 3, 2, 1. This is Exploring Chiropractic, the podcast for chiropractic and pre-chiropractic students. Episode 6 for March 7th, 2014, Life University. I'm Nathan Cash and your host, and the show is not sponsored by MySchoolUWS or Life University. Anything that we share is just our personal opinions based on our experiences there. The featured affiliate for this episode is Audible. Get a free audiobook download today, yours to keep by visiting ExploringChiropractic.com forward slash Audible. This is Exploring Chiropractic and I'm Nathan Cash and joining me tonight on Exploring Chiropractic is Daniel Atkin. How are you Daniel? Doing great. Thanks for joining me from Life University in Georgia. So without, well, risking a horrible cliche, how's life? You know, I've heard that before and life is fantastic. It couldn't be better out here learning chiropractic and living the dream out here in Georgia. What made you decide to head out to Georgia for school? You know, it was interesting, you know, as I was going through my undergraduate school, I always knew that I wanted to go into chiropractic and so when the time came to choose a school, I got on our good friend Google and I found about every school that was out there, you know, perused their websites, called their counselors, talked with a whole bunch of them and kind of came up with my top three between Life University, Parker and Palmer out in Davenport. I felt that after talking to all the people that those deserved a second look. So I took a cross-country flight and hit each one of them and, you know, after visiting them and being at Life, and the second I got on Life, I just knew there was something unique about Life University and so, you know, my journey wasn't one of convenience or, you know, what's the nearest school to my house or anything like that, it was, you know, what's the best fit for me and my family and Life University was perfect for us. That's awesome. You and me both. We put in a huge effort and it's hard to think that that, you know, was as worth, sorry, was as worth as I'd like to think. Because I came to UWS twice. I went to Palmer West. I went to Life West. I went to Southern California and so I spent time and money traveling and I'm glad I didn't but it's not, it's not usual for people to do that, is it? No, it's not. In fact, sometimes I'm surprised how people end up in different places. It seems kind of random and I certainly think it's worth really figuring out what the schools represent because not all chiropractic schools are the same and that's certainly one of the things we're probably trying to get apart about. The point we're trying to make in this podcast is that there are some unique differences and some different fits based on who you are and what you believe in. That's exactly it. I hear it over and over. I chose a school that was closest to me and then I got there and I realized, wait a minute, there's this difference between schools. There's straights and mixers or philosophy and evidence-based and yeah, it's kind of a bigger world than we would imagine. It's not just chiropractic, it's chiropractic. What is your chiropractic story? Why did you choose to go to school? You know, I have an interesting story. When I was 10, my sister Crystal was 12. All of a sudden, after a track race, she started fainting and she fainted every single day for two years. About the same time, 10 o'clock in the morning, her school teacher had popped an ammonia capsule under her nose and it would wake her up. Well, after two years of that, she became paralyzed. You know, so obviously we spent months going to about every doctor imaginable where they came up with all kinds of theories as to what was going on and none of them panned out and so they sent her home in a wheelchair. Well, someone mentioned that we should go see a chiropractor, so we did. After one adjustment, she had movement in her hands and feet. Three weeks later, she was walking again. She's now a happy mother, raising a happy family, leaving a footprint in this world that only a mother can. You step back and you think, well, if it weren't for chiropractic, that wouldn't be possible. So as you can imagine to a 10-year-old that was freaked out about his sister to see what happened, I decided right then and there that I was going to be a chiropractor and obviously you kind of laugh at 10-year-olds deciding what they want to do. Well, somehow that desire never left and my path has taken me straight to chiropractic and I couldn't be happier with what I've chosen. That's amazing. Has the fainting subsided as well? Oh, yeah. I mean, I think after fainting daily, I think after that first adjustment, you know, there was probably a handful of time over the next three or four years where maybe, you know, a handful of episodes total over the next three or four years but it brought her out of the paralysis. The fainting stopped and I mean people laugh at the idea that she was ever paralyzed or ever fainting because I mean it's just by years and years since that happened after having happened daily at almost the same time. That's incredible. That's an incredible story. Was your family chiropractor a life graduate? Did that have any influence on where you went? No, it didn't. I mean, I'm pretty sure he was a Palmer graduate and you know we had to travel an hour and a half to get to him so he was very influential for a little while but I just had the opportunity this past summer to actually go out and meet him and say, you know, he was retired. I tracked him down, was able to shake his hand and tell him what a difference he'd made in my life but he was only in our lives for about six months before we moved it to a different part of the country. That's awesome. You said when you got to campus, you just felt like it was the right place. What is the campus like when you walk to school or get out of your car, what's the view? It's interesting because when you go down the main road to our campus is located, it's kind of a big strip of lots of car dealerships and you think, well, this campus can't be that nice. Well, you turn onto the street and life kind of owns the whole street. They're both sides of it for the most part and honestly it is a beautiful campus. I think life's campus is probably bigger than most out there. We are university, we've got several sports so we've got a big gym center, rugby field. I don't know, I'd have to say it's at least two or three acres of woods so there's wooded areas and trails where you can go jogging and it's really a beautiful, beautiful campus. It's green. I mean, that's just the south when you're down here in the south. It's green for a good part of the year and that was one thing that really surprised me. I mean, there's a little creek that runs down the middle of campus and kind of an old-century village. Once you're around Christmas time, they have what they call the lights of life where they absolutely deck out the whole area with a huge light show that the community comes in and actually pays to drive through. And so it kind of shocks you when you get in there because you don't know how such a beautiful little spot could exist when really you're kind of coming at it from a main drag of a boring old used car shop type road but it is a gorgeous little campus. I'm going to pull up on my screen for those watching the video. An awesome interactive campus map and you're right, it's just forest land and a nice creek running through it. This track and is that a football field that's part of the campus? Yeah, it is part of the campus. It's rugby. We actually have national champion rugby teams here. Just last year, both our club team won a championship as well as our undergraduate team and so that's rugby. It's not football. Right. Yep, you and Life West are the big rugby teams. I think I saw on your Facebook page you had a victory recently. Yeah. So this is a cool, I think this is the only the second school that has this interactive map. I remember Logan had one and it's really nice to be able to see what the campus is like because you're going to spend almost all day every day for the next three and a half years of your life on this campus, right? That's right. Nine day. Do you have a favorite building? You know, we spend so much of our time in the one chiropractic building and it's a nice little facility. Well, I take that back. I probably spend most of my time in the library studying and in a lot of ways the area around you is nice but if you're really intent on getting through chiropractic school quickly and with good grades you're just going to be between four white walls in some library somewhere. So it's nice to walk outside and see it but you've got the normal building and it's a good facility but it's classrooms. It looks like a beautiful library. The image that comes up is just very modern looking and really clean. I like it. It is. It's a great facility and there's lots of resources there and it's really well in fact over the last several years there have been many many updates made to this school where you know you say it looks modern and that's the case in a lot of different areas. Life has been around since 1975 I think. So it's a relatively new school compared to Palmer and UWS although the UWS campus is about the same era in the 1970s is where we moved to the current one so yeah so pretty pretty big and a pretty well kept campus. I like that. I'm looking at the website and I want to talk a little more about the philosophy of chiropractic and there's a page here on vitalism. So I hear from Sherman Life West and now Life University just talk about vitalism and not all schools mention this. What is vitalism to you? You know vitalism a chiropractic word within vitalism is innate intelligence and that's the recognition that inside every living thing there's an innate intelligence that runs that it's the difference between you know what's living and what's non-living and so really the philosophy of chiropractic is that the body is designed to heal itself and the way that heals itself is through the proper expression of innate intelligence and what chiropractic is is it's the removal of the interference from the nervous system so that innate intelligence can express itself more fully and that is taught at Life University and you know is the basic premise of chiropractic and so that vitalistic philosophy really sets us apart in how we understand that the body is being self-healing self-maintaining you know self-reproducing and so that innate intelligence that vitalism is a huge part of what you're exposed to here on campus. A few episodes ago I spoke with students at Sherman College of Chiropractic and they also talked about vitalism and Sherman used to be called the College of Straight Chiropractic. Would you consider life a straight chiropractic school? Yes absolutely you know and at Life University you know enrollment-wise is certainly the largest chiropractic school and and we certainly consider ourselves the leaders in vitalistic philosophy you know certainly along with with Sherman and some of these other schools but Life University would definitely be considered a straight school and certainly on purpose and proud of that reputation. How many students do you have at the school do you know? You know I would from what I've been told and understand I think we're still shy of 2,000 but we're certainly climbing towards there the the classes that are bringing on to campus are huge right now and so you know I they've grown in the three years I've been here but I think we're probably still shy of 2,000 once you include our undergraduate program it's probably closer to 2,500 though. Wow that actually is huge our school I think is around 500 so you guys are nearly well the full campus is five times larger than our our current numbers that's that is a big school. It is. Do you feel like there's any disadvantage to that? You know certainly when you are taking labs you know the lab work and and in lecture you know the size of a lecture and you know can be larger without any disadvantages I don't know what your lab sizes are but often we'll get about 20 students and they'll try to staff it with two different faculty members but having smaller lab classes would only be an advantage just because you get one on one time so that that's probably a disadvantage there. That doesn't sound far off now you're you're on the quarter system at life you're currently in 13th quarter that's right 13th quarter so that's a little bit different as well to have 14 quarters so it's three and a half year program. Yeah okay and how many students are in each class? You know my class started with with probably about 130 you know certainly it drops down as people you know stop partway through the curriculum not that it happens a whole lot but I think we started with about 120, 130 and I've heard that some of our classes coming in are are well over 200 some even getting close to 300. Yeah again a really large class so it's good that you guys get it down to 20 in a lab though we have we try to keep it 10 to 20 and any more I think than 15 it gets difficult to really get that one-on-one with the instructors. Yeah that's right. A few more questions about the website because I found these things interesting let me jump over to this screen share again. I just came across Facebook or maybe it was I was just browsing around life but they have this website called Amplified it seems to be almost a social network for chiropractic and for vitalistic philosophy. Yes Dr. Rieckman our university president is is very forward thinking certainly in that regard in the way that he tries to market things and so the concept between this that this amplified is it is certainly just a way of pushing out a message to millions of people with the click of a button and so he has presented what what he calls the 18% tipping point which I think is something from one of the TED talks if you're familiar with with TED talks and and that's that it once you reach 18% of the population basically a product or whatever it is you know chiropractic or whatever it may be it reaches a tipping point where all the sudden it spills into all the masses and it becomes accepted more as a normal thing rather than something on the fringes and so with this amplified program you know he once we get to 18% of the population as chiropractic and as this social network being a means to get a simple chiropractic message out to a lot of people then we'll be able to reach that tipping point so it interacts with certainly with Facebook and Twitter and some of those other accounts where you can push out a message to a large audience. Yeah from what I remember the idea is they have pre-written or pre collected messages these images these videos that you then can just quickly share on whatever your preferred social network is and so it's a way to to kind of get the word about chiropractic out to your social networks. That's right it's an excellent service that that that can save the time I mean I know a lot of people looking for Facebook ideas for their company website and it's certainly an easy way to push out the message. And it looks like they've tried to gamify it a little so gamifying is that idea of making some type of game out of it of course but you get points so the more you share the more points you get what are these points worth? You know I think they're attached to some so I think they might give you points toward free seminars and similar products like that that you know that are also kind of share the chiropractic message so I believe that's what those points are for. Very interesting it's it's cool to see how the different schools are are embracing social media well of course I love that because I think social media has a huge part and I'm doing an episode coming up in about two weeks on social media for chiropractic students so everybody stay tuned for that. Another example of it is is this life TV or life television I think which really isn't television but it's just a bunch of videos on their web page. Yeah Dr. Reichman 30 years ago started the Renaissance with Joe Felicia and they came up with the very first ever patient education video where you know they could they show the you know when a new patient's coming in before the report of findings and so he really prides himself in that video area in fact I think before chiropractic he was into you know producing videos and you know kind of theater and that kind of stuff and so this was a natural fit and so he loves video he uses them in presentation you can see right here on life TV there's a lot of excellent presentations that kind of teach about life but also about chiropractic as well to to once again share that message very cool here's a video on the vitalistic philosophy I think I'll go watch that to get a better idea of what they uh they like to teach with that well very cool we're going to take a quick break and I'm going to mention the affiliate for the show this week it is audible.com and audible is a great collection of audiobooks you can get a free one just by signing up no no commitment necessary you get the first book for free and you get to keep it and I just want to recommend when I've been reading this quarter or listening to I'm in fifth quarter genetics is one of the courses and at the very beginning we were talking about DNA and he mentioned this book by James D. Watson of course of Watson in Crick fame in which he talks about the process and the history of identifying the structure of DNA and as I walk to school and walk home or sometimes in between classes around a long run on the weekend I like to listen to audiobooks and it's a great way to learn more about the history behind the things I'm learning in class so the double helix by James Watson you can get this book or any other of your choosing for free if you go to exploring chiropractic.com slash audible what would you say is the best part about being at life university I would have to say the best part about life university and the reason why you know if I could I would not make any different choice is the exposure that we have to what chiropractic truly is at its core the philosophy you know chiropractic is a philosophy science and art and I think that what we have at life university is a huge part of all of those and so you know first of all the philosophy we already talked about the vitalistic philosophy you know the science we have a great research program here on campus where students are able to do a lot of research the professor in charge of our research here runs three online journals you know and then of course the art you know between the technique classes I've been told and I certainly haven't compared it to other curriculum from other schools but I've certainly been told that from the electives and from the required curriculum life university has access to far more chiropractic techniques than any other school and so there's lots of opportunity to pursue what you want to pursue but to to to have the essence of chiropractic boiled down to what its roots are and to be able to be on a campus where you know it's time you know this certain certainly not everything's perfect it isn't anywhere but to have a school that's so strong in those three aspects of chiropractic yet you know you see you know for those that want to get into different therapies and things like that you know there's certainly that available so the school doesn't have the mentality of you know of restricting thought or or only stressing one particular aspect of health but there's a living breathing of vitalistic philosophy taught here and and that's the one thing about life university that that makes it all worth it is to have been exposed to that and to really be able to go up grow as a student through that philosophy do you ever use the term evidence-based do you have courses on evidence-based chiropractic or do you spend time looking at the research supporting chiropractic as a treatment oh absolutely i'll tell you i just got through certainly the the most famous class here on campus the most difficult one it has you dive so deep into the research where you know it like i said you know one of the professors we have runs research journals now when it comes to the evidence-based there's a specific class where we go into the details of that and so you know evidence-based is taught and it's something we're exposed to what how it lines up in comparison to other schools i don't know but it's certainly something that's taught here as well as the research we're very interested in making sure that the science lines up you know and is as important as any other aspect of chiropractic if you could change one thing about life university what would that be um if i were to change something um about the school itself it would probably have to well and and this i don't know if this is a complaint across the board that there's a lot of time dedicated to chiropractic and the problem with chiropractic in general could be business and getting out being able to run a practice life university has a business class every quarter and i don't know maybe everybody has a business class all the time but i don't know if we even have a single class on business and most schools that i visited don't teach business so you every quarter you guys have a class on how to run a business every quarter we have a business class and it's interesting you say that because when i was looking for schools that was important to me i wanted to be able to run a business and i like life and i think life i mean i felt that life had the best business program before and and apparently we we must have a pretty good one if if we've got a class every quarter and not everybody has that but you know yeah here we are probably same as other schools still somewhat complaining about the fact that they're not making giving us an MBA while we also go to chiropractic school certainly that's not the school's responsibility but you know the more exposure that we have to business the better because you know we're spending $250,000 for the privilege of opening up a small business and we better know how to run that small business and let me clarify we do teach we do have courses where we're taught billing we're taught insurance codes um i don't think we have a course where we're taught the finances the management the you know how to write uh your business plan how to get loans we have a club on campus that deals with that almost almost every week we have a meeting and um but yeah that that's something that i think is sort of like i spend a lot of time outside of school checking out websites checking out books on how to pay off my loans how to open a business how to run a business and it's scary yeah well at life university we certainly have a course we have multiple clubs um for multiple different angles that do lots of business that are actually quite fantastic you know and i think it's the case that you know you're going to get uh get out what you put into these courses but uh you know with uh you know with that being my largest uh complaint you can tell why um i've really enjoyed my time here at life university that's really great to hear well let's wrap it up uh it's been a great chatting with you and learning about life university there's so many things that we could ask but maybe we'll come back again we're going to have a couple other students on from life university including an old high school classmate of mine that i haven't spoken to in years so maybe we'll do another episode of life and we can get you back on if it fits before we leave i want to share our tick picks this episode what have you got to share with the students you know something i've run into just within the last few months that i love and listen to as often as i can is is a podcast called spinal column radio and it is an excellent podcast because this guy this chiropractor running it is able to interview a whole lot of very very you know awesome chiropractors people that you know names you're going to recognize he does an excellent job interviewing now it's it's certainly straight principled chiropractic and so anybody listening that may not be as familiar with that side of chiropractic it's absolutely worth a listen and for those of you that are into it i'll tell you this stuff will get you charged up you can put it on your iphone your ipad whatever you're listening to listen to it on the commute knife it's it's it's charging me up and and something i definitely recommend i have listened spinal column radio for the past not quite a year maybe about a year ever since i started because as soon as i hosted my first episode dr thomas lemar the host of spinal column radio contact invited me on sharing it and i think that's been a huge benefit to exploring chiropractic because i almost don't have to plan my shows i get contacted from students around the world who heard dr thomas lemar mentioned my podcast contact me and we bring him on so i've talked to people in new zealand australia i've someone from barcelona that is scheduled and including the original student from life who was going to interview so and of course you so that's awesome i i do love spinal column radio uh i'm kind of bum that he's not producing any more episodes his did you listen to his finale episode yes i did i've only gotten maybe an hour into it and i just it's sitting in my podcast app and this episode is over seven hours long he he loves doing crazy things like this because now he can say he has the world's record for the longest chiropractic podcast ever recorded and it's true get to beat it yeah it's a fun show to listen to awesome my pick of the week has to do with podcasts as well and it's a shameless plug because i just discovered stitcher sure radio is on the app and phone fire and it is podcasting and so rather than separate podcast feeds or having go to it which you can do by and subscribe to exploring chiropractic you can also use stitcher and stitcher will take your your preferences whether it's entertainment technology local news global news and it will stitch together a bunch of different podcasts with those qualities and with that material and i'm glad to say that exploring chiropractic is now on stitcher so you can get to stitch on by going to exploring chiropractic com slash stitch things but you can always watch exploring chiropractic on youtube you can download it as well on itunes and you can just go can watch it there listen to it there and find out more and see one of my good things that i was putting of all of the universe and this would have come in handy i think for you dano as well as for me when we were able to be able to capture how can i learn more click on each little will come up and some of them if not all of them there will take you to the web page so that is our practice and stitcher radio a cool new android well daniel thank you so much for joining me this uh this episode about life university yeah it was my pleasure is there a way that people can get a hold of you if they want to learn more about life are you online twitter google you know the best way to get a hold of me i i um is uh an email at d atkin at student.life.edu i'm happy to field any questions i guess i i need to upgrade and get facebook or something maybe that would have been easier but uh but certainly sending me an email i'd be happy to answer any questions because i love to share chiropractic and and life represents what chiropractic truly is all right well thank you daniel and thanks for listening to exploring chiropractic