How Shockwave Therapy Reawakens Healing

Opening and Podcast Introduction 0:00

I'm gonna get surgery on my neck or my back or my shoulder or my knee. And all of a sudden, then they're like, hey doc, yeah, I can cancel that. You know, they called their asthmatic surgeon and canceled their surgeon because they came into the office and got shockwave. And not that it's, it's, it's not that it's us. It's just the power. I believe my belief in surgery is, there's always a place for it. But it's like, why don't you give it like me, give my body a chance to heal. And that's what it did.

What if aging isn't about slowing down, but leveling up? I'm Dr. Isaac Jones. This is the Longevity Leaders podcast. Welcome everybody to the Longevity Leaders podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Rudy Mueller. And today we have Dr. Curtis Martin. It's a pleasure to meet you, sir. And it's a pleasure to have you on here. What I'd love for us to learn a little bit more about first is your story. Like how did you get to where you are now and be sitting in this chair next to me? Yeah, it is. And my story goes back to, I was always encouraged to become a chiropractor because I saw the miracles happen in my own family.

My dad was saved from surgery and it's always interesting how history repeats itself. So that's how I got into chiropractic and I was a traditional chiropractor. And I was, you know, have three offices in Northern California, multiple associates, high volume practice, just really serving our communities and really helping a lot of people. And I had an injury in 2016 that I went to the hospital in an ambulance, scary, the first time you ever go. You know, you're looking at an ambulance bumping along and All of a sudden you can't feel your legs and you get to the hospital,

Dr. Martin's Chiropractic Background 1:35

they do the MRIs. I just remember laying in bed for like four days and going, this is really scary. And luckily I started to move my feet a little bit, wiggle my toes. And so they said, well, you don't need a surgery for your back right away, but you are going to require a back. Uh, surgery, it's going to be, um, the surgeon said you'll need a double laminectomy. And you're a chiropractor at this point. And I was at the point I was working out at UFC three days a week. I was in really fit shape, former athlete in college playing hockey.

So I've always been super strong. So to be. crippled, debilitated, it was scary, to say the least. And so as I came home, my wife picked me up and I came home in a walker, you know, so I remember walking into my house, thank goodness I had a rancher. And I remember just sitting there and just praying going, there's got to be a way. And so my foundation was always hard bone on soft nerves. So I was like, well, maybe I just need a good adjustment. And that wasn't it. I can tell you, I went to every chiropractor across the entire nation, every different technique, from ABCs to 123s, network, upper cervical, I did it all.

And then I started looking more into cellular stem cells. And I said, you know, there's got to be a regenerative power inside the body that if we can tap into that, those ligaments can heal. The body knows best. And so it always was a, it wasn't just a coined phrase. the power that made the body heal the body. I know the body can heal or adapt from anything. I just know that to my core. So with a lot of prayer and prayer brought me back and a lot of stem cell research, I was able to get my injections into the spine.

I went to a gentleman named Harry Adelson at a park city, Utah. Amazing doctor. He said, no, we're going to be able to do this. Scary, you know, cause you're getting this done. He went into the spinal cord, did a Uh, all the ligaments, the epidural spaces, the discs, like went into the annulus and put stem cells in there. I was out for four hours, thank goodness. Um, and got that procedure done. Actually I had to have it done twice. Um, and sit here in front of you, uh, pain free, but along the way, um, it wasn't just getting the cells and just hope and pray it's going to get better.

I had to put in tons of work. And so one of the things that got introduced to me was shockwave. And I use shockwave. The first time I used it, I was, I was amazed. It was 50% of my pain was reduced to my back because I was still suffering after the stem cells. And I was like, and then I started looking into it. I'm like, this is the, the self-nourishment, self nourishment, all these cells need to heal. And so I got a shockwave. Um, I'll say, you know, selfishly, just for myself to heal. And I was like, I started using my back and it just, it helped me rehabilitate myself, got me get from a passive modality, like the injections and some of the things I was getting to get into the pool and start swimming and to start getting my activity back.

So at the end of the year, my pain went away. My back was back. I retired from practice. And so I was left there just running my office and thinking, how many more people have a back injury, shoulder injury that maybe don't want to have surgery? And I've certainly seen over 28 years of being a chiropractor failed surgeries. I'm like, I think I can help a lot of people. So then I started diving into the research and started researching and going, I need to build better protocols because five or six years ago, when I got my shockwave, there was no protocols.

When I got the machine, there wasn't even a consent to treat. I was like, there's nothing. And so I was like, I'm going to have to figure this out. So with cellular research, I met some really good people. Dan Pompa helped me tremendously understand the cell and how the body can heal from inside out. I used Shockwave, built the whole protocol on every single protocol I could think of being a chiropractor.

Injury, Stem Cells, and Shockwave Recovery 5:30

And that's really the difference. And so that's my long origin story, but it was so profound how it just, it just changed me to say, you know what? I'm going to be passionate. I'm going to just persevere and just really get these things done so I can help more doctors be successful. And I found this machine. HydraWave, which we'll talk about in a minute, and it's been one of the best shockwaves I've used to date. I mean, what a blessing in disguise, right? Truly. To be able to go through all of that, yes, it's terrible in the moment, but then also to find something, whether it be the stem cells and then the combination with the shockwave therapy, and now the motivation is, I need this in more doctors' hands.

I need more people to have access to this. And it really was, doctor, this is not my phrase, but this was Dr. Pompa said, this is from pain to purpose. And I said, and I added one more P, I said from pain to passionate purpose. Cause I'm very passionate about what I do. And I love treating people still, even though that now I'm training, but hopefully under, you know, this heart and this guiding spirit that's been telling me what to do. I was like, you know what? I'm going to help more people. I'm going to help more doctors.

And that's really, my motivation and so my my job right now is to take this device when people buy it let it go into the practice and implement it so then every single patient can try it and the people that are getting help will see an immediate change so that's how I do is I show them how to implement it and how to basically get every person in the practice and their friends to try it how to communicate it, how to do a great report of findings. And then also I've built over 100 plus protocol manuals so then when they get it and they have a shoulder problem or a back problem, they know exactly how to treat it for best practices.

And that's not only treating the injured tissue, but supporting the tissues with what they should be doing at home, nutritional products to really build those foundational cells. And that's where they can heal, they can grow, and they can rehabilitate. Amazing. So, to someone who doesn't understand shockwave therapy, what is the layman explanation of what mechanistically shockwave is doing to the body? Yeah. It's really, it's another energy frequency just like some of the other biohacks like laser, right?

Laser's photobiomodulation. And all of it really comes down to every single energy frequency it resonates has helped us heal. Light has helped us heal. Sound can be very healing. The magnetic earth and the resonance, the Hertz from the earth heal. So it's kind of combines a lot of those basic principles. And it really harnesses it into a sound wave. And so with this one, the reason why I like it so much is they were able to take, in shockwave, if you're wondering what it is, there's only two types of shockwave.

There's a pressure wave, right? And then there's an acoustic wave. Those are the only two. And they all have their pluses and minuses. And I can talk about 20 different brands and it doesn't really matter. But there's all pluses and there's pluses from both. What Hydrowave did was they take the pluses from the acoustic wave. the pluses or the the pros from the pressure wave and they combine them together and so really it is um using a magnetic coil to generate an impulse that comes out as a as a sound wave as it goes into a bladder but also the frequency is more magnetic so again that's more of the earth and and the combination of that when i've treated patients it's been the best outcomes of all the different shock waves I've used.

And I think because you're kind of blending the best of both worlds, but also just the sound wave combined with the pulse EMF, the magnetic frequency, and the body just harmonizes with that beautifully. And so the tissues, tissues healing, tissues healing is not usually, even though most chiropractors and doctors say, I want you to be this, miracle story, right? Person, you know, just before this, I was treating a lady that was semi-paralegic, paraplegic. She could barely get to the chair. And so I was trying to get her some help.

And I said, it's a process, right? So these things are not going to see miracles happen like instantaneous. But what I found was when you treat a patient the right way, they're going to get about 10, 20, 30% improvement with one visit. Wow, that's significant. It's significant. And it gives them that currency of hope. Sure. And when that hope comes in, they're going to come back. Right. And then we just simply say, it's pretty easy. The only thing you need is more treatments to really get the full expression of healing.

And that's what they do. They come back. And so if you can get a 10% improvement with one patient one day, and you can tell them that the cells heal typically over 72 hours and you're in progress, I mean, that's the part they're like, and they can see your, and your intention of what you're trying to do. And a lot of times you can talk at a patient. You can, you know, give them hear all these bells and whistles and charts. Here's your X-rays and here's your, your blood work. And here's this. And then then you talk at them, you talk at them.

There's a difference when people can feel hope rather than just speak hope. And that's really what I love about Shockwave is it gives them an opportunity to say, you know what, my body can heal. And from an innate perspective, if you can really release that innate intelligence much stronger than me or you, just say your body can heal. That's where we see miracles. And I've seen miracles happen. So I believe it's the human body is the miracle. but also tapping into that and reminding the body you can heal or adapt from anything.

And that's what this shockwave does. So it's a powerful tool to have in your office. If you're a medical doctor, nurse practitioner, chiropractor, or other health expert that's stuck in a broken system, there's a better way. The Freedom webinar shows you a proven five-step system to build a seven-figure virtual health practice or how to modernize your current brick and mortar

How Shockwave Therapy Works 11:30

practice without the turnout. Learn to create high ticket programs, automated income, residual revenue, and attract clients ready to work with you. Book your million dollar strategy session today by clicking the link in the description. And so is it mostly people that are dealing with pain that are seeking out this, or is there another indication? Yeah, the FDA is for intended uses for pain and inflammation. I've certainly had lots of intended use protocols. I'm also in the R&D of non-intended use, other areas of organs and glands.

But from a standpoint of muscle skeletal, that's really where this shines. And what that means is you wake up tissues. The things we're talking about, the specific tissues are bone, muscle, ligament, tendon, cartilage, nerve sheath, even vessels. So from anything from muscle skeletal to neuropathy, this is an absolute, and I don't want to be cliche, but it is a game changer. When you add that to the practice, you will see some unbelievable results. Unbelievable. Very interesting. Yeah. And so with it, you know, you mentioned PEMF.

I'm assuming that obviously this has an anti-inflammatory mechanism. Yeah. And then it also has a healing component. Is it, is it waking up stem cells? Is it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a great question. And sometimes this gets lost in the weeds. And I've had this the first time where, you know, people in talking about shockwave, they go, it reduces inflammation. And then they go, but it causes inflammation to heal. And it's like, and then people get really confused and they're like, no, so let me, let me help you for some of you in that, in that boat.

Cause I answer this every single day. It modulates the over-inflammatory markers. So whenever you have like an ankle, and especially if you've really done a good job, you don't want to heat it up because that'll cause more of those expression of inflammatory marks. So it modulates over inflammation markers. At the same time, after it's done that to those cells to a certain threshold, Once you start to get past that over-inflammation of a new injury, it can actually start to regenerate. And it does it really with three different things it does the best.

So when that sound and that pressure wave goes into that tissue, what it does is it squeezes the cell, right? So some shock waves irritate the cell wall. This one actually squeezes the cell wall. When it does that, it'll cleave out a vesicle called an exosome. Exosome is like a little, think of a little power packed with a little antenna. And then your endogenous stem cells, which we all have. I know it's a crazy, sexy word these days, but we all have them and they're circulating the whole body.

It sees those little proteins. It goes, the body needs to go here. So then the circulation that carries these cells attached to those And then through the immune system, the immune system will dictate what the repair is necessary. Just like if you cut your finger, you don't have to think of new skin cells. Your immune system says deliver more skin cells than a scar. Your body does the same thing. It knows what it needs in that knee. It knows what it needs in that shoulder. And that way it can support whatever more cells is necessary for a full healing and restoration.

That's what it does. But those three things. hit the pressure wave will trip, triple the amount of blood flow, help recycle the damaged cells over modulation factors, which is key, right? We've got to get rid of the waste of new cells and it will activate and migrate your endogenous stem cells to go to work where you need it. By pushing out the exosomes and the exosomes are basically holding a red flag saying, come here, come here. Yeah. It's absolutely brilliant because really what it does, it's cell signaling the body to go, let's have some more help here.

That's all it's doing. And everything you have inside your body is what's necessary to heal. We all know that. So if we can encourage those cells and support them with good nutrition, good diet, and good positive energy, you'll be healing things when people go, ah, that's not gonna heal. And over the years, I love people that have come in and say, I'm going to get surgery on my neck or my back or my shoulder or my knee. And all of a sudden, then they're like, hey doc, yeah, I can cancel that. You know, they call their cosmetic surgeon and cancel their surgeon because they came into the office and got shockwave.

And not that it's, it's, um, it's not that it's us. It's just the power. I believe my belief in surgery is there's always a place for it, but it's like, why don't you give it like me, give my body a chance to heal naturally. And that's what it did. Sure. And having these conversations with multiple patients, we want that to be the last resort because there's no coming back. Yeah. And sometimes one surgery, as you know, turns on two, turns into three. But before you go down that road, why not give your body a chance?

Why don't you give your God-given ability to heal just one more shot? And that's what it is. So out of the protocols that you've developed, when we're talking about different tissue, targeted tissues, muscle, nerve, bone, cartilage, I would assume that there's different frequencies or, or maybe duration that you're treating that area. Is it, does it depend solely on the tissue or the target area? Or is it also based off of, you know, the, the joint itself, knee, ankle? I think it's a combination of.

That's why I teach it. When we talk about the processes, I really teach about doing a good consultation and examination because that examination will render what's called the diagnosis. And the diagnosis is really to identify what tissue has been injured. And also, this is critical, but you can't overlook this, is the size of the diagnosis and the depth of the diagnosis of what we're treating. Once we understand that, then we can render the right amount of shock waves to that tissue in order to generate that.

Clinical Uses and Personalized Protocols 17:25

And of course, we have to look at diagnosis and also whether it's acute, subacute, and chronic, because those are different phases within the body, so we have to take that into account. And then also underneath that, then you have to look at the consultation and say, I mean, you're a young, healthy individual. A lot of my patients are 65, maybe four or five medication. Maybe they're over swelling. We have to care for other systems in their bodies so they can support healing. So there's a lot of things that I teach that if you take those all into account, You really understand about getting the best results.

And you do have to take that. You can't just wander around with the chocolate and go, I hope it gets better. Nutrition? No. You have to give them the right hydration, the right supplementation, support the lymphatic system, because that's the waste products that get all these damaged cells out. There's definitely a recipe protocol that works really well and you have to care for all the systems. But it's got to be precise to the individual. And that's what I'm like, what I'm hearing is that it's a personalized approach.

You have to. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I remember working at a neuropathy clinic and I got brought into the clinic when it had already started and I'm like, well, we don't know if this neuropathy is due to the fact that they're taking metformin and that's depleting B12. We don't know if it's true diabetic. We don't know if it's secondary to an infection, Lyme disease. We know none of that, but we're treating everybody the same. And so that really opened my eyes to like, okay, we need to personalize. So yeah.

It sounds to me with the protocols that you built, not only are we talking about the frequency, intensity, duration of the treatment based off of the tissue, the depth, the type of tissue, but also tying in nutrition and looking at that individual. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. You have to look at the whole body and that's why it takes time to train. Usually typically when I work with somebody and we do group training. So in our program, we have everything videoed. So it shows me treating every single condition.

We have a manual that's built out, how to launch it, all your forms, how do I do a consultation, what I'm looking for, the examination that are critical pieces. And then after that, how do we diagnose it and how do we actually do a first session discovery form or discovery session or mapping session. And then getting to a point where, okay, let's convey a good report of findings and then certain conditions require maintenance. So what qualifies for maintenance? Why do we need maintenance? And so all these pieces are in there.

And in a course education, I teach a care class on shockwave to say this, I take care of the body. So it's a full recipe on your whole shockwave department and how it should be. Like, so that way, when you take this machine, you have a full way of doing things that you don't get lost and you don't get stressed or leave another piece of tech hidden in the corner. Sure. Because you're like, we've all been there. Yeah, I've done it myself. I, I, I'll be honest. I bought a $50,000 laser and there was no implementation of protocols.

And so I was sitting there looking at it. I was like, well, I don't really have the time and I don't want to experiment on my patients. So I'll just let it sit there. Right. Right. And what a waste. Right. So it sounds like it's a turnkey approach, not only clinically from a protocol perspective, but as well as from a business perspective. Absolutely. So can you expand a little bit about what does it look like as a practitioner who brings this product in? What does that look like for them? What are the potentials, not only in their improvement from these people clinically, but also from a financial business perspective?

Yeah, it's a couple of things just that are noteworthy. As you add a certain modality into your practice, I don't care what it is, you always want to look at it because at the end of the day, there is profitability and my business and practice management kind of shines in that department. When you look at things like massage, if you have a massage therapist, you might charge, let's say $200 for a massage, right? You pay the massage therapist $100 for that hour. So that's basically your revenue is $100 an hour.

With this, it's an average with one employee, and it doesn't have to be a doctor, it'd be doctor supervised. I tell them where to put it. It's typically anywhere from $800 to $1,200 an hour is your reimbursement. And what's the treatment? So the treatments are anywhere from 160 to 240 based on your geographical location. Cause I have doctors I coach in Beverly Hills and I have other ones in other states. You don't want to be charging too much.

Practice Implementation and Business Value 21:35

So when you look at that and the treatments are typically less than 10 minutes, five or 10 minutes is pretty common for doing a good shock. It's phenomenal. It's incredible knowing how to monetize that. is really important. And so that's why you need a very succinct report of findings and getting patients on to maintenance. And this is my whole, this is my goal for every doctor is to say, go into your practice, help as many patients as you can through corrective care. Find the ones that they still want to go golfing.

They're in a second story building and that knee hurts every single day. They can't go to church and sit down and kneel down and they can't sit in the pew because it's just too sore in their back. And they need some sort of maintenance. And you can find out of your whole practice, 200 people a month, 50 people a week. That's it. 50 people a week, an average of $200. per treatment, right, just on a maintenance standpoint. Just get into that way that you go through corrective care, educate them through the care class, get them to maintenance, and you just keep 200 people that are just, you're keeping change in their lives.

And you do the math on that. $200 times 200 patients is $40,000 a month. Times that, right, by 12 months, that's over a half a million dollars. Just in maintenance. One machine, very simple, very easy. And if you want to do more, some of your achievers, go double that. And they say, you know what? I'm pretty good with a quarter of a million. Great. But the thing of it is that you need a system to be a add-on in your clinic rather than a blend-in. I've seen too many times when you get a modality, we talked about the dusty laser I had, but you do get all pumped up about, oh, it's a new shockwave, and you're doing a million dollars in, let's say, chiropractic, and then all of a sudden you do a quarter of a million in shockwave, but then your chiropractic goes from a million to 750, and then you add in 250 of shockwave, and then you're like, oh, I'm doing well.

I'm like, no, you're not. And the reason why I say that I had a doctor that I consulted and did his discovery for me is exactly that. And I said, shockwave actually costs you money is because you took the eye off here. That's why he was so busy trying to build a system that all of a sudden when you're not keeping your eye over here, this was just going down. Right, right. So that's knowing where to hire and when to hire. Yes, how to hire the right person, how to train that person. And also we have a learning management platform that the techs actually plug in and they watch and learn.

So they get trained by me online, how to do all the technique, how to communicate it. So that way they're not taking time out of their day to learn it. Well, and I think that this is also freeing up time for the patient, too. If you think about a traditional chiropractic practice that might have additional modalities like, you know, ultrasound or a TENS unit or even potentially laser, this could, in my eyes, based off of what you said from a mechanistic standpoint of how it treats, this could replace all of that and get better results, right?

Yeah. Yep. So you monetize it, you get better hope, better results. If I was going to pick 28 years of practice, I would say learn how to adjust really well and you're going to fix the subluxation. But now if you have a shockwave, you can fix the damage that was created from the subluxation. And that together is very combined, powerful healing, both from the innate standpoint and also the cellular innate, combining those two together. Crazy good. Yeah. I have one final question for you because I can hear some of my classmates saying, well, is it covered by insurance?

Insurance, Reimbursement, and Closing Remarks 25:05

You can hear patients ask that question. Well, and the good news, like anything, anything that's new into the United States, the FDA is not really great on jumping in and that always the insurance companies go, what? We want to reimburse one more thing. They're going to drag their feet. But we are seeing reimbursement, thankfully, with codes for personal injury. Which has been nice. And a lot of doctors, I talked to one doctor in Florida, he had over 400 offices and he implements at least four shockwave visits to every one of his PI cases.

And it's been reimbursed at the retail amount. And we have a code for, and we can give you that code as well. Awesome. Excellent. Well, Dr. Martin, I greatly appreciate your time, the work that you're doing. I look forward to being able to utilize one of your devices when I'm injured and see the benefits. So thank you very much for your time today and educating us. Thanks for listening to the Longevity Leaders podcast. A Longevity Leaders community is on mission to transform a hundred million lives by 2040. If you enjoyed the show, please share this with somebody that you know, especially another doctor or physician, but also click that follow button.

Until next time, stay strong and live long.