Episode 79 – Dr Heath Travis On Specific Prone Chiropractic

Dr. Heath Travis was born and raised in Bristow, OK. After completing high school he attended Northeastern State University for his undergraduate studies, and Parker Chiropractic College in Dallas, TX to earn his doctorate. Dr. Travis has been practicing chiropractic for 10 years. The last 7 years have been in his clinic Travis Chiropractic in Sapulpa, OK. Dr. Travis loves seeing patients, spending time with his wife and three children, and traveling as much as possible.

Dr. Travis is very active in the chiropractic profession serving as a board member for the Oklahoma Board of Chiropractic Examiners. He loves teaching young chiropractors about starting their own clinics and finding more ways to serve people. He acts as a counselor and speaker within the profession.

Dr. Travis’ belief is that the human body has an amazing intelligence and ability to heal itself. He believes our role is to remove all interference from that healing process and to help the individual find what they need to help speed up that process. Travis Chiropractic sees a wide variety of patients from newborn babies to people over the age of 95. He tries to listen to his patients and teach them ways to be proactive in their journey of health.

Dr. Travis practices a technique known as Specific Prone that is very gentle, specific, and effective. This allows Dr. Travis to treat anyone without causing severe discomfort or pain. This gentle technique does not rotate, crack, pop, or whip the spinal column. Allowing proper motion to be restored to the spinal joints removing the pressure on the nervous system.

Every person is supremely important and deserves to live life to their fullest potential. Chiropractic can help every individual to operate at a higher level.

Be sure to Like his Facebook page and share his info so that he can help as many people as possible!

• Website: www.sapulpachiropractor.com
• Faceebook: www.facebook.com/travischiropractic
• twitter @drheathtravis

Speaker 1: 00:00 This is Dr Chad Edwards and you’re listening to podcast number 79 of against the grain.

Speaker 2: 00:04 What guy doesn’t want to maximize their testosterone through using all natural and organic ingredients? Men now have an option for a locally made paraben and sulfate free shampoo, conditioner and face wash. Not only does dudes, mainly products smell great, which drives lady’s crazy by the way, in a good way. They put a unique spin on their shampoo without actually having a dark gray color because of the coconut shell charcoal that is used to remove the toxins. Dude could be purchased at the Tulsa men’s shop and also online@wwwdotdudemanlystuff.com. That’s d o d manly stuff.com.

Speaker 1: 00:36 Hey guys, this is Dr Chad Edwards. We are back for another episode of against the grain podcast and I am very honored to be joined by a friend of mine that was just bugging me and bugging me and bugging me about coming and being on the show and wanted to get himself in front of both listeners for the show. So we were like, okay, finally we’re going to do this. So today I’m joined by Dr Heath Travis. He is a chiropractor currently practicing out of SAPULPA, Oklahoma. Now the cool thing is he’s been a chiropractor for over 10 years. Been in SAPULPA for seven years. He is very active in the chiropractic profession, uh, graduated from Parker Chiropractic College in Dallas, Texas, and he is a, uh, a board member for the Oklahoma Board of Osteopathic, or I’m starting to ask about the. I’m used to saying that for the Board of Chiropractic examiners, uh, he’s a counselor to speaker for chiropractors.

Speaker 1: 01:33 Got a wealth of experience and uh, so Dr. Dr Travis, thank you so much for joining us today. I’m just excited to have you here. Thank you so much for having me. I’ve been looking forward to this. I can’t wait to be part of it. And again, just thank you for doing this on here. You know, having a, a, a background like this and all these kinds of things. I feel like I’m just like walking in the shadows of God’s pretty amazing. Um, so you do a, you’re obviously a chiropractor, but you do a specific kind of chiropractic therapy. It makes you different from many other chiropractors. Tell me a little bit about that. Yeah, absolutely. We do a technique called specific prone, so very gentle, very noninvasive technique or people come in and they’re not gonna get a lot of, popping, a lot of cooking, a lot of sound being made, but they’re going to get their treatment and they’re going to know that they feel better, but very noninvasive, very comfortable for the patient.

Speaker 1: 02:29 It allows me to work on a newborn or a 95 year old osteoporotic patient without worrying that we’re going to do any harm. So I remember one time I went to the chiropractor and this was a long time ago and it wasn’t a good experience, just, you know, back then. But I got on this table, I think it’s called a drop table, is that right? So I got on this thing and I wasn’t a physician at the time. I was, uh, I was probably 23. Um, so I knew enough to not to know everything, you know, I was young enough to know everything and so I got on this thing, he needed this stuff and I was like, holy crap. He’s like beating the crap out of me. That hurt. So you don’t do that. We do not do that. Would you not do that?

Speaker 1: 03:10 Everything is done facedown. Very soft table, very easy to get on and off of. And again, once they’re done they hop up and just say, is that it? Absolutely. That’s awesome. I love that because that obviously that was an uncomfortable experience and for the record I’ve had a lot of good experiences as well. I’ve had, it was just, that was probably my first one and I was just like, that guy was a nut job anyway, but so, you know, and I’m not saying there’s not necessarily a need for some of the other stuff, you know, I’m, I’m not, I’m not saying this is the only way to go, but anytime you can do something and it’d be very comfortable and have the patient walk away with a great experience, always a good idea. And, you know, I, I do a lot of prolotherapy and we talked about that multiple times on the show and I get some patients that, uh, none of them walk out and say, hey, that was awesome.

Speaker 1: 04:03 Uh, you know, I love getting stuck with needles, but I get some that, I mean it’s a big deal and I don’t ever want to torture them, which is why, you know, we’ll certainly offer sedation and things like that. So, uh, so anyway, really belabored that point. So now one of the, one of the questions that I have is why, why chiropractic? Why, who is a good, you know, as a physician, I want to refer my patients and you know, before the show we talked a little bit about using every possible intervention to get our patients as well as we can with the lowest risk at the lowest cost so that that’s what we should be focusing on as healthcare professionals. So, um, you know, as we talked before, you know, homeopathy I think has its place. I think naturopathic has its place and certainly chiropractic has its place as well.

Speaker 1: 04:56 So how do I best refer patients? How, who, who benefits the most, what, why Chiropractic, what can you, how can you help me out? Absolutely. And traditionally, you know, Chiropractic has been an answer for low back pain, migraine headaches, neck pain, and it still is. It always amazes me to this day when someone doesn’t respond with one of those conditions, there are limits. There are times whenever, yeah, there’s surgical intervention needed or other things, but most of the time we get those better with these are really the other thing that I want people to understand is the chiropractic goes so far beyond just paint a pain management, right? And it’s all about function. You have the chance to function at a hundred percent or not. So if you’re functioning at 95 percent, you’re not 100 percent. We help you guys expressed that and be functional. So children are the ones I really like to talk about. People who sit at a desk all day, people who do labor. It’s so hard not to say everyone can benefit chiropractic because

Speaker 3: 05:58 to some degree they can. How much can they benefit? And how does that play into a role with their other providers and how do we all work synergistically to get the patient better? And that’s where we are right now is helping people to get better.

Speaker 1: 06:12 Love it. So one you mentioned was kids, so you, that’s one of your passion.

Speaker 3: 06:17 It is. Absolutely. I’m a father of three and I have literally from 20 years old to one year old, so I kind of run the gamut on what’s going on in that world all the time. Um, and just in my practice as this developed, I just love seeing kids. And what I find that it doesn’t matter if they’re one day old coming home from the hospital, I just had that happen last week or you know, if they’re 15, 16, getting into adulthood, we find these issues. And the point is, you know, somebody goes, well, I kid feels great. You know, he’s never complained. He never has any issues. So why would I bring them in there? Yeah. And we’re looking at function, you know, we live in a time, I call it kind of this perfect storm of stuff around us will live in a time of high stress, not only for ourselves as adults with responsibility, but Kiddos, you know, stress, traumas, toxins, and that’s where chiropractic plays its role.

Speaker 3: 07:09 These things happen to people. So it’s either a thought, you know, it’s either trauma slips and falls, car accidents, we’re gonna talk about birth trauma, it’s the second or it’s toxins, what they’re putting into their body. All of these things lead to stress and that’s what we’re trying to help them manage so that they can function better so that as these kids leave childhood and into adulthood, they’re able to deal with those and, you know, try to try to get rid of some of these things we see later on developing autoimmune wise. Right? And that’s really where I like to go.

Speaker 1: 07:40 Yeah. And I, you know, Diana, my wife and I are working on a program. I, I, she was telling me on the way over here where we’ve been thinking about a name for it and I think we’re going to call it get real and it’s my foundation and you know, if you go back and listen to the old podcasts for our listeners, I talk about what I call the healthy trinity and that’s optimizing exercise, optimizing nutrition, optimizing the three R’s, stress reduction or reducing stress recovery from exercise and rest or sleep. Then it also kind of incorporating into those three things, toxins. Now you mentioned a very interesting point which is that structure function component and I hadn’t thought about that, so I may be picking your brain for some more of that in trying to optimize health in this get real program. I think that’s what we’re going to call it. Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 08:29 I love that. And for you know, for, for me as a chiropractor, when I first went to school, that’s what they told me. They said, you know, there’s a body that’s well taken care of, well adjusted, that gets enough exercise that eats well and that thinks well and you know, and so that’s kind of where I’ve tried to build and think about how people are going to do well in our office. Yeah. That’s where we use all the providers together to get good results.

Speaker 1: 08:52 I love it. It’s cool. So the uh, so I’ve got, I’ve got four kids in my house, um, between, between my wife and I, we, we, we share for lovely little darlings on Mondays, the rest of the day, their week, their hellions. But I’m just kidding. I’m just kidding. So um, they don’t really have a lot of aches and pains and things like that. So don’t they don’t need to come to you, right?

Speaker 3: 09:16 Absolutely not. Yes, they do. They do. And that’s, you know, that’s the fun part of looking at this as I see so many quote unquote healthy kids, they feel great, they’re operating well. And so we start to trace back the steps and you know, mom and dad say, oh, we’ve never had any car accidents. I’ve never dropped them on their head, you know, there’s nothing going on. So we start to look back. The younger they are, obviously we looked more and more to the birth process itself. Um, you know, it’s hard. It’s hard as a mom is hard on baby, there’s a lot that goes on there and just your normal everyday birth run of the mill, nothing, no complications. The doctor is going to have to put about anywhere from 60 to 90 pounds of axial distraction onto that baby’s neck to get them out right with torque and twisting, which sets up that upper cervical area that, that top of the head and the upper neck to have some dysfunction. There’s a goodman, did a study in the eighties, MD, and he basically said 80 percent of the kids have some kind of imbalance. Wow. Upper cervical from birth, right. This was in the eighties when everything was a lot more and that’s real voodoo back then. So, so, so that. And he even said every child should be evaluated at birth for this at lenneal axial component to help them balance the nervous system. That’s pretty cool stuff. That’s even years later.

Speaker 1: 10:36 Yeah, that’s, that’s absolutely amazing. And you know, in my residency I delivered over 100 babies and in my residency and I loved that part of my residency. I don’t, I don’t do ob now, but I remember there’s a couple that really stand out in my mind where these kids were stuck and you know, having shoulder dystocia is where the shoulder is hung up on mom’s pubic bone. And, and I remember the amount you mentioning that I’d never really thought about the amount of amount of polling that we do, but for the listeners, I will tell you there is a significant amount of polling on some of these kids that we have to do because they’re hung up and they get stuck and you free up that shoulder and you are pulling down and then you turn and pull the 180 degrees up in order to get that baby out.

Speaker 1: 11:24 And uh, you know, of course, you know, thank God that our, our mortality during child delivery is down substantially. What from what it was 200 years ago and things like that. So, you know, huge success, but one of the prices that we paid is, is this dysfunction in your upper cervical spine, which, you know, in, in my vast amount of knowledge of, uh, you know, a cervical alignment and chiropractic. I am a, as we talked about, I am a Dao, but I’m, you know, in my baby steps as far as that kind of stuff, as far as the, I understand structure and function of as far as fixing it. That’s just not what I do on an everyday basis. So, you know, I think you’ve laid out some really good points on how we can be misaligned and some of the problems that that can cause.

Speaker 1: 12:12 And the other piece is that preventive proactive piece and many of my patients to come to see me, I certainly, we get a lot of patients that come in because they feel bad, they’re fatigued, you know, those kinds of things. But we definitely get a handful of patients that come into us because they want to look, feel and perform their best as long as possible. So I encourage everyone, you know, at 20 come see us and let’s see if there’s anything flying under the radar. Amen. Because so many things will begin to fester before we have symptoms and uh, so you know, what you’re, what you’re describing is exactly what we talk about in our clinic is trying to optimize health, prevent things before they become an issue. And I think that structure and alignment and function is so important from a structural perspective.

Speaker 3: 12:59 Absolutely. And I think, you know, especially with babies or even children, sometimes even children that can talk still can’t verbalize what they’re really want to say. Right? And babies especially, I mean, they’re going to cry, right? If they’re in pain or even if they’re not paying, they don’t know how to get that out to you. And that’s where all of that looking to find out how do we a stabilize this right now. So they feel optimal, but we get them stable so that as they’re going forward dealing with life, they’re able to carry that out. They’re able to recognize when there’s a problem, the body deals with it, and then we’d go on our merry way every time and that’s part of what that nervous system function is, is to balance homeostasis right

Speaker 1: 13:38 over here. So I’ve got a question. We didn’t talk about this before, so I hope I’m not throwing you under the bus, but I guess we can edit it if I really throw you under the bus too bad. But uh, two things came to mind when you, when you mentioned a couple of things there. The first one is the colicky baby and the second one is reflux or Fussy with eating. What do you get good success with that? Do you. What do you see?

Speaker 3: 14:00 I’m so glad you asked that. That’s one of our biggest success stories in chiropractor I think, especially as colicky baby. Ask them all the data we’ll call a cute baby who has had success and you know, they’re going to love you forever. It really, the neurology behind that really gets interesting because we’re talking to that atlantoaxial again up in the upper neck. Well, out of that brainstem, we’ve got that vegas nerve right, wanders all the way down to the stomach, right? Well, if we’re not getting that really good flow here or you know, dysfunction, these babies start to see things. Um, and I mean they hurt, right? So it is amazing when you go and make this little tiny adjustment in the upper part of the neck, check the stomach and then all of a sudden the client stops maybe one visit, maybe three. But it is amazing. It’s truly in your heart. Just gets warm. And you know, at that moment you’re like, wow,

Speaker 1: 14:49 well I’ll tell you as a, as a primary physician, when I was doing a lot of pediatrics and did full spectrum primary care, mainly in the military, I would get these, these moms that would bring me colicky babies and not one time. I’m sad to say not one time that I say, you know what, we need to get you in with our, with our chiropractor down the, down the road here. Uh, and that’s where that, that team approach really comes in because I would say, well, you know, are you eating gassy foods? Are you doing, you know, those kinds of things, not that those aren’t important, absolutely. But being able to get to the root cause of the problem, eliminate that and move forward. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing. So I love that concept. Then you definitely have my attention and I think you’re going to get some attention of some listeners as well on some specific things that we can do and there’s a whole host of others. Sure. But those were just two that, as you mentioned, that I was like, oh, I got to ask you about this. So I hope I was perfect. I don’t ever like setting anybody up, but I love that. Yeah. Cool. So we’re going to take a quick break and when we come back we’re going to talk about some other things that you often see and that we may find a benefit in. Absolutely. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 16:00 Are you tired and fatigued? Are you frustrated with doctors because they just don’t seem to listen. Do you want to fix your pain without surgery? If you answered yes to any of these questions than we are the clinic for you, we offer prolotherapy prp or platelet rich plasma therapy and stem cell injections, ivy nutritional therapies, bioidentical hormone replacement therapy, and functional medicine to get you back on track to optimal health. Call our clinic at nine one eight, nine, three, five, three, six, three, six or visit our website@wwwdotrevolutionhealth.org to schedule your appointment today. And we are back with the amazing Dr Heath Travis, uh, telling us about all of the, uh, the

Speaker 1: 16:38 amazing things that he does and some of, I mean, you just had some tremendous success with multiple different things. And before the break we were talking about kids and why we need to be proactive with our health. Some specific conditions that you have seen a lot of success with in your clinic and in your practice with kids that I as a primary care physician did not have good success with. So I mean, I think that’s a, you are a valuable tool in, in trying to optimize all of our patients, but we gave a little bit of a teaser on let’s we’re gonna expand a little bit. So not just kids. Absolutely. There’s lots of other things that you see to tell me. Tell me what’s. What’s some of the other things that you see? One of the biggest things I see day in and day out and it used to be that I would see that that guy that came in, he was lifting things in a field or a construction site. You know that’s not as often. No, it’s the guy that sits at the computer or the lady that sits at the desk all day long who is entering in the information and it’s constant and all of a sudden we start to get this stress point in the shoulder. I can point to it. Probably Ninety percent of the people that come in my door have this one specific place out of alignment and that’s what it gets to the point. It just wears them down and then all of a sudden stress levels are so

Speaker 3: 17:50 high and they’re just, they’re worn out. Right? And so finding that and being able to help that person go to work and reduce their stress really, really makes me happy because it keeps them working, you know? It keeps them absolutely right. And that’s, that’s the big thing. So we’re seeing, you know, postural stress is, and I think you’ll, you can, you can even do the research and Google it. You’re seeing more and more issues with longterm significant problems due to this postural stress that we see everyday. People go as far as saying, oh, bad posture is the new, the new smoking, you know, I’m not ready to sit out there and throw that out there, but I do know that it puts a lot of undue stress on the nervous system, which puts a lot of undue stress on the glands and organs and tissues that shouldn’t be there making this age a little faster than we really want to.

Speaker 1: 18:41 That’s, you know, as you’re, as you’re bringing that, I’m glad I’m sitting in such proper alignment. I wish you could see a picture of this. I’m, you’re probably crawling from the inside. So you know, that structure in alignment, you know, clearly plays an important role. Um, what about, you know, one, one thing that we see and especially talking on with that ob and delivery piece, uh, the, um, you know, pregnancy can be very hard on women. So talk to me a little bit about that.

Speaker 3: 19:11 Absolutely. And pregnancy is probably one of our other favorite things to see simply because it brings about so many changes. Number one, we’re just going to talk about publicly,

Speaker 1: 19:21 it taught pregnancy brings on changes. Exactly right now, I know our wives didn’t expect they were just angels during pregnancy. Sorry, we’ll go with that, but we’re, we’ll roll with it.

Speaker 3: 19:32 Um, and you know, the biggest thing we see outside of just the normal everyday thing so that they are dealing with is the addict pain. That pain that shoots down the leg. I mean that’s probably one of the biggest things I see as a symptom. Right? And so they go, why is this always happening to me? And, and you know, what happens is that relaxing that hormone hits the body and it’s great. It’s supposed to loosen the pelvis so the baby can come out. Problem is, it works on the entire body. That’s right. So every joint gets some relaxing, right? Well now things are just moving to and fro and you know, everything starts to hurt, right? So we can help that mom deal with that side of nerve pain. And it’s unbelievable because the problem that that kind of holds back the primary or the ob is there’s not a lot of things they can give them for pain when they’re pregnant.

Speaker 3: 20:15 You’ll attest to that. So mom has just lost. I was like, I can’t take this. I can’t take that. I hurt. I’m growing a baby, you know, nutritionally void because baby’s taken it. All right? So there we are to help. And it’s just amazing. Not only that, the other big part of this is the in utero constraint, what’s going on with the baby during pregnancy. And it’s funny how you start getting this nervous system to balance and now all of a sudden baby is starting to thrive because, you know, we all have separate nervous system, sympathetic, parasympathetic. Well, for a baby in Utero, the first one to two trimesters are pretty much all sympathetic development because it’s in fight or flight, it’s learning to survive, right? So it depends on mom’s parasympathetics and that relaxation phase to get to, to the baby. So we’re able to help spark that. And it’s just cool to watch a mother that’s gone through Chiropractic care deliver and her story versus the ones that haven’t heard this message. And that’s what I really want people to know is, are there are, you know, there’s ways to help with this stuff. Absolutely. So it’s cool. I love it. Well,

Speaker 1: 21:16 tell me how, if, if someone wanted to get in touch with you, they want to come see you in your clinic, what’s the best way? How do they get you?

Speaker 3: 21:23 Absolutely. Um, best way is probably give us a call. Okay, we’re at nine. One, eight, two, two, four, two, two, two, five. It’s love that. Love that, by the way, I saw that and was like, oh, I’ll never forget that. Sorry. It spells back to two to five by the way. And then the other way it’s www dot sapulpa chiropractic. Tor Tor.com, facebook, Travis Chiropractic in twitter is Dr Heath Travis, and you know, we’re on all of them.

Speaker 1: 21:54 Awesome. So go like his page, he won’t send you like a million emails and, and solicit you for a bunch of money and all those kinds of things. So go like his page, share what he does, uh, give him a call if you think he can help you out. Um, so I, I think you do some great stuff. So glad you were on with us and look forward to having you back.

Speaker 3: 22:13 Thank you so much for this opportunity. I’m a big fan of yours. I’m a big fan of the work you do and I’ve really just thankful to get the chance to be here with you. Hey, the honor is mine up. Thank you sir. Nice.

Speaker 4: 22:24 Thanks for listening to this week’s podcast with Dr Chad Edwards. Tune in next week where we’ll be going against the grain.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download