Your Body Is More Like a Plant

Dr. Ed: Welcome back to the TCP podcast. I have an incredible guest today. We basically did a whole podcast before we started recording. Dr. Matt Delgado. Matt, how are you doing today?

Dr. Matt: I’m doing great, thank you. I’m really excited for the conversation. I think I found you on social. Some people feel like it’s a little odd that I troll people on social, Facebook and Instagram especially, but I’m really just looking for people who are interesting, and I go, this would be a really good conversation. I go with my gut on those.

Dr. Ed: And like you said before we started recording, excellent timing. Why don’t you share with our listeners a little about you, and then we’ll drop into the conversation.

Dr. Matt: For sure. I’m with you, by the way. I’ve met so many friends randomly through Instagram, and it’s even replaced the traditional BNI networks for me. I’d rather find people to network with that I find interesting or that I like. So the human side of me is what I’ll always lead with. As a human, I like to travel. I play pickleball. Anything outdoors, adventurous, good food. I’m a coffee nerd and a health nerd both. I like to read. I obsess over the little details with things. That’s probably what got me into home espresso 15 years ago, and it’s something I carry into the way I practice too, as a chiropractor.

Dr. Ed: That’s very cool. How long have you been in practice now?

Dr. Matt: About 10 years. It’ll be my 10 years December 9th of this year.

Dr. Ed: So if you look back at where the profession was when you came out 10 years ago, what would you say is the most drastic difference between then and today?

Dr. Matt: What a good question. Looking back, I’m going to cast this a little wider than our profession, because I think it’s outside of it too. There’s so much information out there. There’s probably a new problem people have, which is I’m overwhelmed, I’m confused, because everything seems so logical and I don’t know what to do. You see a huge variance even with modalities that are new or different now. You have Shockwave. We didn’t have that, or at least it wasn’t super popular years ago. So just more changes, and social media is so much bigger than it was. There’s a lot more information everywhere, which I think has confused people.

Dr. Ed: It’s more difficult to make a decision, I think, for patients and the public in general. But there’s also more information available at our fingertips than ever before. We can fact-check someone so fast now. And with AI, especially in the last few years, it’s changed so much. I’m in Austin, and you’re in Austin. When I first started my practice, there was a lot less competition, or at least a lot fewer people in healthcare doing similar things.

Dr. Matt: There’s become more and more, and you see a lot more peripheral coaches of just about anything, whether it’s a nervous system coach or a coach for gut and nutrition. Which are great. There’s a space for everybody. But to your point, I think it can be harder than ever to make a decision when it comes to health.

Dr. Ed: The confusion. But I always feel like there’s chaos before some big change in how our profession or the world functions. I think some interesting things are going to happen between now and 2028. I want to circle back, because you’ve been in practice for 10 years, and your first year was not the typical year of a graduate. The universe threw something else at you.

Dr. Matt: You got me early. I’m going to show you this, since we’re on video. I got a bunch of goosebumps on my arm, and I get that when I really feel something. For me, that first year was a curveball I was not expecting. I took an associate position in Nebraska, which I didn’t expect of all places. Three months into that job, I was facing some significant health concerns. I had extreme fatigue. My hair was falling out in chunks in my hand, which really freaked me out, and gut pain, tension all over my body. I ended up going to a local functional medicine practitioner, and I was told I have Graves’ disease. I’m expediting this story, because it didn’t happen so quickly. My TSH came back normal. I know there are chiropractors listening to this, so they’ll know more of the details there. But I was told I have Graves’ disease, and I felt horrible in my body. So I quit my job. It was on a Tuesday afternoon. I was mid-shift, and I thought, enough is enough, I cannot push through this any longer. That was hard for me, because I’d never really quit anything. I played sports my whole life and had always been part of something bigger than myself. So I quit my job, moved to the desert, lived with family, and lived a really boring, slow life for about a year.

Over that year, I tried quite a few things to combat this Graves’ disease, because what I learned in school was you refer to a medical doctor. And the medical doctors wanted to either cut my thyroid out or put me on radioactive drugs to kill my thyroid, and either way I’m on medication the rest of my life. That didn’t sit well with me. So I tried all these natural protocols and supplements. I called reps I had connections with. I spent a lot of time, energy, and money, and all of it seemed really logical. Some people said it’s your adrenals, heal your adrenals. Or you should detox your liver. Or you’ve got to heal your gut, leaky gut. I tried a lot of different protocols and supplements galore. I had a whole list for all the supplements, when to take them, so I wouldn’t forget. I probably had 20 a day I was taking.

Dr. Ed: Wow.

Dr. Matt: None of that worked for me significantly. And if I’m being totally honest, the tail end of trying all these protocols is probably when I felt my lowest, because that’s when the fear came in of, this might be permanent, I might have to live with this the rest of my life. And I found my way to surrender, thank God. I stepped back a little bit. I didn’t have words for this at the time, but I put myself in the right conditions. I lived a really simple life. I slept a lot. I watched comedy shows. I went for walks outside and hikes in the sun, and I ate nothing but good food. I stopped drinking alcohol for a year, which was hard for me at the time. I was 27, and my social life was probably dependent on being in those situations. So I learned to live a little different. Fast-forward a year later, and it went into remission, and it’s been there ever since.

Dr. Ed: Wow. So when you were quote-unquote diagnosed, how did that feel? You must have had this inner turmoil, this dialogue of, I’m a chiropractor, I’m new, I’ve put all this time into my education financially. And we’re very service-driven, so there’s always that guilt of, I need to be doing more. How did you balance that between, I need to heal my body, and the doctor taking their own advice?

Dr. Matt: Talk about an identity crisis. And a familiar one, because I know you have students listening. Even in school, when you first go from student clinic to outpatient clinic, I remember I felt like I was playing dress-up at first, like I’m dressing up as a doctor, and then you become it with more practice. In the same way, I had this identity coming out of school, this new graduated chiropractor, I’m going to change the world, and I still believe that, but it’s like a hero with a cape on. So to be handed a label and this diagnosis really threatened my identity at a deep layer that I had not felt, and it took a lot of wrestling to find acceptance. I felt like a fraud in a way, honestly, because I felt like, how am I supposed to lead people to better health when I have this label?

Dr. Ed: I want to acknowledge you, because I know a lot of chiropractors who wouldn’t give themselves that time to heal. And I’m a different generation of chiropractor. I’m 55. My generation has a different mindset when it comes to practice versus someone coming out at 27 or 30. Not that it’s wrong, but different.

Dr. Matt: I do think that. And you’ve seen my videos, so I get to show my hands with this. There’s a line from a Garth Brooks documentary. He’s my favorite. He quoted his dad saying, everything that’s a blessing is a curse, and everything that’s a curse is a blessing. So I say this with that context, that you get good and bad with either side. But what I witnessed and lived through was that when I was in a more traditional, old-school model for my generation, there was a real excellence and a discipline that I’m so grateful I received. But the other side I overlooked right out of school, especially as a young male, was, oh, just grind, grind, grind, it’ll all be worth it. And it blew up in my face at 27.

Dr. Ed: I’ve had my health challenges and still do, which is part of the reason I’m in this seat. And I still struggle with it today. I wish every day that I was still in practice seeing people. I wish I’d never stepped away. So anyone listening, don’t ever park your license. Keep it active, because someday you may regret it. Part of our revival series is really to reconnect the different generations of chiropractors, because I feel there’s such a dichotomy. The new generation’s values are different than the older generation’s.

Dr. Matt: The values. And I think the big shift is time versus money, to name one. There are probably many. But the currency the younger generation values more is time, where the currency I’ve seen from the older generation is money. Both have value. It’s just where you place it. Every associate I’ve hired, I’ve had seven or eight, they’ve all been Millennial or Gen Z, and time has been the thing. Time off, work-life balance. A lot of that has been our parents having their own blowups and wanting to do things a little different. And bless their hearts, everyone tries, and we all still mess it up. We’re all imperfect.

Dr. Ed: So the associates you’re bringing in, you see they’re not necessarily in it to build a massive practice and scale horizontally, but to have time and experience life. Experiences are more valuable.

Dr. Matt: I think both. Some people want the massive clinics, but a lot of them don’t, from who I’ve talked to. They want to establish themselves and develop more skills first before opening, and there’s a real beauty to doing that.

Dr. Ed: So your experience going through this turmoil, the emotional and physical challenges, now you’ve written or you’re almost ready to publish your book.

Dr. Matt: It’s been written. I’m just doing a few final edits and design things. My greatest challenges became my greatest lessons, and there’s more to it. Six years into my career is an interesting one, where I tripped over this truth that became the whole premise of the book. My mom passed from cancer, and two or three years later I got my first Insight scan. I’d found my way back to them through friends who were using them and getting great results, quantifying neurological function in the body. I saw my own first scan, and I was in disbelief. I said, no, I think this is wrong. I called a friend, said, will you look at these, I think this is wrong. She said, yeah, I think it’s wrong, rescan yourself. So, Dr. Ed, I rescanned myself three times, and the same thing showed up on all three scans. It was a nervous system under extreme stress, far worse than I could’ve imagined. Through a series of events, I slowly made my way into the model I use in practice now, and I gave you this line, our whole worldview for how we see the body. It’s treating the body more like a plant than a car.

Dr. Ed: Expand on that. Because the check engine light analogy is one so many chiropractors use.

Dr. Matt: This is where we might ruffle a few feathers, but hear me out, and we’re more similar than we are different. For years, and I’m using my own story here, not other chiropractors, I would adjust people when something hurt, and it goes away. But what I didn’t realize was the trends and patterns over time, and that’s where scans help you see them. You repair a part that breaks down in someone. It might be the shoulder, the knee, the low back. They get better, then it comes back. Better, then it comes back. The difference between treating the body like a car versus a plant, let me ask you a question. I don’t expect you to be a plant expert, but humor me. I see there’s a plant behind you. If you put that plant in the closet because you were cleaning your desk, and you forget about it for a few months and come back and it’s droopy, how would you bring it back to life?

Dr. Ed: I’d give it sunlight and water.

Dr. Matt: Beautiful. I’ve asked thousands of people that same question, and no one has ever said, I’d prop the branches up, or I’d put some powders on it to get it to grow back. And how did you know that? You’re not a plant expert. How did you know to give it sunlight and water?

Dr. Ed: Partly it goes back to grade school, but I think it’s mostly common sense. Common sense and lived experience.

Dr. Matt: Amen. And I think we’ve lost common sense and story. My story is the proof. I put myself in the right conditions. For humans, I’d say there are four simple but not easy conditions. When we put ourselves in the right conditions, we heal. We’re more like a plant than a car. We’re designed to heal. And those four conditions are sleep, stress, movement, and toxins. You optimize for those things, which is what I did over my year without realizing it, and you give it long enough, and it comes back to life.

Dr. Ed: That brings up the old question. As chiropractors, shouldn’t the body be able to self-regulate and self-heal? Are we interfering with that process when we apply the adjustment? I know the principle of limitations to matter. Who are we to say that the universe, God, whatever, put the subluxation there for a reason?

Dr. Matt: Great question. I could talk for an hour, but I’ll try to shorten it, and if you want me to expand, ask. The whole premise of why I transitioned into a neurologic model is that I came to understand this root system in the body that we can’t see, same as in the plant, touches everything and controls everything. And when you optimize it, all the branches improve. It’s connected to everything. So I had to learn a system that looked at that. Torque release is the primary system I built from. My method is called the TriChord Method. It’s three parts, but the main part is torque release, using a functional leg reflex to find a primary subluxation. I didn’t learn that in school. Let me just say everything works. I did the structural thing for years too, and it worked, and people got better. Even a quick pain-based approach, you go to the joint, it works. I’m grateful it exists. But the more neurologic-focused stuff, when you put lifestyle with it, because lifestyle is the same system. So the adjustment, in my opinion, is the amplifier. I wasn’t seeking regular chiropractic care when I reversed my autoimmune diagnosis. Can we heal without it? Yes. But what I’ve found with more data and more cases is that the limitations often exist because the cumulative strain on the system is greater than someone’s capacity to heal. And these scans help bring that to the surface. Where the future of the profession is going, we were talking about Trevor Kolb bringing something like an EEG, so we can measure the networks in the brain that control the whole show and start to quantify how much capacity the body has to heal, so people become their own best healer. We give them agency. That’s what we should all have.

Dr. Ed: How important do you think it is? Is the technology to demonstrate change in the nervous system more important for the patient, or more important for the doctor?

Dr. Matt: I love that you asked, and I’m going to use your own words. I asked you how you knew to bring that plant back to life. You didn’t say you read a research article. So the answer to my question is, it’s not for the patient. It’s for the doctor. I was in a room recently with some brilliant minds, one of the most well-known researchers in our profession, 10 of us, and we had an EEG on someone, and there were investors in the room. One of the scientists, who’s brilliant, was trying to explain to an investor layperson why this EEG mattered, and she was so confused. So I said, can I give it a shot? I asked her about the plant, and she got it right. Then when I said the neurological system is the root system and this just lets us measure that system, she said, oh, that makes a lot of sense. So it could be for both, but it’s the story we tell behind it. Data’s important, but if we use it to choke people out, we get overwhelmed.

Dr. Ed: I’m so fascinated with AI and where we’re going, and it’s accelerating so quickly. I see something like a neurological scan, and even in a year, if you applied AI and expanded it exponentially into 100 offices, with permission you upload that data, who the person is, their demographics, the course of care, the adjustments. Imagine all of that uploaded to a cloud and AI analyzing it. That’s where our profession would really accelerate, because we’ll have the proof everyone’s been asking for, in real time. It’s like Meta and Facebook. The real value isn’t the software, it’s the data, the people.

Dr. Matt: I tell people with our Insight scans, it’s a data company, and it is, because of the relativity you can give someone’s scans based on other experiences. That’s why a practitioner’s experience becomes more valuable, because they have that relativity. Thousands of archives in their brain, files they can pull from to compare, and you start to model certain cases after others. But I’ll nudge us back, and I’d say I don’t think we can get lost in that. Like you said, what about the common sense? What about the stories of people like me who say, hey, let’s simplify this? I call them in my office the recovering biohackers or recovering health optimizers, who spend thousands a month on their health. I have people in Austin who spend like $2,000 a month on supplements, and we’re looking at their scans, and I’m like, dude, you’re peeing away $2,000 a month. I don’t think these supplements are doing much of anything. But we like this idea that all these gadgets and fancy stuff matter. Don’t get me wrong, I have all the things sitting right here. I have a PEMF mat, an Oura Ring on my hand, the Eight Sleep. I have a five-stage reverse osmosis water system. I have a UV light to get the mold out of my HVAC. But the simplicity of the basics is really important. Early in practice, I was missing this whole thing. I’d recommend stretches and exercises because that’s what I’d been told. Those aren’t wrong, but that’s not how you bring a human back to life. That’s not how you reverse an autoimmune. That’s not how you reverse chronic pain. It can help, but I think we’re missing the beauty and the simplicity of the design.

Dr. Ed: I follow you on Instagram, and I don’t follow a ton of people. Are these the kinds of conversations you’re having in your short videos? I don’t see you doing a lot of lip syncing.

Dr. Matt: No, I don’t do lip syncing. We’ve got the relaunch coming. I relaunched my YouTube channel, and it’s about this. We talk about real cases. My biggest YouTube video ever on my old channel was 1.5 million views. I had maybe two people ever come in off that video, and they were horrible-quality patients. When you speak the right message to the right person, in their language, it’s phenomenal. So I’m working on some of the personal brand stuff on my own. Through Lifespring, my practice, we talk about these things on video, and then on the personal side is where I get into the nerdy stuff that maybe doesn’t make sense in a chiropractor’s office, but it’s all tied back to the same system.

Dr. Ed: What’s the nerdy stuff? I feel like you’re on the cutting edge of marketing. If I came to you and said you can pick one marketing tool or channel to double down on right now, what would it be?

Dr. Matt: I’m going to answer this like I’d answer health or business. It’s more holistic. It would be website for me. Long form. I wrote my entire website, and now all I have to do is get traffic to it. It resonates, and it converts. It didn’t used to. One of my mentors, a brilliant guy, helped me rewrite my entire website, and one of the things he’s said for years is, most people don’t have a traffic problem, they have a conversion problem. You own your website, all the copy, anything long form, and I think that’s the foundational layer of marketing. A lot of the short-form things, when you have a holistic system, are built off the long form.

Dr. Ed: It sounds like you had someone give you feedback, and you applied it. My team and I were doing AI audits, auditing people’s websites and social channels. We stopped, because we’d spend three days on one doctor’s assets, give a score, recommendations, a 50-page executive summary, and the doctors wouldn’t do anything. They wouldn’t change anything, and there was always pushback. And these websites were really bad, not updated for 10 or 15 years.

Dr. Matt: Mine was too. I didn’t have a website my first year in practice. Mine was really bad for probably the first eight years. Sometimes you just need something up, and we all have to start somewhere.

Dr. Ed: It’s your online real estate, your website. And no matter where people find you, YouTube, Instagram, asking AI who they should go see, they’re eventually going to land on that doormat.

Dr. Matt: And I love AI referrals the most. We get a lot of referrals through AI. They’re my favorite, because AI prioritizes relevance more than anything. It’s similar to SEO when it was first around, but the difference is AI uses different signals and takes a more holistic view rather than just a keyword. It’s grading you on relevance. How relevant are you, how consistent is your message across all the different places, and where’s the proof? So when you have real user experience and people talking about you, it loves Reddit, it loves social media, and the stories become the proof. When someone asks where they should go for this, it takes these real things, which I love so much more than people who just know how to hack the keywords the way you could before in SEO.

Dr. Ed: If we look at the statistics, and don’t quote me exactly, but about six months ago it was like one in five people using some kind of large language model to find a service or business. Now it’s like three out of five. It’s probably going to be five out of five in the next six months. And the way people search on Google for a chiropractor is a couple of words, chiropractic, back pain, headache. In AI it’s more conversational. They’ll say, I’m really feeling a lot of back pain, it’s right here. It’s a conversation. So the way they find you through AI is very different from SEO.

Dr. Matt: It’s more of a matchmaker. The people asking it, if they’re more into a holistic worldview where they believe the body’s more like a plant, maybe they didn’t have the words for it, and they ask what they should do. AI considers, well, have you thought these things might be related? And they say, oh, yeah. Then they ask through that lens, and it says, okay, this is your clinic. Versus someone who says, I just need a quick fix for my back pain, and it says, we don’t think you should go to him. And thank you, AI, for saying that, because there are clinics that specialize in a quick fix, and that’s not my clinic. You should go to the specialist for that.

Dr. Ed: Even if they have that conversation, when they go to your website, those two have to be congruent. You’ve got about seven seconds before they bounce. What would you say to a doctor listening right now who’s realizing their website is what they need to dive into? What’s the first thing they should do?

Dr. Matt: I’ve got a fun one for you. Same mentor I was talking about marketing-wise. There’s a book that goes with this, Building a StoryBrand. But to learn something and then apply it is completely different. Every chiropractor understands that. You learn something in school, but to apply it on a real human, you’re like, oh my gosh, how do I do this? Building a StoryBrand is brilliant for describing how. One of my marketing mentors helped me with mine, because I read that book and tried writing my own website, and he said, no, this sucks, scrap it, start again. I kept doing that, and I said, I don’t know how to do this, can you help me? And the applied stuff, I’d say, you really want me to say that? And that’s the genius. People are calling BS more than anything right now. The more honest we can get, the better. The same mentor told me, that’s why your words won’t work for someone else. So if someone hears this and thinks, this guy’s getting people from AI, let’s just copy his plant line, but all the actions they’re taking aren’t in congruence with that, and it’s not really who they are, it’s not going to work for them. You can use the friend test. Have a friend read it. If they seem bored, watch their facial expressions and body reaction, because they’re not going to tell you the truth. If they seem bored, it’s not good.

Dr. Ed: It’s so true. AI is all about congruence and logic. It doesn’t have emotions. So if there’s an incongruence in messaging, it won’t recommend that person. There’s a big conversation now among AI experts, including myself, that all AI is going to have a watermark, especially for written work. So if you’re going to write your book using AI, you’d better do it now. I have the same challenge posting photos on Instagram, and it’s tagging them as AI content on Facebook and Instagram. Not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not going to be presented to as many people. I always see it as a hybrid. You have to show up and be real at least 50% of the time.

Dr. Matt: Totally. I love patterns, and clinically you see the structure of AI, how it delivers lines with a certain cadence. So I’ve intentionally taken out so many em dashes I’d put in the book I’m writing, because early on ChatGPT loved the em dashes. People read it and think, oh, this isn’t really him. But I think my voice comes out very well in the writing. It’s taken me two years, and there’s so much story in there, so human and relatable. That story and being human, the more we learn to show it, the more we’ll stand out as AI becomes more prevalent, because that’s emotion, and struggle, challenge, vulnerability. That’s what connects us.

Dr. Ed: What we’re doing for some of our content clients now is putting a disclaimer at the bottom. Some of this is AI content generated for Dr. So-and-so, or we say the same thing if we’re using their voice clone. Meta likes that. TikTok definitely likes it. It builds trust.

Dr. Matt: I’d like that as a consumer if you showed me. It builds trust, because you know you’re not being manipulated. We feel manipulated when we’re shown one thing, led to believe it’s the truth, and then find out later it wasn’t what we thought. So giving the disclaimer builds trust. It shows honesty.

Dr. Ed: And here’s the interesting thing. People actually value it more when you do show up. If I do an actual video, believe it or not, my clone outperforms me 10x. I can get 20,000 views in 24 hours off my clone, but I posted a real one the other day and it’s 600 views. Lots of likes and comments, but it’s not the same. Still, I feel those are more valuable. When you show up real, and it’s actually you, aligned.

Dr. Matt: We as a profession need to stay on top of this, because it’s accelerating so quickly, and I don’t want to see our profession diminish because no one can find us. They go online, ask a question, and get referred to a PT. I’d walk us back to the same story, the same gates. The viewpoint I see anything through is foundations first. With marketing, AI can help you move fast, but is it really the story you want to amplify? So finding your story first, finding the messaging, and you find that in person with people. Look at their face when something lands. You know how many times it took me saying a plant line, and realizing I had to ask more questions about it dynamically before it would land? If I just say the whole thing, they look at me like, okay, I think I get what you’re saying. So finding the story, building the foundations. Moving fast isn’t always in our best interest. Sometimes finding a way to slow it down, just like I did with my health. Going to the foundations for long enough, then you can amplify with other things at the top. And that’s the fun stuff we all want to do, the flashier stuff. But I’ve made a living at the foundational level.

Dr. Ed: Now that you’ve put in this time to write your book and you’re in the publishing process, when do you expect it in the hands of readers?

Dr. Matt: January 2027. I’ve got a waitlist right now on my website for people who want to be in the loop. I’ll do a couple of book launch parties, one here in Austin, and one in Phoenix with friends who own a supplement company and an organic market there, and maybe a couple more.

Dr. Ed: And the book is Stepping Out of the Grave.

Dr. Matt: That’s the name. And the URL, I’ll drop it into the show notes, is drmattdelgado.com/book, and that’s the waitlist.

Dr. Ed: Who’s the ideal reader? The person who should get your book.

Dr. Matt: The subtitle is How to Heal When You’re Tired of Trying, so that’s it right there. If you’re tired of trying, or you think there’s something more, if you believe we’re more like a plant and there’s an intelligent design, and you can’t seem to figure it out like I couldn’t, when you’ve tried different protocols to manage the symptoms and the parts but haven’t found the dots to connect it. If you want clarity and answers for some of the health concerns you’ve gone through. There are a lot of stories in there where people got it wrong, including my own, and what didn’t work for me and then why it did. Plus the 10 years in clinical practice where I got to use the frameworks I developed. There are a lot of those stories in the book.

Dr. Ed: Where do you see it going? Do you see a second book? Expanding into helping people one-on-one, or a community?

Dr. Matt: My whole purpose is to change the way the world views health. I don’t believe I can do that alone, but I want to be a part of it, and I want to surround myself with people like you who are doing the work. We’re all together as a collective. But I don’t know where I’ll end up. I don’t imagine I’ll be in clinical practice much longer. I came back to it for the rest of this year, and I’m really enjoying it, and I can see myself helping people more with the basics and the foundations. I don’t know whether that’s courses or consulting, and I really think about helping chiropractors bolt on this lifestyle framework to amplify their results, so they can give people back their agency and let them be their own best healer. I think we’re taking their power from them right now without even realizing it. The world is getting further away from the chiropractic paradigm than ever, and a lot of it started back in 2019 and 2020, when we were told our body could not protect us from a virus.

Dr. Ed: This whole story that we’re fragile.

Dr. Matt: We’re the most adaptive species on the planet. And you’re telling me that if we sleep wrong, a pillow causes us to not be able to turn our head? How fragile is that? Or if we sneeze wrong, a rib goes out? And by the way, when the roots are healthy, those things don’t happen. I’m the proof. For six years I led people to believe those narratives were true, so I’m no genius here. Since then I’ve come to understand a more evolved approach, seeing the root system and taking care of that. It can feel scary, because you think, oh my gosh, then do they need me less? And yeah, but that’s the whole point. When they need us less, a crazy thing happens. They love us even more. When we base our care on function, not just symptoms, there’s no reason for them to ever leave. They just need us less, and then they send us everybody. And then the world becomes healthier.

Dr. Ed: People have lost trust in their own body’s innate ability to heal. I love that. I want to fire our signature question at you. I’m going to put you in the TCP time machine and send you back to a younger version of yourself, right after you came out of chiropractic college. You have all the life experience and knowledge you have today. What’s the best advice you’d give that younger self?

Dr. Matt: That diagnosis is the best thing that will ever happen to you. Don’t rush out of it.

Dr. Ed: Interesting. Do you think you’d be the same person you are today without that experience?

Dr. Matt: Hell no. You see the tears coming through my eyes right now. It’s because our greatest lessons come from the biggest challenges we have, if we allow ourselves to learn from them. I’ve been curious my whole life and open to changing the way I do things. I tell people in practice, do you really think I’d be 10 years into my career hitting people with this little clicky thing if it didn’t work? I used to love cracking people. I know chiropractors are going to hate that I’m saying this on a chiropractic show. I used to love osseously adjusting people. And here I am, clicking people with this little clicky thing and teaching them how to see me less. I wouldn’t have thought that would be the case, but I’m so grateful for it. Now I get people who fly from all over the world, and I never thought that would happen. I’ve had the opportunity to work with some of the world’s best athletes and some of my favorite musicians, and been in rooms I never thought I’d be in. The little boy in me is so happy, the people I grew up watching on TV. At the crossroads where it feels like play, all this struggle I went through gave it meaning. It gave it a sense of purpose. That’s why this book exists. It’s not to say I’m an author, come buy my book. This book is for the person that’s tired of trying, that’s been told they have to live with this diagnosis the rest of their life, because that’s not true most of the time.

Dr. Ed: The struggle in life gives it meaning. That’s really what it’s about. You have to remind yourself in the chaos and struggle that this is what gives context to the moments of happiness and gratitude and joy. If a doctor needs to go get a book, listen to a podcast, or follow someone, what’s an incredible resource they should find right now?

Dr. Matt: A lot of my influences have been from outside the chiropractic profession. I learn marketing from marketers, storytelling from people who specialize in it, SEO the same. A guy named Brian Eisenberg, last name E-I-S-E-N-B-E-R-G. I’ve got his book right here, because I’ve heard your episodes and knew you’d ask. It’s I Think I Swallowed an Elephant: The Stories We Sell and the Success We Build. This was a really fun and special book, and I got to be a part of it behind the scenes. Brian’s a dear friend and mentor, a New York Times bestselling author, a brilliant marketer, and I talk to him every day on the phone, going for walks. I got to hear all these chapters develop as they came in. It’s a good daily reader, little snippets, literally like how you eat an elephant, one bite at a time. He does a brilliant job talking about health concepts, life, and business, and it’s all kind of the same thing when you see it through the same lens.

Dr. Ed: I love it. Listeners, head to drmattdelgado.com/book to sign up for the book waitlist. We’ll have all the show notes and resources listed, or head to thechiropracticphilanthropist.com. Dr. Matt, I want to thank you so much for being on the show today and for giving back.

Dr. Matt: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate people like you in our profession who are connecting people and giving them a way to share their stories.