Episode 81: Transformative Healing: Integrating Technology and Holistic PT Practice with Adam Laraway

In this episode, we dive into the transformative world of holistic physical therapy.

Our guest is Adam Laraway, a physical therapist with over 24 years of experience. As founder of Focus Physical Therapy, Adam takes a “family first” approach and helps his patients overcome a wide range of challenges, including those experiencing MS and CRPS  and elite athletes recovering from injuries.

We discuss:

• – Adam’s experiences treating challenging conditions like MS and CRPS
• – His perspective on combining the Neubie with established techniques of manual therapy.
• – Incorporating lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, and functional medicine into physical therapy.
• – How he built a successful start-up practice after a 20-year career in corporate PT.
• – Adam’s personal journey using functional medicine to finally resolve his daughter’s autoimmune condition.

Whether you’re a clinician, a patient, or are curious about technology and holistic health, this episode is a must-listen! Tune in and learn how the Neubie can revolutionize patient care.

Read the transcript:

Garrett Salpeter (00:01.071)
Welcome back to the undercurrent podcast. My guest today is Adam Leroway, a physical therapist who owns Focused Physical Therapy out in the Santa Clarita Valley, which is east of LA out in the Pasadena area, or just north of there. And a couple of things that I really like about Adam are his holistic approach that he takes. He shares my interest in health and…

and really believes and shares with his patients the information about how health influences their journey through physical therapy. And I really like that more holistic approach, which we’ll talk about some here in this episode. And then one of the other things that strikes me with Mount Adam is not only the results that he gets with his patients, but the breadth of patients that he’s able to help. We talk about how the nervous system is…

relevant for movement, for pain, for how we think and feel and energy levels and all that stuff, right? But he is really applying that. He’s really taking this approach to help people just across such a broad range of issues, challenges, diagnoses. And I’m excited to dive into some of that today so you can peek behind the curtains of Adam’s practice at Focus Physical Therapy.

Garrett Salpeter (00:01.574)
Adam, welcome to the show.

Adam (00:03.735)
Thank you, Garrett, I appreciate you having me. I’m excited to talk with you today.

Garrett Salpeter (00:07.142)
Yes, yes, me too. So there’s a lot that you’re doing that I really am excited to get into here. And before we do that, can you share a little bit of your professional history?

Adam (00:20.375)
sure. Yeah, so I’ve been a PT for 24 years now. Started back in 2000 came out worked for about three years at UCLA, which I loved had great mentorship there. Got to work with a lot of good therapists, a lot of surgeons really kind of shaped me right out of school. And then moved up about an hour away into a town called Antelope Valley, kind of three cities. And after about two years there, I became

a partial owner of a clinic for 16 years. And we were really operating a clinic that was focused on patient care and that type of stuff. And it was wonderful, you know, outcomes and just absolutely loved it. And then things kind of started to change. And I lived in a different city about 35 miles away and decided it was time to open up my own clinic with 100 % control. And so I made the jump and.

It’s been almost five years and been wonderful. And so now I’m the sole owner of Focus Physical Therapy. And we’re really focused on, you know, kind of welcoming everybody to the, we call it the Focus family.

Garrett Salpeter (01:30.694)
Yes, and what is the origin of that name?

Adam (01:34.679)
so kind of funny, I, when I was originally, originally trying to think of like, you know, how to come up with the name for a clinic, you know, with, you know, a lot of people, I think use their, you know, maybe their last name, you know, let away physical therapy, that type of stuff. But, you know, my ultimate goal is, was to build a business and try to be that business mindset. And I think that was one of the, the hard parts with starting your own practice, especially from scratch. you know, is that.

You know, as a partial owner before I was the director and I ran the clinic and I worked with the personnel. We were part of a big corporation that did all the behind the scenes stuff. So I didn’t know a lot of the business stuff. And so I hired a business coach and kind of talked about like, you know, if your ultimate goal is building a business, you know, somebody’s not going to want to buy your business with your last name. They’re going to want to buy something that has, you know, a little bit more generic, I guess, you know, tone to it or whatever. And so, you know, my.

my philosophy has always been to focus on patients. When I do an evaluation with them, I open up, I put my table, my computer off to the side and just open arms. What can I do to help you? What are we here to focus on? And so I really kind of, that kind of stuck with me. I looked at like elite physical therapy, which there was 20 of them and all these different kind of catchy phrases and that type of stuff. But I just really went kind of back to what my philosophy has been for the last 24 years and that’s to focus on the patient. And so.

That’s where the name came from. Kind of funny, I was driving up to my old clinic one day and there’s an abandoned lot along the freeway and there was a big huge truck and the side of the truck said Focus in like big huge letters. And I was just like, okay, I guess that’s my message. This is it. Because I was literally thinking about that name that day and I was like, that’s it. And so that was the thing that solidified it.

Garrett Salpeter (03:25.638)
how more clear could the sign be?

Adam (03:27.831)
Right, exactly, exactly. And that’s kind of been this whole process, you know, the signs are there, I just need to read them.

Garrett Salpeter (03:33.862)
Yeah, for sure. So you mentioned focusing on the patient. We’ll get into more of your treatment philosophy and being part of the Focus family, emphasizing care for the whole family and the breadth of being able to help mom, grandpa, and sister. We’ll get to the breadth of what you’re able to do there. So we’ll put a pin in that. Can you just share a little more about your experience?

in that startup process, you mentioned you had been a clinic director, so you knew elements of ownership and leadership, but hired a coach. Where do you feel like your gaps were? Where do you feel like a coach was helpful? What do you feel like were sort of the biggest challenges and biggest learnings that you had along the way? I know there was a few questions and one there.

Adam (04:21.207)
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, so it’s been definitely an eye -opening experience of starting your practice from scratch and just having to learn all the stuff that goes along with that. As a clinic partial owner before and then being part of a big corporation, they took care of all the behind the scenes stuff, all the billing, all the collecting, all the denials, dealing with insurance contracts and…

leases and all that type of stuff. So, you know, I wasn’t really involved in that aspect of running the clinic. I was really more just, you know, the director, again, minority owner of the clinic and running the day to day, working with the staff, making sure patients are happy, you know, that type of stuff. And so, you know, realizing kind of where my areas of weaknesses were going to be, I reached out to a couple of business coaches and interviewed them and kind of, you know, tried to get what I thought was going to be the best philosophy.

to help me kind of grow my vision of what I thought I wanted my ideal clinic to be. And so, it was difficult to kind of know that stuff because there’s a lot that goes involved with dealing with insurance companies and all that type of stuff. And so, I hired a coach, his name is Brian Gallagher with Mag Business who had a…

run six clinics and really kind of knew how to do it. I think he got practice of the year in 2011. And so I was like, okay, this guy knows what we’re looking for. And one of the things that he said to me that really, I think kind of helped me as he says, you know, do you want to be the Walmart of physical therapy? Do you want to be the Nordstrom of physical therapy? And we may need to change those terms to more current, you know, current times, but you know, he was really right. Cause one of the other business coaches I had was like,

hey, we’re just gonna throw as little money at this as possible and see if it sticks. And I don’t think that’s how you really wanna start a business. You wanna jump in with both feet, you’ve got this vision and you really gotta put the pieces to the puzzle in play to get that successful. And so that was really the helpful was with that coaching to give me those other aspects of starting a business from scratch and having it be a success.

Garrett Salpeter (06:42.022)
That’s awesome. Brian Gallagher, by the way, was our guest on episode 57, if anyone wants to go back and listen to that. And he’s, yeah, we’ve gotten to know him over the years. I think he’s, he’s the one that first told you about the newbie, right?

Adam (06:55.543)
He is, yeah. Yeah, that’s kind of, you know, when I say all the things kind of have fallen in place for a reason, you know, that was one of the things was starting a practice in a different city, you know, about 45 miles or 45 minutes away from where I, where I had worked. You know, I had relationships in this, in my hometown, but they knew me as a PT in a different city. And so I needed that differentiator, which is kind of, you know, why I was all in on the newbie, but you know, he.

When I was working with Brian right out of the gate, he had Jason was who also has been on your podcast, had hired Brian to help him get the newbie off the ground from a physical therapy standpoint. And so Brian had said, Hey, you got to talk to Jason about this piece of equipment I’ve called the newbie, you know, like something I’ve never seen. And so I called Jason and had a great phone conversation and I just was really curious. And so I literally booked a flight and flew out to.

to Tampa in 2019 and spent, I think, four days with Jason and was sold. And I knew that the newbie was going to be that big chunk that made me a differentiator in helping me jump from one city to another and getting my current surgeons and doctors that I worked with, but helping me because they had their own referral sources in our current city. And so getting that differentiation to say like, hey, let’s send you over to Adam. Let’s see what’s going on.

what he can do over there to help you.

Garrett Salpeter (08:27.046)
Yeah, that’s, that’s awesome. It’s great to have that context here. And I’m so glad that you worked with Brian and this all happened to work out and we got connected and start, it led to something really wonderful here. So I’m really grateful for that. And how, so, you know, having that, the newbie as a differentiator is, is great. And that’s also just one piece of it, right? When you get it, when you’re in a new city. So how did you get the first patients in the door?

Adam (08:42.263)
Absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (08:56.742)
so that they could even experience this different differentiator. How’d you go from zero to something and then build from there? What was that first step or steps?

Adam (09:06.071)
Well, you know, so obviously initially you come, you know, you open your doors and, and so you’re just trying to get patients in the door. And so, you know, I had gone around and kind of, I had a little bit of, you know, I left my other clinic, you know, on a good, on a good note, I gave them, you know, a lot of notice that I was going to be leaving, for them to kind of wrap up what they needed to do on their end. but. You know, I also gave heads up to the surgeons like, Hey, I’m going to be open up my own clinic, you know, in, in.

in our hometown here and I would love to continue to work with your patients. I printed up the white paper and took that around when I would introduce them to it and kind of say, hey, here’s some information on this. This is a new technology that we’re using in the clinic. I think it can help speed up some recoveries, gave them a lot of kind of information. To be honest, it was kind of received with a little like, yeah, yeah, I know what a electric stim is, that’s great. And I’m like, well, this is kind of different.

And I was still new to it too. So, you know, and all honestly, it’s like, you know, I was all in, but, you know, I hadn’t had the patient experiences other than what Jason had shown me and some of his literature and case studies. And, and so, you know, it was like, I’m all in though. Let’s, let’s, let’s try this out. And, and just right out of the gate had some of these just crazy success stories where, you know, I’ve been a PT at that point, you know, 20, 19 years, I guess. And.

you know, to all of a sudden have some of these success stories and aha moments that, you know, I could get before on my own, but maybe those took me six weeks to get. And all of a sudden I’m getting them in two, three, four visits, you know, and it was really, really cool. and so word started spreading, you know, and, and, and it was just one of those, I didn’t do a whole lot of marketing at first, other than actually, I shouldn’t say that I did marketing to the doctors, but I wasn’t doing marketing to my patients. My patients were doing the marketing for me.

And so that’s, you know, again, kind of goes along with what Focused Physical Therapy is, you know, welcome to the Focused family. You know, people are like, I need, you know, I need my dad to come in and check this thing out. This might really help him. And, you know, you know, my neighbor next door has struggled with this problem for years. Will this help him? You know, let’s bring him in. Let’s try. And like I said, it just really kind of differentiated, you know, what was going on. I…

Adam (11:30.679)
I had one surgeon, I had two neck referrals that were radiculopathy looking at going to neck surgery. And within three, four visits, their symptoms were gone. And I got a call from the surgeon and said, can I come over and check out what you’re doing over there? And as a new clinic owner opening a new clinic, I was shaking in my boots, you know, like I’m taking this doctor’s surgeries. He’s going to come over here and give me the, you know, the riot act, you know, and he came over and I.

put the newbie on him, explained to what we were doing. And he was like, here’s my cell phone, here’s my business cards, I’m gonna start sending you more patients. If we can prevent a surgery, let’s prevent a surgery. This is amazing. And yeah, it just kind of, like I said, just kind of keeps spreading, you know, more and more as patients give the doctor the feedback. My patients are my best marketing source.

Garrett Salpeter (12:20.518)
That’s awesome. I love that. And that’s some great success stories there. I know I’ve heard offline several, so I want to talk about more of those. So a little bit of foreshadowing, because before we get there, I also want to ask you a follow up question on this topic here of getting referrals from patients, having them refer in their friends and family. Sometimes it’s something that just happens naturally, and that’s wonderful. But sometimes some…

Adam (12:21.655)
Yeah. Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (12:50.182)
intentionality around that can be helpful. Is there anything that you do in terms of, you know, questions in your intake for intake process or throughout the treatment process asking who else they know who might benefit from this? Or is there, is there anything else you do in terms of, any sort of referral, you know, formal program efforts or is there anything like that, that, that you do to kind of nudge or encourage people to make those referrals or something that just literally happens on its own? What’s your experience there?

Adam (13:18.295)
I think it just kind of happens. I don’t know. That’s a really good question. You know, I think about, you know, cause I kind of treat the whole age range from about six years old all the way up to you, you know, you’re 99 year old and, you know, it often happens like, you know, I’ll have a teenage, you know, high school athlete or something like that. And, and, you know, the mom or the dad will be in on the eval and, you know, they’re watching what I’m doing. And the next thing you know, they’re, they’re asking like, Hey, I got this shoulder problem. Would that help me too? You know, and well,

let’s come on in, let’s take a look and let’s see, I’d love to try it. I can think of an example, like I was treating a high school football player and it was kind of interesting. He was actually my last patient of the day and we were working on drills and stuff with him and the mom was asking all these questions. She’d had a elbow fracture, really bad elbow fracture, snowboarding like 25 years ago. And she had…

years of therapy and she was lacking, I think it was, if I remember right, 38 degrees of elbow extension. And, you know, that’s as far as she could extend it. And she’s like, you know, hey, do you think this would help me? And I said, you know, I’m absolutely willing to try it. I said, let’s just try a little experiment here. And so I literally put a couple of pads on her biceps and her triceps and I had her just straighten and bend her elbow for about three minutes, you know, at a fairly low intensity, nothing like that, you know, nothing too crazy. And within minutes,

She had like, no joke, 20 degrees. I think we got to negative 18, if I recall. And she was sold. She was like, this is, she was like, literally started to well up and tear up. She’s like, I had years of therapy. They couldn’t, they cranked on it, it hurt, didn’t, you know, but I can never get it any straighter. And so she literally came in and I treated her. I think, I think it only took me about six, eight visits. And we got her elbow within like, I think four to six degrees. She was back at the gym doing everything that she had really had limitations with. I mean, it was just amazing.

But you know then that that you know she told six other people and so next thing you know You know you got six more people coming in hey, you know I heard what you did for so -and -so can can can that work for me well Let’s get you in here. Let’s try you know and again my treatment philosophy You know when somebody comes in for an eval I’m sitting with open arms. What can I do to help you? You know what kind of what we focus on? And that’s that’s where we go

Garrett Salpeter (15:38.566)
That’s awesome. That’s awesome. I love, love hearing that. I will share one related tidbit since we’re talking about referrals and things like that. So back when I was working with people, a client of mine recommended doing, you know, kind of sprinkling in some language that would encourage people to make referrals. And so I tried doing it. That was very, very clever. So I’ll just share it here, you know, hopefully it lands with someone here.

Adam (15:39.767)
Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (16:07.686)
you’ll find it interesting and maybe start using a version of this. But when I was having an initial conversation with somebody in the clinic, I would say, so we’re going to be using this machine, we’re going to be using the newbie here to really accelerate the process, talk about how working with the nervous system can help us break through the patterns and the influences that normally slow down the healing process. And I say, in some respects, it’s actually bad for business because my goal is to get you out of here faster. So I want you to start thinking about anyone that you could not.

Adam (16:08.279)
much lower.

Garrett Salpeter (16:36.102)
any friends and family that you can refer in because we’re going to have to keep the doors open after we get you out here in fewer visits. So people would chuckle, but that actually landed pretty well with people.

Adam (16:43.127)
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam (16:48.791)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (16:52.486)
We also had a lot of experience too where it’s something that is just, it’s a lot of times so different, so unique for people to have an experience when they actually see results right away and they’re like, dang, I just want to, yeah, I want to, my gosh, I want to tell Aunt Judy or I want to tell my nephew, my whoever about this, for sure.

Adam (17:16.599)
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. I had a, I’ll give one more little story here. I had a football player who took a helmet to the, to the hip, you know, big, big contusion, having a lot of hip pain, couldn’t squat, couldn’t put his pants on, you know, cause he couldn’t bend his hip enough to get his, you know, arms down far enough to get his feet over, or his foot over into the leg of the pants. And they went to a doctor here and the doctor said, I’m sorry, you know, four weeks left, season’s over, you’re done. Like it’s going to take longer than that to recover.

So anyways, somebody had told him about what I was doing this. So they brought him in and the dad was very stoic, very skeptical, you know, that this was going to do anything. And so he came in for his evaluation and, you know, big, huge contusion on his hip. And I mapped him up with the newbie and, you know, took him through just some really simple movement patterns, which is sometimes the newbies, I think, greatest strength is you kind of.

almost have to go back to some of those primitive movement patterns. But by the end of the session, I had him fully squatting and his dad was just, you know, kind of leaning against the counter and looking at me. And he’s like, you know, if I didn’t see it, I wouldn’t believe it because for a week he couldn’t, you know, bend. I had to like, he couldn’t get his, his arms down far enough to get his pant leg on his foot. He’s like, and in minutes, all of a sudden this thing, you know, he’s squatting. Like I just don’t believe it. You know, so I ended up seeing him, you know,

I think about four or five weeks, but we actually had him back on the football field. So he missed that Friday and then he missed the next Friday and then was back on the field playing and now was able to finish his season, which was amazing. But then, you know, he’s had a younger brother who’s a baseball player. They brought him in, you know, and up treating the dad. I ended up treating the mom. So I ended up treating the whole family, you know, for different issues. But, you know, it starts from that one kind of aha moment of like, you know, somebody who is pretty skeptical that we’re going to help you. And then all of a sudden they’re like, whoa.

this is really applicable, this is something different. And I think that’s been kind of one of the biggest differentiators for the newbie is that it is different. And a lot of people, they think they know what stim is, but this is a totally different type of stim with a direct current.

Garrett Salpeter (19:26.854)
That’s right. One of my favorite ways to describe it is that it’s like going from an old rotary phone to a modern day iPhone or Android. I’m not trying to, you know, it’s like, yeah, they both can make calls. So there’s some overlap, but you can just do so much more with one than you can with the other. So if people listening to this, you may have heard me say that before, but it’s one of my favorite analogies there or metaphor, metaphor and out whatever that.

Adam (19:34.747)
Right? Right?

Adam (19:47.543)
Yeah, absolutely.

Adam (19:53.111)
Hehehehe

Garrett Salpeter (19:58.726)
You mentioned Adam that your focus is on the patient. You sit there and have one -on -one conversations, really try to figure out how you can help people. And one of the things that I like about you and that we share, I know you and I, we text about just behind the scenes here for insight for people. Adam and I will text about our whoop scores and about what different things influence our recovery and different things that we’re doing. And so I know that…

You and I share an interest in finding ways to improve our health so we can feel better, show up better in the world. We kind of both see that as an underlying foundational piece of our quality of life there. And I know that you also have done some additional training outside of physical therapy in terms of more holistic health coaching or different things like that. So to what degree does that influence? I know you’re taking this more holistic…

Adam (20:35.991)
Absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (20:56.742)
approach looking at your patients, certainly not just hardware -based like traditional physical therapy, looking at the nervous system, we’re talking about that. And also, I think, also looking at lifestyle, nutrition, sleep, things like that too. But can you talk about how that more sort of whole person, holistic perspective influences your treatment there at Focus?

Adam (21:24.631)
that was one of the things, you know, I’ve thought about becoming a functional medicine practitioner. it’s a little tough, you know, going down that road, just because, you know, a lot of that stuff, you have to be able to order blood work. And as a physical therapist, we can’t do that. I actually have talked to another clinic owner that does it, in California, which has a lot more regulations than I think some of the States, but, so I was kind of trying to figure out how, how can I address some of the others, other things that I think are affecting how people recover?

And the hard part is, is sometimes with physical therapy, they say, you got to stay in what’s called your scope of practice and you can’t go outside of that. And so like, we’re not medical doctors that prescribe medication. So I have to be careful. I can’t even tell somebody to take an over the counter Advil because that’s essentially prescribing medication, which is outside my scope. And so as I kind of worked with my own health, I’ve always been kind of like you were saying, like a health nut, trying to hack our systems and.

and optimize our systems. I just read a lot of books and listened to a lot of podcasts and really started going down that realm of that functional medicine.

system and how can I incorporate that in my practice but then still stay within my scope. And so one of the things I found was that if I had a certification as a health coach, they don’t have all the restrictions that we do as physical therapists. And so it allows me as having a credential as a health coach, I can talk about nutrition and I can talk about sleep and I can talk about some of these more kind of holistic approaches. And that widens my ability to talk about that scope of practice.

cause I think it’s huge, you know, I I’ve done with myself, I used to be a pretty avid cyclist. And so, you know, back in, you know, early two thousands, I’d get up every morning and I put a heart rate monitor on my chest and I would run an HRV test. you know, before we could just have it, you know, on our, on our wrist. so I knew whether I could train that day or not train that day, based on what my heart rate variability was doing. And, so I’ve always kind of been that realm. Most personally, and then trying to kind of.

Adam (23:36.695)
you know, seeing what it’s done for my performance as an athlete over the years and, and, and try and help, you know, not just my athletic population that I work with, but, but my whole population, you know, if people are eating junk food and they’re only sleeping, you know, five, six hours a night, they’re not recovering. They’re not giving their body the ability to, to heal and, and, and recover. And, and that’s going to make my treatment less successful. so I do a lot of education with the patients regarding.

getting adequate sleep, making sure they’re following a good nutritious diet that’s not going to be inflammatory. You know, and what can we do, you know, what can we do to, to basically give their body the right environment to heal? You know, they’re coming to me with a problem and sometimes they’ve come to me with a problem that they’ve had for 30 years. Well, obviously what they’ve been doing is not working. So we got to change something up. And so having that health coach credential allows me to talk a little bit more about nutrition and talk more.

about sleep and that type of stuff and get kind of all those systems to try and get working. And obviously we use the master reset with the newbie to help stimulate that pulse electric magnetic field to help with that. I do some stuff with red light, so there’s a lot of different components to trying to stimulate those different systems to get them to heal.

Garrett Salpeter (24:56.134)
Yes, that’s awesome. And I think that if you’re not looking at that sort of thing, and it’s more and more people I think are understanding this based on what people are talking about in social media and the quantity of people who are aware of this message and stuff like that. So this is nothing new at this point, but five or 10 years ago, probably was really new for people to think about how.

Adam (25:17.399)
Mm -hmm.

Garrett Salpeter (25:26.502)
you know, their lifestyle really, really how profoundly that can impact their recovery from injuries and how, you know, how that can really influence for the better or worse, the overall trajectory of someone’s recovery during a physical therapy plan of care and everything like that. So I’m glad you’re, glad you’re incorporating that. I know it’s a huge boost and it’s a big part of why you’ve won all these awards as the best PT in your area there in Santa Clarita. I know, I know that.

Adam (25:52.639)
Right? Thank you.

Garrett Salpeter (25:56.422)
Before we move away from this talk of lifestyle and health, a little bit away from the musculoskeletal realm related to, but different adjacent topic here, can you share your experience with your daughter and her autoimmune condition? Because I know that’s related to health and it was a fascinating story. We talked about it the last time we were together. I’d love for you to share that with everyone listening.

Adam (26:19.767)
Absolutely. So I have two daughters and both, you know, healthy and happy until about three years ago, my youngest daughter, unfortunately, when she started her menstruation, something hormonally flipped a switch and she started having some heel pain and, you know, we took her to, you know, I actually treated her myself at first, you know, and I could get her better for about three days and.

And then, you know, if I stopped treating, then it would come right back. And so then we took her to our orthopedist and they thought she had Sievers disease. And so, you know, put her on some anti -inflammatory medications, which I’m not a big medication guy, but we wanted to try it. But as soon as she’d come off the medication pain would come back. And then she also had a little bit of a, a little bit of a, like a skin irritation on her big toe. And so, and it wasn’t healing. And, and so we, we took her to a,

pediatrician first and then they referred us to a dermatologist, but it just like everything that the Western medicine tried just spiraled it kind of out of control. You know, this little skin lesion on her toe turned into her whole foot and then to her pretty much 90 % of her body. And then she ended up losing about 70 % of her hair. And, you know, as a dad, that’s probably the worst thing you could have is, you know, feeling helpless that you can’t help your child. And,

and having all these adverse reactions. And unfortunately for her, we kind of had to keep really pushing all these doctors because everything they did seemed to make it worse. We ended up at UCLA hospital and children’s hospital. So I was able to treat her with some of the infrared light. We did some newbie foot baths and master resets and pulse electric magnetic field. And I was able to improve things quite a bit.

but I couldn’t quite get all of it. And I should actually back up and say, so she, once we got through all the doctors and got finally got a final diagnosis, her diagnosis was idiopathic juvenile arthritis with a subcategory called psoriatic arthritis halapia, which really affects more older population. But she unfortunately was one of the rare cases that got that. And so anyways, you know, doing what I could on my end to help treat it.

Adam (28:42.391)
But the next thing you know, she’s on five medications and just feeling horrible and not doing great. And I had sent my wife to a functional medicine physician about eight, 10 years ago for hypothyroid. And it made all the difference for her because what they were doing with her wasn’t really helping with Western medicine. And so we contacted him and asked if he would be willing to take her case as well. So he at first was not sure he was going to. He…

had us send all of our case notes from UCLA and children’s and agreed to take the case. And so I’ve worked with him over the last, I guess, probably about a year and a half now. Her hair is 100 % back. She’s off of four of the five medications and her skin is probably 99 % recovered. She has one little spot we’re still working on currently, but we’re almost there. And the functional medicine doctor thinks he’s gonna get her off this last biologic injection.

Once we get that last spot healed up, so she’s she’s doing amazing and and I you know continue to use the pulse of electric magnetic field mat with her I use the newbie with her doing master resets If she’s got any of the joint pain with the idiopathic joint a juvenile arthritis I’ll map her with the newbie and that usually knocks it out, you know until the next time But she’s back to playing tennis. She she’s a sophomore in high school and she made the varsity Tennis team this year and did amazing. So that was awesome

And just, you know, as a dad, you know, but as a physical therapist too, just seeing her get back to those activities has been amazing, you know, probably more, more so as a dad than a physical therapist, but, you know, just to see her have some, you know, getting back to what she should be doing as a 15 year old kid. So that’s been a lot of fun. But again, that kind of solidifies where I come from the holistic, you know, viewpoint of you got to figure out what’s going on with the systems and you gotta, you gotta get them.

Garrett Salpeter (30:31.91)
Yeah.

Adam (30:40.375)
in the right position so they can heal.

Garrett Salpeter (30:44.358)
Yeah. And you know, the, you had tried the, the, you know, state of the art, so to speak, UCLA medicine approach and I had to, I had to go somewhere else. So obviously you mentioned you’ve been doing master reset and PEMF throughout this and that helps. And although you were doing, you know, that had been helping all along. And then when you saw this other functional medicine doctor, so what.

Adam (30:55.159)
Absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (31:08.774)
Is there anything or few things that you can point to that this doctor did, eliminating certain offending foods or certain nutrients? Are there any other things that really moved the needle here?

Adam (31:21.495)
I mean, definitely he is very thorough with, ordering a lot of blood work. I’ve actually started working with him myself, just out of curiosity. so it’s been kind of cool, but, you know, whenever I go to get my blood work, the, the, the nurse will be like, your doctor orders the good blood. We don’t look good. Excuse me. Good blood work. We don’t usually see these tests. so, you know, it’s, it’s really informative, but pretty much he treats with all supplements, you know? So, I mean, you know, her iron level was low, like, I don’t know how they miss that. So she’s on iron.

you know, fish oil and, you know, vitamin D with K2. I’m trying to think what else she’s on, but, you know, pretty much all supplementation. we were already pretty clean eating, but he did, you know, stool tests with her and, and, food sensitivity tests. And so doing some tweaks with, even though we were eating pretty healthy to begin with, getting some of those, those things that were, were irritants, based on the food sensitivity test.

I think just kind of helped her gut biome help. You know, the other thing too, you know, when we were working with the orthopedist, again, they thought they were treating the right thing, but you know, they’re putting her on, you know, anti -inflammatories for long, you know, periods. And then they were putting her on antibiotics for the skin thing, because they thought it was bacterial infection. And, you know, so she just ruined her gut biome. And so, you know, I think doing a lot of the healing in the gut biome with getting some of those, you know,

Because there’s nothing that she was severely allergic to, but getting some of those mild to moderate ones out of the system or eating them maybe once every four days so that her gut biome could heal really, really has made a big difference.

Garrett Salpeter (33:02.054)
Yeah, that’s great. I’m so, so glad that you’ve been able to, this story has a happy conclusion here because in the depths of it, in the depths of it, it was pretty darn scary.

Adam (33:08.279)
Absolutely, yeah.

Absolutely, yeah, yeah. I feel like we’re random third base. We’re on our way home. We’re almost there

Garrett Salpeter (33:18.022)
Yeah, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Obviously a little, little different than, you know, what you’re doing in the PT clinic, but you know, the newbie and some of the other work you’re doing is, is helpful, but it’s a kitchen sink approach for sure. So let’s go, we can go back.

Adam (33:20.183)
Absolutely.

Adam (33:30.871)
For sure.

And let me also say too that Western medicine definitely has this place. There’s some really good things at Western medicine, so we don’t just do that. But if we can do things that are holistic, that’s, I guess, for me, my first approach is what can we do naturally to help your body heal, then if we need to get into some more medication, that type of stuff, then we go down that road. And I apply that to my patient care as well.

Garrett Salpeter (33:59.462)
Yeah. Yeah. And, and some of that, it all, it all has its place. You know, sometimes it’s appropriate to fight disease. Sometimes it’s appropriate to cultivate health. You know, sometimes it’s appropriate to do surgery. I mean, yeah, that’s, you know, so it’s all, it all has its place for sure. I totally agree with you on that. I think that was well said. And now we can transition back to the PT clinic, but also writing, writing this theme of.

Adam (34:08.087)
Absolutely.

Adam (34:11.767)
Absolutely, absolutely.

Adam (34:24.471)
Yes.

Garrett Salpeter (34:28.774)
autoimmune conditions. You also told me a fascinating story of an MS patient that you treated at your clinic there at Focus. And I won’t foreshadow it any more than that other than we’ll just see if we can go there next because of the connection to autoimmunity.

Adam (34:46.07)
Absolutely. Yeah, so I worked with this person now almost I think about three years. But when I first started working with them, they were newly diagnosed with MS, really having a hard time, wheelchair bound, able to walk a little bit with a walker. And, you know, again, you know, been treating with a newbie I think at this point for about two years, so pretty comfortable with what I’m doing and how I’m treating and what my treatment philosophy, but you know, also trying to think about, you know, for MS.

to the population, you know, it was really crucial not to overtax them and wanted to be very mindful with that. And so, started work with him and we just really worked together. We started out with, you know, two to three times a week and just started seeing drastic, drastic improvements to the point that, you know, within, God, I’m trying to remember how quickly, but within weeks, you know, he was walking with a walker almost every time.

ditched the wheelchair completely. Next thing you know, we’re going to a single point cane. And then, you know, fast forward, he’s now walking without anything. And I think I actually saw him this week and I wanted to confirm the story because I don’t have it, you know, in writing or anything like that. But I think about a year ago, he had gone for a follow -up MRI and he came back from the follow -up and he told me, he says,

His doctor was in the room there with him and the nurse had put his brain scan up on the whiteboard and he says to the nurse, he’s like, that’s not so -and -so’s scan. You got the wrong scan. And they’re like, no, that’s the right scan. And he’s like, no, that’s not the right scan. And so anyways, she shows him on the whiteboard, like, here’s the patient’s name. This is his scan. And some of the plaques, lesions that were in his brain were either improved or gone.

And I was just kind of dumbfounded by that kind of like, you know, and we do a master reset with him every visit, you know, we work on different things and like, you know, like is the newbie doing this? Like, you know, so I got really excited and curious, you know, and I have a couple other MS patients and then, and I actually a couple of weeks ago asked one cause they had a follow -up scan and there’s where no worse, but no better. They, so, you know, that’s still a success for the MS world, not to have any progression of those legions. But that was, that was pretty cool.

Adam (37:10.998)
to hear that some of the lesions had disappeared completely and some of them were improved. So I’m still kind of trying to wrap my head around that success. But we’re down now, I see him once every one or two weeks, basically just kind of for a maintenance. And he is doing amazing. He now goes on short hikes and is completely independent, doesn’t use any assistive devices. His strength is doing really well.

spasticity is pretty much minimal and his kind of numbness symptoms stay pretty much in check. They will fluctuate a little bit, but as soon as we do treatment with the newbie, they’re back in remission again and he’s good until the next time I see him.

Garrett Salpeter (37:56.678)
That’s awesome. Yeah. I was hearing you talking about that story before, definitely very exciting, humbling, gratifying to just hear that impact that you’re making there. And it makes me curious. We don’t have any, are making any claims about effects of the newbie like that. We certainly see a lot of functional improvements. We do have a case series looking at…

functional improvements for MS patients in terms of reduced spasticity, increased pain. There’s some literature building on that, but that’s, that histology change is a new frontier. So something that’s at least worth further research and a fascinating data point, even if it’s still in the anic data realm, right? Or whatever you… Fascinating there. And then you also, I remember you also told me, so for everybody…

Adam (38:38.039)
And so.

Yeah, right, exactly.

Garrett Salpeter (38:51.814)
listening, you know, Adam was at his clinic is actually, you know, I believe so much in focus that we’ve made his clinic one of our first centers of excellence. So in the LA area or the Southern California area, people can go there. Clinicians can go there to observe and actually do training with Adam. He’s a master instructor, so he can, can actually train others and how to use the newbie now. So we were just together from the time we’re recording this. So, you know,

couple of months prior and I was getting to hear all these stories over several conversations. And so there was another one that you told me that I would love to have you share here. And it’s certainly, you know, these MS cases are very, can be very difficult when you see someone who’s been declining for so long and often has a significant degree of impairment. And to be able to help them is really wonderful, especially because they often have tried so many other things or haven’t seen progress and that can be.

can be just really wonderful as a clinician to help those people who are otherwise left behind. Another population for whom that is true and perhaps even more is CRPS patients. And remember you told me a story about at least one, while we’re talking about the impact on patients and some of these really interesting standout examples, can you share that experience with at least the one CRPS patient that you told me about?

Adam (39:59.575)
Mm -hmm.

Adam (40:16.247)
There’s a couple of different ones. Was there one in particular that you were thinking of?

Garrett Salpeter (40:23.046)
whichever one or ones you’d like to share most.

Adam (40:24.823)
Okay, we may need to cut that part. Yeah, so there.

well, so I had a, it was a high school athlete, had, again, kind of, you know, friend of a friend had been dealing with it for about two years. It had been a competitive volleyball player in high school and just had a major, major ankle sprain injury. and we were at a, a mutual friend’s party and, and my friend was like, Hey, you know, you should go see Adam. I bet you can fix up your son. And so I was talking to them, you know, they’d just kind of presented as a.

as an ankle sprain and I’m like, you know, kind of, okay, yeah, I’m happy to take a look, see what I can do, whatever, you know, so they make an appointment, they came in and come in and diagnosis is CRPS and like textbook, you know, changing pigmentation, can’t touch the area, like having a lot of issues. And so we just started working with the newbie and got the nervous system to calm down and just really started to improve.

No change in the pigmentation, but all of a sudden we could start touching it. We could map over it. Tolerance really, really improved. And, you know, fast forward, I think I worked with him for, I think about three months, but we ended up getting him back to playing volleyball. You know, we were doing, you know, he was at a heck of a jumper. I mean, and we were starting to apply metrics to making sure that we could do everything that we could to make sure that, you know, he wasn’t going to have a regression or, you know, a flare up of that CRPS symptoms.

And yeah, he’s in college now and has no issues. He skis and, you know, I don’t know that he still plays competitive volleyball, but you know, he has no limitations. And it was pretty cool to work with him because it had been kind of stuck for about two years of just not getting anywhere, not able to do anything, you know, and as a high school kid, you know, pretty depressing, you know, that, you know, you just can’t do anything because everything hurts. So that was a really, really cool experience.

Garrett Salpeter (42:31.558)
Yeah, that’s great. That was to be able to help someone like that again, there just aren’t many, if any, any good solutions out there. So to be able to help them. I think sometimes, you know, as fun as it is to work with a college or professional athletes and stuff like that. I think sometimes those can be even, even more satisfying. So I appreciate you sharing that. And.

Adam (42:57.719)
Absolutely, yeah.

Garrett Salpeter (43:00.678)
As we wind down here, anything else that you feel like you would want to share with New Fit Nation? Anything else related to your practice, other experiences, anything else on your mind that you feel like we should cover here?

Adam (43:17.047)
Well, I think, I guess the biggest thing, I mean, I train, you know, with the newbie myself, you know, I’m a full believer in it and I just see the benefits of it. And so, you know, I guess what I would say is to people that are either think about incorporating into their practice or even, you know, if they’ve bought one and they haven’t gone full in, I actually, one of my therapists that moved to Texas just called me last week.

And she interviewed with a clinic that has a newbie, but they’re not readily utilizing it to its capacity. And I’ve heard that a few times from different clinic owners that they have it, but they, it kind of sits in the corner. And for me, I guess I would say if you’re going to make that investment in this type of technology, jump in with both feet and you will not be sorry with some of the…

the aha moments that you have both for you and for the patient and just the improvement and success. You know, the one thing that I, I guess I would say to, you know, being a manual therapist for, for 19 years before the newbie and having, you know, good success as a therapist, adding the newbie just sped that process up, you know, tenfold, you know, to be able to do some of the manual techniques and stuff that I do with the newbie on.

can be just a game changer and sometimes just immediate results and getting the nervous system and getting it to stick longer, I guess, getting that nervous system to reeducate not only with the manual techniques that you’re doing, but with that input through the nervous system, through the newbie. And it just really for us has been a game changer. I have five newbies in my practice. They run all day long on every single patient unless they have a contraindication such as pacemaker. But you know.

Patients love the newbie and they want to come in and work out with it from a treatment perspective and from a workout perspective. So I would say if you’re going to make that type of investment, you got to jump in with both feet. Because it is time consuming at first, but once you’ve learned how to use it, it’s just amazing some of the successes that you see.

Adam (45:44.471)
Absolutely.

Garrett Salpeter (45:31.142)
Yeah, I love what you said there. Definitely. If people are making the investment, yes, we want to make sure they go through the training. They’re able to use it. And, you know, thank you for being a resource for other practice owners to be able to call and talk to a peer and learn about your experience. I really appreciate that. And then also I really appreciate that perspective. You know, as a manual therapist, a lot of people, and I think, you know, this was you in the beginning, of course, hearing it from a trusted source like.

Garrett Salpeter (46:01.254)
like Brian Gallagher was helpful, but I think you even had that initial skepticism of, you know, being a manual therapist, relying on all those techniques that you have because you’ve seen them work. And I think a lot of people have that feeling of like, you know, what am I going to just use some, set it and forget it, you know, just like putting on some ice and, you know, just replaces all these skills. And no, like you said, it’s just an amplifier or an accelerator on those.

those skills that you have, you combine those with this and it’s a one plus one equals four type of scenario.

Adam (46:34.903)
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, and I’d like to give. Hey!

Garrett Salpeter (46:38.566)
I’m not just at it now, that was on purpose.

Adam (46:42.231)
I also like to kind of give credit to Jason Waz. Jason, obviously you got a great relationship with Jason, but Jason really pioneered, I think, kind of the physical therapy piece of the newbie, with working with him and just seeing some of his success stories really kind of motivated me to try and replicate that. And Jason’s really become a mentor for me, just seeing some of the cool stuff that he does. And I talk with him all the time as well.

And, you know, that’s, that’s, I think one of the best parts of being part of the new fit nation is, is how many networks of, of friends, colleagues, you know, co -owner, you know, or owners that, that, that want to help each other out and, and spend that time, you know, I don’t mind, you know, talking to all the time I’m, you know, getting referrals, you know, of, Hey, you know, can you talk to this clinic owner that’s thinking about putting the newbie in or, you know, hiring the business coach service?

I love that type of stuff because it lets me hear what they’re doing, you know, and what’s working for them, what’s not working for them and sharing what is working for me and what’s not working for me and collaborating so that we can, because ultimately, you know, most therapists got into this profession because they want to help people, you know, but how do we do that? And then having that network to help each other, help each other out, which is crucial. And New Fit Nation for sure is that, you know, I know a lot of New Fit owners, so.

Garrett Salpeter (48:09.958)
Yes, that’s awesome. And I definitely will also second that and shout out Jason was so he was on. Let’s see. shoot. What episode? it was one of episode eight. There we go. So he was on way back, way back when episode eight of, of our podcast here. And he was the first PT practice owner. So he and I became fast friends back in 2017. He came to the first certification course that we ever did.

And he was, yeah, the first PT practice owner. So he and I talked a lot and he gave me a lot of great input and feedback and advice. And we got to talk a lot about how to incorporate the newbie into a PT clinic in terms of workflows, in terms of billing, you know, some of these practicalities. And he, you know, he talks about how the newbie has helped grow his practice to the point where he can actually get out of the day -to -day of his practice and now do more consulting and coaching with other practice owners. And that’s.

That’s another fulfilling avenue kind of in his new chapter of his career too. So that’s all. Yeah. Thank you for mentioning that. And that’s definitely worth a shout out. And so if anyone’s, if anyone’s in the Southern California area, we definitely want to give your website. I’ll also shout out, I follow you on Instagram, focus PTSCV. So focus PTSCV for Santa Clarita Valley. And then what’s the, what’s the, what’s the website? Is it the same or tell me, tell us.

Adam (49:13.847)
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Adam (49:34.999)
Yeah, it’s the same www .focusptscv .com.

Garrett Salpeter (49:40.774)
Awesome. All right. So please check out Adam at one or both of those places. And Adam, thank you so much. It’s an honor to have been able to establish a friendship with you over the years. And I love the work that you’re doing. I have a ton of respect and admiration for you. And thanks for coming on the show and sharing your experience with everybody listening.

Adam (50:01.783)
Absolutely. Well, thank you for having me. And again, thank you for inviting me into your community and spending the last five years with me really helping a lot of people. So I appreciate your help too.

Garrett Salpeter (50:14.566)
Awesome, awesome, yes, it’s a wonderful thing here and let’s keep the good times rolling, keep the momentum going here. Thank you everybody for tuning in to this episode of the Undercurrent Podcast. Please hit the like, subscribe, tell your friends about the show and we will see you on the next episode. Bye bye everyone.