work with Jen, she helps you to maximize your cellular nutrition, so now your cells can function healthfully and these symptoms melt away. Illness melts away.

I was able to reverse type 2 diabetes, chronic adrenal fatigue. I was able to reverse polycystic ovarian syndrome and infertility. My adrenal fatigue melted away within days, and I had suffered for years. That is due to the fact that I was nutrient deficient.

In a world where we have access to so much food, it's quantity, not quality. We're not getting the nutrients we need.

So I can't speak highly enough about TakeYourSupplements.com and how transformative it is to work with them. Go check them out. It is so worth it.

Thank you, Jen, for the work you do. It's phenomenal.

Jennifer Saltzman:

My pleasure. Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be able to disseminate that which has been given to me and helped me so much with others who are needlessly suffering and need to really understand—back to the way God and nature intended for our bodies to function.

We need certain basic nutrients, and they're just simply missing from our food. I am so grateful that I have this tool to help people with.

Ashley James:

Welcome to the Learn True Health podcast. I'm your host, Ashley James. This is Episode 542. 

Ashley James (0:09:33.246)

I am so excited for today's guest. We have Bharon Hoag on the show today, the Executive Director of OneChiropractic, the most disruptive advocacy organization in chiropractic today.

I'm surprised at the amount of people I bump into—who have never been to a chiropractor and are afraid of chiropractors. Because it looks like it's painful. Crack, crack. It looks like it's painful. I have such a love for chiropractic care because of how many times chiropractors have saved me and completely changed the quality of my life.

I was three years old when I started to see chiropractors. My very first chiropractor at age three—and I remember him from age three to about age seven or eight—was Dr. Mark Grossman. He's still practicing just north of Toronto. Toronto keeps growing, so I'm sure it's considered Toronto today, but yes—Toronto, Canada. Dr. Mark Grossman was my first chiropractor.

Then I saw Anita Shaq, who was my next chiropractor. They left a lasting impression on my life. It was Anita that made me want to be—actually, I wanted to become—a chiropractor. Then I saw a naturopath, Dr. D'Adamo, when I was about six years old. He was the one that originally came out with the blood type diet. He made me want to become a naturopath. So those two professions pulled on my heart for so many years.

I love that I do what I do now because I'm a lot like you. I advocate for the space. I'm in the space, and I help people. I'm not a chiropractor. I'm not a naturopath. But man, I just love chiropractic care.

So whenever I bump into someone who doesn't see a chiropractor—usually it's because there's a crick in their neck or they're clearly in pain—I say, “Hey, I have a really great chiropractor that I could recommend.”

Now I see a chiropractor here in Linwood, Washington. I'm going to shout out—I've got to shout out—Blue Heron Chiropractic. She is absolutely amazing. Dr. Claire Russell completely put me back together. I had a major car accident and also birth trauma. My pelvis was completely twisted. It was really crazy from my last pregnancy.

She uses an activator, which is a tiny little click, click, click—very, very precise. She never does the crack-crack or anything, and it doesn't hurt. She put me back together. When I look at the activator, I think, what can you do with that little tiny click-click device? It doesn’t hurt! I stand up off that table and feel two inches taller, and all the tension in my body has melted away. I walk out of there just elated, feeling so good. She’s helped me so much.

This is why I try to explain to people who are afraid of chiropractic—that this isn’t just a bone and joint doctor. We think: crack, crack. Chiropractic is responsible for protecting and helping your nervous system. Your nervous system comes through your spine, and they know how to help your nervous system, how to help your musculoskeletal system, and how to help your organs. They know how to help the whole thing come back into alignment. An amazing chiropractor is worth their weight in gold.

I know I'm preaching to the choir, but there are going to be listeners who may have never gone to a chiropractor—or maybe they went to one and it wasn’t a great experience.

The thing is, there are many different styles of chiropractic. I would encourage people to go find a chiropractor who’s been practicing for a while. Find one who does really specific work. Maybe they do muscle testing, then they do very specific adjustments—not just, “Okay, we're going to crack everything we can crack.” Go find a chiropractor that resonates with you, because they can be the most amazing part of your team that helps you.

Yes—and they can also help point you in the right direction in terms of nutrition. They get more nutritional training than medical doctors.

Now, I’m basically doing the interview that you should be doing. I’m sorry. I just want to tell you how much I love what you do.

So, you advocate for chiropractic care. But why does the chiropractic profession even need an advocate such as yourself?

Bharon Hoag (0:13:55.314)

Wow, well first of all, I loved that. That was fantastic. Thank you for sharing your perspective and your love and experience because a lot of times I'm talking to people that have none, and so it takes us a while to get deep. So I appreciate being with someone that has a personal understanding of this.

It really goes back—first of all, it's important to understand I am a massive lover of history. I always want to know why certain things have become what they are before I try to affect any change in that particular situation.

In the world of chiropractic, it's very, very interesting. A lot of people don't understand, one—we're a fairly young profession. We're 129 years old. This September will be 130 years since the very first adjustment was administered by D.D. Palmer in Davenport, Iowa. But the profession came out of a unique situation.

D.D. Palmer was a magnetic healer at the time in 1895, and he adjusted a janitor in his building because the janitor had fallen. He could hear just fine before the fall. After the fall, he couldn't hear. So D.D. was just like, “Well, that's weird.” The fall had nothing to do with his ears. Why all of a sudden did he lose his hearing?

So he just started what we now call palpating—but just feeling around on his neck—and he kind of felt a bump. So he put some pressure on the bump, and the bump kind of snapped back into place, and all of a sudden, the hearing came back.

What's funny about that story is, immediately he put out an advertisement. Because back then, there were no regulations, there were no rules—you could kind of do whatever you could afford to do. So he put out a full-page ad in the local paper saying that he found the cure to deafness.

Well, he never restored another person's hearing at all. But all of a sudden, they would say, “I still can't hear, but now this is better.” Then he would put out a full-page ad saying that he found the cure to whatever that particular ailment was.

So the journey of chiropractic came as an individual was discovering that by finding these bumps—in a primitive manner, obviously, it's far more scientific and specific today—but in that time, they didn't have technology. They didn't have the ability to know what we know today.

So he would find these bumps and he would just put pressure on them. As he did, all of a sudden, the body started responding in unique ways. Symptoms started resolving. People started having more energy. People started having better vision. All of a sudden, their gastrointestinal issues were getting better.

So he really developed it from, obviously, that point to what it is today. But the uniqueness of this profession and why they need advocates is because we have been in direct and utter contrast to the development of allopathic medicine.

Our primary premise is that your body is self-healing, self-regulating. It does not need help from the outside to be what God created it to be. But the common everyday marketplace of healthcare says the exact opposite. You can't live unless you're taking some type of pharmaceutical. Just watch TV in the United States and you can see—70% of the advertisements are some form of pharmaceutical product.

Our allopathic system is amazing for emergency care. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else in the world if I was in a serious accident than in the United States because we do it better than anyone else. We can save more lives in that capacity. But we are the absolute worst at delivering health.

That's because of the economics of our healthcare system in the United States. There's so much money in sick people. The goal is not to get people healthy. The goal is to somehow keep them sucking on the virtual teat of healthcare forever and the longevity of these conditions—because they're going to have to take a pharmaceutical product forever. They're going to have to do these things.

That's been the economics, thanks to the Rockefellers and a number of groups, if you care to go down that rabbit hole of how allopathic medicine really built and created its empire. The AMA became so strong in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. But chiropractic was attacked by the medical community because we were again in direct contrast to that.

We were, “No, you don't need any of that. Let's figure out where the interference is.” Again, we believe we're self-healing, self-regulating organisms. What we have to do is remove the interferences.

D.D. came up with this concept—said your body has three major types of stress: thoughts, toxins, and traumas. The three T's. Your physical, emotional, and chemical stress.

If we can figure out how to remove those interferences from your life, then your body actually is so strong, it's capable of healing itself. Fevers are a phenomenal thing. People are always trying to take medication when they have a fever, and we tell them, granted, if it gets to 104, go to the hospital. That's dangerous. You're going to start creating brain damage.

But other than that, let the baby go. Don't need to take medicine. Let your body do what it was intended to do.

Ashley James (0:19:09.798)

I would challenge your 104 there. At a certain point when a fever is out of control—maybe 106 or 108, whatever the number is. But 104 is actually a very healthy, good fever as long as you're not having seizures, as long as you're not unresponsive.

If you can communicate—you might feel lethargic a little—but if you can communicate and your heart’s not doing anything weird. You're feeling good. Wrap yourself in blankets. Encourage that fever. 104 is where you want to be. You want to bake those viruses, and it stimulates fevers. 

Fevers stimulate your stem cell production, increasing stem cell production in children. I have a really interesting interview. This is pre-2020. Okay, so think before 2020, we had a different perspective on fevers. I had a—she’s since changed her name. We're friends on Facebook now. She’s coming back on my show soon, so I’m just not going to say what her name is. But if you go to my website and type in “anesthesiologist,” she was an anesthesiologist who retired from anesthesiology to work with her son who was autistic.

He was on the spectrum to the point where he couldn’t be in a classroom. So whatever part of the spectrum that would be, you can imagine—maybe not verbal or not able to work with other children. She nursed his health to the point where he was able to be in a school with children, working with kids. Now he's in his twenties and driving and just doing great in life.

She came on the show to talk about some things, and one of them was fevers. She said, “Think about this concept—where does this concept come from, that we have to medicate a fever and turn the fever off?” That feedback loop is allopathic.

Back in 1918 and 1919, those who died the most during that pandemic were given allopathic medicine. One of the things was aspirin, which was new to the market. They didn’t know how to dose it. These people died. Aspirin causes a lot of negative issues—aspirin poisoning. But even taking aspirin at the recommended dose does a lot of damage to the body, including leaky brain and leaky gut.

I believe it also may disrupt glutathione production. I'm not 100% on that. It does several things that are not great. A lot of people that died were actually dying due to aspirin poisoning from the hands of the allopathic doctors, whereas those who went to the homeopathic hospitals lived and did really well using homeopathy—which is frequency medicine, not molecular medicine. They thrived under the care of the homeopathic practitioners.

Maybe just even because they weren't being poisoned by toxins. They were just allowed to have their immune systems run its course, but then using homeopathy, which supports the body's ability to heal itself, much like chiropractic care supports the body's ability to heal itself.

But back to the fevers. What she said was that she noticed there was a developmental leap after every fever her children had. She went, oh that's interesting. So anytime her kids had a fever—put a hot pack on their tummy, wrap them in blankets.

As long as they weren't, again, seizing, not going limp, not slurring their words, all these things that would obviously concern you—as long as they were conscious, acting normal other than maybe a little cranky because they're hot—she kept encouraging the fever. Then it would blow out whatever the body was working on, and they'd have this developmental leap, like they'd go from crawling to walking or not talking to talking.

That was one of the things she did with her son. She noticed that the nervous system was actually benefited by fevers. She directed me to look up an article. I live here just north of Seattle, Washington. The Children's Hospital here is quite famous. If you need allopathic care for your child, Seattle Children's Hospital is amazing. 

They had an article pre-2020 that talked about how fevers up until 109 were safe for children. Up until 109. That at 108, as long as the child could still eat and drink—like sip on water—they weren’t seizing, they weren’t floppy, 108 was totally healthy, totally fine, no problems, as long as they didn’t have those issues.

Then 2020 came along, and they edited that article intensely. They put a bunch of caveats. It was really interesting. But that’s just this concept of fever.

You bring up this one thing—because we have to question our own belief system—this one thing of fever, to medicate it. Well, when you medicate a fever, you actually cause more damage than good. But then we have to invest more money into the mainstream medical system.

Bharon Hoag (0:24:45.440)

Yep. And it was designed that way. I mean, again, I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy—but it's unbelievable to me how quickly people just follow the shepherd.

Ashley James (0:25:00.704)

But out of fear, it's, we're out of fear, It's fear-based

Bharon Hoag (0:25:05.986)

We've also been trained to not question certain things. So when we don't know, we trust those that are supposed to know.

I mean, that's just a human thing. But it isn't until you stop getting answers that make sense to you that you actually start digging and realizing, holy cow, almost all of this is probably not the best advice for me.

That's really what we face with chiropractic. When people go to a chiropractor and we're explaining to them how the body actually functions—really with the work that we do specifically neurologically—when people understand that the adjustment isn't about your back, it isn't about your bones, it's about your brain, then it's a massive shift.

People relatively get the idea: if I have a headache or sciatica pain or back pain, go to a chiropractor. That's been pretty well covered, and it's pretty mainstream. People get that. Whether they choose to do it or not is different, but they can understand that logic of, “I have back pain, I have a headache, I'll go to a chiropractor.”

But when you really understand what the adjustment actually does and you understand the neurology behind it, that's when it gets even crazier. Then, knowing what it does and the impact it has on neuroplasticity and the prefrontal cortex, you start questioning a lot of stuff. You're like, “Well, wait a minute. If the receptors that are attached to the vertebra are not there for any other reason than to give information to the brain—the brain to process that information and then to create a motor output—then things like posture. Posture is a neurological response. It is your brain's interpretation of what's going on with the body, and therefore it produces a motor output that creates what we would consider poor posture. But the brain thinks that's the safest place for it to be.

So when you start understanding this, this is where all of a sudden it's really cool to do the hacking—like biohacking or things like that. It's not hacking. It's understanding how the body actually operates and starting to remove interferences and give it good information.

Your body's just an unbelievable thing, similar to what we just talked about with the fever. The reason that the fever created better responses in her child is because it reset the brain. The brain was no longer getting bad information. The fever in and of itself kind of shut everything down and put the brain on high alert. The brain was like, “Crap, okay, hold on. We need to regulate here. We've got some enemies in the body. We're going to turn up the temperature a little bit to kill those things.”

Then once it got to a place where it felt it was safe, and the infection or the virus or whatever it was dealing with was gone, it does a self-analysis. It's almost like you're scanning for viruses on your computer. When it does that, it's getting all new input and starts assessing different things, saying, “Well, wait a minute, this area here probably could use a touch-up as well.” Then it puts some energy and effort into that area. Those were the cognitive increases that they started seeing with their child—and the behavior patterns and things like that.

So it all makes sense when you understand how the brain actually operates and how selfish the brain really is over any other system in the body. Then when you know that, then you can start working with that.

That's where we want people to have healthcare freedom. We want you to understand your body.

Women—I'm always fascinated with women. First of all, I'm very, very glad I'm a man. You guys definitely got the raw end of the stick when it comes to just health and all the different parameters that you have to deal with. But women are so much more in touch with their bodies because of their menstrual cycle. You've learned how to read your body and know when things are coming—whether it's natural pregnancy care or when you wanted a natural contraception—you were monitoring your temperature, you were looking at your ovulation cycles.

When women understand their body to that degree from a menstrual side, like what food you should or shouldn't eat when you're coming close to your time, you’ve just built your life around knowing the right way to handle that particular body process. The same thing can happen with your brain if you take the time to understand how your brain operates.

Here's another perfectly great thing and you probably already know this with your work—but it's just a simple little thing that listeners can do: If you are one of those people that doesn’t feel like you get super restful sleep or you can't stay asleep, you find yourself waking up and then going down the rabbit trail of your brain and thinking of everything, just take one spoonful of honey right before you go to bed.

Just keeping your blood sugar up and feeding the brain while you're sleeping keeps it busy. So if you do wake up to go to the bathroom or anything of that nature, you can fall back asleep much faster because the brain is still busy processing the nutrients from the honey.

Again, it's just a tiny little hack, but it's something that—when you understand how the brain operates—you can start making decisions in your life and start doing things. That's what made me fall in love with chiropractic 29 years ago. I knew nothing about it. But when I started understanding how the body actually worked, and then I started adding things into my life knowing what I knew, I was like, holy crud, this is unbelievable.

My son was adjusted at two hours old because I understood the delivery process. I understood how important the central nervous system was. I understood neurologically the importance of a baby from birth up until the first six hours, and then another milestone of six hours to two months—how important it was to help my child really develop the right strength and the right neurological habits so that he would excel.

Now my son's 24 years old. He's never had an antibiotic in his body. He's never been vaccinated with anything. He was a two-sport athlete in college. Never had a broken bone, never had a serious injury or illness. His body is just a freaking machine. But it's because from birth, we did everything that the body was designed to do. He was adjusted regularly. We did all of the neuro-reflex things with the baby when he was growing. He ate right. He eats at the right times. He's just this product.

We joke about it in our profession. We call them “chiro kids”—especially after COVID and all of that stuff. If there is an Armageddon, the chiro kids are the ones that are going to freaking just excel. That’s one question to ask if you're stuck on an island with someone: did they get chiropractic care when they were a kid? Their bodies operate a bit differently because they're not overwhelmed with all of this other stuff.

Now granted, they're still human. They're going to drink water. They're going to eat. Our food is as horrible as it is, so you can only do so much. But it's interesting to me.

I just want people to understand, and I’m not anything special. I'm not a doctor. I don't have a degree in this stuff. I am just someone that fell in love with a profession, and I hated not understanding it. So I went and I just started putting myself through seminars. I started asking questions. I got care for myself. I took jobs that put me in certain positions that allowed me to learn more.

Now I'll be 50 in June and my whole life is advocating for people to just understand themselves, understand their body, and make good educated decisions for them and their family. That's my mission. Because you're not given the tools in their  schools. You're not given the tools with your average everyday pediatrician or with your average everyday MD.

That is not a knock on those individuals. It is not their fault. They're a product of their environment, just like we all are a product of our own. But it is time that this information gets out, which is why I love shows like yours. They are willing to have these deeper conversations and challenge the status quo. I'm not here to blame anybody for why anything is the way that it is. It's human nature for people to try to benefit and profit off of knowledge. I'm not blaming anyone, but I just want to create a little bit more noise so people have options when they start relying on what they're going to listen to and how they're going to advocate for their life.

Because there is such a better way of life than what most people realize—because they just don't know where to look or what conversations to have.

Ashley James (0:33:10.730)

Well, I hope our listeners are encouraged to go find a really good chiropractor. There are so many different styles of chiropractic, and I didn’t know that for years. It was really interesting. It wasn’t until 2012, I want to say, when I discovered that there were several styles of upper cervical chiropractic—Blair and NUCCA and, my goodness, there are so many. There are so many. I have a few more in my head somewhere.

Each one is a bit different. I did a business road trip with my husband back around 2012 or 2013, somewhere around there. We were in our truck, and this truck wasn't amazing. The suspension was just basic truck suspension.

I did the thing you shouldn't do. I put my cell phone basically in my crotch, just resting my hand on my leg, for nine hours as my husband drove. I like driving, but my husband said, “You just chill, we'll get to Calgary.” We drove from Seattle to Calgary. Occasionally I’d look up—there’s a mountain—but pretty much I played some silly game on my cell phone back then for nine hours.

My neck didn’t hurt. That’s the problem. The problem with the cell phone neck is it doesn’t hurt. I wish it did, because then people wouldn’t do it. But it didn’t hurt.

Then we slept on a not-great mattress at our friend’s house. The next night, we were at a hotel because we drove up to a different part of Alberta, Canada. We were going to a health conference and helping with that.

It was a nice bed at the hotel—I rolled over, and all of a sudden the entire hotel building started crumbling around me and going around and around and around. I thought the hotel was falling. I'm screaming because the hotel room is spinning and spinning and spinning, and I feel like I'm falling to my death.

Of course, my husband has no idea what’s going on. Then it keeps spinning, and I keep falling, and I’m thinking, “Okay, I’m not dying. The room just keeps spinning.” I’m throwing up from the sheer force, the feeling as if my body is being thrown. It was very violent. I felt like I was on some kind of circus machine or something. It was really scary.

But after a few minutes—and it kept going—I collected myself and thought, “Okay, well, I guess I’m not dying, but my entire body feels like it’s dying.” I kept moving, moved my neck, and then I got it to calm down. I thought, “Okay. That’s weird.”

Now I'm in a town of 18,000 people in the middle of cow country and farmland, on a Saturday morning. When I turn my neck in any direction, the entire building feels like it's falling. I'm falling with the building, and it’s spinning around me.

So I say, “Okay, I’m just going to rest.” I send my husband to go start help setup and everything. My first thought is to find a chiropractor, but I’m thinking, “For sure there’s not going to be a chiropractor in this town of 18,000 people in the middle of nowhere on a Saturday who’s going to be able to see me.”

But I look it up—and get this—there are three upper cervical specialist chiropractors in that town. One of them could take me immediately. He felt my neck and said, “Yes, your Atlas is so out—it is so out.” He put me back together.

The room stopped. The vertigo stopped. But the vertigo was so intense I had been throwing up all morning—that’s how intense it was.

He put me back together, and then I came back, I think, later that day for a second adjustment. Then I came back the next day for an adjustment. We finished out our trip, and the vertigo was under control.

But I would start to feel like it was happening. The room wouldn’t spin anymore, but I would start to feel like it was happening again. I’d have to kind of get my neck in the right position.

When I got back to Seattle, I discovered an upper cervical chiropractor, and it took us about three years to fully correct what I had done in those nine hours.

There are people walking around who go to their MD, get put on drugs, get told they have Meniere’s disease. When it’s a structural issue, it’s a hardware issue, not a software issue. The MD is trying to treat your software. They're going to try to drug you. What you need is physical manipulation, but specific.

As my chiropractor told me—that she learned in chiropractic school—if it’s not specific, it’s not chiropractic. You can’t just go, “We’re just going to crack, crack the whole thing.” You have to be very specific. Find the exact facet and aid it to come back into alignment.

That experience—I had believed in chiropractic since I was three years old. I believed in it my whole life—but that experience was the first time I had a major crisis, and chiropractic care was exactly what I needed. The tool. The exact tool I needed.

The thing is, let’s say chiropractic care isn’t the tool you need—it still helps you. It doesn’t harm you. It still helps. Whereas if you go to an MD and tell them, “I have problems sleeping at night,” and “I have this pain,” they give you a bunch of drugs. They’re harming you. They’re not helping you. They’re not getting to the root cause. They’re masking.

Yes, it’s masking. It’s a crutch. Sometimes crutches are life-saving. But 99% of the time, the drug isn’t what’s going to actually help you get better.

We need to find the right tool. That’s what I love about chiropractic. Go to a chiropractor—even if it wasn’t what you need, it probably is—but even if it wasn’t what you need, it’s not going to hurt you in the process. It’s actually just going to help you.

Bharon Hoag (0:39:35.642)

I don't think people understand the level of education that they have. I think people hear so many different opinions of chiropractors. I've done a lot of lobbying legislatively—both nationally and in states. When I'm educating legislators or decision-makers and they say, “Well, we just kind of thought chiropractors were people that didn’t make it into med school,” it just cracks me up.

It’s like, OK, fine—whatever. But do you understand what the schooling is?

When you look at the comparison between a medical doctor and a chiropractor—their schooling—chiropractors actually have more classroom hours than an MD does. Where it really varies is in the clinical rotations. Medicine has been around so much longer. It has developed specialties. Chiropractic hasn’t been around long enough where, from a public perception, there are specialties. It’s just “there’s a chiropractor.” There isn’t a pediatrician, there isn’t an optometrist, there isn’t a cardiologist, there isn’t a gynecologist in the chiropractic space.

We're small, and we haven't been around as much. But there are chiropractors that are specific. You were talking about upper cervical. We have chiropractors that really only focus on pediatrics, and they do a lot of neurodevelopmental work. They’re amazing at helping children with ADHD, autism—those types of conditions—and giving them more cognitive control than what they had, because they understand how the brain operates from an adolescent standpoint.

So when you look at the schooling—instead of us learning pharmacology and surgery—we're spending more time in diagnosing, anatomy, and physiology. If it comes to anything dealing with why your body is responding the way it is, I would—and yes, I'm biased, but if you're listening, I can prove this through evidence—I would go to a chiropractor, hands down, before I go to an MD.

An MD is going to look at your symptoms and send you for tests. You're going to get blood work. You’re going to get maybe X-rays, MRIs. They're going to do all these things, and based on the results from that, they'll going to try an array of pharmaceutical products to see if they curb the symptoms you're dealing with. If that doesn't work, they're going to try a different set of pharmaceutical products. If that still doesn't work, they're going to refer you to a specialist.

It's not their fault. It's their training. Ninety percent of the training that MDs get comes from protocols developed by pharmaceutical companies. It isn’t from a sheer understanding of how the body works.

Chiropractors—it's the kinesiology. If you don't know that term, kinesiology is how each part of the body responds to the other. What is the kinetic chain?

Here's another crazy thing: your low back pain could be coming from your feet. Your low back could be coming from your neck.

We have to look at the kinetic chain and see how’s your body is responding to the structural and neurological inputs that it's getting. We do this all the time.

I do own a clinic currently in Columbus, Ohio. My daughter's a chiropractor. My son's in chiropractic school right now. I have a clinic with three chiropractors just outside of Columbus, Ohio. We are very neurologically focused.

We have so many patients who will go have X-rays done by their primary care or from an urgent care—and then they're told, “They looked at the films and said there's nothing there.” I'm like, “Well, we're going to retake them,” because they're trained to look at them very differently than we are.

When we look at them, we can tell so much about the history of a patient. We can look at the disc spacing. We can look at the degeneration. We can look at the calcifying that's starting to happen between the vertebral bodies. We can see if there's been trauma—the remodeling at different parts of the spine. The curvature of the spine tells us a lot. If it's a straight neck, if it's a reverse curve, or if it has a good natural curve that creates the proper spacing for the nerve roots to leave the spine.

People don't understand that your nervous system is the only system in your body that's protected. Everything else is just kind of smooshed together. Your brain and your nervous system are the only things that are encased in bone to protect them because of how important and how sensitive they are to the overall function of the body.

We've never had a successful brain transplant, and I don't think we ever will because of how intricate our brain is.

To go back to your example of what you were having with your vertigo and your neck—the reason the atlas being out of alignment is so vital is because your brainstem goes down to C2.

So when your atlas is out of alignment, that means that it's putting pressure on the brainstem. When you put pressure on the brainstem, you're cutting off information from the body going to the brain, and the brain doesn't know what to do. This is why if you cut the head off of a snake, the tail will still whip around.

It's because it lost its information, so the muscles don't know what to do other than to spasm. When you cut off information flow from the brain to the rest of the body, your body's going to start reacting in weird, crazy ways.

Which is why in the allopathic world, there are very few protocols that work for everybody because not everyone has the same exact reason why they're having the symptom they're having. So we play this Russian roulette with pharmacology to figure out which one’s going to work because we don’t know. We really don’t know what your specific reason is for what’s going on in your body.

Hands down, chiropractors are so educated—4,400 hours of classroom work. Then they have to take five national boards. Then they have to pass the licensure in the individual state. They're very, very educated people. If you take the time to go and sit and listen to one, just for your overall foundation of health, those are the people that have total control—because they're getting more information.

We work very, very well with the medical doctors in our community that have taken the time to understand our approach. We don't want to do what they do. There is a time and a place for medicine, hands down. If I have a super important meeting and I’m really struggling with something, I’ll pop an aspirin. I'm not against it. But I'm not going to take aspirin every day for the rest of my life because it's the only way I can cope.

That's the difference. If I have high blood pressure or cholesterol issues, I'm not just going to trust statin drugs for the rest of my life. I'm going to look at what other factors I can introduce into my life to control those two numbers and my health.

There’s so much that you can do when you understand exactly how your body is responding. That's one of the reasons I fell in love with chiropractic.

There are a lot of reasons. My daughter does another technique that’s called BEST technique. This is energy work, and this might be getting out in the weeds for some people listening to this. I didn't believe it until I saw it myself, and then I studied it. 

Ashley James (0:46:34.439)

You are fine. Don't worry about being out in the weeds, though. We got to go deep. We got to get weird. This works. It works. It works. So tell us about BEST. But understand that we're not judging you for going out there.

Bharon Hoag (0:46:52.251)

I didn't believe it until I saw it myself, and then I studied it. But it's—yes, I agree.

Okay, perfect. So we all know that when there is a visceral response to certain emotions and energies that we have—when we're scared, we feel that queasiness in our stomach. When we're super excited, we might perspire or we get really antsy. So we know that there's a biological response to a neurological effect.

I think everyone can agree to that. When you're super hot, your body naturally sweats. When you're really cold, your body will shiver. All these things are just a biological response to a neurological impact.

BEST technique goes as far as saying we believe that trauma, injuries—your organs, parts of your body—can actually store some of that emotion and hold on to it, which will ultimately prevail in some kind of a symptomatic response.

Even in chiropractic, we have people where, if we adjust them, we just can't seem to get the body to let go of whatever pattern it's in. So that's where techniques like BEST or NET or some of these other energy works are so amazing—because they actually start targeting the specific areas of your body. They've mapped it out, so they know what organs store what type of emotions.

I've watched my daughter take athletes that are just stuck. They're prone to injury. They can't figure out—they can't strengthen themselves enough, they can't diet enough, they can't do anything. They’re just prone to injuries. Then all of a sudden she starts doing this work on them, and I watch them resolve and clear those areas, and then they don't have another injury. It's the most fascinating stuff I've ever seen.

I watch her with moms that have had a lot of post-traumatic issues, or they're holding trauma, whether it was—sexual abuse or physical abuse in a relationship. They have issues of unforgiveness, and they just can’t let go. She’ll do this technique in conjunction with the adjustment, and all of a sudden the health gains that are happening in these individuals are just unmeasurable.

That’s what I love about chiropractic. It’s constantly looking to say, “Okay, hold on. Let’s see how the body is designed to respond to that stimuli. Why isn’t it responding appropriately? What are the interferences that could be there? Is it thoughts, toxins, or traumas?” Then we’re going to build a plan around those ideas to figure out what it is.

Ninety-nine percent of the time they’re able to do it if you give them the opportunity, the time, and the effort to dig in and figure out what’s going on. Which is why you have such the strong love that you have—because that’s been your experience. It’s not about just popping a bone and getting a cracking sound. That happens, but that’s not what it’s for.

The reason the activator, when you look at it and you’re like, “There’s just no way that thing’s going to do anything,” is because it has nothing to do with it actually causing the bone to move. That thing clicks at a specific frequency that communicates with those receptors and sends information to the brain. So it just causes the brain to start focusing on that particular area where it’s getting clicked, and that’s where the change comes from.

It’s just incredible when you understand that. Low-level lasers—those are a big thing in today’s healthcare. People buy them off Amazon all the time. Infrared lasers or low-level lasers are all just frequencies. When you put them to an area of the body, whether it’s inflammation, scar tissue, or whatever reason you’re lasering yourself, the reason those things work is because they’re putting a frequency into the body that causes the brain to respond to it, focus on that area, and cause healing.

I was a part when low-level lasers first came out in the early 2000s, when they were getting FDA clearances. I had a friend who owned a company called Erchonia Medical, and they were the first people to get FDA clearance for burns using lasers. What it does is actually communicate with the cell itself—the ATP of the cell. When you put that frequency in there, that’s where the extra healing comes from, because it’s communicating to the cell, and the cell is communicating to the brain.

The brain’s like, “Well, let’s amp that bad boy up. We like this juice.” All of a sudden, you start seeing these burns getting better faster, with less pain than the normal allopathic model of treating a burn.

It’s all because we’ve learned how to communicate with the body at the level of which it communicates with itself. Everything is energy. That’s why meditation works so well—it’s an energy control mechanism. Doing Zumba, Tai Chi, yoga—those things have less to do with stretching and more to do with regulating how the body actually operates. That’s where the positive change comes from.

This is why I fell in love with chiropractic. The deeper I dug… There’s a phenomenal book that I would recommend to anybody who’s interested in this brain stuff. It’s called The Reality Check by Dr. Heidi Haavik—H-A-A-V-I-K.

It is a phenomenal book. It’s got the latest research. She’s a chiropractor but also a PhD in neurology. She is one of the leading researchers in the world. She lives in New Zealand. I’ve had the honor of becoming friends with her over the last 10 years. The research she’s doing is unbelievably groundbreaking. She’s published in so many medical journals because of the work she’s doing. But she’s mapping what actually causes stimulation to the brain.

She was the first person that’s able to show that the adjustment–the reason it has the effects that it has, because it stimulates the prefrontal cortex, which creates neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s juice. It’s creating new synapses in the brain.

I don’t know exactly how old you are, Ashley, but I know when I was growing up, I was told, “You only have so many brain cells. Don’t do dumb stuff because they’re not going to grow back.” You can’t do that because you don’t have enough brain cells. That was the popular belief at the time—that the brain did not regenerate. 

Well, now we know that's not true. That’s changed in the last 20 years. But now we're finding out not only can it regenerate, but there are things you can do to cause it to regenerate. That’s the beauty of what she’s done in her research.

The book reads very easily. It's not going to be super medical. It's not going to be super complicated. But she does a phenomenal job of using research. Everything in that book you can Google and research yourself and understand how the brain really communicates, what types of decisions you should make in your health, and really let your brain be a teammate rather than an opponent.

I think so many people start working on health—and whether it's obesity, whether it's allergies, whether it's just chronic health issues, whatever your journey is—we oftentimes treat our brain as an opponent rather than a teammate.

When you start understanding how the brain works—and it's not deep stuff, you're not going to have to buy millions of dollars of equipment, you're not going to have to spend billions of dollars on health care. A lot of the stuff you can do yourself.

This is why I love chiropractic. I think everyone should have a chiropractor as their baseline person in their medical team, to just make sure everything else you're doing is working better—because the brain is now a teammate rather than an opponent in that journey.

Ashley James (0:54:27.497)

Oh, that is so cool. BEST stands for Bioenergetic Synchronization Technique, and it's been around for 45 years. I love that chiropractic is always improving on itself. The Hippocratic oath, which is “do no harm,” is hypocritical. It's hypocritical because, I mean, I believe that medical doctors want to do good. It's not that they want to cause harm.

But I invite you—if you're on a medication, which 70% of adult Americans in the United States are on at least one form of medication—that's how sick we are as a nation. There are certain medications, for example, you're type one diabetic and you're on insulin. I'm not counting that. That is necessary and life-saving. But 99% of medications that people are on are not life-saving. They've just been sold a bill of goods that is harming them.

So when I work with clients—I'm a holistic health coach, and I've been doing this since 2011 now, and I was working with clients before that, but it wasn't under the knowledge that I gained around 2011, which was when I was mentored by naturopaths. Then I went through rigorous training, and I worked alongside them for several years.

I've been working with clients for many years, even before that. Back in 2005, I started working with clients doing a type of therapy. It's called timeline therapy. It's a type of therapy that is cognitive therapy and behavioral psychology, but it stems from neuro-linguistic programming. So we're working with the brain.

You talk about neuroplasticity—it's on a quantum level, helping you quickly resolve the unresolved that's stored inside your body, even from your childhood. Even from—and get this—even from conception, even from your ancestors.

I've had clients have distinct and clear memories of being in the womb and hearing arguments and details of arguments while we do this therapy. Then they go and they clarify with their parents, and their parents say, “How did you know that?” Because we have stored in our neurology the memories. But we hold on to negative emotions and limiting decisions and these unresolved experiences.

The native Hawaiians described it as boulders in a stream that cause turbulence in the energetic system of the body. Or they said, it's like you take this negative experience, put it in a black bag, and then it's stored inside you, causing turbulence as the energy moves through. It doesn't allow the energy to move freely because we're holding onto these negative—when I say negative, I mean unresolved

Emotions, I mean, we think anger, sadness, fear, hurt, guilt—those are the emotions that I help people to resolve. It's between 15 minutes to 45 minutes per emotion. So it only takes a few sessions, and we've gone through your entire life, all conscious and unconscious, and we resolve anger, sadness, fear, hurt, and guilt.

So I've been doing that since 2005. It's really cool. It's really cool. If you personally want to do it with me, I'd love to do it with you. I can do it over the phone. I've been doing that since, like I said, since 2005. I got trained in it by the creator of it. Then I later was hired to be his sales manager. That's why I moved to the States.

This is part of my story. This is huge. But doing timeline therapy with people—and a lot of other systems call themselves timeline therapy.

I've met a lot of people who are like, “Yes, I've done that thing. It's where you pretend you're a baby and you scream.” I don't know. It's not that. So a lot of people haven't even heard of this technique, but it actually resolves major trauma in a really beautiful, gentle way—not a violent way. You don't have to relive things. It's not damaging to go through the process. It's very cathartic and healing and wonderful. So I've been doing that for many years working with clients.

It was only a natural progression that I would look to help people on a physical level because I myself was struggling for many years with health issues, and the MDs had nothing for me. They just had drug after drug, and that made it worse. Then I found these naturopaths who were like, “You need nutrition, and you need to stop eating this and start eating that and take these minerals,” and just make these adjustments that were not in conflict with my body. Taking drugs was in conflict with my body—to try to force my body into submission. But that doesn't get to the root cause.

So I very quickly overcame major issues, including stuff I was told by the MDs I was told I would always have for the rest of my life. Very quickly resolved those. That's why I started doing this podcast, because I'm like, we have to get this information out there. I would cry myself to sleep from suffering, and I know there's people out there who last night cried themselves to sleep begging God for the answer.

This episode, for example, could be what guides them. Could be what inspires them and what gives them the information they need.

I just want to back up. You mentioned cholesterol, and I know you’re not an expert in cholesterol. I know this isn't an episode in cholesterol, but I feel like I have to clarify that cholesterol is not unhealthy for you. That is also a lie that has been told to us. Our body makes cholesterol.

Now I'm vegetarian. My husband calls himself a vegan, but he'll wear leather boots because, I mean, the animal's already dead. When we went to buy our car, I was like, “So are we not getting a car with a leather steering wheel?” At what point are you not a vegan? So he just doesn't want to consume murder, basically.

But we also want to be pragmatic because we want to be healthy. We don't want to be the vegetarians that wither away and die. We want to be the vegetarians that live to a hundred. 

So we're all about getting the nutrients our body needs. I'm pragmatic about food. I'm not going to be dogmatic. This is the hill I'm going to die on. But I am looking to nutrify my body, and it's done. It works wonders for me. 

So here’s the thing. Your body makes cholesterol. We used to think the liver made cholesterol and that’s it. So what they did is they came up with this drug that punishes the liver, that bruises the liver, that harms the liver intentionally. So the liver does its job less optimally and produces less cholesterol.

We have now discovered that cholesterol is produced in every single cell of your body that has a nucleus. So 37 trillion cells make cholesterol. Your body needs cholesterol. It needs cholesterol so much that 70% of the weight of the white matter of your brain is made of cholesterol. The myelin sheath, which is the protective sheath on most nerves, is made of cholesterol. Every single cell wall in your body is made of cholesterol. Your sex hormones and stress hormones are made of cholesterol. It goes on and on and on. Bile is made of cholesterol, and bile is needed to emulsify fats.

You don't have to eat cholesterol to make it. That’s another misnomer. Now, you can eat cholesterol, and you can not eat cholesterol, and your body will make it. So to punish your body and to take a cholesterol medication to “lower” your “bad cholesterol” and then go out and eat someone else’s cholesterol is asinine. But they don’t tell you that.

So I have a family member—I’m not going to mention who they are out of protection to my other family members—but back in 2011, we begged them to no longer be on statins, which are the drugs that punish your liver to produce less cholesterol. We begged them and begged them and showed them the information. But of course, their doctor—their MD—is the god in their life.

This person has multiple degrees. Highly intelligent person. Who are we? We’re people without degrees. Who are we? Some kind of whack-job relatives. Just label us.

So they said, “Well, my doctor’s smarter than you.” They got peripheral neuropathy from taking the cholesterol meds, which means they couldn’t feel their hands and feet, and they started to fall down everywhere.

They developed neurodegenerative diseases, and then they developed Alzheimer's and just went downhill from there.

That is the app effect, not the side effect. Using the term “side effect,” by the way, is a PR marketing term to make it sound less harmful. It is the direct effect of taking statins for many years. Those who take statins will have a shorter lifespan and are damaging and starving their brain of nutrition. 

Bharon Hoag (1:04:22.311)

And the saddest part of that whole thing—I don't mean to interrupt you—is they know. They know that that's the result. They know it, but to them, it leads to other drugs.

This is why you now have drugs that are designed to combat the side effects of opioids. Like, “Take this drug if you have opioid-induced constipation.” If you look underneath, there's a great documentary that came out about the Purdue family with opioids. When you actually see the conversations they had, they're like, “Ooh, well this does this.”

“Yeah, we'll buy our way out of having to admit that. But by the way, we're going to start developing another drug because we know if people take this drug long enough, they're going to develop this symptom, and we need a drug for that.”

It's literally a snowfall—an avalanche—of just different things.

Ashley James (1:05:13.561)

So to back up what you’re saying, I have a family member, he worked at JPL, he worked on one of the Apollo missions. He developed a machine that is called, I'm going to say it wrong, mass photospectrometer. I know I'm saying it wrong. It's one of those words where I get halfway through it and then I start questioning myself.

I run out of syllables—mass, photospectrum—my husband can say it, I can't. So anyway, it's a machine that you can take this wand and you plug it into an unknown substance, and it will detect all the molecules in that substance, and this is before AI. It’ll tell you what it is. 

So let’s say I have a pile of baking soda, a pile of sugar, and a pile of Tylenol powder. I could plug it into each one and it’ll say, “That’s Tylenol,” and, “That’s sugar,” and, “That’s baking soda.” It knows.

So he went around to every single pharmaceutical company—he had lawyers—and tried to sell them this technology because they could prevent accidents from happening. They could detect, “What’s this stuff?” “Okay, it’s the right stuff at the right percentage.” It actually would also tell them the right percentage: “It’s 17% Tylenol,” or whatever.

It could tell you exactly what it is so you don’t accidentally give someone the wrong thing.

Every single pharmaceutical company came back and it wasn’t super expensive for them to purchase either, it’s not like he was charging billions— they said they would rather wait to kill enough people and just pay off the families because that’s cheaper.

So he ended up finally finding an application for it in the pulp mill industry. They cut down a bunch of trees, make a bunch of pulp out of it, and then pour unknown amounts of bleach, which then go into the rivers. Unknown amounts of bleach in order to bleach that pulp. But they don’t know how much bleach they need to put in—they just keep putting it in.

So he showed them that this machine could be programmed to then say, “Okay, this pulp needs this percentage of bleach exactly.” So then they saved money, but they were also helping the environment by not pouring a bunch of chemicals into it.

That’s the industry that ended up purchasing his machine because they could save money. The pharmaceutical companies would rather kill people and pay off the families.

We have to get that they’re not out for our best interest. It's wild.

Bharon Hoag (1:07:54.588)

No, they never have been. Here's another thing while we're on this topic.

I get such a visceral response when I start talking about this kind of stuff because it's just maddening to me. I love a capitalistic environment. I would prefer it over a dictatorship any day. But it really does drive me nuts when they create the rules around their own success. I won't even get into the vaccine issue and how they've legislated their own freedom in that.

This is a personal experience that I had myself. I've been an advocate for chiropractic for almost 30 years. I did a lot of work at one time dealing with large insurance companies. My vision was if I could get major payers—Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, Cigna, some of these bigger payers—to understand that they could make more money and save more money developing health benefits that encouraged positive lifestyle habits versus having coverage that gets you from sick to not sick.

That model creates a tail on the healthcare services that just never ends when you have a sick-not-sick mentality rather than a preventative mentality. So we had research. There were a number of studies proving that if a beneficiary—someone that had their insurance—went to a chiropractor first before they went to an MD, that we could reduce the amount of surgeries, reduce the amount of drugs that were taken, all these positive numbers, which equated to just billions of dollars in savings.

Through relationships and people I'd been working with for a number of years, I got to the executives of Blue Cross Blue Shield. I sat in this meeting and I’m feeling very good. I have everything, all my ducks in a row. I have everything ready that proved my point. I could show them how they were going to save money, and it also opened up plan designs to 100% of people living rather than just those that had chronic pain and things of that nature. All these statistics. I was so excited about this presentation.

I deliver it. I get done, and they looked at me and they said, “This is amazing. We agree with you, but we'll never do it.”

I was like, “What do you mean you'll never do it?”

He goes, “We make so much money on paying claims that you're telling us you can reduce the amount of claims that come in—and that just literally short circuits our entire economic structure. So although we think it's great and for an individual, in our own health choices, that's fantastic. But as an industry, it would basically upend the entire industry. So there's no way we could do it.”

I didn’t even know how to respond. I’m like, “So rather than be innovative, rather than disrupt the model, you're just going to continue to perpetuate sickness because that's your economic structure?”

They were like, “Yes. We get so many rebates from pharmaceuticals. We get so many rebates from DME’s for surgeries, hospital rebates. There are so many things that we get. We don't make our money from the premiums. We make our money because of all the relationships we have, because of our plan designs.”

It was just—wow.

Okay, well, and that day I stopped working with insurance companies because there was just no way. I started going to self-funded employers who were willing to make the changes, but the insurance companies were not. So we started working with self-funded plans and helping them learn how to create better plan designs. That worked really well. There are a couple of organizations that do great work in that regard.

But yes, it is not designed for health.

Ashley James (1:11:31.183)

Can you just unpack that a little? I lost you somewhere. I guess it doesn't compute.

So you showed them how to help people get healthy, and because you’d think that would save them money.

Bharon Hoag (1:11:45.267)

My whole premise was this: Right now, if you have health insurance coverage, it costs you almost nothing out of pocket to go to an urgent care, to go to an emergency room, and most likely your primary care physician. No matter what the reason is, there's a zero out-of-pocket there, which means that's the path of least resistance, just from a behavioral standpoint for the individual.

But if you want to do acupuncture, chiropractic, go to the gym, get a massage, there's either a really high deductible or very limited benefits. So, if you're going to do that, you have to be really motivated to do it because your insurance really isn't going to make it easy for you to do it.

What's happened is we've conditioned people—because of the economic impact to them, because of their health benefit—to do the easier road, to go to the urgent cares. Yet everyone’s talking about the abuse of pharmaceuticals, the number of claims, the mismanagement. But it's how the plans are designed.

We had created a plan design that actually encouraged things like chiropractic, acupuncture, nutritionists, it covered two massages a month, it covered gym membership if you at least showed up twice a month—these types of things. Then, if you were going to take the easy way out and go to an urgent care or ER for non-emergency reasons, then there was a deductible. The plan design was built to change behavior in the consumer.

Ashley James (1:13:16.404)

Oh my gosh. I love that. I would buy that.

Bharon Hoag (1:13:18.746)

You and I would. I think the average person would as well. But what they were telling me is they can't do that because of all of the incestual relationships they have with pharmaceutical companies, hospitals—the economic structure doesn't allow that. Even though everyone would be a candidate and people would gladly pay more for their insurance benefit because they're actually getting something out of it from their perspective—if you're covering my gym membership, and you're giving me a massage twice a month, and I get to go to my chiropractor, and I can get acupuncture, and there's no out-of-pocket for any of that—I'm willing to pay more a month for that. People do it now for concierge care.

I showed them all the economics. I said, “This will make you a lot of money. You're not losing money in this. You're going to gain customers.” But they just kind of lifted the hood and showed me all the back-end money that people don't see and don't know about.

all insurance premiums are created by looking at the potential of the plan having to pay out. So if there's a higher risk of having to pay out on medical claims, your premiums are going to be higher. If there's very little risk, your premiums are going to be lower. I think everyone understands that general concept of insurance.

An MD—just a run-of-the-mill family practice MD—their malpractice insurance will range anywhere from $50,000 to $120,000 a year, depending on the type of practice they operate. A chiropractor? Their malpractice insurance for a year—for example, my daughter, fresh out of school and practicing for only two years—I pay $1,100 a year for her malpractice.

This is a brand-new student. So this is someone who doesn't have years and years of experience. You would think that the premium would be higher because they have less experience—maybe more prone to having incidents or accidents—but it just doesn't happen. Chiropractors don't hurt people.

Sometimes you'll see, occasionally, “This chiropractor caused a stroke.” Every single one of those supposed stroke issues has been proven to involve an underlying issue. It could have been anything that actually caused the stroke. It wasn't the adjustment that did the vertebral dissection. That just happened to be the mechanism, but there were already issues.

Maybe that chiropractor didn't do a good exam to look for those warning signs. A lot of times, there are no warning signs. So they didn’t do anything wrong. They've been found innocent of any wrongdoing in it. But of course, the media takes it and throws it out there.

That’s the fear that people have associated with getting adjusted. As you stated, there are techniques—like activator—that don’t do the rotation. You're not hearing the big cracks and pops.

So I'm asking people—prove me wrong. What do you have to lose at this point? If you have chronic health issues, if you're not happy with the gains that you've been having in your health choices, why would you not go and at least try?

I used to do this with my moms with ADHD. I’d say, “You're going to put your kid on a class III controlled substance?” Ritalin is in the same category as cocaine. The addictive issues are worse than cocaine.

You know that if they tell you, “You cannot immediately stop taking it or your child will likely commit suicide,” this is a serious drug. This isn't just a vitamin. If you're going to tell me you would rather do that than try a conservative approach—and we'll know within a couple of weeks if this is going to have a positive effect—why wouldn’t you do that?

I don’t know, as a parent, why you wouldn’t at least try everything you could before sentencing your child to a lifetime of taking a massively addictive drug. There's a reason why they sell it on the street. I just ask people—there are multitudes of different chiropractors with different techniques and different styles. Go to a female if you don't want a big man crunching on you.

Ninety percent of the time, women use softer techniques or are just softer in their approach. We have a lot of women chiropractors. There's a female chiropractor in every town—I guarantee it. Just give it a shot. You owe it to yourself, you owe it to your brain, you owe it to your family to try to make sure that you're creating a foundation of health so that all your other healthcare decisions have a better chance of being effective because your brain and your body are more appropriately connected.

The reason I'm here is because of the knowledge I gained when I got into it in the mid-90s, and I was blown away that no one ever told me this was a possibility. I never wanted to come in contact with another person and not make sure that they had all the information they needed to make good healthcare choices.

So I appreciate you, Ashley. I appreciate your platform that you have here and the willingness to dig into some of these conversations a little bit deeper without judgment, with an open mind. That’s what I would ask of your listeners.

There’s a reason we’re still around. We've already talked about the attacks to try to shut us down. We've talked about the limited access to different things, all these variances that have tried to stop chiropractic from being part of mainstream healthcare decision-making. But yet, we're still here—because we work.

Our patients who have made the decision to go with us love us. So we're going to be around forever because there are too many people who use it as part of their everyday healthcare decisions.

I would just hate for someone to make other healthcare decisions and not at least add this to the repertoire to find out if maybe it’s the missing link.

Ashley James (1:55:39.903)

I kind of lost count after 12—chiropractors. It's not because one didn’t work. It's because I just moved around. But even just in the Seattle area, I can think of six chiropractors I've seen since 2010.

Sometimes I've seen more than one because they are totally different specialties. For example, Dr. Dick Sheppard—amazing chiropractor in Seattle. He has a completely different technique than I’ve seen. Most chiropractors I go to are totally different. They each adapt. They either have their different techniques, but they're all working on the nervous system.

He doesn't do any of that quick. He doesn't use an activator. He doesn't do anything quick. He's working with the nervous system. You lie on a table for about half an hour and he's very slowly,,  he's almost holding you with his hands. He's very slowly moving things.

His whole concept is to take you out of fight or flight because that’s when the healing can begin. He says our birth is traumatic, our childhood is traumatic. Try to find someone who didn’t have a traumatic childhood. Life is traumatic. So we’re all—but over time we are just chronically in that fight or flight. Even if we do things to relax ourselves, we’re still on guard. We’re still, maybe traumatized by being beat up as a kid, or in the playground, or by a family member, or whatever.

So he holds you and works on your nervous system in such a gentle way that he finally has you get into that parasympathetic healing mode.

I’ve had so many massages and it would be like, if you took a thousand massages and concentrated them, it’s really neat. But he really does tap into your nervous system, tells your body you’re safe, and turns off that fight or flight.

So no fast popping, cracking—nothing. He’s doing chiropractic because he is a chiropractor—he’s working on the nervous system.

Then, my chiropractor now, Dr. Claire Russell, who works with an activator, it is so precise.

No cracking, popping, no sudden movements, and it is divine—divine—how she has put me back together.

I am vocal with her. Speak up when you go to your chiropractor. Tell them what’s bothering you that week or that month. Tell them what’s up, not just physical, emotional, mental. Tell them what you're dealing with.

I said, “For some reason, I’ve got a block. My computer broke down. I had to get it fixed. I’ve got this emotional or mental blocker. I'm going back to the office and I want to. I love what I do. I want to do it. I just noticed I have this emotion. Is there anything you can do for me?”

She goes, “Yes, let's test this thing. There's a bone near the brain.” She goes, “Usually when this is out, that’s associated with procrastination and maybe that emotional feeling of a blockage. You go to do something and then you just don’t want to do it.”

Sure enough, she goes, “Yes, that tested out. Let's click, click, click.”

It was such a relief. Then I'm back to myself again.

How neat is that—that something so slight, so precise, so gentle, and so slight could have affected my emotional, mental body.

Bharon Hoag (1:59:14.927)

Yes, it's all intertwined. There's no isolated health issue—ever. It is all connected. There's an energy connection between all of it.

What we do in our profession is we've learned to listen to the body. We trust the body. The body tells us what needs to be done. It's just incredible.

So give it a shot.

Ashley James (1:59:35.064)

Yes, okay, I want to plug something. First of all, what's the name of your clinic that your daughter works at?

Bharon Hoag (1:59:39.200)

Patriot Chiropractic.

Ashley James (1:59:41.206)

Patriot Chiro, is there a website?

Bharon Hoag (1:59:44.412)

Yes, https://www.patriotchiro.com.

Ashley James (1:59:47.288)

Nice, that's, where was that located again?

Bharon Hoag (1:59:49.164)

in Dublin, Ohio.

Ashley James (1:59:50.840)

Dublin, Ohio. Then you've got a few websites—HealthFreedom101, as in the numbers 101, healthfreedom101.com. You've got a 10-step guide for empowering your healthcare decisions. You also have defendchiropractic.org. Of course, the links to everything you do are going to be in the show notes of today’s podcast at learnturehealth.com.

What do they learn by going to these websites? Why should they go to these websites? What do they get out of them?

Bharon Hoag (2:00:22.312)

Yes. The Health101 is just—we wanted to have a resource for people that were listening to this and wanted more information. It was really a way to get connected with me. If maybe I said something that intrigued you, I don't have products to sell. I'm not doing this because I'm trying to push an agenda. I'm doing this because I just want to tell the story, and I want to encourage people to keep digging and look.

Obviously, if people do resonate with me, you're going to find me at the 101 website. The Defend Chiropractic site—that's the work that our nonprofit does. We defend and advocate for chiropractic around the world. We're in nine different countries. We take on various issues.

If you really want to learn more about the struggles and things that we're facing in chiropractic and that's an interest, then the Defend Chiropractic website will get that done.

Then, obviously, our practice site—you’ll learn a little bit more about our approach to chiropractic and the neurology behind it and the way that we serve our community.

Ashley James (2:01:18.123)

Also, because you are the Executive Director of OneChiropractic, which is an advocacy organization, you've got OneChiropractic.org.

Tell us just a little bit about it. I think it's self-explanatory—you are an advocacy organization—but you're disruptive. You guys aren't just lke any other. What's different about OneChiropractic? Can we donate to you? Can we share this with our chiropractors? What can we do to support and help OneChiropractic?

Bharon Hoag (2:01:51.129)

We are a non-profit organization, so all of our funding comes from contributions, so share. We’d love your support. It's more directed towards chiropractors giving because of the work that we do, but anyone that loves chiropractic or has a desire to be connected with it—that’d be awesome.

We're an advocacy organization. We're disruptive because of the way that we approach things. Our organization is not a membership organization. We're a directorship, which means we make decisions and we move on them, and then people support us if they like the work we're doing.

We've approached this thing with chiropractic very head-on, dealing not only within our own profession but outside of our profession. We take on very specific projects. Our goal is to make sure that everyone understands chiropractic and hopefully they make it as one of their primary healthcare choices.

Anywhere there's restriction to access, anywhere that maybe there's just a lack of understanding, anywhere when there's a direct attack against us—we’re the organization in our profession that takes on those types of things.

We don't do a lot of seminars for continuing education. We're not doing legislative in states just for scope expansion or things of that nature. Our organization's all about doing the work that no one else has been doing or wanting to do.

Most of our stuff is very long. It takes a while for us to create the change, but that’s just the calling that we have. It's my personal mission and love for this. My kids are chiropractors. It's what I love. It's what I do.

So I wanted to create an organization that gave me the vehicle to go and do the work that needed to be done. Thankfully, we've had thousands of people that give to us every single month to allow us to continue to do the work that we're doing.

Ashley James (2:03:38.096)

That's so cool. I love it. I love it. What school is your son going to?

Bharon Hoag (2:03:44.172)

So he's at Life University in Atlanta right now. 

Ashley James (2:03:47.308)

Is that the same one your daughter went to?

Bharon Hoag (2:03:49.644)

No, my daughter actually went to Sherman in South Carolina. It's a much smaller school. My daughter didn't like Atlanta. She didn't like the size. Life University is the largest single-campus chiropractic school in the country. There are only 19 chiropractic schools in the United States, so most people don't realize that.

Obviously, East Coast, West Coast. But Sherman was in a small town. They only had about 600 students. Where my son's going, they have about 5,000. So it's a much bigger place. Obviously, Atlanta is a much bigger city, but he loves that—she didn't.

Ashley James (2:04:22.920)

It'll be interesting to see how the two different schools shape their students. Yes, you're seeing how it brings up different approaches. When you go to enough chiropractors, always ask them, “What school did you go to? Who mentored you? How did your style develop?” The best chiropractors I've gone to had amazing mentorships and combined what they learned from different mentors. Through trial and error, they found what worked for them. 

My chiropractor developed a style of kinesiology. I keep begging her, “Go teach this—it works so well,” because these chiropractors, who are amazingly intelligent but also highly intuitive with their patients, go, “Okay, this thing is working. This is something I just figured out about the body and it’s working.” They figure it out, and then hopefully they go and they share it.

Then it spreads, and that's how new styles get created. That’s the coolest thing about it—this is to aid the body in healing. It's not to harm you. So in the worst-case scenario, you walk away going, “I don’t know if that helped.”

Whereas if you go to an MD, the worst-case scenario is literally they kill you with the drugs—because they're drugs.

There’s a certain percentage—a large percentage—of drugs that are prescribed that kill people every year. The third leading cause of death in the United States is prescribing drugs how they’re supposed to be prescribed. Not even overdose. Not accidental. Properly prescribed drugs are the third leading cause of death in the United States.

That’s insane, how we continue to trust them. That’s the amount of PR that they’ve poured into the trust campaign.

So I think we did an adequate job today helping—although I’m pretty sure listeners were already on the bandwagon—but hopefully they share this with those they love, who they want to help open their eyes. We should take some of that trust we blindly give MDs—and I don’t think we should blindly trust anything. We should question everything. But at least take some of that trust away from the MD profession, especially when it comes to chronic illness, because they have zero solutions for chronic illness.

We should pour it into chiropractic care and at least give it a fair shot—give it a fair shake—and see how it does. Go try a different chiropractor. Expand. Be willing to go, “I really like my chiropractor,” but be willing to go to a different one just to try a different technique. Just to experience the difference.

I go to several different ones, just depending on what I feel I need, because it’s so different—but they all are helping the body heal itself.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. This was a lot of fun, Bharon. If you have more to share in the future, I’d love to have you back. I’d love to continue this conversation. If there’s more happening in the world of chiropractic that you’d like to share about.

Also, I really want to interview your friend, Dr. Heidi. I’m going to read her book first, but I’d love to have her on the show. If you could hook us up, that’d be a lot of fun.

Bharon Hoag (2:07:40.262)

I can definitely make the relationship without a doubt, absolutely.

Ashley James (2:07:43.068)

Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Listeners can check out healthfreedom101.com. They can also check out OneChiropractic.org, defendchiropractic.org, and f4cp.org. All of those are going to be in the show notes of today's podcast at Learn True Health.

It was great talking to you. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Bharon Hoag (2:08:05.404)

Thank you. God bless.

Outro:

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Get Connected with Bharon Hoag:

Website – One Chiropractic Org

Website – Defend Chiropractic Org

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