Hey, sports and health fans, coach Frank here, and I need to call a timeout. I have been taking for granted how I and the patients I treat have been becoming champions at whatever their game is in life. Have you ever noticed some are champs and others struggle? I’ve been seeing more and more barriers, preventing people from getting on with their game.
I’m talking about pain, inflammation, excess weight, and even environmental stress people carry around physically. But just because these things are so common is not what makes them the silent pandemic they become. The real problem is what people’s lack of understanding has led them to do about it and living with it and letting it worsen over time to more drastic measures like addictive drugs,
meds, and even surgery. It has gotten way out of hand and it’s time we tackle the elephant in the room before it crushes us. I guess today, as a colleague in the chiropractic profession who uncovered the problem and not only fought back using many successful alternatives, but it revealed a common denominator, which gives everyone champion potential. That’s right. That means you too.
So sit down and dial in while I bring you the interview that will change your game to your advantage and make you the winner you deserve to be no matter what game you play, you don’t want to miss this one. So stick around Game on sports, fitness, and health fans. With another episode of the Sporting Good Posture digital radio experience gear up for coach Frank’s advice from the sidelines as he helps you crush your game.
No matter what sports, health, or fitness game you play. This is coach Frank pump’s Sporting Good Posture. What do you use for it? Hey coach, what do you got for us today? Welcome back to another episode of Sporting Good Posture, coach Frank here. And do I have an episode of an interview for you today? I’ve got a guest here who has seen it all in his Scranton Pennsylvania clinic and has helped some of the most impossible cases back to health against all odds.
He’s discovered a silent pandemic that exists that no one seems to be talking about what is keeping people off their game with pain, inflammation, excess weight, declining general health, and on and on, but don’t worry. It’s not all doom and gloom though. He’s on a mission against some of the harmful measures people commonly take, especially concerning addictive drugs and meds.
He’s a staunch advocate of alternatives, which get results and use them in his clinic to do some pretty miraculous things. And I wanted to have him here because we share this in common and many people still don’t know about these alternatives, even right here in my clinic, where I use many of the same treatment protocols. So you’re in for some powerful truth and some advice on how to release your inner champion.
Something that turns out to be common to everyone. And I’m going to let him school you on that in just a moment, right after this short message, Where do you carry your stress? Whether you carry it on your shoulders, hold it on your neck, or feel it on your back. It’s usually not chronic, but it’s always annoying carrying stress that isn’t normal at all.
But how can you know for sure how the stress you carry can be hindering you? The answer is the advanced postural impact screening at ideal health and wellness center. Chiropractic studies have revealed that posture is more than just how straight you stand. It measures the spinal and skeletal support of every body function. Poor posture reveals trouble areas in your basic structure. Interfering with body function
leads to pain, discomfort, tension, sleep trouble, and even digestive issues and allergies. There isn’t a body function that isn’t potentially at risk. Dr. Marcela conducts the advanced postural impact screening to trace back postural issues to their origins, which often have been accumulating over your entire life to find the real reason things haven’t been working their best. And that means everything.
When you’re trying to reach your ideal performance, see where the sources of the stress you carry lie and find out what you can do about them. Call the ideal health and wellness center at 6 1 5 5 6 7 6 6 8 3 now, All right. So my guest today is a fellow doctor of chiropractic who has been in practice for 25 years in counting and proves every day in his clinic.
What a skilled doctor he is and just how his patients feel about him. Walk around his clinic up in Scranton. And it becomes very clear how his patients respond to him. And many people have been with him for years from fibromyalgia to chronic joint disc and knee injuries, to weight problems and even less chronic stress issues. He has scaled all of it and more,
and even more importantly, he has helped people get away from and invoice some of the most dangerous alternatives like addictive painkillers and medications, even surgery. In 2020, he was held as one of America’s best neuropathy physicians and was recognized by Dr. Eric Kaplan co-chair of the international medical advisory board on spinal decompression as one of the 2020 ones best in the field.
Most people up there in Scranton know and love him for his kind heart, his sense of humor, and how good they feel just hanging around his clinic. And it’s my pleasure to bring him here, to share some of that with you. So please welcome the Sporting Good Posture, Dr. Emmanuel veto doc, welcome to the show. Hey, it’s great to be here.
I appreciate you doing this on a Sunday. I know you’re probably getting ready to get your pasta going and your sauce going through the day. How’d you know that, Hey man, we’ve got to stick together? You know, that’s right. You’ve been in practice for around 25 years. I’ve been in practice for around 15 years. So I know when I came out of school that the,
you know, the opioid pandemic, wasn’t really around at that point in the, and probably wasn’t around than 25 years ago. So how did you start coming across this more? And some of the cases that you, that you’ve seen with this, where it’s become more prevalent in your practice? No, it started years ago with, you know, things like Vicodin,
you know, went on to Tramadol, then it went on to Oxy and then it went onto morphine, you know, none of it’s benign. And they, they tried to make it sound as though it was, and you know, some of the things are quite insidious. So people will say, for example, oh, Tramadol is nothing for example.
Or if I couldn’t, it’s nothing. Well, you’re still stimulating opioid receptors and you’re praying and you know what happens? It’s just the beginning of an addiction, which never handles the problem. And by the time people are ready to handle the problem. And the cases back then a lot of times it was surgery or before, you know, laser decompression was,
were prevalent and widely available. You know, when the time those modalities came around, people were already fucked. Of course, there’s whole psychology, if you will be high in addiction and you know what people do to maintain it. And it’s, it’s actually, it gets pretty scary. Well, thinking about that now, you’re right. I didn’t even remember some of those from years ago.
Yeah. Like Viking and stuff. I remember in the nineties and then you’re right. There’s a lot more that have come out over the years. And even before that, there was Darvocet Darvon, and that’s since been taken off the market. So yeah. Yeah. And then also some of the newer ones now, because we’re just bombarded by commercials all the time with this.
Every other commercial is some kind of medication on there. Why do you see that? It becomes such a widespread problem, you know, not just where you are in Scranton or where I am in Nashville, but everywhere. Now you, you hear about this more. Why do you think it’s gotten to the level it’s gotten so, so quickly now?
Well, because the genie is out of the bottle, number one, because it was allowed to happen. It started with the great Lyle Oxycontin is not a tick. That was the real one because that was the worst of all. After all, it is so powerful and so addictive. And, you know, then of course some doctors were more than willing to take advantage of that and created these pill mills and threw everything at the patient that they would take.
And, you know, once someone’s addicted and you know, you throw it, let’s put it this way. If you throw a bag of jelly beans in front of a kid, he’s gonna want more jelly beans and he’ll make every excuse to have more jelly beans. And it’s the same thing with opioid addiction. And then it goes on to, you know,
then they started making combinations of medications where, you know, they’d combined different types of psychotropic drugs with the pain relievers and you know, that just created a whole other problem. And it just, it simply put the person into the mud, into the addiction that much farther. I noticed where I am in Tennessee, that the main pathway if somebody has pain, is going to the doctor, and here are these,
these pain pills or going home and rest. And, you know, it takes some over-the-counter medicine or whatever, or they prescribed them something. So there’s never really more of a pathway than just that, you know, it’s, it just kinda limits people. So I feel like, I don’t know if that’s how it is in Pennsylvania, but I feel like a lot of areas that that’s the pathway there’s no other besides meds and rest.
And, and that’s really about all people tell them, Well, it’s, it’s tough when you have people who are the gatekeepers and don’t want to hear, I mean, now it’s getting a little bit better, I think, but you know, they’re sending people and nothing gets physical therapy. People should exercise motion. You know, someone told me once,
you know, the first year in chiropractic school, his dad was a chiropractor and he said, you know, dad always told me motion is life and is true. But when it comes to the actual success rate of physical therapy and back pain is very low after six weeks, it’s, it’s, it’s some crazy, it’s some number that’s like 2% or something like there’s a very,
very low improvement with significant moderate to severe low back pain. Anyway, you know, and you also have to remember too, that doctors are getting a little more, a little smarter about this. And they notice everybody knows that you know, after about two weeks, many conditions are going to resolve any way by themselves because the body does have an innate ability to heal.
So the approach is, is way more conservative now. And thank God it is. So as far as PT, cause you know, a lot of people, when they think of back pain, they usually think of, oh, I need to go to PT. Can you explain a little bit of why PT helps, but does not fixes that problem as much as it should,
Depending on of course what the problem is. You know, the idea is if you look at the nervous system and if you understand that everything starts with the nervous system doesn’t mean it always ends there, but it starts with the nervous system. And many times, as far as back pain goes. So if you have a nerve root that’s compressed because a vertebra is misaligned,
for whatever reason that is, it could be trauma. It could be someone moves the wrong way, so to speak, or slept the wrong way, or did. It’s a really hard workout and their muscles are tight. They’re putting extra pressure on the spine. And then the spine is getting moved out of place, which compresses the nerve root as it exits the spine.
And of course, that’ll cause pain. So once you look at something other than just muscle soreness or over, get it, in other words, you need to get to the cause of it. And exercise programs don’t necessarily do that unless the cause of your back pain, of course, just, you know, simple overuse of a muscle. And it’s a,
it’s an, a spousal and then it begins to go away. Not again, not to minimize what they’re doing because they do, they do provide a good legitimate service, but it’s just not, it’s just not utilized in my opinion properly because it’s not. And I don’t know that they, I don’t know that they understand that What I’ve found over the years now,
dealing with this more recently is that when people do both PT and some other alternative therapies like chiropractic or spinal decompression or laser, they’re finding better results because they’re combining those two things and that you removing the interference filing and you’re getting the blockages out of there so that the body can start moving better. And then you’re strengthening the muscles that may have been weak or imbalanced.
And I find that that combination seems a little bit better. Is that kind of what you’re seeing too? I am, you know, it’s the neuro-muscular-skeletal system. Okay. And so it means nerves. It means joints. It means muscles. So you have to dress all three aspects of it. And you know, at heart I’d love to be in purist and go,
you know, this, I’m just gonna treat this guy chiropractically and he’s going to get better. And, and then, you know, the ocean is going to part and it doesn’t always work like that. I mean, if that’s the one thing he needs, sometimes it does. Like we do see miracles in our offices. There’s no question about that,
but that’s not every single case. So, you know, we try to adjust all aspects, including the desks as well. Yeah. That’s the same with me. You mentioned, you know, about using some of these therapies. When did you first start using some laser and decompression, some spinal decompression in your office? Well, we started last year.
I was one of the first guys. I think I started in gosh, 19. I think it was still in the nineteens. Maybe, 2000, as soon as lasers became available, we utilize a laser. The laser is great because it not only reduces pain and does a great job for that, but it also stimulates the body to heal. And let me just back up,
there are two different types of laser, basically two different categories. One we can just for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say there’s a cold laser, which doesn’t cut or burn the skin. So it’s not used for surgery, but it does stimulate the cells to heal because there is a part of the cell that likes the white frequencies and it gets it to heal.
It, it gives, it is energy cause its food through the white and it creates a healing process. And then there are those surgical lasers, which cut and are used for surgery. And of course, thank God we have those as well. Yeah. So I use the same thing. I use that cold laser there. We started using spinal decompression.
I probably started doing that about 10 or 12 years ago. I remember when I first came out in practice, it wasn’t as publicized. We did a little bit in school, but it was more after the fact that I started seeing this more and more. And I did feel like it helped enhance the healing abilities you were talking about. What kind of conditions are you treating then with the laser and the decompression in your office?
Well, strains and sprains, knee pain, no, any kind of pain where there’s a meniscus or a disc, those types of things as well. And that’s what we’re doing the laser decompression. Of course, we do have a product when you might have one also for needs. You have a knee decompression. No, but I’ve been hearing more about this recently.
And I want to look into that. Tell me a little bit more about that. Cause I see a lot of knee problems. Okay. It works very well. I mean, getting rid of the trigger points right in the soft tissue problems, as well as addressing the ligamentous issues with laser right. Is good. And it’s important to do all of those things first,
but there’s a, there is a device it’s, it’s called a neon track and what it does is it decompresses or separates the knee joint a little bit so that the fluid, because discs and knees and meniscus, there’s not a lot of blood flow there, but it does, it does live it right. It does get its nutrition of you now through something,
we call the mint. So every time, we move, it creates a pumping type of scenario. So the motion is very important. So if you’re using our decompression table or for using a decompression machine device for the knee, it basically in a non-weight bearing position pumps or gets the body to pump fluid back into the area, which contains all the nutrients that your knee or your back disc needs to heal.
And then of course, once we were done with that, we’ll use laser treatment because laser that again helps her relieve pain, but it also enhances the body to heal and helps with the actual integrity of the fluid as well. That’s very interesting. I’ve heard more about that probably in the last year or two, I’ve heard some good things, and honestly,
just myself from playing football and a lot of sports when I was younger, you know, I can tell I’d put some wear and tear on my knees and that would be something I could even use for myself. But I have a lot of patients that come in that are golfers and still athletic and still run and are active. So I know that they’re having those knee issues as well.
And we even do custom orthotics in my office to help with that as well. So we try to work from the ground up, but that’s, that’s interesting about that. That needs advice, You know, and the orthotics are great things as well because let’s face it posture starts at your feet. And if you’re, I know myself I’ve been wearing custom orthotics since I was in chiropractic college.
I had some, yeah. Right, right. So I was first introduced. Yeah. And I had some lower back pain and you know, all the labs, right. And then the anatomy laboratories, you know, after, you know, leaning over tables all day, my backward would bother me and you know, it made a big difference.
And I know even now twenty-five years later when either my orthotics were my sneakers where I get knee pain and guess what I get, I get back pain. So posture starts at the feet and a pair of custom-made orthotics makes a big difference. Yeah. I’m big into that and I’ve been doing that for a long time now. And we scan every person that comes into the office to see if they have imbalances in their feet.
Cause it does create that imbalance up. So I’m glad that you’re doing that too. Yeah. I see a lot of relief just myself. I’ve worn those for years now and I tell you like it helps me work out better and I can see if I ever forget to switch them for whatever reason if I didn’t switch them that day,
I see a big difference in my posture and in my ability to work out or whatever I’m doing that day. Yeah. So there’s this very simple thing that works very well in it. What’s nice about it is it’s an ongoing type of syrupy where it’s something that you can not so actively engage every single day. So, so that’s, that’s good. It’s definitely,
it’s a good, good form of fun. It’s a good adjunct. Put it that way. So when you’re doing these treatments on patients, what would you suggest to them to kind of be aware of, you know, if they have been taking any kind of these opioids and you know, are trying to find an alternative route, what do you kind of show them in your office or,
or send out in the community to, to kind of help with this problem? Okay. Well, the first thing is if the patient truly has an issue with pain and it hasn’t gotten to the point where there is a dependency, even still, you know, they may have pain. That’s what got them there in the first place. And I’m sure they still have it.
So now we’re juggling because when you do have someone in with, with, you know, that are on the opioids or opiates, you know, there there’s a psychological dependence sometimes and nobody wants to hear that. I mean, yeah, it’s true. And some people know it and we’ll admit it. Others won’t admit it, but the point is they’re still in pain.
So one of the devices that works very well is we have something called a neuro med, which is electro analgesia. And there, there are a few different varieties of that type of machine out there, but basically, it’s, it works to get rid of DEMA and inflammation, which we know causes pain as well as different algorithms. In other words, different electrical muscle stimulation,
and frequencies, since some of those are very, very high and some are very, very low it’s unlike your typical electric muscle stim machine. So that works very, very well. Especially with the high frequencies to block pain signals to the brain. It’s kind of like what the opioids do, only a lot safer. So that’s one of the things that we do.
And the next thing of course is to try to correct the problem as we discussed before. And that depends on of course what it is and any that would doubt that we’ve already discussed that might apply. So that would be either, you know, a spinal decompression program, you know, chiropractic and, or, you know, your, your knee machine,
maybe compression, or I don’t know if I just mentioned cold laser. So those are the main things, stretching a lot of the problems too, which is widely overlooked in many offices or just the modalities are underutilized, as you know, is trigger point therapy because, you know, if once you know the body and you know, the musculoskeletal system,
right? I mean, so many people have these, these referral points and they become a monster of their own, you know, They definitely, That’s why I get back to is the neuromuscular skeletal system. You have to look at all of it because once a guy’s got trigger points, muscles have their res you know, they have their referral system.
So, and a lot of it will mimic disc herniation, right. Or create a type of sciatica, but it’s not necessarily dealing with nerve impingement, it’s more muscle issue. So that’s where your clinical skills come into play, as you know, and once you, once we’re willing to take a look at that. And sometimes it just takes time to spend a little extra time with the patient to get to that,
come to that conclusion. And then of course incorporate that treatment. It does come down to just diagnosing the actual problem because there could be so many different things and it could present in many different ways. And sometimes the pain you’re having is not where the source of the pain is coming from. So I think like you said, taking the time to diagnose these problems and know exactly where the battle is,
then you’ll know how to fight it and you’ll know how to fix it. Right. And be willing to roll up your sleeves and work on it. Right. Because you know, how many times do you see that? Where, you know, you see this, you know, the person’s been to, to wherever and it’s with any discipline. Okay.
No, one’s exempt. It’s looking almost like how, how does that other person or that other place not know this? And I think most of it is, it’s not that they didn’t know it’s that they didn’t incorporate these treatments. Well matter. They don’t care. They don’t, they don’t care to do the work. Let’s put it that way.
Yeah. Well, you know, one of the cool things is like, you know, my office, I’m sure yours is a one-stop-shop for all health needs. And that’s the key. I mean, the only thing we don’t do in my office is surgery. So everything else can be handled in there, whether it’s weight, loss,
chiropractic, decompression, or laser orthotics. I mean, we try to do it all because I want people to have that one-stop-shop mindset there And you do deliver, I know you do those aspects, you know, even I heard you’re even doing neuropathy. So that, that makes sense that that’s a huge problem. That’s becoming more prevalent as well. Yeah.
There are just so many things out there and it’s important to stay up to date. And I know you’ve done that, you know, you’ve been in practice 25 years and you know, you stay up to date on this, you do your research and I know your community appreciates what you do. And, and I know your patients have been with you for a long time.
And I wanted to ask you, how do people get in touch with you? You have a lot of good advice. You know, you have a great practice there in Scranton. How do people get in touch with you or your office? You can call us at (570) 341-7062. That’s a good old-fashioned telephone certainly works and is welcome, right. Or you can check out my website.
It’s, pain-free scranton.com. Well, thank you for sharing with us today. And again, doc, we appreciate everything you’re doing as a fellow chiropractor, keep up the good fight. You know, you’re, you’re helping people more than you realize. I just hope that more people get aware of this situation because it’s, it’s been around a long time, but now it’s getting some light.
And I’m hoping that we’re turning the corner on this pandemic, that people are more aware of opioids and know the actual side effects and the outcomes that can happen by getting addicted to those things. Yes. And it’s so insidious and I, it just, it breaks my heart, honestly, to see someone under the grips of, you know, anything and especially drugs,
because it’s, it’s, it’s very, very insidious. It robs them of not only quality of life, but a life with their family as well, friends, and other relationships. So certainly something that I would like to keep people away from if we possibly can, you know, having said this, there is some necessity short-term use of course, right. Of drugs and medication pain medication.
So I’m not saying, you know, it’s, doesn’t ever do it. I mean, if God forbid you to have a certain type of injury, there are certainly alternatives and people should, as soon as possible seek the alternatives that we’ve just talked about, that they previously may not have known existed because it doesn’t exist in every chiropractic office or every physical therapy office in any medical Hoff,
every medical office. So, you know, my advice is, you know, choose wisely researcher practitioners, see what they’ve got to offer, speak with them and then make a wise decision from there. You know, knowing of course that there are dangers, especially with opioids involved. I couldn’t agree more. Well, doc, thanks again on,
on this Sunday. And, and I’ll let you get back to your sauce today. And No, I did think about making some today while I was doing a bunch of other work. I had a friend from New York come in a week or two ago and he made this Italian feast and we had a bunch of people over the house. And I used to love doing that when I was living in New York.
So He Made some phenomenal boy and A’s sauce and meatballs, and I made this whole spread of food. I mean, it was like enough for an army and we still have leftovers. Yeah. You know, it’s funny, my daughter was in last weekend, she did this same thing. She brought these incredible pastries and all the things, you know,
that we’re not supposed to eat. Right. But once in a while, I guess we’re going to do it anyway. And yeah, it’s a celebration of culture and life. And, you know, whenever people get together and share their culture, it’s certainly a wonderful thing, much enjoy, but I wish I had more friends like that. I need,
where are these people? So then, But when you find them, you want to keep them around that’s for sure. Absolutely. Yes. So, okay. Well, yeah. Thanks. Good to talk to you again. So, all right. So be well and have, have a wonderful week ahead. Thank you. You too. So some takeaways from today’s episode are that the most important thing is to figure out where the pain is coming from treatment is not the first thing you should be doing.
Whether it’s going to a doctor or a massage therapist or whatever you end up doing or PT, it’s really important to find the root of the problem and get to the cause, find where it’s coming from and why it’s happening. And then you can figure out how to treat it. So the problem with most people is they’ll just look something up, watch a video,
and then they immediately start going into treatments. But if you don’t know what the true problem is, you may be making it worse. And as Dr. Vito said, he has gone through a lot of extensive research over the years to understand why people are having these problems and also understand some of the medications they may be on so that they can find the root of the problem and give alternative solutions.
You know, as we’ve talked about chiropractic spinal decompression, K laser custom orthotics trigger point work. There are a lot of different things you can do for these injuries. And once you find out where it’s coming from, then you can apply the correct kind of treatment. So again, the next step is to find out why this is happening. So what I want you to take out of this episode is to get with me,
and try to figure out why these things are happening. So DME on social media at the ideal health and wellness center, either on Facebook or Instagram, remember the coach’s door is always open. This is coach Frank I’m Sporting Good Posture. How about you? The Sporting Good Posture podcast is a broadcast wellness production powered by an ideal health wellness center, all content copyright 2021,
and all rights reserved by executive producer, Frank Sardella, and coach Frank Pierce, courtesy of the ideal health wellness center in Franklin. For more information, visit sportinggoodposture.com and follow the coach on Instagram at Sporting Good Posture, 2020. He was recognized by Dr. Eric Clapton, Dr. Eric’s class. Oh, that was awesome. I was going to say that’s my favorite blooper of all time,
Dr. Eric Clapton. That’s the best, please. Welcome to the Sporting Good Posture, Dr. Eric Clapton. All right. All right, man. Do it right. All right.