Uncover Your Path To Chronic Pain Resolution: Art & Science

Yoni Whitten, DC

Thanks so much for having me, doctor. It is a pleasure.

Sharon Stills, ND

you are  welcome. You are a chiropractor. We were talking before we went live. How much I love chiropractic medicine and how chiropractic medicine and naturopathic medicine shouldn’t be thought of as the alternative; that chiropractic is the way. I was saying how I love my chiropractor, but I do not see the chiropractor as a place to go when I am in pain. I see the chiropractor as a place I go to stay out of pain and to keep my nervous system aligned. I have always been a fan of chiropractors. It is really great to have you here. I am just curious if you could just share with the listeners why you chose to go into chiropractic and how you got into this resolution for pain.

Yoni Whitten, DC

It goes back a long way, actually. I would say it probably started when I was four years old, and I was the second of three kids. I am the second of three kids. When I was about three and a half, I had a giant growth sticking out of my neck that was the size of a golf ball right here in the middle of my neck. My parents were freaked out, as any parent would be, and they took me to all the specialists. After all of this advanced thought process that went into it, they decided that they would jam a needle into it and suck out the fluid. They did that, and it went flat, which was awesome. Then it came right back the next day. In all of their wisdom, they stuck a needle in it, drained it, and it came back a second time. Then my parents were really worried, and they took me around to other specialists, and they finally decided that they would go in and cut this thing out, which they did, and I’ve got a big scar that runs right there for about five inches.

As I got bigger, it grew down, and it ended up down here, but it was here in the middle of my neck. This was really interesting because they cut it out. They found a brilliant surgeon. It is a beautiful scar, actually. He did a great job; he actually sewed it up from the inside. It is really nice, as far as scars go. But it started coming back, believe it or not. My parents took me to a chiropractor. This is the part where everybody thinks that was one of these amazing, magical adjustments that fixed it and made it go away. That was not the case at all. What the chiropractor did, and this was the point that I was making before we went live here, was that he took a step back and looked at the problem through a different lens. He said, What is this kid eating?  Let’s do an elimination diet. With that approach, my parents figured out that I had a pretty severe food sensitivity to sugar and dairy, which is not uncommon.

What it took was someone looking at the problem through a different lens. Conventional medicine looked at it as, What’s wrong with this kid’s body? The chiropractor that we saw said, What is this normal body reacting to that it needs to sequester an isolated poison and stick it outside of his body so that it does not go into general circulation? That hit me like a ton of bricks. Then, right around the same time, my dad, who was in his mid-30s, was having some pretty significant digestive problems. We saw a medical doctor who had a different take on things. He radically changed my dad’s diet and got him to start emphasizing exercise and meditation. All of his problems went away, and at the same time, my grandmother was diagnosed with cancer, given six months to live, and told she needed to go on chemo and radiation right now. This was in the early 1980s. No Internet. She discovered the Gerson Clinic, which radically changed her lifestyle, radically changed her diet, and completely resolved her cancer. Those were three things that happened when I was four years old that showed me beyond a shadow of a doubt that what you put into your body dictates your health status and your quality of life. I learned it at four years old; that is what sent me down that path.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is amazing. I think at four years old, I was like playing in the yard.

Yoni Whitten, DC

No, I am not saying that I knew I wanted to be a chiropractor, but I am saying that it planted those seeds. Once you have seen those things, you cannot unsee them if you grow up like that. We started an organic garden as a result of this. My mom totally changed the diet of the whole family. Everything about my life changed at that point. I remember building the garden with my dad and going into the garden with him. We had our own chickens, and we had our own eggs. We would go pick fruit and vegetables and bring them back to the house, where we would eat them for dinner. It changed everything about my life. It is like when you see that and then you grow up and you see that, Wow, we are not doing what other people are doing and other people are suffering, bringing in their health in ways that we do not suffer in health. You start making connections. I think that, but those seeds being planted at that age are definitely like, What set the stage? I mean, It is not an accident that me and my brother ended up going into this field.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is amazing. Yes, I was going to say definitely, like your destiny, right? The universe wanted you to do this. That is why you are passionate and good at what you do. I think we are all like, I am at least like that mother raising my kids, but I am like, Oh, I wish I could have joined your family. That seems like a good way to grow up.

Yoni Whitten, DC

But we are where I am growing up. I have two kids of my own now; my daughter is four and my son is one. We moved to a place that has such a pure environment. It is the purest environment that I could find. I mean, we are in the middle of nowhere, a quarter mile from the ocean. We got fresh air. We have literally no environmental pollution. We were on well water. These things have become extremely important for me growing up, and now I am passing them down to the next generation in the same way that my parents did it for me.

Sharon Stills, ND

All right. We all want to hear about how to get rid of our pain. But I am all thinking we should start a sign-up, like, how do we get adopted into the family? Well, do that on the side

Yoni Whitten, DC

I will see if my parents are interested in taking on that. They did a good job.

Sharon Stills, ND

Okay pain—like I said in the beginning, It is something that I know a lot of the ladies listening are dealing with. When I first asked you to come on, you said, Well, I do not really; I am not an expert in menopause. I said that does not matter because just because we are in menopause, we still have bodies. That is one of the reasons why I think there are certain things that apply to menopause, like our hormones, and we talk about that. But when it comes to the physical body and being in pain, what you have to teach just goes across no matter where you are. I want you all to really listen up, whether you are in chronic pain right now or maybe have little visits from pain, or even if you are not in pain, just to listen because this is good information to have in your back pocket and to implement. With that being said, tell us about what it means to overcome chronic pain, how you view it, and how you work with your patients.

Yoni Whitten, DC

That is a really good question. The first thing that I would encourage people to build upon as a foundation is an understanding of what pain is. Pain is an alarm signal from your body. It is a warning. You can think of it like a house alarm or a car alarm. When a house alarm or a car alarm that is functioning properly goes off, it goes off because something is wrong and it is trying to get your attention. That is exactly what pain is. It is not normal to be in pain, and it is not normal for the house alarm to be going off. That is the first thing that people need to understand. Not asking anyone to live in pain is not a nice thing to do. When you gave me the introduction, you said something along the lines of, If you are living with pain and if you have been told that your pain is normal or that it is just a part of getting older, that is a lazy explanation. It is a lazy explanation. It is like, Oh, well, we took a blood test, and everything looks normal. Oh, and we took an X-ray. I cannot see anything that is outside of pathology. I cannot see anything that I would label as pathology. Now I am just going to say everything is fine. I have a piece of paper, and I have an x-ray film.

Oh, I dated myself. I have an image on a screen—a PDF on a screen—that I understand, but I am going to completely ignore the person that is standing in front of me. What I would encourage people to start with is pain. It is not normal. It is there to get your attention. It is intelligent. Pain is amazing. The body we have evolved to have has this incredible response that is there to keep us alive. It has helped. It is to draw attention to something that compromises our survivability so that we can stay alive long enough to pass along our DNA. That is it. That is what pain is. Think of it as like a bright neon sign, a flashing alarm, or a house alarm with all the wailing sirens and all that stuff. It is trying to call your attention to something. People understand this implicitly when they have pain in their teeth or jaw. I better get to the dentist right away to figure out what’s causing this pain. Yet if you take that exact same person and they have a headache, they do not run to anybody. 

They run to the medicine cabinet and get a drug that is going to cover up the symptom without ever stopping to ask what caused it. Very weird. Do the same thing with back pain. You do the same thing with shoulder pain and knee pain. You were never trained to say, What is my body trying to draw my attention to? Just pop a pill and cover it up. That is also abnormal. That is not a normal response. If you went to a dentist and you said, I’ve got tooth pain, and the dentist looked in your mouth for a second with a shining light and their little mirror, and then they gave you a pain pill and sent you out the door, You would be furious. But that is what happens when people go to a medical doctor with, say, back pain, knee pain, or shoulder pain. Maybe they’ll take an x-ray. If the x-ray does not show, like I said, pathology or anything that they can attribute the pain to, then end of story. Here is your pill out the door.

Sharon Stills, ND

Mm. That is such a great example of the.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Very weird, Dr. Stills, because people would be furious in the dental example and in the medical doctor example. There, they feel that the doctor’s done his job. Oftentimes, the doctor would not even put their hands on the patient.

Sharon Stills, ND

It is a theme that has come up. As I’ve been doing the interviews for the summit this year, It is like it is common, but it is not normal. I really want everyone listening to start really thinking about that. Where in your life is something going on that is common? But it is not normal. I talk about this a lot, and we will talk about it for menopause. Oh, it is normal to have hot flashes. Everyone has hot flashes. But no, it is not normal. It is the body’s signal telling you that something is out of balance. It is common, but it is not normal. What you are saying is the same thing about pain. It is very common, but it is not normal. Okay, we keep going.

Yoni Whitten, DC

That’s way too common. You are talking about 20% of the world’s population suffering from chronic pain, very much unacceptable. It is getting worse every year. The leading experts in journals like The Lancet, which is one of the most well-respected medical journals in the world, are saying that the chronic pain problem is going to be significantly worse by 2050.

Sharon Stills, ND

Wow.

Yoni Whitten, DC

It is for two reasons that they attribute it to two main reasons. The first one is the increasing age of the world’s population, which is just statistically true. Less and less people are having babies; there are less and fewer young people and more and more old people, comparatively. That is pushing up the average age of the population, and there does tend to be an increasing incidence of pain with increased age, but it cannot be attributed to age alone. The second factor, Dr. Stills, is much more interesting, and that is a population shift that is going on globally, and people are moving away from low-income countries and the traditional way of living that is associated with those low-income countries, and they are moving into urban centers and adopting the modern lifestyle.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is so sad.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes.

Sharon Stills, ND

We are thinking and civilization is backwards, what we value and what we do not value .

Yoni Whitten, DC

Well, It is a rabbit hole. There are a lot of different ways that you can go with that. When you start talking about; what are the issues with the modern lifestyle? I mean, if we just look at it from a physical medicine perspective and compare modern humans to our hunter-gatherer ancestors, our hunter-gatherer ancestors walked an average of 5 to 9 miles every single day. I mean.

Sharon Stills, ND

How many steps is that?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Well, I guess it would depend on how tall you are, but I am sure you have a mathematician listening to figure that out for us.

Sharon Stills, ND

Way over the recommended 10,000.

Yoni Whitten, DC

But I mean, it does not even become necessary because you are comparing 5 to 9 miles a day on average to; I mean, we’ve got recent data showing that human beings nowadays sit for as much as 15 hours a day. I mean, it’s like we are sitting back and we are scratching our heads and going, There are one and a half billion people in the world suffering with chronic pain; we have got people sitting 15 hours a day. Sitting is literally the position that is more solely linked than any other to an increased incidence of pain. It is not just back pain; it is neck pain, shoulder pain, hand pain, and all kinds of problems. You are spending 15 hours in a position that causes more pain than any other known position, as proven in multiple studies across decades and multiple countries. You are wondering why people are in pain, and they are, and at the same time, it is a double swing because not only are you sitting too much, but you are actually robbing your body of movement while sitting. Movement is an essential nutrient.

Sharon Stills, ND

Love that  I’ve heard like  you hear sitting is the new smoking and  15 hours I am like  then do they just sit all day of desk in front of TV and then just go to bed?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes. You are talking about people who wake up, commute, sit in the car, and go into a sedentary job, and maybe this is pre-COVID because many people work from home now. But now you are talking about people who wake up, sit at a breakfast table, go sit in front of a computer, go sit at lunch, cowork in front of a computer, go sit at dinner, and then sit in front of a television and go to sleep. That is what 15 hours a day looks like.

Sharon Stills, ND

What do you have recommended for it? Sometimes, you cannot avoid it. You have to say you have a job. I mean, I have one of those sit-stand desks. But do you have tips to make sure you are ergonomically correct? Because I think right. Looking at the computer or the phone can lead to a lot of pain.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Sure. Yes. I mean, if we are just taking it from the sitting perspective, the goal is to spend less time sitting and spend more time moving. There are multiple ways to go about this. You mentioned a couple there. A standing desk is a great way to do it, and it does not mean that you cannot sit; it means that we are designed to be in constant motion. Our brain is literally fed by motion. When we talk about going back to where we started on this and the foundation of what pain is, It is calling our attention to a problem. Anyone could relate to this. If you are sitting in a movie theater, in class, or at your job and you have to do this in your chair, move around. It is a subconscious pain response. That is, pain before It reaches the conscious centers of your brain, which we call Nociception. It is noxious stimuli that is being handled on a subconscious level before it gets up to the conscious centers of your brain. What does your body do in response? It moves. Because the movement cancels out the Nociception.

Everybody in your audience will be able to relate to that. You’ve been lying on your side, and you are uncomfortable. Switch to the other side. Build up pressure when you are sleeping at night because you have a mattress that is not supporting you sufficiently well, and roll over to a different position. The movement is what cancels out the pain signal. The body is just built for movement. We are taking that sitting example. You are saying that sitting for 15 hours a day, sometimes, it cannot be avoided. We have to work. We have to put food on the table 100% of the time. I gave in to that. But you can still improve the situation. You can use a standing desk. You can sit in what I am sitting in right now, which is a kneeling chair. I have a great video on my YouTube channel that goes over literally the biomechanics in a study where they measured different sitting positions and the effect on the curvature of the spine. You do your best to minimize the insult and maximize your results. You do not have to. We are not talking about perfection here. We are talking about improvement. That is really the key to pain resolution. It is this idea, this Kaizen example, which not everybody will be familiar with, but it is a samurai principle. The translation is constant, a never-ending improvement. Wherever you are on that spectrum, call it the health spectrum: zero on this end, which is death, and 100 on this end, which is perfection. Very few people get to perfection, but we are always trying to get there.

Sharon Stills, ND

Moving on, I love Kaizen. I learned about that in a wellness coaching certification I took many years ago, and they talked about Kaizen, and I know I am here. I got all excited when you said that word. I am like, Oh, because they talked about it. You were saying in movement that if you have not been moving or going to the gym. We are talking about movement here, starting with little steps. First, by the sneakers and by the door, get a breakout outfit. Step by step, you can get there, and you are giving your brain good feedback of, Yes, I am winning, I am winning, and not beating yourself up and taking small steps to achieve.

Yoni Whitten, DC

That is a good point. Well, what you just said, and especially because your audience is women. Women, more so than men, in my clinical experience, beat themselves up. Men, pat themselves on the back more. Yes, we are awesome. My female patients—my God, they beat themselves up. I mean, I call it supermom syndrome. They’re constantly praising other people and putting everybody ahead of themselves, and they’re just beating on themselves. I am 100% with you that manipulating the game and setting the stage for that person to be successful with whatever they are doing, even if it is just putting the shoes by the door, like you said, is just that absolutely perfect example of setting the game up so that you win and then just inch it forward. But Kaizen is amazing because it is not just that; it is also the idea that you will never brush and floss your teeth well enough that they are perfectly clean for the rest of your life. It is this. You are constantly working at it. Yes. You are never going to hydrate yourself well in a day that you never have to drink water again. It is something that you are working on. But the cool thing is, you get rewarded for your efforts; you get to feel better, you get to move better, you get to have less pain, and you get to have more comfort. With that comes more enjoyment of life, less restrictions on the things that you can do, less restrictions on the things that you are unable to do, and more opportunity to engage in the things that you love.

Sharon Stills, ND

What do you find? Are there root causes? How do you resolve chronic pain? What do the listeners need to know about what you are doing? Because that is a big statement.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes. It is a huge statement. But my point with it is that I am going to take the dental example again. The dental profession did something amazing that other professions really should copy, which is that they said, if you do these two things: brushing and flossing every single day, 2 to 3 times a day, your dental health and hygiene are going to be way better off, and you are going to cut down on the amount of problems and pain that you experienced many times over. These two things, that take up a small amount of time, will improve your life in countless ways. If other professions followed suit, you are not going to solve all your problems by doing that. Obviously, there are dietary factors that dentists generally do not talk about, which is a shame on them. But they’ve done this really good thing with brushing and flossing, and everybody knows it. That is really a major victory because I do not think any other profession has done that in the way that they have, where it is like, This is on you, Mr. Patient or Ms. or Mrs. Patient, and you need to do this and nobody can do it for you. It does not matter if you are rich or poor, educated or uneducated. You need to do these things. You cannot buy your way out of it. There are no excuses. It is inexpensive to do it, and it just needs to be done. Everyone knows that. What a major victory! That is the approach that I take to resolving chronic pain: there are some based level things that you need to do in order to at least have a chance to be pain-free. You will get a kick out of this because you are a clinician. My clinical exam, Dr. Stills, involves the easiest clinical exam, but It is functional. I am like, Hey, can you turn your head to the side? Can you tilt? Can you get down and up off the floor? Can you lift your arm over your head? Any five-year-old laughs at my physical exam. Yet in 17 years, the amount of people who have passed it, I can count on less than two hands.

We have a population of people in modern society that are dysfunctional. They are physically dysfunctional, and they do not even know it because our society does not require people to get down enough off the floor. Jeez, we’ve got cameras in our car now. We do not even have to turn our heads to look behind us when we back out of the driveway. You are laughing because this is probably like the third time I’ve dated myself in this interview because, Yes, back when I learned how to drive, we had to turn our heads and actually look behind us to make sure we weren’t going to hit anything. People do not even have to do that anymore. You can look straight ahead. They do not even know that they cannot turn their heads. Well, guess what? If your neck is such that you cannot rotate, you are at a much greater risk of having chronic neck pain. Same thing with the lower back. If you cannot arch your lower back or if you cannot bend forward easily. These are things that everyone should be able to do. If you cannot do those things, you are dysfunctional, and your risk for chronic pain is increased massively. You mentioned heads on the phones and computers. That is another big one. We’ve had something like five studies since 2018, I believe. I have the data on multiple videos and on my website, but I believe there have been five studies since 2018. Talking about the incidents of forward head position in modern society, 69%, 69 to 70% of the modern population has a forward head position, and forward head position is associated with all types of pain: neck pain, back pain, headaches, shoulder pain, carpal tunnel, TMJ, and teeth grinding. All of these things are associated with a forward head position. 70% of the population has it, which is completely environmental. That is 100%.

Sharon Stills, ND

Bend your neck right now. It is time for checking

Yoni Whitten, DC

100% environmental. Now, the crazy thing about this is that people say things like you just said, Check in, check in, check in. Postures are regulated subconsciously. It is regulated subconsciously. You can only check in so much. It is necessary in the beginning, like when you are learning how to drive a stick. You have got to think about the clutch and gearbox—What gear am I in? Turn signals, windshield wipers, what is my favorite radio station, and all these other important things? That is the fourth time I’ve dated myself. Because I know how to drive a stick shift. But Yes, in the beginning, you do need awareness, but posture is regulated subconsciously, and really, it comes out to a training issue. Are you training your body to be upright, or are you training your body to be bent into the shape of a question mark? Most people nowadays are so concerned with their social media, their computers, and their devices that their heads are down. It becomes adaptive to be in that position. The body is literally trained. It is like if I go to the gym and do a bunch of weightlifting for my arm, my arm gets bigger to adapt to that stimulus. Well, if I look down all the time, my body will literally take the shape of the activity that I am engaging in all the time.

Sharon Stills, ND

What do we do to train, to not have that forward head?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes, beautiful. There are a lot of ways to do it. If we are talking about the person who is the desk jockey, who is on the computer all day long and needs to be on their devices, like we said, to put food on the table, I totally get it. You can go to a standing workstation. If you are working on a laptop, you got to get an external keyboard. It’s like 20 bucks, and it will be the best, 20 bucks you ever spent. Then you take your laptop device and actually put it up so that you are looking upward instead of looking down. $20 investment if you are working on a computer. I mean, it is a no-brainer if you are on a desktop like I am here; my monitor is sitting on top of a lift that actually makes sure that I am looking up while I am working on the computer. Then I am sitting on a kneeling chair, which, like I said, maintains the normal curve in my spine while sitting, which is really cool. Because it has a rocker bottom, I am actually able to rock forward, like I just came closer to the camera, or rock backward. Now when I rock forward, my body gets the sensation that I am actually falling out of my chair. Guess what the reaction was—yes, you did it. You did it without even, you beat me to it, Dr. Stills. Just slow down. What happens is that your body senses that you are falling forward, and your muscles contract. What is really cool about this is that now I am in a sitting position that is active sitting rather than lazy sitting, where a chair with arm rests, a backrest, and a head rest are supported. Now here, my body is completely falling forward, and my muscles have to hold me up here. Then what’s off camera here to the side is a standing workstation where I spend my time. I am going back and forth because I have to work on the computer nowadays, too. You are asking what it is.

Sharon Stills, ND

This chair, where do we get this chair?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Oh, Yes. There’s a video on my website that talks all about it. We can link it underneath here, but that is the a kneeling chair there. 

Sharon Stills, ND

Oh, wow! It looks like one of those like sitting massage chairs almost that you get like.

Yoni Whitten, DC

This is called The Backrest, but It is actually what I would consider a place finder. Then you see the rocker bottom, how It is curved.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes.  That is what allows me to rock forward like that. When I get into that forward position, like I said, It is like I get the sensation that I am actually falling forward and my muscles pull me up. There’s research on this that shows that the curve that is in your spine when you are rocked forward like that is darn near the shape that your spine is in when you are in a standing position. Not only are your muscles active, but you are keeping the proper shape in your spine, and your head has to be back. Because if I put my head forward while I am falling forward, I really feel like I am going to fall forward. This is a great posture training tool, and it allows you to multitask because this happens subconsciously. I do not have to think about holding myself up here because I am scared I will fall on my face. Fear is a great motivator. It is just important to note here that I cannot actually rock forward beyond this point. It is safe. It is safe to do it. It does take me time to get used to it. But, like working out, if I were training for a marathon, I wouldn’t go out and run 24 miles the first day. I would ease into it by running maybe a quarter mile. When people start off with this, and this is a tool that I use in clinical practice all the time for people who work in front of computers, I say, Hey, let’s make your sitting active. You can sit on an exercise ball, but this is even better because you really have more options with this one. Okay. Well.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, I just.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Definitely link to that video  that your audience can see the study and they can and I actually demonstrate the different sitting positions. It is pretty cool. 

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, I just redid my whole thing because I realized, like, I spend a lot of time on my desk nowadays too. I got the sit-stand desk. I got this new chair because I am actually only five feet tall. I got like a mini chair.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Well, you look super tall on camera, it makes it.

Sharon Stills, ND

I like being short. It does not bother me, but my feet, for the first time, touched the ground because the chair is for little people and it has lumbar support. I noticed such a big difference, and I got the lift for my computer, and now I am going to get one of your chairs. But I am saying this because it is really important for everyone listening. If you spend a lot of time at your desk, it could. I was having some pain, and just by making these changes, I noticed, Oh, I do not have pain anymore. I was doing it to myself with my desk and my chair.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes. What you just said, Dr. Stills, is the key. I think that the vast majority of those one, two, and a half billion people who are suffering from chronic pain are unknowingly doing it to themselves. It is such a shame because we could cut that number by at least 750 million with simple things, basic modifications, and a little bit of education. There’s one thing that I would encourage your audience to remember: where the eyes go, the body follows. If your eyes are looking down, your body will go down, and your mood will go down. If you are looking down, It is really interesting. There’s actually research on that. There was a cool TEDx talk that talked about postures like this and that, right? It influences hormonal profiles, right? It influences the tone of your voice, how you feel about yourself, and the hormones that are circulating in your body. All of these things, just based on body posture or vision, play directly into that. If you look down, you are going down. Imagine looking down on a lap all day long, 8 hours a day, five days a week, for decades. I mean, It just beats you. That is a big part of the reason why those researchers at The Lancet are predicting that this chronic pain problem is going to get much worse. Just take the simple step of making sure that your eyes are at least level, maybe 5 to 10 degrees up, and get that monitor up. If you have to work on a computer, take some frequent walking breaks throughout the day, and then pat yourself on the back that you have done something wonderful for yourself and feed into that upward spiral.

Sharon Stills, ND

I have two questions at the top of my brain. The first one is this with the phone, because many of us are on our phones, and if you are, do you stay, like to hold the phone in front of you, or just get off the phone?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Oh, that is a great one. I’ve got to admit, right off the top, that I do not engage with my phone very much. My wife, if she were in here, would be cracking up. Because when we met, I had a flip phone, and this was six years ago. Yes. I was like the last one to the party on the flip phones. I have like my nieces come over, and they are just looking at me texting, and they are like, Do you want me to do that for you?  I am not the most dexterous phone user. But yes, you have to find a way to either minimize the amount of time that you are on your phone or do it in a position where you are not looking down to do it. If you are texting up here or lying on your back or something like that to do it, there has to be a way to minimize the insult. Again, we are not looking for perfection. If you are spending 14 hours on your phone and you cut it to 13 and a half, that is an improvement. That is the thing that I would hit home on: that I do not have a good solution for it other than starting off with my awareness about how much time you are looking down. I do not think it takes very long to send a text; I wouldn’t be super concerned about that. I would be concerned about the person who is watching a podcast or their favorite television show while looking at their phone.

Sharon Stills, ND

Know that that is such a good awareness and challenge. I love that you said that. Yes. It is about movement, not perfection. A half-hour change is better than zero change.

Yoni Whitten, DC

100%

Sharon Stills, ND

Just to have that awareness, I am going to take this challenge myself because I am not as unattached to the phone as you are. But to really have that awareness, if I have to look down at my phone, just make sure it is because I am taking care of something and finishing, not because I am reading something. I have this little thing over here that I’m not sure if you can see.

Yoni Whitten, DC

It is blurred out because of the filter.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, but It is like a little older.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Oh, yes, Yes. The holder. We have that one too.

Sharon Stills, ND

It sits my phone up higher.

Yoni Whitten, DC

I think that that is actually a really good solution. That was what I was talking about with the laptop: getting the screen up so that you are looking up. That is a really good example of little steps in the right direction, and though it might not be perfection, that angulation of the head downward is a significant point. If you want to geek out on biomechanics, this is really, really interesting. The human head weighs about 10 pounds. When you turn it to the side, it weighs 10 pounds, just as much as the weight of the head. Now, if you have a big head like I do, maybe it is 12 pounds. But the idea here is that when you are looking straight ahead, the strain that is on your neck is related to those 10 to 12 pounds of weight. The moment you angle forward, the weight of the head increases. There’s research showing that when you get to an extreme downward angle, like about as far as you can bend with the neck, an audience member might be able to relate to this as like a doing dishes position where the weight of the head is no longer 10 to 12 pounds. When you are out here, It is 60 pounds, Dr. Stills; six zero.

Now you talk about the opposite of Kaizen: it is a constant and never-ending strain on your body, which you build up equity over time. This feeds into that chronic pain problem in a major way. The mechanics of it are simple. Imagine holding a 10-pound dumbbell close to your body. Super easy, right? What if I get it here? I am still a 10-pound dumbbell, but that muscle is working way harder in that position. That is exactly what happens to the head. You take that person who is looking down all day long, and It is not a ten- or 12-pound issue. It is a 40, 50, or 60-pound issue multiplied by the number of hours that you spend in that position. You see, the body will physically change its shape because of that stress. A few things you see are a forward head position and rolled in shoulders. You see a bump form here at the base of the neck that sticks out. Why does that happen? It is literally trying to counterbalance all that weight going forward. Your body will stick that out to try to counterbalance you. It is literally your body changing shape to try to prevent you from falling on your face. 

That’s what’s happening. These muscles here at the base of the neck, the trapezius, become huge, swollen, and tender. How many patients have you seen who have trapped knots that will not go away? They won’t as long as you have a forward head position because those muscle services are being required to hold that dumbbell out here all day long. It will never go away. It will go away when they are lying down on their back and in a non-weight-bearing position where their muscles are not required to do anything. As soon as they stand up, it comes right back. The only way to fix that is to fix the forward head posture, and there are ways that we do that as well. It requires a little bit more effort. But the first thing that I would encourage people to do is stop the bleeding. What do I mean? Stop encouraging the problem. That is the first step towards correction, and It is a critically important step.

Sharon Stills, ND

But that is this is powerful ladies. Just because one thing you are paying attention to that could have like profound changes on your body. I think the connection with the mood too.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Oh yes, it feeds into everything. My daughter does this thing. She is very animated right now. She is four years old, and when she is sad about something, she literally goes and hangs her whole body forward from the hip. I swear she must have learned this from a classmate at school, a cartoon, or something. I do not know where she got it, because nobody else does that around here. But it is very funny. It is a very exaggerated position. But if you think back to that Ted talk, she was literally conveying her mood through her physical posture. A four-year-old understands it when they see it in a cartoon; they know what it means. If your kid comes home from a big day at school where they had to take a test and they walk through the door, you know what they are feeling? You do not even have to ask. You know, it is written on them. If you change that, there is research showing that it changes what is going on in your body. We have research showing, and I am sure you have seen this, that if you fake a smile, it changes your mood. It is amazing. It is amazing. You can do the same thing with your posture. If you have poor posture, there is no possible way that It is not negatively affecting your mood, not possible. If you improve your posture, you are improving your mood. I mean, it is amazing. It is definitely worthwhile to pay attention to it enough that you can make some Kaizen improvements—some little steps in the right direction—because those little steps, they build up equity over time.

Sharon Stills, ND

I love this so much. I had no idea where our talk was going to go. But bringing in the forward head tilt, standing up, and being your superwoman—these are things you can implement and start doing. Well, sometimes it is the little things. That is why I love doing the summit, because we can teach these little things that seem insignificant but that maybe you can start doing on your own that have these ginormous effects in a positive way on your body. The last question I just want to ask, I guess, is what you mentioned about the flossing and brushing of the dentists, dental health professions. What are your flossing and brushing habits?

Yoni Whitten, DC

Oh, I love that you asked. I love that. The main thing I think for that is, and this is something that I absolutely practice, what I preach to my kids, do it with me now. It is funny. Even my one-year-old is starting to do it, which is amazing. But I move every single joint of my body through every range of motion that it has every morning. That is the first thing that I do. I go outside, I watch the sunrise, and I stand on Earth, not on man-made ground. I stand on either rocks in the front yard or grass in the backyard. I watch the sunrise, and I move with my family through every joint of my body through every range of motion. Starting with the fingers, moving to the wrist, and moving to the elbows, I’ve got videos on my website that we can direct your audience to where I guide them through my entire morning routine. I am happy to share that with you guys.

Sharon Stills, ND

I want to see that I am like, if I am not getting adopted into the family, at least I can watch your videos.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Every joint of the body goes through every range of motion every single day; make sure that it feels good when you do it. I go through a very full range of motion, but I’ve been working on this for years. Start with a range of motion that feels good for you. Start with a range of motion. Start with a number of repetitions that feel good for you. You do not have to do my routine, but take a bit of time for it. It is all free, and you do not have to buy anything. You can start incorporating these things into your life and watch what happens when you start feeding your brain this essential nutrient of movement in massive quantities. Start your day; your brain works better; you are in a better mood; you are more energetic; you have a clearer focus; you are just happier. It is like getting a big breath of air when you have been starving for air or a drink of water when you are dehydrated. It is just an essential nutrient on the same level that air and water are. When you start your day with that, that would probably be number two, is to start your day with it especially encouraging for, like I said, your audience, women who tend to put other family members and children ahead of themselves. Taking those few minutes to put yourself first will make you better as a mom, better in the boardroom, better as a wife, and better in everything that you do. Just taking a few minutes to do that for yourself going into the day

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, around here, we know that self-care is not a luxury. It is a necessity. When we are getting into this stage of our lives, we are like, Okay, something happens, and you just finally get it, and you are like, Okay, me first, and that is okay. I love that. I do not do that. I do not do that. I am going to watch your video and start doing that.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Yes, I will definitely send a link. The whole routine, the movement portion of it probably takes 5 minutes, 10 minutes.

Sharon Stills, ND

Wow.

Yoni Whitten, DC

It is easy and if somebody was just starting out, they could probably do the whole thing in 5 minutes just by cutting the repetitions in half. But I mean, if you are starting from zero and you add that, I mean, gee, what a huge leap in that right direction.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, I’ve heard about things like vitamin G for gratitude or vitamin J for joy. Now I am like vitamin M for movement.

Yoni Whitten, DC

I do that a lot of times. I will do most of the routine in the yard, and then I will go in and finish up part of it in front of a red light or on a vibration platform. I’ve got a vibration platform here over my shoulder, and then I’ve got my red light. I’ve got multiple red lights. Actually, I am a red light geek, but I’ve got a big red light panel. On a day like this morning, when we had a storm move through, I will do it in front of a red light panel. I get nice rays into my body, which warm you up on the inside, and the mood goes with it.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, we are red hot, sexy menopause. We love red lights.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Anything.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, tell us about your Web site, where we can find you, and your YouTube channel, because I know you have a lot of great videos there as well. Yes.

Yoni Whitten, DC

Painfixprotocol.com is the website. There are lots of resources there for people. The YouTube channel is also a pain-fix protocol. Oh gees. God, I think we just went over 150 videos on there on a variety of topics. We’ve got restless leg syndrome. We’ve got all types of postural videos—back pain issues, hip pain, pelvic floor issues—and lots of cool stuff that I think your audience would enjoy.

Sharon Stills, ND

Love it, love it, love it. Well, thank you for being here. This was just fabulous and very informative. I highly recommend. Go check out his website. Go check out his videos. I am going to go; I have checked out a few, and the restless leg one is really cool. I know that can increase during menopause. If you are having issues with restless legs, he’s got a great little video. I think it was like 6 minutes, really detailed, and went right into what could be causing the problem. Fantastic.  Just get you to stand up straight, get your head on, and think about your desk. There are lots of good things that you can implement into your life to really make pain a thing of the past.

Thank you for being here and for all the amazing work you have done. Remember, I want to be part of the family. Where do I sign up? I’m sure there are other ones too. I am going to get emails like, Where do I sign up to be part of Dr. Whitten’s family as well? Just thank you everyone for being here and really taking me through this stuff. Sometimes, like we said, we get in our own way and get stuck in, Oh, this is how it is. or I am in pain. Sometimes we just have to really break out of that mindset and be like, No, I am going to take charge of here. I can handle this. I am the master of my body, and I am going to start making little changes. When you start feeling it, it’ll create the momentum to keep wanting to put in the energy and effort to keep making the changes. Thanks again, everyone, and we’ll be back with another interview, soon.