Healthy Wealthy & Smart

More About Osman Ahmed: Dr Osman Ahmed is a Physiotherapist at University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust (Poole, United Kingdom) and a Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Portsmouth (United Kingdom). He trained as a Physiotherapist at the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom, before undertaking his Postgraduate Diploma in Sports Physiotherapy and subsequently his PhD at the University of Otago, New Zealand. He is employed by the Football Association (FA) in England to work as a Physiotherapist with their elite disability squads and has been a member of the Team GB medical staff at both the 2008 Beijing and 2016 Paralympic Games. He teaches on the FA's Advanced Trauma Medical Management course and has recently been appointed the Para Football Classification Lead at the FA. His PhD was focused on sports concussion and Facebook, and since then he has both published and presented widely (primarily on concussion in sport and technology in healthcare). He holds several governance roles within Para Sports federations including Medical & Sports Science Director at the International Federation of Cerebral Palsy Football, Medical Unit Co-Lead at the Para Football Foundation, and Medical Committee member of the International Blind Sport Association. He is a Co-Chair of the Concussion in Para Sport Group, and a Board Member of the Concussion in Sport Group. Osman holds Associate Editor positions at the British Journal of Sports Medicine and at BMJ Open Sport & Exercise Medicine and sits on the Institutional Ethics committee of World Rugby as an external member. He is also a Scientific Committee board member of the Isokinetic Football Medicine Conference. Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:03 Hey, Jasmine, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you on and so happy to see you again. 00:09 Hi, Karen. Thanks for having me. Really good to be back. 00:11 Yes. And so Osman and I both at the International look, Olympic Committee conference in Monaco, a couple of weeks ago, we actually did a talk together. So for the first part of this interview, we'll talk a little bit about we spoke about what we spoke about, and and then get into some of your big takeaways from the conference. And then of course, some of your upcoming projects, papers and all that kind of fun stuff. So why don't I give the microphone back to you, and tell the audience what our talk was, and kind of what we spoke about it IOC? So go ahead. 00:52 Thanks so much, Karen, I probably first thing to say is that we've Omicron raging around the world in the week before Christmas, it feels a bit surreal to think back to what was less than a month ago when we're actually out in Monaco presenting together. So the world has changed very quickly. Hopefully, it changes just as quickly back to the nice, stable world that we were getting towards before then. So I have to see what happens in the coming weeks. But yeah, it was great to present together it was something I think that we've both been speaking about for a while in our respective areas about how clinicians can engage with the mainstream media and social media for injury prevention, and athlete welfare, and just generally for spreading positive public health messages to our patients and clients. And so how we did it, for those of you that weren't in the room, we started off by looking at some different examples of how the mainstream media discusses different injuries and issues. And we took the lens of sport concussion, because that's an area that I'm fairly familiar with. And I've got a bit of an interest in from a research perspective. So I talk through some of the different examples of how concussion had been discussed in the mainstream media starting way, way back with Charlie Chaplin, hitting people over the head, progressing through to the movie concussion, more recently with Will Smith, and also touching upon some South Park episodes, the office and new girl. So other examples of concussion being in the mainstream media. And we had a bit of a brainstorming session, really, it was a nice interactive workshop that we did to everybody. That wasn't a room there. Thank you for contributing so much. He made it a lot of fun and asked a lot of questions and stimulated a lot of discussion between the group. And yeah, I mean, it was quite a nice flowing dialogue between everybody there. And there was some really good examples that people in the crowd shared in terms of their experiences with either engaging in the mainstream media or seeing some negative examples, and some less than perfect discussions and injury representations and illness and medical representations, either in TV shows or in news reports and things like that. So yeah, I mean, session was pretty good. I thought I'm obviously I was one of the CO presenters. But yeah, that was a fun session to be part of. And then obviously, from your angle, Karen, it was really good to hear your thoughts in terms of how clinicians can engage with the media, coming up with some really practical tips for people that would be interested in doing that in terms of how to pitch to journalists, sort of things that you should do when you're reaching out to journalists, and some good examples of how clinicians have worked and engage with journalists in order to get positive, evidence based, accurate, scientifically valid information out to places like the Washington Post and New York Times and kind of upmarket newspapers in that regard. So yeah, it was a fun session to be part of and had some nice feedback afterwards, which was made it worthwhile. And yeah, it was a pleasure to be part of it. 03:51 Yeah, I really enjoyed the discussion within the workshop from with the participants, because a lot of the workshops and we know, we go to all these conferences, and it's usually the person up on stage speaking, and there's not a lot of interaction during the talk, except for maybe someone gets up and asks a question, they sit back down. But what I really loved is that, like you said, people were sharing their experience with maybe being in the media, or really asking the question of like, hey, is this movie concussion? Was this positive or negative? And it was interesting that people had a lot of different views on what they believed as was as positive was this negative? You know, I think we can all agree on some of the things like Charlie Chaplin hitting someone on the head or, or a head injury being the butt of the joke. We can all agree that's not great. You know, that would be a maybe a not so great representation of that. But with the movie concussion, I think they it brought a lot more conversation to the group. I don't know what do you think? Yeah, 04:58 absolutely. I think the noise thing about the topic that we discussed as it's something that everybody's got an opinion on. I mean, arguably, you don't even need to be a clinician to have an opinion on how injuries represented in the mainstream media. But certainly, I've seen lots of workshops and conferences and sessions where I'm not particularly ofay, or knowledgeable about the area that's been speaking about. And I probably wouldn't feel that comfortable in terms of sticking my hand up and joining into discussion in front of lots of other people. But because it was a mainstream topic about the mainstream media, there was lots of people that felt comfortable to do that. So yeah, it was great from that regard. 05:34 Yeah. And I think it gave people some tools moving forward, to maybe reach out to a journalist or to maybe even reach out to say, hey, this article wasn't the best. And do you think you can? Like, I'd be happy to contribute to give you a little bit more evidence to that. And I think that's something that instead of going on social media and complaining about an article or a video, instead, why don't we empower therapists and researchers with the tools, they need to reach out to the journalists to say, Hey, I appreciate you, including physio, therapist, researcher XYZ. But what they shared is probably the not not the most accurate or evidence based. And I'd be happy to give you some resources or speak to you or write a and an article follow up article. 06:31 Plenty, absolutely. And I think we're completely on the same page here. I mean, it's so easy to read something that you disagree with, get angry about it. So you may it's about a coffee time, and then maybe sharing a whatsapp link to your friends and laugh at it, it's a little bit more challenging, but a lot more productive to actually reach out to those people. And like you say, do something constructive, take control of the narrative, as we kept saying, so who is controlling the narrative, we can control the narrative. And that's a good way of controlling that narrative is by reaching out to those people, and suggested some of the things that you said there. So putting some evidence based links in talking about proper scientific evidence, correcting in a nice, gentle way, some of the inaccurate information that may have been shared in the article, there are really, really good things to do. I think so. Hopefully, if people in the audience doing that, and anybody listening, that's picking up between the lines of what we're saying here can do that as well. That'd be great. 07:24 Yeah, and it's easy. It doesn't cost any money. It just costs a little bit of your time. And I mean, like, a tiny bit of your time. 07:32 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, time is money to a lot of people work, especially if you work in private practice. I don't, but I'm sure a lot of people listening here well, but yeah, well, it doesn't really take that long, just drop a quick email or a note to a journalist, to tee up some potentially better ways of reporting on what they've reported on, maybe serve as a link for any future articles. I think it was one thing that we both touched on that, I think is a really nice way of sort of crossing that divide. And bridging that gap is by getting in contact with a journalist or newspaper and saying, Look, I'm a clinician, I work locally, if you've got any pieces that you're putting out about a health related issue or a medical condition, or if you want to check anything with me for accuracy, drop me a quick email, send me a quick text message or WhatsApp. And I'll get back to you about that. And then you're then in a position not to create content for the newspaper, you're not writing their article is not a freelancer for them. But what you are doing is kind of member checking and fact checking and steering the journalists towards more medically accurate correct reporting. So yeah, I think that was a key take home for for me and hopefully, for anybody listening today as well. 08:35 Yeah. And I think that's, that's a great take home from our talk. So from and also a nice transition into what were your other big takeaways and take homes, from some of the other sessions you went to? So if you want to maybe describe the session, and then what your biggest take this session, the speakers and your biggest takeaways? 09:00 Yep, so the one that definitely made a big impact on me was the session on hashtag metoo. So it's about abuse in sports, intentional abuse in sport, and I came up the topic from different angles. So my mount Joy talks about the Larina SAR case that I'm sure everybody listening will be familiar with, which is horrific. And I suppose, because it's maybe slipped out the media attention for a few months now, I wasn't completely familiar with a lot of the graphic and horrific details relating to it. So that was a real eye opener again, for me in terms of how endemic that was and how that could have been nipped in the bud at several stages earlier from the information that we were given there. And I think the other speakers in this session, we're fantastic as well. So Shree Becca, I'm a big fan of sharees work. I went to most of our sessions IOC in Monaco, and, again, she helped deliver a fantastic session around The similar areas as well. And yet, sir to a lackey, who is based at Yale in the US did a really good session about Ghanaian Paralympians, and the perceptions and abuse that they suffer as well back in the home country, with regards to being disabled, essentially, and being an athlete and the barriers that they face and the challenges they overcome. And I thought one thing that was really nice from yesterday's talk specifically was the fact that she sampled the video interviews, and she wove those into her presentation. So you can actually hear and see the Paralympians talking about those things. So unfortunately, like, you can't transport lots and lots of people to the conference to speak as part of your panel. But yes, I did the next best thing, I think in terms of getting the athlete voices literally embedded into a presentation. And that really did magnify and sort of hammer home the points in a really strong way. So for me, that's something that I've since gone back to some of the sporting federations I work with. So I'm involved with the if CPF, which is the International Federation of cerebral palsy, football, and power Football Foundation. And I've spoken to both of those organizations about this and the resources that were provided in that thought were really helpful, just to make sure that we're on top of all safeguarding issues in our sport, I think, for a lot of people listening, I mean, it might sound like quite a boring thing, and quite a basic thing. But ultimately, it's the most important thing I think we can do is to protect our athletes when they're in our sport, and make sure that we've got the right policies, the right procedures, and the right steps in place to look after them. Because as the Larina SRK, showed, I mean that the impacts of getting those sort of basic steps wrong or underestimating those sort of areas of sport are huge and can have profound and very long lasting effects to the athletes involved today. Yeah, for me, that was that was probably the session that had the biggest impact on me. Again, I'm qualitative in my research background, so I was really pleased to be a part of the session with Eva bahagian, Caroline barley, and Christina farga. I thought all three did a really good job of talking about qualitative research. And I think, looking at other talks as well, during the whole conference series, there's a lot more awareness. Now, I think that with athletes and with patients, generally, we don't just need numbers, we don't just need hard cold quantitative analysis, which undoubtedly, is very, very valuable in terms of what we're doing with our athletes and patients, we also need some context to that. And I do feel quite strongly that a lot of that context does come from qualitative research and listening to our players listening to athletes, getting that extra depth to their experiences to either layer on top of the quantitative data or to stand alone and just be independent data that we look at and say this data has got numbers, it's got words, but these are the patient's words. And these are what the patients and players think. And we're going to look at that data, we're going to analyze it, and we're going to respect that data, we're going to act on that data. So Alan McCall, I was in Alan session as well. And he's at Arsenal Football Club, and they do a lot of work there with readiness and return to play. And they collect a lot of data as part of that. But it's really pleasing for me to see some of those high profile as Alan, talking there about the importance of quantitative data and listening to play as the qualitative sorry. Data are listening to players and getting that information as well. So yeah, I mean, I wouldn't call it a revolution in terms of qualitative research. In sports medicine, I think it's a gradual evolution. I think, as we evolve and move through the 2020s as we are, I think there's going to be a greater appreciation, really of the power that qualitative research can bring. And we're going to see a lot more of it, hopefully. 13:43 Yeah. And in comparing IOC 2017 to this one, I don't know that there was much talk of qualitative data in any in any of the talks in 2017. 13:58 I can't remember why for dinner last week. 14:03 I don't. I don't I don't believe there was. And so I think there is this definite shift in thinking that, hey, if we want to keep our players safe and healthy, and reduce injuries, then we have to listen to them. And we have to incorporate this qualitative data into how we as clinicians, because you and I are clinicians, how we work with our patients, you know, it's a little more than, Oh, you just have to listen to them. Because I think you have to listen, and you also have to understand what their words mean. 14:43 Oh, yeah. Listening processing, as well. So you're not just a set of ears, you've got something between your ears as well. And that's the thing that you have to use to process it and then also, act on it. I mean, it's not just a case of listening and processing you need to be Some actions off the back of that change that results from that. So, yeah, completely agree. 15:05 Yeah. Because like you said, from the me to talk with Margo and Sheree, and policies and procedures, yes, of course we need to have those in place. But if you're not listening to your players, you can have all the policies and procedures you want. If the Larry Nasser case says anything, right, they had a lot of policies and procedures in place and USA Gymnastics. Yeah. But they weren't listening to the countless girls and women who are abused by this man over many, many years. Because they did speak some of them did tell people, nobody listened. 15:42 Again, it's the acting management if you're listening, maybe process maybe haven't. But is the acting that needs Yeah, as well. And that's a key part of it. 15:51 Yeah. And I think placing that that athlete in the center. In that case, in particular, it wasn't about the athlete, it was about all the money and all of the prestige that comes with those athletes in your program. So you don't want to blow up the program, they apparent from looking from from an outsider perspective, it's like they didn't want to blow up the program to help save the girls. 16:17 Nine. I mean, in an ideal world, nobody should go to an international sports medicine conference and listen to a talk about that scale of abuse. But I mean, if if there is a positive about sitting in a session like that, so that you can spread the word about it. Take action to make sure that never happens again, in any sport ever. Exactly. Absolutely. abomination that happened. 16:38 Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, one of my biggest takeaways from the whole event is that context is, is everything. If you're not taking, whether it's quantitative data, qualitative data, exercises, application to the, into the clinic, if you're not looking at the context, around the person in front of you, then I feel like it's all for naught. And the other thing, my other big takeaway is like, I don't really know anything. So those are my two big takeaways. 17:11 I think that's always a good thing. If you go to a conference and come away realizing how little you know, I think you've been to a good conference. Generally, I think there's always so many clever people that you listen to and learn from. I went through a cardiology session as well as on absolutely not expert at all. But you go into sessions like that, and you learn a little bit and hopefully take stuff back. And you can apply some of it to your practice. And yeah, it's good that you felt that way. So I did as well. 17:38 wasn't just me, then. Yeah, I left. Oh, I'm the worst. 17:42 How do I not know anything? What am I doing in this job? It really spiraled down on the plane ride home. 17:49 Yeah, so any Junior clinicians or researchers listening, trust us. We're old in the tooth, myself and Karen. So if we feel like this, our stage of our career, then don't ever worry that if you're a new grad, and you don't know everything about everything, but there's something wrong with you, because it really is not, because you get to the end of your career, and there's still a lot of things you don't know, more things you don't know, at the end of your career than you did at the start of the career. So yeah, yes, definitely. Definitely a message I want to share. 18:14 Yeah. Excellent. Anything else from the conference that was for you? You know, a big takeaway from any part of it. Or do you think we covered it all? 18:27 For me, it was just how lovely and nice it was to actually see people face to face again, it just been such a rubbish. 1819 months leading up to that conference had been postponed two times. It was just lovely to actually get to a place. See people do want to give a lot of thanks to the people that hosted the conference. But the organization was next level in terms of how well run it was. Our safe, everybody felt everybody had masks on. I think we were talking about how good it was in terms of the COVID checks going into the venue, everything like that. So although there were, I think, seven 800 people there, there's a lot of people there. It never felt unsafe. And everybody there was glad to be there. And I think everybody seems to have a good time. 19:10 Yeah. And that's what Sheree and I spoke a cup of Sri Becker knights a couple days ago. And we said, you know, the thing that was so great was that everyone there, it felt like, people were there to support each other, and to support sessions and support individuals and, and maybe it's because there hasn't been like, a larger conference like this in quite some time. But it did feel like very inclusive and supportive, and that's kind of the vibe I got and Sheree said the same thing. It sounds like you might have felt the same. So maybe that an NF three is it's it's, it's true then. 19:52 Well, I'm a qualitative researcher, so I'll take those quotes and agree with those quotes. Yeah, I think it was just it was a nice nice yeah. place to be I think for a lot of people that first time they've left their country since COVID. It certainly was for me. And me too. Yeah, I think it'd be nice if that's the that's the vibe going forwards if we do go to a concert and can support each other's research, and there's not academic snobbery, or thankfully, I've not really been to any conferences that have been like that. But I'm aware that every now and again, there can be that element of needle two speeches and feedback and those sort of things. So hopefully, it will stays nice and constructive and supportive and positive objectives. 20:36 Agreed. Now, what do you have coming up? What do you have going on any new projects in the pipeline papers? If you can give us a preview? Obviously, can't give it all the way. But if you can give us a preview as to what you're working on, for 2022 and beyond? 20:55 Oh, okay. Well aware, a few different hats. So one of the hats that I wear is at the BDSM, the British Journal sports medicine. So I think it was announced on social media a little while ago that we're having the first BDSM Live, which is a in person, conference day that's being held in Brighton in the UK in May 2022. So we're quite excited about that. I'm hosting that with Fiona Wilson from Ireland. So it'd be really great to co chair the day with her. And that's certainly something I'm looking forward to. I am also off to the IPF spt. So the International Federation Sports Physical Therapy conference in Denmark in August, where I'm presenting a session with yourself again, Karen, so great to see you there. And again, that's following up on some of the BDSM work that I've done in terms of patient voices and athlete engagement. So I'm really looking forward to that one as well. A lot of 2021 was involved with the concussion and parasport group that I'm a member of so working with international colleagues are involved in Paris sports main concussion. So we released our position statement last year. And hopefully off the back of that there's going to be a lot more studies that take place in 2022. So one of the co authors, in fact, the lead author, Dr. Richard Wheeler, who's very passionate about the area, he's currently doing study looking at the perceptions of blind footballers towards concussion. And so he's done a lot of data collection from that. So I'll be working with him and the other co authors on that paper in the new year, which is exciting. And I'm also looking forward to working with Dr. Mark Murali in Australia, who's a digital health physiotherapist might be one of the best ways to describe him. He's very involved in the tech side of what we do is a professional physiotherapy and physical therapy. And he's got a grant that's been accepted on physio, digital health capabilities, and a model related to that. So I'm going to be working with him looking at that and looking at the digital side of physiotherapy as well. So got plenty of things to keep you busy. And I'm looking forward to hopefully a better year than last year. 23:05 Yes, well, you certainly have a lot to to keep you busy as well. And I should also say that you also work to your clinician. 23:14 Yeah, so my full time day job is at University Hospital, still on the south coast of England, and I'm a full time clinician, I also work part time for the Football Association as a clinician with their elite power football squad. So that's disability football. And in the new year, I'm also going to be starting a part time role there is the power classification lead for the elite disability football program. So looking after the classifications across all the athletes, power football, sports, I'm looking forward to that role as well. 23:44 Nice. And obviously, you'll eat and sleep at some point in between. 23:51 If you ask my wife, there's a lot of eating, and we missed out on those too. 23:56 Good and a little bit of relaxing and a little bit of fun, right? 24:00 Definitely. Always got time for fun. Excellent. Well, 24:03 before we wrap things up, where can people find you if they want to join some of the things you're doing? They want to have more information, they just want to say hi, where can they find you? 24:14 Yep, so probably the easiest way to get ahold of me is on Twitter and my handles, Osman H. Ahmed. And I think you'll probably share the link in the podcast. So that's probably the best way to find me and I'm pretty responsive on there if people do want to get in touch. Certainly if you're interested in concussion in disability sports, or want to talk more about our work that we've done with the mainstream media and how we can engage with them, then I'd love to hear from you. 24:39 Excellent. And yes, that will I will have that link at podcast at healthy wealthy, smart calm in the show notes in this under this episode. And finally, I think I've asked you this question before, but I'll ask it again because maybe you have new advice, but what advice would you give to your younger self knowing where you are now in your life and in your career? 25:03 For a couple of things really, don't take yourself too seriously. I think that's probably a key thing for any young clinicians that certainly when I was working in university, there was a lot of people that were really stressed and anxious to make a mark in the profession. And obviously, that is good. And that's commendable when you want to keep that about you. But also, I think, being relaxed in terms of the way that you do that, and doing it in a collegiate way, I think is probably a really good way to progress your career. I like to think I did that. So that that's less advice to me and more advice to other people. forced myself when I was younger. I'm not really sure to be honest, I'm, I'm pretty happy with the decisions I've made through my life so far. So yeah, probably. I don't know. Pass. Sorry, Karen, 25:52 know that the piece of advice that you gave, don't take yourself too seriously, is perfect. It's perfect. And I think that a lot of people will enter into we're both physio therapists into physiotherapy or healthcare. And kind of like you said, they really want to move their career forward. And so I think it's important to remember Yes, you want to move your career forward, but your underlying Why should be to improve the health of everyone to improve the health of your community, your population that you see, versus getting best of XYZ, or award for this and award for that. I did this look at how great I am. But instead, how are you really impacting your community through your work? 26:38 Absolutely. So keeping everything patient centered. I think that's basically what you're saying there. I think probably the other thing as well is your career is a marathon. It's not a sprint. So you don't have to achieve all of your career goals by the age of 30. spacings out and don't be afraid to reinvent yourself if you find you're in a career or a job that you're not massively enjoying. It's a big profession out there. You're not wedded to one job for your career or your life. There's other places that your career can take you with a degree in the skills that you've got. 27:11 Perfect. That is great advice. Well, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast again. 27:16 I really appreciate it and look forward to seeing you again in person in August. So thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, Karen. And everyone. Thanks so much for listening today. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Founder of Taylor Insurance and Financial Services, Eszylfie Taylor, talks about balancing and prioritizing the mind, body, and money. Today, Eszylfie talks about wearing many hats, how yoga has changed his life, and his work on Mind Body Money. How is short-term gratification hindering our progress? Hear about how Eszylfie fits so much into his life, how he picks himself up after a failure, and get his valuable advice for 2022, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." "Only something good comes from being bold. Either you're going to get something you didn't have, or you're going to continue not having what you didn't have anyway." "Pay yourself first." "If you aim at nothing, you'll hit it with amazing accuracy." "You have to give up smaller short-term instant gratification things for the long-term greater thing." "Ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship." "Those who think they can do something and those who think they cannot do something are both right." "The most successful people in life are those who can endure the most pain." "No one is on their deathbed wishing they had more money." "Never give up. You never know how close you are to your dreams." "The road to walk a mile begins with a single step." More about Eszylfie Taylor Eszylfie Taylor is the president and founder of Taylor Insurance and Financial Services, and serves as financial advisor to individuals, business owners, and high net worth families. Over the past decade, he has been widely recognized as one of the most accomplished producers in the industry, receiving the National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors (NAIFA) award, "Agent of the Year: Los Angeles" in 2010-2012. Additionally, Mr. Taylor is a 15-time "Million Dollar Round Table" qualifier, the last four of which he has been a "Top of the Table" producer, ranking him in the top 1% of all producers worldwide, and was the recipient of the 2015 Top Four Under Forty Award by Advisor Today Magazine. Mr. Taylor began his career at age 22 with New York Life Insurance Company, where he soon ascended to the Chairman's Council, reaching the ranking of #1 Broker in Los Angeles (2006-2013), and #1 Agent for the Company's African-American market (2006-2013). In 2007, he began building his own firm, Taylor Insurance and Financial Services. Mr. Taylor currently sits on the board of three non-profit organizations dedicated to business empowerment, children's health, and social services. He is the founder of the non-profit, Futures Stars Camp, which provides basketball training and life coaching skills (www.futurestarscamp.org) for kids. In addition to his passion for business, Eszylfie loves being a hands-on dad. Eszylfie holds a Bachelor's Degree (magna cum laude) in Business Management from Concordia University. He has also earned the Series 6, 63, 65, and 7 licenses, and a Life and Health Insurance license. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Finance, Financial Freedom, Success, Perseverance, Yoga, Mind Body Money, Long-Term Goals, Consistency, Resilience, To learn more, follow Eszylfie at: Website: https://www.mindbodymoney.com https://www.taylormethod.com https://www.futurestarscamp.org Instagram: @EszylfieTaylor LinkedIn: Eszylfie Taylor Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:02 Hi, Eszylfie welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on. 00:07 Thank you for having me. 00:08 And I'm excited to talk about you and your journey and all the different hats that you wear in your, in your professional and in your personal life. So let's break all of this down. So you are a financial advisor. You're a yoga instructor, you're an entrepreneur, and you're a girl, dad, and I have a soft spot for I'm one of three girls, you've got three girls, I totally I get it. So if we can, let's first talk about how does all that happen in one life? How do you put that all together? 00:43 Yeah, I think, for me, when I was graduating college, I made a promise to myself that I would never look back at my life and say, what if what if I did this? Or what if I try this? And what if I went here? I just say I just say yes. Right? And as as as a result of that I'm a huge failure, probably arguably, the biggest failure you've ever met in your life. And that's also why I succeed, right? So I would rather try something and fail miserably might fall flat on my face and say, Okay, that wasn't for me and check the box, then just wish or assume. Right? And because, you know, again, I think I didn't want to be a grizzled old man sitting on my porch one day thinking of all the things that I could have done with my life that I should have done with my life and then look back with regret, no, no, no regrets? 01:32 And how do you pick yourself up after each one of those failures? Because, I mean, maybe my skin's a little bit thinner. But I would just I don't know that I would have the fortitude to continue to pick myself up and move forward again. So how do you do that? 01:48 I think for me, you know, sports sports played a big role in helping me create grit. You know, I have a nonprofit that I founded called future stars. And then I teach kids and I'm actually doing a camp right now for kids. And, and I told the kids today, I said, you miss 100% of the shots, you don't take this 100% of the shots you don't take. So my contention is, is I just tell myself, I tell others to be bold, right? Because only something good comes from being bold. Either you're going to get something you've never had, or continue, which you didn't have what you didn't have anyway, right? You're going to get something you didn't have or continue not to have what you didn't have anyway. So what do you lose? To your point? It's really just ego. Right? That's, that's right. Right. And so I'd rather hear or know, or face rejection and say, Okay, well, I didn't have it anyway. So what have I lost? That, you know, nothing, right? Yeah, I look at it, you know, it's, it's only it's only greed, right? It's only only upside. 02:50 And so you've so you say you've had all these failures, okay, I believe that, but you're also incredibly successful in multiple areas of your life, one of those being a financial advisor. So talk about how you got into the financial advising game, and then we'll maybe get since we're in the beginning of a new year is 2020, to maybe get a couple piece of pieces of advice from you, on how to set yourself up for success from a financial standpoint. But first, let's talk about how you became a financial advisor. And we'll take it from there. 03:29 Yeah, I started my career fresh out of college, I'm in the business which is unique, right, so the average financial advisors probably a 55, six year old white male, right, so I'm anything but that I had one simple, you know, modest dream coming out of college that was to become a millionaire by the time I was 25. Right. So 22 I figured what three years is that's that sample time, right? It's reasonable, you know, by three years, that's, you know, that's, that's that should happen. Um, and, you know, I was at a job fair at my university and you know, I'm going from from booth to booth and all the companies are kind of telling me the same thing. I'm gonna make somewhere between 4050 grand a year, and I'm scratching my head and I'm like, okay, like, I'm not the smartest guy in the world. But that doesn't add up, right? Like I get to a million bucks that way and so you know, by by chance, uh, you know, I found my way into this world of financial services and what drew me to the industry was that it was an industry as a field where I was paid for my work I work ethic and aptitude not my age or tenure. Right and so at the end of the day, I was gonna eat what I kill right I was gonna I was gonna I was gonna make as much money I was going to have as big an impact in the community in the world as I worked tap right and so you know, it's funny against the against the better advice of my father who told me no, you know, get go work for someone else get a job right? Go get a paycheck on the first and the 15th and I just like i Dad, I think, I don't know I like You know, I can't even tell you how I'm gonna do it. But I just believe doing it this way me being in control of my fate is just a better way to go. And 20 years later, you know, here I am. 05:12 And I, I can totally relate with the just get a job and get the paycheck. And because I remember leaving college, I thought I would get a job and a hospital or a clinic and I would work there until I retired. Right, because sometimes those worlds aren't open for you right away, and you have to kind of really forge your path. Now you were very successful, as are are very successful as a financial advisor. And then you moved into becoming an entrepreneur, starting your own brokerage. So we'll get to that in a second. But before we do, let's give people a little bit of advice for their financial success in 2022. What's your best advice for us? 05:55 Yeah, I mean, one of the guiding principles of creating financial security is the idea of paying yourself first, right? And, you know, tell people you if you work for a company, right, and and and they didn't pay you, would you continue to go to work? Virtually everyone says, Well, no, rather not go to work, have a good day. But my contention is, you get your paycheck, and you pay rent, and you pay your car lease, and you pay your credit card, and you pay your cell phone bill, right, and you don't put any money away, right? No money in savings investments for you, you just work for free, because none of that money went to create wealth for you. Right. So the the one thing that I would tell people is to pay yourself first. And this really comes first and foremost with creating a budget. Right? You have to have a plan, right? I would say if you aim at nothing, you'll hit it with amazing accuracy. Right? So you have a certain amount of money coming in. Okay, so if I make five grand a month, okay, well, what are your bills? My bills are three grand a month. Okay. That that gap between your income and your expenses? That's called your discretionary income? That's do I make dinner at home tonight? Or do I go to that steak house? That's do I, you know, do I go on vacation? Right, you know, to to Hawaii? Or do I just go camping, you know, down down down the road, right. And so those are your choices, right? Those are your choices. But I always tell people pay yourself first. And the reason and I wanted to drive home the importance of this, you want to get to the point where you can live off of interest, you want to get to the point where you've saved, you've accumulated so much money, that the yield the earnings from your money covers all of your expenses. That to me is retirement. It's not about being 65 or 67, or 70. It's the point at which you remove the half twos from the equation, you do things because you want to do them not because you have to do them. And the more money you put away, right, the longer it's working, the greater rate of return you're earning than the faster you get to that point, right. And so I don't care where it is, it could be a savings account to start. It can be a brokerage account, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, insurances, whatever, right? But something you must pay yourself first. Right? And that's, that's the first guiding, no first guiding principle. 08:10 And I love that I started doing that a couple of years ago has changed my life. Yeah. And it's like, it's so I feel like I have like less worry and less burden on my shoulders. Does that make sense? 08:23 Well, it does make perfect sense. And the challenge is, is people go oh, well, you know, I, my lifestyle will be, you know, be interrupted. And no, it won't, right. And if you think about this, and I love breaking down, and this is maybe a challenge that the listeners can can join in on, take the amount of money you're looking to save on a monthly basis, and break it down to the day makes it even more palatable. So you think about it. If I go, Hey, I want to save, you know, I want to save $1,000 a month. That's my target. Right? So what's that roughly about $33? A day. Right? So you get a lunch every day, Karen, you had to take me to lunch, right? Would that change your life? Would your life suffer? We just ended a living change? Probably not right? You're ready to retire? If I said you have $2 million in your retirement account. Would that help you with that? Would that change your life? I probably wouldn't hurt. 09:19 Yeah, it would be good. I'd be I be okay with that. 09:22 Right. And that is what you're giving up. So it's like we have to give up smaller short term instant gratification things for the long term greater good. 09:31 Yeah. And I think that's that mental shift is so important because we live in a world now where instant gratification is everything right? And so how do you counsel your clients who are used to an instant gratification world to be like, Hey, listen, this is going to come to you but you have to wait. Well, 09:50 I think the principle of saving and investing or paying yourself first doesn't mean you can't have fun. It doesn't mean you can't enjoy the fruits of your labor and I think people tend to, you know, live in these extremes, right? Like either save everything you must, you know, not spend don't have any fun like your life is over right? Or, or like, we only live once I'm gonna spend it all right and, and the reality of is there's a balance, you know in the middle, right? And so what I'm saying pay yourself first in that example if I make five grand a month and I have $3,000 a month of expenses, and I decide I'm gonna put away $500 Well, there's still 1500 bucks to go to the movies to go to dinner to go buy that, you know that handbag to go buy those shoes. You want it right, like, but you made yourself first. 10:36 Yeah, yeah, I love it. Like I said, that mentality has just changed and shifted everything for me. So hopefully, the listeners will take that and hold on to it through 2020. Now, like I said, you wear a lot of different hats. So financial advisors, one new or very successful financial advisor working for someone else. Right? And then you kind of made a shift, you kind of reached the point where, oh, I feel like I've got all this stuff. But I'm not sure that I'm happy in the place where I'm at. Is that right? Yeah, I 11:12 think, you know, for me, I realized I draw the analogy, I felt like I was a shark in a fish tank. Right. Like I had, I had outgrown, you know, the system that I was in. And in order to continue to to flourish, I needed to swim in larger waters, right? I believe in life, you know, you're green and you're Brown, you're growing and you're dying, you're getting better, you're getting worse, there's no staying the same, right? And so for me, I'm always looking to grow, I'm always looking to get better. I'm always looking to be pushed, and challenging. So you know, what better thing than, you know, leaving a 13 year career, you know, and multi multimillion dollar practice than to go out break out on your own and try to build something bigger. So that's exactly what I did. 11:57 And again, not easy. Now, was this around the same time that you started getting into yoga and becoming a yoga practitioner? And how did that change? What you do as a financial advisor and even as a dad and as a person? Kind of connecting that mind and body? 12:18 Yeah, I think it was somewhat around the same time I've been been practicing yoga for about 14 1415 years and and I've been independent now my own brokerage about 910 years and I think what yoga taught me not only what it did for me physically, but it I was very idealistic visit undermanned, right, this will happen, this lab, this will happen, right? I was very rigid, right? This, this, this. And what yoga taught me is it taught me to detach myself from outcomes. It taught me to detach myself from outcomes and to just focus on process. Right. And so there's a little Mater that I that I shared in the listeners can can take part in this as well. And you got a challenge in your life. Right? You got an issue in your life, you ask yourself questions, three questions. Do you have a problem? No. Okay. Don't worry about it. Right? No problem doesn't worry about. Do you have a problem? Yes. Can you do something about it? Yes. Okay. Don't worry about it. Do you ever problem? Yes. Can you do something about it? No. Oh, great. Don't worry about it. Which basically means all paths lead to not worrying about it. Right? So I believe that everything happens for a reason. And it's exact, perfect timing, even the crappy stuff. Right? Even the stuff you're like, This isn't fun. This hurts. Right? And, and, and, and one of the things that yoga has taught me is this just changes my mantras. I mean, even teaching it right, I have all these intentions and things that I that I that I share with with my students and that I have to also live by I can't say it not believe it or not live with it, right. And even this past week, my watch for classes that ease is a greater threat to progress than hardship. Right? And so through adversity through challenges, that is where we that is where we grow, that's where we get product progress, that is where grit is developed. And so for me, Yoga has softened me in so many ways. And let me accept things right, except that sometimes I will get exactly what I want. And sometimes the door will be slammed in my face and it's okay because if a door gets slammed in my face it was supposed to get now now the challenge is in the big so do you need me Sophie, every time you get rejected, you just accept it like know what I mean by trusting the processes. If I have done what is required of me, if I have done everything that I can do, then I can detach myself from the outcome. I don't mean that I'm sitting at home flipping TV. going like, I'm going to make a million dollars this year. Are you working today? Like no, but it's coming to me I'm manifesting. There's two keys to success in life. Number one, you have to believe that's the first part, those that think they can do something and those that didn't, they could not do something about usually right, then the second piece, then you have to do the work. Right. So what I always had was a tremendous work ethic that I always had. But what was flawed, flawed, or what was underdeveloped, if you will, was that mindset that, that that that positivity, that manifestation? That that, okay, this, this is what will happen, okay? This is what I want to happen, okay, and then go out and do the work. 15:38 Yeah. And boy, that second parts, the tricky bit, right, having to do the work. That's the hard part. And I know, and then, what I see a lot, and you probably see this on social media is people will say, Oh, I put it on my vision board, and it just happened. Or I manifested it, and it just happened. And then you're sitting there like, what, like, if that work is 16:02 because people people typically aren't posting their losses, right, people are posting their wins, you know, and the reality of it is, is that, you know, you take any anyone in any any arena sports, entertainment business, right there, they're all failures, all of them. They just were too stubborn to stay down. Right. And that's, that's the difference. I've come to believe that the most successful people in life are simply those who can endure the most pain, who can endure the most rejection who can in you know, indoor, and I think that's how I became successful in my business. I think, I think that I coined the phrase at the time when I was new advisor, I put in the phrase, tactical persistence, right? I'm going to be persistent tactfully. I think, in the first couple years of my career, people ultimately just did business with me, because I like, if I don't buy something from this guy, I think he's ever going away. Like, I don't think he is ever. Right. And so, you know, I was just there, they're there. And they're like, fine, right? I mean, you've developed a relationship and people know, right, then he's not going anywhere. He's gonna be here. Right. And, and, and, and I think I think that's, that's, that's important. I mean, anyone, uh, any one of the listeners, you know, of this program can tell you what is the easiest way to put off a salesperson or a telemarketer the easiest way to um, one simple phrase, call me later. And 99.9% of the time, they will not and you're off the hook. You don't even have to reject it. You did. So call me later because they didn't follow through. Right? Right. They didn't follow up. So you didn't have to actually, you know, say no, even right. And so, that's the thing for me, like, No, I'm gonna follow up and I'm gonna follow through and I'm gonna do everything that is required of me. Right. And if you ultimately type he's not right or my services are right then. Okay. Right. But I will not fail because I didn't do what was required. That will happen. 17:52 Yeah, yeah. That makes perfect sense. And, you know, speaking of tactful persistence, the other hat that you were is a dad to three girls, so I can only imagine tactful persistence comes in handy. So how has all of this your experience in business, your experience in yoga, your experience in life? How does that come together when it comes to raising three, three gals? 18:17 Yeah, um, you know, I, when I was a younger man, I used to pray to God that he'd sent girls to hang all over me. And he took me literally and it's like, here you go, here's three of them. Right? So be careful what you ask for my kid. I've got these three girls. And this is a prime example of you don't always get what you want, but you get exactly what you need. Right? me growing up as an athlete, I was a force for Letterman. In high school, I went on to play college basketball. You know, I recently got inducted into the Hall of Fame in my high school for sports. Right? So of course, I want Boys, boys continue to legacy and go on. And then I get three tall girls, two beautiful girls like oh, man, like God, why? But you know, just, I'm a different man. I'm a different father because I have these three girls. And I think, you know, my, my role and the one thing that I say is like as as a as a man, right of girl, Dad, if you will, I'm the first man they fall in love with. So it's my responsibility to show them, you know, respect and true love and chivalry, because that's where they're going to carry on in their relationships as they get older. And so I think, you know, I feel very blessed. Although, they are sisters and they're they're all flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood. There are three completely different people that represent three completely different sets of challenges and, and, and things to deal with. But I've been blessed because they're good girls, right? And I wish I could say it was because I'm such a great dad. But, um, you know, I think that they're they're just inherently they've got good sweet spirits, which is, which is a blessing to have. And then I'm just doing the best I can to guide them. I think we all can attest to this being as we get older, we become adults, we look back at our parents, and we realize every one of us has said this at some point, like, wait a minute, our parents didn't know what the heck they were doing. Right. Like, and some of us even called our parents out, right? Like, you were just winging it. They're like, Yeah, you know, and so I feel like, you know, I feel like, we're just all doing the best we can, you know, and that's, I'm doing the best we can as much as I feel like, you know, I'm doing all the things from I can from my, my daughters, I'm sure they'll tell you. Yeah, but he didn't do this, or this or this, but, but what they will definitely say is that, you know, I'm president and that I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm consistent, I'm a consistent, you know, consistent force in their life. Right. And that's, you know, that's the most important thing to me. I don't need them to always like me, I don't I don't need them to always agree with me, but I do need them to, to respect and honor Me and then with the love that we have, you know that that's something that you know, is so special, and then I feel blessed to be there for their father. Yeah. 21:20 Amazing. And you're putting all of this together, your financial advisor role your entrepreneur role, your community mindedness, your girl, Dad, your yoga, into mind, body money. So what is it? And what can we expect? 21:42 Yeah, Mind Body money is a docu series that I created. I have actually filmed all of season one, I'm in the process of talking to a variety of networks now to get it placed on on national television COMM And q1 Next year, so stay tuned. I've also created an app that's on the App Store mind dot body dot money that's on the app store as well. But the idea is that how do we become the best versions of ourselves? And we become the best versions of ourselves balancing those three areas in that order. Mind. Body, money, right? Mindset first manifestation, manifestation. Every day when people ask me how I'm doing I Thomas, the best day of my life, I say that every single day. Now, does that mean that everything is going well in my life at all times? Nope. But that's what I say. I'm manifesting positivity. Right. But health alone is so important. We're getting one body, right? Never no one's ever on their deathbed wishing they had more money. Right? So you got to take care of yourself. And then money, good stewardship of your money, right? Money can't buy you happiness, but it can pay your bills. So I can do a lot of stuff by hand. And so typically, what I find is people are unequally yoked right you might have the money hungry driven person and And admittedly, I was that person coming out of school, I want to be a million dollars. I want to, you know, you know, have a nice house nice car and buy stuff, right? But lacks substance lacked connectivity. Oh, right. And, and, and when I got all this stuff, what I realized, like, oh, an empty because it's not about the stuff. It's not about money. Right? It's about connections about love. Okay, and then you got the other people that understand spirituality? No, it's about mindset and in spirituality, and, and peace. And that's great that you feel like that you want to go on this yoga retreat. But I got a question for you. How do you pay your bills? Right. And so it's that it's the balance between those three areas. And that's what the show features different athletes, celebrities, entertainers, all the way down to your common men and women, and how the journey in life, right, you know, is navigating those three areas. And the one thing that I'll tell you, between all of the people, there is always a story of failure. There's always a story of doubt, or uncertainty that they all press through. And that's the one thing that I say common thread, like the most successful people, right that I've met in my life all can tell you a story where they were down and out or they didn't know what's gonna happen next, but they persevered, right? There's a, there's a, there's a little meme that I that I share when I'm doing my my talks and it has it's a photo of a goldmine that you can envision this in a person with a with a with a pitchfork, and they're digging in, they're digging, and they've dug like a 10 foot ditch and they get frustrated, and they turn around like, like I'm finished right? And they were only one foot away from actually hitting goal but they're like I've done so much And then the mantra here is don't don't ever give up. You never know how close you are, to, to your, to your goals to your dream. So So you swing away, you swing away until you get it. Right. And maybe maybe you'll get there in a week, they will take a year, they will take 10 years, right? Maybe Maybe it's not meant for you. Right. But But again, right, don't leave this earth wondering what if? 25:25 And out of all of the episodes that you've done and the people that you've met through mind body money? Is there a particular story that sticks out for you that you can share with the audience? 25:40 Yeah, there's two stories that come to mind. Actually, I'll share first one guest we had was on the show was Jordan sparks. She was the youngest American, I 25:51 love her. She's great. 25:52 She's awesome. Just as lovely. Off off screen as she is on screen. She shared with me so she goes on American Idol. She comes here to actually to Pasadena where I live, she cheats. She auditions at the Rose Bowl and gets cut. She didn't even make it to go see Simon and all those guys, right? She gets cut, right? And she says she remembers walking out, you know, through the parking lot with all these girls. And at the time, she was young. I think she was like 17 or so. But at the time, she said she remember seeing all these older girls and older by but I mean like 2526 year olds, I thought, Oh, my life is over. This is my only chance to make it big. And I'm done. And she thought to herself like, no, like, I'll come back don't get another way for me. So she goes back, she lives in Arizona. So she goes to a regional regional competition in in in Phoenix and wins, right and wins. And the prize for winning was a chance to go to the next city, which was in Seattle, and try again, audition again. And on that second audition, she gets picked up and then ultimately wins 26:58 the show. Amazing. 27:00 And so that story is when we're like wow, you know, like, wow, you know that what level of perseverance and just believe that like not this, isn't it? And how many of us would have faced that rejection or or stumbled in the live live? Yes, it wasn't in the cards for me. Right? But again, as long as you have breath in your body, keep pushing. Right. The other story I'll share is I had David Hasselhoff he was on my radio show my Ask the Experts radio show. And we're interviewing him. And David Hasselhoff was one of the principals of one of the first billion dollar TV franchises Baywatch, right? Um, I personally think that Knight Rider was cooler but for the for you. Gen Xers with me. But anyway, but but the US, you know, first building our franchise Baywatch, right, and we're talking about that. And again, what a lot of people don't know is that they watched initially was cancelled. It was cancelled after the first three episodes. Because yeah, they killed like five people in the first few episodes and and the viewers didn't like it. So the show got canceled. So in an attempt to revitalize the show, because like I need financing, so in little known, but David Hasselhoff in Germany is like he's huge, right? Like he's like, he's like, yeah, he's like, the biggest thing he's Yeah, yeah. Right. So he goes to Germany's like, they'll give you money, right? It goes in Germany. He raises some money. He gets like 1,000,005 to bring back the show, and comes back and does the show, right? Well, what happens is, they run out of money. They run out of money, they can't finish the episode. So like, man, we got 22 minutes of content, we need 25 And we don't have any more money. What can we do? How can we make the episodes longer slomo that is where slomo comes in. Slo Mo was to stretch out the scene so that they can get their minutes so funny that the most iconic part of the show was really a mistake was really because they didn't have money right? So story after story after story like that, that I've heard in my 22 year career most certainly in filming this Docu series is follow doc that like wow, like so many times people put a lay down so many times people could have you know, given a peck Jeff basals worked at McDonald's guys. You have like, like, like so so when somebody next to you when you're when you're working in Starbucks and the barista next to us like I'm going to be a billionaire and all scoff right you never know. 29:34 It can happen you never know. I love these like insider stories. I think it's so cool. So as we start to wrap things up, where can people find more about you about mind body money? Maybe see some little clips things like that. Where can where can people go? 29:53 Yeah, I'm pretty easy to find. My name is so unique. There's not a lot of me out there. He Sophie Taylor, Mama variety of social media platforms Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, that's at a selfie Taylor s ZYLF ie Taylor at the Sophie Taylor. For the show, we actually have a website, in addition to the social media platform. So we have a website Mind, Body money.com. So mind body money calm, you can also get information on the app store as well. You can download the app, the app store at mine dot body dot money, as well. And so yeah, we're out here we're continuing to push out new content, and, and keep everyone posted on the release of everything. But I'm super excited for what 2022 is going to bring and look forward to sharing. I feel like the bottom line for me is like when do you watch television? And and learn something? When do you watch television and feel better? And that's what I'm going to bring? That's what I'm going to bring to the world? 30:56 Well, the world certainly needs it at this point in time. So it sounds perfect to me. And now before we end, I asked everyone this same question. And it's knowing where you are now in your life and your career. What advice would you give to your younger self? 31:12 I would remind my younger self, that the road to walk a mile begins with a single step. No shortcuts. No matter how talented you are, no matter how smart you are, no matter how ambitious you are, right hard work is undefeated, you must do the work, right foot in front of the left one step at a time you'll get there. I think one of the biggest reasons that I'm successful today, it's all the slow, boring stuff. All the get rich quick, I'm gonna make a million dollars in a month and change the world all that stuff crashed and burned. 31:47 Right? So you mean all the stuff you see on social media? 31:51 Yeah, all that stuff crash and burn. It was it's the slow and steady. You know that? That is why you know, is why I'm here. Right. And so that's why I remind my younger self and it's hard, right? It's hard to listen, my long term plan at 22 was 25. Right? That was my long term plan. Right? I love that. Right? I mean, I was like, man, three years, that's 25 years old. Right? And so, you know, I can still couldn't even see past 30 like, well, what is what is that? You know, and, and then you you you blink? Right? You blink and you're like, well, 10 years has gone by 15 years gone by 20 years has gone by, you know and so that's what I would remind myself is just stay the course. Don't get you on the highs don't get too long. The lows the road to walk a mile begins with a single step. Just go. 32:37 I love it. Great advice. And Sophie, thank you so much for coming onto the podcast one more time. Where can people find out more about you? 32:48 Social media at ie Sophie Taylor, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, at Mind Body money, Instagram as well. And at the mind body money.com site as well as a mind body about money on the App Store. 33:03 Perfect. Thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. I appreciate you. And I wish you all the best in 2022, including your show. 33:13 Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. I'll take all the well wishes and blessings I could get. Thank you very much. 33:18 You're welcome. And everyone. Thanks so much for tuning in. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Social Justice and Sports Medicine Research Specialist, Sheree Bekker, talks about social justice in sports, medicine, and research. Today, Sheree talks about the conversations around physiology and injuries, and the different environments that affect the ACL injury cycle. How do clinicians implement the findings in the research? Hear about Sheree's qualitative research methods, the importance of recognising the social determinants of injuries, tackling systemic experiences, and get Sheree's advice to her younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "We have to recognise the human at the centre of those experiences." "Gendered language that seems like everyday language in sport can be really harmful to both men and women." "[Be] cognisant of, and [be] able to have those conversations with athletes, patients, people that you work with all the time about their social conditions of their lives." "The social conditions of our lives play into our injuries and our rehabilitation." "It is about not simply seeing rehab as a biomedical issue alone to solve, but thinking about it as socially, politically, and materially oriented is a practice that you might incorporate in your way of thinking." "Injury prevention, and a contemporary vision for injury prevention, needs to be athlete-centred and human-focused." "We need to have those uncomfortable conversations about our complex, messy realities." "Context is everything." "Sport isn't neutral. It isn't apolitical." "We can start to ask these questions, start to have these conversations. The answers aren't going to come tomorrow." "These ripples will take some time." "Connection is greater than competition." "Hold on to the power of connecting with people who are at the same career stage and doing work with people who are at the same career stage as you." More about Sheree Bekker Dr Sheree Bekker (she/her) was born in South Africa, grew up in Botswana, completed her PhD in Australia, and now calls Bath (UK) home. She is an expert in 'complexity' and research that links social justice and (sports) injury prevention. She has a special interest in sex/gender and uses qualitative methods. This underpins her work as an Assistant Professor in Injury Prevention and Safety Promotion in the Department for Health at the University of Bath. At Bath, she is Co-Director of the Centre for Qualitative Research, and a member of the Centre for Health and Injury and Illness Prevention in Sport (CHI2PS), and the Gender and Sexuality Research Group. Internationally, Sheree is an Early Career Representative for the International Society for Qualitative Research in Sport and Exercise, and a founding member of the Qualitative Research in Sports Medicine (QRSMed) special interest group. In 2020 she was appointed as an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, and in 2021 she was appointed Qualitative Research Editor of BMJ Open Sport and Exercise Medicine. She completed a Prize Research Fellowship in Injury Prevention at the University of Bath from 2018-2020, and received the 2019 British Journal of Sports Medicine Editor's Choice Academy Award for her PhD research. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Physiotherapy, Social Justice, Injury, Prevention, Gender, Sexuality, Physiology, Sociology, Environment, Research, Change, Resources: Anterior cruciate ligament injury: towards a gendered environmental approach To learn more, follow Sheree at: Website: https://sites.google.com/view/shereebekker/home Twitter: @shereebekker Instagram: @sheree_bekker Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:02 Hi, Sheree, welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you on. I've been looking forward to this for a long time. So thank you so much for joining. 00:12 Thank you for having me. Karen. I am delighted to be talking to you today. 00:16 And today we're going to talk about some of now you had a couple of different presentations at the International Olympic Committee meeting in Monaco a few weeks ago, and we're going to talk about a couple of them. But first, I would love for you to tell the audience a little bit more about you, and about the direction of your research and kind of the why behind it. Because I think that's important. 00:43 Mm hmm. Yeah, I've actually I have been thinking about this a lot recently, over the course of the pandemic, and thinking about where my research and my work is going and why I'm so interested in in kind of social justice issues in sports injury research in Sport and Exercise medicine. And I guess for me, there are two reasons for that both of them related to my background. First of all, I was born in South Africa. And I grew up in Botswana. And I think, you know, growing up into countries that have interesting pasts, you know, South Africa having post of apartheid and Botswana having been a colonized country, I think I grew up in places where we were used to having difficult conversations about social justice issues on a national level. And I think, you know, that is something that has influenced me definitely in the way that I see the world. The second part for me is I studied human movement science at university. And my program was in a Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. And I didn't realize at the time that most people get their sport and exercise medicine, sports science, human movement, science training, in medical faculties, or in health faculties, whereas mine was very much social sciences and humanities. And I only realized this later that my training in this regard was quite different in terms of the way that I see the work that we do. And so now, I've landed here at the University of Bath, and I'm in a department for health. But once again, I'm back in a Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. So it's been a really, really nice connection for me to come back to these bigger social justice questions, I guess, that I'm interested, you know, in our field. So for me, that's really the why I think of why I do this work. 02:42 And, and kind of carrying along those themes of social justice and really taking a quat. Know, a quantitative, qualitative, sorry, qualitative eye, on athletes and on injury, let's talk about your first talk that you gave it at IOC, which is about the athletes voice. So take us through it. And then we'll ask some questions. So I'll, I'll shoot it over to you. 03:17 Yeah, so um, my first talk, the first symposium that I was involved in at IOC this year, we had titled The athlete's voice, and those of us who were involved with it, we're really proud to be able to get this topic, this kind of conversation onto the agenda in Monaco. I had so many people comment to me afterwards, that this was the first time that we've been able to have this kind of discussion at this specific conference. And, you know, previous editions, I think, have been very much focused on that biomedical that I was just talking about, given that it's Sport and Exercise medicine. And it was the first time that we've been able to bring athlete voice into this space. And so this symposium in my talk in particular, was really focused on qualitative research. Even though when we pitched the symposium, we kind of decided that we couldn't call it qualitative research, because it wouldn't have been accepted at the time. And, and now, it's amazing to me how far we've come that we can actually talk about qualitative research in these spaces. So what I spoke about, and what I was interested in is, you know, what are the kinds of different knowledges and who are the people that we might listen to in Sport and Exercise medicine and sports injury more broadly, that traditionally we maybe haven't scented and haven't listened to? And I was interested in those kinds of social meanings of injury and of injury prevention and how we might do things differently. So you know, for me, it was that Recognizing the value of alternative perspectives, and working across disciplines and advancing our research and practice in this way. And so that's really what I spoke about was, you know how we might do these things differently by actually listening to the people at the center of our work and listening to athletes themselves. And that was really the focus of that symposium. 05:26 And in looking through some of the slides from the symposium, some of the quotes that I'm assuming we're taking from the qualitative work are, gosh, they're kind of heartbreaking. So what do you do with that information once you have it, right? So you're conditioned not to quit, you turn off your emotions, you become a robot as soon as you step onto the field or the pitch or the court. So how do you take that qualitative research? And what do you do with that once you have it? 06:01 Yeah, so you know, my talk, the way I kind of structured my talk was to talk about how we generally do injury prevention. And what we generally do is we, you know, figure out what the issue is what the injury problem is, we develop an intervention, and then we implement that in intervention and hope that it works. And, and some, you know, that's the kind of general cycle that we use. And what I decided to do in my talk, which was only a 10 minute talk was to dedicate two of those minutes to a video that I showed, that was just set to music that flashed up all of these quotes from athletes. And there were quotes that I'd collected from a number of different sports, a number of different athletes and spaces over the years, that really speak about their experience in sports and these toxic environments, which is something that I think we tend to kind of put to the side, maybe sometimes and ignore, sometimes in sport, when we put sport up on a pedestal and only think about the good things that happen in sports. And those quotes are also, I guess, a throwback or connection to one of the other talks that I had at IOC, which is not something that I think we'll speak about today, but about safeguarding and recognizing safeguarding as an injury prevention issue. And so we had these, like two minutes of these quotes from athletes. And I think that video really signaled a palpable shift in the room in recognizing what athletes are actually saying, and what their experiences are in sport about needing to, I guess, you know, put their their kind of robot hat on and be this strong person within sport where they can't break down where they can't have injuries or anything like that. Otherwise, they're going to be the team. And just for us to come back and to recognize that humanity in that experience, within sport, I think is really, really important, especially when we're at a conference where we're talking about injury prevention and interventions, we have to recognize the human at the center of those experiences. And so for me, coming back to your question about what do we do with that information? I think that's really powerful information, in terms of how we think about what injury prevention is, and does. And I guess we always focus on bodies, and you know, body parts, the ankle, the knee, the hip, the growing. You know, that's, that's kind of been a big focus of injury prevention. And I think we often forget that injury prevention is and can be so much more than that. And that there are these social factors, or social determinants, that to play into injury and its prevention. So the social aspects of our lives in terms of, you know, abuse that might happen in these spaces, or just being exposed to toxic spaces, you know, how that does actually render us more susceptible to injury, and how that can thwart our injury prevention efforts in these spaces. So for me, it's about integrating both of those two things I think together, and that's what I'm kind of getting at with qualitative research. 09:19 And, and that leads me into something else I wanted to talk about, and that is a review from the British Journal of Sports Medicine that you co authored with Joanne Parsons and Stephanie Cohen, anterior cruciate ligament injury towards a gendered environmental approach. And what you just said, triggered in me something in in reading through that article was that there's intrinsic factors and extrinsic factors that can lead to injury and injury prevention programs, if done well, should incorporate both of those. Right but they often concentrate on the biomedical part of the The, whether it be strength training, or landing, or, you know, whatever it may be when we look at a lot of these injury prevention programs, but there are so many contextual issues and extrinsic issues that can impact any of those programs. So I'll kind of let you sort of talk through that a little bit and talk through some of the main points that you found in that paper. But gosh, it really gets you thinking like, Well, wait a second, it could be, like you said, if you are, depending on the environment in which you live, can have a huge impact. And it's, it's more than just, especially when it comes to girls and women, it's more than just oh, it's because you have your period. And that's why this happened. Or if your hips are wider, that's why you got injured, right? So go ahead, I'll throw it over to you. And you can kind of talk through that paper a little bit, and then we'll see what comes up. 11:04 Mm hmm. You know, I'm so happy to hear you say that, because I'm so I'm not a clinician, but it has been amazing to me to hear how this paper has resonated with clinicians and people working in this space in terms of your own experiences and what you see and what you hear from the people that you're working with. So yeah, you're absolutely right. I mean, this paper was born out of conversations that Steph and Joanne and I had in terms of how we were frustrated by I guess, the discourse around sports injury, particularly for girls and women, often being blamed on our physiology on our bodies, right. And to us, that seems like a bit of a cop out. And just to say, oh, you know, girls are more susceptible to ACL injury, because they have wider hips, so there's nothing that we can do about it, you know, so that's really pitched us that intrinsic risk factor that girls and women are just inherently weaker, or supposedly more fragile than boys and men, and there's nothing that we can do about it. So we're just going to have to kind of live with those injury breeds. Right. And, and we found that this kind of thinking had really underpins so much of the injury prevention work that we'd seen over the last 10 or 20 years. And we wanted to problematize this a little bit and to think through what those kind of other social and I would say structural determinants of sports injuries are. So I'm starting to talk about this idea of the social determinants of injury. So not just what are those intrinsic things, but actually, what are the what are the other other social modes, I guess, that we might carry that might lead to injury. So in this paper, we speak about how we, as human beings, literally incorporate I think, biologically, the world in which we live. So our societal or ecological circumstances, we incorporate that into our bodies. And so we can start to see how injury might be a biological manifestation of exposure to that kind of social load. So for girls and women, how our gendered experience of the world might render us more susceptible to injury, rather than just positioning ourselves as being more weak, or more fragile. So we were interested in how society makes us and skills in women more weaker, and more fragile. And so in this way, we speak about how you know, from the time that we're babies, girls are not expected to do as much physically we are brought up differently to young boy babies might be when we go through school and play sport in school, we play different kinds of sports, and again, you know, on average, or in general, and girls, goes out, you know, not encouraged to be as active and to do as much with our bodies as boys. And we then go in right to have this kind of that cumulative effect of less exposure to activities and doing things with our bodies. Actually, that is what leads to us being more susceptible to things like ACL injury over time. And this is carried on in the kind of elite sports space as well. So we see how girls and women's sports are devalued in so many ways and how we're not expected to do as much or to perform as well. Or to train as hard I guess, as boys and men So an example of this that actually happened a couple of weeks after we published the paper was the NCAA March Madness. I don't know if you remember, there were those pictures that were tweeted all over social media, about the women's division, only being supplied with one set of teeny, tiny Dunda. Whereas the men's division was given, you know, massive weight room with everything that they needed to be able to train to be able to warm up and do everything that they needed to do in that state. And the first that was just an excellent example of what we're talking about in terms of girls and women being expected to and actually being made, I guess, weaker than boys and men are in exactly the same sports spaces. And so that's kind of a rundown, I guess, of what we wrote about in the paper. 15:53 Yeah, and I look back on my career as I was a high school athlete, college athlete, and not once was it, hey, we should go into the gym and train with specific training programs, because it will help to make you stronger, maybe faster, better, less prone to injury, but the boys were always had a training program. You know, they always had a workout program. So I can concur. That is like a lived experience for me as to what training was like, comparing the boys versus girls college straight through or high school straight through to college. And yes, that March Madness thing was maddening. Pun intended. I couldn't you could not believe couldn't believe what we were seeing there. That was that was completely out of bounds. But what I'd like to dive in a little bit deeper to the article, not not having you go through everything line by line. But let's talk about the different environments that you bring up within the article, because I think they're important. And a little more explanation would be great. So throughout this kind of ACL injury paradigm, you come up with four different environments, the pre sport environment, the training environment, the competition environment, and the treatment environment. So would you like to touch on each of those a little bit? Just to explain to the listeners, how that fits into your, into this paper and into the structure of injury prevention? 17:31 Yeah, sure. So um, yeah, what we did with this paper was we take we take the the traditional ACL injury cycle, and that a lot of us working in sports injury prevention are aware of, and we overlay what we called gendered environmental factors on top of that, so we wanted to take this this site, call and think through how our gendered experiences and girls and women, again render us more susceptible, and over the course of a lifetime, or a Korean. And so starting with the pre sport environment, you know, that goes back to what I was just saying about girls and boys being girls being socialized differently to boys, when we're growing up. So that kind of life course effect, gender affects over the life course, in terms of what we're expected to do with our bodies. That really starts in that pre sport environment when we're babies and young boys and young girls. And then we track how that works throughout the ACL injury cycle. So moving into the next step, coming back to this NCAA example, you know, what the training environment looks like, and how it might be gendered in ways that we might not even pick up on. So another example here, and this is a practical example that we've given to some sports organizations, since then, is, you know, the kind of gendered language that seems like everyday language and sport that can actually be really harmful to both men and women. So for example, you know, talking about girl push ups, you know, that really does set a precedent for what we think about girls and women in sports spaces. When you say, Oh, you go over there and do some girl push ups, it really does render girls and women as being more weak, you know, weaker and more fragile than boys and men. So those kinds of gendered experience in sports spaces, and you're an example there is really key. But then we also talk about kind of during injury and post injury as well. And this comes more into the kind of rehabilitation space and so on how, again, expectations of girls and women's bodies might play into what we expect when we go through rehabilitation as well and, and how that plays into that ACL injury cycle of recovery, as well. So that's really for So it was overlaying gender, across all of those spaces. And I think that gives us a really powerful way of looking at ACL injury differently and to, to conceptualize what we might do both in injury prevention, but also once injury has happened to help girls and women differently. 20:20 And in reading through this paper, and and also going through the slides that you graciously provided on Twitter, of of all of your talks at IOC, as a clinician, it for me, gives me so much more to think about, and really sparked some thoughts in my head as to conversations to have with the patient. So what advice would you give to clinicians, when it comes to synthesizing a lot of this work? And taking it into the clinic, talking with their patient in front of them and then implementing it? Because some people may say, oh, my gosh, I have so much to do. Now, I have to read all of this. Now I have to incorporate this, do you know what I mean? So it can some be somewhat overwhelming. So what advice do you have for clinicians? Yes, 21:13 so I really do think and as I said earlier, I think a lot of what we're seeing here is what clinicians are doing all the time anyway, I think, especially people who are already connected to this kind of idea of this social determinants of health. And so I guess, for me, it is really just being cognizant of, and being able to have those conversations with athletes, with patients with people that you work with all the time, about their social conditions of their lives. So not again, not just reducing people down to bodies, but recognizing that people have you know, that the social conditions of our lives play into our injuries and our rehabilitation, and holding space for that, you know, when I'm teaching, that's what I say to my students all the time, but I know that that you know, this, and clinicians know this better than I do. You, you know, it's not just about saying to someone, go away and do these exercises, and come back to me when you know, that person might have a full time job with three kids to look after. And, you know, a lot of other things on their plate as well that that one exercise or exercise program isn't necessarily going to be the silver bullet or the answer to, you know, the way that they need to be dealing with that injury. So I think for me, it's again, that re humanizing and being able to have those those conversations and recognizing those social determinants of injury or recovery, and so on. And so I think for clinicians, it is about not simply seeing rehab as a biomedical issue alone to solve, but thinking about it as socially and politically and materially oriented as a practice that you might incorporate in your way of thinking. That's really it. It doesn't need to be any more than that. We don't need to complicate it. Any more than that. 23:10 Yeah. Perfect. Thank you for that. And as we start to wrap things up, is there a, are there any kind of key points that you want to leave the listeners with? Or is there anything that we didn't touch on that you were like, oh, I need I need people to know this. This is really important. Hmm. 23:36 Yeah, I think, you know, if we kind of connect the conversations that we've kind of had today with the different points that we've connected to, I think, you know, what I saw in IRC at the IOC conference in Monaco is I really felt especially on day one at that athlete centered symposium that we had, I really felt like a palpable shift in that room. And in the conversations that I've had afterwards, with people I've had so many people come up to me to say that, you know, that it was really inspiring, and it's helped them to be able to go away and have different kinds of conversations, incredibly have different kinds of conversations about the work that we're doing in injury prevention and in Sport and Exercise medicine more broadly. And so I really think that we need to focus on that idea that injury prevention and a contemporary vision for injury prevention needs to be athlete centered and human focused. And I think if we truly committed to this, I think the ways in which we develop our interventions, and the ways in which we might go about our work, more generally in Sport and Exercise medicine, in physiotherapy and so on, it needs to reflect the socio cultural, so meaning those social determinants of injury in cluding the ways in which things like sexism, and misogyny, and racism, and classism, and ableism, and homophobia and transphobia, how that all can and does actually lead to injury. I think those are larger conversations that we need to be having enough field that we've started to have very slowly, but they are difficult conversations to have. And we often cut them out when we only think about injury as a biomedical thing, again, only thinking about bodies. And so for me, I think those are the those are the thing that we now need to get uncomfortable, you know, about, we need to have those uncomfortable conversations about our complex, messy realities, and that we're dealing with that athletes are human beings, that these are our experiences of the world, that sport and exercise medicine needs to reflect that as well. In terms of our composition, we need to reflect the communities that we serve as well. And Tracy Blake talks about that often. And you know, those are the conversations that I'd like to see our field having going forward. And I do think there was a shift in being able to say those things at Monaco this year. 26:16 Yeah. And so what I'm hearing is, was the big takeaway for me from Monaco is context is everything. And we can't, we can no longer take that out. And focus, like you said, just on the biomedical aspect of this person in front of us as if they don't have past experiences and emotions and thoughts and fears and concerns. And context is everything. And for clinicians, it sounds like a challenge to start having these conversations at more conferences. I know it's this little kind of bubble of clinicians, but if it can start there, perhaps it can make a ripple out into the wider public and into having these conversations with your athletes and patients and not be afraid to have these difficult conversations, or to ask the probing questions to the person in front of you. Because they're more than just their ACL injury, they're more than just their back pain. So I think challenging clinicians to have these conversations, whether it be one on one like this, or within large groups at conferences, and then take that back to your, to your practice and really start living it and understanding that this can is as important, maybe, in some cases more important than the biomedical injury in front of you. 27:41 Oh, I could not agree more with that statement. I mean, something that I've spoken about a lot before is that, you know, sport isn't neutral. It's not a political. And it's the same for the work that we do. It's, you know, for far too long, it's been positioned as a neutral science thing that we do. And I think we're now starting to recognize the context around that, that our values and our principles and people's lives and experiences, you know, as you say, play as much as if not more of a role in their experience of sport, and injury, and rehab, and all of that. So I would agree with you completely, we need to be having more of these conversations, we need to recognize this within our research, we need to recognize this within our practice. And we can't keep going on as if you know, none of so if we can remove all of that from the practice of working with human beings and being human beings as well. You know, all of this is connected for me. And as you know, as we're seeing now, it's for all of us who work in this space, once we start to have these conversations, we can start to ask different questions, we can start to think about things differently. And I think that that's really powerful for the future of our work in this space. 28:55 Yeah. And I think it's also important to remember that we can start to ask these questions start to have these conversations that the answers aren't going to come tomorrow. So that instant gratification that has become the world that we are now living in that if it doesn't happen within the next couple of days, that means it's not going to happen, but that these ripples will take some time. Yeah, absolutely. 29:19 And, you know, so a lot of my work is in complexity theory. And what I say about that is, you know, there probably are not going to be hard and fast answers here. But it will bring up new considerations and it will bring up I think, I'd like us to move away from this idea that we can solve things, but actually move closer towards the idea that this is an ongoing practice. And that that's always going to be I think, more powerful for me when we see things like injury prevention as a process or a practice. That's not necessarily going to solve things. But that is you know, really To the context in which we live in our lives is an ongoing thing. And I think that's what we brought into the ACL injury cycle. Papers. Well, 30:09 yeah, I think it takes away from the clinician as being the MS or Mr. Fix it to, okay, we are layering ourselves into people's lives. And we need to be able to do that in a way that fits the person in front of us as best we can. 30:26 Yeah, exactly. Beautifully said exactly. We can't necessarily solve those things for them. But these provide considerations, things that we can do. And yeah, we can move with that. 30:39 Yeah, absolutely. Well, Cherie, thank you so much. I mean, we can go on and talk for days on end about this stuff. And perhaps when one of these days we will we'll have a bigger, wider, broader conversation and and make it go on for a couple of hours, because I'm sure it will bring up a lot of questions, maybe some answers, and perhaps some changing of minds when it comes to injury prevention and what our role is as clinicians. So thank you so much, where can people find you? 31:13 Thank you, Karen. And I love that I think broader conversations are so helpful in this space. So people can find me on Twitter at Shree Becker, that's probably the best place to find me. I'm always over there and happy to have broader conversations with everybody. So please come and find me on Twitter. 31:32 Perfect. And we'll have links to everything, including the paper that we're talking about. From BDSM. We'll have links to everything at the show notes at podcast dot healthy, wealthy, smart, calm. So one question left that I asked everyone and that is knowing where you are now in your life and in your career? What advice would you give to your younger self? 31:51 Oh, so that's a really good question. And it's I think it's my Elan series, again, connected to what we saw in Monaco. And something that I've said for many years now is connection is greater than competition. And something that I live in that I feel like I wish I had done earlier is to hold on to the power of connecting with people who are at the same career stage and doing work with people who are at the same career stages as you especially someone who has and is an emerging researcher, or researcher clinician in this space, because I think the exciting new conversations that we're seeing in this space are coming from people who are you know, recently merging, I guess, in these researchers faces and so it's okay to collaborate rather than being in competition with people who are doing great work in your area. So that would be my advice. 32:54 I love it. I love it and couldn't agree more. So Sheree, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you again. I appreciate it. 33:02 Thank you so much, Karen. And everyone. Thanks 33:04 so much for tuning in and listening and have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Founder of the Rizing Tide Foundation, Heidi Jannenga, returns to the podcast to talk about fostering diversity in the physical therapy industry. Today, Heidi talks about the incredible work being done by the Rizing Tide Foundation, the process of awarding scholarships, and future Rizing Tide developments. Which changes still need to be made in the industry? Hear about the growing student debt problem, how you can get involved with Rizing Tide, and get Heidi's advice to her younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "Almost every single one of them [students] were working full-time jobs at the same time as going to PT school. Some of them, more than one job." "There's a huge segment of the folks that answered that survey that have more than $150,000 of debt post-graduation." "It takes a lot to try to balance the price of education to what we actually are getting paid as clinicians." "A rising tide raises all boats." "Be open-minded to a path that you may not have thought that you might go down." "If something aligns with your vision and values, then go for it." More about Heidi Jannenga Dr. Heidi Jannenga, PT, DPT, ATC, is the founder of the Rizing Tide Foundation, which seeks to inspire more diversity and inclusiveness in the physical therapy industry. Each year, Rizing Tide presents scholarships to five promising BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) students who are on the path to earning their Doctorate of Physical Therapy (DPT) or furthering their PT education by pursuing a residency program. In addition, Heidi is a physical therapist and the co-founder and Chief Clinical Officer of WebPT, a nine-time Inc. 5000 honoree and the leading software solution for physical, occupational, and speech therapists. As a member of the board and senior management team, Heidi advises on WebPT's product vision, company culture, branding efforts and internal operations, while advocating for rehab therapists, women leaders, and entrepreneurs on a national and international scale. Since the company launched in 2008, Heidi has guided WebPT through exponential growth. Today, it's the fastest-growing physical therapy software in the country, employing over 600 people and serving more than 90,000 therapy professionals - equating to an industry-leading 40% market-share. In 2017, Heidi was honored by Health Data Management as one of the most powerful women in IT, and she was a finalist for EY's Entrepreneur of the Year. In 2018, she was named the Ed Denison Business Leader of the Year at the Arizona Technology Council's Governor's Celebration of Innovation. In addition to serving on numerous non-profit leadership boards, Heidi is a proud member of the YPO Scottsdale Chapter and Charter 100 as well as an investor with Golden Seeds, which focuses on women-founded or led organizations. Heidi is a mother to her 10-year-old daughter Ava and enjoys traveling, hiking, mountain biking and practicing yoga in her spare time. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Physiotherapy, Representation, Scholarships, Diversity, Inclusivity, BIPOC, Student Debt, Education, Opportunity, Resources Higher Education? By Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus. Apply for a Rizing Tide Scholarship. To learn more, follow Heidi at: Website: https://rizing-tide.com Twitter: @HeidiJannenga LinkedIn: Heidi Jannenga Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the full Transcript Here: SUMMARY KEYWORDS rising tide, scholarship, pt, students, people, heidi, industry, physical therapist, foundation, profession, podcast, scholarship program, year, works, residency programs, physical therapy, pts, residency, crest, education 00:07 Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast. Each week we interview the best and brightest in physical therapy, wellness and entrepreneurship. We give you cutting edge information you need to live your best life healthy, wealthy and smart. The information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as personalized medical advice. And now, here's your host, Dr. Karen Litzy. 00:35 Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I'm wishing you all a very happy New Year and welcome to the first episode of 2022. We've got a great one in store. But first, a big thank you to Net Health for sponsoring today's podcast episode. So when it comes to boosting your clinics, online visibility, reputation and referrals, Net Health Digital Marketing Solutions has the tools you need to beat the competition. They know you want your clinic to get found get chosen and get five star reviews. So they have a new offer. If you sign up and complete a marketing audit to learn how digital marketing solutions can help your clinic win. They will buy lunch for your office. If you're already using NET Health's private practice EMR, be sure to ask about his new integration, head over to net help.com forward slash li T zy to sign up for your complimentary marketing audit. Okay, on today's episode I'm really excited to have back on the podcast Dr. Heidi J. Nanga. She is the founder of the rising tide Foundation which seeks to inspire more diversity and inclusiveness in the physical therapy industry. Each year rising tide presents scholarships to five promising bipoc students who are on the path to earning their doctorate of physical therapy, or furthering their PT education by pursuing a residency program. In addition, Heidi is a physical therapist and the Co Founder and Chief Clinical Officer of web PT, a nine Time Inc 5000 honoree and the leading software solution for physical occupational speech therapist. As a member of the board and senior management team Heidi advises on web PTS, product vision company culture branding, efforts, and internal operations while advocating for rehab therapist women leaders and entrepreneurs on a national international scale. Since the company launched in 2008, Heidi has guided web PT through exponential growth. Today, it's the fastest growing physical therapy software in the country employing over 700 people serving more than 90,000 therapy professionals, equating to an industry leading 40% market share. In 2017, Heidi was honored by health data management as one of the most powerful women in it. She was a finalist for he wise Entrepreneur of the Year in 2018. She was named Ed Dennison, Business Leader of the Year at the Arizona Technology Council's governor's celebration of innovation. In addition to serving on numerous nonprofit leadership boards, Heidi's a proud member of the YPO Scottsdale chapter and charter 100 as well as an investor with golden seats which focuses on women founded or led organizations. She is also the mother's 10 year old daughter Ava enjoys traveling hiking, mountain biking and practicing yoga in her spare time when that spare time is I don't know. So today we are talking about the rising tide Foundation. And if you are a physical therapist and you are hoping to go into residency or you're in your residency, you must listen to this episode because you can win a scholarship from the rising tide foundation. If you're listening to this today, Monday, you have until Friday in order to to submit an application to the rising tide foundation to get a scholarship for your residency. So get on it people a big thank you to Heidi and everyone enjoyed today's episode. Hey, Heidi, welcome back to the podcast. Happy to have you back on. 04:02 Hey, Karen, so great to be here. Thanks so much for having me. 04:05 And so today we're going to be talking about a foundation called the rising tide foundation. So what is it and why did you decide to start this foundation? 04:19 Well, thanks so much for having me on. And to be able to talk about this because it really is a has been a labor of love. And a true way for me to give back to a profession that has given so much to me. The Rising Tide foundation really started after a few years of us doing the real estate of rehab therapy industry report which you and I have talked about on this podcast, and every year. There doesn't seem to be a change into two major things that we ask the serve the people that we survey, one was what you mentioned student debt, and actually, not that it hasn't changed, it's actually increasing. And that's a big burden, as you can imagine, to an industry. And then second was actually the biggest emphasis, which is the the, the lack of diversity within our profession. And being a person who identifies as a person of color. The fact that we have this lack of diversity has been a real, real issue, that hasn't made much change, despite, you know, the APTA and others sort of bringing attention to the issue. But the percentages as far as what the makeup of our profession looks like, has not changed has not really changed at all, in the last five years that we've been doing that survey. And so that was really the two major impetus behind me starting this foundation, I've been lucky enough to have financial success with web pt. And so had started the rising tide Foundation, not knowing what I wanted to do with the foundation back at the end of 2019. And then with everything that happened through 2020, it just sort of hit me over the head that this is something that I can personally make a difference in, within our profession. And 06:39 what exactly does the rising tide foundation do? 06:45 It is a scholarship program. So we have two tracks of scholars. We have the crest Scholarship, which is actually geared towards new and new students coming into the profession. And so we provide $14,000 scholarships to three participants, or three scholars, three scholarship winners, that is renewable for the three years PT school, and then we have to serve scholarships, which actually is for physical therapists who are going on to residency programs. And those are $10,000 each, for the one your usual one year program of residency. How, how 07:41 are these winners chosen? What give us a peek sort of behind the curtains, if you will, as to how the process works, so that if people listening to this, whether you are a physical therapy student, or you are one of those people like Gosh, I really want to do a residency, but I don't know how I can make it work financially. So how can these folks apply to the program and and like I said, gives a little peek behind the curtain on how it all works? 08:12 Sure, well, first and foremost, you have to qualify and so if you go to rising dash tide.com, you will find all of the specific sort of qualifications that are required. So for example, for the crest scholarship, you are either an undergraduate who is applying or an undergraduate who is applying to PT school. So you have will have graduated from an undergraduate with an undergraduate degree going on to DPT program, or you're a PTA that's entering into a PTA Bridge Program, which is there's only a couple of schools that do that. But we are also providing scholarships for any PTA who they want to go on to get their DPT so there is a actual physical, like documentation style application, which you have to fill out as well as writing three short essay that include questions like What inspired you to become a physical therapist? And, you know, what does it mean to be a community member? And then also, you know, we really wanted to dive into the essence of who the scholars are. Because we feel like we want to invest in professionals who who are really going to want to make a difference in the profession. So the last question is talking about sort of a failure that you've experienced in your life and what you've really learned from that training. Did you know dive into a little vulnerability and understanding of who they are at the core of the person. And so you also need some letters of recommendation, and transcripts in the normal sort of thing that you might think about in going through a scholarship. So once you you send all of that information. We have a selection committee, which I'm really, really proud of. I was honored to gather quite a few thought leaders from the industry including a fossa, Joe Badea, Maria Gonzalez seen Sharon Wang is actually not from the industry. We wanted to bring together our selection committee, which I call our Beachcombers, hopefully see that sort of nautical theme here. Wendy HARO, who is a software engineer actually works with me with PT, Moyer Tillery, who is also a PT, and then Jean shamrock rod. And those folks make up our our base comers who were to which our selection committee, so we scour all of the applications that come in for each one of the scholarship programs. And we narrow it down to around 10 finalists, and each of the finalists and have to go through an actual live video interview with the selection committee. And from there, we then get the really tedious and hard, difficult decision to narrow it down to the three winners. We just went through the crash scholarship selection process, and it was absolutely amazing. And, and we we were able to narrow it down. But having been our first process, it was just an incredible experience. And we had so many great applicants that we actually ended up awarding five scholarship winners, three of the full scholar, scholarship cross winners, and then we actually started two new sub winners, which are the what we're calling our rising stars, which actually got $5,000 scholarship towards their tuition and, and fees, they might be paying towards PT school. 12:35 That's amazing. And how many people applied for the crest scholarship? 12:44 Yeah, you know, Karen, you know, all about startups right in that first, first year, you kind of are working out the kinks, you're trying to figure out the right processes to have in place. And we had a fairly short window of about 60 days, 45 to 60 days that we opened up the application process this year, for our first cohort of crest winners. And our goal was to get 20 applicants. And after a social media polish and the PR, including, you know, me talking on a few podcast, we actually got 40 applicants which I was so so thrilled about. So we doubled the number that we wanted, then, obviously through that process, it's was so great that we couldn't actually just narrow down to three. So we actually awarded five scholarships and I I just wanted to give a shout out to the amazing scholars that did winner that are part of this first first cohort we had three winners from Northwestern University, Ruth Morales Flores is actually a second year students. Ricky Loki, who is a first year in Jackie Hua, who was a first year as well, just phenomenal, phenomenal students. And Alicia lead from Washington, St. Louis University and Tyrrel McGee, from Regis University. So a really broad spectrum of really interesting and thoughtful students who I know are going to make huge impact on the industry moving forward. 14:29 And you know, you had mentioned that part of the application process was interviews. So a lot you had the members of the committee interviewing 10 Different students and you're reading through 40 different essays. So what did you learn about the PT education system through hearing from all of these applicants and the eventual winners of the scholarship program? 14:59 Well, for First and foremost, as I mentioned, one of the goals and the mission of rising tide is all about improving the diversity of the workforce within our industry. And so, obviously, you know, the number of students that have been accepted to PT school in order to really receive this scholarship and qualify for the scholarship has to be people of color. And so the fact that we were able to get the number of scholarships applications that we did, in such a short period of time, was amazing to me. And, and I attribute a lot of that to the physical therapy, schools really putting diversity as a high priority in terms of their recruiting process of really also trying to change the face of who we are, and to become less homogenous, and more reflective of the society in which we live in. And so that was a real, I want to say, eye opener, but but pleasant surprise, that, you know, despite the fact that we haven't seen the numbers change, that it is something that is a huge priority, and is now after a few years of changing processes, and changing how the recruiting, where they're recruiting from and how they're actually going through the actual student selection process. For example, there are many schools now that are either eliminating, or D prioritizing SAP scores as an entry component, or GRE scores as it goes into graduate school, as a as a component of the process, and putting a higher priority on interview and essays and other things and more more, I guess, tangible areas of interest as they go through the, the selection process for their incoming classes. And so that was a that was really positive for me to really hear that. But it more than that, it was the passion that the students had for the industry. You know, I don't think much has changed in terms of why people get interested in the PT field, most of them had had experiences, whether it was personal or with family members, that really sparked that inspiration to to go into the PT field. Some of the other things that were just amazing about these students is almost every single one of them were working full time jobs, at the same time as going through PT school, some of them more than one job. We heard stories of, you know, students who basically had to decide whether they were going to pay for food, or pay for a book. And so the determination and just the sheer passion around why the and what they're able to do in order to accomplish their goals, was just astounding. And I don't know that, you know, most people understand the sort of path that, you know, underserved populations sometimes have to take in order to accomplish those goals. 18:54 Yeah, that's amazing. What a great group that you you got to meet. Now, after talking with these students, aside from the fact that hey, schools are kind of changing the weight of inclusion criteria, what further changes do you think need to be made within the industry? And on that, we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor, and be right back with Heidi's answer. When it comes to boosting your clinics, online visibility, reputation and increasing referrals, net Health's Digital Marketing Solutions has the tools you need to beat the competition. They know you want your clinic to get found, get chosen and definitely get those five star reviews on Google. Net Health is a fun new offer. If you sign up and complete a marketing audit to learn how digital marketing solutions can help your clinic win. They will buy lunch for your office. If you're already using Net Health private practice EMR, be sure to ask about its new integration. Head over to net health.com forward slash li tz y to sign up for your complimentary marketing Audit? 20:01 Well, we know as, as we you, you started talking about in the beginning of the show is the student debt ratio that pte students are coming out with post graduation. We've seen that time and time again, in our state of rehab therapy industry report, as we surveyed, you know, 1000s, of therapist to understand their biggest woes, as they are navigating through this profession. And, you know, I, there's a huge segment of of the folks that answered that survey that have more than $150,000 of debt post graduation. And that was a 5% increase over what we found those numbers to be in 2018. So just in a few years, that number has grown significantly. And so that's to me, it's just not sustainable. When you compare what the compensation is, for an average, you know, new grad, being somewhere between depending on the type of PT services that you're delivering anywhere from 60 to 90 grand. That's just not commensurate to be able to be able to live and then pay off that debt, which you know, $150,000 in PT school usually means on top of another 100 grand at minimum that you you've accumulated through undergrad. So we're talking a huge, tremendous amount of debt. And so what I know is also happening is looking at shortening the timeframe in which it takes to get a doctorate degree, there are universities and colleges like South College, that are changing the way we think they're trying to change the way we think about PT school, where it doesn't have to be 100% in person that, you know, a large portion of the time spent can be done online. So that cuts down significant amount of debt in terms of having to pay for housing and other things. And it just becomes more accessible to more people, and decreases the cost of the overall educational process. So I really think that the cost of education, rethinking how we do the curriculum, of what truly is necessary to be in person are things that that really need to be looked 22:40 Yeah, and when we talk about that sheer amount of, of debt, when I speak about that to other people, I always preface like, you know, like you said, Pts are coming out of school 50 to $90,000. It's not like we work at Goldman Sachs, where in two years you get like $500,000 Bonus, do you know what I mean? And and why law paid off? Right? So it's a little bit different PTS are not usually getting a $500,000 bonus. May I don't want to, I don't want to get yelled at by people on the internet. But I'm pretty sure that doesn't happen often. 23:21 No, I don't think that happens very often. As a matter of fact, I think, you know, especially in the times that we're in right now, you know, the the 5%. Five to maybe 10% increase year over year is probably what's on average. So, you know, it's gonna take you a while, especially if you're you're starting out as a new grad in that maybe 60 to 70 range to even get to the, you know, the six digit. Right. And so, yeah, it takes a lot to try to balance the price of education to what we actually are getting paid as, as clinicians. 24:05 Yeah. And and if there's a really great book, Heidi, I don't know if you've ever heard of heard of this book, but it's called Higher Education question mark. And it's by Andrew hacker and Claudia Dreyfus. And they talk about the cost of higher education. And what are some of the extraneous things happening on college campuses that aren't going directly to the education of the students, but yet is being reflected in the price of admission. So if people want to learn more about that, I would highly suggest reading that book. 24:40 Yeah, absolutely. There's a lot of debate happening right now around higher education and the need for it. You know, I know even within our own profession, there's a lot of question marks around the DPT on whether it was worth it or not. But at the end of the day, we are here we are At level professionals, but we do need to figure out if we are going to continue to grow and have an attract the top talent that we want to continue to have our profession, you know, be recognized as adding, you know, tremendous value to the overall healthcare system. We definitely want to, you know, remain viable and relook and relook at how perhaps we're doing some of the things because I just don't think that the way the path that we're on today is truly sustainable. 25:38 Yeah, I agree with that. And now, let's say you're a student out there, or you're going into residency, how can they get more information to apply for upcoming scholarships? And is there are there any scholarship applications that are due soon? 25:55 Yes, I mentioned we have the crest scholars, but we also have the search Scholarship Program, which is for residency programs. And that current application process is open right now. And so it will be closing on January 14. So if you are a current resident residency program participant, and would like to apply for the surge scholarship, and you are a person of color, you can apply at res rising dash tie.com. If you go to search scholarship on there and just hit the Apply button, it will take you right to the page in which you can fill out all of the information, upload any documentation that we're requiring. And then we will definitely take a look at the application and put you into the process. 26:55 Yeah, so that means if you're listening to that, listening to this podcast today, on the 10th, you have until the end of this week, so get on it if you want money to help you get through your residency, so you've got like you've got five days, so get on it. 27:14 And this is an annual annual renewal process. So we will launch a new cohort every year. So if you miss out this year, but you're going through your residency programs, this year, you will get another chance at the end of this year to apply for the scholarship. And definitely any students out there who might be listening or interested in the field of PT, and you are going to be a new grad in this upcoming year of 2022. Or I'm sorry, a new student to PT school this year. And please, please, please think about offsetting some of that student debt through a scholarship program like rising tide. 27:55 Excellent. And now what's new with the foundation? What do you have coming up aside from these amazing scholarship opportunities, 28:03 while being part of rising tide means you're part of our community. And so one of the really awesome things that we are going to we are doing with our cohort is getting them together annually for sort of rising tide retreat in which we're going to have thought leaders from the industry come together to help be mentors to these students. Each cohort will be building on itself. So as we have this first group of 2021 Slash 2022 go through this year, they will then come back and be be mentors to our next cohort of students that will be coming through so part of the sort of surge and crafts together where you've got, you know, physical therapists going through residency programs will help to be mentors to these up and coming students. And so creating this community of connection, and education is really what we're planning through 2022. 29:15 I see what you did there. I like it, I like it. And now let's say you're a physical therapist like me, and you're like, wow, I am loving this rising tide. How can I can I donate to this? Can I be a part of this? What can I do? 29:32 Yeah, that's a great question. Karen and I, since launching this this past year in 2021, I just been so honored by the amount of outpouring of support that people have wanted to give to this program, including financial. I mentioned that it was self funded. And you know, We've had many, many years of scholarships that are going to be awarded. But with this outpouring of support of people who wanted to donate financially, I, I went ahead and change the 501 C three status to allow me to have donations. And so in March of 2022, we will be opening up the rising tide foundation to people who want to donate. And my hope is to actually double the number of scholarships that we're going to be able to award in 2022, that we we were able to do in 2021. And so if we can continue to do that every year, so that would mean we would award 10 scholarships in 2022, rather than five for at least the cross scholarship and then four of the search scholars, I think that would be absolutely amazing. And as you can imagine, if we did that year over year, we would be funding almost every PT student in let's say, 20 years. 31:05 Exactly. Hey, that's that big blue sky dream, right? The be hag? Yes, yes, the big big dream. And and, and it's a great dream to help future physical therapists not be saddled with the amount of student debt that a lot of students over the past couple of years have, unfortunately, had to deal with. So I think it's a wonderful foundation. And I applaud you for taking the initiative to putting this out into the world. And again, where can people find Oh, you said it a couple times, and we will have a link to it in the show notes. But where can people find more about the scholarship and about rising tide? 31:49 Yep, it's www dot rising with a Z r i v i n g dash tide.com. And I'm sure many of you have heard the saying rising, a rising tide raises all boats. And that's really where it came from. It's something that has that thing has really meant a lot to me, in how I perform as a leader, and what I sort of prescribed to as sort of my own personal culture of wanting to help people. And so that's where sort of the name sort of stems from. But yeah, go to rising tide.com. And you can learn all about our foundation and scholarship program, you can sign up for our blog subscription, we have a monthly vlogs, coming out about all kinds of things that has to do with how students can improve sort of how they think about becoming a physical therapist, too, just thought provoking ideas as we go about wanting to sort of change the face of the PC profession. 33:05 Perfect. And I'll also add that you're also on Instagram, and on Twitter. So if you go to the website, you can go down to the bottom and click on the little icons, and you can follow rising tide on Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn as well. That's right. Yeah, perfect. All right. Well, Heidi, as we start to wrap things up, I know, I asked you this before, so you're gonna have to think of something new. What's another piece of advice you would give to your younger self? 33:41 Well, I would just say be open minded to a path that you may not have thought that you might go down, go down. I will just say that, you know, starting a nonprofit, and a scholarship program was really not on on my radar. And as things have unfolded, just like starting in that entrepreneurial mindset, like it works in your professional life, as I'm sorry, it works in your personal life, as well as your professional life in terms of finding problems that need to be solved and figuring out a way to do that. And so stay staying really open minded to things that come your way that may not be necessarily what you think, or had planned to do. To find ways to just try to try new things and be open minded to those options and they can take you down path of trim adding tremendous value and to others but also just in, in in to yourself as well. 34:58 Yeah, excellent advice. keep your mind open. And if something aligns with with your vision and values, then go for it. Great advice. Heidi, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast today talking about rising tide. And again, if you're going to mention this one more time, if you're going into your residency program, check out rising tide, check out the website. We mentioned it several times, also in the show notes at podcast at healthy, wealthy, smart, calm and apply, because you've got a couple of days if you're listening to this on the 10th of January 2022. You've got until the 14th to apply for the surge scholarship. Is that That's right, right. 35:44 That's right. Okay. Well, you got until the 14th until the midnight of the 14th and mentioned that you heard it on rising tide or on the healthy wealthy podcast. And we'll just move you to the top of the stack. 35:56 Yes. So So do it. People get on it be a part of the rising tide. Heidi, thank you so much for coming on. 36:04 Karen, it's always a pleasure. Thank you so much. Yeah, 36:06 of course. And everyone. Thanks so much for listening, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart. And a big thank you to Dr. Heidi Jenga for coming on the podcast to discuss the rising tide foundation and of course, thank you to Net Health. So again, they have a new offer if you sign up and complete a marketing audit to learn how digital marketing solutions can help your clinic when they will buy lunch for your office. Head over to net health.com forward slash li te zy to sign up for your complimentary marketing audit to get your clinics online visibility, reputation and referrals increasing in 2022 36:45 Thank you for listening and please subscribe to the podcast at podcast dot healthy wealthy smart.com And don't forget to follow us on social media

In this episode physical therapist and podcast cohost, Dr. Jenna Kantor talks about the highs, the lows, and everything in-between from the past year. We talk about: The effects of Covid-19 on life and the practice of physical therapy Online bullying in the physical therapy world Realizing the importance of friendship The mental shifts we experienced over the past year What we are looking forward to in 2022 And much more! More about Dr. Jenna Kantor: Jenna Kantor, PT, DPT, is a bubbly and energetic woman who was born and raised in Petaluma, California. She trained intensively at Petaluma City Ballet, Houston Ballet, BalletMet, Central Pennsylvania Youth Ballet, Regional Dance America Choreography Conference, and Regional Dance America. Over time, the injuries added up and she knew she would not have a lasting career in ballet. This lead her to the University of California, Irvine, where she discovered a passion for musical theatre. Upon graduating, Jenna Kantor worked professionally in musical theatre for 15+ years then found herself ready to move onto a new chapter in her life. Jenna was teaching ballet to kids ages 4 through 17 and group fitness classes to adults. Through teaching, she discovered she had a deep interest in the human body and a desire to help others on a higher level. She was fortunate to get accepted into the DPT program at Columbia. During her education, she co-founded Fairytale Physical Therapy which brings musical theatre shows to children in hospitals, started a podcast titled Physiotherapy Performance Perspectives, was the NYPTA SSIG Advocacy Chair, was part of the NYC Conclave 2017 committee, and co-founded the NYPTA SSIG. In 2017, Jenna was the NYPTA Public Policy Student Liaison, a candidate for the APTASA Communications Chair, won the APTA PPS Business Concept Contest, and made the top 40 List for an Up and Coming Physical Therapy with UpDoc Media. ​Jenna Kantor currently holds the position of the NYPTA Social Media Committee, APTA PPS Key Contact, and NYPTA Legislative Task Force. She provides complimentary, regularly online content that advocates for the physical therapy profession. Jenna runs her own private practice, Jenna Kantor Physical Therapy, PLLC, and an online course for performing artists called Powerful Performer that will launch late 2019. To learn more, follow Jenna at: Website: https://www.jennakantorpt.com/ Facebook Instagram Twitter Fairytale Physical Therapy Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here 00:00 Hey. Hey, Jenna, welcome back to the podcast for our annual year and Roundup, if you will. And I want to thank you for being a great addition to the podcast and for pumping out really amazing podcast episodes, you're great hosts, the energy is fantastic. And the podcast episodes are always great. So I want to thank you for that. 00:27 Oh, my God, you're so sweet. I like I was definitely not as much of a podcaster this year, I acknowledge that. But hey, listen, we've all been adjusting this year to pandemic and now pandemics still happening, but also recovery. And I'm just grateful to still be a part of this podcast in any manner to be in this interview right now. Because I really, you and I are very much on the same page regarding remaining evidence based and speaking to people that we respect in this industry, and also people that we want to see just rise and have great success. So I'm just grateful to be honestly, I am humbled to still be in the room here with you. 01:11 Thank you. That's so nice. So kind. Now, let's talk about this past year. So 2021, obviously dominated by the ups and downs of COVID, which is still going on as we speak. We're we're both in the northeast, so we're experiencing an incredibly high surge at the moment. So COVID is obviously a big story. And I think part of the COVID journey that isn't being talked about as much. But I think general public, certainly the mainstream media, are people now living with long COVID. It is just something that seems to be skimmed over. And we know that at least at least the bare minimum is 10% of people diagnosed with COVID will go on to have symptoms of long COVID. And instead of some of the studies that I have read recently, those percentages are much, much higher. So what I guess, what is your take on all of that? And what do you think we as physical therapists can do to keep this in the in the forefront of people's minds. 02:23 We discussed this before, but I think there's going to be bias within this. So I want to acknowledge that we all have our biases. That being said, I think we need to first acknowledge there was a phase where there was a part of the world that did not think COVID was real. So based on the research that is out there, and personal experience of a lot of people getting it, as well as personal friends very close personal friends working in hospitals in New York, specifically COVID is real. So I want to say that first. I'm not going to differ from that I really wish there I'm I think we're past that in the world. I think there was never a clear cut of like, Oh, I got it, I see that it's real. I was wrong. I would have liked that moment, because that hurt people in the process. But I just want to say that first. So COVID is real. Okay. Now, let's not belittle it. And I think in regards to the patient care. I think this, the reality of long COVID needs to be just as respected. Just like when you have a patient that comes in the door and says they're in pain, and you don't believe them. We need to stop that. So we need to believe them and their symptoms, and what they have and what it's from and treat it accordingly. Because if we go in the door to help out these individuals who are struggling with this, they're not going to get better. What are your thoughts? 03:59 No, I agree. I agree. And I've heard from people living with long COVID that people don't believe them even their own family members, people in who work in medicine, they don't believe them. So I think that's a huge takeaway that if as clinicians we can do one thing sit down Listen, believe because the symptoms that they're having are real. We did a couple of episodes on long COVID thing was back in August and spoke with three amazing therapists and they're all involved with long COVID physios so if anyone out there wants more information on living with long COVID I would definitely steer you to long COVID physio on Twitter and and their website as well. Because they're a wealth of knowledge. These are people living with long COVID their allies, they are researchers and I think they're putting out some amazing information that can help not just you as the clinician, but if you know someone that maybe you're not doing directly treating maybe it's a family member living with long COVID I think the more information you have, the more power you can kind of take back to yourself. 05:10 I love that. I love that. It's the biopsychosocial model. I mean to that I from working because I work specifically more with performers, the psychosocial component, my my patients, my people I call my people, my people would not be getting the results they're getting if I didn't have to deal with that, with them standing by their side, holding their hands helping them through and out of their pain. There's symptoms every day and this that goes for anything. 05:41 Yeah. And and we now know, speaking of performers that a lot of Broadway shows are being sort of cancelled, and then restarted and canceled and restarted because of COVID outbreaks within the cast. So this may be something people might think, Oh, I work with performers. I don't have to worry about long COVID Well, maybe you do. 06:01 Yeah. Yeah. And for them, it's the, from the performance that I'm in contact with on Broadway that, you know, it's I'm, I'm, I'm very connected. I've been in the musical theater industry for a very long time. So for the people who are on Broadway, the individuals I spoken to, they're doing okay, which I'm really, really grateful for. It is a requirement for the performers to be triple vaccinated, and now they're getting triple vaccinated. I know one performer on Broadway, who was about to get her booster shot, and then ended up getting COVID, which was quite unfortunate. She's doing okay, though. Grateful, no signs of long COVID Right now, but for the performers, you're talking about dance, there's endurance and breathing that is necessary. If the singers even if they're, they're not dancing, they still dance, they're still asked to do things, they still have out of breath, emotional moments, were breathing is challenged. So I'm just bringing up one component with long COVID. But that's, that's a big standout for performers specifically, that need, it needs to be kept out for them. I remember one time during, oh, goodness, during 2020. And it was the latter portion of the year. And I was doing virtual readings with performers. That's how I was staying connected with my my friends and people in the industry. And it was our way of being creative. In the meantime, while we're waiting for things to open back up. And one individual is she what I just cast her to read as the lead in the show, and she was so good. It was my first time hearing her perform first time meeting her. She was Outstanding, outstanding. And at the end of it, we were going around checking in with each other how we were doing and she started to cry and opened up about losses and her family due to COVID. And that she didn't think she would be able to sing like that again, because she had been dealing with her breathing problems for so long. And so then we all get emotional with her. I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. So yeah, it's it's a it's a real thing. We didn't have the vaccination then. So I'm interested to see statistically where we are at with long COVID with having the antibodies in our systems. Obviously, everybody is different, but I'm hoping that there's less of it because of the vaccine. 08:25 Yeah, time will tell right? Yeah, we have we need those data points. So aside from obviously COVID being, I think the biggest story of the year, certainly within healthcare and even within our field of physical therapy. What else have you seen over 2021? Or maybe it was in an interview you did or a paper you read that really stuck out for you as as a big part of the year you know, it made it's made it it made its mark for you. 08:58 Oh, I'm going to focus just on the PT community. And I want to emphasize with community I see our community at really, we've always butted heads there's always things that we butted heads on. But I'll just give the instance that really made me go whoa, I was in a room with a bunch of intelligent wonderful human beings and discussing something I said a term that I thought was really common especially because in the musical theatre industry. We are fighting for dei diversity, equity inclusion all the time. Like if this is a topic of conversation all the time. It is a huge thing in regards to casting what is visually out there the most at like the highest level and, and bipoc the phrase bipoc was unrecognized by a good portion of physical therapists in this room and I was disappointed Did I was it said so much it doesn't. It's not saying that a person is evil for not knowing no. And that is not my point. But it is a problem that it's not being discussed to the level where these common extremely common thing phrases are not just known. That just says a lot to me, because it's in regards to people getting in the door access and being reached, in lesser, lesser affluent areas, that to me, it shows that it's not being discussed, it's not being addressed. If it was, then bipoc would be, and this is just one instance. But I thought that was very eye opening. Because it's just like saying, I'm going to eat today, someone saying, I'm not going what you're not eating, I don't know. And that was a bad example. But just something that is or you wake up you breathe, that is how known the phrase bipoc. Same thing with LGBTQIA. Plus, in my community, like, for me to go into another room and for things to need to be defined. I know we all have different worlds. But I think as physical therapists, there, there's a disconnect, unfortunately, depending on wherever we are from, and we need to fix that. Because I can't live everywhere. I can't treat everyone in the world, I can't treat all the performers in the world, I don't want to I like having my niche practice and treating select individuals, and boom, my people do very well. And if it gets to a point that it starts to grow, I'm going to be passing them along because I don't want I don't want that I don't want it to be huge like that. And with that in mind, I need more people who know and therefore are our allies. To me, it's a lack of ally ship, of just not knowing the basic language. And I and I apologize to anyone who's listening on my intention is not to sound like a white savior at all. It's not. But with my limited knowledge at this point, I'm already seeing something that is really, really lacking amongst each other and we need to fix it. I don't know if it's books or I don't know, I don't I don't know the answer to that. But I'm just addressing that was that was the biggest standout thing for me this year. 12:27 And it for those of you who maybe are not familiar with the American Physical Therapy Association, they have what's called House of Delegates. So they had a meeting in September of this year during the APTA centennial celebration. And in that they did pass a resolution that the APTA would be an anti racist organization. Now, were you in the room when that passed? Jenna? 12:54 No, I was not in the room, I was actually there at the House of Delegates a bit discouraged this year, I know. i The fact that they were able to figure out any manner to put it on is is a feat to be had after 2020 20. However, the in person when you go and if you are not a delegate, which I was not this year, you can usually sit in the room, and just be in the back and listen, because the because of the space that they got in the way it was set up, there were chairs in the back of the room, but there weren't that many and it filled up. So they already preemptively set up another room where you could watch what was happening on a TV, which did not sit well with me. Because I could have stayed home instead of flying in for that. So I was definitely not in the room. I definitely was less present this year. Because of that I was I was bitter, I was bitter. I was bitter. I felt like I I already know you it's through elected and know who you know, to become a delegate, but I really felt disrespected and unimportant. Being in a separate room, watching from a TV rather than actually getting to be in the room because there are ways that they hold the meeting where you can stand up to say a point of order to speak on some points from the from the back of the room. And I just wasn't even going to wait to see how they figured that out. I just felt like not a not an important voice. So I wasn't present for that. But I do know about that. I think it's wonderful to get that on the docket. But the same thing when we voted in dei unanimously. How? 14:41 What comes next? You mean? Yeah, well, yeah. 14:45 What is the game plan? Because for me, I can say a sentence like that. But then what are the actual actions and that's where it's like, is that going to happen? Two years down the road three years. What are we at what are we actually doing? What are the measuring points and take action? and not meetings on it, not being hesitant on making mistakes. Let's make mistakes. Let's just go for it. That's the only way we're gonna learn. There's no such thing as a graceful change, no matter how hard you try, 15:11 right? Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think like you said, what comes next is? Well, I guess we'll have to wait and see what are the action steps they're going to take in order to create that and, and live up to the, the words of being an anti racist organization? Because it was passed overwhelmingly. 15:32 Right? And then I'm sure they applauded for it, you know, like, this is great. But to me, I think it's, I it's just like, okay, you know, like, what, but now what? Because from DJI and the I heard that they're trying in the battle in this behind the scenes, trying to move forward, but I have not seen action there. And maybe I'm missing something, you know, feel free to call me out Call me whatever. Like, I'm, I would love to be wrong. 16:07 Yeah, these big organizations are slow ships to steer. That's not any excuse whatsoever. But I understand there's a lot of layers that one has to go through to make things happen. As you know, you've been volunteering for the APTA for a long time. So you understand that, but I think a lot of people who don't don't, so that's why I just wanted to kind of bring that up and saying, like, yeah, it takes it takes a long effing time to get stuff done, you know? 16:33 Yeah. And I mean, you can hear it, I'm frustrated by I'm not, I'm not happy about it. And but it's, it's because of my friends, the conversations I have, and I, I'm, I'm lucky, I'm a sis white, stereotypical female. So like, the way the world has been made, and the way it caters to humans. It fits me, but it doesn't fit everyone and I'd like I can't imagine what it would be like to just be left out of a lot of things in everyday life. I think that's horrible. 17:05 Yeah, agreed. What else? What else do you think was a big something that you saw within the profession? Or even trends in health and fitness that might have really changed over this past year? For better or for worse? I can think of one I think and this is just my opinion that the the communication via social media has gotten a little too aggressive. Is that a nice way of saying it? Like I don't understand it, I don't get it. I took like a little break because I was Oh, can't say I was bullied because I feel like bullying. It's that sort of like you know someone is having like a sustained go at you. So I don't know 18:01 it's bullying is bullying. Yeah, bullying is bullying. That's the thing is that we have a lot of bullying that happens but then they gaslight you about their bullying. It's like Whoa, it's next. It's almost like a strategy. Like they're playing a game of Monopoly, and they have down how to win. Like, yeah, people barely there is a lot of bullying. 18:20 Yeah, a lot of bullying. A lot of threatening, like, I get like threatening DMS or people threatening me, you know, on their Instagram stories or whatever. For I can't imagine I look back at that interactions. And I'm like, I don't get it. 18:38 Yeah, I don't get it. Yeah. 18:41 So I and my first reaction was to like, when people will do this and be so aggressive as to send like a Taylor Swift GIF. Of her song, you need to calm down. And then I have to take a step back and be like, that's not gonna help the situation any. Right, right. Right. Don't do it. I just sort of back off. But I think because of that, bullying or threatening behavior, I've 19:05 really like I'll say it bullying continue. I've, 19:09 I've just like, for the past couple of months, I've really taken a backseat to any kind of social media just to like, give myself like a mental health break, you know, like meeting I don't comment on things. I might post some things here and there, but I don't really make any comments, unless it's to. And that's mainly and I'm going to say this because from what I can tell it's true, is it happens to be men in the profession who are a little more aggressive than the women, like women can seem to have a bit of a nicer conversation around whether it's a question or, you know, something, but when a lot of the men it's just become so like ego driven, that there's no resolution, and it's just mean. Mm hmm. And so I was like I need to take a break. So I saw a lot more of that this year. I don't know if it's because of lockdowns and because of a heightened sense of what's the word? Stress to begin with? And then yeah, or something else on top of it? I don't know. But I, I saw that this year, definitely for the worse, because I just think, gosh, if people outside the profession are looking in and watching these exchanges, what are they thinking? 20:28 Yeah, yeah, I've definitely seen it in sis males specifically. 20:33 Yeah, yeah. 20:34 I'm not it honestly. doesn't it's not a specific color of skin. But specifically sis males. 20:43 Yeah, I would I would agree with that. Yeah. 20:46 I have. I have experienced a little not not to the level, but I've definitely experienced that. And it's for 2021. And it's not okay. No, it's not okay. However, I ever look at it as a blessing. And this is where I get I love looking at it like this. Yes, please, please, thank you. Thank you for identifying that you have no space in my room, my shelf my space at all. I will not take advice from you in the future. And I will not heed any, any value to what you have to say, because of your willingness to chop me down. Thank you for identifying yourself. I'm now in the debate of blocking you from my mental health. And that's it. And that includes in person. That's it. That's it. And I really don't look as blocking as like, wow, for me, I'm going like, No, I don't want to know you. I don't want to know you. And my life is so much better because of it when I was at the PPS conference, because of just going No to the to the people I don't want to know and just saying like, just straight up like I like I don't need you, I don't need you. I want to be a service to people who need physical therapy period. So people are going to just, you know, find ways of you know, and spend their time writing some angry thing. Have that that's on them that's on them. Like I'm like, like, and if it and honestly I will likely block you. 22:18 I love that I love like you're you're it's not just that you're blocking the person. You're blocking the energy blocking the energy they're bringing into you and draining you down. So then you're not at your best well, or with your friends or loved ones patients, even with yourself. Yeah, you know, if you have to ruminate on these people. I love that. Yeah, it's not it's not just blocking you from social media, it's blocking the energy that you the the bad vibes, if you will, that you're Brown. And that affects you that affects your mental health that affects you emotionally. And it can carry through to a lot of other parts of your life and who needs that? Yeah, 22:59 and, and for anybody who's trying to saying like, I can a bully did it or like it. Okay, let's, let's look at it this way, when you're messaging an individual something, first of all, we all know this. When you write in text, everybody's going to interpret it with different tone. So as soon as you write in text, we all know this, and we're taking advantage of that fact. So that way, you can later go, oh, I said it in a nice tone, Bs when you're typing it, it can be in whatever freakin tone and you know what you're doing. Also, when you're not talking to a person, the only time you show up is to say something negative. Yeah, that's you're not your voice is not important. And you know, your voice isn't important. 23:39 It's so true. What I've actually seen is a lot of these, these kinds of people, they're not getting the attention they used to get. Mm hmm. Do you know cuz I think more people are of the mindset of like, I don't need this anymore. Like this was maybe this was funny. Maybe this was cute a couple years ago. Ah, not anymore. 24:01 And also I love I don't like having down moments, but we all have our down moments in our career and in our life. But I what I do love about the down moments in the career in life, the people who are around at that time, those are your friends, those are the people you want to know. So I love my moments in the PT world. When I'm in a down moment because the people who want to talk to me then those are the people I want to know. Whereas when I'm you know, can candidate for the private practice section, you know, which is awesome. And then people want to actually talk to me then. Oh, wait, I'm gonna wait and see when you know, I'm not that. Am I still someone you want to speak to? That is those are the people I want to invest time in. Those are the people I want to invest time in. I want to see you you do well and vice versa. I want to be able to get to know you as a human more and more and more. I just want the children Relationships, it doesn't mean I'm going to have time or you know, we're gonna have time to talk every day. But I want those true relationships. So for me, those downtimes, when I might not look the most graceful, I might be messing up or maybe not messing up. Maybe I'm actually making a change here speaking on something or getting people to think differently ever thought of that, you know? Awesome. Like, are you gonna be here to chop me down? Or just be here to have a conversation and having a conversation? Set up a phone call? If you really care? Like if you really could you don't? People don't care that Oh, reaching out, they don't care about you cannot be when they're reaching out to give feedback. Let's have a comfort. No, they just want to get into an attack mode. No, we No, no, don't try to decorate it. We know that's what's happening. And yeah, that were to town. There's enough going on. 25:52 Yeah, there's enough going on. And you know, this conversation really made me reflect on the past year, and I think what's been a good thing has been the deepening of good relationships. So like, nobody has time for that other, like bad stuff anymore. Like there's enough bad stuff happening. I don't have time for that. But what you do have time for is the relationships that are two sided, you know, a nice bilateral relationship that you're willing to invest in, and allow that relationship to come deeper and grow. And I feel like, you know, and like, you don't have to be friends with 1000 people, you know, you can be friends with a handful you can be friends with one person. And if that person, it's it's real and deep and meaningful, then isn't that wonderful? And I think years ago, I used to think, oh, the more 26:46 people you know, the better. Me too. Me too. 26:49 And now I think because of the upheaval of the last couple of years now, I'm really finding like, you know, I need like couple of good people that I can count on to have my back to, like you said, lift you up when you need to, and maybe to like, give you the honest truth when you need it as well. Right? Exactly. So I've been really, really happy that over the past year, I've made some really nice deeper connections with people than the physical therapy World Sports Medicine world. And I'm really, really happy about that. So I think that's been a real positive for me, 27:26 I totally agree with you, I mean, that our relationship is naturally growing over time, which I appreciate and, and I really do I completely on the same page completely on the same page. And and for me, when I go to conferences, like I'm really isolating more and more, who are the two are the people that like I must spend time with? And and then if other people want to join sure, you know, absolutely. But I I'm not overwhelming myself, oh, I need to be friends with that. No, I don't need to. And you know what, like, that became very apparent when I seen people speak, even at PPS, where the goodness, they were showing slideshows with their friends, and it was like, literally all people who are elected in the higher positions are all best friends with each other. It is it's true, you can't deny it. If you're up there. If you're one of those people. It's true. And you know what, I look at it like this, my friends may go up there to that, mate. That's not why I'm friends with you, though, you know, in friendship through because I like you as a person. So I'm gonna let that lay and not even explain and go into more depth and let people interpret that how they want and the right people will stay in 28:44 my life. Exactly. So what are they? What are they? Let's, let's sort of wrap this up on a positive note. What are their positive things came to you this year, whether it be professionally, personally, 28:59 oh, I think being more comfortable in my skin at conferences. So I had the I mean, absolute honor. Like I was really overwhelmed with happiness at the private practice conference this year. It was just so cool to be nominated. And I felt so much more comfortable in my own skin going up there. I you know, there there are a couple naysayers not realizing there'll be naysayers that, you know that I had to deal with but going up and it was a small moment. But we had you have this rehearsal. I don't know if it's done the same way. For the nominees where they go, you practice when your name is called going behind the podium and then walking down the stairs so you know what to do when you're asked to go out there and give your speech. And I went out there and I did a great vine to my spot. And I mean, I was so happy I did that because I was feeling it and that's what I would do. I did a great fine. And I know that silly, nobody else paid attention to me honestly probably knew that I was doing it. And some were probably like, Oh, but I didn't care. I was like I am on this freakin stage right now, this is the coolest thing. And to be at that place of like more self acceptance, because I know I don't have the stereotypical personality and energy, you know, that that is normally accepted amongst the vast community. So to be more me in that moment, I felt very proud. I felt very proud of myself. And that was really cool. I'm really, really happy about that. And then I like Dan, you know, sat down and ate some more bacon, it was great. 30:46 Well, and you know, being comfortable in your own skin that then comes across to the people who are in front of you. So when the speech actually came about, I'm sure people picked up on that picked up on the fact that you're now more comfortable in your skin that you're more comfortable, perhaps as a physical therapist, and because you found you're not that you've, you've already had this niche, but you sort of found your niche. You know, what, you what you're in the physical therapy world to do. Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. 31:19 Absolutely. Absolutely. And I got a little bit picked on for being too perfect with my speech and everything. And I was like, I you know, in reflection on that, I was like, they just haven't fully accepted my energy. That's okay. Don't get there. Okay. That's it. Don't get there. I'm like, I'm a performer. So it's gonna happen. You know, do you want to join a British company dialect? That's, 31:47 that's a weird comment. That's a weird criticism. Yeah, but yeah, you know, 31:53 but I felt I felt I felt like I had to reflect to go No, I actually felt really good, because I've definitely put it on before. No, I practiced it to be to deliver it. Me as me. And now it's so fun. So fun. Oh, my God. Yeah, I was just that that was a big, positive. Awesome, awesome feeling. I work with so many people who are in the PT industry, who want to be dance physical therapist or physical therapist assistants and imposter syndrome is super real. And so I like that I'm practicing what I preach and self love. And and it's awesome. How are you doing all that this year? 32:36 I'm better. I mean, imposter syndrome, I think, for me is always there, like always kind of underlying the surface, if you will. But I think that's pretty normal. You know, the more and more I listen, or I read about, like, these famous people who are up on stages and in movies, and you know, people who think oh, they have no, they must be like, amazing. And no, they it's the same thing. So I think for me, accepting that it's normal has actually helped decrease it a little bit. Instead of feeling like, oh, boy, everyone else here is like, amazing. And I'm like the loser trying to keep up. And then I think, no, that's pretty normal, because I think everyone else feels that way as well. Yes. And then once once I was able to accept that it makes going up on stage, like, I don't get as nervous as I used to, and it's been. It's been much, much better for me even speaking. Like I was joking, I could say I now I shared the stage with FLOTUS, because at the future physical therapy summit, I spoke for literally a minute and 45 seconds as a spokesperson for the brand Waterpik. So Waterpik has these wonderful showerheads. And they sponsored the future physical therapy Summit in Washington, DC back in September. And so the sponsors got to go up and say a little something. So you have literally less than two minutes, and I had to get all their talking points in. But I also like, decided to make it funny. So I was just saying things off the cuff. And afterwards, everyone's like, that was a great bit. I love that bit about your parents. I'm like, I didn't think of it as a bit. But okay. But then the good news was afterwards, people came up to the table, the Waterpik table, you know, in the, in the hall area, and like the one guy was like, I wasn't gonna come up, but then after that talk, I had to come up and see what you guys are all about. I needed to find out what you were doing and hey, can you do this? And so, for me, I felt as nervous as I was to go up and speak be mainly because it wasn't about me, it was about Waterpik. So I wanted to do them proud, you know, and afterwards, they got so much great feedback and possible partnerships selling through clinics with 700 locations? And can we do a study with Waterpik? On wound care? Can we do a study with Waterpik on people living with CRPS and using these, like, and that's exactly what they were looking for. So that made me feel like much better and gave me a little bit more confidence. And it was also fun to be able to do such things kind of off the cuff. You know, 35:25 that's so cool. Yeah, I love that. You should definitely be proud. That's so cool. 35:29 So that was really fun. And then the next speaker, it was it. The next speaker a two speakers after me was the First Lady of the United States Dr. Joe Biden. So yeah, there you go. No big deal. No big deal. Yeah. FLOTUS. So that was really fun. And was that yeah, for me, I think that was a big highlight of of the year for me, I guess professionally, which was really cool. is cool. That is so cool. It was it was cool. Anything else that for you? Did we miss anything that you wanted to get in? 36:02 Yes. For the Yes, yes. Yes. Okay. I now live in Pittsburgh and and was visiting New York had a great time. I got to see Karen at one of my favorite salad places, although I didn't get my normal favorite salad, which now I'm in regret until I go back again, to get my favorite salad from Sweet greens. It's the kale salad. It's so good. Caesar kale salad. I highly recommend it if you're going and you want to save some money because I love to be cheap in New York. Okay. said that. Now I'm not sponsored by sweet green. I just love sweet green. Okay, 36:31 I know we're dropping. We're dropping a lot of like, 36:33 I know. Like suede. And also get Levine's cookies. Okay, yeah. When you go, I never have gone to the tourist areas. I avoid it. But I spent a lot of time in Times Square because I was going to see Broadway shows. And it's also one of the few Disney Stores that still is open. So I had to go in there. I got a wreath I didn't need but I needed you know, and Okay. Rockefeller Center. So I go there to meet Stephanie. Why rock as you and I didn't have enough time with your Stephanie. But while we were waiting, there's a whole show of lights. A GG know that you knew this that like it's with music and everything like Disney. I had no idea. What's the store that darkness said yes Avenue, Saks Fifth Avenue. And it's like castle and lighting. It was I was just joking. If you don't know, I love Disney. I love Disney so much. And this was a Disney experience. And I just we weren't waiting in the cold. I'm like, all bitter. You know, I just I'm not happy in the cold. So I'm like, and then the light show on Japan? 37:45 Yeah, it's spectacular. It was 37:47 so great. I had no idea and it goes up like every few minutes. It's quite regular. So if you like oh, we miss it. You're fine. Just wait a few minutes. It'll start again. i Oh, go see it. Go see it. Don't stand in Time Square for New Year's. But go see that that was such a wonderful, positive, beautiful moment. And, and just great. It was great. Also, there are a lot of great photographers in New York. So if you're visiting New York, and you want to get stuff for social media, that is the spot to get it. There are so many talented photographers you can get reasonable prices and and build your social media real fast. All right, that's it. 38:26 Perfect. Well, before we wrap up the year, where can people find you if they want more information about you in any of your programs? And also let us know what you have coming up in 2022? 38:38 Okay, well, most immediately, you're going to find me at Disney Land in February this year in 2022. Because I'm going to be there my birthday. If you go there on the 16th of February. Just let me know. And we'll like meet up with you. But no, I'm going to be eating junk food all day. So if you're expecting me to be held a healthy influence, I will not be alright. For me, I'm going to be continuing with my private practice, working with performers and continuing with helping people live their lives as dance PTS helping you on the business and treatment side with my dance PT program. But most importantly, because I'm always like I'm a performer and physical therapist. I'm doing all this work right now. I am getting back into performing which I'm really happy about so I'll be submitting a lot more which I'm just super stoked. I feel like all my work stuff is is being is much more easier to handle now I've got it down. And the systems are in place if you will get to audition more than I'll be a movie star just like that because it's so easy. It'll be great, but I'm really excited about that. What about you Karen? 39:55 Oh, that's exciting. Gosh, I'm not gonna be a movie star. Anything So what do I have coming up? Let's see, um, this past year I finished the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program, highly recommend anyone to apply to because it's really amazing. How many more plugs can we drop in this episode? And so I'm going to this year, I'm looking to hire another PT for my practice, right? Mm hmm. Which is very fun. Exactly, it grows, but 40:31 you're like, I'm not going to take all the patients. It's gross, 40:34 but time to bring on someone else. Right. And then continuing to work with just a couple of people. With business coaching, I like take four people at a time for me that I get it handle, it's good enough for me, I'm happy to do it. So that will open back up again. Maybe end of January of 2022. Because like you said, when you know what you can handle and you know that you can help the people who want to be helped, then it becomes so much easier. So now I feel like I've got this under control. I know how to split up my time and manage my time. And so I'm really looking forward to that in 2022 and we'll see what happens. 41:24 I love that. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, are so cool. I love what you do. 41:30 Where can people find you? Oh, 41:33 yeah, so I have the dance physical therapists Facebook group. So that's one specifically for PT so you will find me in their active conversations once talking about performing arts research all that stuff. You can find me at CSM Oh yeah, social media, dance physical therapists on Instagram. I am also musical theater doc on there. But I really associate people more regarding musical theater, not other pts. So dance physical therapist, is that and then on Facebook, Jenna cantor. And yeah, pretty much Jenna Cantor from Twitter and Jenna cantor. Yeah, your website. Jenna cancer, PT, calm. 42:18 Perfect. Perfect. Excellent. Well, Jenna, thank you so much for coming on and wrapping up 2022. And for all of your help and friendship throughout the year. I really appreciate it. And appreciate so 42:31 much. I have to just say that joke that keeps coming to my head every time you keep saying wrapping up. I feel like I should be wrapping a present. I just it's a stupid joke. But I just need to put that in there. Thank you. I said it. 42:43 Tis the season when in Rome, right? Yes. All right. Well, thank you again, so much. And everyone. Thank you so much. On behalf of myself and Jenna, for listening to the podcast all year and for supporting it. And you know if anyone has any suggestions on anyone they'd like either one of us to interview please let us know. You can find us on social media. I'm on Twitter at Karen Litzy. NYC and Instagram at Karen Litzy. You can email me Karen at Karen Litzy. Calm it couldn't be any easier. Or you can find me at Karen Litzy calm. We're super easy over here. So let us let us know if there's any topics or people that you're like man, I really want to hear from this person. We'll be more than happy to see if we can get it done. So thanks again. Everyone have a very, very happy new year and a healthy 2022 And of course stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Specialist Sports Physiotherapist, Morten Hoegh, talks about pain and injury management and research. Today, Morten talks about his workshop on pain, the problems in the research around pain and injuries, and embracing the patient as the expert. What is nociplastic pain? Hear about the injury versus pain narrative, treating the perception of injury during pain, the problem of over-treating pain, and get Morten's advice to his younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "There is a difference between having an injury and being in pain." "You will have injury and pain on one end, but you will have pain without injury on the other end." "Just because we know something doesn't mean we know everything." "Pain prevention is well-intentioned, sometimes unrealistic, and possibly unhelpful." "All pain is real. It's always experienced as pain." "People who live their life with pain, they are experts." "We have different aspects and different competences, and we should bring them together." "We should definitely try and cure pain from the planet, but maybe not by opioids." "Things take time to cope with." "Make sure you stick to good ideas if you think they're good, but also leave them if they're not." More about Morten Hoegh After qualifying as a clinical physiotherapist (1999) and completing several clinical exams, Morten was granted the title of specialist physiotherapist in musculoskeletal physiotherapy (2005) and sports physiotherapy (2006). It was not until 2010-12 he made an entry to academia when he joined the multidisciplinary Master-of-Science in Pain: Science & Society at King's College London (UK). From 2015-19 Morten did his PhD in Medicine/pain at Center for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP), Aalborg University. He is now an assistant professor. Having spent more than a decade as clinician, teacher, and business developer, he decided to focus on improving national and international pain education based on the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP). Morten was vice-chair of the European Pain Federation's Educational Committee from 2018-20 and has been involved in the development of the Diploma in Pain Physiotherapy and underlying curriculum, as well as the curricula in nursing and psychology. At a national level, Morten has been appointed to several chairs and committees, including the Danish Medicine and Health Authorities and the Danish Council of Ethics. He has co-authored a textbook on pain, and written several book chapters, clinical commentaries, and peer-reviewed basic science articles on pain and pain modulation. Morten's first book on pain in layman's terms will be published in January 2021. Morten is regarded as a skilled and inspiring speaker, and he has been invited to present in Europe and on the American continent. He is also a prolific debater and advocate of evidence-based and patient-centred approaches to treatment in general. Morten is motivated by his desire to improve management of chronic pain, reduce stigmatisation of people with 'invisible diseases', and to bridge the gap between clinical practice and neuroscience research in relation to pain. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Physiotherapy, Neuroscience, Pain, Injury, Rehabilitation, Research, Experience, Treatment, Management, Resources: #IOCprev2021 on Twitter. To learn more, follow Morten at: Website: http://www.videnomsmerter.dk https://p4work.com Twitter: @MH_DK Instagram: @mhdk_drmortenhoegh LinkedIn: Morten Hoegh Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:02 Hi, Morten, welcome to the podcast. I'm very excited to have you on. So thanks so much. Thank you for having me, Karen. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah. And today, we're going to talk about your really wonderful, wonderful workshop at the IOC conference in Monaco. That was just a couple of weeks ago. And you did a great workshop on pain, which is one of my passions. 00:27 But I would, I think 00:30 the best thing for us to do here is to just throw it over to you. And let you give a little background on the talk. And then we'll dive into the talk itself. So go ahead. 00:43 Thank you. And, you know, I'm really happy that you liked it. It was a great pleasure to present that the IRC was my first time there as well. A lovely place to be and very lovely people. And he really well organized conference as well. Well, back to the background. So the tool was, the workshop, as it were, was actually originally something I planned with Dr. Kieran or Sullivan, who is now in Ireland. Unfortunately, he couldn't come due to turn restrictions and all of that for COVID. So we had to change it slightly. But over the period of the last sort of year or so I've been working with colleagues at all university where I'm affiliated and test Denton and Steven George of Adelaide and, and to university respectively. And together with them, we sort of have written up this idea that there is a difference between having an injury and being in pain. And the reason we came about that was because we wanted to try and look into what is actually the sort of narrative definition of a sports injury. And and some one of my colleagues are actually two of my colleagues Kosta, Luke, and Sabine Avista. We're looking into this and trying to sort of find out what the consensus what they came up with, when they were looking at the last 10 years of of sports related research is that the same articles could use injury and pain for the same thing. So it was being used almost as well, not almost, but as sentiment synonymously throughout the program, or the manuscript, and others will stick to pain and others will stick to injury. But if you then try to go down into the methods and find out what is an injury, really, some would have definitions, but there weren't really anything. And definitely, there wasn't a clear distinction between when is the tissue injured. And when is the athlete suffering from pain that is keeping them from not doing what they want to do. 02:50 So we came up with this idea to write an editorial for the BDSM. We couldn't get it accepted as an editorial, we were under the impression that maybe the topic was a bit too narrow. So it really wouldn't have any impact. But we had a we had some some help from from 03:12 sorry, you can cut that bit out. I was just losing her name. Let me just get it here. 03:21 Oh, that's she was such a great help. I'm really sorry for not being able to I definitely think we should put her name in there. 03:32 Oh, here we go. 03:35 So we wanted to do the editorial first. But we were under the impression that we couldn't get the editorial through because the topic, you know, is probably a bit too narrow. But fortunately, Madeline Thorpe, who is working with TAs in Adelaide, she helped us create this infographic that sort of conveyed the message of the difference between what we call a sports related injury and a sports related pain. So after a few revisions, the BJs took it in as an infographic with a short text to describe what we mean. And and it's been. It's been, you know, quite well cited afterwards. So we're very happy with the the attention that this idea has got. And then of course, what we really are trying to do here is to create two new semantic entities as we say, Where where it's clear when we do research, but also when we talk to athletes, are you really injured? Is the tissue injury that needs healing and where you might need you know, specific treatment for that injury versus Are you having pain as a consequence of an injury or even without an injury, which is what we call sports related pain. So that's sort of the broader concept and and I hope I've I've done right with my co authors. 05:00 because they've Of course, been been a huge part of both the development and the writing of these, these, this infographic. 05:09 Yeah. And can we now sort of dive in a little bit deeper? So, injury versus pain? Right. I think a lot of people will think that every time you have an injury, there's pain. So used a really nice example in your talk. So does tendon tissue damage lead to pain? Yeah. But is the pain in the area of the tendon equal to damage to the tendon? 05:38 Maybe not. Yeah. Right. Oh, so yeah. So let's, let's have you kind of dive into this injury versus pain narrative. And if you want to go into those pain mechanisms that you spoke about, we can dive into that as well, because I know that that people had some questions on that on social media. So let's first talk injury versus pain. Yeah, again, my my perspective on this with my background, being a physio and, and sort of a neuroscientist is that I come from it, I would say from a pain, scientist pain mechanistic approach. And what I try to do is to understand what goes on in the human that could explain why they feel pain. And in some instances, and for instance, in low back pain, we we think, in about maybe 80 to 95% of the cases, we don't know what's going on. So we're pretty sure that the risks are mechanism, perhaps are quite complicated. One there has multiple factors that are interrelated, but there's probably something. So that's really difficult to study. Again, consider consider, you know, if you were tasked to, to come up with a, you know, a model where you could study this model would be, for instance, an animal model. So not that I would encourage people to go out and, you know, do bad things to other animals. But just, you know, for the sake of the example, let's imagine that you wanted to do an animal model of low back pain, or even a herniated sorry, a groin injury, you could say, in sports. 07:20 If you know, the most basic thing to do would be to create an injury. If you don't want to create an injury injury, what you could do is induce inflammation, you know, inject capsaicin, or put something under the skin or down into the tissues, and that makes your immune system go, you know, make inflammation. And that inflammation makes your nervous system respond more powerful. We call it sensitization, I think many people have heard of that word by now. 07:49 And that's a really good way to create that sensation of pain in humans as well. So we can inject capsaicin again, and people will usually feel pain. 08:00 In that case, that's what happens or that's how we understand what happens in the case of a tissue injury. So when there's a tissue injury, there's inflammation, and we understand that pain. So when the tissue hit healing period, is sort of crossing from what you could say, the inflammatory phase, into the prolific face, pain should go down. And in most cases, that's what happened. But what when the pain persists after the inflammatory phase. You know, from the science perspective, we don't know that. But we still know that this person is in pain. So whether that be an athlete or non athletes, they're still in pain. And in this in sort of the pain research world, we have a definition of pain that doesn't necessitate any type of injury, not even any activation of those, we call them nociceptors. But nociceptive system you could say. 08:53 So we acknowledge that people can have pain and not be Do not be damaged, not be injured, not have pathology. And that's sort of the idea that we are trying to bring into sports medicine as well, which has been over the you know, many last decades I've you know, I've been in in sports medicine or as a sports physio, for 20 odd years and sort of dominating belief. And also perhaps, trajectory has always been sort of the orthopedic sports related and to some extent, also pharmacological approach, combined with and that's important, combined with a non pharmacological physio, perhaps approach. So there's been this interrelationship collaboration between doctors and physios and other health professionals, which is quite unique. As I see it in the musculoskeletal system. We don't see that to the same extent, for instance, for low back pain or neck pain, but sports has done that. But maybe there has also kept people within the realms of sort of orthopedic approaches trying to understand what goes on. It's 10:00 tissues, and why did they hurt, and then when you couldn't find out why they hurt, we've just looked deeper into the tissues, which is, of course, a good idea from a scientistic or scientists perspective, because there are definitely things in the tissues that we don't know today, which will, you know, make us become more aware of what goes on, you know, as, as late as in the beginning of October, wasn't it where the Nobel Prizes were given out, there was given a Nobel Prize out for the person, I might do violence to his name, but it's part of Putin, I think he's last name it. 10:36 I didn't, I suppose a Putin or something like that. I do apologize for not being able to pronounce it. But he got the Nobel Prize was shared the Nobel Prize for his work on a peer to two receptors, which is a quite new phenomenon and sort of the longer perspective, but it might learn us over time, why could movement hurt? Which is something we don't know today? So if there's no sensitization, why does it hurt to be moving? And that's really interesting. But again, coming out in the clinic, we don't know enough. So we will have patients in the clinic where we simply do not know why they hurt. 11:14 And you could say that doesn't matter. We can call it anything. But then if you take a clinical look at what goes on what happens again, if you look at the signs, what does it mean, when people are hurting, and they think they're injured? They This is what a percentage again, they seem to be thinking that they're being in pain is the same as being weak. If you're weak, you're not, you know, you're not allowed to be in on the team, you might lose your position. So it has a lot of negative connotations. And I mean, that in itself is wrong. But what if it's based on a misconception that just because you're hurting, you are also injured? And couldn't we help people who are hurting with their pain, 11:59 just as well as we could if they are injured with a tissue injury. So what we are saying is that the two are different. They're both real, they should both be addressed. And they're not, they're not opposite ends of a dichotomy, you will have injury and pain in one end, but you will have pain without injury on the other end. So we need to pay attention to both of them separately. Yeah, it's because sometimes a person has a pain problem 12:29 may not be a specific tissue problem, but they have a pain problem. And so this pain problem may, like you said, cause certainly a an athlete to catastrophize. And to really play out to the point where maybe now they're fearful to get on the pitch or the court or the field. And so where does that leave us as physio therapists when it comes to their care? How do we help manage someone, or I should say, help someone manage their pain in order to play their sport, knowing that their every time they go out and play, they're not compounding, quote, unquote, tissue damage? 13:14 Yeah, and interesting, let's say someone has the perception that their tissues are injured, and every time they move, that's a sign of their tissue injury, or even when they hurt more, the injury is bigger, then that person, I mean, if that's a person like me, I would think that I should do something about that injury so that I don't hurt. But pain is always a symptom of something underlying it. Whereas we know from pain research in for instance, low back pain, that pain can in itself, be the disease, what the ICD 11 is now describing as chronic primary pain. So you can have that in your body, you can have it in your tendons, you can have it all way where your tendons are, you can have it where you know, where the bones are, where the where you feel the muscles are. And it's the pain itself is the problem. So rather than looking specifically at a tissue, which needs strengthening or some sort of treatment, then we can look at the person and say, What is it really that you need? A very, very simple example here, which is unlikely to be, you know, the case for everyone. But let's imagine we have someone with knee pain. And the thing that happens is that when they start running, their knee pain gets worse. But if they've been running for a kilometer, or two kilometer or miles, whatever, you know, whatever metric you use, 14:40 then the pain might be the same. So it sort of comes from nothing to let's say, five in the first mile, and then it stays at five, maybe six, and that person wants to run two miles perhaps. But what's the problem in that? I mean, the problem of course, is if pain in this case is a sign of an injury 15:00 that we should attend to. So we need to understand that it's not an injury. 15:06 Once we've done that, why not help this person, deal with the pain and maybe deal with it when they run, just like we would say to someone, if they have, again, back pain, for instance, and they have pain when they work, but their pain is not necessarily worse when they work, should they not be working? I mean, of course, if, if your pain can go away by two days of rest, and graded exposure, that's fine. But in some cases, and they're not as rare as I think most people believe they are, that we just need to work with that person and help them do what they need or want to do with that pain. And why is that, you know, of course, it's not the optimal it would be much nicer is if we would just kill the pain. Or if they could kill their own pain. But we're not there yet, we are still working to get it. And we're not giving up, there's a lot to do. But currently today, and tomorrow, we need to help people work with their pain, that's the best thing we can do now, and and, you know, giving people that agency to actually manage their pain. So in the case of the runner before, maybe the best thing we can help them do is share with them ideas and make them take agency over their pain by you know, using perhaps a cold pack or heat pack or a rest regime or watching you know, something that takes off their mind of their pain for a minute look at you know, watching dope sick on Disney, whatever they need to do to get their mind off, you know, the pain that they have, so that they can recharge, and they can be as you know, their normal again, before they go out for another run. So all of these things would make absolutely no sense if we didn't acknowledge that pain in itself is the problem, because it's not helping anyone's tissue injury, if there was a such to become better. So again, that's the infographic in its essence is that on one end, you use those inspiration to how to manage pain, what that means and how pain is influenced. And on the other side, you will have tissue injuries, and how to manage that, for instance, loading. In sports medicine loading is a big issue. It's probably the one thing that you know, everyone is doing when you're rehabilitating some someone after an injury or pain. But pain doesn't necessarily necessarily sorry, pain doesn't necessarily respond to loading. So you can have the same pain, whether or not you're loading. But there could be tons of other things such as the way you think about your pain, the way you respond to your pain experiences you've had before the context your work in. So you can run in one context without too many pains or problems. But in a completely different context. For instance, when you do a competition, or if you know, if you need to do something, because that's the bar to get onto the competition you want to do, then pain can be a much, much bigger problem. So we need to understand that context of beliefs and experience really influences pain, whereas loading may not. But it could have caused, but it doesn't have to. So pain is a much larger, much more complex topic of which we still don't know too much. We do know quite a lot. And as long as there's an injury, we understand the pain that goes with it. But when it comes to these pains that are there by themselves, the ICD 11 type chronic primary pain, then that's the type of pain that we you know, we've really, we don't have the sort of blueprints on that. So we can't help everyone. And we can't say this is right for you or wrong for you. We need to do individualized care for all of these people and help them find the best tools to support themselves. Yeah, and I think that was something that people who weren't at the conference and kind of reading through tweets, 19:08 that certainly brought up some questions, one of which was the pay mechanism, no sub plastic pain, where we can't fully explain it. And so then there was a question of, we can't fully explain it, why even bring it up? So I'll throw it over? Yeah. It's, again, it's a good question. And especially if you're a clinician, why would you use it, though, they're basically what they are. They're ways that scientists understand the pain. So again, imagine you're standing at one end of the road and you're looking at the other end by the end of that road, a very long road, you have pain. And then the way the place you're standing at is how you explain how to get to that end point. And if you're standing at a place and you know there's a tissue injury, there's inflammation. We understand that as 20:00 Part of the normal normal nociceptive system. So we would call it nociceptive pain. 20:05 Underneath that there is a range of different changes and modulator modulators of the system that leads to, for instance, peripheral and central sensitization. So they're not unique to anything that is there also in nociceptive pain, but it's induced by, for instance, a tissue injury. 20:24 If you have a different tissue injury, the one that hits your nervous system, we call it a neuropathic pain, so you have a nerve damage, along with pain, we call that a neuropathic pain. So again, you're standing on this long road, but in this case, the road itself is sort of gone wrong. But we still know what's going on. Again, if you want to use the study metaphor, you can, you can design a study, you can just take an animal, and you can compress or do something to the neurons, and you can create this similar pain experience, or at least the behavior that it assimilates this pain experience in animals, other than humans. And then finally, we have this new, we call it a mechanistic descriptor knows a plastic pain, which is much much blurrier. And perhaps it's more like a waste bin. As it is now it's, it's where you would say we acknowledge that people have pain. 21:24 And a lot of things goes into it. So just like in nociceptive, and neuropathic pain, sensitization is definitely part of it. It could also be part of the note of plastic pain. But unlike the other two, you don't have the inflammatory response that could explain it. And you don't have the neuron damage that could explain it. But the person experiencing the pain could have a similar experience. So what is it really? How do we a scientist tried to understand that pain, and that's what most plastic is at the moment. And there is a little bit of debate that whether or not you can actually use algorithms to diagnose or, you know, 22:09 maybe 22:11 justify at least that you yet the person in front of you are experiencing this type of pain mechanism or pain related to this mechanism, we definitely have a very, very, you know, widely embraced algorithm used for neuropathic pain. And some very, you know, high profile researchers has just recently come up with a paper suggesting that the same can be done for noisy plastic, sorry, for noisy plastic pain. But personally, I don't think we should, because unlike so nociceptive and neuropathic pain, they're both well understood by signs and we can separate them, they are different. So you can have both, but you would have different qualities to it, there'll be a nerve damage in one and there wouldn't in the other, for instance. 23:02 But we don't know about most plastic pain. So it could be changes in your nervous system, it could actually be, you know, increased responsiveness of your immune system in interaction with your nervous system. It could all be all of that. So it could be sensitization, but it could be tons of other things as well. So how can we start when we don't know what the mechanism is? How can we start to clinically differentiate? So I don't personally think we're quite there yet. Although I like the idea that maybe we can at some point, what I'm afraid of, if we start to use these clinical descriptors, sorry, these mechanistic descriptors, as clinical guidelines, is that what happens to the people who are now embraced and validated in their pain experience by scientists saying, Well, we know what you have, it's mostly plastic pain. But what if we made up an algorithm? And we used it for people? What about the people who fall out? Do they need, you know, a fourth descriptor? Are they just weird? Do they have unknown pain? Are they back to the psychogenic pain? So we've come quite a lot of way, embracing the clinical aspects of pain into the pain research world. And I think using you know, these three mechanistic describers, as you know, trying to really differentiate them and create perhaps treatments that is directed at either one. At this point, or especially anatomy is specifically directed at most aplastic point pain. Just because we know something doesn't mean we know everything. 24:34 So yeah, that's that's the issue. There was a bit of off topic. I'm sorry. But it's such an interesting topic. And I think that the most important thing about no plastic pain is that it is a construct that researchers use. It's embraced by the IRS, the world pain Association, the pay Research Association, and it validates that all pain is real. And there's, you know, it's still real even though we can 25:00 not understand it from a science perspective. I think that's important. And I would hate to see that we misuse it. To say that some really has it. And some don't. Because that's just, you know, that'll be I'll be sad. Yeah. And and can't one's pain experience? 25:20 Everybody's pain experiences individualized. But one person's nociceptive pain experience may be exactly like someone's neuropathic pain experience or someone's no support plastic pain experience, because it's in so then to categorize the persons Oh, well, my pain is like this. So it means this, so I can't have this. And I think it can get people a little confused. And when you have more long term or chronic pain, it's like, the the pain is there. Pain is pain. Some people need the the label or categorization, but like you said, Is it is it really helpful? And it kind of leads me to the one of the last slides in your presentation, and it was like pain prevention is well intentioned, yay, thumbs up, sometimes unrealistic, and possibly unhelpful? Yeah. So do you want to expand on that a little bit? And what you meant by that slide? 26:23 Yeah, that's slide was. That was actually the whole idea when, when I started to talk with Dr. Kieran Sullivan about workshop is that we see a lot of people, athletes. So both of us are still clinicians. And we see and we hear stories of a lot of athletes who have been treated and treated and treated again, or assessed and assessed and assessed again. And again, because they have a pain that we cannot objective eyes. So we can't find anything on scans or blood samples or clinical tests. So rather than acknowledging that pain can be there, so let's say nosey plastic pain, those are, there's something going on in your nervous system that gives you this pain, and we don't know what it is, we can't see it, that will be the, I would say the proper thing to do. So rather than doing that, we tend to keep sending people off. And it ends up with too many scans and too many assessments and too much worry. And in that process, we know the athlete is unlikely to be performing optimal during that period of time. Partly, of course, due to the pain, but also due to the insecurity to you know, if nothing is found on the first scan and a second scan that at some point, they probably start to wonder whether or not they're completely broken, or if it's a really rare disease or even if it's gonna kill them. And these are things that we might feed into by overtreating. So, of course, we should try and prevent pain. Statistics suggest that that's quite tricky. And we, you know, it would be great if we could or even perhaps what we can do is give people tools so they can take agency over their pain when it flares up. But having this idea that when you are in pain, you are damaged is very unhelpful. We think. So we really wanted to highlight the fact that sometimes pain is is that it is pain is still disabling. It's that feeling of pain, and nobody can feel whether or not their pain is due to an injury or not, it feels just like pain. But we identify all pain as if there was an injury, when in fact, it's it's quite unlikely that the majority of cases would have an injury attached to it. And just coming back to one thing you said before that it was quite subtle, but I think it's a really important point you made there, which is that all pain is real, it's always experienced as pain, whether that be of any of the descriptors or for any reason, it always feels like pain, and the quality that we attached to it, it's a muscle pain, or it's whatever is something we do it's our perception is our belief about what the pain is. And maybe that's what we need to also address in sports medicine is that disbelief about what your pain is caused by is a potential target for treatment, we call it psychotherapy or psychoeducation. Or, you know, and that doesn't have to be paying neurobiology education that's unlikely to be better than any other good education and listening and embracing. So there's a range of different interventions that are combining or embracing the fact that you need to talk to your athlete or your patient and help them make sense of their pain in a way that gives them empowerment will give them agency over their pain. 29:51 And something that came to my mind as you were saying, oh the pain it's it's in the muscles, the tendons, the bone, it's the joint and can't that all 30:00 So be a coping mechanism of the athlete. So they may say, oh, it's, you know, this is just a muscle strain. It's so it's their way of coping of saying it's nothing I can continue to to move forward. Do you know what I mean? 30:16 Yeah, absolutely and, and I think as long as it empowers them, if you know if you have the pain that you again, think about Dom's, or delete onset onset muscle soreness. That's an empowering pain, isn't it? I mean, I have Dom's, I was doing exercise yesterday. And if you really want to, you know, be good at something, then perhaps Dom's is your sort of reward even, even though it's painful, it should be awful, it might actually feel like a reward. So in that case, you interpret the pain that you are experiencing, as a reward or something you want it to happen. And I definitely think that some would say that this is just a minor thing, again, think about general health and male, you know, older men, like myself, tend to not go into, you know, the GP for what we consider to be minor things, but in fact, that might be killing us. Because we say, no, no, that's nothing, no, that little spot, that's not cancer. And I would say I don't, I don't think it's a lump, it's probably just something that's here this week. So we should be much better at listening to it, and giving it you know, you know, the quality or the, you know, the meaning that it should have. So it's on both ends of the spectrum, sometimes we neglect that pain is there for a reason, and we should listen to it. And sometimes we should understand that the pain is there without anyone really knowing what it is. But it doesn't mean just because we don't have a universal tool that can treat all pain, which is what we say when we say there's no treatment for chronic pain. In fact, there's quite a, you know, a variety of well established evidence based treatments, that can reduce pain, but they need to be targeted, and individualized so that each one find their, you know, their way through their pain. And of course, one way to do it is to go to everyone you know, who has a, you know, any background in health and ask them what to do, probably the best thing to do is to talk to someone who knows about pain, and then get advice about what seems to be working for you. Embracing that the one in this case, the athlete with pain, they have perhaps one or two years experience with their pain, they know much more about their pain than I do. But I can act as a consultant, I can listen to them, I can help them structure, I know what you know, patterns out there. So I can listen for that. And then together, we can try a few things. But over a period of maybe weeks, they should know as much as I do about pain generally, but with their focus on it. And and that should give them you know, with a bit of practice the ability to find out what works and what doesn't. And rather than thinking of pain management, in the case of a sports related pain, as an on off thing, so either it works and the pain is not there, or it doesn't work, it only reduces the pain a bit, we probably should be realistic and say that most people can have reductions in their pain, perhaps 2030, perhaps more percent. But the majority of people will experience from some sort of management of pain reduction. But it doesn't mean that the pain is going to go away. And it doesn't mean that thought is going to be absolutely pain free. But we need to find a balance between the two so that we understand when pain is actually a sign of either injury or possible injury. But also understand when pain is something that might just be part of life. And the best way we can do the most evidence based approach to that would be to find your way through it, you know, in perhaps, together with a 33:56 clinician of some sort? Yeah. And my gosh, I was just gonna say as we wrap things up, would you like to put a bow on it on your talk and at at the IOC conference and to this talk today, and I think you've just done it? I think you'd beat me to the punch. But is there anything else that you'd like to add? 34:18 That, that you want the listeners to take away? 34:22 I think the most the thing that I always want to stress is that people who meet or live their life with pain, they're experts. And we as clinicians, and researchers should embrace that much more. So the patient as an expert, is something I feel deeply about. 34:44 And I think we should be able to understand that as you know, as a scientist, you might know, you know a lot about groups. 34:51 As a clinician, you might know a lot about people who come to you with a similar symptoms, but as a person who have pain, you have two or three years 35:00 perhaps have experience with your own pain. And I think the best way to you know to get all of these together is by everyone being aware that we have different aspects and different competencies, and we should bring them together. And I think that's the best we can do right now. But still, don't give up hope we should definitely try and cure all pain from the planet, but maybe not by opioids. Yes, I would agree with that. And now more and where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you do? Read your research, where can they find you? 35:39 I think the easiest way would probably be to either find me on on Facebook, or go on Twitter. My handle is at MH underscore DK. And I'm also on Instagram. It's at MH DK underscore Dr. Moulton. Whoa. 35:57 Excellent. And one last question. It's a question I asked everyone is what advice would you give to your younger self, knowing where you are now in your life and in your career? 36:09 Remember, things take time to cope with sometimes you have a good idea. And you can't imagine, however, too, you know, you hear something and everyone else knows it. And you're like the only one who doesn't get it. But give it a bit of time. And, you know, I we have a saying that Rome wasn't built in one day. I think it goes in English as well. So give things time and and make sure you stick to good ideas if you think they're good, but also leave them if they're not. 36:37 Excellent advice. So Morton, thank you so much. This was a great conversation. And like I said, your talk at IOC was really wonderful. There's if people want to see his slides, there are tons of tons of tweets with all of his slides and great descriptors. You could go to IOC p r e v 2021. That was the hashtag for the conference. And as you look through, you'll see a lot of tweets from his from Morton's workshops. So thank you so much for coming on and expanding on that for us. I appreciate it. 37:13 Amazing. Thank you. It is a huge pleasure and privilege to be here. Thank you, Karen. Thanks so much. And everyone. Thanks so much for listening, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Bryan Guzski, Director of the Orthopaedic Residency Program at the University of Rochester Medical Center, and Tim Reynolds, Clinical Assistant Professor of Anatomy & Physiology at Ithaca College, talk about their work on Movers & Mentors. Today, Bryan and Tim talk about their book, Movers & Mentors, and they get the opportunity to be the interviewers for a portion of the episode. Why is it important to have mentors? Hear about the motivation behind the book, some surprising interviews they've done, the value of having a team, finding your 'why', and choosing when you say 'yes', all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "From an entrepreneurial standpoint, from a business standpoint, your partner is everything." "Invest in [yourself] and take care of [yourself], physically and mentally, so that you can take care of your patients better." "Challenge yourself to step beyond your comfort zone, because the benefits of that can be significant if you're willing to try." "Find a mentor and don't fear or stray away from the imposter syndrome. Use that as fuel." "If you never ask the question, the answer is always no." "Trying to do it all will keep you small." "You have to really only say yes to things that align to your values." "Take a step back, know who you are, know your values, know what your individual mission statement is." "He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened." - Lao Tzu "If you don't have the capacity for it, then don't do it." "Stay curious." "Continue to search for the 'why'. It's okay not to know." More about Bryan Guzski Bryan Guzski PT, DPT, OCS, MBA, CSCS, is an outpatient orthopaedic physical therapist practicing in Rochester, NY working primarily with patients with spine related issues and persistent pain. Bryan earned his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Ithaca College in 2014, completed an orthopaedic residency program through Cayuga Medical Center and received his Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist certification in 2015, and earned a Master of Business Administration degree from Simon Business School at the University of Rochester in 2021. More about Tim Reynolds Tim Reynolds PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS, is a Clinical Assistant Professor of Anatomy & Physiology at Ithaca College and a part-time physical therapist practicing at Cayuga Medical Center in Ithaca, NY, where he predominately treats patients with spine or lower extremity impairments. Tim earned his Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from Ithaca College in 2014 and completed both his orthopaedic residency and spine fellowship through Cayuga Medical Center, and currently helps mentor and teach in both of these programs as well. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Physiotherapy, Academia, Movers, Shakers, Mentors, Prioritizing, Self-care, Self-improvement, Values, Motivation, To learn more, follow Bryan & Tim at: Website: https://www.moversandmentors.com Twitter: @moversmentors @timreynoldsdpt Facebook: Movers and Mentors Instagram: @moversandmentors @bryguzski @timreynolds10 LinkedIn: Bryan Guzski Tim Reynolds Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:03 Hey, Brian and Tim, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you guys on to talk about movers and mentors. So welcome. 00:11 Thank you, Karen, thank you for having us today. We're sharing this sit down chat with you. 00:15 This is great, Karen, thank you so much. 00:17 Well, thank you guys for including me in your book with over 70 Other pretty illustrious folks in the Movement Science physical therapy world. So let's start with the basic question that I'm sure a lot of listeners want to know. What is the why behind the book? 00:40 Yeah. So Karen, Tim and I were going through residency orthopedic residency together. Back in 2015. We both graduated from Ithaca College in 2014. And we both entered into a residency program at ethika are in Ethica, in 2015. And as we were going through the coursework there, and kind of taking different classes and really kind of immersed in the PT literature and physical therapy, space and various different content. We started noticing a lot of reoccurring names and reoccurring themes. And so, you know, different names like Tim Flynn, Josh Cleveland, surely sermon, Stuart McGill, you know, all these all these names that, you know, names in our rehab space that I've done a lot of really cool things and have put out a lot of different research that that, you know, we follow to this day. So we started noticing those names. And Tim and I were also reading a book by Timothy Ferriss called Tools of Titans at the time. And we really liked that book. And we enjoyed it. We got a lot out of it. He interviews people like, you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Oprah Winfrey. So various different industries and various different spaces. But we like the model that book and we started to ask ourselves, well, I wonder how, you know, individuals and movers and shakers within our industry would answer questions that we have. So fast forward two years. That was 2017 2018 at that point, and Tim and I started putting together a list of questions and a list of names. And at that point, you know, we kind of we kind of took it from there. And Tim has a little bit more info on how we how we came up with the names. 02:29 Yeah, so it's one of those things that we could have written a 5000 page book in regards to the movers and shakers within the physical therapy industry. And I think one of the most important things that Brian I have tried to stress is that this is a living project. This is not a one and done situation where there are movers and shakers that are currently developing and changing the practice. And so I think that's one of those things that, yes, there are people within the pages that I'm that are, we're happy to have there. But at the same time, there's so many other people would want to reach out to, and we look forward to have the opportunity to potentially talk to those individuals in the future, and are excited to see how does the profession change in the next five to 10 years and who are going to come up and literally shake the industry that we have the opportunity to be part of. And so as we started to go about this, like Brian said, we're diving into this literature, I had the opportunity to do spine fellowship after doing my orthopedic residency. And so the amount of Tim Flynn articles that I've read over the past three years was obnoxious. And so we started to make this almost like PT Dream Team, if you would, where we said okay, from, from a literature standpoint, who do we do we invest ourselves into a lot of, and like Brian mentioned, John John Childs, and we have Josh Cleveland. And then we have Tim Flynn, and the surely SARM and Gwendolyn Joel, there's these names that we have read multiple articles from and so kind of selfishly, we put together this list of people that we would really appreciate reaching out to, because we've been so invested in their in their literature over the past several years. And then from there, we kind of spread our net a little wider, because we had to see who's moving the industry from a clinical practice standpoint, right. So not necessarily from an academic or research standpoint, but from clinical practice. And who's moving it in regards to social media influencers? Because as someone who works in academia and works with the up and coming physical therapy generation, those are the people that they're following on Instagram and on Twitter, and so they're moving and shaking the industry in that format. And we looked at who's been guest speakers at recent conferences and who's putting out podcasts and how He was really trying to have the opportunity to get our profession to move in a positive direction. And so from there, we created this sort of master list, we reached out to all of them, and some have the opportunity to participate, which we're super thankful for. Some respectfully declined based on the fact that they had other stuff going on. But I think one of the things to remember, Brian is sort of given us timeframe, this was right pre pandemic, that we started to reach out to all these individuals. And what's been such a blessing is that we've been able to cast a wide net across multiple different countries across multiple different professions. But at the same time, we reach out to people in Australia, and there's Australian wildfires. And so we're trying to really respect individual's personal physical well being while navigating global pandemic while trying to also conduct interviews. And so it took us a little over two and a half years to be able to accumulate everything and be able to put everything out into a book format. But I'm super thankful to have those people within the pages. And like I said, I'm excited to have the opportunity to reach out to more in the future. 06:14 And so it takes, you know, a couple of years to get all this together. How did the two of you kind of keep the momentum going? Number one, because that's hard. And then number two, how did you kind of kind of temper your excitement and your expectations? Because I know, I'm the kind of person who's like, let's just get it done. Let's go, go go. But here, you know, you've really taken your time, over two plus years. So can you talk a little bit about that? 06:52 Yeah, I think from the outset, Tim and I both thought, I will send out some emails, you know, we'll get a handful of responses. It'll be a cool book, maybe we'll sell to maybe, you know, five, including our siblings, and parents, that sort of thing. And it really from the first batch of emails that we sent out, you know, Tim and I were really, every time we got a response, we would text each other, shoot each other an email immediately, Hey, Peter O'Sullivan responded, or David Butler responded, or Karen Litzy responded, you know, this is awesome. Like, we're actually doing this thing. So I think it you know, you spoke to momentum, Karen. And that's one thing that Tim and I, you know, we've never really hit a point where we were at a lack of that, or hit a dull moment, if you will. Because every time we got we did another interview, or we got another email, or we set up a, you know, maybe a podcast, it was definitely adding fuel to the fire. And, you know, they kept us pretty engaged and pretty excited throughout the whole thing. So, yeah, I mean, to I think if you asked us when we first sent out our emails in 2018, hey, you know, this is you're going to publish this in 2021, we'd say, No, it's going to be next year. And then life happens and pandemics happen and several other things. And, you know, it turned into a two and a half year project. But you know, it's been a lot of fun the whole time. And Tim and I still are still excited about it and excited about about the future, too. 08:16 And I think that's one of the things. There's kind of like Christmas every single time we had a response because it was super cool. You send out these, these emails, or you give a phone call to people that you've literally have had as your mentor from afar for years. And it's like, oh, my gosh, I cannot wait to have the opportunity to sit down. Like Peter, I saw that I've watched a lot of Peter softened videos from pain science standpoint, from spine fellowship work. And having the opportunity to sit down with Peter resolve them for an hour and 15 minutes was like, amazing. I was super stoked. And so so all those opportunities to talk to these people definitely continue to keep flame burning. And at the same time you talk about how do we sort of balance that, that excitement and try not to do too much too quickly. Brian and I have known each other for years, this has been such an amazing project to be able to find a partner that you want appreciate and to after two and a half years don't hate. So I think that's like a really good thing. And I think we balance each other out very well, where we're both skilled in a variety different formats. And then at the same time, after reading your draft manuscript, probably like five times through and through, you really do not want to read one more time. And there's points where we're like, I think it's good. I think we just just push it out, call it a day. And then Brian could probably agree that I'd say well, let's just read through it one more time, and then you catch one or two small mistakes. And so I think it's one of those things that just finding the right person that's willing to invest and stay motivated to push you and challenge you From an entrepreneurial standpoint, from a business standpoint, your partner is is everything. And so I think that's been one of the blessings that we've had this for this project. 10:11 Yeah, I love it, I think that's great advice is to have that person who complements you. Right and because you don't want to have just like a yes person, but instead you want something that's going to complement you and push you in, in a positive direction. And, and I will second the Peter O'Sullivan, he is just what a nice person and giving and charitable and gosh, I had an interview with him at CSM a number of years ago. And I had to ticket it. Because it was live at CSM. And we actually had to ticket it so that only 25 people could go and I it was only for students. And by the end of the interview, he was laying on the ground, you know, students and stuff. It was just so it was such a great experience, because he's just one of those very kind of electric personalities. 11:08 Definitely. very warm, very electric. 11:10 Yeah. Were there any interviews that you did that surprised you? 11:20 Um, in 11:21 a, in any way that doesn't have to be good or bad. Just surprise you because perhaps the persona that this person has, whether it be their research, social media clinical that you thought they had, and then when you interviewed them? It it surprised you? 11:46 Yeah, I would say. Obviously, when you when you interview over 75 individuals, you get a variety of different responses, you talk to a variety of different personas, devided different characteristics. And I think going into it, knowing the background of someone's, I use the metaphor of like the front cover of a book, we all have like front cover worthy attributes or accomplishments. And then it's like, well, what's on the inside of those pages. And so we see everybody's bio, and I've been on X, Y, and Z shows or published this many papers and, and so we see all that stuff. But we never really hear some of those people talk or talk personally about some of their successes and some of their failures. And so I think everybody had the opportunity to have some elements of surprise. But I think what was also cool as Brian, I made up this master list, and it was basically just based off of accomplishments and achievements, or their influence on the profession. And so, for instance, I was looking through and like talking to Michael Radcliffe, who is who is a researcher that I've read your research, but I, I never really pictured what you would look like. And I never really perceived that you would have such amazing responses within this book. So I think it was those individuals that I might not have been so invested from like falling on social media, or have watched your YouTube videos, and really getting a chance to know them in an hour, hour and a half. Those were the interviewers that really caught me by surprise, but at the same time, I think I walked away with so much more, because there is so much unknown that they're willing to offer me. Um, and so I think I think that was the most exciting part or the most surprising part for me. 13:42 Yeah, I think kind of, because of the types of questions that we asked, we really intimidate joke about this, if we want to know, you know, surely Simon's recommendations for motor control. We can find that online. We can we can Google that. Right? If we want to know, you know how David Butler opens his pain talks, we can probably find that somewhere and explain pain or explain pain Supercharged. But you know, how Heidi genetica who's the CEO of versio Excuse me? Why pte how she structures her day. And what her favourite failure is it those are things that you can't find you can't find that in textbook you can't find that online. So the types of questions that we asked really opened, opened it up to knowing these people from a different perspective, which we thought was pretty cool. I'd say that one of the individuals that really stands out in my mind, Tim actually did this interview, but I transcribe it so I got to listen to everything, literally word for word was Stanley Paris, who's one of the founding fathers of orthopaedic manual physical therapy and then the United States and North America for that matter. And I mean, this guy is is just incredible from sailing around the world to swimming the English Channel to founding St. Augustine to being, you know, a founder and president of various organizations like the guy has done it all to owning a winery or several wineries. I believe he's just, you know, a jack of all trades. And I think listening to that interview, I was like, you know, he's, I think 83 Now, and my jaw was dropped to some of the some of his answers and some of his experiences. So that was, that was really cool. But, I mean, we had so many so many great interviews, Jeff Moore was a terrific interviewer. Peter O'Sullivan, like we talked about Kelly star it gave, you know, exceptional answers. So we were really, really lucky. And, you know, positively surprised, I should say, surprise, in a positive way with with all of our guests. 15:55 Yeah. And it it, it does kind of, like an education for you. Right, 16:02 definitely. Yeah. 110% Yeah, I mean, it was one of those things. I had the opportunity to speak with Michael shacklock. Um, and such a well spoken. Such a thoughtful, mindful person. And back in residency, Brian Knight did some research with neurodynamics and your mobilizations. As I was like, Oh, my gosh, like, you're the Dude, that was like, given us all this information. And now we have the opportunity to actually speak to the source. So I think back to being like eight or nine years old, and have all these posters of Major League Baseball players up on the walls, and just like, thinking about how cool it was to have their pictures, and to think about what it would be like to play baseball with them. And now to be able to communicate with some of these movers and shakers within the industry, and have them be peers, and be able to carry out a conversation with them learn from us as much as we're learning from them in that conversation is just such a rewarding opportunity. 17:08 And do you feel like it has changed your clinical practice at all? How you are with patients? Did any of the answers or just even the interactions with some of these folks change the change the way you practice? Um, 17:24 I think yes. I would say I've slowed down, and I'm more intentional. Just based on a few, I guess, specific responses, but one that comes to mind is oh, shoot, pause. This might be a Karen, you might have to take this this out. And then wait, 17:48 wait, wait a mess up. Or 25? I 17:50 know. We were crushing it. Dude. Millet mark. I don't know. I want to say more. Mark Milligan. So we'll jump back in. Yes, I would say more mindful and intentional. And I've slowed down in my practice, one response, or several responses from Mark Milligan definitely kind of changed the way I think and operate within the clinic. And I've definitely tried to be more intentional and kind of think about my thinking a little bit more in the clinic from a specific, you know, tactical exercise prescription perspective, not so much. Because that wasn't really the focus of our book. But just, you know, Mark's mindset, and kind of his, his recommendation to all young professionals to really kind of invest in themselves and to take care of themselves mentally and physically so that you can take care of your patients better, I thought was really powerful. So yeah, I'd say, a little bit more intentional, focused, and I've slowed down. 19:00 Yeah. And I think sort of piggybacking off of what Brian was saying, less so about the actual clinical approach to what sort of treatments are you providing? And I think that was one of the the most exciting things about the book was we were not talking about what's your favorite three exercises for X y&z Because there's so much saturation, I'd say from a social media standpoint, which is great. I think that's one of the things that's challenging the profession, that anybody has the opportunity to put out content, and it's one of the curses of the profession that anybody has the opportunity to put out content. And so I think the opportunity for young graduates and PT students, and individuals interested in the Movement Science field that is sift through a lot of information to be able to find out what is truly valuable for them. And like Brian was saying, These are the answers questions that aren't necessarily within a textbook, but also probably not necessarily on people's social media channels also, right? No one really steps up to the plate and says, you know that one time when it took me three tries again to PT, school, Dad was really a good important point in time, my life, or, yeah, I remember when I failed the boards. Those are things that I think can really influence and the sort of career life changing for these individuals, who, as a current college professor, writing final exams, getting ready to watch by an influx of tears in my office in the next bout 48 hours, who perceive a failure as such a detriment to their potential growth, and well being as a person, I got a B plus on this test, all my friends got A's, I cannot necessarily navigate that situation. That's like conversation that I hear all the time. And so talking about how has things changed in my practice, I'm currently part time in the clinic, more time from an academia standpoint. So I think it's changed my communication opportunities, with the next generation, being able to literally use this book as an encyclopedia. And knowing the responses that people have given flipping to their name, and saying, I need you to read this chapter from Mike Reinhold, where he talks about becoming an expert, because you're not there yet. Because you shouldn't be there yet. Because you haven't gained clinical judgment and clinical experience. And it's going to be okay. But go read this come back in five minutes. And so I think that's how I've been able to sort of benefit from this, from this experience and how I've taken it influenced my own practice. 21:51 Excellent. And, and as a side note, Tim, the, my podcast episode coming out tomorrow, my podcast is with Silvia Zubaan. And she's a clinician 50% clinician 50% academia at St. Louis University in Washington, Washington University in St. Louis. Sure. And surely, sermons. Yeah. And it was a really nice conversation on how to navigate. She's been doing it for 15 years now. clinician and academia and academia. So it was a really nice, really wonderful conversation on how to navigate that those two worlds successfully and how to be vulnerable when you need to be and with whom, and because it can't always be great and perfect, like you just said. So if you have a chance, I would come out tomorrow, I would listen, I'm excited. Currently to edit this part out. I don't need to plug my own podcast within a podcast. He was a little self indulgent. But because you, you're kind of in a similar position. She's just been doing it for a lot longer. 23:10 That's awesome. I appreciate that. So 23:11 check it out tomorrow. It was really, like, such a good conversation. She's super cool. She should be in your next book. There. Yeah, like it. She's super cool. Yes, Silvia it's CZ you PP o n. Yeah. And she does some research and and she's written some papers and things like that, but she's super cool. Okay. So, um, is there anything? Before we sort of flipped this a little bit? Because I know you guys were like, Hey, would you like to expand on some of your answers, which, you know, is fine. So we'll flip this in, in a bit. And I'll have you guys host and I'll be your guest. But before we do that, is there anything else kind of about the process of of compiling and publishing the book, that you would love people to know, because it made such a big difference in your lives? 24:23 I think one of the blessings of our profession is the lat orality component to your growth as an entrepreneur, but also as a professional. We graduate with a clinical doctorate, or and this can be transcribed across multiple professions, but you go to school to be able to learn how to learn right and in our profession where you sit for a board certification, which gives us the opportunity to practice as a clinician within that. You can wear multiple different hats and I think what was nice with this is That title allowed for us to speak to a variety of different people and have this mutual commonality, which was physical therapy, or Movement Science or the treatment of individuals with certain pathologies. And I think this would never have happened if we didn't make ourselves vulnerable and uncomfortable. Because who are Brian and I? And why should we have the opportunity to talk to Karen Litzy? Or why should we have the opportunity to talk to David Butler? Or why should in so we had this idea, and it all stemmed from the courage to be able to reach out and ask because you never know, unless you try. And so I think sharing one of these thoughts with your listeners is, I think we all have dreams and aspirations that are slightly beyond our scope of practice. And sometimes we can limit that opportunity for us to navigate those ideas, because we are either potentially afraid of failure, or just don't know what the outcome is going to be. And so since that's an unfamiliar territory, we just assume, and therefore we never attempt. And so I think the one of the best things that I've learned from this is accepting failure for what it is, what's the worst that they're going to say? No, I do not want to be part of this, thank you for the opportunity. And the best thing that we could do is create a relationship, create a mentorship opportunity, and have sort of this professional friendship that stemmed from a cold call email. And so I would, I would recommend, at least my thoughts would be challenged, challenge yourself to step beyond your comfort zone, because the benefits of that can be significant if you're if you're willing to try. 27:02 Yeah, Brian, right. Yeah. 27:04 Yeah, I think there's some level of kind of normalization of failure and imposter syndrome within this book. And I think when you dive into it, and you dive into the responses, everyone has been there, everyone, I'm speaking to, you know, students, new graduates, young professionals here, but guess the message kind of spans anyone in any part of the PT space or industry with however many years of experience, you know, everyone's felt that level of imposter syndrome, or, or fear of failure, and the kind of ability to, to kind of push through that, overcome that and almost use that and leverage it to, to push further or overcome obstacles is really powerful. So I think of it like if you're ever kind of at the top of a mountain, in terms of, you know, imposter syndrome, if we look at it, like, like a curve or like a mountain, if you're at the top of it, then you know, what's really driving you and what's what's pushing you forward, if you're kind of somewhere along along the line on the slope, then you have some level of uncertainty, some level of fear, or some level level of imposter syndrome, and that's actually going to feel fuel you to learn more and be better be more effective. And again, one of the main themes of this book was finding a mentor and the importance of that and how valuable that can be in any, any track or any, you know, facet of our profession. So kind of find that person that's doing something similar or doing exactly what you want to be doing. And, you know, don't hesitate to reach out to them. Because we're in the, we're in the business of helping people and thankfully, we have a lot of professionals around us that that want to help other people but also want to help you know, students, young professionals, so don't hesitate to reach out. I think you'll be surprised with with, you know, the the feedback or the the return on that. So, definitely, definitely find a mentor and, you know, don't don't fear stray, stray away from the imposter syndrome use that as fuel. 29:20 Yes. And I will say I got a piece of advice several years ago from a fellow physical therapist, son. So her name's Cecily de Stefano. She's a physical therapist outside of DC. And we were in Chicago for a one night q&a With Lorimer Moseley. And the next day, we were walking around, she had her five year old six year old somewhere around there, young son with her, and she was sort of walking up ahead and he was walking Next to me, and he said this, Karen, would you like to have a play date? And I said, Well, I don't. I don't have any children. And he was like, no, just you. And I said, Oh, um, okay, well, I think we should probably ask your mom first. And then he gave me a great piece of advice. He said, Yeah, because if you never asked the question, the answer is always no. And I was like, and I said, that's the best piece of advice I've gotten in years, and you're like, five. So just to begin with what you guys said, If you never ask the question, the answer is always no. And I've never forgotten that, since he said that. And so now I just always add, ask the question, because the worst that can happen is it's no and so okay, you move on. But you never know. Unless you try. Okay, so true. So let's, uh, we'll start wrapping things up here. But now I, again, thank you for including me in this book. It's a real honor. So if you want if you guys have any questions to I guess I can expand upon or, you know, anything else that that may be? I don't know, you go ahead. Talk about being out of your comfort zone. Go ahead. And you asked me, I'll hand the mic over to you guys. And I'll see, we'll see what we can do here. 31:21 Sure. Karen, thank you, again, for being a part of this. I really liked your response. We were speaking about failure a little bit before. And I really liked your response on failure in the last comment, here you have, I'll read it right from the book, it says, failure has taught me to be more introspective to have an open mind to trust in others more. And to know that in the end, it will all work out the way it is supposed to. I was wondering if you could expand on the to trust in others more? Do you have a specific example that you're thinking of, or examples, or just, you know, have other people come in at really important times to help you out when you're, you know, in a in a, you know, event of a failure? 32:07 Well, I can't think of one person or one incident in particular, but what I will say is, I am personality type a driver. So someone who likes to get things done, who likes to be in the driver's seat who I don't need help, I don't need help, I can do it on my own, I can do it on my own. And as a result, I think that yeah, I've had failures, because I tried to do it all by myself. And it just doesn't work. You know. And so there's a great team building exercise called lost at sea. Google it, I won't go into detail as to what exactly it is. But you have to you fill out. They give you a list of things that maybe you need when you're lost at sea, and you fill them out what you think you would need from one to 15 or 16 or something like that. So you do it on your own. And then you you do it as a group? And then you find out, like, did you do better on your own? Or did you do better when you had someone helping you? And better meaning like, did you survive? lost at sea? Or were you eaten by sharks? Right? And time and time again, and the group that I did it with? Everybody did better with the group. Right? And so for me, and I learned that I took the Goldman Sachs 10,000 small business program, and it was part of that program. And the big part of that program is learning how to be part of a team and learning how to have people around you that make you better. And so I think my biggest failures came because I didn't ask for help. Because I always thought no, no, I can do this on my own, or I can handle this and quite frankly, I couldn't. And so it resulted in a failure resulted in a less than optimal outcome. It resulted in stress on me and and perhaps some mental and emotional anguish, when in fact, I could have just had a team around me ask for help. And that task probably would have been done better than if it's just me and so yeah, I always so when I said that line, I didn't have one particular person or event in mind, but rather that like sometimes you have to like suck it up, you know, and admit that you can't do things and it's okay. It's just part of life. Like I had interviewed a woman Her name's Stephanie Nikolaj and she said you know trying to do it all will keep you small and she's right. You know, you can it's hard to grow as a person as an entrepreneur as a clinician, my God if you just did everything I Your Own I mean, you'd be like, I don't know you'd stop growing from the day you graduated from college right from your PT program. So you you need the these people around you need people around you, who can lift you up and and make you a better person, a better clinician, a better entrepreneur, whatever it is. But you'll never be that evolved person if you're on your own, it's just impossible. 35:26 Yeah, I think, Karen, like the number of hats that you wear as a business owner, a podcast as a volunteer and advocate, right? You, you kind of need people like that in your ecosystem, and it for so many projects, and especially the bigger the project, it really does take a village, and you need people that specialize in certain aspects to come together as a team. You know, Tim and I have talked about this kind of checking, checking your ego at the door sometimes and just kind of leaving that, as you said, Karen, you know, kind of admit that you can't, you can't accomplish it all by yourself. So I that was a that was a really great answer. And, you know, I think you spoke to some of the points about being more introspective and having having an open mind as well. 36:09 Yeah, and being able to trust people, clearly, I have trust issues. But you know, I think finding like, like you guys said, like you found each other, you knew each other for many years, you have this really nice trust and bond. And I don't know, maybe it's like 20 years in New York has made me a cynical New Yorker or something. You know, but really finding those people that you can connect and trust that they have your back and you'll have theirs. I think it's really important. 36:37 I think, another question that I would have just to sort of elaborate on, obviously, we have a variety of individuals that are listening, right now clinicians, non clinicians, entrepreneurs, and one of the questions that we asked within the book is, what advice would you give to a smart driven college student or a young professional entering the quote unquote, real world? And I think one of the things that you mentioned, that was really valuable was that it is easy to say yes to everything, when you believe it will further your career, I would advise you to only say yes, the opportunities that align with your values and goals, as the saying goes, saying yes to one thing is saying no to something that might be a better fit. I think that's really powerful. Because I think we're in a society of more is better, or the perception that doing more is better. So knowing knowing who is listening to this and having the microphone if you would, for for a minute baseline question. Can you elaborate on that? Or if you had to give that sort of monumentous speech regarding that topic? I think that can be really valuable for a variety different people this? 37:48 Yeah. And I think that saying that saying yes to everything, or only saying yes to things that align with your values? I mean, yes, you have to really only say yes to things that align to your values. But I think that speaks to speak to that 30,000 foot view of society in general, and of social media and what we're seeing everyone else do, right, so you may scroll through your Instagram or Twitter, Facebook, Tik Tok, whatever it is, you're on. And you may say, Well, gosh, this person just, they wrote another article, or Gosh, this person speaking here, and they're doing this and they're starting an app, and they're, they've got a podcast, and how come I'm not doing all that? Should I be doing all of that, so I should be set? Why, you know, I need to be doing XY and Z and, and, you know, you've got that, that FOMO disease, you know, your fear of missing out, and then you bombard yourself with things that you think you should be doing because other people are doing them. But it's not even something you believe in, but you think you should believe in it? Because Because other people in the profession are doing it and look at how many followers they have, or, or look at all the success and I use that in quotation marks because we don't really know someone's true success out on social media, right? Because we only put the good stuff on social media, you're not going to put the shitty stuff on social media, right? And so I think this saying yes to everything. I think a lot of it is based on societal pressures, what you're seeing on social media, maybe what a colleague or someone that graduated with you like, oh my gosh, they already started their own practice. And I didn't do that yet. So I guess I have to do that. And I have to say yes to this, that the other thing and it's, I think you really have to especially now like take a step back. Know who you are, know your values know, know your what your individual mission statement is, right? I know you guys said you have a mission statement for your book, but I would challenge everyone like you have your own mission statement as whether it's a clinician or you're in academia. But really you have to know deep down what your values are, what you're willing to take and what you're not willing to take, and, and really know yourself in a very deep, meaningful way. And I'm not saying I know myself in a deep meaningful way yet, but I'm trying, right? It doesn't mean and again, it doesn't mean you have to know that. So again, that's another thing people think, Oh, I have to do this now. But you know, in researching a talk for CSM that I'm actually doing with how do you Janemba my, the part of my talk is increasing your self awareness as an entrepreneur, and how do you do that, and I came across a really great quote, he who knows others, as wise, He who knows himself as enlightened by louts Lao Tzu, la Otz, you I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. And I saw that quote, and I thought, Oh, that's so perfect, right. Because as, as clinicians, and as physical therapists, our job is to get to know the patient in front of us or the student in front of us or whoever it is in front of you that oftentimes, I think we give away big parts of ourselves without taking it back and looking inward. 41:16 And so you kind of get this like, drain on your empathy, and your energy goes on as the day goes on. And I think that happens a lot. And in these kind of giving professions that we are in, whether you're a professor or a clinician, or even a researcher, right, you're going to give all of your energy to that. And then you see you're always looking outwardly all day. And do you take the time to come back at the end of the day and look at yourself inward? And say, Well, what, what am I doing? Like, why am I doing this? Am I doing it for the likes? Or to get more followers? Or like, what is your goal? Right? And so I think that's kind of where that saying no to things comes in, if you know, your why behind what why you're doing things. It will make it easier for you to say yes, and to say no, because it's going to align with with who you are. But that takes time, you know, so as a new as a student, or a new professional, maybe you do have that all figured out. And if you do awesome, come on the podcast, let's talk about it. How did you do it, but you know, if it takes time, and you have to kind of find your groove and, and really know, where you want your career to be headed. And some people do know that right off the bat, I didn't. But it doesn't mean that other people don't have a very clear path of where they want their career in life to go. You know. And, and there's obviously that changes here and there. But I think that's what I meant by that, quote is looking for those opportunities is to really know yourself, and what your How much are you willing to take? How much capacity do you have for XYZ? And if you don't have the capacity for it, then don't do it? Because it's going to be done like half assed, you know, and nobody wants 43:19 nothing. That's great. Yeah, great advice. Yeah, finding, finding your why and staying true to your why and finding things that that sort of line up with that to allow for you to not have that emotional, physiological draining. If you would find things that fill your cup not not dump your cup out. 43:37 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It's a nice way to put it. 43:42 Um, yeah. So Karen, thank you so much for, you know, kind of expanding and elaborating on some of those. You know, as Tim and I mentioned in the, in the beginning, I think when we were chatting probably before we were recording, Tim, and I want to probably get a podcast started at some point in the future. And, you know, we'd love for you to come on and be one of our guests, so we can talk more about this stuff. 44:06 Yeah, I'd be happy to. And now before we wrap things up here, where can people find you guys? Where can they get the book? Let's go. Go ahead. The floor is yours. 44:18 So we have a website. The website is movers and mentors calm on there is all of our social media information and links directly to Amazon where you can find both our Kindle version and paperback version. If you have questions, comments, please tag us send us stuff on social media. Tim and I love that we you know, we've been very fortunate we've had really engaged you know, an engaged audience up until this point and so you know, we're looking or looking for more of that and shoot us an email if you want and with with comments or feedback. We love to hear that as well. 45:00 Great. And how about where can people find you on social media? Oh, yeah. Yeah, 45:08 it's in those that thing tendons got our handles there. 45:11 Yeah. So my, you can message me on Instagram. But Tim Reynolds DPP would be my thing. That's my Twitter routes, and would be my Instagram. And we'll send you that Karen. So you can sort of tag along for the podcast. But I like Brian was saying, I think the opportunity to interact with our, with our audience is one of the most exciting things, getting somebody that reading the book from South America and is so excited to receive the book is one of the highlights of our day. And I think having the opportunity to have our our audience also send us Who do they think should be the movers and shakers in our potential upcoming volumes of this would be something that we'd really appreciate. There's so many people within the profession that we do not know of yet. And so obviously, appreciate having their insight and input in that as well. 46:08 So I'm at at Bryan, Bryan, Gaskey, and Instagram and then we're at movers and mentors, both on Instagram and Twitter. 46:16 Perfect. And all of that will be in the show notes at podcasts at healthy, wealthy, smart, calm. So before we wrap up, what is question I asked everyone, what advice would you give to your younger self? So let's say fresh out of PT school at Ithaca? What advice would you give yourself? 46:36 I would tell myself, stay curious. Because I find that when I'm curious and asking questions, that means I'm engaged. And I think engagement. If it aligns with your your purpose and your passion, then you have kind of all three things in alignment. And that, you know, lends itself to a happy, fruitful and hopefully, you know, effective career. 47:05 Excellent. Tim, go ahead. 47:08 And I would say sort of piggybacking off what we were talking about earlier, Aaron would be continue to search for the why. And it's okay not to know. And I think that's one of those things where finding your why and staying true to the values is one of those things I'll add to life journey, continue to search for that throughout the lifespan. But I think actively checking back to is this lining up with my Why would be one of the things that I would want to do, either from a journal reflecting standpoint, or just from like a quarterly check in. But then also, the acceptance of it's okay, not to know not necessarily not to know what your y is, but not to know certain things in part of your life. Um, and I think being 20 to 2324 and try to navigate your 20s. And I'm thinking that everybody in that sort of FOMO aspect is having the solutions and answers. And it is okay that you do not know yet you are enough, you will be enough, challenge yourself and have the opportunity to allow for that growth and expansion. 48:23 You guys, that is great advice. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast and sharing your book. Again. It's movers and mentors, and it's available on amazon.com. Go to their website, go to the social media. Everything again is that podcast out healthy, wealthy, smart, calm. One click, we'll take you to any thing you need for both Brian and Tim. So thank you so much, guys, for coming on. 48:49 Thanks for having us, Karen. Yeah, thank you, Karen. 48:53 Pleasure and everyone. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Dr. Sylvia Czuppon, Associate Professor of Physical Therapy and Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine, talks about balancing her role as an academic with her role as a clinician. More about Sylvia Czuppon: Dr. Sylvia Czuppon received her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 2000, Master of Science in Physical Therapy in 2002, and her clinical Doctorate in Physical Therapy in 2011, all from Washington University. She received her Certification as an Orthopaedic Clinical Specialist from the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties in 2010. Her work has been published in British Journal of Sports Medicine, PM&R, Physical Therapy, and Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. Dr. Czuppon is currently an Associate Professor of Physical Therapy and Orthopaedic Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Missouri. She divides time between outpatient clinical practice treating musculoskeletal pain patients and teaching orthopaedic content in the professional DPT curriculum at Washington University. She has given local, state, and national presentations on lower extremity injury rehabilitation and return to sport. She volunteers her time educating coaches, parents, athletes, and the community about youth injury prevention strategies. To learn more, follow Sylvia at: Twitter: @czuppons Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:03 Hey, Sylvia, welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy to have you on. 00:07 Thanks for having me, Karen. 00:08 Of course, of course. And, you know, we were talking before we went on the air about, you know, not seeing people in person and going to conferences. And the last time we saw each other was in Vancouver, at the third annual World Congress of sports, physical therapy. 00:30 Yes, right. That's right. Yeah, 00:32 I think that's correct. Yeah. 00:33 I can't believe it's been that long. 00:34 I know. I know. 2019. Right. Beginning of 2019. 00:39 I think it was. Yeah, it was COVID. Year, but it was before all that stuff. Yeah, yeah, 00:43 exactly. And, you know, shameless plug, the fourth annual World Congress on sports. PT is going to be outside of Copenhagen in August of 2022. Absolutely. So I encourage people to try and and your fingers crossed, it'll work. I keep saying 2022. It's gonna be the year. So shameless plug for that. Now, let's move into you. So today, we're going to be talking about life as a clinician and academia. And I love this topic, because I think there's a lot of clinicians out there who are wondering, well, how do I get into academia? How do I how do I do that? So why don't you give the listeners a little bit more about your background and how you did it? Sure. Yeah. So 01:38 I've been fortunate to be on faculty at Washington University in St. Louis for 15 years now. I think, approximately, it's been a while. And yeah, I sometimes I'm like pinching myself. I'm like, How is time flown that way? How 15 years? Yeah. 15 years? I graduated in 2002. So yeah, yeah, it is, oh, my gosh, I 02:05 can't believe it, I can't believe it. 02:07 So. So when I, when I joined the faculty, honestly, it was it was a nice, it was a nice mix of events. When I came out of PT school, I knew I wanted to do a little bit of teaching, but the Washington University at least, recommends that you have about a year of clinical practice under your belt before you join an academic institution. Like lab assisting. So that's how I got my start, I started lab assisting in classes that had orthopedic content. And when a position on the faculty opened up, I, I basically jumped at the opportunity got lucky enough to be hired. And away I went. So when I first started, my split, I think was 90% of my time was in clinical practice. And about 10% of my time was in, it was in teaching and it was all a lab assisting. And over the years, that is at has morphed considerably. I'm about 5050 right now. So I spent 20 hours a week in the clinic and 20 hours a week, teaching or doing teaching related things. And it's been a I don't think I'll ever go below that. But who knows what will happen. But I like that balance that I've struck right now, I can't ever see myself coming completely out of the clinic into teaching, like some of my colleagues have done, you know, you go to PT school to become a clinician, you don't go to become an educator, otherwise I go to, you know, to get my teaching degree. And I think that's probably been one of the biggest challenges is I am a PT, learning how to provide high quality education without an education degree. So there's been a bit of a learning curve associated with that as well. 03:42 And what do you feel are the advantages of being a clinician and, and working in academia? So what does your clinician hat bring to your students? 03:55 Yeah, you know, I think it's interesting. So, um, as a clinician, what is nice is I can give them I don't want to call it real world application, but it really is. So they students, we teach them in the ideal scenario, like, Okay, your your patient comes in, they have this positive test this positive test this positive test, what must be their diagnosis? Is any patient ever that cookie cutter clean No, 99% of the time, they're not right. So we teach our students in the best case scenario, the easiest ways to understand and so being a clinician, I can still give them a little bit of perspective, but like, here's where the gray areas come in. And this is why we teach you that ideal scenario so that you recognize the ideal, but here's how you can kind of think more with the clinical hat on it's a little bit similar to being like a clinical instructor. I think that's the greatest part about being a clinical instructor and shameless plug for those of you that are out there that are not clinical instructors. We need a lot more of them there. You know, our students are. It's such a rewarding experience. It really is. It's time consuming, don't get me wrong, but it is very, very rewarding, but I'm so be so being a clinician and being able to, to give the clinical the true clinical perspective on some of the things that students is learning, I think can be, can be invaluable. Like I have students all the time. They're like, Sylvia, this this sounds like a load of hooey like this doesn't even make sense, like help me understand when I would ever do this, and to be able to tell them look, you know, this is exactly why you need to know this level of detail, or this is why as a, even though, you are determined to go into sports, physical therapy, or you're determined to go into orthopedics. This is why you need to understand neuro for example, like, this is why they teach you neuro related things. I think I posted on Twitter, you know, like a couple of weeks ago, I've been to patients this year, that I think I'm, you know, not to toot my own horn or anything, but it's unfortunate, these people fell through the cracks, I think, in referring them out, both of them have gotten a diagnosis of ALS that nobody caught before this point. And it was based on what history they had given me, as well as some of the signs and symptoms that I saw with it within them. They referred to me like one had scoliosis, and horrible back pain, and another one that was a total knee replacement. And those are not diagnoses, you would expect to have ALS diagnoses associated with them. But some of the other things they were describing, it was terrifying. And just, again, like these are things to help students understand that they all do go together, you're treating a person that doesn't come in with a strict diagnosis, you're treating a whole person. And they don't always get that in the education setting when we're giving them fabricated cases. 06:27 Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And that's, that's amazing, by the way, from a clinical standpoint, that you were able to refer them to the right people to get the right diagnosis. Yeah. And that's, you know, and again, that's where physical therapists come in. And I'm sure that this is part of your teaching to your students that, you know, we can be that kind of primary care provider, you know, and even the second opinion, 06:56 sure, sure, yeah. And it is, it is one of those, you know, Missouri is not a direct access state. And so it's interesting, like teaching in a non direct access state, because we do typically get the patients they have the referral, it's generally pretty accurate, but you get some of these that fall through the cracks. And it's why we get the training that we get as physical therapists, you know, for those scenarios. But even again, in a non direct access state, these patients had been screened by other physicians, and it possibly just the complexities of their care, it just things got missed. So 07:33 amazing. Well, now, let's talk about what your responsibilities are, as a clinician, educator, so if you want to break it apart clinician educator, separately, or just let because I think it's important if people are interested in in, going in this direction, they need to know what it entails and what their responsibilities. Sure. 07:59 So I think it's a little bit different if you're so so my position is a faculty member means that I split my my time, assume a 40 hour work week, you know, nobody who actually works that when they're a faculty member on any any academic program, but, um, so I split my time for many people that come from a physician, whether lab assistant, in addition to holding a full time job, that's usually hours, in addition to whatever your hours are in a week. So when I was working as a lab assistant, before I joined faculty, I was working 40 hours a week plus lab assisting X number of hours a week, so there was a little bit of that, because very few employers will give you that time off and say, Oh, you want to live six, eight hours, we sure only work 32 hours here, like, it's very difficult to get that. And then depending on when the classes are during the day. So we have labs from like one to three, some people couldn't do that it's smack in the middle of prime, you know, treating hours. So that is definitely a consideration that people want to make. If you're working part time, it becomes a whole lot easier. Your schedules are a lot more flexible, as a faculty member, so I have 20 hours a week, again, dedicated to patient care, 20 hours for teaching. So in my patient care responsibilities, I basically have a set schedule that is has to be designed around the times that I'm supposed to be in class. So that has to probably be the worst for the person for my for my clinic boss who has to come up with the clinic schedule. He's working around everybody's class schedules and the times that we can actually physically be in the clinic. And so I treat in our clinic, we have a one on one model, so we don't overlap patients, you know, and so that's, that's really nice. We do have physical therapy assistants that we work with as well. And so I balance my caseload, I feel like any like I would anywhere else, I have autonomy to decide when I want to delegate when the patient needs, needs to come back to CV, frequency, duration, all of those kind of standard, standard types of things. Um, I am fortunate because I've been there long enough that I do get a little bit of flexibility and asking for the patient. Two types that I want to see. So I love the postoperative knees and any knee, really. So I do get a little bit more of those than maybe some others do seniority, it's great. And then my academic hat is complicated. So I'm depending on what semester in the year that we're in. And we're also going through a curriculum renewal right now, which is a whole nother whole nother topic of discussion. But in some semesters, I am a course master for for a class. And so that entails doing everything you would expect from a course to making sure the syllabus is up to date, to organizing exams, practicals, lab assistants, supplies, outside lectures, patient labs, etc. to an other the other semester I am, quote, unquote, just a course assistant, so facilitating the course master with all of those duties. So those hours are kind of wrapped up in our actual academic time. So if I have 20 hours a week, and I'm only in lab for 12 hours, my other eight hours are supposed to be spent doing all these other behind the scenes things which are, which easily kind of add up. So it is a little bit of a mix, and the curriculum renewal that I was talking about. So Wash U is going towards more of competency based education, which I think is the movement in education as a whole. And so we're we're in the beginning stages of that our first year classes going through the start of our new revised curriculum, and I am helping to craft the second year curriculum. So that's a huge task, taking what we currently have reorganizing it, restructuring it into an even better product than what we currently have. So there's a lot going on, that is certainly more than 20 hours a week. So yeah. 11:49 And can you explain competency based education versus what's currently happening? I don't know if that's like opening a huge can of worms. But let's go for 11:59 Yeah, yeah. It's also challenging my my full understanding of this, because it's all it's all this is like a complete foreign language. It's like going through, as I as I kind of alluded to earlier, I'm going through, I'm becoming like, I feel like I'm going through to get my education degree in the process of learning how to teach the this material better. So with the competencies, it's essentially like saying, Okay, you're competent in gosh, there's domains, there's, there's all sorts of terminology, but basically saying that, like, okay, that you have this one domain of patient and client care, within that you have different competencies, like, I'm able to take a, I'm making stuff up, because I don't know them off the top my head, but like, able to take a complete history for like, able to do communicate with respect and dignity for the patient and care provider, like things like that. So there's different things that this student is now having to pass and show competence in these competencies, a pass individual competencies, versus getting a grade in a class to say, you're good enough for that grade, it could be really strong in one area, but really not great and another, but their overall grade is enough to move them forward. We want to kind of raise the bar a little bit and say, You know what, that was good. But we can do better. And taking it to like each one of these competencies you need to pass in order to continue on curriculum. Got it? 13:15 Got it? Well, that makes actually makes a lot of sense. 13:19 Does now trying to make every lesson plan, every lecture that you give mapped to every competency that you have is a whole nother topic of discussion. Yeah, 13:32 good luck. Yes. Yeah. Good luck with that. And now something that you kind of alluded to before, which I want to dive into is, so your 20 hours practice care, 20 hours teaching, and I put 20 hours in quotation marks, right? So we know as clinicians, it's always more than 20 hours, right? And in teaching Gosh, it's definitely more than maybe what you signed up for. So how do you and here comes the question, how do you balance all of that with the rest of your life? Because you've got kids? 14:09 I've got two teenagers. Yes, got a dog. 14:12 I've got two dogs, actually two dogs, you've got a home, you have got a life outside of all of this. So what do you do to balance it all? 14:22 Yeah, so that was probably the most challenging thing that if I could have gone back in time and talk to my younger self, I would have been like, don't say yes to everything. That was probably the first thing that nobody really ever told me. Because I thought that if I said, No, nobody would ever asked me to do anything again, you know, you feel like this. Oh, this is a fantastic opportunity. I don't know where the time is gonna come out of but I really want to do it. And so I just started I would say at the time yes to pretty much anything that sounded interesting. And even yes to some things that I was like, I'm not sure if this is what I want to do, but I feel like if I don't say yes, I'm going to lose this. They're going to think I'm not interested in it. Think so, naively when I was when I was a younger faculty, um, that's what I did, I said yes to literally everything and almost put myself in a horrible spiral of I had so many issues in terms of that work life balance, I didn't have any it was work, work work. And then life was like a tiny fraction of that. And that was when my kids were little, I've got teenagers that are 17 and 14 now. Um, but what I discovered over the years was that those opportunities are at least and I still believe this, if those opportunities were meant to be, they're going to come around again, if people really want you, they value your expertise and your knowledge and your skill set, they will come asking around again. And you know, just saying no, one time, and just even saying like, No, you know, what, now is not the right time, I'd love to help you out. Can you come back again, like, you know, if you have another project, just ask me. I mean, hopefully I'll have time at that point, you know, there's no, there's good ways to not just firmly shut the door right to leave that still open. Um, so I've found a better balance for myself now, because I've figured out what is super important for me, and what is not, like really important. So I started saying no to different class commitments that I had previously done, because it was it was stuff that was okay. But it was not my passion in teaching. And so I started whittling down to the things that that made me honestly, the maybe the most happy to think about teaching or be involved in. And when I started doing that, I did become happier with with how that balance was shaping up, because some of that work really wasn't work anymore. You were enjoying doing it, versus looking at it and saying, Man, I got three more hours of this that I've got to prepare for, and I'm just not feeling it. You know, there's a reason nobody's ever asked me to be an anatomy lab assistant. And it's, I mean, enjoy anatomy. Don't get me wrong, but the level of detail I just, that would that was not my forte. No, that was not my forte. And it's like, I want to know the applications and things that I'm interested in. But some of the things that they have to learn for PT school, it just wasn't wasn't in my wheelhouse. You know? Yeah. So it's like, things like that, where, where I just prioritize a little bit better. 17:06 Yeah. And I was gonna follow up question I was going to ask is, How did you? Like, what methods did you use to decide what was best for you? And what methods did you use to break down? Like, no, like, this is a No, maybe not forever? But uh, no, for now, this might be a no forever. This isn't a solid? Yes. Do you know what I? 17:30 Yeah, yeah, it wasn't in certainly not easy. Um, it came again, across several, several years to try to figure that out. So part of it came down to okay, I was lab assisting in multiple classes. And did I really want to stay lab assisting in that context? If the context, if there was a, there was an immediate hesitation in my answer, then I thought, okay, that can't be the number one priority that I really want to stay in that class. So then I started adding up hours, and how many hours a week? Or really, am I spending in that class? What could I replace it with? Um, is there another opportunity right now that I want to replace it with? So it was sort of like, figuring out the timing of things would be one thing? And then some of it was just just deciding, okay, well, I know it's gonna throw me over the, the 20 hours or whatever that I have right now. Am I okay with that for a little while. And for a period I was and then now that I'm older, I'm not, you know, I've got I've got a, I've got a teenager that's going to be leaving the house in two years. And I've decided, you know, what this would, this is the time I actually I want to spend with her, you know, not that I didn't want to spend it with her as a little kid. But now I'm like, feeling that like, empty nest feeling starting to grow. And I'm like, I don't want to miss, you know, all the things that she's doing. And, and so I've just prioritize, you know, what, no, I'm gonna say no to that. Or I'm gonna say, you know, I can't do this this year, or I can only do this for part of the time, like, admissions committee, you know, figuring out who we accepted to our program. Like, well, I can't do it the whole year, but I can do it for part of the year Will that be okay, you know, and try to work out compromises with the people that are there looking for my time. 19:11 I love it. And, you know, so often women have such a hard time with this. Yes, you know, yes. Because we think if we say no, like you said, That's it, we're done, or we're gonna be labeled difficult, or, you know, someone that you know, she doesn't, she's not interested. We'll never get back to that. Right. So I think it's, as a woman, we really have to kind of get over that kind of thinking and and realize like, Hey, if you say it's a no for now, but not a no forever and the people are like, Oh, God, she was setting it up, well, then they're probably not your people. Right? And that's okay to let that go as well. Right. 19:52 I think what also complicates it a little bit is this whole Superman thing, right, like women that believe they can literally do everything. So you've got to be the best parent, you've got to be the volunteer at all the PTO, whatever school stuff, the sporting team, the in then at school, and then it works the same thing, I got to be able to handle this whole load and show nobody a crack in my facade, you know, so that they can see that I can do it, you know, and if I do you crack, then they're gonna think that I'm weaker, you know, just stereotypes that way. I think that's obviously it's really unfortunate that that still exists. Um, but, uh, I, we're not super human, like we have, you know, we have breaking points too. And we need to know what those are for ourselves for our own sanity, you know, for the sanity of our family members, our friends, all the people around us, you know, the pets, yo, all of that. So, 20:43 yeah, and your students as well, like Have, have you ever kind of displayed that vulnerability, whether it be to your employer, obviously, your family, and that's a different story, but maybe to your employer or to the university, to say like, I'm reaching a breaking point. And so how did you do that? 21:04 Yeah, definitely. to the employer. Um, yeah. So So there have been times where and unfortunate our program director, gammon Earhart is amazing. And her predecessor, the CCD singer, was was great, too. And they've always been wonderful with this sort of open door policy. So when you hit that point, or you feel like you're coming up to that point, I felt 100% comfortable going to them and saying, Hey, guys, look, I am, I'm over my head right now. And I don't know what to do. Like, I really need some help. And they kind of talk you down a little bit and say, Okay, well, how can we make this better, I have been very fortunate to be supported in that role. Same thing with even my immediate supervisors within the clinic. Same kind of idea. I had some personal struggles earlier this year, unrelated to COVID. And having and knowing that I had that support system, by being in a good place, I think this is true of any job. But being in a in a in a supportive environment, where they were like, take the time that you need to get your your self. Right. You know, it was it was very nice to know that I had that kind of support. 22:12 Yeah. And so I think the moral here is, it's okay. Absolutely, to let people know that you're not okay. And it's okay to be vulnerable. And if you're the people you're working with or for don't accept that, then I think it's a clear sign to say, Well, wait, wait a second, what am I doing here? 22:38 Right, right. Yeah. And I would love to say like that, I have been fantastic. And always being vulnerable. That is definitely a lie. Nobody, nobody, nobody, nobody is and I, I, you know, grew up in a, in a, in a household where perfection was like, required, it wasn't even, you know, it was it was an expectation, just as you know, my hair is black. And it will say, well, it's gray now, but that it'll say one color like it was the expectation you will be perfect you will be you will not show or have any flaws. So bringing that into a scenario like I am in right now and telling somebody I'm not like I'm vulnerable, I'm hurting, I need help, like even asking for help was was a huge, huge deal for me. But again, I had I had a good support structure, even within my workplace environment to allow me to do that. 23:24 Yeah. And it is, it's hard to ask for help, you know, because because you don't want people to think you can't handle it. All. Right. Right. Right. So asking for help is I know, I have a really hard time asking for help. But I'm getting better at it. Yeah. But it is, it's hard to reach out, it's hard to ask for help. Because you're afraid that someone will maybe think of you as less than or incapable or whatever, you know, all those bad things that spin around in your head, right? 23:55 Or just that if they're thinking about asking you to help out with something that you really want to do, they're not going to ask you anymore, right? Like, you know, and kind of where I'm at as a as an associate professor trying to rise to the professor level in a couple of years, trying to take a larger leadership role in our curriculum, there was definitely a fear of well, wow, if I tell them that I can't handle what I've got right now. There's no way they're going to ask me to do X, Y, or Z. So do I risk doing that? Or do I just drown? And I wasn't willing to drown? No, no, no job is worth that. My personal happiness was not worth that. And again, fortunately, everybody was very understanding the the fear that I had built up in my head was no near nowhere near what I experienced at all. Like it wasn't there. They were like, You know what, we get it. Take the time that you need, it's fine. We'll figure it out. And we'll help you figure it out. We'll give you whatever resources you need, whatever support you need. So it was wonderful. It's really wonderful. 24:47 Yeah. And it's so important to kind of voice that because like you said, you're trying to kind of climb up this academic ladder. So if you never voiced that maybe you would never, you would never reach that Professor level. because you would have burned out left. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. So why not put those fears out there and and find the things that like not to use Marie Kondo here. I don't know if you know Marie Kondo she's so Marie Kondo is like this organizational guru. And her thing is if it doesn't bring you joy, get rid of it. Yeah. And so I wrote that down when you were talking about how, you know, anatomy lab, not for me doesn't bring me joy. This does. So I'm sticking with this. And and what you find is when you do the things that bring you joy, this sort of Marie Kondo method, I mean, she doesn't like, you know, does this shirt bring you joy? And if it doesn't know, this book, this, you know, tchotchke, whatever it is, but you can you can apply those principles, I think, in this scenario, when deciding what to say yes, and what to say no to? And even if you have nothing else on your plate at the moment, you can still say 25:58 no, sure. Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. 26:02 You can still say no, and that's okay. Absolutely, well, this oh my god, I'm so glad that we talked about this is so good. So let's, let's talk about now, I would love to get from you, maybe two or three pieces of advice that you would give to a clinician who's trying to break into the world of academia. Yeah, 26:27 so, um, I think with with clinicians, the first thing is that you've, you've got to know what your, what kind of teaching you want to do, right. So like, if you're, if you're an orthopedic just being happy with, I'll take any orthopedic class, that could take you from going geometry and manual muscle testing, to examination and treatment kind of thing. So knowing sort of what level you want to be involved in helps. Because when you're then approaching the education division director of a program, that's usually who you send your resume or your CV to, when you're interested, they can have a better idea of whether there's a need honestly, in the in the curriculum, for another lab assistant for another lecture, if there are certain topics that you know very well, that you are passionate about, that he would love to lecture on. I'm even offering that up, like, hey, you know, I have a special interest in blood flow restriction training, but I'd love to be able to share that with your students. You know, this is my experience and background with that, let me know if there's there's any any availability for that, I think that's that's another part of it. I do think that it is, um, it is nice if you have a connection to the school, I mean, obviously, like, I got fortunate, I graduated from Washington at school, I'm now in faculty here. So I already had a connection to the program, it made it easier for me to get my foot in the door, because they already knew me as a student. And then as a clinician, because I was in the area. I do believe it is harder when you don't have those connections. But that's where I think networking in general is huge, right? So like you and I, we met through the Twitter verse, and then of course in Vancouver, but like making connections because people that you connect with have connections elsewhere, right. And they might know, just in talking to you. They might say, Oh, wait, I remember Sylvia said that they were looking for X, Y or Z at their at Wash U, maybe you should reach out and talk to her and see if there's anything going on. You know, I think connections are the other part that that people value, but you don't necessarily value maybe as much as you should. As a clinician, I think I take for granted that. And I don't know, if you feel the same way, we travel a lot, we get to go to a lot of conferences, we get to get a lot of all these pre COVID, we went to a lot of conferences. And that's where a lot of the networking happened, right. Clinicians do have to take continuing education in order to keep their their licenses active. But I feel like clinicians are probably taking the cheap local easy place near them to take on it because they don't probably have the benefit, always a funding behind it like I do at an academic institution. And I think that's, you know, you do what you have to do, but finding other ways to network, whether it's through your state organization, like the Missouri Physical Therapy Association here, through the national organization through some of the sections like sports section, ortho section, you know, getting involved that way to make connections, you don't have to attend conferences to do this, but you can get involved. I mean, everything's through zoom right now, you know, and so being involved that way to make connections can get you in the door in other ways. And I think that's probably an underappreciated part of the whole, how do I get my foot in the door? 29:41 Yeah, I would agree with that. And I love all the options that you just gave for clinicians and even students who are thinking, hey, one day I want to do both. Sure, right. So let's know what kind of teaching you want to do. Reach out to people in the school if you have a connection if you don't have a connection start making those connections. Absolutely right. And as a student, I think connecting through whether it's a PTA in general, or the components or your state is a great way to do that. And I would also say, stay in touch with the with your professors. 30:17 100% 100%. Yeah, I mean, and your clinical instructors as well, I mean, for me, my first job coming out of PT school, was because I went back to talk to one of my clinical instructors, and she's like, Hey, by the way, we have a job opening, would you be interested in applying? And I said, Oh, I'm not sure. And she goes, Well, I already submitted your name. And literally, that's how I landed, my first job was like, Okay, well, I guess I have to like, contact them now. So it was great. Yeah. 30:41 Yeah. I love it. I love it. Okay, so now, as we start to kind of wrap things up, is there anything that maybe we didn't hit in the conversation that you came in? Like, ooh, I definitely want to talk about this. Did we miss anything? 30:55 The one thing I will say is, is being on faculty, what did help me was naturally meshing and getting myself a mentor on the faculty. So not all academic institutions, like I know why she didn't have it at the time. They didn't really have like sort of a mentoring program for new faculty joining. And I don't know if this is true for all academic institutions. But for anybody that's interested in doing that, or joining an academic institution, as a clinician, academic, or as a researcher academic, is understanding if there is some kind of mentoring program because without the guidance of my mentor, Marcy Harris, Hayes, there is no way I'd be where I was at today, Marcy was like, kind of like my voice of reason, she was the one that was just like, Okay, you your interests are like humongous Sylvia, you need to narrow it down a little bit, you cannot keep saying yes to everything. She was the one that pushed me in certain directions, because she knew that a gentle nudge would help me get to where I wanted to be, even if I didn't want to take that leap for myself. If I was doubting myself, she would be the one that would say, you can you can do this. She was the first person that put me in front of a crowd of 300 people at CSM. So I have a lot to say, and I never would have, I genuinely never would have done that without for encouragement. And her understanding that I was ready for it. As well as it was something that was going to help me in the future. And that I'd appreciate it later on down the line versus my fear, again, of doing it on my own, would have prevented me from getting that far. So so definitely identifying a mentor. And again, this is for clinicians, even to in the clinic, like don't go into a clinic, and just expect to just learn it all just on your own or through Con Ed guy, I would hope that whatever clinic somebody joins into, has some kind of mentoring program as well. So that you can learn you can shadow you can get experience from other people. And it's different than just being able to say to your your pod mate, hey, I had this patient that was a little complicated. What do you think like truly having a mentor, I think is a big, big thing. To help enhance the level of clinician you are as well as again, if you're an academia, how to get up that level ladder and how to navigate it to I think that was the other thing Marcy gave me was some advice on how to how to get a little bit further because she was ranked ahead of me, and she had some great personal experience. Pros and cons, I guess you could say, to navigate that. 33:25 I love it. I think that's great advice. And I love how you said not only get up the ladder, but navigate it as well. Right? Because there's a lot of things that are gonna push and pull you along each rung of that ladder. Absolutely. So I think that's amazing advice. Okay, where can people find you if they need a mentor? Or they have questions? 33:47 Yeah, so Twitter's the easiest place. So I think you've got my contact information, but I am on Twitter, and an email is perfectly fine as well. So they can find my email address just to the washi website. Or really, if you just Google my name, it's pretty impossible to miss. There's not that many Soviet coupons out in the world. There's none, in fact, so it's pretty easy to find me I come up readily on a Google search. 34:10 Excellent. And we will have all the all of those links in the show notes. And now I have a question that I asked everyone at the end, but you already answered it, but I'm gonna ask it again. And that's what advice would you give to your younger self? 34:27 Yeah, totally. My younger self would be learn how to say no, and how to prioritize what you really want to do. prioritize what's going to make you happy. What's going to make you the clinician, the person that you wanted to be when you grew up, you know, because if you sacrifice what you want for what everybody else wants, you're not going to be happy. Perfect, I 34:52 love it. Thank you so much. I appreciate this conversation so much. I appreciate you for coming on. This was wonderful. So thank you so much. 35:00 Yeah, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to be on I appreciate it 35:03 too, of course, and hopefully we will see each other in person soon. That 35:07 would be fantastic. Indeed, indeed. All right, and everyone, 35:10 thank you so much for listening, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart.

In this episode, Physical Therapist at Kelly Hawkins Physical Therapy, Meagan Duncan, talks about creating safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community. Today, Meagan talks about trauma-informed care, navigating trauma during the subjective exam, and the importance of consent. How can PTs make clinics safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community? Hear about the discrimination faced by the LGBTQ+ community, doing community advocacy work, and get Meagan's advice to her younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "Gay men can undergo sexual violence at twice the rate of straight men. 50% of transgender people will experience some kind of sexual violence in their life. It's even more if they're a minority." "Being trauma-informed is important in any discipline because you don't know what somebody has been through." "I think it's about really small gestures." "Starting with paperwork, gender has every option you can think of. If it's a paper form, gender's a blank space." "We have small flag stickers for every flag that you can think of with all the colours that represent different parts of the LGBTQ+ community." "Be more vigilant about asking for consent." "Asking for consent is something that should be ongoing and all the time." "Education is a big part of asking for consent, because in order to consent to something, people have to understand what it's going to entail." "Providing options Is a really important part of consent." "It's not patient-directed care. It's patient-centred care." "Don't just go around touching people without consent." "Find a niche. If you can find a niche that you are passionate about and that is needed, you are never going to struggle for work or for satisfaction." More about Meagan Duncan Meagan Duncan is a Chicagoland native who earned an associate degree as a Physical Therapist Assistant in 2013 from Kankakee Community College. She then worked for six years in an orthopaedic setting while earning a Bachelor's in Interdisciplinary Studies from Governor State University in Illinois. Later, she moved to Las Vegas to earn her Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from the University of Nevada Las Vegas in 2020. As a PTA, she developed and ran a pro bono clinic at her first post grad job in her hometown of Joliet, Illinois. She now practices in Las Vegas and specializes in pelvic health after completing a specialty clinical rotation with the VA Hospital in Las Vegas. Duncan currently works at Kelly Hawkins Physical Therapy, a prominent outpatient physical therapy company in the Las Vegas area. At Kelly Hawkins, she built a successful pelvic health program that she has overseen and grown over the past year and a half. Duncan also works for NPTE Final Frontier, a premier national physical therapy exam preparation company that works with domestic and foreign trained students to help them pass the board exam. In this role, she tutors PT and PTA exam candidates and assists them with content development. She advocates for students and professionals to balance life outside of physical therapy. Outside of her profession, Duncan enjoys hiking, biking, paddleboarding and anything she can do outdoors with her husband and dog. She is excited to welcome a new addition to her family soon, as her first child is due in a month. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Physiotherapy, LGBTQ+, Inclusion, Trauma, Pain, Discrimination, Sexual Violence, Advocacy, Consent, Pelvic Health, To learn more, follow Meagan at: Email: mduncan@kellyhawkins.com Website: https://www.kellyhawkins.com LinkedIn: Meagan Duncan Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:02 Hey Megan, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on. 00:06 Hey, Karen, awesome to be here. Thank you for having me. 00:09 Yes. And like I said in the intro, today, we're going to be talking about creating physical therapy space, a safe spaces for the LGBTQ plus community. So before we talk a little bit more about that, can you let the listeners know where your passion for this community comes from? 00:27 For um, so I guess I feel like I'm just kind of a fan of the underdog in any situation. And I can't say that I have personally experienced, like so much in this community, aside from having a lot of relationships with people, and seeing what they go through and what life looks like on that side of our world, because it's a very different experience from what I've had as a heterosexual, white female. So when I was in high school, I just kind of ended up best friends with a gay man. And he kind of brought me into the circle of his friends, which ended up being just a really large, wonderful welcoming circle of people on all spectrums of the LGBTQ plus community. So I got really interested in just kind of gay rights and things like that went to marches and did all of that. Tried to advocate for the community as whatever I need to do as a 16 year old, which was not very much. And now I found myself in this position that I can do something which is awesome. And it's not even necessarily something I thought about when I went into the niche that I'm in. But I am really happy to be able to finally say that there's like some baggage behind this lifelong commitment that I kind of said that I had towards the community, but was never really doing anything about it other than like, your like Facebook posts here and there that talk about, you know, advocacy or supporting a community that's not well supported. So I'm happy to be able to do something about it now. 01:56 And let's talk about what you can do, or what we can do as physical therapists to help support this community, because I'm sure a lot of people may be listening to this and say, Well, what does the community need? That's so different from the rest of of other communities? So what is it about this community in particular, that perhaps they're more exposed to certain things? Or do they not get the care that they need? So go ahead, I'll pass the mic over to you. 02:27 Yeah, absolutely. So just discrimination in general, it's a problem in so many realms of social issues, being gender and sexual preference, of course, is one of those huge ones. So people feeling like or actually having less access to healthcare, getting denied health care, or getting given less than optimal treatment, or not really getting the best of their provider because of discrimination or because of biases that those providers have. Likewise, they might be afraid to go to facilities or go get treatments for things that are going through because they've experienced poor care before. So my niche actually, is pelvic floor physical therapy. And in this, there is so much that I can do for the community and physical therapists as well. And I was thinking about this podcast and thinking, what actually makes my job so different from the way everybody should be treating everyone. And I think there's a lot to learn, aside from just treating in pelvic floor PT. But in pelvic floor PT, I see a lot of people in the community because they are much more exposed to sexual violence and sexual trauma. And that correlates really significantly with pelvic floor dysfunctions. So we know from studies that gay men can undergo sexual violence at twice the rate of straight men, transgender people will usually experience about 50% of people will experience some kind of sexual violence in their life, which is a huge number 50%. And then it's even more if they're a minority. So that's a huge community of people where like, most of them need our help or need pelvic floor PT, or need more support than they're getting. So I think that we can play a big role in advocating for people and making spaces where they feel like are welcome. Or be that person that they can come to and after bad experience, bad experience or bad experience in healthcare, they can come to you and feel comfortable. And that's a really great feeling from my end. And I hope that other physical therapists out that out there feel better experienced that because it's awesome. 04:29 And you know, when you're talking about sexual trauma, or sexual assault within this community, I mean, the thing that sticks out to me is trauma. And so there is more and more research. And I think more and more people are now aware of trauma informed care. So can you share with us some of the principles of trauma informed care and why physical therapists should care? 04:56 Yeah, so this is kind of one of those things I was thinking about. trauma informed care and pelvic floor physical therapy is like, every class every time, we're always talking about every continuing ed course, because the nature of the work is so intimate, and very personal. And we're asking questions that make people uncomfortable, and hopefully not too much, but putting people in uncomfortable positions a lot of times, and it takes a lot for somebody to even come into my office to tackle these issues. But I think we should all be kind of treating in that same way. Because we don't really know like, of course, I know, when people come in for pelvic floor PT, they're probably uncomfortable. Like most of the time, people don't really like, want to be there. They're there because they need it. But that goes for a lot of things in physical therapy, right? Like people don't want to have back pain and come in and like, a lot of people don't want to get like touched and massage like, that's not what they intended on doing. But here they are, because they need it. So being trauma informed in any discipline is really important, because you just don't know what somebody has been through. So talking about trauma informed care, I think understanding a little bit more about trauma is probably a good place to start. So I do kind of think everybody should 06:10 reflect a little bit on what that means. So I was thinking of a good example. And I think that trauma can be kind of like pain, where we don't have a measurable, like objective measure for like, what pain is or what trauma is. So I know if a patient comes in says they're in six out of 10 pain, I have a patient with that same diagnosis that might say they're in two out of 10 pain. Or maybe I see, let's say I see somebody with a knee replacement. And I know that like a good healthy knee should have zero degrees extension, right. Or before they leave the hospital, we want them to have 90 degrees of flexion. But like I can't say to somebody, like you have a 15 degree trauma contracture. Like that doesn't make sense. There's no reference point that we know of other than what that person's experienced. So it's important to understand that trauma is different for each person. And some people could be really traumatized by an event. And some people could not really be traumatized by the same event. And that could depend on what factors they have in their cultural background in their other life experiences or the lens that they see things through. So somebody could experience their parents getting divorced, and maybe they came out of that fine. And they're like, Well, I came out of that fine. I don't know why it's so hard for everybody else. But you don't know what it was like to experience that with these other issues around you with being a minority or having financial distress or anything else like that. So understanding traumas is the most important part first. And then when we talk about trauma informed care. And this is from a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, there's kind of the principles of trauma informed care, what does that mean? So the first part of that is to realize that trauma is a widespread issue. And it is invasive, and pervasive, and it affects people in a lot of different areas of their life. And then also realizing that there are pathways to potential recovery. After that, we should be able to recognize the five signs and symptoms of trauma. So recognize what is trauma look like? Sound like? How does that patient act? How can we pick up on if they're a traumatized individual. So seeing a patient being uncomfortable in your clinic, they might not make eye contact with you, they might not want to face you directly, you might see their body language is a little bit off, their arms are crossed. Things that we've all seen. We all have patients probably every day ranging anything from like that super bubbly, happy patient to the one that comes in and has done PT before and had bad experiences, and they're really unhappy. So recognizing what does that look like, and then responding by implementing that knowledge into practices and policies within just not just yourself, but the the facility as well. So using what you know, to actually change or adopt practices better, going to be more inviting or more informed and make more comfortable spaces for people that are traumatized. And then we have resisting retraumatization. And this, I think, is the most important part for us as clinicians. So thinking about what we can do to make an environment that does not correlate with any kind of trauma, anybody has had to make them have to revisit that. So and that could be anything again, like there's traumatic events that range from, you know, like really terrible sexual violence, and these are maybe things I hear about, but then there's also the trauma of like, having been misdiagnosed or having been told this or that by that provider or getting a hopeless diagnosis or being told that there's nothing that can be done for them. Those are things that we can actively try to resist re traumatizing that patient in. So being on honest and informative, making sure that we're not making false promise promises, but also that we're providing hope. And then thinking about what our space is like. And this is probably relative, maybe a little bit more for like LGBT, t plus LGBT plus community, where I am making sure that my space has signs that say All are welcome here. And things that make people feel invited, because they very possibly have had an experience before where they walk into a facility and like, immediately feel discriminated against or immediately feel like, this is not a place that I want to be here, this is not a place that's going to give me good care, and maybe the Carolinas without a dentist, but at any rate, they've experienced that and probably are very likely more than once. So I want to make sure that whatever I'm doing is not recreating any of that for them. 10:54 And when you are, understanding what trauma is, and really trying to understand the trauma of the person sitting in front of you, right, I would assume a lot of that comes through our subjective exam. So do you have any advice for therapists who are navigating these waters, even newer therapists perhaps are navigating or who maybe aren't, are not as well practiced in the art of the interview? Or in that process of, of that subjective exam? So do you have any like, what types of questions do you ask that kind of stuff? 11:34 Yeah, sure. Um, so I asked a lot of questions and pelvic floor PT. But I think the more important concept around that is, um, sometimes instead of asking questions, I, and that's not that we're talking at patients. But I do take a moment to do this. And if I am getting a sense from a patient, that they may have experienced trauma, that they're not going to share that with me. And that is probably more likely than not, especially on the first day, when I'm doing my initial evaluation, they don't know me, they don't trust me, they don't really want to share any of this with me, let alone even be there. So, a lot of times, I'll take the opportunity to talk about how trauma or how other experiences can relate to pain. So I might say to, let's say to my pelvic floor patients, I don't need to know or I don't need you to tell me any details or anything. But I am aware that trauma increases pelvic floor dysfunction increases pain, and it can really affect the way that people recover. So if there's anything that I can do during this treatment to make you more comfortable in any way, let me know if we need to stop anything. We're doing them, you know. So I might just take it as a piece of information, instead of asking a direct question, like making them tell me, maybe they'll do that later on in another session or two. Maybe I might need to know more at some point. But I've really never ran into that situation. A lot of patients will tell me the extent of it right there. They might do it another session or two. But it's not something that I really want to force out to people like day one, because if if I do that, like are they going to come back? Because that re traumatizing them? Have they been forced to talk about it before. I'm not a psychologist, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm maybe not the person that they want to share all that with. So I want to make sure they have the open door to tell me about it. But I'm not like dragging it out of them. 13:22 Yeah, that's, that's wonderful advice. I really love that. And the other thing is, that I heard a couple of times during kind of these principles is creating that safe space, creating that space, where like you said, Everyone is welcome. How do you have any other tips and it could be from the person at the front desk all the way to, to the therapist and every employee in between? So are their conversations with the all the employees who work at the within that space? And and this may seem kind of like a silly question, but I think it's important, but colors on the wall artwork, things like that. I think it makes a difference. Right. So what do you what do you think? 14:10 Yeah, so I think that maybe places are a little bit hesitant to, like, fly this giant rainbow flag outside their door, right? Like, I would totally do it if I have my own clinic, but I recognize that I'm like, you know, working we're still working in a world that like from a business model. Maybe we don't want to do that because we want everyone to feel welcome, right? But it doesn't really take much. I think it's about really small gestures. So in our clinic, starting from paperwork, like they fill out paperwork online. And gender, for example, has every option that you can think of. If it is a paper form, gender is a blank space, so that blank space leaves people the option to write how they identify. And I love that option because That's even better than having to choose from like an overwhelming amount of options, or not finding the option that you're looking for. So a blank space for gender is fantastic. And then what we have in our clinic, like I said, small gestures, I think small gestures are really the thing, we have very small little flag stickers, like on the Plexiglas from our front office. Just little flag stickers for like every flag that you can think of, or it has like all the colors that represent different parts of LGBTQ plus community. So that little flag makes such a big difference, because I'll tell you, a lot of our patients are not going to notice it, like your patients that don't identify in any of those ways are not even going to notice it. But those people that do are going to see it, and they're going to love it. And we get compliments on that all the time. They think like, Oh, my God, people are so thankful for this little tiny sticker, we got like four pack on Amazon for like, probably a couple bucks, you know, just doesn't take much. And then another thing that we have in our waiting area is a sign that says All are welcome here. And that's such a simple thing, because that's not offending anybody that's making all people feel welcome. And people that are looking for that in their space, they know exactly what you're talking about when they see that fine. And everybody else is just like, oh, that's a nice thing. And they might not think very much of it. But it's certainly still a good thing to hear like, older people are welcome. Younger people are welcome. Everybody's welcome here. So it's really easy option. 16:29 And I love that these are all really easy, inexpensive, and accessible ways to show that you are working hard on creating a safe space for everyone. And like you said, a safe space for the LGBTQ plus community who oftentimes can't find those safe spaces. 16:48 Yeah, yeah. Another another small thing that I do personally, because I want my patients before I even go into their room maybe to like understand that I'm an advocate, I just have like a rainbow water bottle. And that's what I drink out of that work. And they see that sitting on my desk, and maybe some other stickers on like my laptop and stuff like that. But something that they might see like, Oh, that's my therapist, and they see like a rainbow water bottle. And it's just like a little thing that makes them feel more comfortable. I love it. I love my water bottle, so everybody's happy. 17:19 And do you go out physically into the community for advocacy work or as part of the clinic just so that people know that you're there? You know, like, how, how does that work within your community? Because I'm sure there are people who I mean, I'm in New York City, right? So I talk about like a large amount of people, right? So how do people know how to find? So how do people, especially in these marginalized communities know how to find the people who are creating spaces for them? Yeah, 17:49 so most communities, I'm in Las Vegas have support centers or community centers that support or provide or refer to services like my own or other providers that they know, create these safe spaces. So we have a support center here in Vegas, I've spoken to a little bit, I'm not necessarily within everybody's insurance providers. So that makes things a little bit harder. I'm in pelvic floor PT, I get so many patients from all over. And I've had a very long wait time, it's been tough to go out and mark it. And I'm also leaving for maternity leave actually in a couple of weeks. So I have plans for when I come back to reach out a little bit more, but I have been swarmed with what I have. But going out into these community centers, just letting them know who you are dropping off some cards, I have done that. And that is a really good way to at least get started. Get your name or your clinic out there. And maybe you're not what every person is looking for. But if they have your card handy, and they are providing social services to somebody, they might say, it sounds like you could benefit from this I know a great physical therapist that you could go to. And then, of course, we're a little bit bound by insurances. And that's definitely something I see in my future is trying to provide a little bit more preventive care to people that are uninsured or under insured. But that's probably a future problem for me at the moment. Right. 19:18 Right. And I think that's great advice. So if you're in a city, reach out to local community groups, community centers, things like that, and I think that's a great way for you to get out and in the community and really make a difference. And now there's one more thing that I want to talk about before we start wrapping things up. And that is the importance of asking patients for consent. So you touched on this a little bit, right? But especially in the pelvic floor world. Where does this explained explain to the to myself and to the listeners, how you go about asking for consent And why this 20:01 is yeah, this is definitely like if we can take home anything from if listeners could take home anything, it's to be more vigilant about asking for consent. And I can kind of trace this back to like how I've evolved in asking for consent. And I think about an IC O I think probably hope I'm probably not the only one guilty of this. But when I started, I started as a physical therapist assistant. So way back, when I graduated as a PTA, I went to work at a facility where the, the clinic was pretty manually aggressive, a lot of manual therapy, a lot of kind of aggressive manual therapy, which can be a little jarring for patients that are maybe not prepared for that. But I think about how many patients, I just went into the room and like started palpating, or like, Okay, I'm going to check this and then just like put my hands on them. And I think now about like how strange it would be to just like, grab somebody like psi SS without like telling them where you're going, like grabbing the back of their hips or having them like face a wall and then touching their back. And that can be like a very, that can like reiterate some traumatic events for people being grabbed from behind. That's, it's, I can't believe that I did this being the person that I am now. But I did, I did it every day all the time. And I never really thought about consent, I just figured the patient was there, maybe the provider before me had probably done similar the same things as a PTA, so I assumed PT had done the same. And I just think how crazy that is. Now, to me, it just is like so out there that I would have done that. Um, but asking for consent is something that should be ongoing and all the time. So from the initial evaluation, and education is a big part of asking for consent, I think too, because in order to consent to something, people have to understand what it's going to entail. And for me and pelvic floor, that's certainly relevant because I do do internal pelvic floor exams. So they need to know exactly what I'm going to be doing. And I use a model to demonstrate and to talk about what that's going to entail, and then discuss that they have the option to consent to that or to not consent to that, if they don't, there's other things that I can work on that I can help with. So I don't want them to feel pressured, that they have to consent to anything that I asked for. So consent, those should be informing the patient pretty much every step of the way. So instead of saying, I'm going to check your pelvic alignment, nobody knows what that means, like our patients don't know what that means. So I might ask, Is it okay with you if I touched the front of your hips, and then that's how I started just kind of simple and explaining in layman's terms, what I'm going to do. And a lot of times, I'm asking a patient or giving a patient options. And this is kind of part of trauma informed care is enabling or empowering the patient to make choices or have options. So instead of saying, say I want to do soft tissue work, instead of saying, I will be right back, I'm going to go grab some lotion, and then the patient knows I'm going to do soft tissue, but they didn't get an option to consent to that. I just went to go grab it. And now they feel like they're stuck there. And I'm going to come back with lotion and they're going to get a massage and they don't have a choice. So I might say, I would like to work on this. This is why. So we can do that. If you don't want to do that. We can work on mobility in this other way. So that way they have an option for what they want to do or how they want to do it. So providing options, I think is a really important part of concern. Um, I think yeah, I think that's mostly what I mean with consent. 23:42 Perfect. Yeah, I think that's great. And listen, I used to do the same thing. And I can't believe I did that either. Yeah, just like walking into a room and just like touching. Like, I wouldn't want someone to do that to me. I can't believe I did that. 23:55 I know. And I wonder is that like, a time? A time thing? Like 10 years ago? Was it just more like then we're just more informed now? Or was I just like totally oblivious? Because that's certainly 24:05 possible. I think it's just we're more informed now. I'm gonna I'm gonna go with that, you know, and yeah, and and maybe a little bit of a being oblivious? I don't know. But you're right. Like, I would just come first of all stand up and you just be like, hands on the pelvis. And it's like, what is like, how, what, what was? 24:25 And like next to I think, like, we were just yeah, like not grabbing, 24:30 grabbing onto people's heads and everything. What's that about? I would never do that. Now. You know, even if I'm just going to touch someone's arm. I was like, I'm just gonna put my hands here if that's okay. And we're gonna. Yeah, it just makes so much more sense. And I love the fact that you tied that in with the patient education component. Because I think like you said, you can't have one without the other. It's just so important. 24:55 Right? And I think that we underestimate like how much the patient wants to be educated about things. So and that's a lesson, I think I've learned pelvic floor PT, because so many people did, like they don't even know they have a pelvic floor or what it does. So education's been a huge part of my practice, like the whole first session is really education and training, and bladder and bowel training and things like that. But patients want to know, they want to know all the details, like they love it, tell them so they know what you're doing. So they know if they want that done or not. 25:24 Yeah, absolutely. At your right patients want to know, and it doesn't matter the age, they want to know, what's going on with their bodies and and what they can do to be a part of it. So it's also a great way to empower your patient to understand and take control over their, over their bodies. You know, and and give, give the patient some autonomy and some confidence. 25:49 Yeah. And to give that the patient the opportunity to, like collaborate with you, instead of be told what's happening. So to have the opportunity for them to feel involved and to have a voice in their decision making and understand even why they're making a decision, like so that they might know. Yes, I do want this internal pelvic floor exam done. Because I want to know more about the tone of my pelvic floor so that I can know why I have pain or why I have difficulty emptying my bladder. I want them to be able to make that connection in their head and be able to consent to it. Knowing why. 26:21 Yeah. And it's all part of patient centered care. I mean, that's what we're all supposed to be doing. Right? Yeah, absolutely. It's not patient directed care. It's patient centered care. 26:33 Right. And just as relevant as it is for me and pelvic floor. I think it's the same anywhere else across the board. 26:39 Yeah, across the board. Absolutely. Well, I, you know, I want to thank you. I think this was a great conversation. I feel like I've definitely learned a little bit more about trauma informed care. So I thank you for that. Now, where can people find you? If let's say they have questions, they, you know, they want to know how they can implement some of the things you're doing in your clinic in their own clinics. 27:06 Yeah, sure. So I typically use my work email for anything like that. So that is M Duncan at Kelly hawkins.com. And I like I said, I'm not much of a social media person I wish I could say I was that's probably not the best way to contact me. 27:24 I know you're not missing anything. Don't worry about it. 27:27 Yeah, but I'm always happy to check emails and respond that way. For people trying to figure out where to start. I did want to mention CSM has a lot of great topics on this, I've certainly gotten a lot of information, or directed myself onto what things I'd like to learn more about by going to CSM and going to these discussions. There is some information on trauma informed care at CSM this year, as well as introductions to pelvic floor PT, for those that are interested. And there are always platforms and other lectures on what we can do for the LGBT Q plus community. Excellent. 28:04 Thank you so so much. And before we wrap up, I'll ask you the question I asked everyone. And that's knowing where you are now in your life and in your career, what advice would you give to your younger self? 28:14 That's fine to not just go around touching people. 28:18 Yeah. That advice to each other. 28:21 I think I'm fortunate that never really panned out to be anything too negative, but I would love to go back and not do that. But what I do tell people and recommend as far as career is to find a niche. So my niche is pelvic floor PT. Within that my niche is being passionate and treating the LGBTQ plus community treating patients that are transgender, that is a great niche to be in, not everybody is doing it, it is so needed. If you can find a niche that you're passionate about, and that is needed, you are never going to struggle for work or for satisfaction. Um, it really is kind of been if you build it, they will come situation. And people told that to me when I began pelvic floor pt. And that's what I did, I built a pelvic floor program, the company that I work for now. And like I said, I am very busy, very satisfied with the way my career has gone in. So find a niche and it's not something that every new student is going to know right away. But get out there and explore like go shadow and go find places that are outside your comfort zone. Like I wasn't I didn't think I was going to go into pelvic floor PT. I don't think a lot of us that end up in it do. It's maybe not something I would have thought to shadow I would have been like, that does not sound good. I don't want to do that. But again, outside your comfort zone, go shadow and find therapists that are doing things that you don't think you would ever do, and see if you can find somewhere that you're going to land and be successful. 29:50 I love it. That is great advice. Thank you so much, Megan. I really appreciate your time and your knowledge sharing with myself and the Audience So thank you so much yeah thank you and everyone thanks so much for tuning in and listening have a great couple of days and stay healthy Wealthy and Smart

In this episode, Associate Professor at the University of the Sciences and Director of BTE Laboratory, David Logerstedt, talks about monitoring and responding to load injuries on the knee. Today, David talks about the most common loading injuries on the knee, difference between external and internal loads, and how to improve tissue capacity. What is mechanical loading? Hear about David's most recent research paper on mechanical loading and the knee, how therapists can monitor and respond to loads, how clinicians can apply the information in the paper, and get David's advice to his younger self, all on today's episode of The Healthy, Wealthy & Smart Podcast. Key Takeaways "A lot of the stresses that cause the injury also are some of the same stresses that you can use to rehabilitate the injury." "Most of us have enough tissue capacity to walk, but we might not have the tissue capacity to run a 10k." "You really are trained to look at how the joint is reacting to the loads that you're placing on it. Measuring irritability is probably the best way to describe it." "Even just asking how they feel can give a lot of information." "If people understand the 'why', then maybe they're more likely to do it and follow through." "Don't say no. Always say yes to opportunities. Especially in that early career, if an opportunity comes along, take it." More about David Logerstedt David Logerstedt, PT, MPT, PhD is tenured Associate Professor at University of the Sciences and Director of BTE laboratory. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in health and human performance from the University of Montana and a Master of Arts degree in exercise physiology from the University of North Carolina. He earned a master's degree in physical therapy from East Carolina University and a doctorate in the interdisciplinary program of biomechanics and movement science from the University of Delaware. Dr. Logerstedt has been a practicing rehabilitation specialist for over 25 years and is board certified in sports physical therapy. He has presented his research on knee disorders at national and international conferences and has published in high-impact sports medicine journals on ACL injuries. He has co-authored several clinical practice guidelines on knee disorders. His goal to improve the implementation of clinical research into practical and accessible for all clinicians. Suggested Keywords Healthy, Wealthy, Smart, Knee Injuries, Loading Injuries, Tissue Capacity, Stress, Research, Rehabilitation, Recovery, Physiotherapy Resources: Effects of and Response to Mechanical Loading on the Knee To learn more, follow David at: Website: David Logerstedt's Bibliography Twitter: @DaveLogPT LinkedIn: David Logerstedt Subscribe to Healthy, Wealthy & Smart: Website: https://podcast.healthywealthysmart.com Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/healthy-wealthy-smart/id532717264 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ELmKwE4mSZXBB8TiQvp73 SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/healthywealthysmart Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/healthy-wealthy-smart iHeart Radio: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/263-healthy-wealthy-smart-27628927 Read the Full Transcript Here: 00:07 Welcome to the healthy, wealthy and smart podcast. Each week we interview the best and brightest in physical therapy, wellness and entrepreneurship. We give you cutting edge information you need to live your best life healthy, wealthy and smart. The information in this podcast is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as personalized medical advice. And now, here's your host, Dr. Karen Litzy. 00:35 Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. I am your host Karen Litzy. And today's episode is brought to you by Net Health so when it comes to boosting your clinics, online visibility, reputation and increasing referrals, net Health's Digital Marketing Solutions has the tools you need to beat the competition. They know you want your clinic to get found get chosen, and definitely get those five star reviews on Google. They have a fun new offer if you sign up and complete a marketing audit to learn how digital marketing solutions can help your clinic when they will buy lunch for your office. If you're already using Net Health private practice EMR, be sure to ask about his new integration, head over to net health.com forward slash li tz why to sign up for your complimentary marketing audit. And it's great, I use it and it works. So I highly recommend it. Now onto today's episode. So I'm really really happy to have Dr. David lager stead on the episode today. And we are talking about monitoring and responding to load injuries on the knee. So Dr. Lager stat is a tenured associate professor at the University of sciences and director of the BT EE Laboratory. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Health and Human Performance from the University of Montana and a Master of Arts degree in exercise physiology. from the University of North Carolina. He earned a master's degree in physical therapy from East Carolina University and a doctorate in the interdisciplinary program of biomechanics and Movement Science from the University of Delaware. He has been a practicing rehabilitation specialist for over 25 years he is board certified in Sports Physical Therapy. He has presented his research on knee disorders at national international conferences and has published in high impact sports medicine journals on ACL injuries. He co authored several clinical practice guidelines on knee disorders. His goal is to improve the implementation of clinical research into practical and accessible, make it practical and accessible for all clinicians. So yeah, so today we're talking about a new paper, that he co authored the effects, the effects of em response to mechanical loading of the knee to great paper, you can go to podcast at healthy, wealthy, smart calm, to find a link to the paper. And a big thanks to Dr. Lager stead for breaking it down for us and everyone enjoyed today's episode. Hey, David, welcome to the podcast. I'm happy to have you on. 03:04 Thank you for having me. Yeah, and I'm excited. Today we're going to talk about a new paper that your co author on that came out on to be very precise, October 20, of 2021. And it's the effects of response to mechanical loading on the knee. So of course, my first question, I'm sure this is the first question everyone asked you is, why write this paper? What is the why behind it? You know, as a, as a clinician, as well, as somebody who is now in academia, I've always kind of had this question myself, you know, what kind of loads are on the knee? And I've always had this, you know, concern about dosing and trying to figure out like, how can we can best dose exercise around the knee. And as I, as I really started to think about this more, really started to find that there hasn't been any review, or any kind of clinical commentary kind of brings at least the concept of mechanical loading, kind of in one place. And the knee is always a good model, because it does seem to have a lot of a lot of research around it. And it's an area I'm familiar with, because of my work in ACLs. And so I, we, you know, we just started, started thinking about, okay, how can we best talk about what kind of loads are being placed on the knee and, and some of it kind of kind of came out of some conversations I had with another colleague of mine, where we've really started to talk about the use of inertial measurement units and how those can start to give at least some general indications of what loads are occurring through the lower extremity. And so we decided to just kind of put a team together 05:00 who had expertise in in loading? And then expertise in specific structures related to the knee? And so that's kind of how it kind of came together. And when we're talking about loading of the knee, so in this, in this paper, you're talking about mechanical loading. So let's, let's go with some more definitions here. So what is mechanical loading? And why is it important in respect to the knee will stick to the knee? Yeah. So, you know, in the paper, we really describe mechanical loading, this is the physical forces that act on are free to make demand on the body, either at the system's level, or even on structures at a specific organ or tissue level. And so if you think about mechanical loading can kind of subdivided into different variables, such as, like the magnitude of the load, how long the load is being applied, how frequent it might be applied, or even maybe the direction or the nature of that load. So 06:05 so when we think about loading, though, all those components kind of interact, can interact with one another, and then create different loading patterns that can impact again, the knee is the organ itself, or specific structures within the knee. And when we're talking about loading, I think most people think of loads as external, so something that we are placing on that knee, but there are external loads in their internal loads. Can you kind of differentiate those for the listeners? And how, and why are both important? Yeah. So when we think about, you know, external loads, to kind of think about is like, really kind of that work that's being performed? So like, how far did I run today? Or how high did I jump? So when we think about like, like that, it's almost, it's almost kind of like that outcome in, in an essence when we think about external load. But when we think about internal load, you can either think about what what's the physiological process that's going on inside the body related, potentially related to the external load, or maybe even the psychological. And again, maybe even that biomechanical response to that external load? So So usually, when we think about internal load, it's like, you know, how what, you know, what is your heart rate doing related to how far you run? Or what is the extra? Or what's the amount of stress that's being placed on the knee after you land from a jump? Yeah, so so both are important, especially when it comes to knee injuries, and loading injuries. So let's talk about what are some of the common loading injuries on the knee? 07:54 Yeah, so if you think about some of those different types of loads, you can kind of really subdividing at least at Deneen to kind of three major categories. In essence, whether it's a compressive load, a shear load, or a, you know, a tensile load that occurs, there's some other loads that can occur, such as some hydrostatic pressure loads, but the primary ones are really related to that. And so then if you break that down into specific structures, such as a ligament, you know, like the ACL, which is one of the more common injuries that occurred the knee, you know, that's usually related to some kind of tensile load that's occurring on that ligament, it can occur either from, you know, cyclical loading, where you can continue to put stress on that ligament until that ligament ultimately fails. But usually, it's one usually large load that occurs that relates in, you know, a traumatic tear. That's probably an example of kind of one of the more common ones. But, you know, we, you know, we commonly see other tissues damaged, you know, the meniscus is another common injury. And that's usually again, that's really related more to some compressive with shear load. And then, you know, cartilage also kind of was kind of relies on 09:24 a shear load to be damaged. So 09:28 all those different loads occur on the knee, it just sometimes it depends on again, all those other variables that we've talked about, you know, the nature of it, or the compressive versus the shear versus the tensile load, but then again, how quickly does it occur? Maybe at what angle your knee is bent that can impact all those types of things? Yeah, I would think angles, speed, fatigue levels, hydration levels, you know, 10:00 All of that I can only imagine goes into 10:04 a type of injury from one of these loads, right? And you say, you know, and if think about, you know, again, you have that that external load, but then, you know, think about some of the other internal loads, you know, the muscles around the joint contracting, to maybe unload the knee at a specific time, because, you know, we have, you know, you've seen many athletes like they cut and pivot 1000s of times in a career, why is it that one certain time, they do the exact same maneuver, they've done 1000 times before, their ligament tears or their meniscus tears. So there's, there's so many other underlying factors that lead to it. 10:50 And so part of this papers, at least trying to describe some of those things, so people have an understanding of what is the underlying loads that can can lead to an injury. But then, 11:03 what can we do after that? How can we use those exact same parameters of same loading parameters to rehabilitate them? Because the same, a lot of the same stresses that caused the injury 11:17 also are some of the same stresses that you can use to rehabilitate the injury? Right, and I would think have to use to rehabilitate the injury. Right? Right. Yeah. So so they, so they can adapt to that stress and be ready to handle the stress the next time it occurs. Exactly, exactly. And now what one of the figures we were talking before we went on the air within this paper is figure four. So for everyone who is listening to this, we'll leave a link to the paper in the show notes. But when you go through, you'll see there's one figure it's figure four, it's a conceptual model of loading of the knee. And it's like a monster of a figure like it is. It's large, it looks very intimidating, and very complicated. So can you break it down for us? Yeah. So this is how, you know, we started to think about taking a lot of these other models that have been out there that have described, you know, maybe the physical stress model, or many people have commented on the, 12:24 on the die model, related to the envelope of function, and also the dynamic recursive model related to injury, probably the, is the best one, best way to describe it. But you got to take into all those factors that can influence or just leave somebody susceptible to an injury, 12:52 as well as including this their underlying physiology. And again, that could just be related to those non modifiable factors such as your age and your sex. 13:04 And then again, your underlying physiology, you know, your genetic makeup, maybe even just some kind of a little bit of your underlying fitness level. And then what are some things that can predispose that tissue to injury? And again, it could be, you know, do you have a strong tissue or a weaker tissue? Does the, you know, do you have certain types of muscle fibers, you know, that can influence again, things like fatigue? And then what are the external factors that lead into it? So, some of these models have already been kind of described in the ACL related literature, you know, you know, shoot a surface interactions, whether that occurs out there is, is it turf versus grass. So, those types of things can all potentially influence an injury and then, 14:00 you know, moving into the next part, then you just think about the mechanical load. So, again, all those factors related to magnitude and duration and frequency. And then we wanted to kind of 14:15 try to articulate that, again, if you took, you know, just conceptually took it is looking at each of the different major structures in the knee that could be impacted, and then talked about how those tissues respond to some kind of stress and strain. So, you know, if you put it, 14:39 again that load under a specific type of compressive versus shear strain, how does it respond to that, and William Thompson did a really nice review in ptJ a couple of years ago, looking at some of the Meccano therapy and McKinna biology that occurs at specific 15:00 tissues that Karim Khan had kind of initially proposed back, God 10 years ago or so. And then if you take all those things account, and the stresses and strains, so then you start to look at how that impacts how the tissue adapts to those stresses and strains. And, you know, using kind of the fitness model, or the fitness fatigue model is, is if you apply the right stresses at the right time. And you do that consistently over time, it basically builds up into tissues adapt to it, and it gets stronger, and fitter. But if you don't do it, or you do it at a delayed time, it may stay at a homeostatic level, or than if you do it too infrequently, or the loads are too much, too frequent, then you can actually fatigue the tissues. And, of course, if you get too much fatigue, and you get the right amount of load placed on it, then that can result in injury. And then you kind of go through, go through again, and go through it again. And again, that's part of the rehab process is taking all those things into account. And so 16:22 that's how we tried to really try to conceptualize it and think about, you know, and so we really kind of focused more on the the tissue levels and the response to injury, and how you can use that kind of this conceptual model of kind of stress and strain along those other factors, too. I think it's important to note that we're not only talking about ligaments or meniscus when we're talking about the tissues around the knee, ligaments, meniscus tendon, articular, cartilage bone. It's not just, we're not just talking about ACL 10. Lien, you know what I mean? There's, it's really the all the structures that that make up that knee joint, correct? Correct. Yeah. And, I mean, I think that's even a really important point to like, when we're rehabbing. You know, somebody and you know, you take somebody with a meniscus tear, not only are you impacting the meniscus that you're working on, you're also impacting a lot of the other structures around it. And so you can influence the all that rehab, or that rehab impacts all those tissues, depending on how you're providing the specific load. Right? Absolutely. And, you know, one of the the words that's in that figure is tissue capacity. And so during the rehab process, certainly after injury, but even, let's say, without injury, right, I think one of the goals is to always improve tissue capacity. So can you kind of talk about what exactly that means? What that What does tissue capacity mean and as physical therapists, what where do we stand in the improvement of that capacity. And on that note, we'll take a quick break to hear from our sponsor and be right back. 18:18 When it comes to boosting your clinics, online visibility, reputation and increasing referrals, net Health's Digital Marketing Solutions has the tools you need to beat the competition. They know you want your clinic to get found get chosen, and definitely get those five star reviews on Google. Net Health is a fun new offer. If you sign up and complete a marketing audit to learn how digital marketing solutions can help your clinic when they will buy lunch for your office. If you're already using Net Health private practice EMR, be sure to ask about this new integration, head over to net health.com forward slash li tz y to sign up for your complimentary marketing audit. 18:55 Kind of an in a general layman's term, you think about just tissue capacities, it's all related to the under I think sometimes so the underlying tasks that's being performed, right, you can have a certain level of tissue capacity that allows you to, to walk or run the tissue can meet the demands of that load placed on placed on the body by that specific task. Right. But if the task is too high, or the load is too high, relative to what the tissue can handle the tissue than this doesn't have the capacity to handle that load. And again, it may be able to handle that load one or two times. But over a repeated bout, it may fail much quicker. And so I think sometimes tissue capacity is it's also related to the task that's being performed. may know most of us have enough tissue capacity to to walk community levels and things like that. But you know, we might 20:00 not have the tissue capacity to run a 10k, even though that we may have the underlying structure that we could build up to that, I think those are the things you have to take into account. And from a rehab perspective, you know, you always have to think about kind of that starting point of what people can handle, and then how, how you can adjust the rehab process to improve that capacity over time. So that that leads into what are some ways we can monitor load and respond to that load? So we're the therapist, we're taking care of our patients, how can we monitor and and, and change that load as necessary? Yeah, so. 20:46 So from, you know, a clinician standpoint, you know, most of us probably in the clinic, you know, we don't have high tech equipment, like global GPS units are inertial measurement units to measure 21:01 acceleration, and 21:04 you know, how far people have gone 21:08 a certain amount of distances they walked or jogged or done the whole thing, like you have seen with some of the devices like catapult or, or 21:18 I measure use IMU units. But I think from a clinician standpoint, we still have a lot of great tools that I think are that we still under utilize, to some degree. So, 21:32 you know, I, I always like to tell my students 21:38 that you really are kind of training to look at how the joint is reacting to the, to the loads that you're placing on it? And are you making the tissues more irritable or less, irritable, measuring irritability is probably the best way to describe it. And the knee, you know, you can see things like, you know, increase swelling, you know, 22:02 which is a common, probably a common measurement to see for, for increased irritability, but it can also be, you know, is the joint getting sore versus the muscle getting sore, right? And so trying to be very clear, 22:20 with 22:21 the person you're working with is, you know, does it hurt inside the knee, or is it just hurt in the muscles around the knee, because we'd expect to see some muscle soreness if you're working those, right, but you don't want the, you know, the irritation to be in the knee. Um, so those are probably the two major major, major ones that I like to use. But 22:44 you can also look is, you know, do Did they have a sudden decrease in a range of motion, you know, which can be an impact, or, you know, a factor of them, having some irritability, has their strength gone down, which is probably a little bit harder to assess more consistently, but those are probably the major things I would consider looking at is, if you're starting to see some of those means the tissues become a little bit more irritated. But if you don't see those, then you know, the next, you know, maybe the next session, the next couple sessions, you can start to slowly increase the load a little bit, and see how they respond. And I think that's always the challenging part. Like, I like to challenge my students with is, but that's one of the great things about being a therapist, who is we get to see them again, and see how they respond to our treatments. And we can regress or progress them as needed. Yeah, and and I think that's a really great thing that you said at the end, we can regress or progress as needed. So if someone if you give someone some exercise or some loading, and they come back with like an angry knee, it doesn't mean stop everything and go back to passive range of motion. It means okay, let's just take it down a notch. But continue. Yeah. Yeah. And I think when the the last one I meant should have mentioned is, you know, just even just ask them how they feel. Mm hmm. You know, how are you how do you how does it feel today can give a lot of information then you can use things like you know, a session RPE schedule, you know, scale, say, Okay, your knees a little bit angry. Let's back, let's back your exercise session down two or three today, instead of working at a seven. Mm hmm. So you can still do something still keep the knee moving. Still keep it kind of moving forward, but you've kind of backed off in gave it a little bit time to, to calm down. Yeah. So it's, it's sort of this combination of what you're seeing objectively and then asking them how novel What a novel idea you're doing or you're having 25:00 Having trouble? Yeah. The other day you were doing stairs really well. And now you're having trouble doing stairs, you know, some of these functional day to day things? Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think, like you said, those are just really simple tools, I think we, we get so focused on, you know, what we like to call the objective data, instead of just asking people, how do you feel today? Yeah. 25:23 Absolutely. And now, how can we and I say myself, we, I'm a clinician, how can how can we clinicians use the information in this paper to start applying load to a REIT to the rehabilitation of an injured knee? Or post surgical knee? Or what however you want to categorize? Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, as we were talking before, there's a, there's a, there's a lot of data in this in this paper, too, that the clinicians can think canoes, and so I don't want them to get overwhelmed with all the numbers in the data, but it's really there to be is it as a resource for clinicians to say, Okay, I have somebody who has a pretty irritable knee, and these are the activities that we're doing before, you know, and we can get a sense of, okay, that that activity, you know, was, you know, three times body weight, I need to find an activity, that's maybe two times body weight. 26:27 So we can regress them a little bit. And this is an activity that kind of fits that or this was an activity that put this amount of stress on the ligament, we know that that stress is still within us safe range to, to push it a little bit to the next level. 26:47 Because, you know, I think some of the, some of the fear is, is that if we're putting stress on the ligament that we're going to injure it, or even on any tissue, right. But we, as we know that, especially after the initial inflammatory phase, you need to start putting a little bit of stress on the healing tissues, because that's how tissue gets stronger is that it has to respond to stress. But if you're putting, you know, if you're putting state and I'll put an air quotes, safe, safe stresses, or stresses that are below kind of the the below the failure rate, and you're monitoring the knee for those inappropriate responses, then you can use that information to slowly progress them through a rehab safely and adequately the healing structure to then kind of into the next level of repair. The one of the tables, we talked about this, again, before we came on, was table seven, within this paper, where you have some activities where it's like this is like you said, maybe it's 1.4 times body weight, or this is 20 times body weight, or this is eight times body weight. And I think that's a really nice guide for clinicians. But I think it's also a really great educational tool for the patient. So you can show this too, because most patients get it. I think a lot of times we underestimate our patient's ability to understand. Yeah, a lot of these concepts, you know, and and so I think if we can say the patient, hey, listen, this is X amount, your body weight, this activity is less than that. And let's say you're a month out of like some sort of surgical procedure, hey, let's go with the one that's less times body weight than this. And because people say, well, what's the big deal? It seems like it would be fine. But I love that because I think it's a great way for clinicians to use the paper also is a great educational opportunity. Yeah, no, no, I think that's a that's a really valid point, is it? I think if we can educate the patients on, you know, these are the activities that you should be doing right now. And as you strong, get stronger and get better than you can move into these activities the next time, right. And so they're always asking, patients are always asking, like, what can I do now? What can I do now? And so, you know, this table can give them some insight of, okay, this is where you're at. These are the things that you start doing now. And these are the things that probably wait a little bit longer. I think that the patient will really understand the why behind, you're giving them the exercises that you're giving them. Yep. And that's really important, because if people understand the why then maybe they're more likely to do it. Yeah. And follow through. Yep. So I mean, I think it's great. I think this paper is great. Is there anything 30:00 thing that we didn't touch upon in the paper, the process of doing this paper that you would like to share before we start to wrap things up, no, you know, I'd really like to, you know, first of all, thank my co authors who were willing to, to sit down and write this, it was, it was no small feat, you know, pulling together, clinicians from around the world to, to do this. And so, you know, definitely want to, you know, think tour MacLeod, Brian higher shyt, J uebert. Tim Gavitt and Brian eckenrode, for, for agreeing to do this, you know, this, like I said, this was a paper that had been mulling around in my head, probably since I was in PT school, you know, for a long time. And, you know, this just felt like the opportune time to pull it together. And fortunately, you know, in the last several years, last 20 years or so, we have, we have the data now to support a lot of the things that we do is physical therapist that I think intuitively, we've always done. But I think now that we can, we can demonstrate a lot of what we do, and some of the value that we bring to, to rehabilitation into to patients and to clients. Yeah, and and I mean, I like this paper from a rehab standpoint, but I think it's also really great from a strength and conditioning standpoint, right? Because as physical therapists, we don't have to just be the people there when the athlete or the person is injured, we can also be the person that helps to keep them strong and kind of improve, especially in I know, in a lot of professional settings. You've got strength and conditioning coaches, and athletic trainers and pts. But for the average physical therapist, like if you're in a small town, maybe you're it. Yeah, you're doing it all. Yeah. So I think this paper is really helpful not only to progress, people after injury, but to kind of look and say, Hey, this is the load that we can place on you that will hopefully help to decrease your chances of getting injured. Yeah. So I appreciate that in this paper. And now, where can people find you? And like I said, we will have a link to the paper in the show notes. But where can people find you if they have questions of you specifically? Yeah, I'm fairly active on Twitter. And so that's primary, my primary social media outlet so you can find me It's Dave, log PT. You know, if there's any questions or anything like that, that's probably the best, best way to reach me is either directly through DMS, or, or through my Twitter feed. Perfect. And now before we wrap things up, I have one more question. And it's a question I asked everyone is knowing where you are, in your life and in your career? What advice would you give to yourself? Let's say as a new grad, right out of PT school, I would probably, I would say, at that early stage advice, actually was given to me before is don't always don't say no. Always say yes to opportunities, especially in that, that early career, that if an opportunity comes along, take it, it may or may not be the perfect opportunity. It may not be what you dreamed of, but it more likely or not, will 33:32 be the a value to you. And many times it's a huge stepping stone. I would say you know, an opportunity comes along, say yes. Especially when you're young. Yes, yes. Young and full of energy. I think that's great advice. So listen, David, thank you so much for coming on the podcast breaking down this paper. It's a great paper. So congratulations on that. So thank you for coming on. You. Thank You, anytime and everyone. Thanks so much for listening, have a great couple of days and stay healthy, wealthy and smart. And a big thank you to Dr. David lager stat for coming on the program and talking all about load parameters around the knee joint and of course, a big thank you to Net Health. So again, their digital digital marketing solutions can help your clinic win by allowing you to get found get chosen and get those five star reviews on Google. They have a new offer if you sign up and complete a marketing on it to learn how digital marketing solutions can up your clinic when they'll buy lunch for your office. Head over to net help.com forward slash li T zy to sign up for your complimentary marketing audit today. 34:41 Thank you for listening and please subscribe to the podcast at podcast dot healthy wealthy smart.com And don't forget to follow us on social media