Traditional Healing Meets Modern Mastery: Dr. Adam Gavine’s 2-Day Fix for Chronic Pain Pt. 2

Last time, Dr. Govine explained the origin of his healing philosophy and the power of individualized care. In part 2, we uncover how his wasabi method and shockwave therapy works, plus hear about remarkable patient recoveries, including my wife Margaret regaining the ability to walk. Truly amazing. Dr. Govine also shares how understanding physiology leads to real long-term healing. Don't forget to listen to part 1. It would be really helpful to understanding this episode. I'm your host, James Barry, and you're listening to Everyday Ancestral, where tradition meets innovation for whole body wellness. I want to go back to some of your other therapies. One of the ones that you used with Margaret, and that I think is the core of the Wasabi Method, is shockwave therapy. So can you talk about that? Yeah.

Yeah. So that's, that's a company I started with Dave Asprey last year.

The Wasabi Method.

Yeah. Wasabi Method. So we use acoustic sound waves that we put into the tissues of the body to stimulate healing and repair of those tissues. It has actually about 19 physiological effects that it has on the body. So some of them are, it increases what's called angiogenesis. So angiogenesis is The formation of new blood vessels. I can go on like your arm. And a lot of people, the problem is why they get like trigger points or pain or soreness. Think of muscles almost like plants. If they don't get enough blood, or in my analogy, water, they start to wither and not work as well. So I can go on a tissue and stimulate the body to say, hey, lay down some more capillaries in this area to help supply that muscle with adequate blood flow so it can function better. So think of it like laying down some irrigation to a plant to give it more water. That plant starts to thrive instead of just survive.

It almost sounds like you're supporting resilience, really.

Well, essentially we are because it comes down to just physiology. If you understand physiology, you can almost fix anything. So you just, you just identify what's happening in the body and go, okay, this is like, this muscle is lacking blood flow. So if I increase the blood flow to that muscle, guess what happens? It becomes stronger. It becomes more resilient. It becomes more functional. It becomes just a better functioning muscle.

When you were applying that shockwave therapy through the Wasabi Method on Margaret with her knee, walk me through what you actually did, because it was more than just that. I know you were also using your experience, but maybe just share with us that process of how you would work with someone with that ailment.

The Wasabi Method, it's not just the device. So a lot of people are always like, Why is your device better? And I tell people honestly, like, my device isn't necessarily better than other devices. Think of it like a car. You don't need a Ferrari to drive 4 miles to work on a 30-mile-an-hour road. It's kind of superfluous. So a lot of these other companies, they'll sell you these whiz-bang devices that cost You know, $50,000 to $100,000. And I'm like, my device is $15,000. It's like me selling you a Ford Focus. Like, it'll still get you to work. It gets the job done. You don't need the Ferrari to get you to work every day. And so a lot of these other devices, they make you think you need the Ferrari. It's like, you have to have the Ferrari. You're stupid if you don't have the Ferrari. And it's like, well, I don't really need the Ferrari. It costs a lot. The upkeep's a lot and it doesn't really give me any extra benefits. With our device, if I sell you the Ford Focus, now imagine if I had Lewis Hamilton teach you how to drive that Ford Focus. So that's what we're doing. I'm going to teach you how to use our device to get the maximum benefit out of it. That's why we call it a method because it's not just the device. It's how you use it. I have 5 modules. So we have the upper body, we have the lower body, we have men's sexual health, we have women's sexual health, and then we have advanced techniques. With the upper and lower body, it's basically, I go through every muscle and I show you exactly how I would treat it. You get like 20 years of experience. So you don't have to spend 20 years learning how to do this. I teach you the secret sauce. I go, this is how I do it. You can follow what I do, or you can adapt it a little bit to, to be your own. I'm cool with either, but I'm going to show you what I do and what works best for me. And that's really the secret is learning how to use it. 'Cause then you'll get much better results. And pretty much we're the, one of the only companies in the world that sell these devices that have comprehensive education that comes along with it. The other thing we do is we'll sell to non-medical people. So I could sell you a device. The caveat there is you can only use it on yourself. You can't open up and just be like, I'm gonna treat everyone down my street and charge 'em, you know, $100 each. There's 2 things. You have to have insurance and you have to have a license to touch people. So as long as you have that, if you're say like a qualified massage therapist, you can actually charge and use this in your clinic. But the company I used to work for that I did, I was one of their lead instructors. They will not sell their device to non-medical people, even though the FDA deems it okay to do. They just go, we don't sell to peasants. And I'm like, okay, I'm happy. But we have, we have certain caveats. One is when you buy our device, you have to purchase the education. So the education, again, it tells you all the contraindications. It tells you all the safety things. You actually have to pass our safety test before I will even send you the device. So that way I ensure that you have done the, the safety module and that you're not gonna hurt yourself or others.

What is it that people have to be aware of? 'Cause, 'cause maybe you can explain or describe the device, 'cause most people will be listening to this, right?

It's like a gun. So basically inside the gun at the tip, imagine it's like a gong at the end here. So imagine if you stood in front of a big gong and I hit it really hard, you would feel those sound waves from the gong kind of hit your body. Those are shockwaves. So basically on our device, we put a little gong on the end of the gun. We have a bullet inside a chamber. That gets pushed by controlled bursts of air, and then the bullet hits the gong. That creates this sound wave that goes into tissues. The caveat there is you have to have ultrasound gel because the sound waves don't travel well through air. You lose like 99% of the energy, but they travel really well through a medium like water or like a gel. It's similar to like ultrasound. Put some gel on, it goes into the tissues. What it does to the tissues is it stimulates signals. So it stimulates cells to change and adapt. So basically you're putting a signal into the body and then the body's responding. So it's like, I'm, again, I'm telling your body, clean up on aisle 5. So your body, your brain picks up on that signal. And then releases all these chemicals. One's called VEGF. So that stands for vascular endothelial growth factor. That hormone will help your body grow these new blood vessels. That's why we use it for helping with erectile dysfunction. If you're not getting enough blood flow down there, you can't achieve a proper erection. We can stimulate the body to lay down new blood vessels. So that you, you can achieve a proper erection and it gives you a permanent solution to that problem if that's the specific issue that you had, if it was due to blood flow instead of having to pop Viagra or whatever all the time.

So what does it actually feel like?

So at the applicator, the tip kind of moves in and out like that, kind of like a jackhammer. And a lot of people think it's electrical because it feels like it's kind of zapping you, but it, it's all mechanical. It's all pneumatic. So it's compressed air that pushes the bullet and then the bullet hits the gong. The gong creates these sound waves. The sound waves go into the tissues and you feel those sound waves going into you and we can control the pressure. So it doesn't have to be excruciating. You can set it to a level that, that's tolerable. And I always work within people's tolerance.

What kind of outcomes are you seeing in people that use the Wasabi Method? And then how fast are you seeing them?

We get really amazing effects almost instantaneously. So if you, if you go, if you go watch us on Instagram, I post a lot of our videos of us working at conferences and just the outcomes that these people get within, you know, 5 minutes for, for some of them, they're just like, wow, that's amazing. It's unbelievable. One of the other physiological effects that you have from the treatment is it causes a local analgesic effect. So if you have pain, say in your elbow, I can decrease your level of pain within 5 minutes by using the device because it stimulates the nerves in the area and they release the, a chemical called substance P. And you probably know this being a, a chef, if you eat something really spicy, you know how it like burns and it hurts a little bit in your mouth at first, but then your mouth kind of goes numb and tingly a little bit. So that's the exact same physiological effect that we get when we work on these tissues. So we stimulate these nerve endings to release substance P. Once the nerve has no longer any ability to release substance P, it gives you a little analgesic effect. So your pain instantly goes down and pain is a strong modulator of movement. When you have pain, you move differently and it's very unpredictable. So when I train people, if they have pain, it's really difficult to train them because every time they move, they move differently. But if I can bring down the pain, now the brain's not trying to protect that joint as much because it goes, oh, the pain's gone. So it, it can restore normal movement. And then I can get people to do these normal movements and get stronger, more resilient, and more functional to help them get back to where they're supposed to be.

Is there any part of the body you can't put it on? I mean, if you're, if you're able to, even with erectile dysfunction, are you literally putting it on the penis?

Yeah.

And you're, and what the person has to put their hand on the other end, cuz don't you need a resistance?

Nope. You just put it on, like I can put it on your finger and it'll just go into your finger and stimulate the cells and the tissues at that level. So if you say you sprained your finger joint, I can treat that joint. It will bring down inflammation. It will increase blood flow to the area. It'll bring down your pain level and it'll stimulate a bunch of other things like collagen. It actually stimulates stem cells. You get a release of stem cells. You actually even get a release of BDNF, so, which is a hormone that helps, helps your brain work. There's about 19 physiological changes that occur that we stimulate in the body when we use this, this device.

Have you guys ever tried it on the inner ear? I mean, I, I can't remember how fine the tip is, but have you ever been able to help people with hearing issues?

I haven't tried that, but the device is a little loud, so I would be a little worried working on the ear.

That might be the only area you wouldn't use it on.

Yeah, you can't use it over the lungs because the shockwaves can actually cause air to expand. So there is a small risk that you could damage the alveoli in the lung. We avoid going directly over the lung. Like if I'm working on someone's upper trap, I'll just kind of direct it away from the lung so that it goes more anterior rather than inferior into the lung. The other contraindications are you can't use it on kids. So anyone under 18, because it causes growth and proliferation. And with kids, they have what are called growth plates on their bones. We don't want to stimulate abnormal growth in areas.

Those plates usually fuse at, what is it, 24?

We say 18 because for most people, the main ones are fully formed at about 18. There are a few that, yeah, they go up until about 21. I think it's collarbone is one of them. You can usually tell if you get, if you get like an x-ray, it's an easy way to tell which growth plates are Still there. For most people, it's totally safe for a fully grown adult. So pregnancy, it's not that it's harmful. We just don't have a ton of pregnant women signing up to do clinical trials on this. If you're on blood thinners, so like warfarin, stuff like that, cuz it can, it can cause some bruising and stuff like that. If you have like hemophilia or any blood clotting disorders, Other things are if you've had a cortisone injection, but the caveat there is after 6 weeks you can have it done. Pre-ruptured tendons. There's caveat there as well. If it's been over a year, I tell people it's fine.

So we don't leave people scared. Maybe you could share, like, I'm sure you have a story that of people that have used it other than my wife. 'Cause of course that was, I remember feeling like, wow, that was a miracle. But maybe you have others where the recovery was so profound that the people were like, that was a miracle.

I've got a few stories. So one I often tell when I'm at seminars and stuff is I had a patient who had plantar fasciopathy, which is the pain in the, in the bottom of the foot. It feels like they're walking on broken glass. So she was, she was in her 60s and she'd seen about 10 other practitioners before she saw me. And she had spent over $10,000 in 2 years and she hadn't Seen her daughter or granddaughter for over 2 years because they lived in Hong Kong and I'm in Australia and she, my patient's in Australia. So she couldn't walk far enough to, to, you know, get on a plane and go see her daughter and granddaughter. She told me after when, when she first saw me, she was like, oh, you're going to be, you know, just number 11 who failed. And I was like, oh, let's see what we can do. I had her on a flight to Hong Kong 8 weeks after I first saw her. She was so happy, one, that I was able to resolve her foot problem, but also that she could go visit her daughter and granddaughter, which was super important for her. And we don't think sometimes as practitioners, like, we're just like, oh yeah, you know, but that really meant the world to this woman that she could, you know, go see her family. After that, she sent like At least 12 people to see me. She was just like, any of her friends that had problems, she's like, go see Adam, go see Adam, go see Adam. So I, I got a ton of referrals from, from her. And the cool thing too with her condition is it never came back. Let me qualify that. It did come back a little bit and I just gave her like one treatment and then it, it went away again.

That was gonna be my question is, is how, how long-lasting is it? But that's amazing that it didn't come back. Wow. That's definitely very inspiring.

And that's a condition that commonly comes back. I've had a really high success rate with patients with that condition. I would say I've had about 2 patients in the past 10 years that I wasn't able to sort out. And that's typically a condition that most practitioners struggle with. Like I go to seminars and people are like, how do you treat this? How do you treat? I'm like, I fix everybody with this problem. They're like, how? And I'm like, You just do this and then they're all like, oh, okay.

The device sells itself.

Yeah. Unfortunately, the problem is I forget that not all practitioners know what I know. And I take that for granted. I'm like, well, so part of our goal for Wasabi Method is I want all practitioners to know this information and be able to sort this. I want, if you went to any, you know, physio, chiro, podiatrist anywhere in the States, I'm hoping that you could get the same result as you'd get with me. That's my goal is to train people up so that anywhere you go, you get the same result, which is basically sort me out, tell me what I need to do, and let's get rid of this problem. That is not at all the current state of affairs.

The McDonald's of healthcare, no matter where you go in the world, the hamburgers still taste the same.

Yeah.

Yeah. I wanted to ask though, given the nature of this podcast, Everyday Ancestral, how do you integrate lifestyle factors such as nutrition and mental wellbeing into your treatment plans?

It's pivotal. My God, I tell, I tell people you have to address all these things. You can't just, because if someone has a crappy diet, if someone's stressed out to the max, if someone's not sleeping well, if someone's not exercising at all, it makes my job way harder because the body just can't heal like it should. It's, you haven't given it the right things. Again, if we go back to the plant analogy, it'd be like a plant that's not getting enough water, a plant that's not getting the proper soil and a plant that's not getting adequate sunlight. Like, how's that plant going to thrive? It can't. When I work with people, Like I don't bash them over the head with these things. I just, again, I always check to see where they're at. There's a real skill. Like I have a friend that develops programs to, with universities to help teach practitioners how to communicate with patients. And that's, that is such a skill that we're not really taught that when we go through university, we're just taught Learn the anatomy, learn the biomechanics, learn the physiology, and then don't worry about communication. You know how to talk. And it's like, it's so unfortunate because if we simply knew how to communicate and meet people where they're at and actually listen to people, like half the time, like when I help patients that haven't been able to get results with other practitioners, all I did was just listen to them and they tell me the answer. All I got to do is listen. Like, I love the analogy you have. You have one of these and 2 of these, use them in that ratio.

Oh, I've never heard that actually. I love that. For those that were listening, you pointed one, one, you point to your mouth. So you only have one mouth and you have 2 ears.

You should use them in, in that ratio. Now I'm not doing that today with you. I'm doing, I'm doing a lot more mouth, but I'm just sharing my No, I'm grateful you are.

You're, you know, your stuff and I, and I cannot stress how miraculous what you did to Margaret when we met felt. You took her from below empty. I mean, she felt at her worst and you brought her to half a tank, at least maybe even 3/4. I mean, she's way better now, but you got her to a place where she did not know she could get. You know, before we end, I think let's talk about that because that's really fascinating to me is because I almost feel like, yes, you helped her knee, but what you really helped was her mindset that she wasn't broken.

So what I had to do with Margaret was I had to make her feel safe. That was the most important thing because she felt vulnerable. She felt like I can't walk. My knee's going to dislocate. So the cool thing is when you're a practitioner like me is people have faith in you because, you know, I've got a couple degrees up on the wall. They go, well, he knows his stuff, right? So they automatically have faith in me. And so they listen better. So I told her, I said, look, your kneecap's not going to dislocate again. I promise you. I've seen this before. It won't happen. So then I planted the seed and then she's like, okay. So then she's, she's challenging the information that her brain is, is giving her because her brain's saying it's unsafe. It's going to dislocate. You're going to hurt yourself. Don't do anything. And then she listens to me and I'm saying, that's not true. Are you going to believe your brain? Are you going to believe someone who studied this for 20 years? And so her brain goes to, I'm going to go with the expert because he knows his stuff. And then she started to trust me. I did really gentle stuff. Even though the first day I worked on her, I actually didn't use the wasabi on her. And that was deliberate because I knew she couldn't handle that. And that's where I was talking about meet people where they're at. So I had to meet her down here because she wasn't ready for that yet. And I knew that. That's just because of years of experience knowing how to work with people in these conditions. I was like, you can't handle that. I actually didn't even touch her knee. I worked on her ankle and her calf because I knew if I worked on her ankle and calf, it's away from the danger zone and that I would get Changes that would help her knee. So I can work on her ankle and her calf. It's not going to hurt. So she doesn't feel threatened. It's going to have physiological changes that are going to benefit her knee. And I'm going to get a good result. So that's what I did on the first day. I just worked on her calf and I worked on her ankle and I got her ankle and her calf working better, which had effects on her knee. And she felt that straight away. She's like, oh, that works. That works better. And I go, great. Come back tomorrow. We'll do some more. So she left happy because I didn't do too much. Sometimes less is more. A lot of it was just gaining her confidence. And had I gone straight to her knee and done a bunch of stuff to it, I might've flared it up a little bit. The next day she would've been like really apprehensive and she might not even showed up. Had I done that, that was very deliberate. And that's a, that's a mistake a lot of rookie practitioners do. They're like, oh, let's get in there. Let's, no, that will not work. That would have failed miserably with, with your wife.

I feel like it's a real life lesson. In fact, what you're sharing, I mean, in a sense, you know, whether it's the Russian doll analogy or even peeling the onion, it's like sometimes we treat ourselves with that aggression as well. We go, oh, this is what's wrong. Or I'm such a jerk for doing this. Or I'm, you know, we beat We're our hardest critic. All it does is it then pushes us towards, you know, eating that pint of ice cream or just feeling shame or these really intense feelings. And that maybe, I love how you're putting this, that maybe we need to sometimes just approach a very hot situation with gentle eyes and open ears.

100%. You got it. It's empathy. Have empathy for yourself. Be kind to your body. A lot of this, you know, hard charging, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna force my body to get fit or whatever, that it doesn't make sense. The body works so much better if you work with it instead of against it. Look at it like how you would treat a child or an animal or a pet, you know, like be kind and listen. Your body tells you the answers. Because like I had a patient yesterday and she's like, What should I do this weekend? And I'm like, just try a few things and listen to what your body likes and what it doesn't like. If you do something and it feels like it's flaring it up, stop doing that. It's not rocket science, but some people just, it's almost like people need to be given permission. It's like a lot of the time I just feel like I'm a teacher or like a principal giving people permission. It's like, you can do that. Just not too much. Have you heard the term interoception?

No.

So interoception, it means checking in with your body. So, you know, when you do like meditation, they'll be like, focus on your left big toe. Now focus on your pinky toe. Now focus on your ankle. And you go up, that's interoception. So we have nerve endings That go to every part of our body, but you're not thinking of every part of your body all day long. Right. It's like, how's your, how's your pancreas feel today? And you're like, oh, let me check. How's your right pinky toe feeling? You actually have to think about it. Right. And then you go, oh, it's, well, it's not sore and I can feel it that I can move it. So this idea of interoception is very powerful. And it's something we've lost in our modern-day society. And that's why meditation is very powerful because if you drop in and feel what's going on in your body, it makes you very focused. You're not worrying about what's for dinner. You're not worrying about what time I got to pick up the kids. You're not worried about your taxes because we can only do one thing at a time. If I'm thinking about my pinky toe, I'm not thinking about my taxes. So just doing that just calms people the hell down. Don't worry about all that shit. That shit will be there when you come out of your meditation. Your taxes will still be there. They still need to get filed or done or whatever. But why don't you take 10 minutes out of your day and not worry about that stuff? And guess what that does to your nervous system? It downregulates it, takes you out of fight or flight, gets you into parasympathetic. That's when your body heals and repairs. We're meant to be in parasympathetic pretty much all day long. We're designed to only go into sympathetic, which is fight, flight, freeze, or fawn when we have a threat. Now you shouldn't have threats. All day long. Like, do you feel under threat right now? No, no. Right. So you should be in parasympathetic. The only time, you know, like if you're crossing the street, maybe because there's, you know, oncoming cars, but that's a good thing because it gets you to move your ass and cross the street before that car hits you. So don't think of them as good and bad. Just think of them as systems. And our default is, should be in the parasympathetic, which is feed and breed and rest. So when we're in parasympathetic, we digest our food way better, which I'm sure you know tons about. And our body heals. Because if you're getting chased by a saber-toothed tiger, your brain goes, should I fix that kidney infection we're dealing with? Or should I run away? Your brain makes an executive decision. It goes, what's going to kill us first? Probably the saber-toothed tiger. So it goes, I'm going to take away the blood flow from the kidney, put it into your legs so you can run as fast as you can so you don't die, which makes sense. But nowadays we have so much stress that our brain thinks we're being chased by saber-toothed tigers. All day long. And then we never go into parasympathetic. And then our body never gets the opportunity to heal that kidney infection. And all of a sudden it becomes chronic. And now you need a kidney replacement or something. That's how a lot of these problems occur because our body just, we're so stressed. And the funny thing is people, you know, they go to yoga or meditation like once a week and it's like, they go, oh, I feel so good. It's because for 1 hour, once a week, they go into parasympathetic and they feel good. That should be the default. That should be our default.

Absolutely. Well, I thoroughly enjoyed digging into not only the Wasabi Method, but just in general, how people can look at their bodies differently, how they can maintain their body. I love that concept of like, Getting support, thinking about the warmup, you know, not just for the athlete, but for your day, your, your individual, what's your warmup for your day physically? And really, we could take that energetically, mentally, you know, having a warmup in a sense that's unique to you. I really like that. How can people learn more about Wasabi Method? How can they find you? Are there ways for people to work with you remotely?

Yeah, you can. Our main platform for social media is Instagram. So we're @wasabi_method. Our website is wasabimethod.com. For my clinic is backtofunction.com.au. So it's back, B-A-C-K, and then T-O, function. .com.au because I'm in Australia. My emails and stuff are on there if you want to email me. You can also work directly with me even if you're in the United States. I have patients that I do telehealth with. So I can assess you. I can give you programs. I even have an app where I design exercise programs for people. It has videos. It has instructions. It's really, really user-friendly. And that's what I use here with my, with my patients here in Australia. So It would be no different than, than you being a patient here. So happy to help people out. Or if you want to find someone that does the Wasabi Method, has a device, we have a list on our website, or you can email us and we can put you in touch with the appropriate people in your area.

Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me. Dr. Adam, and thank you all for listening or watching Everyday Ancestral. We love having you on our team. Stay curious and make sure to share with a friend or leave a message so we know how we can make this show even better.

Thanks so much, James. It was a pleasure to be here.

Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Thank you. Thank you for joining me today, Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links, and resources mentioned at eatpluck.com. That's eatpluck.com. And hey, if you know someone who'd get something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.