EPISODE SUMMARY
Guest: Dwayne Hoskins, DC.
Dwayne Hoskins. is a chiropractor. He was born to be a chiropractor,. He has 30 years in practice, and has done a lot of things. Everything he does that I'm passionate about has chiropractic wrapped up in it.
Hear us talk about:
The nerdiest of the nerdy people. (The Upper Cervical Council.)
The philosophy of chiropractic and the tenets of chiropractic and its view of how the world works and how the body works, it fit hand in glove with his theology.
Just like every patient is different, every Doctor is different as well. Some are more touchy-feely while others are more analytical. In the end, they are after achieving the same result.
Technology can help the Doctor and the patient achieve better results.
Knowing when and where, and how to adjust is important, but not as important as knowing when not to adjust.
Temperature measurements have been used for millennia to determine inflammation and other health markers.
The history of using technology to measure nerve impulses and temperature for clinical use in chiropractic goes back one hundred years.
Roger Titone, founder of Titronics is one of the all-time top ten influencers in chiropractic without a DC degree.
To Find out more: About Dr. Hoskins
Click here to Contact Dr. Dwayne Hoskins
Email: dochoskins@titronics.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DocHoskins
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/doc.hoskins/?hl=en
To contact Ruth, go to https://www.blairclinic.com
ruth@blairclinic.com
https://www.facebook.com/rutelin
TRANSCRIPT
Welcome, welcome, welcome to What Pain in the Neck podcast. I'm recording this today in Dallas, Texas at the Westin Hotel Galleria. I'm here at the ICA Upper Cervical Conference. ICA stands for International Chiropractic Association, and that means it's attended by some of the top and best and nerdiest and most studious and most effective doctors in the world.
[laughter]
You nailed it on the head.
Right?
Specifically, this one is the Council on Upper Cervical Care, so it's the leaders of all of the nerdy people. It's the nerdiest of the nerdiest are here. They're the greatest, we're the greatest.
Are you one of those nerdy doctors?
No, actually, I graduated in '92 from a chiropractic college called Logan. They didn't really even teach upper cervical care, so I was the first 20 years in practice before I learned knee, chest.
Actually, before we go any further, you keep saying I, but we haven't really even introduced you yet.
My name is Dwayne Hoskins. I'm a chiropractor. I was born to be a chiropractor, and I've now 30 years in practice and done a lot of things. Everything that I do that I'm passionate about has chiropractic wrapped up in it.
When you say you were born to be a chiropractor, does that mean you always wanted to be a chiropractor? Are you born into a chiropractic family or something like that?
No. Actually, I had a cousin whose father-in-law was a chiropractor. He's the one that introduced me to chiropractic in high school. When I look back on the philosophy of chiropractic and the tenets of chiropractic and its view of how the world works and how the body works, it fits hand in glove with my theology.
Can you sum that up what is that philosophy and the theology?
The fundamental philosophy of chiropractic is there is a universal intelligence that keeps everything going. There's a universal intelligence that created-- whether you believe in the biblical creation story, you believe in humanism, or you believe in the Big Bang theory, chiropractic start is, there is an intelligence in the universe, and that intelligence keeps us going. With my theology, that's what I believe, too, is God created the universe to operate in a certain way, and it gave all of the parts of the universe intelligence to help it operate like it should, including the self-healing function of animals.
The overarching chiropractic philosophy is the power that made the body heals the body.
It's the only power that can heal the body. That's a quote from Reggie Gold, one of my heroes. The entire quote is, "The power that made the body is the only power that can heal the body."
Oh, I had it wrong.
No, you didn't have it wrong. You just didn't have it complete. It's okay because there's a lot of quotes that are kind of they're chopped up. It says, the power that made the body heals the body. That's true, but it makes a lot more impact when you realize it's the only power that can heal. If I do an adjustment on you that has a positive impact when your body accepts that adjustment to heal.
If I went down to the Morgan, did the same exact maneuver on a cadaver, there's nothing there to heal because the essence of that person is gone. Life itself is gone. That's what we do, is we work on living beings to express life more fully. The power that made the body is the only power to heal the body. That's why I love it so much, because when I say I was born to be a chiropractor, this is my whole life up until I became a chiropractor, was this thought process of we were created to be more than we are.
We live in a fallen world around fallen people making fallen decisions, but we have the potential to be better. How can we release that that's been locked up? Before chiropractic, I didn't know what it was called, and now I know it's called a vertebral subluxation is that thing that's holding back our potential. That's why I love chiropractic so much because it fits with who I am and what I was created to be.
That's what this whole show is all about, is for people who are suffering. There is a solution out there and just keep going after it. Right?
Absolutely.
Why don't you tell us a little bit about your chiropractic story? Since you have 30 years, let's make it slightly abbreviated. Where you started in chiropractic, and I know a lot of people don't know that there are different specialties within chiropractic and that sort of thing. Why don't you take us from where you started fresh out of chiropractic school and where you are today, what your position is today, which is actually what I want to continue asking you about later.
Absolutely. I think I'm going to answer that question a little bit different way than you're probably expecting.
Okay. That's fantastic.
We're going to go back to the answer to the previous one. If the body does the healing, it's taking whatever I'm giving it as the doctor to heal itself. My technique is specific to me, not to you, the patient. It's specific to me, the way I understand the body works and the way I have to understand how the physiology and anatomy and kinesiology and blah, blah, blah, blah all the other ologies work for me to come up with a specific vector which is a force and a direction for you, for your body to accept it for the maximum amount of healing.
That's where you come up with a lot of techniques. Your husband does Blair technique. He's in the Blair Clinic and helping run that legacy that's critical to our profession. That's a very highly analytical a lot of tools, a lot of information goes into that for him to be as specific as he can be to do the job he needs to be to deliver that vector to his client to get the most effective adjustment possible.
Yes, that's true. He's extremely analytical.
Right. Me, I'm more of a touchy-feely relationship kind of guy. I use motion palpation and static palpation. I use other things where I'm interacting with a client on a more touchy-feely way.
When you're saying palpation, it's literally touching.
Touching and feeling. With my skills and experience and exposure, I can feel things an inch or two under the skin when I do my palpation, when I do my feeling for what's going on. I'm also feeling what the body is trying to do to correct itself. Because if the body is always trying to heal itself, it's doing things. If I can feel the body actively trying to move a bone back into place, that gives me clues on where I may need to help it. My technique is not that hyper-analytical, my technique is hyper-touch and interactive.
That's the way I was trained. I was trained at a college called Logan, and they didn't teach upper cervical at all. They taught something called diversified technique, which really isn't a technique. It's a hodgepodge of different maneuvers. Then I learned Thompson technique, and then I learned Cox Flexion distraction, which are all lower back and Pelvic. Basic technique was Pelvic in origin. Then I learned Gonstead along the way, which is full spine. I became adept at those.
I became sufficiently proficient at those that the body was still getting the vector it needed for correction. To answer your question is, I come at it a little bit different way of I'm learning all these techniques to give the body what it needs to heal and the body's taking it. I went a different way than your husband did. These people that were serving here at this seminar are all upper cervical based. I was taught the other end of the spine. 30 years in practice, I'm getting great results as they are using similar tools, just focusing on different areas of the spine.
That brings me to if you're saying your technique is essentially almost opposite from what's being taught at this conference here today, although not opposite in philosophy, but opposite in-
Just location.
Practically day to day, I guess. What brought you here?
Well, again, to finish that thought process, I'm also a martial artist. I'm a third-degree black belt in taekwondo.
Cool.
What I've noticed is, although the different martial artists started a different base on the pyramid. At some point, they all reach the same point. At some time in their training, if you go long enough in training, all martial artists look the same. In chiropractic, I'm noticing the same thing. I started at the tailbone, Blair starts at the occiput and the C1 and eventually, we all eventually do the same thing. We look at where the body needs help, which 9 times out of 10 is upper cervical.
I just happen to start at the other end to get there. It's just the way chiropractic is. Again, it's not me or my technique doing the healing, it's the body of the patient or the client, that recipient of the adjustment is what's doing the healing. why am I here? Because I love these people. I am sales and marketing director for a tool that's used primarily for upper cervical care.
That's interesting. That's actually what I was going to say when I guess I interrupted you a second ago.
It's a conversation. There's no interruptions.
You're just telling me you're a touchy-feely guy, but you're here representing technology.
Yes, I'm also a technology freak.
How does that fit together? Well, because I realize technology is a tool to connect people. Like this podcast, we're sitting in Dallas in beginning of June. People are going to hear this months later, years later, decades later.
Well, probably a few weeks from now.
Maybe. Well, it's going to stay out there.
Oh yes. It stays out there.
Stays there forever.
That's true. It doesn't go away.
We may be gone and somebody hears it is like, "Oh, chiropractic is something I need to investigate."
That would be cool.
Understanding the technology's the way for people to connect, it's fine with me. If I can take technology and get rid of processes and procedures that used to separate me from my clients because technology does things faster and number crunching faster and stuff so I have more time to spend with my clients, I'm all for it. When technology steps in between me and the client, I'm against it. The technology that I represent helps me determine does that client need an adjustment today.
Yes. Actually, that is a really important question. The whole idea of healing that we talked about, the healing of the body, the power that may the body heals the body is it just doesn't need interference. That means if there's no interference, then basically, if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
You may not feel good. Your name of your podcast, is My Neck Hurts or what's the?
What Pain in the neck?.
What Pain in the neck?.
It's a play on words. [laughs]
You may have extreme pain in the neck that is part of your body's healing-
That's true.
-cascade. The worst thing I can do is put another force into it the body doesn't need.
Yes. Actually, that happened to me this week.
I'm sorry.
A couple of days ago, three days ago I was feeling terrible. I had a terrible headache. My neck hurt. I had a terrible pain in my neck. It was really weighing me down, slowing me down. It impaired my thinking, my energy, my mood. I was sure I needed an adjustment. My husband ran all the tests, including the tests using the technology that you're going to tell us about in a few minutes. He said, "Congratulations, and I'm sorry you're in alignment. I'm not going to do anything." Here I am today and I'm so thankful that he knew to do that because it's what I needed. I'm feeling more energetic now than I have in a long time.
Unfortunately in our society, in our Western culture, we equate feeling good with being good. We equate feeling good with being healthy. That's not the case because we can medicate or we can go to the bar and get feeling really good. That means nothing, has nothing to do with our health status. It just doesn't. We have to be very careful that we don't equate what we feel with what is. Understanding when to and when not to is a key component of being a doctor. We are doctors of chiropractic.
That decision of whether or not to adjust the technology that you're going to tell us about in a minute is a key instrument to make that decision. We use that every day on every single patient in our office. Before I ask you about that, I want to go back in time. When I first started in chiropractic in 1994 that's when I had my first adjustment. Shortly after that, I got a job for an upper cervical chiropractor. He was Dr. Blair's best friend. His name was Dr. Muncy. He was the teacher of the Blair Technique for many years. He would just tell stories all day long. I got the privilege of listening. I think that's actually partly why I want to do this podcast because I've had the privilege of hearing the stories.
Most people don't know because they haven't heard the stories. I want to get those stories, but I-- One of the things that I've heard him talk about was he went to Palmer College of Chiropractic. He graduated sometime in the '50s, and at the Palmer College of Chiropractic, they had a research clinic. He would describe how they had multiple specimens, essentially skeletons, real skeletons of real people that were on display. They were also doing research on instrumentation. Early on when they would determine whether or not to adjust people, they would run their hands up and down people's spines. One of these patients was an engineer, I believe this was in the '30s but it could have been-
The 1920s. Mid-'20s.
Mid-'20s. The engineer was saying, "What are you feeling for?" He was saying, "Well, I'm trying to determine hot and cold spots on either side of the spine." He developed an instrument. It was not an allograph at that time, it was the thermoscribe. Right?
The first time thermoscribe is after that. It's the neuro kilometer.
It's neuro. They've had different neuro. In the process of inventing this machine, the EEG was invented, still used in hospitals around the world today. People who think chiropractic is quasi-science, just look at the EEG. The lie detector was invented and both of those came first. Then bingo, three times the charm. They got the thermo scribed, the neuro kilometer. An allograph was the one that Dr. Muncy was using. It was down the line. All of this was before computers. Why don't you pick up my story from there and correct me if I got some part of it wrong?
No, actually, that's actually more complete than the story I tell because most people, those side trails you included are important. When I'm in front of other chiropractors, I leave the EEG, the EKG, all those other ones out. Before that even started, what we're looking for is the transfer of mental impulse from the brain to the target cell. The interference of that is what we're actually trying to help the body correct.
Okay. What does that have to do with hot and cold spots?
Well, that transfer BJ was looking for.
BJ is BJ Palmer.
BJ Palmer. The son of the founder of chiropractic, D.D Palmer. BJ Palmer was the promoter and expander of chiropractic. BJ spent a lot of money in 1920, 1910s, 1920s, millions of dollars in 1920 money, which is hundreds of million dollars today. He was an entrepreneur, radio stations, and all that stuff. He took all of his prophets and put back into research. He came up with something called the electroencephaloneuromentimpograph. It was a shielded room-
Say that three times fast. [laughs]
It's basically a shielded room that listened to the nerves. Then he took out the nerve, the physiological impulses, and listened for the noise that was carried along, which was information. Then he used that to determine whether there was subluxation present or not. Looking at that, the hot boxes thing with Doss Evans, the engineer you were talking about earlier. About the same time. That was late 1910s, early 1920s with the electroencephaloneuromentimpograph, two. The second time I said it right. In 1926, the patent for the NCM and all the thermo stuff came out. We're almost a hundred years into this now. He found that when you saw a break in the balance of heat being emanated on either side of the spine-
A break meaning it's cold and hot.
It jumps to one side or the other, one side being hotter than the other for whatever reason, that correlated with what he was finding with the electroencephaloneuromentimpograph. There's number three. I'm not going to say it again.
[laughter]
Here's a $100 tool compared to a million-dollar tool. Which one's going to find its way into the offices of normal chiropractors? They went down this road because there was a high correlation of similar findings. That became the standard in 1926 who presented it at Palmer Lyceum. That's when a lot of people said, "We don't like technology getting between us and the client," not realizing that it actually took a lot of stuff out of the way so you could communicate more clearly.
Which is essentially what you were talking about a few minutes ago.
Now we're on the version in 1987, '88, '89, some of the players you we've been talking about, including Clay Thompson, the founder of Thompson Technique. Agnes Palmer, which is the granddaughter of BJ Palmer, or daughter of BJ Palmer daughter. Some of these other players were there. Roger Titone's an electrical engineer. They said, "Make this better," and he did. We've added some-
Roger Titone is the founder of the company that you work for today, and you're here representing today.
Yes. Good friend. Good man. He's one of the unsung heroes in chiropractic in my opinion. When you look at the chiropractors or the non-chiropractors that have dramatically changed my profession of chiropractic, there's about 10 of them. There's Keith Warson, there's Doss Evans, he became a chiropractor. There's Roger Titone, there's William Esteb. There's Roberto Monaco and then there's five others that I can't really pull out of my memory right now. There's not very many. Roger's one of them. He created this tool that's very useful. I don't want to say essential because we can still do chiropractic without it, but it makes it more difficult if we don't have it.
We talked about this machine that measured heat differential. I took it up to before computers and it seems like Roger Titone took that into the computer age.
Yes.
Why don't you describe that technology and then as a doctor of chiropractic-
Sure.
-how it's being used by doctors.
Sure.
If you're listening to this and you're thinking, "I need another type of doctor, I need some help. What can it do for me?"
Sure. People, in general, have known since Socrates that temperature differences are an indicator of imbalance. They used to put wet mud on the back of people back in Socrates' age and Hippocrates' age and see which side dried faster. That was the side of inflammation. They've known for millennia the body uses temperature to heal itself. We also know from physiology in the '60s of a tremendously intricate study in the '60s showed that the capillary beds on either side of the bumps on the back, the spinous processes; the spine little bumps that you can feel on the back.There's capillary beds. Capillaries are really tiny blood vessels. Their only job, their only job, their only job, I said it three times on purpose.
Their only job.
Their only job.
Does it have any other jobs? [laughs]
No other job is to get rid of heat. The only place it gets rid of heat is the spinal cord. Here we have a very short physiological pathway, a very short neurological pathway. The reason that's key is the longer the pathway, the more things can interrupt it. If you have a short pathway physiologically, anatomically, and a short pathway neurologically or electrically, it limits the number of things that can interfere with it. Its only job is to get rid of heat for the spinal cord. The body is always looking at doing things in balance, not perfectly in balance but close and it's always looking to adapt to bring back to a status of health. What we're looking for is a condition in the body called adaptive balance.
You're constantly changing what you're doing at imbalance. If we do a temperature scan of the right and left capillary beds, they should be pretty close to the same temperature if your body's working right. Makes sense, right?
Makes sense.
What we do is we measure them and if one side's hot or colder than the other, that's an indication that there may be an issue there. Now over time, that information elevates. Like if you take your temperature right now, what would that tell you? It would tell you what your temperature is right now.
Exactly.
If you're having trouble getting pregnant, taking your temperature five times a day over the course of weeks, all it would tell you is your temperature. But following the pattern of temperature you could tell when your body's ovulating if you have those organs. That makes sense.
Yes, I know about that.
All it's doing is measuring temperature. If we see patterns, we can make other decisions and other assumptions that are true physiologically. That's what we do is we measure those capillary beds, see if there's balance there. If there's no balance, which side is hot or which side's colder? Then the doctor takes that information and determines if there's subluxation. It goes from there.
He's looking for patterns.
Patterns mean stuck. If you're playing piano and every key you hit comes up with a C sharp, is that piano working right or not?
It's not working right.
If we scan, if you're rested and everything else is cool and this one spot's hot, is that normal?
Maybe.
No. Over time, no.
Over time. I see what you're saying. I could just have been rested on laying on that side, let's say and one side is-- let's say I slept on my side or my covers were on one side, one side could temporarily be hot or cold.
Which is why we have an acclimation point in the scanning process. As the client comes in, they acclimate, then you scan, then you do your other checks, adjustment if necessary, resting period, and then a rescan. That's the pristine protocol for thermography. As to get rid of those pressure points, get rid of the I slept wrong, and allow your body to achieve as normal a balance as it possibly can so that your readings are as accurate to the balance as possible. The other question is why is that useful and very quickly, very objectively, no bias whatsoever?
If I got to make a car payment this week, the thermometer doesn't matter. Doesn't care if I have a car payment due or not. It's going to tell me what the temperature is, period. It's extremely objective. It's extremely unbiased. It doesn't care what your color is, it doesn't care what your monetary status is. It doesn't matter what car you drive or if your mortgage is three days past due, it's going to give me a temperature. It's completely unbiased. It's completely objective. If I can take these temperature readings, I can very quickly as a doctor make a decision of do I need to go further or are we done, I'll see you next week or next appointment time.
That's the power of this. It's a very quick 30-second scan that gives me data as the doctor to determine whether I need to adjust you or not or to go further in my examination. If you're clear, there's no reason to do anything to you today. If I do anything to you today, at best it's a massage. At worst, it's an assault and battery.
What is it that Titronics is doing and Roger Titone came up with that puts him on your list of top contributors if this technology was essentially invented in the 1920s?
What he did is he modified some of the things using current technology within radiation. Heat is radiation, light is radiation, sound is radiation. We can focus radiation using lenses and we can eliminate scatter and eliminate background noise. We can eliminate noise by using collimator tubes or focusing tubes or telescopes. He moved the sensor further away from the skin. He put a tube in front of it, a telescope and he put lenses in it so it focuses on a very, very specific point on the skin.
That's true because when I first started, people will have red marks on the back of their neck and would pull their hair and things. That's not a problem these days.
No, because then what you're talking about is those sensors were flaps of metal that looked like two combs stuck together. They would get hair and it would pop them up and every time that happens, they'd become less sensitive to heat. You're actually getting a degrading signal as you work with it. By moving those behind a lens, moving them away from the skin, now we have an accurate, reliable, durable, precise tool that has accuracy and precision to a 10th of a degree. Fair enough.
That's amazing.
It's very, very sensitive. It's very, very accurate. It's very, very precise. Then adding the wheel that as the wheel turns, it takes a picture. Some of the older ones you had to time. In practice timing is like, I have 30 seconds to go from sacrum all the way to [unintelligible 00:27:44] or I have 10 seconds to go from the upper back to the neck. It has to be exactly 10 seconds. It can't vary. If it's nine seconds, then it's going to show up wrong.
Now it's not that way.
No. Every 16th of an inch as that wheel rolls, no matter how fast you go, it takes a picture of both sides and it puts it in a spreadsheet. Then after that spreadsheet's done, the computer does its magic. That's one of the things that I'm really excited about now is we've added layers of magic to the number crunching to take some of the guesswork out of pattern work and to notice some of the subtle nuances and to actually put numbers with yes/no kinds of decisions to help the doctor be even more precise and accurate with what they're doing.
That's what I've seen. Makes it easier to know whether it is or isn't a pattern.
Also in everything that I do with Titronics, I want them to, and I want us to also help the client know what's going on in their body. We have color stuff and we have bars and we have different things to let them see for themselves what's going on in their body.
We use that with our patients. What is your favorite part of this? Do you have a favorite one or maybe a couple of favorite stories of why this is so meaningful?
I use this in my office pre and post every visit. I had this guy. He's a rugged from Alaska backwards guy. He's coming in twice a week because he overturned a mower in a ditch and he was pulling it out. We were getting him pretty cleared out subluxation-wise. Then he came out on a Friday and his scan was completely different, not like anything in the last three months. I said, "Fred," his name's not Fred but, "Fred, something's not quite right. Since this is directly connected with your autonomic or automatic nervous system, I don't know if it's indigestion. I don't know if it's heart. I don't know if it's lungs.
I don't know what it is, but please be careful this weekend because I don't know what's going on but something's going on." He had a heart attack Sunday morning. He came in the next week, he said if I wouldn't have been aware, I would've kept chopping wood and I probably would have died. The body knew something was happening and it showed up on the scans.
It communicated that to you as his doctor.
Because I saw it, I didn't know what it was. I just knew it was different than anything I'd seen before. I said, "Listen, I don't know what this is." There's no way for me to know pre what was going on. I said, "But be careful that if anything, anything starts to go wonky, stay alive." That means he decided to go to the hospital and they stopped the cascade of a fatal heart attack.
Yes, that's incredible.
That's one of the things. The other one is, as hard as it is like you experienced this week is people are in a lot of pain. I'm like, "Listen, my heart is aching but there's nothing for me to do. There's not a thing I can do because it's not showing up as a chiropractic issue."
Then if you actually just go by your heart, you can actually make it worse.
Yes. Again at the best, it's a massage which I'm not licensed or trained to do, and at worst, it's assault and battery because it's something I shouldn't do.
Yes.
It's like those things are heartbreaking, but then also seeing people that come in and they started care, they'd never seen a chiropractor before they were 65 and coming in and now they're 75 and even 10 years-- even though they didn't start care until 65, their scans are getting clearer and clearer and clearer as they come in.
Yes, that's neat. There's never a wrong time to get help.
Because the body wants to heal. The power that made the body is always working to heal the body because it's the only power that can heal the body.
Yes. I feel like that actually is a really fantastic place to end it. Maybe there's something I haven't asked you that you just can't wait. You just feel like it needs to be told right now.
Not really. I hope this is not the only conversation we ever have.
Okay, I will take you up on that.
There's so much in chiropractic that I've experienced and then been part of. I've got to witness and be a front-row one. It's really incredible profession. I love what you're doing and if there's any way that I can help with the podcast, please let me know.
Yes.
There's a lot of people out there that are getting the truth of chiropractic out. If I can be of help in any way possible with you or anybody that's listening or whatever, please don't hesitate to look me up and ask me.
How do people contact you? Also if chiropractors or chiropractic students are listening to this and they want more information about Tytron, where do they find you?
Well, the website is the best place to go, titronics.com. T-I-T--
I will link to it in the show notes.
titronics.com and then my email is dochoskins@titronics.com. If you want to find me just search Doc Hoskins D-O-C H-O-S-K-I-N-S. Because of a techie, I get all those labels at Instagram, at Twitter, at well, all those other ones. If you do that Doc Hoskins, I'm there.
Doc Hoskins. Well, this has been absolutely delightful and I've learned so much.
Thank you, thank you.
Thank you for being here and taking time.
No problems. I love you because you love the things I love, that's another BJ quote.
Okay.
That thing is chiropractic.