The Profitable Chiro Network w/ Dr. Daniel Kimbley
Welcome to The Profitable Chiro Network with Dr. Daniel Kimbley…
On this podcast, we take deep dives into the science of success, stress, and sustainable practice growth—through the lens of God’s intelligent design. From unlocking the power of your prefrontal cortex to breaking free from pain patterns and maximizing clinic profitability, these conversations challenge conventional wisdom and reshape the way you think about chiropractic, business, and life. This is The Profitable Chiro Network.
The Profitable Chiro Network w/ Dr. Daniel Kimbley
Ep 1: Exploring the Neurochemistry of Success: (mind, body, soul)
Watch the full video version here: https://youtu.be/aj7O9GYDEHg
Hey, what is up, family? Welcome to the Profitable Cairo podcast. I'm your host, Dr Daniel Kimbley, and this is my beautiful wife Heather. Hello.
Dr. Daniel:We are hailing from Orange County, california, and we're going to talk about a whole bunch of stuff on this podcast. Primarily, we'll focus on three specific categories. We'll focus on success and neurochemistry. We'll focus on pain and the stress response and the neurobiology of that as well, and then on some of the episodes we'll just talk about wealth and cash management and some of the fun money stuff about practice. Today, though, I would love to talk about success and the neurochemistry of success, and I think what's really interesting is that there's a specific chemistry that's involved in the brain when we are following a path that God kind of sets up, assesses up on, and so I guess my question like to start it off, heather, for you and as we have this conversation is like how do we even define success in the first place?
Heather:Okay. Well, I think for us as a family, we share the same values, so our definition of success is always putting God first, our relationship second, and then hobbies, business. Everything else comes after that. Cause we're not putting God first in our lives, spending time with God, spending time in the word for us specifically, we feel like we don't have the joy that we could have, which is ultimately a part of our success.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah for sure. So success obviously can be defined a bunch of different ways. Our family's definition of success doesn't really have anything to do with money, right, and what's cool is like we just did a workshop the other night and I asked everybody in the room there are like 40 people and not a single person said anything about money when we talked about success. I love that and so I think it's a piece of it, but it's not the most important piece. And, like you said, there's a connection to God in there and while we won't go so spiritual on the podcast I don't think it's we can't not talk about that as well. And we'll talk about some of the neurobiology of what it means to be connected to God and you know, living a life of purpose and those kinds of things as well. So success is cool because there's a specific brain chemistry involved. But I think before we have to go pre-God or pre-Jesus for us and talk about when we met in our lives, to really talk about, like when we met, what success looked like, why it didn't look a certain way.
Dr. Daniel:And I'll just kind of start by sharing my story. So I grew up and, like my dad, worked in a factory. He was. He worked in heat treating my mom, was a nurse and then later became a bus driver, and so it's not like we came from a lot of money and my parents could provide for us, but like we had. We had our own struggles and that's not good, bad, right or wrong, but really, um, you know, my aspirations when I was a kid, when I was growing up like high school, were to just be the assistant manager at the oil chain shop which is what you were doing.
Heather:Oh, you were working at the oil change shop at the time.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah. So in high school I got a job. Um, so, yeah, I got fired from target for quote unquote stealing, even though I wasn't stealing. Um, then I got a job as a at an oil change shop, specifically like I was the guy underneath in the basement like pulling the drain plugs, doing all this stuff and I got. I got, I was good at it, and so they offered me like a third key holder position and then they wanted me to become an assistant manager. So my journey, my whole life, like even in high school, was like I'm not going to college, I'm going to become the assistant manager and I'll have a 401k and I'll have a key and I'll make 10 bucks an hour and it'll be all good. My dad had other plans, and so my dad is like you are really dumb, I'm not letting you not go to college.
Heather:Primarily because he didn't go to college, so he wanted something different for you.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, and I think he saw the potential in it and not even saying I have totally different viewpoint on college. Now, right, I had to do it in order to become a doctor, but that wasn't my initial goal. My goal in the beginning was I want to be the assistant manager Then, and this kind of gets into this idea of success. So when we talk about success from my perspective and your perspective, heather, when you come into the story, they're really inseparable, because so much of our journey was centered around something that wasn't actually us anyway. That kind of kept us trapped, and that's what I really want to talk about on the episode. And then, like what's the chemistry behind it? To say like, hey, here's how the brain actually functions. So we'll get into the brain stuff later, but we got to tell the story first.
Dr. Daniel:So, um, basically, dad is like you have to go to college. Um, cause he wanted better for me, he saw potential in me. My boss at the oil change shop saw potential in me too, and he's like dude, you have to go to college. So I basically applied to one school, hoping that I wouldn't get accepted. Right, and um, lo and behold, I got accepted. And then I was bummed about it because I'm like dang it, now I have to go, um, but it was really was a savior for me, because one of the things that I learned early on was about this thing called a hidden curriculum, and I know that you can relate to this too, so I'll let you share your side of it in a second.
Heather:Well, what were you studying to learn this hidden curriculum?
Dr. Daniel:Yeah. So first, when I got accepted, I was like I'm doing pre-law, I'm going to become a lawyer, and I met the advisors literally that first day, and I decided within the week that, like that it was just way too boring of people to be around. Like it was very dry, um, and I didn't even know, though, like it was just something implicit in me that I'm like I cannot do this. It just seems like it's going to be too boring. So now I could look back and be like, literally, god was just like calling me somewhere different. Uh, I wouldn't have known that at the time, I would have never said it at the time. So then I'm like all right, I want to become a teacher. So the reason that I thought I wanted to become a teacher was because I had, like most of my friends in high school, like house arrest, uh, probation, yeah, and I just hung around with a crew where, like, we generally got into a lot of trouble. Luckily, that was not my story, but I was like like that was my crew, those were the homies. So lots of time doing things I shouldn't have been doing in places that I should not have been, and I remember, like, as they were all dealing with their issues. I was kind of the dude who was like, hey, like you're legit not going to pass English class unless I help you with this thing. Like I remember my best friend like helping his mom one of his papers because all the stuff that he was dealing with in his life, and like the darkness that he would not have passed or graduated high school if it weren't for me and his mom like writing papers for him. So I'm thinking like, all right, I could be an English teacher, but I really want to be a gym teacher. So I went back to the school yeah, pe teacher sounds way cooler than an English teacher. So I wasn't sure I wanted to be a PE teacher.
Dr. Daniel:And I went back to my high school and the principal, mr Hurley, was like I went to see him specifically and I'm like, hey, can you just like tell me if this would be a good move? And like what do you think about it? And so he laid it down and he's like come on. So he took me down to the gym where the PE classes were being held and in my school at the time, like, mind you, I just graduated from there. So we had two PE teachers and they'd both been there for like 20 plus years.
Dr. Daniel:And he's like, look how old these teachers are, look how many gym teachers there are. And I'm like, all right, there are two, right? So? And I still didn't know what he was trying to show me. So then he's like, let's go back up to the front of the building. And we walk all the way back up to the front. We walked to the English department and there's like 12 English classrooms and he's like how many teachers do you count here? And it was 12. And I'm like, okay, why are you showing me this? And he's like where do you think it's going to be easier to get a job?
Heather:Your opportunity for a job is significantly easier being an English teacher versus PE.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah. So like we talk about you know, we think about like success and some of the opportunities that are presented to you. So that was my thing. I'm like all right, I'm good, I can do English, Like I help my friends with it, I'll probably be great at it, Awesome.
Dr. Daniel:So step into like first semester English or second semester English class and one of the things we were required to write a research paper and this is like the most research I've ever done ever.
Dr. Daniel:But one of the topics was on a thing called the hidden curriculum and there are a whole bunch of researchers who talk about this thing called a hidden curriculum and there's another piece of it called stereotype threat. Claude M Steele has done a bunch of research in that area, but neither here nor there what I learned is there's this thing called a hidden curriculum and what the hidden curriculum states is pretty simple. It says that whatever socioeconomic status you were brought up in is going to prepare you for a job at that socioeconomic status level. So if we think about like my dad being a you know factory worker, he at the time and he learned a lot on his own and like kind of elevated through the ranks to get to management. But back then it was much like you have to follow these directions, Like you push this specific button on this specific machine. When the bell rings, you go to lunch for 30 minutes. When the bell comes back on, you come back from lunch and then you do the same routine.
Heather:There's no critical thinking, there's no creativity Every single step of your life.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, exactly. So all of those follow directions. There's only one right answer it must be done this way. Those are like low level skills that require no creativity, no thinking on your own no thinking on your own. You could teach anybody to do it Right, and so then, on the other end of the spectrum, if you go all the way to the elite school, what they found with the hidden curriculum is that these students were being taught creativity, critical thinking, looking at things from multiple different viewpoints, studying different languages, learning about different religions.
Dr. Daniel:So many more opportunities, yeah opportunity to think and choose for yourself. So when I learned about this thing called the hidden curriculum, I had this moment of like oh my gosh, that's why I wanted to be the assistant manager, and it blew my mind.
Heather:Because you were in that lower socioeconomic classroom.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, I realized that my school had just prepared me to think a certain way about the world and my thought process about the world. When we talk about success which we'll get into in a minute my thought process about the world was like if I go and I get a good job and I get a 401k, one day I'll be able to retire. And that was like it. I didn't need to think critically, I just needed to do what was asked of me and that's what my school taught me. You show up every day, you turn in your homework, you get a good grade, you go to the next grade, you go to lunch. At this time and I didn't, with the exception of a few teachers I didn't have a lot of opportunities to think critically.
Dr. Daniel:Oh yeah, I would agree that I was raised the same way or explore outside of the box in any way, yeah, and so I realized like, okay, this is how mom and dad like, this is the socioeconomic status that mom and dad lived in.
Dr. Daniel:But, I thought about other schools in the area that are, like you know we're talking at the time mind blowing to spend 500K kindergarten through 12th grade for private school, but that was preparing those kids to be doctors and lawyers. And so there's this researcher named Jean Anion and what she found is that basically there's a spectrum of schools. So there's the lowest socioeconomic status schools they're learning rote memorization like one right answer, one wrong answer. Then there's a school that's a step above that, where there's a little bit more autonomy but not much. And then there's like a middle school, and then upper middle class school and then what she would call the elite school OK, and so on that spectrum, kids are learning different skills to keep them at a certain income range. Ok.
Dr. Daniel:So when I learned about this, it was like this huge awakening in me where I'm like, oh my gosh, that's why I only want to be the assistant manager, that's why I didn't want to go to college.
Dr. Daniel:And then it awakened me this other thought of, like, wait a second. So what this means is that everybody has the same potential to be successful. And the other piece of the hidden curriculum, just real quick, I feel like I have to share it because it's a nerdy research. So there's another researcher named Claude Steele, and so what Claude Steele would do is, like one of the examples of the studies that he would do is they would have students take a test and they would see how they did on that test and they're basically measuring IQ or performance and then they would have the students take a test again and they would staple their picture to the test before they took it and while they took it. Then, when they would submit it, what they found is that the kids, when their picture was stapled to it, certain students, usually based on economic status, usually based on like color or race what they found is those students performed worse.
Heather:By the fact that they could look at their own picture.
Dr. Daniel:Because their picture was stapled to the page.
Heather:Does that mean that they had, like a certain thought process of their own identity by just staring at themselves?
Dr. Daniel:or what does that mean? No, what they knew, what they found, is that when the kids knew that someone would see the color of their skin or their race, or sometimes even gender, that was grading the paper, they would perform worse. So this is called stereotype threat. So if I think someone is going to judge me poorly or negatively, I will actually perform worse.
Heather:Because they already had that thought process in their mind.
Dr. Daniel:Because they knew that whoever was going to grade me was going to see me. Wow. And so then this gets into this whole conversation. When we talk about success, what I really learned is what it comes down to, and that could just be a whole episode in and of itself. It's like the idea of stereotype threat, but really what it comes down to is this is that every person has the same potential to be successful. We all have the same neurochemistry. God gave us all the exact same gifts. Yes, and I realized that, like I wasn't wanting to express mine fully because I was stunted by systems that I didn't know were in place, how you were raised.
Heather:Yeah, yeah, yeah, through that school system, and I'm sure that you can relate. A hundred percent.
Dr. Daniel:No-transcript of gets us to us meeting each other. So I got a job in teaching um wicked addictions, wicked darkness in my life, and we meet each other and I would love for you to share the story of when we met, because it's so funny and it's told the same way every time.
Heather:And I get called out. It's so true, that's why it's told the same time. So the first night we met, we talked about two things CrossFit and chiropractic and then, shortly after that, we did a push-up contest and you cheated.
Dr. Daniel:I did not cheat and you said you won. For the record you skipped numbers.
Heather:I could clearly hear you.
Dr. Daniel:I did win. Skipping your numbers, I have bigger pecs. I won.
Heather:Actually you cheated. That's the end of the story.
Dr. Daniel:False, I'm not a cheater, just end of the story False.
Heather:I'm not a cheater, just for record for anyone listening, I'm not a cheater.
Dr. Daniel:For record he cheated, um, and then I also beat you again on our wedding night, but we'll get to the wedding night later, uh, so okay, so go back into the story. We talked about CrossFit and chiropractic. Um, it would probably be important to just let people know I don't know about you and you can speak to this One. You got to talk about, like, what you were doing. And then the other thing is like I just kind of started a health journey. So my initial, like four way into this, what I would say is a health journey, was Tim Ferriss's four hour body, so that's kind of. When we met, I was all into CrossFit.
Heather:You've just gotten into CrossFit, yeah.
Dr. Daniel:And CrossFit is brand new at the time. This is like I started CrossFit in end of 2008. And this is end of 2010 when you and I met. So CrossFit was still new to me and I just found out about Tim Ferriss' 4-Hour Body and I'm like okay, for the first time I actually care about what I put in my system as far as fuel.
Heather:Yeah, I was working for a chiropractor at the time as I was going to physical therapy school, so when I first started that job, I was truly just looking for a job to stay like somewhat in the health related field, something that I could stay consistent with with learning and staying somewhat in my field. Little did I know that I was working for a very neurologically based chiropractor that kind of opened my world to so many more possibilities outside of what like the body could truly do. And, um, when we were talking on the first night, my docs that I was working for were really into CrossFit at the time, so that's how we started talking about CrossFit and, um, that's how I introduced you to chiropractic at that time as the funniest part is I thought chiropractic was complete hogwash at the time.
Dr. Daniel:I thought chiropractors were quacks. I grew up in a world. My best friend's dad was a chiropractor and so he had a practice attached to his house. He had a home office and he would kick us out of his office when somebody would roll in their walker. He took care of people who were like all 80 plus and literally what I thought it was is.
Dr. Daniel:I can remember having like some kind of neck stiffness and I was like hey, do you think like your dad could help me? And his dad was literally like no, I won't adjust you, because if I do, then you will literally be like you'll have to come to me forever or else you'll be in pain for the rest of your life. So there's this whole other paradigm of chiropractic that has to do with like vitality and the body's ability to heal itself. We don't have to get in on that on this episode, but getting back to this idea of like teaching and us meeting each other in success. So that kind of led us to this point where we had a journey where we were just like dating and you played hard to get for like 27 months until it until it wasn't really that long, but I literally wondered forever. I'm like does she like me, does she not like me?
Heather:The funniest part is I knew at two months or two weeks that we were going to get married.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, and we we did end up getting married, which is cool. So, so before that though, um, after we started dating, it took us, it took you like six months. Yeah, You're working at the chiropractor's office finishing up your physical therapy license, and you're like just go see Dr Mike, and I'm like I still was like I don't understand, like how could getting my back cracked do anything so stubborn?
Heather:You had so many excuses.
Dr. Daniel:And most guys are that way, like I literally find that now in practice, like most guys are just not as smart as women is what it comes down to, especially with their health.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, for the people in the back, let me just say that again, don't be dumb like me. Like I just took so long. So here's what happened is cool. So, um, I was like in the party world in high school um, lots of drugs, lots of alcohol, lots of just stuff partying.
Dr. Daniel:And even though, even though I had that, I still had this like belief inside of me that my body knew how to heal itself. So like I could party all night, be exhausted, wake up in the morning and like, have a ripping headache. And my friends would be like, dude, just take some Tylenol for your headache. And I'd be like, no, even though I was partying, even though I was like didn't care what went into my system, I would still be like, no, my body knows how to take care of itself. Like I can handle my headache on my own.
Dr. Daniel:So there's like this double-minded philosophy that I had at the time, but I would always I remember saying that like multiple times to friends I'm like, hey, no, my body knows how to heal itself. And then we got to I go, you finally get me to go see Dr Mike, and he does a workshop, much like we just did the other night, and he's the first thing he says, or the first thing I remember him saying, is like and this is a room full of like 60 people he's like the body knows how to heal itself, and I was like, whoa, this, yeah Well, it was powerful, because it's something that I believed.
Heather:Right and I had in line with innately what you thought.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, I had it in me my whole entire life and it's like it was activation of like you've seen those movies, right, where, like the person's like a FBI agent and then they like get activated. Where they're just a normal citizen and then, like some secret code, word is said into their ears and they get activated Like what's that Jesse Eisenberg movie? You know what?
Heather:I'm talking about.
Dr. Daniel:Yes, I do Like that. It was literally like what it was. And so I got activated and I was like dude, what is this? So I'm teaching and I'm like pretty broken and like a lot of darkness, Like I was bored, I was unhappy we still weren't married but we were considering, I think, moving in together. I don't know that we'd lived together yet.
Heather:We had the conversations.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, we had talked about it. But like my life kind of looked like, this is I would snooze as much as I could, show up five minutes late to work every day, rushing hated being there. Would leave as soon as I possibly could at the end of the day, no planning or zero, planning the kids.
Dr. Daniel:Uh, partly, partially because I was good at it, but partially just because I was bored, um and then and I, I love teaching, that's the thing about it. Like I loved what I did, I didn't love parts of it and I just wasn't happy with myself.
Heather:I don't even think you graded your own kids papers.
Dr. Daniel:No, and I got crap for that a lot from students. So when I started getting adjusted though, I kind of like became the health guy, and so I saw Dr Mike. I obviously got under care with him and as I started getting adjusted, I noticed, like my tendency to like I still wanted to snooze and I still wanted to get home. Actually, I got to back up because I got to share the part where like this is how bad I was. Like not only was I doing all this stuff in school, like I was the avid coordinator, I was a volleyball coach I still was rushing out of that place every day, like I didn't want to be there. I never talked to you about it.
Heather:I was pretty miserable, oh yeah, I would ask you every single day how was your day?
Dr. Daniel:What did you like enjoy about your day? And it was you were shut down. Yeah, I don't want to talk about it yeah. I don't want to talk about it. It was, it was good Hard, I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, um, so isolating for you and I didn't feel connected or like I was living passionate. But I started.
Dr. Daniel:So I started seeing Dr Mike and I noticed that, like I had, this new found passion and purpose, to start learning about what was happening in my classroom with, like, the students that I was teaching. Okay, and that's some really good teaching mentors. So that's a piece of it.
Dr. Daniel:I can't not give them credit where credit is due? But at the same time, I started asking questions about like, well, how does the brain learn? And then, like, why do I feel this way? Right, because even though I was still like plagued with this kind of like darkness and heavy cloud and addiction and some of the stuff that you didn't even know about at the time, I still cared and I felt myself starting to care more and I wanted to learn more and I was like ripping through books and learning about the brain. Yeah, and what was the? Why did I feel that way?
Heather:Like from your adjustments.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, I mean, it was literally from getting adjusted to care and so like we don't have to talk about chiropractic care on this episode, but the neurochemistry is super interesting which we will get into, because that gets back to success. Right. So, um, chiropractic is amazing. I would love for you to share your journey of chiropractic, and then we'll just continue this story.
Heather:Sure Um, my journey, I guess, is probably a little different than what most people say chiropractic care is for. I never started seeing my doc for any type of pain. I started seeing him because I was required to get adjusted, essentially opened my eyes to this whole new world of like what health really was. Obviously about what you put in your body, how you take care of your body in so many different ways. But then, like, it really started allowing me to, you know, focus more on certain areas and be motivated more in other areas. Again, I never had any pain to start with, so it was kind of different than what most people get started with.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, and that's like my journey was the same. I didn't really go for any specific reason, I just went because my my soon to be wife was like trying to convince me to go, but I didn't understand why. And it unlocked this like, okay, the body knows how to be healthy. So what's so interesting is like, as I started waking up, I started to realize that like hey, we had everything we were told that you're supposed to have.
Dr. Daniel:So circle back to success and this idea of the hidden curriculum and stereotype, threat and all those things and all this research that I was looking at threat and all those things and all this research that I was looking at. I started to see like another layer where it popped up again. Because before I was like, oh, broke the hidden curriculum. Like I'm going to college now, oh, broke the hidden curriculum. Like I got a job as a teacher and I was a volleyball coach and the avid coordinator and teaching honors programs and piloting PBL classes and like all this stuff that I was doing that anybody would have looked at and been like dude, he's crushing it. Pbl classes and like all the stuff that I was doing that anybody would have looked at and been like dude, he's crushing it, but I was still miserable. Yeah, you weren't happy, but I still cared about the brain and still, like, cared about my students and learning about that, yeah.
Dr. Daniel:So what happened was like I had this awakening where I realized that, like we had everything that we were told we were supposed to have, yeah, growing up like you're supposed to go to college, get a job check, have a house check and go from there.
Heather:House with a white picket fence the stereotype of the house with a white picket fence we literally had that.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, we had cars. Uh, we had a garage gym. We were about to get married. I, yeah, there were just so many things when it's like you've arrived like you've done it all. You guys have 401ks, but I was not happy, Right, and luckily you were just a good enough woman to be like. Hey, I'm going to stick it out because I think there's probably some like.
Heather:I saw the potential here.
Dr. Daniel:Um, I don't know what it was that you saw at that point which is super cool, but yeah, I don't know what it was either but so someday you'll have to describe.
Dr. Daniel:So this is where this is where it gets crazy, because, like I started getting adjusted, I start asking questions about like why do I feel this way? Why? And then, like, as I started asking that like really vague answers from the cairo, where he was like we're affecting your brain when we're adjusting you and I'm like, all right, that's cool. So I mentioned multiple times now that I was super passionate about learning, like how could I help my students better? Yeah, so it's led me down this rabbit hole of learning specifically about the frontal cortex of the brain, and what I learned is you know, there are a bunch of books and studies on this. One of them is the Adverse Childhood Experience Study, which I'll talk about in a second, but this book by Paul Tuff. And so Paul Tuff introduces some ideas from this guy who's an economist, his name's James Heckman. And what Heckman he was asking the question of like why do we make kids go to school for four years if we can in high school? Okay.
Dr. Daniel:Freshman, sophomore, junior, senior. Yes, why do we do that if we can just give them a GED in two years, or less than that, and they have the same?
Heather:success.
Dr. Daniel:And they have the same like if they're technically qualified to graduate from high school regardless of if they went for four years or two years or whatever the GED program is one year. Yeah, why would you not just give everyone send them to school for two years? And he was thinking about it from a money perspective. Okay, Like what we're feeding kids for lunches, what we're funding publicly electricity and energy in the buildings. Like we're ripping kids through more quickly. Sure.
Dr. Daniel:It only makes sense from a financial perspective. So as he started asking these questions, what he realized is like oh, what's the reason that sets these kids apart who, like, are getting their GEDs, versus those who don't get their GEDs and don't graduate high school? Is the function of the frontal cortex of the brain, which is what the function of the frontal cortex of the brain is, things like. They're all soft skills, so what we call non-cognitive skills, so grit, willpower, determination, curiosity, determining good versus bad and right versus wrong. It's goal setting and it's specifically with goal setting. It's setting a long-term goal but then doing the short-term things that would actually allow you to hit it in the end, reaching that long-term goal.
Dr. Daniel:It's our emotional intelligence, it's our faith, which I think is super cool. We can circle back to that. It's our hope, it's our optimism. It down-regulates other parts of the brain. So when it is strong, when the front part of the brain is strong, it actually turns off other parts of the brain, and we'll talk about that. We can talk about it later when we talk about kids if we get to the kids' conversation today.
Dr. Daniel:So the front part of the brain is responsible for soft skills and a bunch of other things too. But if we just talk about the soft skills in the context of success, what Heckman found is that these kids just have a set of skills, and that's what is giving them the allowance to be able to finish the GED and be quote unquote successful later in life.
Heather:And how are they gaining these skills with the GED?
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, so there are a lot of studies that talk about it. It's such a good question. This is where we'll get like nerdy. So there's. Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment?
Heather:Yes, but tell everybody else. Have you heard of the marshmallow experiment?
Dr. Daniel:Okay, check this out. It's so cool, so this is one of my favorite studies. So what they do is they take kids and they've done this forever, like back into the sixties, I think is when they started it.
Dr. Daniel:And so they'll take kids and they will put them in a room and a researcher will come in and they'll say, hey, and the researcher just kind of looks like a doctor. They're like, hey, so what I'm going to do is I'm going to leave this marshmallow here on this plate for you, but if you can wait until I come back, I'll give you two, or you can just have this one. Right now you get to decide, and these are like different age ranges, so they go from like two up to like eight years old, and when they do these studies, all they do is a researcher leaves and then they have like double-sided glass and they just video what happens with the kid and you can actually look these up on YouTube. They're hilarious. But what's so special about watching the videos and what the what the research presents is this is that the kids who have strategies to deal with or distract themselves will not eat the marshmallow To avoid eating the marshmallow because of what is to be expected.
Dr. Daniel:So that would be considered self-control, which is a frontal cortex activity. A soft skill? Yes, it's a soft skill, okay.
Heather:What do you think you would have done?
Dr. Daniel:Back then, yeah, yeah, uh. When I was a kid, well, yeah oh, I would have for sure eaten the one without question. Me too, there's no doubt I did not have self-control. What do you think Coco would do?
Heather:I think she could hold out, she would for sure hold out she would definitely be able to hold out.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, or sometimes she just sets her own way, so this is what it gets so interesting.
Heather:She would say I just wanted the one marshmallow. Yeah, that would be her.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, she's so smart because she'll be like it's fine, I only wanted one, I only wanted one, yeah, and she'll just like totally play it off because she's smart she knows how to play us. She does. She's so special. So, okay, the marshmallow study. So here's what's cool. When you watch these kids, what they found is that they're looking at, like, what these kids are doing. So some would like tap their finger. Some would literally like look away or like go to the other side of the little room.
Heather:Some sang right. They would like sing songs Some would sing songs.
Dr. Daniel:Some would like kick their foot on the table on the leg of the table and they realize that, like these are all just strategies for them to try to distract themselves long enough to the research, for the researcher to get back.
Heather:Cause they didn't know how long they were going to have to wait.
Dr. Daniel:No, they weren't told. It was just like when I come back, then you can have two. Okay and so, and they've done this with Oreos and a whole bunch of other stuff, so it doesn't have to be just marshmallows. So what they found is that those kids who would like tap or sing or do whatever somewhere, their parents had inadvertently taught them strategies to delay gratification long enough and distract themselves so that they could get like the ultimate reward. Wow. So, but it's an indicator of success. Okay.
Dr. Daniel:And so then we get into this idea of like the adverse childhood experience study. Yes, and again, this is a study that stands on its own, but Paul Tuff's book how Children Succeed talks about this. What they do is they look at MRIs, so they look at like functional MRIs of kids, and what they found in these adverse childhood experience just means stress. So what they found with these kids is that if they have more stress when they are younger, then they are less likely by pretty much all measures of success to be successful based on what their functional MRIs look like when they're little. So to like sum that up and put it in a normal human terminology is that when we have stress when we're kids, that will negatively affect or turn off the front part of our brain. It decreases activity of the front part of the brain and what happens is because the stress hormones that flow through our bodies when we have a stress when we are children sets us up for a less likelihood that we will be successful.
Heather:And when does the?
Dr. Daniel:stress start when do they consider that? That's a great question. So the stress can start at any time, but the earliest it could start so they've done these research with mice now and it's pretty readily available and like agreed upon at this point is that by second trimester of pregnancy the fetus is receiving stress hormones from mom and those stress hormones are negatively affecting the development of the fetus's brain before it ever takes the first breath of life.
Heather:So you're also saying that the stress that the kids have from this study can relate back to in the womb?
Dr. Daniel:Yes. So when we talk about and I don't think anybody's done these studies to necessarily prove it but if you just, there's two things right. So you have to have literature and you have to have logic. It would only make sense that if stress hormones turn off the front part of the brain and affect brain development which we know unequivocally that it does so stress hormones negatively affect brain development. If mom is pregnant, what's the first system in utero to develop, like the brain, the brain and the nervous system.
Dr. Daniel:So if that's the first system to develop and it guides the development of everything else, if we're stunting the development of that nervous system, with mama's stress hormones, then we're setting a kiddo up before their first breath of life to be less successful, to be in more of a fight or flight than a rest and digest. We don't call it fight or flight and rest and digest when it's in utero, though, we say pain or pleasure response, and so what we find is that by second trimester, babe's brain is primed for a pain or pleasure response.
Dr. Daniel:That's second trimester, that's before the first breath of first breath of life. Wow.
Dr. Daniel:Then we go into there's birthing trauma, but then we talk about what the adverse childhood experience study was really looking at is like how a dad who might be an alcoholic or a mom or an abusive parent or living in a single parent household or not knowing where your next meal is going to come from, financials, financial stresses, living in a bad part of town there's all these things that could be considered stress, right, and I think you know a lot of us. I think we dealt with some of those that we didn't even like I'll give you a perfect example of this and like I love my parents so much, they did the best they could, but I never I forgot this and I didn't realize it until, like, really being here but growing up like we never had central heat or central air. We had space heaters in the wintertime. This is in Indiana Space heaters in the wintertime and we had window air conditioners in the summertime. My whole entire life, yeah, and so, like you just think about the stress of like finances on mom and dad.
Dr. Daniel:That is it has to trickle over to the kids, plus, you know, seeing your parents argue and like doing whatever, dealing with divorce later in life. So the adverse childhood experience study really just should suggest that when we have stresses, the more that we have, the less like we are to be successful. And the ACE study would define success in a number of ways. So they would look at how much money you make, they would look at disease rates, they would look at divorce rates, they would look at drug abuse rates, they would look at alcohol abuse rates, healthy relationships Basically, like I said, anything that you would define as success. Those measures go down when kids have more stress. Wow. So the question is why?
Dr. Daniel:And in my opinion and everything that I've seen through, the research suggests that by the second year of life, the baby's, a kiddo's, brain has created most of its connections by the second year of life synaptic connections. So what that means, then, is that if our brain has made the most synaptic connections by the time that we're two, everything else from that point forward is not is no longer connectivity, but it is myelination. You can't build more. You can build more. That's why we have neuroplasticity, but most of it is set unless we're aware of these things that we're talking about. Yeah.
Dr. Daniel:Nadesh. How are we doing Great? You're at 30.
Heather:You have like 25 minutes left.
Dr. Daniel:And this is like all making sense, all making sense. Kokaboo, you doing good, yeah, okay, cool. So when we get into? So, again, just going back, the point is that the brain is developing so rapidly in the first two years of life it's making most of its connections. Everything after that is myelinating. Okay, for the most part, I'm exaggerating. I'm not exaggerating, I'm just simplifying a little bit, but myelinating pathways that have already been there. So what this means, then, is that it's going to be way harder after those first two years of life to combat whatever stress we've dealt with, and it gets even worse by the time we get to, like eight years old, wow. So, again, when we talk about success, we're talking about things that are being programmed from way before.
Dr. Daniel:Anybody would mostly give credit for it, which is why I love chiropractic so much, and so you start to look at your life and my life and I look at my aspirations and my dreams, and it's no wonder then that when we start getting adjusted and we wake up, the front part of the brain and our brains start awakening, we feel this newfound passion and purpose to learn more about the brain, in my instance.
Heather:Because when you are getting adjusted, you are directly affecting the prefrontal cortex, which is the area for success, exactly, exactly, and the area for the soft skills.
Dr. Daniel:It controls. Other stuff too, lots of other stuff. We'll talk about those in a minute. So that's kind of the adverse childhood experience. So then I go, if we go back to my classroom, I started looking at my students and as I learned all this stuff and I'm realizing like I've worked in a pretty urban school district and what I realized is that, like most of my students just had a ton of stress on their kids, so give an example, like the biggest one would just be socioeconomic status.
Dr. Daniel:So one of my favorite students I remember every morning he would come in and he would sleep under the counters in the back of my classroom. He would take a little nap because he would always get there early and I would ask him I'm like dude, how do you sleep under there? And he's like Mr Kimblee, you don't understand. I've never slept in a bed my whole life.
Dr. Daniel:He's like I've only slept on the carpet so I can sleep pretty much anywhere with no issues at all, and that's like that's heartbreaking, but that's a stress. So much stress, you know, and you extrapolate that on top of like probably not living in the best neighborhoods and all the other stuff that he experienced.
Dr. Daniel:That's when it gets really, really like I said. It's heartbreaking, but I wanted to help these kids. So my thing in teaching is I started just going and basically figuring out like how could we influence the prefrontal cortex? And as I'm getting adjusted, seeing our Cairo, I'm realizing that there's like more passion and more purpose, and I'm asking more questions and I finally put it together that like, oh my gosh, what if we could teach skills to the prefrontal cortex? And I started asking another question what if these kids could have chiropractic care? Because we knew that chiropractic was affecting the brain? What if these kids could have chiropractic care instead of, like, going to a school nurse? Wow, how much more successful would they be? Yes, and what we found is that, unequivocally, kiddos are going to be more successful if they're well-adjusted, if they have a well-firing frontal cortex, than if they don't. And I eventually got to the point where I had to literally stop teaching and we gave up our whole life.
Heather:Well, you, stopped teaching because you realized that getting adjusted would directly affect that area in a more efficient manner than the way you were teaching.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, so I was teaching these teaching strategies and people were asking questions and they wanted me to teach our whole school district what I was doing. But I realized that like that's taking years to get results Right, when there's a possibility that I could very well like adjust these kids and see results in like three months.
Heather:Yeah, Well, in turn, they're also going back home to the exact same environments that are stressful.
Dr. Daniel:Exactly the exact same environment. That's stressful. So I'm like, how do we bring kids out of that?
Dr. Daniel:And the best way is to get them to and we're not gonna bring them out of the environment but we can get their brains to adapt to the environment differently, and that was done through the adjustment, and so this idea of success really gets down to it's just neurochemistry. It's just what is happening in the brain, what chemicals are involved, what structures are involved, and if we can re-stimulate those structures and change those pathways and change that hormonal system, then again, going back to my thing, at the very beginning, god gave us all the exact same potential to be successful.
Heather:So tell me how that works with an adjustment.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, so like when we adjust the brain, we're immediately reversing the effect of stress hormones being on in the system. There's a whole process involved in this with I'll share when I'll share just a second. But the idea is that when we adjust the spine, we wake up the brain. When we wake up the brain, the brain says, hey, we actually don't need to be in fight or flight, let's go back into rest and digest. And it's kind of a perfect segue into how, like how this whole thing works.
Dr. Daniel:Is you got to think like if you're a cave woman and I'm a caveman and a bear came in to attack us right now and we're cavemen right? So like we're in the cave and there's a fire and you had just been out picking berries all day and I had my loincloth on and I wrestled a bear with my bare hands and I brought it back to eat, but then, like that bear's spouse was very upset that I killed it and brought us dinner for the next three months, and you were so proud of me and mama's bears coming back to attack me.
Dr. Daniel:We're going to fight it or we're going to run away from it. You're going to fight it and I'm going to run away. Yeah, exactly. So our brain releases stress hormones. It doesn't and this is what's so interesting it doesn't matter where stress comes from. So our brain releases stress hormones to get us to get up and fight or run away. So those stress hormones cortisol, adrenaline, norepinephrine, they're known as catecholamines those stress hormones get us up and alert and put us in an anxious state so that we can either fight and kill the bear or run away from it. But the trick in this is that when you look at why fight or flight, fighting requires lots of movement. So I'm going to fight the bear, I'm going to kill it, and then my brain's going to go okay, it's going to scan my environment and say, okay, cool, there's no more threat, let's go back into rest and digest. Or the opposite is true we run away, as you stated, and we get far, far enough away, and then our brain goes okay, cool, there's no more bear.
Dr. Daniel:Which also requires a lot of movement, lots of movement, exactly. You're so smart, so when we have movement in fight or flight, the brain realizes like, okay, cool, there's not a threat, let's go back and rest and digest. The problem is that today in our society, we're not cavemen and women, so our stresses are finances and relationships and comparing ourselves to one another on social media and moving a whole bunch and the state of the economy and what president, we hate or we don't hate, or the fires, if you're here in California.
Heather:Toxins in our food.
Dr. Daniel:Toxins in our food Blue light, blue light is a huge one. I think blue light is probably arguably the most important one that people don't think about. Every time you look at blue light on the screen, it's literally triggering your brain into a fight or flight response. It's turning off your body's production of melatonin via the pineal gland and you're like shutting down your ability to sleep well, to think well to regenerate and learn new things inside of the brain in the first place.
Dr. Daniel:Blue light is so, so, so critical and so detrimental and we're bombarded by it.
Dr. Daniel:Because of our phones and screens Because of our phones and screens, and so this kind of presents this like whole interesting thing of what are the like, what are the pathways involved, right? So I shared that if we don't, if we fight or run away, our body's going to interpret the environment and say, okay, cool, we feel safe and so. But when we circle back and we don't fight or run away, like we don't today, we're stacking stress all day long, like, as you and I are sitting here right now, we're getting bombarded with EMF and wifi and so our body's in a low level stress response. So what happens is, when we have stress, it like it does a number of things and this all kind of happens simultaneously. So it fires up the HPA axis, which is a hypothalamal, pituitary adrenal axis.
Dr. Daniel:So we're going to fire adrenals, we're going to change what happens in the pituitary gland which releases hormones, um, and it's going to affect the hypothalamus as well. It's also going to affect the hippocampus. So the it, so cortisol, it's also going to affect the hippocampus. So cortisol, one of the stress hormones, shrinks cells of the hippocampus. So what this means is decreased learning. It also fires up the limbic system and it activates the limbic system, specifically the basal ganglia and the amygdala, and what happens is in that limbic system. It's going to allow us to be more anxious, more alert, more on guard, more fearful. Wow.
Dr. Daniel:So those stress hormones do all of this simultaneously in the brain. It increases our whole sympathetic response. So when I say sympathetic, I just mean a stress response. So the stress response when we break it down from a physiological perspective, we're increasing heart rate, increasing blood pressure, increasing blood sugar levels, increasing cholesterol levels, increasing blood clotting factors. We're breaking down connective tissue and protein tissue, so we're breaking down ligaments and muscle and tendons in the body so that we can build up more stress hormones. We're turning off the digestive system. We're increasing our fear, anxiety, depression. We break down bone. We turn off testosterone. We turn off growth hormone. We break down bone, we turn off testosterone, we turn off growth hormone. So there's all this whole physiological process.
Heather:All these keys to the diseases that we have today in society.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah. So if you break that down, I won't go too into detail. But if you break those down and you look at like increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, what's that associated with High blood pressure? Well yeah, Heart disease, Cardiovascular disease?
Heather:Yeah, right, associated with high blood pressure. Well yeah, heart disease cardiovascular disease?
Dr. Daniel:yeah, right, so heart disease or artery diseases in general. So then you look at like high cholesterol. Well, you can talk about atherosclerosis, but what we know is that sugar in the bloodstream actually makes the blood more acidic, and that's the problem with cholesterol, not that cholesterol is bad in the first place. Okay, so there are all these processes. We can talk about increased insulin resistance, yeah, diabetes type 2 diabetes. So there's all these processes we can talk about increased insulin resistance diabetes, type two diabetes.
Dr. Daniel:So there's all these things that happen in stress response that literally did they completely destroy our health. But the interesting thing about it and depending on like what level of detail you want to go into, one of the things that firing up of stress hormones does especially chronic stress is it decreases a neurotransmitter called BDNF, which is brain derived neurotropic factor, and so I mean yeah, so BDNF is what literally allows our brain to make new connections, and so if we decrease BDNF, what we will have is like shorter term we'll start we'll start having brain fog or loss of memory or we won't be
Dr. Daniel:thinking as clearly or we can't make as good of decisions, but longer term, though, having a decrease in BDNF, and what we do is we increase glutamate in the brain. So glutamate is excitatory to the brain, which sounds good in short term, but in long term what it does is it actually creates neurodegeneration. So we lack of BDNF and then increase of breakdown or neurodegeneration of the brain. This can start to lead to like Alzheimer's, parkinson's dementia all those kind of things.
Dr. Daniel:And so there's all this stuff that happens as a result of the autonomic nervous system, specifically the sympathetic branch of the nervous system, firing. So, to answer your question, what happens in a chiropractic adjustment? So, like we talked about fight or flight, if we move joints of the spine the proper way, then we'll wake up the brain. And when we wake up the brain that movement of the joints of the spine, the brain will start to interpret its environment differently and it will say, oh, there's actually not a bear here, we don't need to fight or run away, let's go back into rest and digest and, just like you can do with anything in the body, we can actually build our body's capacity up to deal with stress better, so that the things that used to stress us out no longer do and we can adapt better to each of the stresses that we put our body under in the first place.
Heather:So essentially you can take on more long-term as long as, because we're never going to get rid of stress, but we will always have stress, no matter the age. By the way, babies being born still experience stress, developmental milestones stress, sports stress, school stress, social friendships for teenagers, stress, and then obviously everything as an adult that we experience as well. We're never getting rid of that stress. So as long as you can adapt to stress better by addressing the prefrontal cortex, you can essentially be more successful.
Dr. Daniel:Exactly Well said, and so it's really quite simple. That's why I quit teaching, so that I could step into a place with authority and tell someone like hey, your kid may not actually have dyslexia. That's a symptom of a disorganization of the brain, and if we can wake up the brain, turn off the stress response, decrease or increase BDNF, allow the brain to make new connections, grow the cells of the hippocampus and actually get them to learn well, then maybe those things will just turn around. Yeah.
Dr. Daniel:And we have, like epic case studies, to share that you know, our documentary talks about one of those. So it's like that's why I quit teaching and that's where we get back into. This idea of success is, realistically. What it comes down to is all of everything that would make someone a successful. Human being is housed within the frontal part of the brain which we already have within us. We already have within us.
Heather:God designed us perfectly. We were born with it.
Dr. Daniel:Yes, it is expressed through how much input we put to that part of the brain, and so remember that stress decreases input to that part of the brain.
Heather:Yes.
Dr. Daniel:And there's a whole pathway involved. We can talk about it later on, specifically how movement of the joints of the spine affects that part of the brain, but that would be a whole other episode. Yeah, I think the biggest point to go to, though, is that, like the skills of success are learned, yes.
Dr. Daniel:And so from us going me wanting to be an assistant manager at the oil chain shop to then getting suckered into going to college, in a way, finding this newfound passion and purpose, being really good at teaching, having everything we were told we were supposed to have, being miserable, and then realizing like hey, we're going to give up everything- yes, we're going to give up the picket fence, we're going to give up our cars, we're going to give up our jobs and our money, and we could have done that forever and been very, very, very unhappy.
Heather:For sure.
Dr. Daniel:But I think what it comes down to is like that the chiropractic care and waking up our brain yeah. The success part of the brain yes, is what allowed us to take a risk. Yeah. We felt safe, safe to go to chiropractic school.
Heather:Yes, move across country.
Dr. Daniel:Across country. Yeah, live in campus housing as a married couple fresh new married couple with no money, no potential of income. I had no idea what I was doing. By the way, like I, I was an english teacher. So to go from english to like straight up, science, you had no science.
Heather:Wait, tell us what your science was.
Dr. Daniel:Background oh yeah, so this is so funny. Um, I took that's hilarious, I took one one biology class, okay, and uh, this is like basic, basic biology, like I'm talking so basic of biology.
Heather:Like ninth grade biology.
Dr. Daniel:One of our assignments, one of our extra credit assignments. This is how I passed biology. By the way, in undergrad we had to take pictures of things that had to do with the things we were learning about. So I remember. I wish I could find the cameras and I could show people.
Dr. Daniel:One of those was like denatured protein. So when you cook an egg on the skillet, when it turns from clear to white, that's protein denaturing, okay. So, like I took a picture this is like an extra credit assignment that I would not have passed if it weren't for this assignment Like fermentation process of alcohol so me taking a picture of, like an alcohol bottle to show that there's like a fermentation process that happens. Wow. So, ba, I'm talking basic, basic, so good then. Um, what's funny is in chiro school, like second quarter, yeah, I remember, like in tears almost, and you're, I'm like babe, I can't do this.
Dr. Daniel:like you literally, you had no science background uh, because we're talking like chemistry and some of these other organic chemistry, like I, just yes had no skills around but we made it happen.
Heather:So wait, you didn't tell them the science that you took.
Dr. Daniel:Oh, yeah, yeah, the science that I took. I was trying to avoid it.
Heather:Cause it's funny, no, it's good.
Dr. Daniel:Geology was my primary form of science, geology. I took a lot of geology classes, so, and we used to look at like rock formations and so if anyone has questions about rocks. What can I don't know now I don't remember a lot of it, but if you gave me like a breakdown or like a side cut of, a piece of earth. I could probably figure out what, um, what pieces of earth were, where and when the fault happened, and all this stuff so useful in school, for you so useful so that's kind the, that's kind of the breakdown of like this idea of success and then the link between the prefrontal cortex.
Dr. Daniel:So when we get back to it is like all jokes aside on the geology stuff, what it comes down to is that the frontal cortex is a part of the brain where the skills are there to be learned and anybody can learn them.
Heather:Anybody can.
Dr. Daniel:And everybody has it within them, right, and I think that's kind of the. The place where I would like to land the plane is this idea that, like, no matter who you are, no matter what you were raised or brought up in, there is another level for you and if you don't have strategies to address the front part of your brain, the prefrontal cortex, specifically, then you will probably be lacking, even if you don't know that you are like. I have worked with high level entrepreneurs that had no idea there was another gear wow without addressing the prefrontal cortex.
Dr. Daniel:And there are a lot of ways to do that and there are ways that you know. We can talk about clean eating and we can talk about exercise. The most effective way, obviously bias, is going to be chiropractic care Right. But we won't talk about that on this episode and it gets down to this vitalistic principle is that every single person has the same potential to be successful.
Heather:We were all designed the same way, yep.
Dr. Daniel:And designed the same potential to be successful. We were all designed the same way and designed perfectly. God didn't make a mistake and these studies really show that it can be reversed. I've seen it with our clients, I've seen it with people who I've worked with personally, and when you realize that it's just a chemistry that can be influenced, it's a chemistry that can be changed, regardless of your history, regardless of your background, it's anything is possible.
Heather:So good.
Dr. Daniel:And the frontal part of the brain is responsible for success.
Heather:Yes.
Dr. Daniel:You are not responsible for your success. And your upbringing, your upbringing, your family, your identity yes, None of the stuff that you think holds you back actually holds you back. Right, god already gave it to you. It's already been promised to you. This is why you know we get to get into. This. Could be another episode too, but like why does the Bible say do not fear so many times? Do not fear, do not worry. Every time you have a fear or worry, your brain releases stress.
Dr. Daniel:Putting Every time you have a fear or worry your brain releases stress, putting it in the stressed state yeah, and that limits our ability to think clearly and make decisions and have more faith and optimism.
Dr. Daniel:But it took a risk for us to be like, okay, hey, we're going to go to, we're going to take a risk and go to chiropractic school, it's all going to work out, instead of it like feeling like we're going to die. We took another risk after chiropractic school to move across the country again to California, where people said the you know what laws are crazy. It's way too expensive. It's way too expensive.
Dr. Daniel:You can never do it. You definitely can't live on the beach Like all the things that we kind of have now we're told we couldn't do, and I would attribute it 100% to the way that God created us and the way that every person was designed to function with a healthy frontal cortex and the neurochemistry and the structures involved in that are key in the success, and it's just tapping into the right decisions so that you can take the risk and let it be calculated and feel safe and feel comforted.
Dr. Daniel:And again, getting back to my point, is this is why the Bible makes the promises that it makes Do not weary, do not fear, like all those things, because it was the cheat code of like you can't be successful and achieve the promises to you If you're stuck in a stressed out state.
Heather:Yes, so good.
Dr. Daniel:What else?
Heather:I don't know that's good.
Dr. Daniel:Yeah, I love how you Cool, I love it. All right, fam, that's it. We'll come at you guys next week. Sounds good, peace.
