The Body-Brain Connection
by Eric Kaplan, DC, FIAMA, Perry Bard DC, Jason Kaplan DC
My career as a chiropractor has not always been easy. When I began in 1979, I was called a quack more times than I was called doctor.
Now, I am so proud of how chiropractic has moved to the forefront of healthcare, and now, working with Disc Centers of America, we are changing the paradigm of simply drugs and surgery for disc problems. Today, we are treating the worst cases in the world and getting results. Thanks to people like Dr. James Cox, DC, Dr. Norman Shealy, MD, PhD, and Dr. Alan Dyer, MD, PhD, we are gaining our rightful place in the back and disc industry.
The first time I listened to Dr. Jim Parker, he talked about PMA’s positive mental attitude. It is a positive mental attitude, but I have taken myself, my partner, Dr. Perry Bard, and all of our clinics in 43 states to the next level. I know it is not always easy, but hopefully, this article will help you. As you can see from the picture below, my life has not always been easy, but I have never given up. I am grateful to chiropractic medicine for everything that I have in my life. I have always believed that your attitude will help your altitude in practice.
A decade and a half ago, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania took a sudden, sharp turn away from the road well-traveled by the psychiatric profession since the days of Sigmund Freud. He decided to study not what made people miserable, but rather what made them get up in the morning with a merry heart and a spring in their step. Martin Seligman, PhD, had decided to study happiness.
When the positive psychology movement took shape only 15 years ago, some considered it a lark and a vanity project of the man who led it, Martin Seligman, Ph.D., author of Authentic Happiness, Learned Optimism, and the then-newly elected president of the American Psychological Association. He wanted to switch the centuries-old direction of his profession from probing sadness to promoting happiness. While academics balked at first—after all, studying depression and pained childhoods had more gravitas than telling people to smile more (which works to increase personal positivity)—the research dollars Seligman raised and the solid findings he published got their attention.
As chiropractors, Dr. Perry, my son Dr. Jason Kaplan, and there are three components needed to build your practice:
1. The Brand. This is what separates you from the pack.
2. Leadership. The qualities that define you
3. Attitude. Your attitude makes a difference.
Listen, with insurance companies not paying your bills or reducing your fees, it can be challenging to overcome obstacles to choose happiness over and over again. When life gets tough—the tough get going. Success can be rewarding. No matter how hard you think practicing might be, you will always come out on the other side just a little bit stronger and wiser if you maintain a positive attitude.
That is why life is such a beautiful web of challenges and triumphs. From every experience comes a valuable lesson, and your ability to find the light even in your darkest hour means you are greater than your worst day. In my book, The 5 Minute Motivator, I state, " there are no mistakes in life, only lessons."
Perry and I believe and teach daily that positive psychology creates a veritable canon of tested and proven measures to increase one’s subjective well-being (aka “happiness”). The idea that you are a glass-half-full person or a glass-half-empty person has almost begun to feel quaint because perhaps the most powerful message to arise from the science of happiness is the idea that we can significantly change our outlook and life satisfaction no matter who we are, what we do, where we live, how great our practice is, or how much money we make.
Shaun Ackor, an early positive psychology adopter from Harvard University, sums up what we have learned about personal happiness over the past decade and a half, “We are not our genes, our environments, or our childhoods. At least, we don’t have to be. By changing our habits, we can trump even our genes.” We can all be glass-half-full people if we want.
Express gratitude regularly to your staff and patients. Strengthen your practice and social connections through frequent quality time with friends and loved ones and acts of kindness towards patients, staff, acquaintances, and neighbors. Show your character. Doctors get in the “flow,” get that satisfying feeling of active engagement in one’s work, art, or sport by figuring out your core strengths and how you can best utilize them. Meditate. Exercise.
Everyone knows I like research, and research reveals more nuances in human happiness and practical ways to achieve it every year. So consider this an update in progress. Already practicing many of the tried-and-true happiness habits? Or are you only an eight or nine on the flourishing scale? Then, add these strategies to your mix. Much of the research to follow comes from the mind-body school of thought, which contends that the way you think can transform the health of your body, and vice versa, into a feedback loop that you can control and spin in the direction you want. We are positive that you can spin it upward to reach that 10.
View stress as a challenge, not a threat.
We all know that stress is bad for our health and emotional well-being. However, worrying about whether you are too stressed can be stressful in itself. Moreover, who among us is not juggling at least a half-dozen balls, none of which we can afford to drop? Stress reduction strategies like meditation, massage, exercise, and time with friends are still great ideas, but some degree of stress will likely still be a part of your life no matter what. And that can be okay. New research shows that stress can help us thrive if we are not afraid of it. The researchers, Achor and Alia Crum, Ph.D., an assistant professor of psychology at Stanford University, worked with 380 managers from UBS, the financial services company, presumably a stressed-out lot.
Achor and Crum showed half of the UBS group an instructional video on all the possible benefits of stress. (Yes, there are some.) They wrote, “The experience of stress can enhance the development of mental toughness, heightened awareness, new perspectives, a sense of mastery, strengthened priorities, deeper relationships, greater appreciation for life and an increased sense of meaningfulness.” The group that learned about the benefits of stress experienced a 23% drop in stress-related health issues, including headaches, backaches, and fatigue, even though their stress levels remained the same. Their productivity on the job increased, and their life satisfaction scores improved. The folks in the other group did not enjoy the same health, productivity, and life satisfaction boosts.
“This research shows us that while stress is inevitable, its effects upon our bodies and minds are not,” Achor says. The managers who viewed stress as a challenge from which they could grow did! The next time you are under stress, try to view the pressure as potentially enhancing—and a sign of the rich life you lead—rather than debilitating.
Think young.
A new study shows that you are as young and young-looking as you think you are. Researchers from Harvard and MIT examined how superficial cues of age (e.g., gray hair and baldness) affect health and longevity. Women were invited to a hair salon where stylists colored and cut their hair. The women who thought their new ’dos made them look younger lowered their blood pressure, while those who did not think the trip to the salon changed their appearance maintained the same blood pressure. Next, strangers evaluated photos of the women in the study and revealed who they thought looked youngest. Consistently, the raters judged the women who believed themselves to look younger as actually being younger than women who thought they appeared to be their age or older. The kicker: the researchers cropped out the women’s hair from the photos.
The lesson: Confidence in your appearance may make you better-looking. We work on this at boot camp. Previous president Donald Trump once told me that “a businessman should be as well dressed as their best-dressed client.”
As another example of how the perception of age may speed up or slow down actual aging, prematurely bald men are at greater risk for developing prostate cancer and coronary heart disease than men who are not prematurely bald. The researchers hypothesize that it is possibly because the bald men perceive themselves as older. The point is not that baldness causes or is a precursor to cancer, but that how you feel about it may play a part. Think of yourself as a sexy young Vin Diesel, Kelly Slater, or Taye Diggs—all handsome, hairless men—instead of Great-Grandpa Eddie.
Much research has found that women who have children later in life live longer than mothers who had their kids earlier, perhaps because they are surrounded by more signs of youth—infants, playgrounds, school, and younger parents—as they age. Another lesson: Play, swing, slide, and make friends of all ages.
Cultivate a positivity bias.
Research has shown that if most of our interactions with others in a day are positive or neutral, and one is negative, come bedtime, most of us will dwell on that one bad experience instead of focusing on the pleasant ones, even though they were more frequent. It is a natural human psychological phenomenon called the “negativity bias.” We give more weight to negative elements of our lives and spend more energy avoiding negative experiences than seeking positive ones. Trust me, I golf. One bad hole or one bad shot can ruin your day if you allow it. The key is if you allow it.
To many, practice is difficult.
What if we could reverse this? Author Rick Hanson, PhD, believes we can. The mind-body connection is so strong that we can improve our health through our outlook—as demonstrated by the stress and hairstyle studies mentioned above—and we can rewire our brains to respond and think more productively. How? By “marinating in every good moment,” Hanson says.
Every time you have a pleasant experience, whether a hug from your child, a joke shared in the elevator with a co-worker, or running into an old friend on the street, savor the interaction afterward. Think about how it made you feel, why it was so great, and how lucky you are to have such moments.
This is the attitude your patients and staff need from you. Dr. Bard and I learned that doctors who are 100% all in understand the power of being all in and the power of the brand and positive mental attitude.
Try to stay with this good moment for long enough—12 or more seconds—so it transfers from short-term memory to long-term storage in your brain. Doing this a few times a day encourages the innate process that will translate that ordinary positive experience into a bit of lasting neural structure and gradually weave these positive resources into the fabric of your brain. In other words, chip away at your negativity bias until you can focus on the positive without effort. Just as our neuroplasticity—the brain’s ability to change—allows us to learn to use chopsticks or ride a bike and do both without thinking, so can we train ourselves to think more positively. Before-and-after brain scans of people who practice this exercise show physiological changes that reflect the shift away from the negativity bias.
Try not to ruminate so much.
Instead, take it easy on yourself. So you had an embarrassing or humiliating moment. So you had a bad patient, a disgruntled employee. Acknowledge and honor their feelings, learn from them, and then move on. In the world we live in, it is not always easy. When you realize “the road to success is always under construction,” and remind yourself of that, you will be on the way to a better path.
Spend your money.
Just do it wisely. The party line in most positive psychology research has been that money cannot buy happiness—at least once basic human needs are met. One study found the cutoff to be $100,000. Above that, more money did not make a difference in personal well-being. However, Daniel Gilbert, PhD, a Harvard psychology professor—perhaps inspired by the financial success of his best-selling book Stumbling on Happiness—begs to differ. “If money does not make you happy,” he wrote in a paper for the Journal of Consumer Psychology, “you probably aren’t spending it right.” He says, “Money is an opportunity for happiness, but it is an opportunity that people routinely squander because the things they think will make them happy often don’t.” Invest in yourself, in your practice. Make your office the best. Make your office your greatest trophy.
Find meaning.
The ongoing Memory and Aging Project from Rush University Medical Center in Chicago has found that the biggest predictor of older people’s health and life satisfaction as they age is their self-reported sense of purpose. A strong sense of purpose was associated with an increased ability to perform day-to-day activities and greater physical mobility. Seniors who had this strong sense of intention also had a lower risk of cognitive impairment and a slower rate of cognitive decline. They outlived their peers.
Another recent study showed that having a deep sense of purpose allows faster and easier recovery from negative events. “The ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience,” the study’s authors concluded. As chiropractors, finding purpose should not be hard. Living your life’s purpose is what makes a positive mental attitude.
Perry and I believe the key component to happiness is finding purpose in your life. He admits that there is a bit of irony behind all the current happiness research, saying, “In the end, it’s not about what makes you happy. It’s about what you have to offer others. Can you put others first? What is your social impact on the world? Living a life of purpose can be hard, and it has a long time frame when it comes to happiness. But in the end, it’s the best measure of a happy life.” Yes, meditate, find your flow, get coffee with friends, exercise, and do all those other proven positivity and well-being boosters, but do so with purpose that makes them more than just feel-good activities. “That’s the difference between a pleasant life and a truly happy one,” she says.
So, if you have been waiting for a meaningful life purpose to come to you, like a calling, you may want to go after it instead. Is it making the world better through your work or volunteerism? Is it taking care of your children and family? Is it creating art? Is it appreciating nature and helping with conservation efforts? Is it simply being an active and contributing member of your community? If so, that is what builds your brand, your practice. This is why we hold the Chiro Event, www.thechiroevent.com. Look for our ad in this magazine and join us for a day with a positive mental attitude. You will not be disappointed.
Dr. Eric Kaplan and Dr. Perry Bard, are business partners of over 32 years. They have developed Disc Centers of America & Concierge Coaches, now in the eleventh year, as well as the first and largest National Certification Program for Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression. Currently, they have over 150 clinics using their Disc Centers of America brand and lead ongoing success training events throughout the year. For more information on coaching, spinal decompression, or seminars, visit www.thechiroevent.com or www.decompressioncertified.org, or call the Chiropractic Q&A Hotline at 888-990-9660.
Dr. Jason Kaplan is a graduate of Parker University. Along with his wife Dr. Stephanie Kaplan, they practice in Wellington Florida. Jason is an Instructor for Disc Centers of America, one of the Nation’s largest collection of doctors specializing in Disc Injuries. He has been recognized and honored by the International Disc Education Association and serves on the Medical Advisory Board for Non-Surgical Spinal Decompression. He teaches technique at the National Certification Program at Life University and is considered a Master on Non Surgical Spinal Decompression. www.wellingtondisccenter.com.
