Episode Ninety-Five (Carol McMakin’s conflicted copy 2023-07-19).mp4: Audio automatically transcribed by Sonix
Episode Ninety-Five (Carol McMakin’s conflicted copy 2023-07-19).mp4: this mp4 audio file was automatically transcribed by Sonix with the best speech-to-text algorithms. This transcript may contain errors.
Dr. Carol:
We did it.
Kim Pittis:
Yay!
Dr. Carol:
We did it without Kevin.
Kim Pittis:
Wow.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.I’ve got him on my cell phone. But yesterday was Kevin’s birthday.
Kim Pittis:
Happy birthday, Kevin.
Dr. Carol:
Happy birthday, Kevin, from Kim. I have to text it to him because he’s on a raft in the river?
Kim Pittis:
Lovely.
Dr. Carol:
With an anchor that’ll keep the raft from floating downstream.
Kim Pittis:
Perfect.
Dr. Carol:
And it’s a sunny day. It’s perfect. And I feel so proud. I did it all by myself.
Kim Pittis:
You’re such a big girl.
Dr. Carol:
And then I found you as a participant. And I found the little dropdown that said make you a panelist.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
It’s like there’s hope.
Kim Pittis:
We can do hard things.
Dr. Carol:
I’ve used that quote more than once.
Kim Pittis:
Me too.
Dr. Carol:
We can do hard things. And then there’s Kevin’s quote, which is you just do the next thing.
Kim Pittis:
Think about that one a lot.
Dr. Carol:
And so you just do the next thing.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah. I can get overwhelmed quite easily, especially in the summer.. There are so many things going on right now.
Dr. Carol:
Balls in the air.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah. I feel like one of those circus performers where they have the plates on the sticks and he’s just spinning all that. It’s just trying to keep everything spinning.
Dr. Carol:
There are some days where it feels like you’re juggling chainsaws, flaming torches and Nerf balls.
Kim Pittis:
This is a true story.
Dr. Carol:
Your hair’s different today.
Kim Pittis:
I got a haircut this morning. You know, when they go, you go to the salon and they blow it and they straighten it
Dr. Carol:
It’s cool.
Kim Pittis:
Thank you. It’s summertime, so it’s time for haircuts and all the things.
Dr. Carol:
Oh, my hair’s the same all the time.
Kim Pittis:
It’s not true. You went through multiple changes a while back with teal and purple and…
Dr. Carol:
That’s when it was still brown. And at the end of Covid, when I had three months where I didn’t have to be on film, that’s when we could let it grow out to an inch and a half of gray and then buzz the whole thing, right? And there was another month and a half for it to grow out. And then it’s been like this. And every now and then I get tempted to put teal or purple in again and then it’s, no, it’s just too much trouble. So I’m here. It works.
Kim Pittis:
It’s funny. I’m going to go back to your intro for a second because we always have a theme and there’s always like a plan that we both typically like to derail at a moment’s notice. But I have the best intentions all the time to have a script. And the last two weeks have been, I feel like I always get sent the messages in which to speak about, just like we get the patience that we need to learn from and all the things. And I’ve been very good in the last year of being more perceptive and receptive. So the word of the day and it’s so funny. You remember Sesame Street?
Dr. Carol:
Oh, yeah.
Kim Pittis:
Always had like, today show brought to you by the letters J. Q and number three. And I feel that’s how we are. Like today’s show is all about safety and today’s word is about the word safety and feeling safe.
Dr. Carol:
Okay.
Kim Pittis:
We’re going to both take it in different directions, I feel like, because that’s just how our conversations typically tend to go.
So the summertime for me is a time of checking in with a lot of the athletes that I work with because it’s like the off-season for a lot of different, aside from tennis. It’s like this off-season where a lot of my athletes are recovering from the season, especially with hockey, and we are undoing the damage and we’re in this rebuilding phase. And my triathletes, it’s race season, so the same thing. It’s been like trying to put out fires and manage old injuries and get them patched up for peak performance. But the common theme, no matter if it’s a professional athlete or somebody who is 82 and is just trying to keep upright and not use a walker and just be as grateful for the movement that they have as possible, is that regardless of who it is and how old they are and what their level of activity is, when you feel safe in your body, you are going to move more efficiently and effectively than if you are not feeling safe or being apprehensive or are not totally convinced that an injury is healed.
Dr. Carol:
True. So I have a corollary to safety. When you’re finished with that thread, I don’t want to interrupt.
Kim Pittis:
This is just the appetizer I’m starting, so you go.
Dr. Carol:
Feeling recovered. Feeling safe in your body? There is a corollary, and that is risk management. So I had a patient come in this week from out of town, and he came in with two complaints. One was what he originally was coming in with, was a peripheral neuropathy.
Kim Pittis:
And you have bunny ears quotes going. So you’re not sure that it was a peripheral neuropathy?
Dr. Carol:
Oh, it totally wasn’t. But he had a nerve conduction study that said he had slowing in his left leg. Not his right leg. His hands were fine. And so the person who did the nerve conduction study diagnosed him with a polyneuropathy, which would have been hands and feet. But it was only the left leg. So I used a pinwheel instead of a nerve conduction study and it was L4, L5, and S1 on the left. And he has a lumbar MRI that shows a disc bulge at L5-S1. So it was just treating nerve pain, but that’s what he came for from out of state. And then he said, but on Friday, I fell off a ladder. Now he’s 68 and that’s the risk management part. Your body is 68. Your slow twitch versus fast twitch muscles are 68, not 28 especially if you’re a male human, the inside of your brain is still about 30, so your brain thinks you’re still 30. Your body knows it’s 68, and so your cortex has to take over and it’s risk management.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
So the risk management is you don’t get to get on. 25-foot ladders anymore. No buts. He didn’t break his arm. But it was bruised and swollen. And I did learn something because it was all black and blue. And I said, I’ll run 284 and dissolve the clots or dissolve the bruises because they were superficial. They did that because they had their own machine and his pain level went up to a seven or so and we dissolved the clots. Do you remember the part of the Core that does that?
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Shows that with the brown recluse bite.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
I forgot to tell her about 18/62 if the pain went up. So that’s my bad. So we got the pain back down. That was easy. But safety and risk management. So it’s used common sense. Because he said the ladder started to come off the house and I pushed the ladder back towards the house and jumped. And then he just landed on his arm So the good news was the ladder didn’t come down on top of him. He didn’t fall with the ladder just really bad things that didn’t happen 68 and landed on his arm and got lucky and didn’t break it.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
You have people that work for you. Let somebody else go up on the ladder and/or hire it done. And that is the hardest part to learn, especially as people get older. Me being a prime example. Athletes they’re used to being physically active, strong, quick, recovering from injuries, getting injured, just part of the story.
Kim Pittis:
But there’s an interesting segment that gets missed with athletes, especially the more elite that they are. They’re rehabbing from an injury. The urgency to get better. The pressure The drive to get from point A injured to point B, an elite athlete back to pre-injury status.
Dr. Carol:
A lot better than pre-injury.
Kim Pittis:
Better Exactly. Because they have to show that not only are they back, but they are better and worth the contract extension and the salary that they’re getting and whatever else it is. But here’s the narrative and here’s what I’ve seen in 24 years working with this population is, they rehab the ankle. They rehab the hip. They rehab the Achilles tendon, but they trade it for contralateral compensation or something else that they’re trading because they’ve blown through the stop signs to get from point A to point B And what I have been doing the last two-three weeks is going back on that journey and being like, when did this start? Okay. Again, we always talk about the mysteries and the history and for me, yeah, I treat the easy stuff. The musculoskeletal stuff is the easy stuff that the history is there, but it’s really listening to it and picking apart the emotions, picking apart that segment when the amygdala and the limbic system had a very strong opinion on what was going on and the conversation goes something like, okay, your ankle is fine, sure, but I’m going to give you something on the other side because I don’t totally believe you and you’re going to skate anyways, so I’m going to try to keep you safe. So instead of that right leg injury, that left side is going to take over. And then the story goes on from there.
Dr. Carol:
And explaining to the patient whether it’s an athlete or a civilian doesn’t matter what the age is, the hippocampus gets paid to remember every bad thing that ever happened. And when you look at the neurology of it, all the information from that injured right leg goes through the nerve, up the cord, through the medulla, through the midbrain before it gets to the sensory-motor cortex. When he goes to skate again, it comes from the sensory-motor cortex. Okay, I’m going to skate from here to there this fast, and I’m headed for that guy and I’m going to do this. That happens up here in the brain, But it has to go through the hippocampus, And the thalamus and the hippocampus says, no, there was that right ankle thing that you did. So then from the hippocampus, it goes down to the cerebellum. Cerebellum does not notify and it does not negotiate. The hippocampus says to the cerebellum, be careful of that right leg. And the cerebellum said, okay, I can make the left hamstring and glute work harder to protect the right ankle. So it’s not like the left side shows up from space. It comes through the hippocampus, goes to the cerebellum. Cerebellum doesn’t tell the athlete that his glut and his hamstring on the left are going to be working harder so that his right ankle will be safe. And that’s why FSM is so much fun in injury recovery, because you do the physical, you do the peripheral end of it, right? Ankles, knees, hamstrings, nerve glides, removes scarring in the nerves, scarring in the fascia, makes sure that the meniscus is fine and the talus is fine. And there’s all those nerves that go, treating the ankle is not treating the ankle. You’re treating from the fibula to the toes.
Kim Pittis:
Absolutely.
Dr. Carol:
Fix and then re-coordinating it. Then it’s almost worth having two machines at one time during the reconditioning process, whether it’s an athlete or civilian.
Kim Pittis:
Totally.
Dr. Carol:
One machine on 40/89. Yes. The hippocampus does not get to vote. What do you mean? And you just see the hippocampus with a muzzle on it going, wait, foot bad and so you do 40/89 and the hippocampus doesn’t get to vote. And then depends on how bad it was, you do 81 increase secretions in the sensory-motor cortex and the sensory-motor cortex because it can’t get to the hippocampus. So the hippocampus is turned down. It goes straight to the cerebellum and the cerebellum says, you want me to what? There was this. Oh, well, I guess the right ankle is okay. All right. And then you do increase secretions in the cerebellum on a second machine while you have a muzzle on the midbrain. And then you have them. In my case this week, I had the patient just practice walking. Just step, step forward. Shift weight, step back, Shift weight. She ran into a car on her bicycle. When she was doing 20 miles an hour six-seven months ago. And the pain was all in her leg and she tore the labrum in her hip joint a bit, just a little posterior thingy. And I treated the hip. Treated the leg. It wouldn’t hold. So it’s the mysteries and the history. How did you hit the car? My left knee hit the car. 20 miles an hour. Jammed it back into the acetabulum. There’s the labrum tear. And then I checked the lower SI joint. She tore the lower SI joint, didn’t tear it, sprained it. So we taped the lower joint.
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
And it was done, but we still had to muzzle the hippocampus. Turn on the cerebellum. Make her pretend to bicycle.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
Because you have to replicate the movement, right? Like we talk a lot about 13 loves to be mobilized. Yes. But so many of our like, reboot or neuro repatterning however you want to call it, has to do with taking very basic movements and overriding the nervous system to create this safe environment and I have been using a lot of verbal feedback lately to help reinforce that. So, for instance, I will do 40/89 in superhero pose sometimes. So superhero pose is standing. That’s right. It’s for those of you who are just listening to the podcast, you’re going to stand feet hip-width apart. You’re going to put your hands on your hips and you extend your chest as if you’re projecting something from your heart up to the corner of where the wall and the ceiling meet. So you’re not just standing straight, but you’re standing upright. It’s a very empowering pose. And research has shown that people who even stand in superhero pose for two minutes before a job interview perform 95% better than people who don’t do that. This is very grounding confident. So I start all my neuro repatterning, all my reboot in superhero pose with 40/89 just standing, grounding. And it also helps people who are really dwarfed after a treatment, just get back in their body safely again. But I’ll start with that and I’ll say, how does your knee feel right now? Yeah, it feels good. How else does it feel? I feel strong. So I think about Roger Billica’s last talk at the Advanced when he was talking about the nocebo effect and the placebo effect, and to not dismiss the placebo effect and how important it is to use positive words. And I think about you all the time when I think it was in the very first instructors training program, we were doing a practicum and I was the patient and I was face down and I was prone and somebody was I think we were doing shoulder prone and the person that was working on me was saying, Ieu, this is so ropey and Ieu, this is so tight. I just kept hearing Ieu and so bad. And you had mentioned right away you’re like, Stop learning moment time. And you really drove the message home. Like when you have a patient that is prone on the table, even when they’re supine, but especially when they’re prone, they are in this hypnotic state and they’re very receptive to suggestion. so all the practitioners that are listening, I know it’s really tempting to be like, Oh, this is so gross and feel this is so gnarly and this is tight and this is blah, blah, blah. Keep that for your inside voice and use positive words like however. And a lot of patients will say, Oh, where do you want? Or that feels tight. You can easily turn the train around and be like it is, but it’s getting better, right?
Dr. Carol:
And then you run like you’re working on a shoulder. You run 40/396 and they say is that different? And he said, Yeah, it’s getting softer.. All you have to do is turn down the sensitivity of the nerve and it has come to the point that in every single class now, at some point during the practicum or during the lecture, I get around to, every patient is in a state of hypnosis. I haven’t made that a lecture in the Advanced yet because I don’t want to have to make the slides. But it’s such an important piece And for the first year or so after I took the San Diego Society of Clinical Hypnosis Weekend Workshop, where it was all MDs taking the class. And they talked about using it in the emergency room when somebody’s blood pressure is 90/40. So the nurses taking the blood pressure, calls the blood pressure out. The doctor who’s the E.R. doc, makes eye contact with the patient, put his hand on the shoulder and says, it’s too bad. you’re doing great. And the pressure starts to come up and then he can tell the nurse in, put on another whatever, and do this and do that. The patient doesn’t hear that. Patient is in a hypnotic state when they are physically relaxed, mentally focused. So in order to put a patient into a state of hypnosis, you don’t have to do anything. You have to work to keep them out of hypnotic state, make eye contact. All they have to do is be in pain and be one on one with you with no distractions. That’s it. Done. They’re mentally focused on their soar or whatever. And everything you say goes right in. And the subconscious or the midbrain is not critical. So you can’t say or if I say you won’t feel pain what do you hear?
Kim Pittis:
Right.
Dr. Carol:
Pain. It’s called a power word. So when we were taught pain management, hypnosis. You’re taught to see things like this might start to be more comfortable. It might know you don’t want to set up a yes it will, no it’s not. Right. So if the patient doesn’t feel getting more comfortable, you don’t want to tell them this is. And they’re saying, no, it’s not. This might start to feel more comfortable. Usually when we do this, the tissue gets softer and meanwhile, from a practitioner side, you’ve got your hand in their armpit or groin or low back or kidney or whatever, and they might start to feel more comfortable. That’s still kind of firm, isn’t it? I didn’t use the P word. That’s still tight, isn’t it? Let’s try this.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Right. And you soften your voice. You slow it down. And it is a really powerful tool. And I just got lucky that I happen to have that training when I was 28, I was a pharmaceutical rep.
Kim Pittis:
I’ve got two different directions I want to ask you about. So. When I’m unraveling these old injuries and I have to go back in time. You’re making a face right now, and that’s exactly what it is. So for the practitioners listening, when you are going back in the history, sometimes the history is super painful. It’s almost when they talk about it, it’s almost like it just happened yesterday, even though it could have happened years ago. And depending on the trauma, whether it’s a car accident or something with abuse or something that happened in an athletic situation, there’s going to be an emotional component that is attached to it. We’re not robots. And this could sound a bit woo. I just listened to this very enlightening quantum physics podcast the other day. So this is fresh in my head right now, talking about like time and how when you are rehashing a history, there’s part of you that it is in the present. The pain is still in the present. It doesn’t matter that it happened many moons ago, it’s still relevant. And we talk about working with the midbrain versus working with the emotional components. And I think we talked about this last podcast. They do go together, right? It’s about quieting down the midbrain. But also I think just being receptive to certain emotional components that are involved. And again, I’ve said this all the time. I didn’t do the emotional components before because I didn’t really listen, I wasn’t hearing you. I wasn’t hearing the patients because in a pretty healthy demographic that I get to work with, I don’t see people as depressed or.
Dr. Carol:
Angry or.
Kim Pittis:
Exactly but it’s still there. So, again, and that was the case study that I had written. I was measuring hip flexion that wouldn’t budge. I had exhausted every A channel, every B channel. There was nothing left to try. And then that patient just kept talking about how scared he was, about losing his job, how frustrated he was. Like all these words started coming out, all these emotions, and I ran it blinded. He didn’t know and I sure wasn’t going to tell him, I’m going to try depression. I think you have terror. But he had known frequency and he known what I was doing. And he said, Oh, that feels so great. I’m like. Really? Yeah. It just feels like the muscles are just going to melt and it’s going to give. And man, I feel awesome right now. And I was running terror. If you’re a professional athlete and someone comes at you 100mph, like, I don’t care how seasoned you are, that’s scary.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
You’re you might not get back in the lineup. You might lose your job. You might never play again. This is terror and just running passive hip flexion, it just went and went. And so, as a practitioner like me who’s very sciencey still, you can still measure these emotional components with range of motion, with pain, with all these other things.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. And emotions don’t come from space. I still have the idea that they’re mediated by the midbrain. So the amygdala is the emotional component and the hippocampus, they’re all threaded together. We have one frequency for all three of them. The separate frequencies we have for each one, not so much.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
So quieting the midbrain and doing the specific frequencies for specific emotions, hugely important for function, for comfort, for the sense of safety. And that’s. Yeah, well done.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, But it’s something that I think we lose sight of because we get so excited with treating what’s under our hands and that we forget things. And so again, using two and three machines and in the settings that I’m working with, in the summertime, when I don’t get an hour or an hour and a half with patients, I get 20 minutes with a big group that I’ve been working with.
Dr. Carol:
Wow.
Kim Pittis:
And so if 20 minutes is all I have and yes, they’re getting other modalities, 20 minutes for machines, I can make a dent in something. And it is because I am treating the midbrain, I am treating the emotional component and the CustomCare’s are great because I can make these small little programs that just put.
Dr. Carol:
20 minutes.
Kim Pittis:
Loop that I know is going to be relevant for certain patients. And then my PrecisionCare is for the exciting stuff.
Dr. Carol:
And I made a mistake with this patient that had the peripheral neuropathy on his left leg. There’s always two parts to pain. One is how much it hurts, the other is how much you mind it.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, I think about that a lot.
Dr. Carol:
Because he’s male, because of his profession. He’s a guy’s guy.
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
I always ask every patient except him were you ever molested, abused physically or emotionally, or have you had any severe physical or emotional trauma as an adult?
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Didn’t ask him that for whatever reason. And but this peripheral neuropathy scared him. So as I’m sitting there working on it and as we get rid of it every time, but when it comes back, it terrifies him.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
I’m thinking to myself, that’s central sensitization. What is that about? During the third treatment. I’m asking him. I finally asked him was there any physical or emotional abuse as a child? And then he went off about the generational trauma. He is Romanian So generational trauma and then his dad and what his life was like as a child and it’s like, sorry. So then I put one machine just from his neck to his foot and ran 40/89 for the whole rest of the treatment. And he still has to do his exercises. He has a disc bulge. He’s lived with this mysterious peripheral neuropathy, scary diagnosis for a year. The diagnosis was wrong and I think I talked about that at some point where if the person that diagnosed you was correct, you wouldn’t be here. So let’s start over. So the physical exam demonstrated that he did not have a peripheral neuropathy. He’s not diabetic. He didn’t have any other. And it was dermatomal. Get the history correct. Start over and be confident enough in your history and physical exam to come up with your own diagnosis. So the marathon runner story.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Glute hamstring injury. And the glute was indeed the plus three instead of a plus five.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah,
Dr. Carol:
I rolled her over on her back and it started with a groin injury. So the real problem was a groin injury that was two years before. Created adhesions in the nerve that made the cerebellum turn down or inhibit the glute.
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
And. So and teaching that some of that is just mileage, right?
Kim Pittis:
You’re right. Because I don’t think anybody really goes back and tells people when they’re in school, whether it’s PT or personal training or chiropractic you take note of the history, but no one actually goes back there to reassess anything. And I’ll get the same weird face all the time with new patients when they come to me for right hip pain and I’m taking the history and I see there was an old injury on the left ankle and I’m examining the left ankle and they’re like, but it doesn’t hurt anymore. I’m like. I’m glad it doesn’t hurt. That’s great. But let’s just see the function of it. Let’s just see. And nine times out of nine. I don’t want to say out of ten. I’m almost 100% on this one. There’s going to be something off with the function, whether it’s inhibited somewhere or the range of motion is depleted somewhere because there’s scar tissue somewhere, or sometimes it’s something as small as the balance is off. So you get somebody just standing and have them close their eyes.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
And watch, were the compensations are throughout the chain. Watch how their feet grab on to the floor for dear life because they don’t trust their ankle or their foot. And so again, this kind of goes back to safety. So like I was been doing just a ton of very thorough, in-depth MSK assessments over the past two weeks.
Dr. Carol:
Right.
Kim Pittis:
And I’ll get range of motion eyes open and I get it. Eyes closed.
Dr. Carol:
Oh, good for you.
Kim Pittis:
And it’s just such good feedback, especially for the athletes because they’re so in tune neurologically with what their body is doing. So even just a standing squat assessment where you have somebody do a mini squat, eyes open, just do that for me. Eyes closed and you see them lean, you see the shift, you see the compensation, you hear the feedback. Like that feels terrifying. I don’t want to do that ever again. That feels so different.
Dr. Carol:
So then you do, in our group, you do a Vestibular screen.
Kim Pittis:
Exactly.
Dr. Carol:
And the other thing like with left hip pain.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
You go looking for adhesions in the psoas and this disc bulge is on the left.
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
And oh, yes. He’s had two episodes of kidney stones on the left, and somebody, a massage therapist, told him it was his iliacus. I have this iliacus problem when I do this with my hip. It clicks.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Put my fingers in the middle of his psoas and then up under so scarring in the ureter.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And then scarring in the kidneys. Sclerosis in the fat pad, went down. Iliacus was fine. And it’s just…
Kim Pittis:
They can’t blame the massage therapist because they’re only feeling what they think they can affect. So, yeah, Iliacus would be in that vicinity. But you’re not. Let’s be honest. You can’t be iliacus.
Dr. Carol:
No. And you can’t separate the iliacus from the psoas.
Kim Pittis:
No, I can’t. Who can do that? I don’t. You just don’t know. But I love the idea of it. And I’m sure you could do range of motion and see that. Okay, Hip extension might be limited. And if hip extension is limited, you automatically think it’s going to be the hip flexors. But there’s more to the story.
Dr. Carol:
And it makes it challenging to be us. But after a while because you know what you’re looking for.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
It is easier to be us. Because somebody comes in and says, I have this. And automatically these days in my head, it’s okay. You take the medical history. Do you ever have kidney stones or kidney infection and you have a pain pattern that does this? And he has this compelling complaint. On that and automatically in your head, it’s okay, that’s 13/ 60. That part’s easy. Neuropathic pain. Okay, That part’s easy. So there’s one webinar that I did a couple of years ago and it was taken apart. You take a history and you take it apart, each one into little bites.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Or medium-sized bites that for us make it easy. It’s okay. You have a disc bulge that’s six weeks. Change your posture. Do these exercises run these protocols. You’ve got a CustomCare’s. So you do that nerve pain. Not scary. Once you know it can be gone. And if your leg hurts, look at your posture.
Kim Pittis:
Right.
Dr. Carol:
What does that have to do? Because when he thought it was peripheral neuropathy, his low back didn’t have anything to do with it once he knew it was radiculopathy, when your leg hurts or your foot hurts, look at your posture. Oh, okay. And because we have a tool that lets us approach things differently, we can attack it. We can approach it from physical, emotional, mental, neurological, visceral.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
All more or less at the same time.
Kim Pittis:
Exactly.
Dr. Carol:
It’s really fun.
Kim Pittis:
And safely and in control. Right. So, again, going back to the safe word. Right? Sometimes when patients are new to FSM and you’re bringing out multiple machines and there’s lots of wires and some patients are super excited and some patients are like, Well, you get the Frankenstein joke once in a while. Am I going to explode all these things? Am I super charged?
Dr. Carol:
There’s going to be curly and you’ll be able to play the piano and tap dance.
Kim Pittis:
Exactly. Yeah. And some patients make jokes and you can tell that they’re trying to be funny, but they’re actually concerned and trying to explain to them, even with all these machines, chances are you’re not going to feel anything. Hopefully, the pain just starts to get better and things start to move a little bit better. And they’re like, okay, what are they all doing? How is this working? And I always use the analogy that George gave me at the Advanced many years ago about there’s all these we have this giant room and all these people are in there, but two people are having a conversation over there and two people are having a conversation over here and you can’t hear that conversation because you’re not involved in it. We’re having this conversation, so you and I are. And it just made so much sense to me. So when I use multiple machines, I always think about George and just the conversations that are happening within.
Dr. Carol:
And he said the two channels don’t see each other and the two machines don’t see each other. It mixes and each one appears to do. What it’s supposed to be doing. It appears to do that. How? Can I prove it? No, but after you do something 200,000 times, you get an idea that it’s probably doing what you think it’s doing. It’s pretty fun.
Dr. Carol:
Hey, Denise Lassner has, is terror 94 on B unbeaten? No. Terror on the emotional list is 970 on A and the organ associated with terror in Chinese medicine, which is the colon. So in our world, it’s 970/27.
Kim Pittis:
Right. I was just going to pull up.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. And there’s a different frequency for a that’s a yang sort of terror.
Kim Pittis:
Okay.
Dr. Carol:
There’s a different frequency for yin fear. Worry over concern. That’s the kidney. Oh, interesting.
Kim Pittis:
Read it out loud for all the friends at home.
Dr. Carol:
This is John Mizer. Aloha. Follow up question from last week. Patient lost taste and smell, had parosmia. Distorted taste. Run all six virus frequencies. Ethmoid sinus, capillaries. Try the sensory cortex and the Vagus. She loves to eat. Loves, taste and smell after Covid. There you go. So she was unable to see her grandchildren due to not being vaccinated. Would you try 970? The taste is not on the tongue. You’re an flu brain and organs, try 92, which is the sensory cortex and try 109, which is the Vagus.
Kim Pittis:
Who had long Covid? Is that what I’m gathering so far?
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. So a lot of long Covid patients. The organ that’s associated is the Vagus. So there are different tissues that are affected by long Covid. And you run the. John, this is the first one, the Parosmia, which is when everything just smells disgusting and taste is a different thing. I haven’t treated change in taste, but this is the first. Smell problem that this protocol hasn’t worked on. So that’s good to know. I always get nervous when something always works 100% of the time.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah, because nothing ever is.
Dr. Carol:
No So there’s a group of OTs at this last two-day practicum in Troutdale. So they see patients with phantom limb pain and they’re all excited about being able to treat it. And they said, I’ve never had a failure. I’m almost to double digits with phantom limb pain and sometimes it’s a two-visit fix and sometimes it has to be repeated. Same thing with thalamic strokes, right? And I have trouble believing it’s going to work on everybody. At some point when you get to somebody it doesn’t work on, let me know and we can brainstorm. And see what’s going to work. Speaking of which, we’ve got 15 minutes left, I have to tell you. You ready?
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
Okay. So you know the room that you did the sports course in Troutdale.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
With the big vaulted ceiling?
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
Okay. So Friday we had this two-day practicum for people that have taken the course.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Online. And we’re setting up that room with tables. Friday afternoon is we’re setting it up, Kevin says. What if we rent this room from the landlord? And do the 5-day Core here and let them come to us.
Kim Pittis:
Oh.
Dr. Carol:
Now back when we started doing courses across the US, we were new and we needed to attract locals. So, we do advertising in that state and the three surrounding states. That’s back when you did things by paper.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
So it was regional and we had to go there. When we went to Denver, out of 20, 30 people in the course, there were only three people from Colorado and from California. They came from Canada, they came from Florida, they came from Texas, came from all over the country. And they came to Denver and 10 or even five years ago, the hotel bill would be 12 to $15,000 for a five-day Core. This one was $29,000. And I had to sleep in the Denver airport. It was like it was the last straw. Friday afternoon, Kevin says what would happen if we rented this room? I wonder how much would it be? I don’t know. He said, We’ll talk about it next week. And by then I’d already sent an email to the landlord and that room’s been vacant for a long time.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
It’s perfect for us.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And by Saturday afternoon, I had a yes. And by Monday morning, I had a conversation with the leasing agent.
Kim Pittis:
Perfect.
Dr. Carol:
And so we’re going to be doing five-day course in Troutdale. It’s so much simpler. And people are walking around the clinic, taking pictures of the treatment rooms, getting to see how it works in real time.
Kim Pittis:
That is huge. Like to see what a setup looks like and to be mentored. Like you said, in real time just to see how it works, because FSM courses are so different than any other course that you take. Like any course that I’ve taken in almost 25 years of practice, I am on the plane home knowing exactly how I’m going to implement it.
Dr. Carol:
Right?
Kim Pittis:
You don’t get that with FSM because there are so many practitioners from so many different fields. And even within that, like the chiropractor that I worked with in Calgary, saw somebody every five minutes. So that his model would not work with somebody who sees somebody once every half an hour. So I think you just get so many ideas when you see a clinic like yours in its entirety and then you can see, okay, now I know how this would work.
Dr. Carol:
Because that’s the biggest question people have at the end of the Core is how? How do I implement this? So there’s a couple of things you have to figure out how to deal with laundry. Are you going to buy towels, have a washer and dryer? We have one in a busy practice. I had a laundry service.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Pick up on Friday. Deliver on Monday. The deal was nothing scented, no fabric softener and they came in pre-folded. And then we just went them and put them in towel warmers.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And then you have to get used to how to deal with new patients because I don’t know about you but almost every FSM practitioner practice doubles in six months.
Kim Pittis:
Easy.
Dr. Carol:
And you have to figure out that the money you spend on the devices replaces your marketing budget because your patients become your marketing arm. And so there are those two adjustments. Then you have to have a cart and then we put hooks on the walls because if you put the leads anyplace, they will tie themselves into plant hangers So the word that it’s not just safety. It’s like vision. If you can see it. If you can vision it. It was such a no-brainer, but I was so stuck in my habit of doing things. You ship, you pack, you travel, you set up in a hotel, you do this, you do that. That’s the other thing. Troutdale is wonderful, quaint, cozy town.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Kim Pittis:
With sushi, bandits, Burger bar and pub, the burrito and taco shop downstairs. Pizza place across the way, the Italian place. Bronze sculptures everywhere, because it was a big bronze art bronze foundry at the end of the street.
Kim Pittis:
What’s that place that we went to…
Dr. Carol:
McMenamins And that’s the other thing at the end of the 5-day core because I’m not spending a fortune feeding everybody lunch. I can take the whole group to the Black Rabbit and we can have a private party. And all I have to do is rent a sleeping room and we can all use the hot tub.
Kim Pittis:
Yay!
Dr. Carol:
It has so much potential. I’m so excited.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
Literally that afternoon, Saturday or Sunday, I get a text from Dave Burke saying, Are you still coming to Cleveland? And it’s yeah, it’s there you go.
Kim Pittis:
That’s such a great idea. And it’s one of those simple ideas that you’re like, Yeah, that just makes so much sense. And what’s that’s one of your quotes, right? Be a student of student of easy.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. Sleeping in the Denver airport was the final straw. I’m too old for this. As everybody that comes to the course now has either taken it on video, heard about it from somebody who’s been treated or is using it.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
We don’t get anybody anymore that is completely novice to it. They’ve read the book, they’ve watched YouTube, they’ve watched various I’m just so excited. It’s going to be a 60-inch screen the projector will set it up permanently.
Kim Pittis:
You would just need to figure out blinds on that window. I think.
Dr. Carol:
That’s all. And I told the landlord that it’s like there’s no build-out. We’re going to put blinds up, blackout shades in the front.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And visions shades in the back. That’s it.
Kim Pittis:
That’s it. Because it’s beautiful and you don’t need to do anything. And you have all the space in the world and the clinic has a magical feeling when you walk in. And it’s something that everybody should experience. So I’m so happy for you. That is that’s great.
Dr. Carol:
I’m so excited.
Kim Pittis:
And it’s such a quick flight for me to come up and participate and hang out so
Dr. Carol:
There’s the FSM sports, but there’s I’ve been telling people when they ask about how do you rehab them? And I said, then you have to take Kim’s class and it’s FSM sports, but it’s really FSM, PM&R Rehab. So rehab is that’s the next step. How do you exercise it? How do you connect the mechanical change. You can’t teach everybody in your class to know what you know after 25 years of doing what you do or 20 years of doing what you do because you learned it from guys who were doing it for 20 years. And by the way, I had a Canadian massage therapist that was osteopathic trained.
Kim Pittis:
Yes, they’re going to do fantastic with this.
Dr. Carol:
Or she’s just you can see her salivating. It was so much fun.
Kim Pittis:
It’s so exciting. And I do think we’ll need to like rebrand FSM Sports. So FSM Rehab or FSM PM&R, we’ll we’ll change it up because my vision and my happiness and my comfort zone is still working with athletes. But everyone is an athlete deep down inside. Right? My goal is to get everybody moving better, regardless of ability, age, background. We all need the fundamentals of movement and that is always my goal. And if you’ve taken the sports course, we’re not like doing these complex Olympic lifting. We’re learning how to walk. We’re learning how to sit in a chair, how to stand up from a chair, basic things that everybody needs to learn and relearn after they’ve had any kind of injury. So, that’s on the horizon.
Dr. Carol:
Every practitioner that takes the core needs to know how to go from the fix-it part, which is what I teach to the rehab part to what you teach. And not everybody treats athletes a very small percentage,
Kim Pittis:
Right.
Dr. Carol:
But everybody treats people that need rehab.
Kim Pittis:
That’s right.
Dr. Carol:
So we’ll talk about rebranding.
Kim Pittis:
We have all the ideas.
Dr. Carol:
We do. I’m so excited My whole nervous system just.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
Calm down. It’s so fun.
Speaker2:
The thing I love about the FSM courses and the Advanced especially and the Symposium is once you learn FSM, there is a gift that you are gifted and you relearn everything, you relearn physiology, you relearn anatomy, you learn psychology. There are so many aspects that just start sparking in your brain that you never… So you’re gifted this openness of the word that I’m looking for.
Dr. Carol:
Connectedness. Everything is connected to everything.
Kim Pittis:
It is.And you can get as expansive or as myopic as you want with both of those terms. But just really quickly, I was mentoring last week and one of the comments was, how do you know all this?
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
And I said I know. I go, This has created a little monster inside of me. I am a better diagnostician, I am a better palpator. I am just a better practitioner because of FSM. And so you always talk about changing medicine and changing the world and changing every. And we talk about quality of life for a patient. But I think we have to have a little bit of gratitude for what how we are changing practitioners first and foremost to just be better. And my goal as a mom over the summer is showing my kids, their goal is to just make every change, change someone’s life a little bit better every single day. Can you leave the world a little bit better on Wednesday, then you did on Tuesday? And so I think, yeah, it’s been a big gift to be an instructor and to help practitioners become better because that again is that ripple effect. It’s going to improve patient quality of care and everything else.
Dr. Carol:
On one of the nice things about being in the community is I’ve worked with people over the last 27, however many years that know more than I do in their particular field and am shameless. It’s oh, that’s a good idea that fits here. And now I know one little piece of what he knows, but the piece that he knows fits into what I know and when I apply it within my matrix. Oh, and then there was you. And then Robert Grimm taught me how to do histories. He’s a neurologist, was a neurologist. But we got the same circling the drain patients when I started with the chronic pain and fibromyalgia practice and I got to go sit in the corner and watch him take a history and do a physical neurologic exam. Just sat in the corner and watched. He always started at the beginning. He never read the other notes or diagnoses before he saw the patient. He always did a complete neurologic exam and he came up with his own diagnosis and then he might compare it to the previous diagnoses. And he asked him one time, what do you do that? And he said, if the other diagnoses were correct, she wouldn’t still be in this mess. Right. And it’s the FSM community so we used to I’ve actually changed the slides in the supine cervical practicum because for core years ago, the three instructors used 40 reduce inflammation in the disc annulus and there were three instructors in the room, one of whom was Sue Battle, and she said, I use 124. It works better than 40. And the other two instructors said, Yeah, me too. And it’s really I’ve never used 124 and 710 Oh yeah. If you think about it, the reason that the disc annulus is inflamed is that it’s got little cracks in it. So if you do 124 first, you still have to treat inflammation.
Kim Pittis:
You’re right. You’ve got to go. What’s the cause? Where did it start?
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. So you borrow from everybody that knows everything and or knows something. And it makes that’s the flexibility part.
Kim Pittis:
Yes
Dr. Carol:
The learning curve that you describe It’s linear.
Kim Pittis:
Yeah.
Dr. Carol:
And the other nice thing about FSM is that FSM will teach you the response to the frequencies is predictable and reproducible. And the response to the frequencies will teach you everything you need to know. The Core seminar is the tip of the iceberg. The real learning.
Kim Pittis:
Part of saying You’re welcome and I’m sorry for what about to happen to your brain?
Dr. Carol:
Exactly. And your fingers.
Kim Pittis:
Yes. So it’s funny, I had a quote picked out and I’m like, I’m not sure if this is going to be perfect or not. And it just ended up being so perfect the way you brought us home talking about the FSM community. Here’s the quote.
“The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned” Maya Angelou.
Dr. Carol:
By who?
Kim Pittis:
Maya Angelou.
Dr. Carol:
Oh, yes.
Kim Pittis:
And that is how I feel about going to the Advanced and the Symposium where we have these extremely diverse community. But we can all talk in numbers and not be questioned and just feel that sense of safety and community.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. And it’s 4:00 again.
Kim Pittis:
Look how we did that.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah.
Kim Pittis:
All right. It’s so great to be back because some little misses and stuff. But that’s the summertime. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Happy birthday, Derek.
Dr. Carol:
Happy birthday, Derek. Happy birthday, Kevin.
Kim Pittis:
Happy birthday, Kevin and Derek. Yes.
Dr. Carol:
And everybody else who’s I have this thing. Be it what you just said?
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
Every day is a day of birth. You start over every morning.
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
Every day is a birthday.
Kim Pittis:
Yes.
Dr. Carol:
Because you have a chance to make new decisions every day. New learning every day.
Kim Pittis:
Yep.
Dr. Carol:
You’re reborn every day.
Kim Pittis:
What a gift.
Dr. Carol:
Yeah. So what is 76 x 306? That’s a lot of birthdays.
Kim Pittis:
Just keep counting them. Keep racking those up. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of your week and we’ll see you next week.
Dr. Carol:
See you next week. Bye.
Kim Pittis:
Good job today.
The Frequency Specific Microcurrent podcast has been produced by Frequency Specific Seminars for entertainment, educational and information purposes only. The information and opinion provided in the podcast are not medical advice. Do not create any type of doctor-patient relationship and unless expressly stated, do not reflect the opinions of its affiliates, subsidiaries or sponsors or the host or any of the podcast guests or affiliated professional organizations. No person should act or refrain from acting on the basis of the content provided in any podcast without first seeking appropriate medical advice and counseling. No information provided in any podcast should be used as a substitute for personalized medical advice and counseling. FSS expressly disclaims any and all liability relating to any actions taken or not taken based on any contents of this podcast.
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