Why Your Pain Won’t Go Away - Dr. Matt Delgado

The modern healthcare system won't help you heal. It's designed to keep you sick and dependent on drugs. If you want to get well, you've got to get out of the system. You've found Predictive Health Clinic. Join us as we get well and stay healthy.

Jack Heald: My guest today is Dr. Matt Delgado. Let's jump right in. What one specific health issue do you wish to address today? 

Matt Delgado: Treating symptoms versus the root cause and what that even means. 

Jack Heald: What got you interested in this particular issue?

Matt Delgado: Yeah being a chiropractor, I think most people that come in to a chiropractor's office would be people in pain, but usually it's an acute flare-up of a chronic issue, and that chronic issue many times has been there for I'd say years, but usually years and most people typically don't realize that almost any disease process takes years to develop, but Pretty instantaneously, we might feel symptoms and it can lead us to believe that they just came on, pretty suddenly.

Jack Heald: Let's go to the third question. What's the biggest popular misconception from your perspective about this issue with root cause versus presenting symptoms? 

Matt Delgado: Yeah, I think time is the biggest factor around it, and I think we're so sold on this idea that everything can be fixed, air quotes on that fixed word, because I don't think we're ever broken or fixed when it comes to our health.

Our health is really a process, and most I think we're you know, any disease process takes time to develop and it takes time to correct. And I think to better illustrate that, if you go into any of the treatment rooms in my office, there's a picture of, you probably heard this story, the straw that broke the camel's back and the last straw is usually what brings chiropractor's office, but many times the doctor in general, right?

In a chiropractor's office, we might hear things like, I slept wrong last night, so my neck hurts. Or I bent down to pick something up and I threw my back out. But it couldn't have been the air quotes. I'm using air quotes because people will say it's a fender bender I was in 10 years ago, but I wasn't injured.

The airbags went off. It was a 40-mile-an-hour accident. But I wasn't injured. I wasn't hurt. And what they mean is I didn't have any symptoms at the time. It could have been that, and it couldn't have been sitting at a desk eight hours a day for the last 10 years. But what it could have been was this pillow had to have been the pillow and I slept wrong and that pillow is causing my 10 years worth of neck problems. 

Jack Heald: I think I know the answer to the follow-up question. 

Matt Delgado: Yeah. Healing takes time. We were just talking about, you're pointing out there's a helmet of a lot of UT football player that I'll take care of. One of the favorite interactions I have with a UT football guy who came into my office to see me, he says, what I love about this the most is you're not telling me that you have some quick solution for me.

He goes, everyone tries to tell you that as a pro athlete, but he goes, I know things take time. You can't see the best trainer in the world. It doesn't matter how good they are. One workout. I don't care who's training you. Your biceps are not going to be bigger. It just doesn't work like that. Or one salad.

It doesn't matter who's preparing the salad. It's not going to work like that. So time takes time. 

Jack Heald: I remember when I had my own health crisis and it was when I first got serious about all alternatives to the typical way of dealing with health issues.

The doctor who ultimately helped me heal, I said to him how long is this going to take doc? And I'll never forget his answer. He said, you didn't get into this overnight. I'm not going to get out of it overnight. 

Matt Delgado: Great answer. 

Jack Heald: It sounds like the, to reframe the issue, most health issues are not something that just flared up from whatever the last event was that you happen to remember, but it's more likely something that has been developing over time.

Matt Delgado: So think of, I think another good example to think of here and something I'll use in practice with people is when you think of something like diabetes, imagine someone, who finds out they have diabetes in a doctor's office, if they were to say it had to have been the blue skittle that I had last Thursday, because before that blue skittle, I did not have diabetes.

It had to have been that blue skittle. And we tend to be so short-minded, and myself included with my own health challenges. I'm not immune to it either. I've had plenty of my own times where I've, wow, this has been months to years of, or habits in the making. And now my expression of symptoms has come on pretty suddenly.

So symptoms are a smart response that tells a deeper story. And usually that deeper story, when we talk about root cause, that's really what we're talking about and many times it takes a series of questions or an expert to help guide us there 

Jack Heald: Let's go a little deeper. You're a chiropractor. So you tend to work at a specific type of modality that works to resolve these long-term issues.

So let's frame your answer inside. The context of the type of modalities, healing modalities that you practice. How would you encourage someone that they need to pay attention to? How would somebody recognize I've got a problem developing rather than waiting until it's a full-blown issue? If you could address that from the standpoint of chiropractic care.

Matt Delgado: Yeah. Great question. So what brings most people into a chiropractic office is pain, but usually, when we get to the root of it, it's something in the past that they had that wasn't fully resolved injury-wise, like a fender bender or lifestyle habits, like sitting at a desk and more of my lens as a chiropractor is the nervous system, the brain and the spinal cord.

That's what controls every Perception in our body, but also including things like pain and things like tight muscles or the way our body moves and every Organ that functions in our body digestion immune system mood energy sleep. These are all things controlled by the nervous system. So Some of the early signs that we might look for actually made a poster of this and it's on one of my walls in my office Because we're not taught what to look for or early things that precede pain Early warning signs.

Early warning signs that could precede pain, if we're talking more about a physical manifestation of something in our life that's wrong from a chiropractor's lens, could be things like feeling uncomfortable sitting for long periods in certain positions. 

If you fly on an airplane and you feel like you can't get comfortable on an airplane or you're sitting at a desk and you feel like you can't get comfortable sitting at a desk and you always fidgeting or you need a pillow propping you. 

That's one sign. Feeling of needing to stretch or foam roll multiple times a day. That's common. That's not normal. 

Jack Heald: Common, but not normal. 

Matt Delgado: Common, but not normal. So again, maybe tension between our shoulder blades, our neck feels really tight and really achy, and we feel like we're always needing to stretch it or maybe even pop it, popping our own neck and back.

That can give really good short-term relief. But the detriment of that is it actually creates a new problem, ligament instability and hypermobility. And I know because I used to do it. 

Nobody told me not to do it. I had sports injuries and that has led to some pretty significant discomfort in my neck and I didn't really know what to do about it.

So I was taken when I was 15 years old, ibuprofen and I'd pop my own neck. And I got pretty good at popping my own neck. I'd made a lot of noise with it, but it didn't do anything to help me. Long term. So I say all those things are things that we can look out for as early detectors or early signs of maybe unhealthy joints in our body or an unhealthy spine.

Jack Heald: Okay. So say a listener or viewer recognizes themselves in your description of early warning signs. What's the likely outcome if they fail to take action? 

Matt Delgado: Great question. They're going to have more frequent flare-ups. And what I mean by that is bouts of pain where they may wake up and be like, Whoa, my neck hurts.

I can barely move it. I can barely turn it. And most likely those flare-ups are going to go away on their own. But if you ignore those long enough, those flare-ups will become more frequent in nature and more severe in nature.

And if you ignore those long enough, then you're gonna tend to develop, a named disease or disorder. And the process that's taking place there, that's breaking down is we call it osteoarthritis. It's wear and tear of the joints. It's just signs that your joints are wearing out. And if we choose to not actively do something about it, then they'll wear out.

We are pretty, most people listening to this probably understand we can get a new car, there's no problem there if it wears out. We cannot trade our body in as a certain point and then your only option might be surgery and surgery for something like osteoarthritis. It isn't necessarily going to get rid of someone's pain.

It's about a coin flip on the effectiveness of it. And some of the potential risk factors are pretty significant when we talk about spinal surgery as well, not to mention the cost. 

Jack Heald: So what specific steps can someone who recognizes themselves here take in order to prevent or avoid these undesirable outcomes?

Matt Delgado: Yep. Doing more, I'd say, most people are drawn to stretches. Stretches are great for quick symptom relief. That's why we're drawn to them. But they don't do much for us long term. More corrective exercise is what I'd recommend, and that's building Healthy joints, corrective exercises, stability exercises or moves that are designed to think of a physical therapy type exercises that are designed to help create healthy joints.

So that's something that we can do on our own taking more frequent breaks also, if we work at a desk or if we're sitting most of the day, we're meant to be moving. And someone might say I have a standing desk. So do I. Then I'm just. standing up instead of rotting, sitting down.

We're meant to move. So I'd say those are the two free things that people can do on their own. And I think the third really is seeing a chiropractor. Chiropractors are the specialists when it comes to the spine and the nervous system, the nervous system controls, literally everything.

So it's not just about symptom management, but really bigger picture is health optimization, longevity, and how do we preserve the health of our spine and our nervous system so we can live to a hundred like we're meant to. 

Jack Heald: Can you point us in a direction of identifying the types of corrective exercises we can do on our own?

Matt Delgado: Sure. I've built a couple of guides. One of the guides is for people with back pain, and even if you don't have back pain, there are all things that you can do also, and I actually worked remotely last year.

You're more on the business than in the business, not as a chiropractor. And I would use these same exercises myself. Things like a bird dog or a glue bridge. If you're familiar with those those are a couple of them that are in the guide and it's really just meant to create a healthier spine if you already have a healthy spine and it's meant to help get rid of pain if you have pain.

Jack Heald: Okay. So we'll, we can link those in the show notes, both the guides and the YouTube channel. Excellent. All right. Let's talk about Matt Delgado's practice. What's the best compliment the nicest compliment that you recall getting as a result of your practice? 

Matt Delgado: That we listened.

And this was something that you know who I'm about to mention here. His name is Brian Eisenberg. He's a friend of both of ours, I believe. And Brian helped me discover that pretty early on through reading. He encouraged me to read my Google reviews. And now we've got maybe, I don't know, 350 Google reviews, but at the time I had maybe 50.

And the trend that I noticed in him was he listens and I think that's really important because people's story is what really should drive our testing. And they always hold a lot of answers that are important. And it's up to us as a practitioner to hear them and just ask the right questions. 

Jack Heald: I'm reluctant to hammer people. But I'm also reluctant not to highlight something you. I want to highlight what you just said. If your healthcare practitioner is not able to, because of outside constraints, listen to you or simply doesn't listen to you for whatever reason, that's an early warning sign that you've got a healthcare practitioner who.

For whatever reason is unable to help you heal for whatever reason is not practicing the healing arts. The mission of this show is twofold. One it's to help the world heal and two, it's to help healthcare practitioners return to practicing the healing arts. So I'm going to ask the painful question now.

What's the most common complaint? 

Matt Delgado: Yeah, I gotcha. That one's not, I don't have to think long for that one. And fortunately that we don't accept health insurance and I get it because I have health insurance. I think I pay 500 a month for Health insurance, and Jack, I don't use it on any of the providers that I see regularly.

I've got it in my back pocket in case of a catastrophe or emergency, but I don't use my own health insurance because I dabble more in the proactive health model. And unfortunately, insurance is not designed to cover health optimization. It's designed to cover symptom management, and I am not in the business of symptom management.

That's where we start, but most people that stick with us are for health optimization. 

Jack Heald: Repeat what you just said. 

Matt Delgado: I'm not in the business of symptom management. That's where people start is for symptoms, but they stay with us for health optimization and insurance does not cover health optimization, which is true health.

They cover reactive care, which is symptom management. That is why we are one of the sickest countries in the world. We ranked, I think dead last every year in these third-party studies among industrialized countries when it comes to overall health. We make up what, of all the entire world. I think we take over half the world's drugs, but we're like 5 percent of the world's population and we rank dead last.

So you do the math. Our whole approach is off. So I'm not going to play the game. And I get it. It's a pain in the butt. I finally, Just giving up and put it in my back pocket. And if it covers something one day, so be it. But that's my that's that's my card just in case I break a bone.

Jack Heald: But the common complaint is you don't take insurance. All right. So the big one, question nine, if you had a single health message you wanted to deliver to the world, and you could only use eight words or less. What would that message be? 

Matt Delgado: Being proactive saves time and money. 

Jack Heald: That applies to more than just health.

Matt Delgado: Yes, it does. 

Jack Heald: Very good. Being proactive saves time and money. Thank you very much, Matt Delgado. We will post your information in the show notes, but for those who are listening right now, tell us how folks can get ahold of those guides and your YouTube channel. 

Matt Delgado: I'd say Instagram is the best way @Dr.MattDelgado, D-R. M-A-T D-E-L-G-A-D-O. You'll find it in my bio. I've got some guides to help with some of the stuff you might be experiencing at home. And there's a lot of health educational videos that can help you get started if you're a beginner 

Jack Heald: This has been Predictive Health, the podcast. We'll talk to you next time.

Listen up. We are the Wizard of Ads. For 40 years, we've created dominant brands in a variety of industries. Now, we're bringing our magic to healthcare. We're seeking one extraordinary healthcare practitioner to help us build the first national brand in direct primary care. If you think you could be that person, let's talk. Email us at health@wizardofads.com.

Tell us why you think you're the one. That's health@wizardofads.com.

Brought to you by, wizardofads.services