We discuss how:
– Matthew is a chiropractor and has helped many people with RA
– Chiropractic can help joints
– Chiropractic focuses on the spine and the principle that the human body can heal itself
– Different types of stress can affect the spine’s alignment and the aim of chiropractic is to reposition it
– There are different types of massage, each with its strengths and pitfalls
– Matthew first approached RA taking care of his mother
– He sees the Paddison Program as the foundation of her progress
– He has examined it thoroughly and agrees with it completely
Clint: Today I’ve got a wonderful man that I met when I was over in Anaheim putting on an event, and he is the son of a lovely lady who is part of our support group. His name’s Matt, and he’s a chiropractor and he is going to talk about chiropractic and rheumatoid arthritis. Good day Matt.
Matt: Hey Clint, thanks for having me.
Clint: It’s a pleasure. We’re going to be covering some stuff that we’ve not done before here on the podcast. We’re going to be talking about ways in which your profession, and you in particular help people who have rheumatoid. So, tell us a little bit about you know how you help people with rheumatoid.
Matt: Well, Rheumatoid arthritis is a delicate condition, I’m sure you and your viewers know. But the main way that I help people with rheumatoid arthritis is it’s not just a one thing that does it. I do it through a combination of both chiropractic care done in a specific manner. Utilization of manual therapy, like Massage Therapy for different joints and things like that because people with RA have lots of problems with their joints. And then, dietary changes must be done. If the diet’s not under control, to be blunt nothing else will work.
Clint: Yes, that’s certainly what we find is that everything’s just you know working against you with rheumatoid. It’s like sitting on a slippery slide at the play set when you’re a kid and the gravity’s trying to pull you down, You know what I mean? And, unless you’ve got lots of grip on your shoes you’re only going to go down that slide.
Matt: That’s one factor.
Clint: So that’s it, that’s it. Now I’ve got lots of friends who are chiropractors. Actually, the college that I went and stayed at when I was at university was full of buddies who were chiros and they were all studying to be chiropractic. And up to this day I must you know, still have four close friends who are chiropractors who live back in Australia. So I know as a patient how chiropractic works, but I am very interested to learn from you how it works from the practitioner perspective. Especially since, you know it can get complicated as you said.
Matt: Absolutely.
Clint: How do you go about it? And how does it work?
Matt: Well, with chiropractic it all revolves around the principle that our bodies are designed to be healthy, plain and simple. You for example, you have your breakfast, your body takes your breakfast, and literally will be turning it into living tissue. Your body is self healing, and self replicating. So with chiropractic, what we do is that we have a main focus of the spine. Now there are a lot of other things that chiropractors have the ability to delve into with nutrition, exercise, physiotherapy, things of that nature but chiropractic at its core is about spinal health.
Matt: And the reason why we look to the spine is that the spine is the foundation for movement, and also protects all of your nerves. Now these nerves, they go to every cell, every muscle, everything in your body. So when we have stress, all different types of stress, physical stress, like falling down the slide, emotional stress which can knock things out of place just like a car accident, and chemical stress in the food and the things that we’re putting into our body. Whenever there is more stress than our body can adapt to, what can happen is that the spine can lose its proper alignment. Now when that happens first thing you lose is mobility. Things get stiff, can’t twist, turn, bend, and move. Muscles will react accordingly by spasming and getting tight for various reasons, but it also can affect the nerves that exit the spine. Now when you affect the nervous through irritation and or compression. Whatever that nerve is doing can’t do its job right. So what we do is that we look at areas in the spine that aren’t functioning well, maybe irritated the nerves. They give what’s called a chiropractic adjustment to help reposition the vertebra, take pressure off the nerve, and allow the body the opportunity to do its job right. And that’s really what it comes down to.
Clint: Fantastic. Well I know, that you know when we first met you came and attended the seminar with your mom. And she just almost said, look you’ve got to talk to Matt, he’s done so much for me. And so you have obviously influenced her progress tremendously. You demonstrated on her arm in front of me, some pressure points and things like this that took me back to my own experience. Because my wife and I found that with my elbow problems, pressing on to the forearms. Just the soft tissue not into the joint on the forearms gave me tremendous relief. So you know we know that this really works and other clients have said their chiropractor offers them great relief. One of our clients Mark in Melbourne goes to the chiropractor a lot gets tremendous relief. So I’m keen for you to explore more. Take us a little bit further into this. What where should we go from here? Should we talk about the specifics or demonstrations what do you think?
Matt: Well one of the biggest things with at least from my… I’m not only work on my mother, but I have lot of other people I have the opportunity to help. That they come in for neck pain, back pain, or they may come in just because they don’t know what to do next.
Clint: Yes.
Matt: Because, the word doctor actually means teacher. So what that means is, half my job is doing my specialty in helping people through chiropractic adjustments. But the other half of my job is education, and teaching people about options, about things that they have the power and the ability to take control of themselves, do something about it. So, one of the biggest things that I see with rheumatoid arthritis is because it is such a total body type of condition, You have aches, pains, pain is going in the shoulder you can’t sleep at night, pain that goes in the hand, things that just aren’t going away. Now,absolutely there are a lot of symptoms and a lot of problems, that are from the rheumatoid directly. Now rheumatoid pain as someone who has experience with actually feeling that it’s quite different than other pain.
Clint: It is, it’s totally unique. Yeah, it’s weird.
Matt: You know the description I hear most is that it feels like you have broken glass in your joints. And that’s a scary thought, I mean growing up we’ve all stepped on a piece of glass, and then the world ends, perhaps you know, and then take out the glass on your foot. But with Rheumatoid you can’t, unless you do the right thing.
Clint: Yup.
Matt: But what I do see though, it’s hard to get back on track is that people that have rheumatoid also have other problems. If you have an elephant in the room that is creating a big problem, it’s very easy to attribute all the other methods to that big problem. And forgetting that there can be other things that are there too. Now with rheumatoid because it is such a, because it affects so many things in our body it can get such a wide array of symptoms what you feel.
Clint: Yup.
Matt: So what I find though is that, a lot of symptoms that may be a byproduct of things are done to people’s body are actually not the rheumatoid giving them the pain.
Clint: Totally agree.
Matt: Yeah. So, but the thing is that when you’re in so much pain all the time it’s different for everybody. But the one thing that that’s in common is that you know it’s terrible. You know one of the worst health conditions I’ve seen. But,one thing that I see is that when someone’s in that much pain they have done so many things that haven’t worked. It really just takes the wind out of people fail and you know demotivates them in their drive to help themselves.
Matt: But anyway. So with chiropractic I found that so with…with rheumatoid so much of the symptoms go to the hands and the wrist, right. So it’s logical to look at the things that can affect the hands and the wrist. Now the nerves that go go to their hands and the wrist most of the time come out of the bottom of your neck.
Clint: Right. Okay.
Matt: So when you have one of misalignments that we are talking about earlier if that’s also affecting one of those nerves. If it’s affecting that nerve that goes to the muscles of the forearm that attaches the hand it’s logical to say that it could be affecting it.
Clint: Definitely, yup.
Matt: So with my mother being in the condition that she was you know I did everything in my power to try and help but how do we change that because this just can’t be. So with with all the background that I’ve done, all the school studying research. Now that one thing that we have in common. My mother was sending me some articles that you were reviewing. I don’t understand any of that. Can you explain it to me. You know but but we do our due diligence we do our research and we used the talents that we’ve been given to find a solution. So I had a look at the bottleneck and if we see that there is a problem there then I go ahead and do some adjustments to my mum and my other patients but again I am seeing a trend among people that have RA, they kind of have similar spots within one or two levels in the spine.
Matt: So you know once or twice there may be coincidence but im having dozens of people that have the same area.
Matt: Now that’s not to say that that’s the same with everybody but we have to look. So one of the things I find most remarkable that I’ve seen quite a few times that I’ve adjusted to spot in the lower part of the midback lower than the shoulder you know for women it’s more like round where they are brawling in the back.So with my mother I’ve adjusted the traffic which is just around that region and then I just that and that she stands up and her hands that could close, closed.
Clint: So that’s incredible.
Matt: That’s not to say that that happens with everybody. But when we see a change like that we keep looking.
Clint: Yep yep. Well just to sort of add to that for people who might be raised eyebrows thinking what I used to find and I know we’re going to get to this because this was what just captured my imagination when we met. Is that for my elbows which were both affected in such difficult joints to fix because the elbows as complex joints with so many connective tissues and things and it’s just very complex joint and the guy who did my synovectomy the surgeon said that he only does elbows. He said because they’re so complex his whole career is just elbows, right. So that’s it’s taken him a long time to become the expert at surgeries on elbows. Now. Anyway so what Melissa used to do is she would press on my forearm about an inch away from where it joins the actual joint on the inside. So yeah if you’re watching this on on video then if that’s my elbow joint she would be pressing in this region here on the forearm.
Matt: That’s because the biceps attach there.
Matt: In this part of your arm attaches down through here.
Clint: But but she was pushing on the forearm side of the elbow. And this these muscles probably were part of a larger collection of tissues that were very tight but you know what I’m getting at is the connective tissue was playing such a large part of not just the inflammation but the pain.
Matt: Yeah. So. One thing that’s that it’s very easy to be done just like what you were mentioning either to yourself or to have a family member do or friend is that you can do tissue or just like that. But then again the muscles that go down into the hands or on the back and the front of your forearm. So when a muscle has been injured the muscle tissue literally can get tangled.
Matt: So people call that knot.
Matt: So the way the way a muscle works is that when it contracts and it shortens the fibres slide then that is what gives you movement. Okay. So when you have an injury to that area those fibers can get twisted and knotted up just a little bit. Now one thing that goes with that is that you’ll get inflammaion which I’m sure which most of us are all too aware of. Yeah you get inflammation around that spot that’s tangled.So it will hurt when you poke it.
Clint: It does. Yes exactly right yeah. Right.
Matt: So one one thing that we have the capability of doing and so to every person really does that they can help untangle those parts together and allow the movement to come back which will allow some of the inflammation that has turned chronic to get out.
Matt: So the way you do that is that it’s a (inaudible) stretch.
Clint: Okay good. Yes.
Matt: So what you’ll do that your you can feel your own muscles because your body will tell you a lot. Yeah. So if you take your own hand now if you can’t use this finger then use another one and if you can’t use any of them, find a friend who has five.
Clint: Or a son.
Matt: Or a son or a daughter or whatever because rheumatoid tends affect these fingers more commonly, the thumb is usually the best one we got.
Matt: So you can just take your thumb and place it on the back of your forearm. Now the muscles run up and down the arm, they run along the arm. So if you take your thumb pressed into it lightly not with so much pressure that’s causing you pain.
Matt: Now one thing like you had as you have mentioned in some of your seminars, there’s a difference between pain and discomfort.
Clint: Yeah yeah right.
Matt: You know discomfort is ok, pain is not.
Matt: So you want to start the muscle out in a shortened position. So you want to bend it bend the elbow whatever you got or bend the rest whatever you can do it. If you can bend here great,if you can bend here great that’s fine wherever you’re at, that’ll work. Then you pin it. as while you press.(inaudible) You pin that spot that is a little bit sore when you press into it.
Clint: Yes.
Matt: Now it’s holding that pressure. We’re going to move that joint just through some of that range of motion.
Clint: Ah like you hold it down.
Matt: Your holding it, you’re pinning and moving. Pin, move.
Clint: So, you’re attempting to stretch it whilst it’s under a pinned or a compressed state.
Matt: Yes, active movement, active movement. You must intentionally move that muscle to help with the blood flow. And also, there are other things that’s why we do that.
Clint: Okay. Right. Right. Okay. So once again let’s say we let’s say we have the muscle here on my forearm.
Clint: So what I can do if I can try and demonstrate this might be.
Matt: And the mid of the muscle is in this section right in the mid of your forearm.
Clint: Yeah. In the mid of the forearm. So let’s say I had a problem there, I would push here and then push hard and then move back and I can feel it attempting to push it to make that stretch,to move. Yeah. Right. So. Yeah. And I can feel you know even now even though the joint has no inflammation I can still feel and I’m sure most people can pressure points throughout the body that you can find all over.
Clint: It’s common right. Our body is full of these pressure points aren’t they?
Matt: We’re covered in these muscle then when you have multiple joint issue these problems can be in lots of different places. So you can be getting manual therapy or massage therapy from someone who knows what they’re doing that’s really important because anything that you can do right you can also do wrong. It’s important to listen to your body. If it doesn’t feel right don’t.
Clint: Yes. Yes
Matt: But with these passes that we’re doing into the forearms and other muscles, a general rule of thumb is to make three or five passes like 3-5. And about 2 spots per muscle.
Clint: Okay right not to go crazy.
Matt: You don’t overdo it. Yeah because you can.
Clint: You can. All I got to say that this is an insight for me because my tendency is to go hard at anything and if at things I think I’m onto something then I if it’s a dose of a supplement I used to megadose and if it was an exercise and it seemed to be working I would do it every day for months right. But I must say that I feel like. Let me give you a specific example. You know those rollers that you can get at the gym, the foam rollers but.
Matt: That’s a hard foam to do that’s about (inaudible)
Clint: That’s it. Okay. So. On multiple occasions I have used those in a large. Like a large session 20 minutes on rollers all over my legs and everything and.
Matt: We can talk a little about it if you’d like.
Clint: I’d love to. Let’s talk about those rollers because I found sometimes it does amazing things like on my neck if I had little problems I would line and just 30 seconds neck feel amazing the next day. Big muscles 20 minutes on the legs the quads and yeah not right the next day something not so good. So definitely get your thoughts on it.
Matt: So, as with all tools a foam roller is a tool and in order to achieve the result that someone is trying to get, it must be used right. So what the roller, a general rule of thumb is that you want to keep the passes between five to 10. You don’t want to be overdoing it especially when we have a body that is reactive, yeah. You know when something when I heard it really hurt but one other tip that I can that I can give you is when you’re on the roller try to maintain a good posture. So when you’re rolling out let’s say the midback. Yeah right. It’s not something that you want to try and arch over to get that motion because although that can feel good at the time you know yes it can create more problems later on like you’re mentioning.
Matt: Mm hmm. One other thing with that is while we’re using the roller on particularly on our back you may hear pops and cracks and things like that. That’s just pressure changing the joint in itself is not a bad thing. But again you have to have the proper posture so good you know what I tell my patients that don’t know how to use a roller that are wanting to do something. Yeah you know, a great thing to do is either meet with a physical therapist because that’s more so in their wheelhouse. Mm hmm. Or some chiropractors you use that too but having a sit down and going through how to how to do that. But it’s extremely helpful on on different muscles and such. If you’re going to be using the roller to help with hips, back and stuff like that there’s typically two kinds of rollers, there’s ones that are that are flat and cylindrical. Yes those are more appropriate for our backs things like that. Where there are other ones that have knobby bits all around them.
Clint: Yes knobs all over them.
Matt: Yeah those are helpful for larger muscle groups but kind of along the same same guidelines as what we’re talking about the muscle work. It can be overdone though for someone who’s starting with the roller I would definitely recommend using a flat one as opposed to one has knobby bits frankly because it’ll be it’ll be safer will be less likely to have flare up as a result of using the roller.
Clint: Yeah. Good good good. Okay. So 5 passes maximum. If you rolling on them just like for instance with my quads I would be.
Matt: Five again.
Clint: Five to 10. Yeah five to 10. So I’d be faced down in sort of a like like hands like this and just roll my body back and forth five to 10. Good good because you know I’m watching other guys and trying to just pick up what other people are doing and some people are like watching TV on them for 15 minutes you know.
Clint: And I’m thinking.
Matt: Oh yeah. For some people that may not cause an issue but again working with people who have these neck and shoulder issues like that it’s always it’s always better to error on the side of caution because you can always do less and go back and do more but you can’t do more and go back and do less.
Clint: Yes good right. Now. You did mention before the concept of pain referral with adjustments into the sort of the bra strap position you said can refer straight down through into the wrist. Have you seen anything else like this with a concept of referrals and I’m going to just throw this one up for you.
Matt: Sure.
Clint: I believe a lot of shoulder pain that people experience that they attribute to RA can be coming from the position of muscles between the spine and the shoulder blade just two inches below it. Can you talk about these.
Matt: Yes there is a muscular condition more of a dysfunction of muscle called upper crust syndrome.
Matt: It’s based off of the work there was a medical doctor by the name of Vladimir Yonder a long time ago. You can google that and have fun looking up all about him. So there they there is a condition called Upper Crust syndrome. Essentially what that what that condition tells us is that certain muscles are turned off other muscles are turned on and then that creates a dysfunctional mechanics of the whole shoulder girdle and when something’s not moving the way that it’s intended to move, eventually it will give you problems. That spot that you were talking about basically where the neck meets the shoulder on top of that shoulder blade, there’s a few muscles that all are attaching through there. And when someone has gone into that fight or flight mode because they’ve been in pain for so long. Those muscles adapt to that position so you can change that in a few ways. Because you know I was trying to be a little bit more in depth for this. There is a concept called reciprocal inhibition when it comes to muscle. Basically for every muscle there is one that does one thing and then there’s another one that does the opposite.
Clint: Okay. Like a tricep-bicep?
Matt: Absolutely just like that. So opposites can both contract at the same time they can both squeeze. You can contract your bicep and your triceps at the same time but both of them cannot shorten at the same time. You can’t lose your elbow in both directions at the same time. So when you go to pick something up and you are using your biceps, you’re picking up that grocery bag or whatever it is you’re thinking bag up you’re not thinking try to relax, right? That’s reciprocal inhibition.
Matt: If you turn on one muscle the other one will turn off. Yeah. So if we take that concept and apply it to that spot in the shoulder we can turn this off by turning on other things.
Clint: Okay. Yep. I’m following.
Matt: So, now when it comes to that, that’s where your upper track and the (inaudible) those muscle that go up here, the opposite muscle to help turn those off are the ones that do the opposite movements.
Clint: Which are.
Matt: Which are your mid and lower trapezius which are just below your shoulderblade. These are the muscles that give you that good posture. Yeah. Are they having. Yeah. So there is an exercise that I that I help people that have that type of muscular issue not just people that have RA but have that shoulder issue.
Matt: It’s called brewvers.The name is not important but what it does is.
Clint: Yeah.
Matt: You wanna walk this through together?
Clint: Sure, Because I still get that problem from time to time I stoop a lot even right now as I’m speaking with you. I’m bent over being tall and having a very you know a sense of connection with people and a need to be included. I stoop a lot to remain on a similar eye level to people and yeah so I need some help with this.
Matt: And even with our smartphones and computers and all that stuff that goes hand in hand. Yeah. So. We all have our own interpretation of what good posture is. It sounds like Clint, sit up straight!
Matt: Right so we tend to do something that we all have our own meaning what it is. So the first thing we do is we sit up tall, right comfortably tall again the principle of pain and discomfort discomfort of pain is not still applies in pretty much everything that we’re doing when we have a condition like this.
Matt: So the first thing is tall right. Yeah. Okay. Next is the position of the shoulders. So a lot of us know that we’re sort of virtual back but it’s not as much that as it is rolled back and squeezed down. Now, If we haven’t used these knuckles in a long time it can be very very difficult to recruit those muscles. So the way we help ourselves do that is with our arms and our hands.
Clint: Yes.
Matt: Now I know I know we can’t see what I’m doing with my hands but essentially you want to have them at like the bent at the elbow.
Clint: Yeah. Okay. Yeah at a right angle.
Matt: And then what we’re going to do again first thing is tall, then shoulders back shoulders down.
Matt: Now open the palms and gently try to squeeze the shoulders as they push them down.
Matt: Can you tell what I’m doing?
Clint: I can do we apply quite an effort to pull those shoulders down?
Matt: No no no no no it’s all again one step forward. It’s not 3 step forward, 2 to step back on effort level you want to use about maybe at 25 percent power. You just give it a little bit of a squeeze. And then once you’re there you hold it and breathe.
Matt: Hold it and breathe. And what we’re doing is that we are retraining those muscles to activate, that way these ones turn off. And by doing this, it has other effects that will follow, our posture begins to improve. There is less stress on the joints and then as function improves, pain usually reducesas well. So wha you do is you try to hold it for about 10 seconds and breathe and then relax and control the movement and again shoulders back in down, the pressing of the shoulders is important.
Clint: I’ll definitely do that.
Matt: I wish I could tell you do this exercise once and you’ll be all better.
Matt: But that’s simply not not the truth. The reality is the more you do it the better it gets. This is the great habit to utilize if you are going shopping at the supermarket. Walk in the park doing as much as you can whenever your brain is idle, what helped build that habit. That way you are able to do this without thinking about it.
Clint: Yes fantastic. Now I’m going to throw you a curve ball because you’ve got to think and an all I’m doing now is just thinking of my own experiences.
Clint: I think well if these are real for me they’re probably all for other people. Sometimes when I try and sit cross-legged and sit up straight to meditate with my hands in my lap like it just you know you sit like that kind of thing. Yeah. I can watch other people that seemingly can sit in that position comfortably but my upper back just gets so sore after literally three or four minutes in that position and I don’t know if it’s because of the way my hips aren’t positioned or my upper back or if I just don’t do it enough or what it is and I end up invariably coming out of short meditations because I don’t feel very good in my body. Is it, is there something that’s easy for me to work on in that area.
Matt: Yes. There are a few things to think about. So. one is is the muscles on your chest, your pecs. As the pecs get tighter they get that rounded posture.
Clint: Yes.
Matt: And as our center of gravity moves forward you start to put stress into that upper back. So what I would recommend to look into is to do like a chest stretch like a doorway chest stretch.
Clint: Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
Matt: Now most people do the doorway chest stretch not the right way. Again, one one goal is to help yourself and not hurt yourself in the process.
Matt: Yes know when it comes to stretching.
Matt: So if if you’re doing a doorway stretch through your chest you know what you want to do is keep that arm at a 90 degree angle like your higher. Okay. Yeah. And then that door is here and you’re going to drive your chest through it so you know.
Clint: Yeah. Gotcha.
Matt: One of the most common mistakes that I feel that people have a tendency to want to look down and kind of drag themselves down when they’re doing it. I wouldn’t recommend doing that because that would create a pinch in the front of the shoulder especially if you have a lack of mobility in there. But that one exercise we just talked about that burgers that’s a good one and the chest stretch going through there. They’re like. I know that you have mentioned yoga before. Yeah. Like the kakao type of position.
Matt: Like Mo. So that’s why you’re on all fours. Yes. Right you’re going to arch that back up and then down that way.
Clint: Absolutely.
Matt: Now, if you want to get mobility in that upper part of your mid back you’ll want to walk your bottom back towards your heel like toward the child pose.
Clint: Yeah. Gotcha.
Matt: It is important to try to keep those arms as straight as you can and then you can go up and down and do a few sets of 10 repetitions. I just generally help encourage proper movement to those joints.
Clint: All right. That one’s straightforward. I can definitely do that. Moving from the.. the names escape me a little bit even though I’ve done so many classes. So yeah so out in front and you’re in the cat with a back goes right up arching into the black cat thing but then push you push your buttocks back down towards the hills and get that stretch while keeping your arms out straight.
Matt: Right. And by doing so it’ll change where the fulcrum is in that movement to your upper back instead of your lower back.
Clint: Yeah. Gotcha. And and then I guess on top of doing those things just the repetition of the meditative position and also the shoulders back and down chest out sort of thing. All these things will slowly help to make it all easier.
Matt: Yeah baby steps.
Clint: That’s it. That’s it. All right. Let’s see now I had a short list of things I wanted to make sure I covered with you. Is there any mistakes that we can make with massage.
Matt: Absolutely.
Matt: There are many different types of massage and I am not implying by any means that that massage therapy is not helpful but we have to be extra careful with people who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis especially so. So again it all falls into (inaudible) more so I would be very careful with like deep tissue massage work. I would go a little bit lighter even if people feel like they can handle it. Yeah because 12 hours later six hours later people often are regretting it when they have the rheumatoid. Yeah because their body has such a large reaction to that. So I would say sticking more so about a medium pressure is okay. I’m still at 0 to 10, 10 being the worst pain imaginable. There was no pain at all. Try to keep your personal pain threshold. I would say no higher than five or six.
Clint: Yup yup. I had this is a was repeatedly for me massive issue was when some massage therapists particularly of the sort of that Asian kind of part of the world when I would see some Chinese massage therapists and actually they were all in that category.
Clint: In Sydney us a huge number of Chinese massage therapists available and I think for most people it’s fabulous. But I was going to them and they really want to massage into the joints themselves and massaging into the joints themselves caused me excruciating pain that lasted days afterwards. So unless you’ve seen otherwise my recommendations would never be pushed into a swollen joint.
Matt: Definitely not. A way to help avoid injuries from a post therapy,if you go to a physician’s office whether it’s a medical doctor or a chiropractor or even a doctor of physical therapy. The world is changing so a lot of health care clinics do an integrated team approach. None of this or that and we typically have massage therapies that do manual therapy on our team. So when we work for example when I have someone that comes to me and they want to know if massage therapy will help them or not you know I’ll do an examination and look at their case particularly and then will walk over and communicate with a therapist to say hey this is Clint, this is what’s going on. This is the type of muscle work in manual therapy that would most be appropriate for him and his condition. That way we can help guide the health care and avoid the injuries that can happen.
Clint: Yeah.
Matt: So again I would say look look for an integrated office that does multiple things that are guided or under the supervision of a doctor.
Clint: Yeah that’s what my one of my best chiropractic friends Mark Whitfield who is based out of Brisbane in Australia his clinics the same. Sometimes he thinks that massage therapy would be very beneficial to begin the treatment.
Clint: So I’m just laughing at the dog in the background to get there and then and then. You know it’s just part of the whole care. Right. So you’ve got you’ve got that same thing going on which is brilliant. So let’s talk about where people can get some more help if they wanted to see you directly. You came to the Anaheim Convention so I am guessing that you’re not too far away from there.
Matt: Well my mother live in Anaheim. I practice over in Redondo Beach in California. Okay. But the Southern California doctors Goodlife Chiropractic and Goodlife pPysical Medicine. So we’re just down the beach out at Redondo Beach. So the best way to contact me is probably through e-mail or you can always call the office. You can look us up on Yelp and have all of our information I usually find find things out nowadays. But my my e-mail if you want to ask me a question is goodlife.drmatt@gmail.com, that’s my direct email so you can always shoot me a question or hey I heard about this. What do you do with that. But if you know if people want to see me one on one as far as your face to face, the best thing to do is call and schedule an appointment. Our number is 310-543-7779.
Clint: Okay fantastic that’s brilliant. Well I know that you’ve done so many wonderful things for your mum. She is really the biggest fan of your work and you know if ever there was a example of someone with rheumatoid arthritis who got tremendous outcome from chiropractic work working with you then she certainly is so I encourage anyone who’s considering getting some chiropractic work to to check out your contact details and getting in touch. And you have seen your mum do tremendously well haven’t you. Not just throughout what you have but also with the work that she’s done with with my program.
Matt: The Paddison Program is the foundation for for her progress. When this all started you know. It’s a scramble right. What do you do. Yeah right. Because you know in the health care world and in the medical world, in our medical textbooks, our guiding textbook for physiology and all that stuff you know it give this is the condition, this is what caused it, with the case of rheumatoid, they don’t know. Right. As far as with that. So. You know food should have an effect. So I want to figure out what foods eat. You know we all know fruits and vegetables are good for you. And then some people think thinking that maybe other things are helpful but a lot of dieting that the information can get very very confusing especially from a standpoint of someone who you know that’s not their background. Oh yeah. Yeah. You know most of what we have in the supermarket is not really food anymore. And you know what I you know 40 50 years ago there was an organic and not organic. There was there was just just (inaudible.
Matt: So but as for the things that I do especially when it comes to health care of my family my loved ones, I do my due diligence I research everything about everything and make sure that it holds up to scrutiny. So I’ve looked through dozens and dozens and dozens of different diets and things not to eat and stuff like that and all of the all the programs that I found besides yours. There was always a large section in me that I didn’t agree with things that physiologically from an actual like health care perspective didn’t make sense.
Matt: But I have read through your entire program and then with my mother with every step that she has done that and the Paddison Program is the only thing that I agree with completely. There’s not anything in there that doesn’t make sense. And once we started to see changes with that, you know, changing your diet and other parts that go with it is very difficult you know, but pain is a very good motivator.
Matt: You know it’s not funny but it’s is a really good motivator. We will avoid pain.
Matt: So if you know if I tell somebody the food you’re eating is making you sick and you don’t want to hurt anymore you can’t eat this. There are a lot a lot more likely to listen to what I got to say. But the Paddison Program is giving my mother the control and autonomy of her self and of her pain.
Matt: You know I get people that come through the office that you know that are marked down rheumatoid. And those tell me that everything hurts and stuff.
Matt: And I referred them over to you and I say you know it’s really difficult to figure out what to do on your own you know here is a how to this is how you do it. And with rheumatoid because it affects you know in the grand scheme of things such a small percentage of the population when someone all of a sudden get that diagnosis of rheumatoid, they feel alone. Their friends, their family they don’t get it they are all they are trying to help, oh you should do this, you should do that but after people have failed dozen times, they tend to give up. But anyway, it has really given control over this and I recommended 100 percent not just coz you’re talking.
Clint: Sure sure sure sure yeah. You know you mentioned to me when we met.
Matt: I recommend it coz it works.
Clint: Great. That’s the main thing.
Clint: Awesome. Thank you. Well we’ve covered a whole bunch of stuff. I’m happy with the list that I wanted to cover with you and it’s you know it’s an area I think that is under utilized by most people with rheumatoid.
Clint: And if if people are not in your geographical area then I recommend contacting a local chiropractor and giving it a go, go in see what the specialist says, have a session see how you feel afterwards. Because there is a great deal to gain and lots of lots of positive things can come out of it. So yes.
Matt: If I may add just one little tidbit, I know what people are looking for a chiropractor you know. And if they’re not in the area or if you have a chiropractor that has been helping them. You know it’s important that people work with rheumatoid if you are going to have their necks adjusted to have a full physical examination you know not, it has to be done diligently. You have to go through all the things. Actually I do most of the time on people and that’s because if you’re going to be moving any of the joints in the neck. We must know what is going on with those joints and exactly what is happening with that purpose. In particular we must be careful with the top of the neck in particular because rheumatoid attacks the ligament. And can and can create some instability in the top of the neck. So. the chiropractor should be very very careful of the top of the neck. And that’s just from what I have seen clinically as far as with that. So again the chiropractor should be diligent. Listen to, should do a full examination, the adjustments should not hurt. That is the big thing a doctor should not hurt. Discomfort is ok but pain is not. And. You know and less is more.
Matt: Typically people have rheumatoid they respond much much better when you’re only adjusting a few areas and not just everything. Well when we’re talking about rheumatoid arthritis because the body can get overwhelmed. So know anyway you know you must must find someone who is good at what they do.
Clint: Yeah absolutely.
Matt: Yeah and open to working with the other people on our team, other doctors,other massage therapist, other physical therapists you know the best approach the team approach but finding a doctor of all kinds that is open and you know honestly wanting to work with everybody that is on their feet is important.
Clint: Okay fantastic. All right well thanks for that Matt and I look forward to talking with you again down the track and keeping in touch along with your mum who once again is doing great and a lot of it is due to your help. So thanks so much.
Matt: And yours, thank you Clint!