Evolving with the Times: A Holistic Chiropractic Approach

In this episode of 'Ask the Chiropractor,' Dr. Brant Hulsebus discusses the extensive education and credentials required to become a chiropractor today, including his certification as a Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner (CCWP). He reflects on the differences in chiropractic care over generations, emphasizing the advancements in diagnostic equipment, education, and holistic practices. Dr. Hulsebus also shares insights into maintaining a genetically congruent lifestyle through proper diet, exercise, and mental wellness. Tune in to learn how modern chiropractic care can complement traditional medical approaches and help achieve better health outcomes. If you're in the Rockford area, don't miss his upcoming holistic night on April 23rd.

www.rockforddc.com

Transcript

0:00

Hello, Dr. Brant Hulsebus here and welcome to another edition of Ask the Chiropractor. Ask The Chiropractor is my little podcast that I do when someone has a question about chiropractic or chiropractic care, I try to answer. I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. I'm a proud graduate of Palmer College of Chiropractic, and I'm happy to be the team chiropractor of the Rockford Ice Hogs. Let's dive into it. Thanks for tuning in. Again, this week's question has something to do with my name, not my first name or my last name, but some of the credentials that come after my name. You see, we have to do so much education as chiropractors in order to keep our license, and I like to study various things in order to receive credentialing, to make me more of a person that you can ask a question to about chiropractic. I. When I first graduated chiropractic school, I went out to Las Vegas to a really large chiropractic conference. It was called Parker, and I was at Parker conference. I was in a room in Las Vegas with more than a thousand chiropractors, easily more than a thousand chiropractors, our largest conference conferences we have. And when I was in this room, we were asked to stand up in the room if you were a second generation chiropractor. And I'll be honest with you, a lot of people stood up. That's common in my field. But then we were asked to stay standing up. If you're a third generation chiropractor. And that's when I found myself all by myself.'cause as many of my father was a chiropractor, started practice in 1975, but before him, my grandfather was a chiropractor also. He started 1949. And so the question was asked of me, I. Then by the speaker because they realized I was standing. So they came over, gave me a microphone, and asked me a bunch of questions. The question they asked me was, when your grandfather took care of patients. You must see some of those patients today. And even now, this is 20 years ago, even now, I still see a lot of the people that my grandpa saw. Less and less unfortunately,'cause, father times undefeated. But I do see some people that he saw. And the question I was asked is, Hey. Did your grandpa get people better faster than you when people came to see your grandpa?'cause they had lower back pains or headaches, did they tell your grandfather could get 'em fixed really quick? But it takes you so much more visits. Why is that? We know that people aren't lying, so why is it, why did my grandpa get people better faster than I can? He asked me a simple question. He said, did your grandpa have a better education than you? See. Grandpapa went to chiropractic school back in 19 47, 19 48, and back then you go right from high school to chiropractic school and chiropractic school back then was only 18 months Long matter of fact, it was still considered a trade school and that's because Grandpapa didn't have to learn about MRIs 'cause they didn't exist. Grandpapa didn't have to learn about DNA. They hadn't discovered DNA yet, so a lot of the things that I had learned about, they just didn't exist. Be, and they existed, but we didn't know how to use 'em or what they were yet. And no, I had a much bigger education than my grandfather. Then he asked me maybe your grandfather had better diagnostic equipment than you. And I'm like no. Like I just said that there was no MRIs back then. Grandpa had x-rays. His x-rays took three or four days for them to dry. He'd take 'em and hang them up. He'd go in the dark room with a flashlight and try to look at 'em the best he could to help the patient that day. And then my dad said the whole clinic always stunk like the developer because the x-rays were hanging all over the place, drying out. So grandpa definitely didn't have the better diagnostic equipment. I've used Surface EMG machines. My toilet took a couple podcasts. I have a friend with a motion MRI machine so we can watch the adjustment in real life. So grandpa didn't have better diagnostic equipment than me. They said maybe your grandfather had a better working relationship with the medical community than you did. And that's hilarious. Because they tried to put him in jail. He didn't get to practice with a license until 1963, so no, they were trying to arrest them. They were, they had a, just a wilke thing was still going on. Where the a MA was trying to destroy chiropractic practice is if a chiropractor opened your town, they send a packet of information to the medical field and the community how to ruin that quack. They called it. That was actually the division on quackery from the a MA. So they were actively trying to ruin him. And I have orthopedic surgeon and plastic surgeons and general surgeons as patients. So my father once said he's happy. My grandfather did not live long enough to see me practice.'cause if he'd seen the modern medical. Providers I take care of, I might have gave him a heart attack and killed him. No, grandpa didn't have a good working relationship with the medical community at all. Okay. So why did he get better results than me? The question was posed, maybe it's not me. I. Maybe it's not him. Maybe it's the patients. Maybe in today's world compared to 1940s, 1950s, maybe today we're that much more toxic. Maybe we're that much more dopamine driven. Maybe we're that much more eating bad food, more angry, more mad, more bad posture, more sitting behind the computer screens. Maybe we're just a sicker as a society. And so this course, the C-C-W-P-A Certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner was about how to train our patients to go back to more of a genetically congruent lifestyle that we're designed to have. Dr. Chestnut always called it Eat right, move, right Think, those were his three big classes he taught us. So we had four big classes that we took with four different textbooks, four different final exams, and a final exam in all of it. And I did all that stuff. I was really excited to hear this information because Dr. Chestnut hit a. Thing with me when he talked about this is I did have those conversations, right? I could finally answer these patients, why? Maybe my grandpa and I, maybe grandpa wasn't that much better of a chiropractor than me, right? We did go to the same chiropractic college. So maybe that's the difference. Now, when I went to Palmer, it was 10 trimesters and I had to go to school first. Because things have changed. We've adapted and we've learned so much more. So we require no more, which is only fair. But yeah, so I had my CCWP certified Chiropractic Wellness Practitioner, so we studied like what is our food is deficient in. What movement are we deficient in and what's going on with this negative impulses in our heads all the time, causing people to have so much stress and anger, and how do we change the dopamine addiction that we're all under? And to be honest with you, I've really liked these topics and I take a lot of extra classes both online. I. Reading literature, research and stuff on these topics outside of what I did in the class too. It's just been something I continue to study over and over again. 20 years ago when I took these classes, I was still teaching my patients what the word organic food meant, and I don't have to teach anybody what organic food means today. Everybody knows that. But there's still things in our world and our diet and things that we do that we could do better of. How much exercise do you need? How much walking should you do every day? What? What's the problem of looking at TikTok videos? What does that do to your brain? 20 years ago, we weren't studying TikTok videos, that there was no TikTok. There was no iPhones yet. So this is all changing, evolve, and I try to keep up on the topics. So as a chiropractor, sometimes I tell you these podcasts, I put a different hat on. I take my chiropractor hat off and put on my CCWP hat.'cause we learn about different things. And that's what I'm gonna do here in my office too. So if you're in my community, if you're in the Rockford area, April 23rd, I'm gonna do a holistic night. That's what I call these. And we talk about the things I learned in the CCWP. So what does that have to do with me as a chiropractor is may have A-C-C-W-P. If you come to see me and we find the problem in your spine, you're not getting better. I can address some of these. Eat right, move, think, right topics that Dr. Chestnut taught us and how they might be influencing your overall health. And the laying your ability to fully recover at the rate and the speed you want to, right?'cause everybody wants to be fixed tomorrow. That's what, that's how this whole thing started, right? They told my grandpa they got better than two or three visits. Why does it take me two weeks? And I could teach you coach on those things. So if you're looking for a chiropractor that's very holistic and natural, looking for a chiropractor with a certification with A-C-C-W-P is a huge guide that you're working with somebody with this advanced. Studies in this area. Now this program's through the International Chiropractic Association, the ICA, and that's chiropractic.org. You can go on that website, you can look up the different councils. You'll see the sports council, which I'm also on the board of. You'll see the. The CCWP Council, which I used to be in the board of, not anymore but I was on the board when it first started, and you'll see that you can find a chiropractor in your area with this certification so you can go see a chiropractor who maybe thinks more naturally, more holistic and more organic, and get the care and the complimentary care you need. Now we get a lot of this education normally right through chiropractic school, but this class is definitely a deeper dive. You've heard me take talk about taking pediatric courses. Same thing as a deeper dive, and I've also taken some philosophy courses, the LCP program through Palmer College, which is a big dive into chiropractic philosophy. So if you're looking for a chiropractor that. If you are a whole istic natural person, you want to talk to a chiropractor about some of that stuff, A-C-C-W-P chiropractor is the way to go. And if you're in my community and you want to come learn more directly, like I said, it's gonna be April 23rd, gonna be in my office at six 30 at night. Just hit the links, ask tell us, gimme more information. We'll share it with you. We'd love to have you come. I don't sell nothing. I just sit around. We do a round table and we talk about things. I bring up things that sometimes I question the medical approach due to the lack of success and try to bring up different approaches to different healthcare problems. One of the ones we talk a lot about is osteoporosis for women. What are some more things you can do? And the cool thing is I took these classes 20 years ago and I've been doing this for 20 years, and I actually have patients that. These concepts and stuff I've worked on, right? Trying to do extra stuff. And through chiropractic care I'm able to keep them adjusted so they can do the extra things that I'm asking them to do. And for the first time they're getting positive results. And I'm not saying ditch the thing that you were doing. I'm just saying let's add this and this. You don't have to go against your medical doctor to see a chiropractor, but you can add chiropractor to what you do in medicine and sometimes get much bigger results. And sometimes. Stop relying on the medicine.'cause your body gets a self-healing mechanism that can take care of itself when you remove all the interferences. And that's what we do with chiropractors. Hey, thanks for asking about the CCWP. If you have a question about chiropractic care, chiropractic education, chiropractic certifications, chiropractic boards, chiropractic exams, whatever you got, I not only have do I have my CCWP, but I talked about the International Chiropractic Association. I am the Illinois Delegate of the State of Illinois. I am also on the Sports and Fitness Science Council. I am also the vice chair of all of the regional assembly men. I also work with the students through this program. On top of that, I am also your state president of the Illinois Prairie State Chiropractic Association. I do a lot of legislative stuff. I am one of the Illinois reps in Cairo Congress. Of all the state associations in America, we get together. I'm the representative of one of the Illinois Associations. I. Not only that, I'm at Palmer College all the time. I'm a fellow at Palmer College, so I stay active, I stay involved, and I stay current. So if you have a question about chiropractic care, I promise you I can get you an answer. Go ahead and leave a message after wherever you're watching or seeing this, and thank you for tuning in.