Latest / Everyday Ancestral with James Barry / Traditional Healing Meets Modern Mastery: Dr. Adam Gavine’s 2-Day Fix for Chronic Pain Pt. 1

Transcript

Traditional Healing Meets Modern Mastery: Dr. Adam Gavine’s 2-Day Fix for Chronic Pain Pt. 1 · Everyday Ancestral with James Barry

0:00
I've ever had back pain or injuries that don't seem to get better, no matter what you do.
0:08
Are you looking for a miracle?
0:10
On this episode of Everyday Ancestral, you'll meet Dr. Adam Gaven, an over 16-year sport
0:17
chiropractor, author, and a miracle worker of sorts.
0:24
Dr. Adam is the co-founder of the Wasabi Method and Innovative Approach to Shockwave Therapy.
0:29
Aimed at enhancing pain management, longevity, and overall health,
0:34
stick around to learn about movements that help everybody
0:38
and a mindset that might just change how you treat yourself.
0:43
I'm your host James Barry, please enjoy Dr. Adam Gaven.
0:50
We met at a conference, and my wife Margaret was about four or five days into an injury.
0:59
A knee injury, it was torn, and the patella had popped out, and then it got replaced,
1:05
but she could not walk.
1:06
And she was still on crutches.
1:09
You basically said this was a three-day conference, and you were like,
1:15
she'll be walking in two days, maybe two in a little bit of change.
1:19
I think we met maybe on a Thursday, so maybe it was four days.
1:22
You said she'll be walking by Saturday.
1:25
I just was flattened, and you did it.
1:27
And you did it, actually, I think if I remember correctly, Friday night.
1:32
So you actually did it a little earlier than you had said.
1:36
So you specialize in sports chiropractic.
1:39
Yeah, I'm a sports chiropractor.
1:41
Why did you choose chiropractic work, and even more specifically,
1:46
why did you choose sports?
1:49
I'll go to basically my origin story.
1:52
I used to be at the Catholic while I was in high school in universities.
1:57
So that's if people don't know the Catholic law, and it's 10 track and field events over two days.
2:03
Isn't it deemed one of the most difficult sports in the world, too?
2:07
Yeah, if you're Olympic champion, you're basically viewed as the fittest person in the world.
2:14
I used to do that, and when I was 16, I tore my hamstring, and I went to a physio,
2:22
and not the bag on physios at all, but I was seeing him for about six months,
2:28
twice a week for six months, and I still couldn't run.
2:31
And so a friend of mine on my track team said,
2:34
oh, you should go see this chiropractor up where I live,
2:36
which was the next town over about 20 minutes away.
2:39
And he's like, oh, he works on Olympians and stuff like that.
2:41
I was like, oh, okay.
2:43
So I went and saw him, and he assessed me.
2:46
And he's like, well, it's your a doctor muscles, which are the problem.
2:52
So I saw him twice.
2:54
After the second visit, I'm just thinking, I'll just ask him,
2:58
when do you think I'll be able to run again?
3:01
And he looks at me funny.
3:02
He goes, you can go for a run tonight.
3:05
And I was like, what?
3:07
Like I've been having six months of twice a week treatment.
3:11
And after two treatments, you're telling me I can go for a run.
3:14
I'm like, pull shit.
3:15
He's like, yeah, you can.
3:17
And so I went for a run that night.
3:18
That was the first time in six months.
3:20
I was actually able to run without, like I used to have to stop
3:24
after about a hundred meters because it would just hurt so much.
3:26
And I was like, oh, my God, I can run.
3:29
So I think I ran like two kilometers or something like that that night.
3:33
You know, you bring up a really important point.
3:37
A lot of people actually don't really understand the difference
3:40
between physio and chiropractic.
3:42
So what was the difference between what this person did
3:45
and what you had been getting for six months?
3:47
What I try and tell people is, unfortunately,
3:50
people have this stigma around physio, chiro, osteo.
3:56
I tell people it's more about the individual.
4:00
At the end of the day, I had to go to university to get a degree
4:04
so I can legally put my hands on people.
4:07
So whether I became a physio or an osteo or chiropractor,
4:11
I would probably end up virtually doing the same thing
4:15
because we all can.
4:16
Like I go to physiotherapy seminars all the time.
4:20
You know, so when people are like, oh, I need to go see a physio
4:22
about this, I'm like, no, you don't.
4:24
I know everything they do.
4:26
So it's more about the practitioner.
4:29
And certain practitioners have a lot more tools
4:32
in their toolbox and other.
4:34
Like I've gone to countless seminars over the years.
4:38
So I have tons of tools in my toolbox.
4:41
We'll get to one here soon.
4:43
But it's really about knowing how to use these tools
4:46
and how good you are.
4:48
Like any profession, there's good plumbers,
4:51
there's bad plumbers, there's average plumbers,
4:54
there's amazing plumbers.
4:55
And it's the same with what we do.
4:57
It's not whether you're a physio or chiro or osteo.
5:01
It's, are you good or not?
5:03
Okay, well let's try to dig into that.
5:05
I'm always telling people when they work with health practitioners
5:08
like nutrition is something or I'm always telling them like,
5:11
they act like they go to one and that's who they're with.
5:13
And I'm like, no, no, no, no, they're like genes.
5:16
They all seemingly see this seem the same,
5:18
but they all fit differently.
5:20
What would someone be looking for to give them a hint?
5:24
Like, oh, this person is the right fit.
5:28
What defines the right fit in your judgment?
5:31
There's a few things and it's really person dependent.
5:34
So actually I've wrote a book on back pain
5:38
with one of my professors from university
5:40
about 10 years ago, it's called Back Pain.
5:43
We have a chapter in it that actually
5:45
kind of defines the attributes of a good practitioner.
5:50
A good practitioner will do a proper history or intake.
5:55
So they'll talk to you about anything you've had
5:58
in your life, like surgeries, illnesses,
6:01
any meds you're on, any supplements you're taking.
6:04
They'll, that'll be comprehensive.
6:06
So that if you have a condition,
6:09
so you actually have like a problem with your goal bladder,
6:12
you'll actually get pain that will refer up
6:16
into your shoulder here.
6:17
So if I know that and you're just like,
6:20
oh, massage that muscle to fix it.
6:23
I'm like, well, that won't fix it
6:25
because your goal bladder is referring pain up there.
6:27
So it's not actually a muscle problem.
6:30
So I would argue that the fact that you know
6:33
the goal bladder pain is back there
6:37
would constitute, oh, he knows what he's talking about
6:39
because most physio would probably not know that.
6:44
Am I right or wrong about that?
6:46
They actually should.
6:47
It's more if you're say seeing a massage therapist.
6:51
The difference with massage therapy is they don't,
6:54
they don't diagnose.
6:56
They're just like, hurts here, work there.
6:59
So like I had a guy yesterday that he was like,
7:02
oh, I think it's just a muscle problem.
7:06
He thought it was a rib or something
7:08
and then he's like, oh, I think it's just the muscle
7:10
in between and I'm like, well, come see me
7:13
and I'll diagnose.
7:15
I'll figure out what's actually the problem
7:18
and then we can go about fixing it.
7:21
When I assessed him it was actually his T10 vertebra
7:24
that was really stuck and because the rib attaches
7:28
to that vertebra, if that vertebra can't move
7:31
neither can the rib.
7:32
So he was just getting a referral pain from that.
7:35
So I said to him, if you saw a massage therapist
7:37
they wouldn't have been able to help you with this.
7:40
You would have had temporary relief
7:42
because the muscle freaks out,
7:43
because the rib can't move and the vertebra can't move
7:46
so the muscle's trying to pull that vertebra and rib
7:48
and nothing's happening.
7:51
40% of you listening still haven't followed the podcast.
7:56
Let's drop that to 20%.
7:57
It takes three seconds and helps us reach more folks
8:00
who need these conversations.
8:02
Go follow every day ancestral on Apple or Spotify
8:06
and let's stay curious together.
8:09
I feel like I'm already getting a sense though
8:12
you just know when you're working with the person
8:14
at the right fit because even as you're talking
8:15
I'm like, oh, he knows what he's talking about
8:18
and it's not just book learning.
8:20
I can sense from you that no, he's been in this business
8:24
long enough, he's seen enough bodies,
8:26
he's had his hands on enough people
8:29
that this is deeper knowledge than just,
8:31
I just got out of school and I'm dotting my eyes
8:34
and crossing my teeth, you know what I mean?
8:36
Yeah, well it's wisdom.
8:38
The definition of wisdom is knowledge plus experience, right?
8:42
So you can go through university or college
8:46
and learn everything.
8:48
You have the first part, you have the knowledge
8:50
but you don't have the experience.
8:52
So you don't have true wisdom
8:54
and going back to your question,
8:56
finding a good practitioner,
8:58
you wanna have a practitioner that has wisdom.
9:01
So like when I listen to people,
9:03
I can almost figure out just from listening to them
9:06
what's wrong with them.
9:08
Like I'll be five minutes into a treatment
9:10
and going through their history.
9:12
I'm like, I know what's wrong with you.
9:14
So it's not visual, it's auditory for you?
9:17
It's both because I have the wisdom.
9:19
I'm like, I've seen this before.
9:22
It's kind of funny.
9:23
I basically run an algorithm in my head.
9:26
And so when you're telling me things,
9:28
I'm like, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no.
9:31
That's like I'm kind of like a computer.
9:34
I just figure it out and then when I get to the bottom,
9:36
I'm like, with him I would have been like,
9:39
it's an 80% chance, it's a bird bra.
9:42
It's a 15% chance, it's a rib
9:45
and it's a 5% chance, it's a muscle
9:49
or maybe like an organ or something like that.
9:53
And when I go to treat someone, I play the odds.
9:56
And I'm gonna go with the 80%.
9:58
So with him, that's what I did.
10:00
So I go, okay, we're gonna try this.
10:02
If I'm right, you'll feel a lot better straight away.
10:06
So that's what I did.
10:07
So I adjusted his vertebra and he was like,
10:09
oh my God, I feel so much better.
10:10
I'm like, well, I'm right.
10:12
So I tested my theory.
10:15
You got into this field from your own awareness
10:19
of injury and healing as a decathloner.
10:22
Well, what's kept you in it?
10:24
Because clearly you didn't just stop there.
10:27
I mean, you've grown, you've learned new modalities,
10:31
you've learned like shockwave therapy
10:34
and the wasabi method, which we'll get to,
10:37
but like you're growing.
10:38
And even as you're talking about this,
10:41
I feel like, oh no, this isn't just a job.
10:43
This is a passion.
10:45
When did that kind of moment happen
10:47
that it went from, oh, wait, this guy helped me,
10:50
this other guy who didn't, this is interesting to them.
10:53
Like, oh no, this is my mission.
10:55
I really enjoy helping people.
10:59
Like with your wife, if my bills were paid
11:02
and everything, I would do this for free.
11:05
You know, just so I can help people
11:07
and see their faces light up.
11:08
Like Margaret's did after I had her walking
11:11
because that fills my cup.
11:14
They always talk about, you know, you got to do something
11:17
that gives you purpose and meaning.
11:19
And I've been told I have a gift
11:22
and I enjoy helping people.
11:26
Yeah, it's just fun for me.
11:27
I love learning too.
11:29
I would literally go to seminars every weekend
11:32
if I could.
11:33
I had someone tell me a few years ago,
11:36
when he goes to seminars,
11:38
he basically takes his brain out
11:39
and leaves it at the door
11:42
because he was like, when do you learn the best?
11:45
When you know nothing.
11:46
Like when you go to kindergarten, you know nothing.
11:48
So you're like a sponge, you take everything in.
11:51
And so I try to do that when I go to seminars.
11:53
I don't have these preconceived notions.
11:55
I just go, I pretend I'm dumb.
11:57
And I'm just like, okay, give me all the information.
12:01
After the seminar, that's when I synthesize it.
12:04
I go, okay, I don't believe that.
12:07
This is good or I'm gonna look more into that.
12:10
And then I'll try things.
12:12
So I don't just dismiss things.
12:14
I'll actually try them.
12:15
That's kind of fun thing when you go back into practice
12:17
after seminars.
12:19
You're like, oh, I'm gonna try this new thing
12:20
and see how that works.
12:22
So every year I'm learning new things
12:24
because I'm like, okay, I learned this at the seminar.
12:26
I'm gonna apply it and see how it works.
12:30
And then if it works well, I'm gonna keep it.
12:32
If it doesn't work so well, I'm gonna discard it.
12:35
This is on your book cover.
12:36
Even treat the cause not the symptom.
12:39
And I love that because that's how I look
12:40
at nutrition and food as well.
12:43
As the co-author of a book on back pain,
12:47
what are some key strategies you recommend for individuals
12:51
to maintain a healthy spine, for example, in their daily lives?
12:55
It's different for everyone,
12:57
but a key one is we talk about spinal hygiene.
13:01
Almost like you have your oral hygiene.
13:03
You know, you brush your teeth and you floss
13:05
and then that keeps your oral hygiene taking over.
13:09
So that's what I tell people or patients
13:13
to think of your spine like it needs movement.
13:18
As I'm sure you've heard the term movement is medicine.
13:21
Our spine's meant to move.
13:24
And unfortunately nowadays people have jobs
13:27
where we're sitting at desks and stuff all day
13:30
or they're a truck driver and they're just sitting down
13:33
all day, we don't move and lift and bend and twist
13:39
the way we should or the way this body's designed.
13:42
We're all meant to be hunter-gatherers.
13:45
Unfortunately, this is how we hunter-gather
13:47
now in front of a computer and sitting at a desk.
13:50
Order sandwich from, you know, local shop.
13:53
That's how I just hunted.
13:55
It actually makes us weak.
14:00
So I tell people, a lot of it's just moving
14:03
and you have to figure out where you're at.
14:07
Some people think I was alluding to before that,
14:10
I don't make the rules, I just know the rules.
14:13
And one of the rules is you have to start where you're at.
14:17
If you try, like unfortunately, things like CrossFit,
14:21
they try and get everyone doing the same thing.
14:23
It's like, oh, you can do, you can do cleans.
14:26
And it's like, no, you can't.
14:27
You can't even do a normal squat without weight.
14:30
It's like the perfect recipe for injury, you know?
14:33
It's like, let's have unfit people do something new
14:38
that they really don't know how to do.
14:40
Then we load them up and then we get them
14:43
to go well into fatigue.
14:45
You violated every rule of physiology there.
14:49
And so it's inevitable that you're gonna end up injured
14:53
because you've broken all the rules.
14:55
So again, learn the rules.
14:58
And if you don't know them, you can go see a professional,
15:00
someone like me, and I can teach you the rules.
15:03
It's, they're not complicated, they're not secret.
15:06
I tell people all the rules, they'll all the time.
15:09
But it's just movement.
15:11
Motion is the lotion.
15:12
So you gotta move, but moving on an appropriate way.
15:17
You know, don't be doing cleans if you can't do a squat.
15:20
And it's like, okay, I had a 93 year old patient,
15:23
oh, I'll never forget, she's like, I can't squat.
15:26
And then I put her up against a wall.
15:28
And I said, slide down the wall one inch.
15:32
And she slid down the wall one inch
15:33
and I go, now stand back up.
15:35
And then she did that and I go, congratulations.
15:37
You just, you just did a squat.
15:39
But that's where she was at.
15:40
And then after a month, I had her slide down the wall two inches.
15:44
And then I had to do three inches.
15:46
So I was like, start at level one.
15:48
And then we go to level two and then we go to level three.
15:51
There's a natural progression and you can't skip steps.
15:56
Well, you can, but you'll pay a price.
15:59
You can't go from crawling to running.
16:02
You have to go from crawling to standing to walking to running.
16:06
That's the progression.
16:08
There's no skipping steps.
16:11
So people love hearing like three top movements
16:15
or three movements you can start today, right?
16:18
And I'm hearing you that sometimes you can't just
16:20
give a blanket exercise or movement
16:23
because it's not necessarily getting specific
16:26
with that individual.
16:28
However, if you were to give a couple of basic movements
16:34
that people listening today can be like,
16:36
Hey, I'm pretty sedentary.
16:38
I'm going to start doing these three things that Dr. Adam suggests.
16:42
Are there kind of just three that you found in your 16 plus years
16:46
that are like, you know what?
16:48
I've seen from A to Z.
16:49
And if everyone just did these three things to start,
16:54
they wouldn't need 25% of what I give them.
16:57
One is just kind of your basic flexion extension of your spine.
17:03
So whether it's getting down on all fours
17:05
and doing what we call like the cat cow or you can also do it seated.
17:10
So the problem with that one is some of my older patients,
17:14
they can't, if they get down on the ground, they can't get back up.
17:17
So what I'll do is I'll get them to do like a seed inversion,
17:20
which is they're bending and extending.
17:24
It's pretty hard to hurt yourself doing stuff like that.
17:26
So I was trying to give something that people can do
17:30
in that safe.
17:31
Those are the two kind of caveats I look for.
17:34
Can you do it and to is it safe?
17:37
Another one is just going for walks.
17:40
I love that one.
17:41
Every human should be able to walk.
17:44
I dislike seeing when people are in these scooters and stuff like that
17:48
because once you start down that road,
17:52
it leads to more disability and dysfunction.
17:57
Your goal should always be to I'll use this as an interim thing
18:03
until I sort myself until I get strong enough
18:06
to be able to walk on my own again.
18:09
We don't do that.
18:10
We make it like, oh, just go on the scooter and you'll be right.
18:13
And it's like, well, you're no longer weight bearing.
18:16
You're no longer walking.
18:18
There's tons of calories you're not burning
18:21
just because you're not standing or walking.
18:24
So those suggestions seem very non-invasive to me.
18:27
And I know that's a really important focus
18:31
that you recommend techniques to help heal
18:34
and repair the body.
18:36
What does that mean, though, non-invasive?
18:39
Because I know that technically what you just said
18:41
were examples, but we have to compare it to something.
18:45
So what is an invasive technique versus a non-invasive?
18:50
So invasive just means that we're opening you up
18:53
or putting something inside you, whether it's a pill
18:58
or a needle or like an injection or surgery.
19:03
So those are the main invasive techniques.
19:07
So non-invasive is pretty much anything that doesn't do those.
19:12
So you have a few of them in your arsenal, though.
19:15
I know one of them is called active release techniques,
19:17
ART.
19:18
Can you explain what ART is and how it benefits patients
19:21
dealing with muscular skeletal issues?
19:25
So active release technique, it's a myofascial release
19:30
technique, some myomeaning muscle fascial is basically
19:34
we have throughout our body, we have this cling wrap
19:38
around all our muscles.
19:39
And a lot of people's problems are actually
19:42
due to facial problems, not necessarily the muscle.
19:47
Think of it like, you know, when you buy like a sausage,
19:50
it has the skin around the meat, that's the fascia.
19:54
So if you imagine that skin on that sausage being like twisted
19:58
or tangled, the meat inside can't move and do its thing.
20:04
Okay, so what I have to do is work on the fascia
20:08
to free it up and then the muscle underneath it
20:12
can move and glide and contract and do what it's supposed to.
20:17
Is that the same thing as visceral manipulation?
20:20
No, that's different.
20:21
Visceral means organ.
20:22
Okay, okay.
20:23
Your organs have fascia as well.
20:26
Everything has fascia.
20:28
So think of the body, it's almost like a Russian doll.
20:32
If I peel your skin off, there'll be a layer of fascia.
20:36
And then if we go deeper, there'll be another layer of fascia.
20:41
It basically insulates or protects every layer
20:44
and separates every layer from the layer above it.
20:48
Okay, yeah, interesting.
20:49
So ART is more your outer layer
20:52
and then people that do visceral manipulation,
20:55
that's really where they're supporting the release
20:57
of certain organs that are stuck to that fascia maybe.
21:01
Yeah, so it's just different release techniques.
21:04
So think of things as layers, right?
21:06
So if I have one muscle here and I have another muscle here,
21:10
you gotta remember they're covered in this like cling wrap,
21:13
the fascia.
21:14
The fascia from this muscle can stick to the fascia
21:17
from this muscle.
21:18
So think of it like two sheets of paper.
21:20
I should be able to move one sheet or the other sheet
21:24
relative to one another.
21:27
Now imagine if I put glue in between the two sheets of paper,
21:32
now when I try and move the top one,
21:34
the bottom one moves with it.
21:36
They can't move independently.
21:39
So that happens a lot in the body
21:41
and that's pretty much when I work on people,
21:43
that's what I'm trying to work.
21:45
Because I've felt 100,000 bodies,
21:47
I can feel that straight away.
21:49
I can go that sticking.
21:51
What results in the sticking though?
21:53
Is it nutritional?
21:54
Is it lack of activity, injury, movement?
21:58
When we move, we get these sliding surfaces
22:03
to move on each other
22:06
and it kind of lubricates and keeps it moving.
22:09
So when we don't move,
22:11
we almost become like the tin man
22:12
and the wizard of all as we can't move.
22:15
These muscles get stuck on each other.
22:18
And so think of it,
22:20
the longer you haven't moved something,
22:22
the more stuck that becomes.
22:25
So imagine like if you didn't brush your teeth for a day,
22:28
you'd have a day worth of gunk on your teeth, right?
22:31
Now imagine if you didn't brush your teeth for a week.
22:33
Now you have a week worth of gunk on your teeth.
22:37
So this is how it works with the fashion world is.
22:40
If I don't move this muscle,
22:42
I'm gonna have a day and then a week
22:46
and then say a month,
22:47
once it gets to like a month or more,
22:50
all of a sudden this glue becomes like concrete.
22:53
You can no longer get rid of it
22:55
through stretching or moving.
22:57
So that's why laugh when some people are like,
22:59
oh, I'm just gonna stretch this and I'm like,
23:01
I hand them like something made of steel
23:03
and I'm like, well, try and stretch this.
23:06
You're gonna have the same success.
23:08
It won't stretch.
23:09
So that's where you have to pay someone like me
23:11
to go in and break down those adhesions
23:15
between the muscles so that they can slide and glide
23:19
and do the way, do the work they were meant to do.
23:22
And are you mostly doing that
23:24
with your hands through ART or does ART include devices?
23:29
No, ART strictly hand.
23:32
It's done all done by hand.
23:34
There are other techniques like grass
23:37
and our instrument assisted soft tissue treatment
23:41
where you use tools, they're almost,
23:42
they look kind of like knives like they have a beveled edge
23:46
so that they can't cut you.
23:48
When you're working tissues with instruments,
23:52
we're stimulating these cells which are called fibroblasts
23:55
and fibroblasts are kind of like repairmen of the body.
23:59
So when people are like,
24:00
unbreaking up adhesions or facial bits that are stuck,
24:06
we're actually stimulating the release
24:08
and proliferation of these fibroblasts
24:10
which are basically like repairmen
24:12
that go when kind of clean up the mess.
24:14
So I'm telling your body, you know,
24:16
like clean up on aisle five, clean up on aisle five
24:18
and then your brain will send all these repairmen
24:21
to kind of clean up the mess.
24:23
That's kind of the physiology of it.
24:25
Given your background in sports,
24:28
competitive sports at fact,
24:30
is there something or advice you have for athletes
24:33
to prevent injuries and maybe it's not just athletes
24:36
but maybe in general,
24:37
but what are some things that we should all be thinking
24:40
about to prevent injury?
24:43
You've opened a bit of a Pandora's Box there
24:45
because there's a lot of different views on this
24:49
but my view is essentially,
24:51
I like this concept of prehabilitation
24:54
so you have rehabilitation which you do after your injury.
24:57
A prehabilitation is knowing what to do
25:02
in order to prevent injuries.
25:05
For instance, I've been accepted to do my PhD
25:08
at the University of Sydney on the Achilles tendon
25:13
and what the research shows with the Achilles tendon
25:15
is if I have you do exercises preventatively,
25:20
your risk of getting Achilles tendonopathy
25:23
go down significantly.
25:25
Say I was working with like an NBA basketball team,
25:30
I would have every player do these exercises every day
25:35
just so they don't end up
25:37
because the Achilles tendon,
25:38
it's the most ruptured tendon in the whole body.
25:42
If you rupture it like Kevin Durant
25:45
ruptured his a couple of years ago,
25:47
you're out for basically a year.
25:50
And then most of the guys that come back from that,
25:52
they're never quite as agile and strong
25:56
and functional as they were.
25:58
So the key is to avoid it.
26:01
You know, the same with ACL, they do it.
26:03
They do this in soccer and Europe.
26:06
They have all their guys on the team do exercises virtually
26:10
every day so they don't end up with an ACL tear.
26:14
You gotta know what to do,
26:17
what exercise is appropriate and why you're doing it.
26:21
Because people just do, oh, let's get fit.
26:24
It's like, well, if I'm doing bicep curls,
26:27
that's not gonna prevent my Achilles from tearing, is it?
26:30
It's figuring out what are the most common injuries,
26:34
what's the risk for every individual as well?
26:37
We can do things like, we can image all these players.
26:39
We can look at their Achilles and go,
26:41
hey, you actually have a bit of a problem there.
26:44
So we're gonna, you have to do these
26:46
because you will end up with an injury
26:48
if you don't address this.
26:50
What I hear you saying is if you,
26:51
let's say if you're a runner,
26:53
you're gonna do certain pre-warm-up
26:56
that is specific to running.
26:59
And I know we talked about exercises,
27:00
but what's the pre-warm-up for the everyday person
27:03
who's not the athlete, who's not the basketball star?
27:07
You mentioned maybe the cat, camel.
27:10
That's technically a warm-up, right?
27:12
Are there others?
27:14
Oh, there's tons, but it's very bespoke.
27:17
I don't like giving out general information.
27:21
I'm always very specific
27:23
because you'll get better results
27:26
if I give you something specific.
27:28
So that's why I tell people that
27:30
rather than just go on the internet
27:32
and watch these influencers and it's like,
27:34
oh, this guy does this.
27:36
And it's like, yeah, but that's good for him.
27:39
Just like diet.
27:41
You watch someone, they're like,
27:42
oh, you know, vegetarian.
27:45
Worked super well for me.
27:46
I lost 50 pounds or whatever.
27:49
And then another guy's like, oh, I do carnivore
27:51
and I lost 100 pounds.
27:53
And it's like, which one's gonna work best for you?
27:56
That's what you wanna know.
27:57
It's not like what work best for Bob
27:59
or what work best for Sally.
28:02
Who cares?
28:03
Unless that diet has your name written on it,
28:07
it's not for you.
28:08
So exercises are the exact same.
28:10
It needs to be bespoke,
28:12
but you just go see someone like myself
28:15
who really knows their stuff
28:17
to help you figure out what would be appropriate.
28:19
Because you change all the time.
28:22
If you're coming back from say holidays,
28:25
you're on Christmas holidays,
28:27
most people weren't working out.
28:28
Most people were drinking a little bit more
28:31
than they usually do,
28:32
eating more desserts than they usually do.
28:35
You're at a different point of health
28:38
than you were probably two months before that.
28:41
You might have been healthier
28:42
when you're running every day
28:43
and not eating and not drinking as much.
28:46
It needs to be tailored to the individual
28:49
and where they're at.
28:50
One thing that I was really taken by one
28:53
when we first met is how you talked about the body
28:57
and bringing back up Margaret
29:00
so she had injured her knee.
29:01
And you kept saying to her,
29:04
your knee has to relearn how to move again.
29:07
Can you expand on that?
29:08
Because I feel like really what I hear you saying
29:10
is that we shouldn't wait till we get hurt,
29:13
that we should actually be working with someone
29:16
to see where our body is currently at
29:19
and what it needs to maintain whatever it is
29:23
that we do on a daily basis.
29:25
And so I feel like this is connected
29:26
to that same concept of like wherever we're at
29:30
with our energy, our stress, our current life.
29:34
So it's almost like we have to remind our body how to move.
29:39
Yeah, that's exactly right.
29:40
I'm glad you're understanding that.
29:43
Because a lot of people don't get that concept.
29:44
So going back to what I was saying,
29:46
it needs to be bespoke.
29:48
So I got to see where you're at.
29:51
So when I work with patients in my clinic,
29:54
I basically assess them to figure out where they're at.
29:57
So I'll put them through a bunch of functional movements
30:00
and then I kind of grade them
30:02
and that identifies issues.
30:06
So I'll be like, do a lunge
30:07
and then I'll watch them lunge.
30:09
And if I see their knee kind of creeping across the midline,
30:13
then I know that that needs to be worked on.
30:17
So a lot of people just think they can just fix things
30:20
by thinking about them like posture, for instance.
30:24
Everyone's like, oh, I just have to be more conscious
30:27
of my posture.
30:28
And I'm like, yeah, but what are you gonna do
30:30
the other 23 hours and 59 minutes of the day?
30:33
You can't be conscious of your posture all day
30:36
because you get busy doing things.
30:37
A better approach is to,
30:40
I'm gonna give you exercises that are gonna work
30:44
your postural muscles will get them stronger
30:47
and then you will naturally adopt a good posture
30:50
and you don't even have to think about it.
30:52
And it's like, does that not sound a lot better
30:54
than being conscious of your posture all day long?
30:58
Cause you got other things to think about, right?
31:01
I wonder when we're born,
31:03
what we're carrying in our body
31:05
can sometimes play out in the rest of our lives.
31:08
And I say this because my youngest daughter
31:10
has been tight from day one.
31:14
She's very like constricted.
31:17
Part of me thinks it's maybe generational anxiety.
31:21
I don't know, energies that are beyond her, I don't know.
31:25
But do you see that kind of stuff playing out in the body?
31:29
I mean, cause sometimes I think of the body
31:31
is almost like the way a sculptor talks about a sculpture
31:34
is like when they saw the stone,
31:36
the sculpture was already in it.
31:37
They were just chiseling away the missing pieces.
31:40
But really, I couldn't say that with my daughter
31:42
because she came in with something that I'm not even sure
31:46
as hers.
31:47
You're touching on kind of metaphysical things.
31:51
I personally believe that we have,
31:54
the research is actually showing this generational trauma
31:58
and stuff like that.
31:59
I think they showed descendants of people
32:02
that were in the Holocaust.
32:04
Their metabolism's totally different
32:06
because those people were basically starved.
32:09
You've probably seen that as well, have you?
32:12
I haven't seen that, that's fascinating.
32:13
Yeah.
32:14
So if you were starved, your body,
32:16
your metabolism will adapt so that if you get any food,
32:21
it will want to store it as fat straight away
32:23
because your body goes, I don't know what I'm going to eat again.
32:27
So everything I get, I'm going to try and store as fat
32:30
so that I cannot die.
32:33
That changes the epigenetics and then say
32:37
that woman had a daughter,
32:40
she's going to get that epigenetic attribute as well.
32:44
So all of a sudden, she's eating normally
32:48
and she keeps piling on weight and doesn't know why.
32:51
Well, it's because her body had received information
32:56
from her mother to keep on storing fat
33:00
as quickly as possible because that helped her mother survive.
33:04
There's all these adaptations that can occur.
33:08
Like, for instance, people think like tight muscles are bad,
33:11
but when they actually test people for like jumping,
33:15
the people that jump the highest are actually the people
33:18
with the tightest calf muscles.
33:20
And they have actually shown like when people stretch,
33:22
those people stretch their calves,
33:25
their performance goes down.
33:27
So think of the calf muscle, think of it like a spring.
33:30
If the spring's really tight and loaded,
33:33
when it releases, you get more energy,
33:36
you get more kinetic energy.
33:38
But if you release some of that tension,
33:40
then it doesn't have as much kinetic energy to give.
33:45
So a lot of these athletes going and stretching
33:48
for something like that,
33:49
it actually hinders their performance.
33:51
Yeah, I see what you mean.
33:52
This is Pandora's box because then it's like,
33:55
well, then are we, how we're born?
33:57
Is that kind of our super skill or whatever?
34:01
Is the body we're born into?
34:02
Is that kind of what we're meant to have?
34:05
How much should we be manipulating it?
34:07
Think of it almost like you're a character in a video game.
34:11
You will have certain attributes
34:13
that will make you better at certain things
34:16
and worse at others.
34:18
Say you're five foot two as a man and you weigh 80 pounds.
34:25
Well, you're not gonna be really good
34:27
at the world's strongest man or shot putter discus.
34:32
However, you're gonna be really good at being a jockey.
34:37
Unfortunately, we don't do that with school and stuff.
34:39
We don't figure out what people's talents are
34:42
and attributes are and guide them down that path.
34:46
By contrast, like someone who's six foot five and 300 pounds,
34:50
they're not gonna be a good gymnast or jockey
34:54
because they're just too big.
34:56
They're not gonna be world class at those sports,
34:59
but they're gonna be awesome at shot putter discus
35:02
or world's strongest man.
35:05
Thank you for joining us for part one.
35:08
In part two, this is where you start to learn
35:12
about the therapy that he worked on Margaret with.
35:15
This is where we dive into the wasabi method
35:18
and how Dr. Gavine uses shockwave therapy
35:22
to trigger rapid healing and prove mobility
35:25
and create lasting results.
35:27
It gets really fascinating.
35:30
If you found this helpful, please leave a review,
35:33
share this episode or tag someone who needs this insight.
35:38
See you in part two.
35:40
Thank you and stay curious.
35:43
Thank you so much for joining me on everyday ancestral.
35:48
If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe
35:51
so you don't miss the next one.
35:53
You could find the show notes, links and resources
35:56
mentioned at eatpluck.com.
35:58
That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com.
36:04
And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out
36:07
of this, share it with them too.
36:09
Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.