Dr. Christine and I spend a lot of time each year learning from seminars and conferences and implenting what fits our healthcare philosophy and workflow to provide the best care we can deliver to our patients.
Here are some of the highlights and insights from attending a Summer full of learning opportunities from various speakers, vendors, and industry leaders.
CALCHIRO SPORTS SYMPOSIUM 2022
So many great vendors in the sports symposium, but one that stood out was ROCKTAPE's introduction of the RockPods VIBE. These are cupping devices used to assist soft tissue manipulation WHILE applying vibration therapy built into the accessory. This device allows the provider to 'soften' their approach to chronic pain and sensitive tissues that need to be mobilized as an adjunct to other manual therapies like Chiropractic manipulation.
TSAC 2022: Tactical Strength and Conditioning Conference.
San Antonio, Texas
The National Strength and Conditioning Association is the leading organization for strength training professionals, coaches, and trainers. Their TSAC is a branch of their sports science specialty that has been adapted to the military, law and fire personnel who operate at high risk & high stakes performance levels.
One of the most difficult applications of adapting sports science principles to the tactical personnel is that specialized skills (such as movement screens, corrective exercises, biometrics, and testing scenarios) need to be applied in high volume to recruits, cadets, and platoons of soldiers. You can see it would be time intensive, and an investment into personnel that has great possibilities, but at high cost. Often times the vendors are offering the most high tech devices and programs, but implementation could be sluggish when dealing with government or county officials. A provider or professional has to make the proposal, show cost effectiveness, and reasonable implementation timeline that by the time all of these monumental tasks are achieved, the devices and programs would have evolved.
There are so many more questions to how we can be resourceful at the same time be progressive with our new technology and training methods, and many tactical personnel often reach out to their providers by their own personal pursuit, rather than sponsorship by department or platoon's organization.
One of the fun portions of going to conferences is meeting new vendors and learning about what's on the horizon for devices, programs and services.
Dynamax is a company that produces various medicine balls and weighted ballistic products that you can lift/throw/slam/roll/kick or beat up....all to make workouts harder, more fun, and more applicable to the tactical and athletic setting. I got to take the Dynamax SLOG (a 60 lbs ballistic roll thing..) after doing a water bottle flipping it into a standing vertical position! Check out other ways to use it on the video.
Fun with burpee variations:
Dynamax SLOG is a very durable piece of equipment. We used it as a jumping and landing surface while doing burpees. Later on, we picked it up and threw it accross our lawn.
BIOHACKING CONFERENCE 2022, Beverly Hills, CA.
We got to meet so many great providers of healthcare and wellness professionals who have taken a bold step in their practice...to pursue an education that is not sponsored by the Pharmaceutical industry. It's not an understatement to say that our university and higher education system has been influenced by Big Pharma for too many decades. The pharmaceutical industry has influenced the Western medicine to become a reactive form of care rather than proactive form of wellness. For every symptom...a headache, back pain, diarrhea, etc...there is a prescription form of medicine. Proactive wellness asks..."Why do you have a headache, back pain, diarrhea, etc.." and finds a way to test and change your lifestyle, or intervene in the state you are in to prevent that problem from continuing.
Biohackers use techonolgy, testing, and collective information to derive a lifestyle or make choices in their lives which can affect their biology. Finding ways to economize time, energy, and even the financial burdens of trial and error turns ordinary medical consumers in our current healthcare system into a proactive consumers who chooses their doctors, products and services more wisely and economically to meet their wellness goals.
The most interesting thing about Biohacking is that it can be expensive, cost prohibitive, and time consuming. Between vitamins, supplements, hot saunas, cryotreatments, ice baths, robotic work-outs, cooking with infra-red light, brain exercises, Hydrogen infused water, Oxygen infused IV treatments, weight lifting, cardio, hyperbaric chamber...the list goes on...and it doesn't include the time you need to cook, clean, work, drive, shop, and pick up your kids!
All of the above, so we can live more like o
ur great grandparents at the turn of the 20th century. When adults actually worked outside, walked to the store, were exposed to the sun, the ocean, and the snow; We we lived more in relation to one another instead of social media relations; When we had nutrient dense foods; When processed foods were a luxury, not a staple; When we had no blue light at night so we can have a normal Circadian rhythm; When can sleep soundly after a day of hard work.
Our gyms, nutritional supplements, cryo and heat therapies, EMF blockers, and so many of the high tech devices to measure our biometrics is really there to help us live as our ancestors did...connected to the ground, to one another, to our natural resources, and to our work ethic. Think of Rocky IV training montage.