Dr. David Wardy: Welcome to the Doctor Dad's podcast where a naturopath and chiropractor come together each week to share lifestyle medicine, health advice, inspiring interviews with some of the top experts of health and wellness, bringing you the latest nutrition and exercise, ancient healing toxins and detox your microbiome, mindset, hormones, brain and much more. Stay tuned. We're going to teach you how to experience growth daily. Hi, everybody. Doctor Dads coming at you with another great episode. This is Dr. David Wardy and I’m here with my main man, Dr. Nick Jensen. What’s up, brother?
Dr. Nick Jensen: Doing well, buddy. I just started the week with camping with the kids and -
Dr. David Wardy: You look fresh, man.
Dr. Nick Jensen: I feel fresh. Feel fresh.
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Inspite of those, just getting back into the groove of things is a little, like it's a little challenging, right? You know, we've had a couple of vacations within the summer and every time it's like, oh, yeah, what are we going to do again?
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah.
Dr. Nick Jensen: What am I doing when I show up at work? You know, what's the routine like? So, it's good to be here though and connecting on my first day back with you both.
Dr. David Wardy: I feel you, man. I was at a town. I was in San Fran, since last Thursday, went and learned a little bit more network spinal, which was a lot of fun.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Really nice.
Dr. David Wardy: Had a blast, got to work with some pretty amazing doctors and spent a Saturday kind of wrapped up in that. And then we came home. So, yeah, definitely know what you mean on like getting back, back in the saddle and finding the groove again. So -
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Totally. It was funny, like, I mean the topic we're gonna be diskussing today has a lot to do with, like understanding foundational movements and structural integrity and those kinds of things. And, and, and I just can't help but realize just how impactful self-care has been in everybody's recovery. And I just feel like that is something even when we're away that I definitely make sure that I keep implementing, because I just recognize just how important it is. So, I just want to say that because you know, even though you may not remember what is it you do as an occupation while you're away, there are some things that definitely linger when, when we are away. And a lot of that goes back to self-care. So, which is sort of tied into the conversation today.
Dr. David Wardy: Oh, I love you, Ben. You've been covering this stuff for almost a month, right? And that we're gonna –
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Dr. David Wardy: … talk to a woman today. Her name is Eileen Durfee. And pretty much what she does for a living is, she helps people do more self-care so that they can take better care of themselves. Right? So, Eileen, thank you so much for joining us today on the podcast.
Eileen Durfee: Well, thank you for having me.
Dr. David Wardy: So, Eileen, let's just jump into it. Tell us about yourself and tell us about you know, how Creatrix Solutions came about and kind of where we're at today. And then we'll jump into the stuff, the fun tools you sent us, we'll talk a little bit today.
Eileen Durfee: Well, I've been sick my whole life. It started when the doctor ripped me out with forceps. And I mean, when I started walking, my hips were twisted and one knee hit the other one. They put me in special shoes, they x rayed my legs, they were the same length. They didn't get me to a good chiropractor. And I was just in constant pain. I grew nine inches in three months.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Wow!
Dr. David Wardy: Wow!
Eileen Durfee: And I mean, they even excused me from PE because of the hips and the knees. And then I got ran over by a car when I was walking in a parking lot. And it was just like daggers in my chest, every breath, could barely lift my arms. And that's when I came across Dr. Scherger who developed exercises to restore the curvature to the spine. And but you know, then when I was what? When I was 20, I got a silver amalgam filling and then my health went down like crazy. It got so bad. At one point, you know, my hair was falling out, I had psoriasis all over my body. I couldn't remember anything. I had panic attacks, anxiety. I couldn't sleep. I had thyroid disease, Hashimoto’s. I was a wreck and, and I had Candida so bad and then cystitis and what they gave me were antibiotics and antihistamines. That’s what I lived on. I had to carry an EpiPen because my lungs would close up. I would – like any kind of odor from carpets or perfumes or chemicals. It was just really bad.
I mean, actually my relative was the one, the movie was made about the boy in the bubble. You know, so I didn't get the greatest genes to start with. My mom was sick as well. But I was managing to switch from prescriptions to natural substances to chase the symptoms. So, I did that for a while. And then I came across hair analysis, which kind of was the beginning of a new journey for me because I was looking more at the root and understanding that some of the things that I was taking were causing some of my new problems or making the root cause worse. And so, I got into, you know, detoxification protocols with saunas. And so, I mean, after being a nuclear power plant engineer, auditor, trainer, and traveling all over the United States, I got into real estate, land development, building houses, running construction crews. Then, I started managing nonprofit corporations doing all their financials and board meetings and member integration.
And I started having a facility where people could come in and take a sauna. And then I got electric machines, like Rife machines, and multiple wave oscillators, and Bob Beck machines and Hulda Clark Zappers, and, you know, all this stuff, because I literally could sit in that MWO for 30 minutes and be pain free for two days. And so, you know, but when I started hair analysis, and was taking these certain supplements that they recommended, I found like, I didn't have pain. It didn't drive me. I didn't have to go and sit in those machines.
So, we're really like a car battery that our minerals have been out of whack and so we don't conduct electricity anymore. So, instead of you know, doing the jumper cable routine, you know, building new nutrition in the body. And so, because of being an engineering, and I'm more left brain. There's a lot of inventors in my family. And so, and I'm a gizmo woman. So, I just buy everything and try it. And then I think, oh man, I wish it was this and that. I'll go to sleep. And then I see the gizmo, the better way of doing it. And I know how to draw on AutoCAD and all this and bought my own 3d printer and started building prototypes. And cuz my dad's a machinist. I didn't have any brothers. And so, you know, I just started playing around and tinkering and it got to the point where I opened my health business and you know, started filing patents.
Now, I have 10 granted patents, five of them are around spinal fitness because of that’s such a big thing in my life, you know, to be now 60 years old. If you x-rayed me, I don't have disks that are all worn out, I don't have bones that are all worn off, because I've done regular chiropractic care and used these exercises. And so, I made the leap in 2010, and opened up my health company. And then I think I was exclusively just doing my health from about 2013 on. And so, now we ship to like 91 countries. And, you know, we do you know, all kinds of stuff. And I just keep on creating more things. I've got more patents pending and more gizmos to make. And it's all about because there's no silver bullet for health.
You know, so you have to think about the air you're breathing, the water you're drinking, what you're putting on your skin, the structure of your spine, because if the nerve impulses aren't getting to the organs, they're not going to be. And then, it's about energy because of fatigue. If you don't have the right shape, and you have tight muscles, that consumes a lot of energy. People do not realize. So, we want to spend our energy wisely, and take the straws off the camel's back. And now at 60 years old, I'm sitting here with no pain, I sleep well. I wake up with energy. It's just, you know, it's taken a while to get here and I've been in my own guinea pig. But this is, I feel like I'm in my fourth life in this life. This is really what I was supposed to be doing.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Well, what a journey. I mean, you said so many things there. And I think when people hear stories like, Okay, you went through autoimmunity, like arthritis to you know, massive injuries, like you’re getting hit by a car or run over by a car like to all these like environmental sensitivities to heavy metal toxicity. I mean, you sort of check the list of like almost everything that can happen to a human being. And like it's not your life story. You found a way to overcome it and to reconfigure your body and you talked about the voltage and electricity and biochemistry and just moving patterns and structural integrity. I mean, you kind of talked about like, like you said, everything that can happen to someone, and that you can be on the other side of it and speak from this place of knowing and experience that the body can heal if you put it in the right environment. Like what a powerful story. It's amazing.
Eileen Durfee: And that's what I had this underlying drive that, it's just like I felt like if my body just had what it needed that it could heal itself. So -
Dr. David Wardy: Beautiful.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Beautiful.
Dr. David Wardy: Well said. Well, and we hear those pain to purpose stories quite a bit, right? I mean, me and Nick, that's our you know, we're constantly … a lot of the stuff you've gone through, those are the type of people we help with things like that with similar solutions, what you were talking about, and I love it that you have this engineering background. So, your brain just automatically can go there, right? You're just looking at systems and what do I need to work out on my system? What's deficient? What's toxic? I mean, it's, it's, we talked about this all time, but it's complicated, but it's simple sometimes when you kind of zoom that lens out a little bit.
So, today, we're gonna, I mean, you got lots of goodies on your site. And we'll talk a little bit more on the back end, because I do want you to tell everybody about your website and the things that you offer. But because I am a chiropractor, I'm going to be a little selfish today in the podcast, and you did hook us up with some really neat toys. So, we're gonna kind of talk about these toys that you sent us, Eileen. And I want to dive into each one and talk about where the design came from, why you designed them the way you did. And then we'll, we'll dive into the benefit of using these things for people that have different issues. So, let's start with the Back Trac, the really cool foam roller that you sent us, because we live in a world now where there's tons of these. I mean –
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Dr. David Wardy: I could probably count on like, I had five and [0:11:23 inaudible] like literally all the foam rollers that have been designed and developed. And now everybody says that, you know, this one's better. But yours is very unique. That doesn't really fit into, you know, that spectrum of most of the foam rollers, you see, because most foam rollers we see, they're pretty much just like circumferential around the whole foam roller. They're just flat, right? Like there's no like yours has a dip. And do you have it with you. If not, I can grab one.
Eileen Durfee: Yeah.
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah, for the people who use the video. So, Eileen is holding up her Back Trac. And the uniqueness of the foam roller that she has, is right in the middle, where most foam rollers still are like solid. She has a gap that wraps around all the way around the middle. So, it's kind of like this, like a ring on the inside, where there's basically uh, about a half inch of a gap that dips in. So, when you roll on this thing, it basically gives room for the spinal column to stretch when you're actually rolling your spine. So, you know, I use foam rollers all the time, so does Nick. And when you're rolling your spine, you constantly can feel the pressure up against your spinous processes. You kind of have to go roll off to the sides to try to get a little bit more of that paraspinal action.
But the thing that I loved about yours was as soon as you load on the roller and you start rolling out, there's this nice space for the spinal column to move freely. And then you're getting this nice stretching of the facet joints and even like the meninges beneath that, because there's a lot of fascia that runs within the cord that exits the spinal column. And it gives this really nice effect and it releases the spine really fast. You know, I don't like most foam rollers because I don't ever feel like you get a full release of the spine. And you can roll a lot on them and loosen your paraspinals. But a lot of times, you'll get up and you feel some relief, but it's like it just didn't get into the spine area where you needed it to.
So, this one's great. Like I did notice and I use it probably every day now and just play with it. But there is a noticeable shift and you can get a little bit of cavitation there in the joints. And then when you get up, you do feel an improvement in the spine the way that you're sitting or standing up. So, can you talk a little bit about this guy and how they came about? And then yeah, let's go from there.
Eileen Durfee: Well, Dr. Scherger always taught me, you know, when doing certain exercises that we always wanted the spinous to float. Because, you know, like you said on a regular foam roller, it's flat. Some people you know, depending on how tight their fascia is or their muscles, what subluxations they have, that could actually rotate a spinous and cause more of an issue. So, I knew that it was really important to have a groove for the spinous to float, but also to have it squishy in different densities because it's not about pain. It is really about getting that movement, like you were talking about to stretch you know every joint. You know a lot of people don't realize it but when you don't have the proper S shape, there's so much compression bone on bone that your disks don't float and pump like they're supposed to.
So, a lot of people's disks are dehydrated. So, with this, with that stretching action that you're experiencing, it's actually hydrating the joints as well. And so, Dr. Scherger didn't have, you know, like a foam roller. But I had tried other foam rollers and I just wanted to offer something additionally that could be used for spinal health. And when I put the spine, you know, on it, the size of the groove is made so that you can even roll clear up into the neck, your head on it, clear down to the low back. So, it will literally, it's like a roller for stretching, increasing, you know, blood flow, hydration, everything into the spinal column. So, I have it in two different densities. Now I was in San Francisco on one of those motorized bicycles and not paying attention. And all of a sudden, there's a sign, don't go here, you know. So, I'm like trying to stop and there's people behind me. And so, I'm looking, waving at them so they don’t run into me, and I put my foot down, but there was nothing there.
So, I slammed into this guardrail. And my ribs were out and I went to my chiropractor, you know, who uses all kinds of different techniques, Pettibon, everything. I went to a CranioSacral Upledger guy. I mean, I did everything. And I'm like going, like, oh my gosh, I can barely move my arm. And the prototype to the Back Trac came. I got on there, rolled on it. My rib went in, I rolled on it again the next day. And it was completely in. I could raise my arms, no pain. It was just like, I was so happy with the design of this roller. And yeah, it's, it’s not about myofascial release, you know, like. You know, and there's some good things to myofascial release, you know that, but this is to do something different. And the other thing is, is this material is self-skinning polyurethane foam, which is super expensive, by the way, and even the mold, the aluminum mold that it had to be cut to be able to pour this with the heated channels and everything else. And it's super-duper expensive. But that's the only way that you could get the different densities and the action that this provides.
Dr. David Wardy: I love how you talked about ribs because I was gonna bring that up right now. A lot of the reason people roll out is to try to get ribs a lot of times. And I, you know, I've even in the past had to tell patients like, they're like, What would I do when I don't have you? And I'm like, we'll try to roll out and sometimes you can get the rib to go, but it's very difficult to get a rib back in place just using a regular foam roller. The beautiful thing about your design is that central canal where the spine floats, it's still putting on a little bit of pressure on the tVPs of the spine.
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Dr. David Wardy: Right?
Eileen Durfee: Yeah.
Dr. David Wardy: Which again –
Eileen Durfee: Yeah. That’s the purpose.
Dr. David Wardy: … that floating action of the facets and then like the hydration of the disk like you're saying, and it's easier to move the ribs like because it's like right on the spot where you need it. And then it's got a good density, like you're saying and then the other thing I love that you mentioned is, I can move a whole lot further up in the spine and down further on the spine with yours, compared to some of these other ones where you're kind of just mid-range, like upper thoracic, and then you can get maybe down to the junction or the thoracolumbar junction, but then it gets uncomfortable with yours. You can move a whole lot further and it's not as uncomfortable. But you can still feel that action of it actually moving things and reorganizing things.
So, the centrality of it is, it makes a huge difference because you're getting much, much, much better movement of the spinal column. Those joint mechanical receptors can fire while you're actually doing it. So, there's a lot of even proprioceptive functioning hitting the brain and treatment taking place. So, it goes beyond like just the structural things we're talking about there. You're getting a lot of brain stimulation just rolling up and down, I think. So, I love it. That, that thing's a lot of fun. I don't – Nick, I think I got one of those, sorry. I don't think you got one?
Dr. Nick Jensen: I got one too, [0:19:07 cross talk]
Dr. David Wardy: [0:19:07 inaudible]
Dr. Nick Jensen: Oh yeah, I got one.
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: They come in two different densities. I don't know if I sent – I think I sent –
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah, I got both. I got a red and –
Eileen Durfee: And I think I sent Dr. Nick just one.
Dr. David Wardy: Okay.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: But yeah, it's, it's really helpful. People have really - I have a product review on the website where this lady, you know, fibromyalgia like chronic pain. Every single foam roller she's ever tried in her life is just giving her pain. And she uses the, the medium one, the orange one, and it actually has helped align her spine and relieve pain and improve her posture. It was just like, you know, amazing. There's so many people out there that can't get aggressive, you know, with certain products and that's what the different densities are about.
Dr. David Wardy: One, I love the, the disk conversation, you know, because we're getting that movement like you're speaking, when you're rolling, you're getting a lot of that pumping action of the disc. As a chiropractor, I see - I see lots of compression. I see compression in the lumbar spine. I see it a lot in the neck. I mean, you see it a lot. And like you're saying, if you don't have good hydration in those disks, it's going to add to joint dysfunction, and then that adds to subluxation, which starts to add to nerve issues. And then we're just getting more and more disconnected and we have all these pain and these problems. So, that centrality of the product and what it's doing, it's, it's magical. So, very, very cool. Really, really enjoyed that one.
Eileen Durfee: Awesome.
Dr. David Wardy: So, let’s jump -
Dr. Nick Jensen: I'd love for you guys, if you wouldn’t mind just for people listening because you're talking about a lot of like technical stuff, David and I love it. It's, it's so important, though, but, but maybe just for simplicity, if you guys could just break down that, that hydration component and the pump, and maybe even just you know, discussing a little bit more about what's actually happening, because there’s so many people that are getting disk bulge, are getting disk herniation. You know, maybe just talking about, a little bit more about structure, the pumping action, the hydration, because those are key, key pieces for people to understand rehabilitation and, and self-care.
Eileen Durfee: Right.
Dr. David Wardy: I'll just – well, Eileen, go ahead. And then I’ll follow up after you talk.
Eileen Durfee: So, you Google the benefits of an S-shaped spine, you only find two references. It's pretty much unknown. But when you have a spine that’s in an S shape, your muscles don't have to work as hard. And you have these 30, 60 and 90-degree angles in the spine. It's like a Roman arch. In architecture, it is very strong. And then it causes so in gravity, shape, shear forces in an S-shaped spine cause the facet bone to clamp facet bone on facet bone. So, it's like a vise, it's strong. Where if you have a flatter back, where then you see more compression, because it's not kind of offset like a shock absorber, you know, taking part of the brunt of it and at an angle where the, the disk can still float, you know. So when its straight, you've lost that so you have increased compression, less hydration, and then you have shear forces going in the opposite direction which then.
So, a disk is not like a muscle, it's like a ligament. Ligaments do not stretch. So, there's tension on that disk. And then when it's too much, when the spine has been too straight, then it herniates because the bone then shifts, you know, out of place. And so, when Dr. Nick is talking about, you know, explaining compression, or like you know, spinous or transverse process or all these things. Shape of the spine is key because you cannot change muscle attachments on bones. You know, everybody has all these tight muscles. So, we're stretching. I say it's like refusing to remove the nail out of your tire and carrying around a compressed air can. You can still get from point A to point B. But if we had a way to induce the body to an S-shaped curve, our muscles would be relaxing, we'd have less compression, but then our shear forces at the 90-degree angle would be pushing bone on bone. See, you talked about the, the meninges and the fascia and all that stuff. On the back, we have basically the multifidus and the inner spinalis muscles.
Those are like short muscles that their job is to hold up posture. But what is happening is, they're very weak and they can't hold it for long because you're supposed to have the S-shaped curve. It's like when it doesn't have the S-shaped curve, it's like emergency. Your body tightens muscles so that you don't fall flat on your face. So, it's expending all this energy, it's giving you pain, it's increasing compression, and then it's shearing your disks and your bones out of place. And so, this posture, this S-shaped posture is pretty much you know, unknown, but you're going to be able to move easier in gravity, be in less pain. And that like that spinous floating and catching use of the TSP, those are, like the spinous is that pointy bone up the middle of your back. And the transverse process are those edges on the outside edge of your vertebrae that you know, you could feel when you put your hands on your back.
And so, that's why we can benefit the body by letting that spinous float in this groove. And then when you lay on it, the weight of your body, it's like a train on a train track. You know, it guides the bone, stretches it and kind of adjusts it, you know, into place. So, we need to look at how can we get the S-shaped posture because it alleviates all these problems. It gives you the mechanical advantage. It's like if you have a bent crankshaft in a car, you know, your motor is gonna cease. It's gonna run hot, all those kinds of things. Or it's just like our body, compression will deteriorate the joint. It'll rub off edges of your bones. And you know, people don't look at the physics of all this coming in line with their body.
Borelli in 1680 had a guy with the 100-pound sack on the shoulder, you know, with his trunk of his body just you know, four inches forward. And there was over 25,000 pounds of compression and shear forces that went through the vertebrae of the spine. So, this is why, you know, our everyday living situation is wearing us out, why we're getting tight muscles and things like that. And so, yeah, in simple terms, we have the wrong shape. So, we have tight muscles. So, it's like, let's get the shape. Then our body can hydrate and our nerves can impulse. And you know, we're just going to feel better.
Dr. David Wardy: Well said. And to add to that. So, what Eileen is talking about. I mean, look at all the things that cause this, this problem that we're talking about. You have, especially now, so you have forward head translation and posture all day long as people are looking down at their cell phones. So, that's a biggie. You know, you're talking about the weight of how just moving that weight forward affects your spine. Your, your head's heavy five to seven pounds, and it's, it’s forward all day. That's putting a lot of pressure elsewhere. And the body has to deal with that with like what the Eileen is saying. We sit a lot, we sit too much. And most people that sit don't sit properly. They don't engage the pelvic floor.
So, when they're sitting, there's this huge loss of the lumbar curve and the lumbo, thoracolumbar junction. So, like Eileen is saying, there's tons of energy leaks where your body has to overwork all day long to manage, force and handle gravity all day long. I know it's funny. I hear this so much times, so many times a week from new patients that walk through my office. There's always a comment or something of, they had an x-ray at some point of their spine and they say, Oh, I had degenerative joint disease. Honestly, degenerative joint disease is nothing more than just a translation of, my spine cannot handle force properly. Because the body will lay down more bone on the vertebra above and below the disk when it can't stabilize, or it can't handle force.
So, it starts to build and lay down more calcium around the disk to support you or the facets. So, if you have degenerative joint disease, all that translates to is, you have an unhealthy spine. And you need to start taking better care of your spine. But I think it's funny because there's this joke in chiropractic. We always say that people take better care of their teeth, than they do their spine, right? Because it's charismatic, everybody's gotta look at it all day. And if we were all walking around like and you could see everybody's spine and we wanted to have pretty looking spines, it’d be a very different world and I'd be a lot busier than I am right now. But the reality of what you're, what you're speaking to is, it’s so true.
This is a big problem from just ergonomics daily to your nervous system being overstressed if we're in this fight or flight survival defense mode. The body kind of goes into a ball and everything goes into flexion. That's another trigger that's going to add to this, so you get something called Adverse Mechanical Core Traction. So, there's all these layers that contribute to what we're talking about. And these are just great tools for self-care with what Eileen is talking about to combat these things, and they really kind of, for some people reverse this problem if you don't have this S-shaped curve. And then for others just to maintain it based off what you do for a living and the ergonomics that you may have. And you know, we’re just combating life, to be honest with you, and your spine’s gotta carry you everywhere. So, why not have, have tools at home that help you basically effectively deal with this a little bit better. And this is what we're talking about. That's what I love about this one.
Eileen Durfee: I was just in the airport, and I took a point to try to find people with an S-shaped spine. And you know, I was, I left at seven in the morning. I didn't get it until 5pm. I had two different layovers. So, I was looking at a lot of people. Do you know how many people I saw with the right S-shaped spine in all of that whole weekend to there and then flying back?
Dr. David Wardy: You can probably count them on one hand.
Eileen Durfee: Three.
Dr. David Wardy: Yeah. Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: This is so epidemic, people don't even know it. They're so used to taking ibuprofen or you know, putting up with it, or the opioid epidemic. You know, I mean, low back pain alone in America is $100 billion a year and how many failed surgeries. And, and the thing that I love about this equipment, because there's a process. The first thing we do is, we do a sit up over a power cushion. Then, we do the Back Trac roll, then we do a pelvic tilt, then we do the neck flexion. And then like flossing and brushing your teeth, Dr. Scherger used to say that, you know, you floss and fresh the teeth you want to keep. It's like doing these exercises, and not very many.
I mean, you could spend 5, 10 minutes and make a huge difference, you know, in a person's spine a day. And, you know, when I show people these things. You know, I could take an 80-year old grandmother who can barely walk to an athlete, like a UFC fighter that I've worked with, or Major League Baseball player, and I can do an evaluation on him, put him through the exercises, and all of a sudden, their muscles are loose. They are gaining reach. They, you know, feel better. It's like these, these exercises. This, it needs to be like a movement, spinal fitness. It's not yoga, it's not Pilates, it's not golf, but it's spinal fitness, it sells itself. You try it. And its life changing. So, there's more compliance. Like for instance, if somebody's got, you know, forward head posture, and they're having headaches, because all their muscles in their neck are tight, and it's radiating down their arms.
If they, you know, have their little exercise monitor that says, get up and move, you've been sitting for an hour. You know, get your 250 steps in, or, you know, drink your water. You know, you could just do your Neck Shaper. You know, you could just do, you know, like five or six of those in an hour. And you'd be surprised at how you find yourself sitting up and your muscles going loose. And so, it's super simple to integrate, you know, in your life. It's just like, after Dr. Scherger died in 2016, nobody's teaching it. So, it's like, this is my passion. And so, I'm like so thankful that you guys brought me on today that we're talking about this.
Dr. David Wardy: Oh, thank you. This is, this is good stuff. I love it. So, you brought up the tool, bring up the Neck Shaper because let’s jump into that one because I -
Eileen Durfee: Now this, this originated from a prototype that Dr. Scherger had. He literally had a catcher's mask.
Dr. David Wardy: Okay.
Eileen Durfee: And then he would teach us how to, like look up. And then it's just chin down or it's like C5. If you nod at somebody, I'm agreeing with you, that’s C5. So, so all it is, is just look up to the ceiling. I mean, some people can barely look up without pain. Wherever it is, that's where you start. You’re just looking up and then it's just chin down. And then you just totally relax and use the force to push your head back and that actually loosens your low back muscles because your low back muscles were tight, because your head was too far forward. So, if those go loose, and then your shoulders go back.
Everybody used to tell me you know, stand up straight, put your shoulders back. It was the position of my head that caused my shoulders to be forwarded. So, it's just you know, a cushioned little piece that you put on your head, forehead and your chin and you just put the force and then you just loosen and push it back. And then your, your spine begins to learn that your head is supposed to be back. It's like if I'm exhausted like all day traveling in an airport. I just feel like my posture is not good. I just immediately go like that and it's like oh yeah, now my muscles are loose. You know, my head isn’t where it's supposed to be. You know, it helps to develop that habit. But this also is one inch so you can put weights on it and I have all these other kinds of cushions, ones for the neck and low back so I can lay like on a workout bench and I can put that below my head.
It kind of hanged my head off the end. And then I can put weights in force. So, this Neck Shaper when you have like a fulcrum underneath it. Well, again with that special groove, then it's exercising the multifidus, interspinalis muscles but it's affecting global posture and segmental posture. So, the Neck Shaper is pretty amazing. There's been some awesome stories with people. There's this one guy who was going to have a fusion in his neck for 10 years with intractable neck pain. Nobody could do anything for him.
He was just, you know, using, you know, painkillers. And he had this for two weeks. And he did like five or six neck flexions about every couple hours throughout the day for two weeks. His pain went away. He got curvature enough that they no longer wanted to operate on me, doesn't even need it. I mean, I'm actually flying and going to Stockton, to the Nate Diaz in Nick Diaz Academy and meeting Cesar Gracie from the Jiu-Jitsu, and I'm training his fighters, because all the fighters are having replaced disks in their neck or neck fusions. Because they're all like [0:36:37 inaudible] you know, hunched over fighting. And here, this device is able to reverse and get that curvature in the neck.
Dr. David Wardy: So, Eileen, I think you need to rename it to the Spine Shaper.
Eileen Durfee: The Spine Shaper.
Dr. David Wardy: Because I have a testimonial for that one. No, no joke. Like, I know it's for the neck. But like, when I first used that, the very first round, I just did 10 reps. I sat like you're doing, just lifted up to 10 reps. And then the rest of the day, I went and sat down and I had to sit and I was like, it was like this awkward feeling. You know, I, I, I have to bend a lot throughout the day. I'm more constantly bending over the table. So, like, my life is lots of, lots of flexion and extension, but a lot of flexion. And so, you know, lordosis curve and the cervical spine and the lumbar curve, they are always going to be under stress for me. And I can feel it. You know, the longer my end day is, you know – at the end of my long days, I'm sorry, I have this like crazy stiffness sometimes in my back.
So, I use that thing. And that day, noticeably standing up straighter with ease, not like it was forced, like I was trying to like get myself up. And then even my head back over my shoulders. And it was a very, it was an interesting feeling because it was foreign to me. But then I kept using it daily. And then I, it kind of like lessened the intensity of it. But again, standing up much straighter, much more at ease. And again, not having as much of that stiffness, because I've also been using the foam rollers almost every day. So, I love that thing. The Neck Shaper is great, but I would say, instead of Neck Shaper, it’s probably the Spinal Shaper, because like you're saying, it did affect my low back.
You know, I was using it on my neck and I noticed a noticeable change in the lumbar spine as well. So, it does have a global effect for sure, for sure. And then the foam rollers are great. You know, I'm doing the rotations edge of the table. Then, I'm just, I worked. I think I started. I could last about 11, 12 minutes the first time I did them. And then I'm all the way up to like 20 minutes where I can handle them [0:38:41 unclear] at 20 minutes. But when I started, you know definitely some tension when you put them under there, but then you hit like this sweet spot in between where the tension lets up and then at the back end, you'll start to build a little bit more tension, but that, that window started getting wider and wider of no tension to the point where like it released quicker and then I wouldn't get tension until I maybe run 20 minutes, but noticeable changes just in a small period of time like you're saying.
Like I believe when I spoke to you over email, we talked about probably a three months protocol with a lot of these things have been real focus daily. And honestly within the first like week and a half, I started noticing changes. So, it's not something that somebody's gonna do where you're gonna be like waiting for this big change that's gonna take forever. The changes actually happened pretty - pretty significant changes pretty quickly with just daily use and like you're saying, it's like 10 minutes if that to do these things, you know, and then you work your way up to 20 over time, but like just starting, just 10 minutes is all it takes. And it's like you're saying, it's like brushing the spine. It's, where just it's, it's spinal hygiene for self-care is honestly what I would probably name that.
Eileen Durfee: And you can multitask where you're laying over the rolls. You can read, you can meditate. I mean, there's all kinds of things that you can do. So, it’s not -
Dr. David Wardy: I thought that, yeah, the meditation. I'm glad you brought that up, because that's what I did. I focused, I just did breath work. And the more breath work you do on those things, the faster the release you actually get. So, I noticed bigger releases when I was focusing on just doing breath work on those things. But yeah, absolutely.
Eileen Durfee: Yeah. And so, Dr. Scherger taught me. That's one of the things after I got ran over by the car, he had me fold bath towels into half, fold them in, so there was a groove in the middle, and then we used rubber bands on the ends because, you know, depending on the curve, you might have to use a really little towel, or then make it bigger as time went on. So, we use those for the low back and the neck and that's how I survived, you know, because when gravity is not in the equation anymore, the muscles can let go. And so, he used to, on the neck flexion with the power cushion, they used to use that towel on top of the cushion. And so, when I was making the cushions, it's like, why not make five different diameters?
You know, I had a 3d printer. So, I printed molds and poured prototypes to size people to see okay, what diameters is going to fit everybody. So, I went two and three quarter, three, three and a quarter, three and a half, and three and three quarter. And that seemed to fit everyone. Now I think I need a two and a half for the people with really, really flat low backs. I've come across some people that way to where it's almost like just have a little tiny hand towel down there, you know, to begin with, and then they could use the neck, you know, cushion.
But his idea was, when you do that twist, when you, you know, give yourself a low back curve, you lead with your eyes and you twist, then it's going to increase blood flow nutrition to the disk. Instead of being like in a sponge, more fixed state, you could change it to a gel, because we want a healthier disk that's in a better location. And so, it - the towels worked, you know, pretty good. It was a good starting point. But when I got the prototypes of these, it was literally life changing. A little boy that came in with his father. They had a business next door, had a trampoline accident. And he'd been having seizures ever since the accident. He'd been to chiropractic physical therapy. Nothing had helped. And so, I had these ugly prototype cushions and I taught him how to do the back twist, sized them and gave those to him. And a month later, his father came in and said, he's never had a seizure since.
Dr. David Wardy: Oh wow!
Eileen Durfee: He uses them daily. He takes them everywhere with him in his backpack. And I've had other people that were plagued with migraines, with terrible tension in their upper shoulders, that they literally were loaning out my prototype cushions. And you know, talking about how they've been migraine-free and how great they were. So, yeah, so I ended up you know, if you try to break it in half, because of this groove, we were having cushions break into half. So, inside these, there's actually a dowel, a wooden dowel.
Dr. David Wardy: Oh wow!
Eileen Durfee: So, you can't break them in half. I don't know if you noticed that or not.
Dr. David Wardy: Okay. I didn’t, I didn’t try. I didn’t try.
Eileen Durfee: But these little holes are where nails help the, the dowel in when we pour them.
Dr. David Wardy: Okay.
Eileen Durfee: But, when you have the properly sized rolls, and you're not in pain. When your legs are out flat, one of the phenomenon is, you would literally hear your bones crack when all the muscles let go. And they, and they shift. And that's where you know, as you increase the diameter, you'll hear the cracking more with maybe the medium, you know density. But you know, everybody's got a starting point and just baby steps but people just using these one time, they feel such a benefit that the compliance. For people in back pain, I mean, because I've been there. I've been in such terrible back pain. You’d almost do anything not to be in pain. So, these things work fast and, and they're you know, amazing.
Dr. David Wardy: Well, I want to talk a little bit about the w5hy some more, right? Like you have a great product. You were, we were talking about this S shaped curvature. So, I want our listeners to picture something real quick. Imagine this S shape spinal column. And there's the brain on top of this as a column and we have a spinal cord like a rope that passes through the S shaped column. Now what Eileen is speaking to is, when we lose curvature of our spine whether it's like loss of lordosis, cervical curvature or even lumbar curvature. We start to get a flattening of that curve. So, instead of it being an S, it starts to straighten out. And then what do you think happens to the spinal cord inside the column, when the curvature straightens out. It builds tension on your spinal cord. And there's a lot of things that happen from this from just regular back pain to like, she's describing migraines, headaches, just global pain moving into other areas of the body, because the body is trying to be stable and handle force and it can't.
So, it's got to take that load elsewhere to deal with it, you know, all the way to core tension when it's built up and it's constant like that, to where your nervous system is constantly in fight or flight. So, this can lead to a whole onslaught of other health problems. When your nervous system’s tone is constantly in survival defense mode, because your brain's number one priority is survival. So, if you have cord tension, and it never lets up, that can affect your breathing, your focus, your concentration. It can cause anxiety. It can cause digestive problems. I mean, there's this onslaught of stuff that happens just from something as simple as what we're speaking to right now, which is just your spinal curvature.
So, it's such a simple thing we're talking about as far as the how and the what to address this big why. And what we're talking about is, there's this, like you said, three people of probably hundreds that you looked at over the weekend at the airport, because it's, it’s a rare thing, because of our ergonomics, and just how we live our lives now. But the reality is the fixing, and the self-care piece of this is very simple. And if you just give it a little bit of time and work on these things, you can see big changes in your overall health. And it can be from a lot of things. So, don't just put it in a bundle of like, it's just going to help my back pain. It goes beyond that. And I'm glad you brought up some of those other testimonials, because it goes way beyond that. And I hope people can actually picture that and see what I'm trying to explain because it makes worlds of difference when you have slack for your spinal cord.
I mean, there's even research that shows that a lack of spinal curvature causes loss of blood flow over your lifetime. And it's one of the contributors to Alzheimer's disease right now. The loss of circulation in the brain. So, that's long term, something that your spinal curvature actually effects. So, there's all kinds of things, right? So, these are the solutions we're talking about. And Eileen has done a great job of designing some really neat tools to help people deal with these type of things and to improve their life.
Eileen Durfee: Another aspect, you know, because maybe some of the listeners are into sports, and they want to be athletic. I think that trainers need to be aware of exercises that actually reduce curvature and put strain on the body potentially, you know, injuring someone versus the exercises to gain the curvature and why like say would a runner or an athlete who jumps want to have a good S-shaped curve. One of the studies that Dr. Scherger did with the Olympic Center in Colorado with Bob Beaton and Jennifer Stone. And then Ron O'Neill from the New England Patriots. He was there for 26 years. And then Smitty from York Barbell, he was an Olympic heavy lifting coach. He worked with them for, yeah, forever. And they wanted to find out why did a football lineman that had that big low back curve always overpowered the lineman with the straight back.
So, they for the first time, took a mathematical approach to every disk in the vertebrae to calculate compression and shear forces in movement to identify the positive advantage of an S-shaped curve over a straight one. But one simple way to explain like stride length in a runner. Like if you have the S-shaped curve, you know, every listener would just stand up and fill their hamstrings. You know, stand like you're in neutral. You know, probably 90% of the listeners are going to have tight hamstrings. That means that you don't have the S-shaped curve but Dr. Scherger and the team and they sent the mathematics to Cornell University. They calculated what forces are translating into our hip and our knee joints and how much effort does the hamstring have to exert?
Like if you're standing erect and you have good neutral posture, it's zero effort on the hamstrings. And it's about 86 pounds, you know, in the hip, where if you have 100-pound trunk, and you're two inches forward at the waist and two inches at the head, which is very typical, which you see most people standing. That hamstring, that tight hamstring is 843 pounds of effort. And there's like over 800 pounds in the knees. Why are we seeing so many knee replacements? It's because of not having the S-shaped curve. But when you go to run, see the body is like got all of its own priorities.
So, it's got those tight hamstrings to keep you from falling forward. That is a long muscle that is only designed for running, for locomotion, for jumping, for launching objects. But when the postural muscles have fatigued and weakened, the long muscles take over the postural work, and then they're no longer available. And when you calculate the curve of the low back with the tight hamstrings, it causes your foot to plant early, so you have a shorter stride length. So, you can't jump as high, can't run as fast. So, it's really the mechanical advantage to use this in athletics, so that you have the superior athlete. That was Dr. Scherger's passion was to be able to identify the superior athlete, and then the ones that didn't have the shape to be able to give it to them. Because up until his methods of where you have like posterior support underneath you, you know, it's like a train over a train track.
This is the power cushion, where you do a sit-up over and you do a pelvic tilt over. So, I can think if you're going to move a boulder, you know a heavy boulder and you have a straight bar. In order to get the leverage, you put a block underneath there close to the boulder. So, literally you can use, you know the equilibrium, you know, the math is that 100 pounds can move 500 pounds. So, Dr. Scherger was really into cranes and lifting and moving and construction. So, he started looking at leverage and the human body and how all this works. So, he came up with the power cushion. So, the spine is the lever, and then the weight that we put on top of the bodies like the boulder so we can put the muscles in like absolute tension. And then, you know, depending on where the fulcrum is, it's strategic with the weight.
So, that way it builds the muscle and the one exercise that the pelvic tilt, because of how the underneath the body supported and you're laying, you know, supine basically, with the pelvic tilt with the force on top of it. It's like the rectus muscle pull, with the weight on top of it curates [0:53:34 unclear] leverage. So, if you have a herniated L4-L5, which when you look at Borrelli study, mathematically, that's the point where 1000s of pounds go to force. That's why that's the breaking point of most problems, but we can literally shear them back in place. Because the power cushion gets rid of posterior shear. We're having people do regular sit-ups and that is just horrible. Because when you do, when you bend your spine, it's no longer facet bone on facet bone and they can twist and they can, you know injure and it, and it. And so, the power cushion with that fulcrum eliminates the posterior shear.
It actually puts the body in post - as if it already had good posture. So, then it can build like a sit up, it builds the external obliques with the pelvic tilt. It strengthens the rectus and then it’s shearing back the bones. And so, when you get up, like these athletes, these UFC fighters or whatever, I have them bend over. You know, we measure their hamstrings. I have them bend over, see how far they can reach like I have them jump, you know. So, if you have bad posture, you're gonna land forward or backwards. Have them raise their arms up. If they can't put their arms all the way up, you know, it indicates neck problems because you know you have that resistance, you have them turn their head. And then I do. Like Dr. David said, I only did like 10 reps of that the first time. That's all I do with them. I do 10 sit ups, few little Back Tracs, 10 pivot tilts, 10 neck flexions. I had one guy get 11 inches of reach in one session, but it's always 2, 3, 4 inches. I –
Dr. David Wardy: Wow!
Eileen Durfee: And the weight on top makes a difference. I had a helicopter pilot who had two torn hamstrings and a torn quad. And you know, so, and he could barely bend over. So, I was just going baby with him. I wasn't putting weight on him. And he really didn't, he says, I feel better, but he didn't gain anything. And then my force applicators came. I had a dream because that $8,000 machine, we thought that was not very portable with rods to get the weight on you. So, I had a dream about just clamping some [0:56:01 unclear] unordinary barbells you have to have your force on you. So, those came. So, we got him on the Power Cushion to do a sit up and we put that on him and his back’s cracking like crazy and he did about 10 of those. And he got up and he gained three inches of reach. So, the leverage with the absolute tension. With that fulcrum under your body, it's just this magic combination that Dr. Scherger was the one who came up with. His equipment was really archaic and basically, I improved all of it is what I did.
Dr. Nick Jensen: It's amazing. If someone didn't have that, like the Power Cushion looks amazing. But if you didn't have the power cushion, could you use the Back Tracker as like a, a modified –
Eileen Durfee: Well, you can –
Dr. Nick Jensen: A modifier?
Eileen Durfee: You can do the pelvic tilt on the Back Trac because you just hold it in place so it can't roll and you climb up on top of it. And -
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: And you can do a pelvic tilt on that. You can't do a sit-up. It's the wrong arc. Even a medicine ball is the wrong arc. So, physics wise –
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: But what you can do in my free PDF guide on the website says, take a sleeping bag. You roll a sleeping bag and tape it up with duct tape and you can kind of tighten the center of it and you can create a makeshift power cushion. Now, I'm you know, have my final prototype on the power cushion. And now, it actually has a Neck Shaper attachment to it.
Dr. David Wardy: Wow!
Dr. Nick Jensen: Oh, wow!
Eileen Durfee: You know, that just pulls out with pins. That was something that Dr. Scherger always had talked about. And so, when I make those. I mean they have, because of all of that. I mean, it’s got internal steel plates and all this, they're quite the deal to get made. But - and I, and I'm working on the force applicator. I got a new clamp coming because this old clamp didn't work very well. And it'll turn. So I have to thicken this and notch that and then I don't want as much rotation because I had it to where you could fully rotate it. But we only need a little bit. So, I'm making the final changes, but those will be available, but not this year.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Got it.
Eileen Durfee: But I have guides because you can do with the workout buddy.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Right.
Eileen Durfee: You can have them put their hands on your chest and do like a plank on top of you. And same thing on the iliac. And my, my illustrations show exactly where to put your hands, how to do it, how you can fold your own towels, how you can stand and do the neck flexion. You know, the equipment makes it much easier. But this is something that everyone needs. So, I have all the free - free PDF guides, even a list of the exercises to do and not to do. Like if somebody does a curl, a standing curl, their back muscles activate as a primary mover to hold the force from on top. And we don't want to exercise those muscles in that way. So, what we do is, we tell you do a preacher curl. Sit down, take the force off that low back. So, we like have you rethink every exercise that you're doing and do different ones to work those muscle groups so that –
Dr. Nick Jensen: Love that.
Eileen Durfee: … you can safely you know, still be athletic, but not damage your spine.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Can we, can we talk about the hips a little bit too because a lot - so many people are going for hip surgery and I don't know if there's something you can talk about in regards to like this, the S-curve and hip issues because I mean, it's, it's a huge problem for so many.
Eileen Durfee: One of my PDF guides show the shear forces and compression forces at the hip with and without the S-shaped curve. And it's like an 800-pound difference.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Wow!
Eileen Durfee: So, basically, it is prematurely wearing out the joints, the hips and the knees because of not having, you know, the S-shaped curve. So, it's just obvious that people need it but they don't even know they need it.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah. So, so let's, let's talk about, you know, where people can access this information because, I mean, Eileen, it's so fun to like just watch you get excited about the different things you're explaining. And David too, I mean, it's just it's been fun to just tune into, to what you guys are sharing. And I, I literally hope everybody can listen to this, not just you know, the people that are tuning into us regularly. But I mean, this is one that I'm going to share with, with everybody because this spinal hygiene is not talked about enough. This is such critical information. So, obviously, people can access some of these tools in your website, but please like share, where do they find the PDF? How do they learn how to exercise properly? How do they find out more about you and what you're doing? And please share all those details?
Eileen Durfee: Right. Well, my website is Creatrix Solutions, that's the name of my company. It’s C-R-E-A-T-R-I-Xsolutions.com Or you can just type in spinal fitness. And it'll forward you to Creatrix Solutions. And under exercise, there's a lot of drop downs that go everything from you know, explaining the neck, the back, the different posture correctors, the different rolls, but there's one that says, PDF guides. And so, there's a lot of content on there. I'm adding a bunch of new videos on using the spinal fitness equipment. Right now, there's some of those posted on our Instagram, which is Creatrix Solutions, so they can see me in action showing you how that really works. And, yeah, so -
Dr. David Wardy: Perfect. Awesome. For our listeners, check it out, go check out her website. Look at all these fun tools we just spoke about today. This is important self-care, like Dr. Nick was saying at the beginning of the episode today. So, this is one of those things that’s not talked about enough and very grateful and blessed that we had Eileen on here to shed light on this specific topic. And you're doing amazing things for my profession. So, I really have to thank you. More chiropractors need to look into these things for self-care for their patients. So, Eileen, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate you.
Eileen Durfee: Oh, well, thank you for having me. And thank you for spreading the word.
Dr. David Wardy: Oh, you got it.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Absolutely. Yeah. And just one last thing. I mean, I didn't get to share my experience with, with the products and, and I gotta say like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't have truly understood it until I tried it. And, and that there's so much power in actually just getting a chance to use the product. So, I am just so grateful that you are, you sent it my way. And it's definitely changed my, my awareness about my spine, and just, just the profound impact. I mean, my, my experience is very similar to David's in that I couldn't stay with, you know, with the two rollers underneath me for more than 10 minutes and then gradually increase it. And I ended up taking them with me whenever we left the house because if you were gone for over a night, I was gonna use those every night because of the impact. And just even waking up, the mobility in the morning and just the ease and, and just letting off that pressure off the lower back. And as you're diving deeper into the content with just this S-shaped curve, like this is the, the goal for - I think for every human to really recognize that there's a certain internal environment, structural integrity that needs to be intact for your nervous system, for your cardiovascular and your brain, your immune system, your lymphatics, for everything to work properly. And if, if this isn't being addressed, all of us as healthcare practitioners, we're missing out on a huge, huge factor within this human body. I mean, I like to tell my patients that you know, trees, they're, they’re meant to be solid in the ground and they create their own shape based on you know, the movements of the sun and the, the rain and the water that's there but we're mobile beings. And if we're not doing the things that serve this mobility within the body, we're really not serving the, the body, this, this human frame. So, this is, this is foundational information for people. I just –
Eileen Durfee: It’s, it’s anti –
Dr. Nick Jensen: I had to share that.
Dr. David Wardy: Okay.
Eileen Durfee: It’s anti-aging one less thing, you know.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: We're born in a C-shape. We can’t even sit-up but look at everybody old. They've lost their curves, they are bending over.
Dr. Nick Jensen: Yeah.
Eileen Durfee: Then, all this, their organs begin started shutting down. Dr. Scherger worked with a nine-year-old that was in a wheelchair. It took about 12 months but this nine-year-old had the S-shaped curve and we could run up and downstairs. It was just so much more stable. So, it's, it's life changing.
Dr. David Wardy: Truly. Eileen, thank you so much. And for our listeners, go check out her stuff, creatrixsolutions.com and we'll see you guys in the next one.
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