526- The Power of Diabetes Reversal Programs in Chiropractic Care

Welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor, where each week we deliver the latest chiropractic research and marketing strategies, all in the time it takes to get to your office. Now, here's your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid.

Hello, and welcome to the Evidence Based Chiropractor. I AM your host, Dr. Jeff Langmaid. On today's episode, I have a fantastic interview with Dr. Jeff Hawkings of Diabetes Reversal Group. They're a new partner of the podcast and we're going to dive into behind the scenes of why and how diabetes is such a big issue, how it shows up in your practice, and how Diabetes Reversal Group has made it really, really easy for chiropractors just like you to. To be able to bring a diabetes reversal program into your practice, make it simple and easy, and massively results driven, which I love. So without further ado, here's an interview with Dr. Jeff Hawkins. I want to start at the top with a question that I have for you and I'm sure many other docs do as well. What was that aha moment for you that shifted your attention time, energy, focus from traditional care to developing a reversal program?

Yeah. Well, again, my wife and I, we had for our first 18 years together, Jeff, we started and we built and sold four chiropractic offices, multidisciplinary. And after 18 years of that, you know, we kind of just reached our pinnacle of, okay, there's no other challenge here. And we wanted to try something different. And our philosophy is always that kind of blue ocean strategy. How do we start something nobody else is doing? And because diabetes runs in our family, I had an aunt who died of it when I was younger, and, and my wife's dad, he just passed away two years ago. So when we started this company 16 years ago, he was right in the thick of it. And so it's a very personal mission for us. And 16 years ago, when he looked around, there was no program somebody could join that showed somebody exactly what to eat and what not to eat with no bs, what supplements to take, what exercise to do and provide coaching and training and guarantee results. So we created it, and it's been a long process the last 16 years. We got patent approval five years ago, and now we're just helping thousands of people, and it's just exciting. So this licensing program we're offering is really the next step for us, which is really cool.

It's. It's powerful. And the word reversal is different than managed. And I'd love for you to dive into the distinction and how important that is in patient care between reversing diabetes and managing diabetes. And why, why is the difference so important?

Yeah, well, as all chiropractors know, right, Medical doctors are trained in med school to manage diabetes with meds. That's it. They're not trained in nutrition, anything wellness. They're certainly not trained how to reverse diabetes. So that's why 99% of diabetics in the world have no idea it's reversible. They think once they get the diagnosis, they got to take these pills every day of the rest of their life. There's nothing they can do, is basically, you know, finger in the dike, try not to get a really bad complication. So management is when you take meds to keep your blood sugar normal, reversal is when you get your A1C to, to 5.9 or lower, taking no meds. And so that's what we do. We reverse it. We get people completely off their meds and reverse the condition. So it's like putting it dormant or into remission because this is not a cure. You can't cure diabetes, but you can put it into that dormant remission state where the blood sugar is normal, taking no meds.

Let's talk about some of the pillars there, because clearly you mentioned a few of them at the top, but there's some core pillars to a reversal program. And what are some of those key components that you see ultimately that just drive the best results for the patient?

You know, the two biggest things is, you know what we got patented, which is the specific list of foods and drinks that you can have as a diabetic, and the ingredients and dosages of the nutritional supplements. So that's what we got patented. Our supplements have 87 different nutrients in them. So it's not just a little bottle with four or five things like cinnamon and chromium. It's like very, very robust. And those are proprietary to us. And so those are. That's our secret sauce. When you eat the right food, you take the right supplements, blood sugar starts coming down. And when the blood sugar gets below about 105 in the morning, that our support coach tells the patient to contact their primary doctor so they can start reducing the dose of the meds. So we're not the ones that are stepping into the primary care role. We're not diagnosing anybody prescribing meds or taking them off the meds. We're just coaching them through our lifestyle program.

Yeah, that makes sense. And when you think about, I think about the sustainability, right, being able to Take something down is one thing. Being able to stay there is another. What have you, you seen in the last 16 years in terms of the sustainability of that reversal?

Well, it's very sustainable because here's the thing I learned, and probably most chiropractors know this, I learned this 35 years ago. Trying to sell prevention is a very, very hard thing to do. Even though everybody should get an adjustment once a week for the rest of their life for maintenance and prevention. Very hard to sell that. People wait until there's a crisis on my neck, oh, my back, whatever. It's the same thing with diabetics. Like a diabetic who's like late 40s, early 50s, who just got diagnosed taking one pill with no symptoms, there's no urgency for them to change their lifestyle. Right. So we can't try and motivate somebody for that. They have to be self motivated. So that's why most of the patients you join our program, they've been in diabetic for at least five years. They're taking four, five, six meds. They feel like crap. Energy levels low. Right. Sex drives low. They're already getting neuropathy in their feet, blurred vision, kidney problems, hearted, you know, high blood pressure, cholesterol. So they get to that point where they're scared and they're like, holy crap, I need to do something, I'm going to die. So that's what kind of motivates them to want to make those lifestyle changes. And once they do that, that also helps them sustain it because they don't ever want to go back to the way they were because they know how devastating it can be. But they have to get to that breaking point, you know, before they want to do this. And that's what I learned a long time ago. It's hard to motivate people. They got to do it themselves.

Yeah, absolutely. In my mind, this seems like such a natural fit with what we do as chiropractors. Movement, performance, nutrition, ensuring people are reducing inflammation. All of these items that we talk about seem like such a natural complement to having a diabetes program and having that offering as a specific line of service in the practice. How do you think about the principles, I'll say, of diabetes care, diabetes reversal, chiropractic, and how aligned are they? And did I miss anything there?

No, I mean, 100%. That's why, again, I've been a chiropractor for 35 years. Right. I mean, last 16 just doing diabetes reversal. But I can't imagine this kind of program being developed by A medical doctor or a dentist or podiatrist. You know, you have to have our kind of training and philosophy of wellness and doing it from the inside out to even come up with something like this. So that's why I think it aligns perfectly, and that's why I think this is a great thing. An added thing for all chiropractors is plug and play inside their practice to offer that as another solution.

Yeah, I want to give. On that note, I want to give a quick shout out for docs listening and or watching. We're going to drop a link down below to connect with Dr. Jeff and his team to learn more about their licensing program and really bring this into your practice and in a meaningful way. And in line with that, Jeff, what are some of those practical first steps that chiropractors should be considering right now as they're saying, man, I'd like to start talking about this with my, with my patients. Where does somebody start?

Yeah, well, the easiest thing obviously is, you know, again, becoming a licensee of our program. We do everything. So when that happens, they would, we would create a specific licensee link for them, like an affiliate link, and all they have to do is, hey, Mary, I see you have type 2 diabetes. We're now a licensee of the world's only patented system to reverse type 2 do. If you want more information, go to this link and watch a free webinar. I mean, it's that simple. That's really all they have to do. And then they go through our process. The patient watches the webinar, they have a consultation with us, they sign up and we do all the work. And the doctor earns a fee for that as a licensee. So it's a very simple plug and play type program. So we don't. We're trying to make it where the doctors don't have a lot of moving pieces in this, where they got to think about this every day. And I can get into later on, like how easy and how plug and play it is, but that's really what we want them thinking about, is that this is an additional service they can offer with literally like no additional work. Which is great.

Yeah. In my mind, I want to get into the specifics, but before we do, in my mind, helping, correct me if I'm wrong, being able to help somebody reduce the effects that diabetes has on their body would seem as though that it would help with all of the clinical care that you're delivering in your practice. If they have an underlying chronic condition that's really preventing them from ultimately living their best life at the optimal. At the worst, they're just in abject pain all the time and dysfunction. This seems as though it would be something that actually has the opportunity to enhance the, the, the other care that's delivered hands on in the practice. Am I off base with that or is that correct?

Oh, 100%. I mean, you know, high blood sugar affects every cell in the body. It's a nasty freaking disease, man. It affects the brain, heart, liver, kidneys, pancreas, spleen digestion. Like everything gets annihilated across all the inflammation and it's affecting everything. So, yeah, so when you're trying to be that wellness doctor, obviously doing the chiropractic care is awesome. That's the pinnacle. But if someone's a type 2 diabetic, you know, with all these symptoms, chiropractic is not going to reverse that. So doing it together is a really synergistic thing and it's just perfectly blended. For chiropractors, kind of be the ones that are leading the charge on this because it's, as you said, it aligns with what their philosophy is already.

Yeah, that, that makes sense to me. What are some of the biggest myths that you find? I think that there's a lot of information out there that's either lacking or maybe docs that haven't focused on some of these things in the past. I'm sure you're aware of some things where you're like, oh my goodness, whether it's the patient saying it, maybe it's a new doc who signs up to the program, or what are some of those common myths associated, associated with diabetes itself or diabetes care that we can bust right now?

Well, again, a lot of it is. A lot of people think it's genetic. Right. A lot of patients are told, oh, your dad's got it, your mom's got it. You're going to get nothing you can do. It's like the lightning bolt from the sky has hit you and there's nothing. That's not true. There's no gene identified that causes type 2. Now there's genes that kind of have, like, make you more susceptible, I guess is the right word to use. But there's nothing that's been identified that, hey, you have this gene, you're screwed. And you're going to be a type 2 diabetic, which is good news because that means it's caused by lifestyle, improper habits and lifestyle. So now when you change those lifestyles and habits, you can reverse it. That's the great news. Another thing is that it's a diet. Like, you have to lose a bunch of weight to reverse type 2, and that's not the case. We've got tons of people 70 pounds overweight that don't have diabetes. We've got people perfect weight that are diabetic. So it's not. It's not a fat or a skinny disease. It's. It's the insulin resistance in your body. And so that's why we have people that will lose 30, 40 pounds in our program, because they have to, but they're still 60 pounds overweight. But now their diabetes is gone. So that's a big myth that, oh, if I just lose 10, 15 pounds, I'm good to go. It's not that simple. So those are some of the biggest ones as far as the clinical aspect for the doctors. They think implementing something like this is. Is way too challenging. They got to hire additional staff and spend a bunch of money on marketing and get all this inventory in their clinic and do all this selling and make. It's like a big hassle to add this to their practice. And it's not like that. And that's what we can get into here too.

So, yeah, I'd love to dive. Let's. Let's go right there. Let's dive a bit deeper because you mentioned some of the, what I'll call the mechanicals of the program, and I'd love to dive deeper so docs can really have a crystal clear understanding of what this looks like, you know, as they add into practice. You've mentioned it and we both know it. So docs are inundated with tools, products, and services I like to call the closet of seminars past. You know, 30 grand for that piece of equipment sounds great at the time. And then six months later, you've given away, you know, half the care of it.

You've given away half of it, and.

It ends up being something of a seminar past with a program that, as I understand it, you know, is really online, that really allows a seamless handoff. Seems like it just makes it way easier from a pro, from a practice perspective. But maybe just take a few minutes here and let's just walk through A through Z. How does this work? How is it implemented? What does the doctor see, know? What does the patient see or know along the process? And just how's it work?

Yeah, so again, we've literally made this, Jeff, as we just discussed off camera, you know, the simplest thing for Dr. Nipple, because again, I, when I was Practicing I got presented all these things. Hey, decompression 100 grand this now you got to spend 20 grand a month in marketing, hire additional staff members, have all this stuff. So we've made it to where there's literally there's no additional staff needed, no equipment to purchase, there's no marketing cost because all you're going to do is market this internally to your patient database. Right. There's literally no time for the doctor, no inventory required. So all we do is create that licensee link and they have a QR code they can give and all they have to do is send out an email once a month on autoresponder to their entire patient database. Just basically saying hey, if you're a type 2 diabetic or know somebody who has it, we're now a licensee of the world's only patented system. To learn more about it, click on this link to watch a free webinar. It's literally that simple. That's all they have to do. And so we also provide a six foot floor banner that they can put in their reception area where there's a QR code page can click on. We also provide 100 color blur brochures that that the receptors can give to patients of diabetic. So that's literally all the docs and the team has to do. We set it up so it's literally a set and forget it. And the way it works because they become a legal licensee of ours, Jeff. And this is to make sure there's no anti kickback issues going on. Right. So when we charge the patient the funds, right. So the average care plan is $6,000. Right. So the $6,000 goes into the doctor's account, not ours. So they get the 6,000 and then they pay us average of $4,500 of that to deliver the service and they keep that other fifteen hundred dollars as a markup as a licensee. So they're going to average earning 1500 dollars per patient enrolled and we're literally doing all the work. So that's what makes this so simple. It's almost like that sounds too good to be true. I mean we've literally made it like this. To where there's no moving parts and to quite honestly where the team can't screw it up. Right. Where they don't do the marketing. Right. Or they're not selling it the right way. Like we made it where we take all of that off their plate and just let us do it. Just literally send them to this link and that's it. So it's very, very seamless. And again, they still have again, average of fifteen hundred dollars. They do like one patient a week extra, six grand a month, 72 grand a year, you know, for literally it's 100 profit because there's no marketing costs. So that's a really nice thing to do.

So, yeah, it's, that's significant. And I think there's, I don't know that you might, you probably know the exact percentage or within a range. But, you know, this is a thick percentage of, of the population walking into practices each day. This isn't some, you know, an issue that's like, well, you know, one out of every 100 people. I see this once a month. You probably see this once every 30 minutes. Right.

You know, here's the stats, Jeff. Like that again. Right now, according to the American Diabetic Association, 20% of people in the US that are 45 years or older have diabetes. There you go again. So less people watching this have a pediatric practice. A pretty good percentage of that are their patients are going to be 45 and older. Right. So they get literally probably around 15 or more of the typical chiropractic practice. They have type two. And the cool thing is though, even if they don't have diabetes, most people know somebody who does.

That's right.

So it could be Aunt Millie in New York City. You know, even if you don't have it, you can refer that link to your aunt in New York. And when they go through it, the doctor still earns their licensing fee even though it's not their patient. So that's another way to. That's why when we say you send this email out every month to your entire database, it's not just the diabetics, because again, most people know somebody who is. And every month it kind of recycles, right? Because there's more people getting diagnosed every single month. As you know, there's 38 million people in the US right now with diabetes, 97 million with pre diabetes. So it's just insane. It's like 11 of the population, but again that 45 and older, 20%. So it's a lot of people, man.

That's a massive, that's a massive amount of people. And I know your team handles all of the back end implementation, which makes it so easy for the doctor. Give me a little quick preview. I'm sure the docs out there are saying, well, what happens, you know, what, what is my patient experience? What's the process like from a patient perspective?

Yeah, so again, once they go to that link, they watch an hour long webinar online. It's all telemedicine, so they don't have to go to a clinic or anything. They do it from the comfort of their own home. They watch the webinar. At the end of the webinar, they get an opportunity to schedule a consultation with one of our consultants. And they do that by zoom. And then we customize a program for them. We have a three month, a five month and a seven month program all based on the severity of their diabetes. So it's basically 4,000, 6,000, $8,000. And they can use third party financing like CareCredit if they want to make monthly payments. Very, very simple, like any other kind of high end product a lot of doctors offer. And so once they get in, then they get transferred to our, one of our support coaches. And so now the patient has to check in at least once a week and giving us their blood sugar, their blood pressure and their weight and what they ate for the day. And all of that is done through the app or we have an online portal as well that goes right into our CRM. And again, so once they started following that, right. The supplements are shipped to their home. So now all they got to do, the patient start eating the way we teach them and then taking the supplements. And guess what, blood sugar starts gradually dropping. And again once it gets to that 105 or so in the morning, boom, they contact their doctor, the medical doctor, and their doctor starts gradually reducing the dose of the meds. And the other cool thing with this, Jeff, is that we actually guarantee results. That's what nobody else. And it's actually a better than 100% money back guarantee. So as long as the patient follows a program as we direct, if they're not reversed at the end of the program, they get 100% refund plus $1,000 just for trying it. So there's literally no excuse for the patient not to try because either works or it doesn't. And the cool thing is if we have to give a refund, we cover the cost. We don't go back to the doctor and snag that fifteen hundred dollars they earn. That's all on us. So it makes it very, very simple, very easy. So it's a very, very cool thing for, for the doctors to offer. It's a very professional program. Again, we just did a, I didn't know if I told you this, but we just did last month a show on Dr. Phil December 15th. So that's going to start airing next week, actually kind of second week in January. So again, this is the real deal. So doctors can be real confident that what we're doing is the real deal. It's not some kind of pie in the sky thing. Again, the only patent in the world that's pretty powerful. We got an independent study proving what we've done. 16 year track record doing this. So they can be confident that they're offering a really cool service to their patients.

I think that's fantastic. I'm going to save the heartbreak story of how difficult it is to get a patent for another day. I am sure that is a process, but I appreciate you and your team doing the hard work so I don't have to. Right. So the docs listening and watching can really take the best of the best. They can take the proven, patented way. And as you said, with a money back guarantee. This just makes it so easy to be able to have a brief and direct conversation with patients in practice. So I'm going to encourage everybody listening and watching. Jeff with Diabetes Reversal Group, you guys have came on as a partner of the evidence based chiropractor. So thank you for that. And we're excited to partner together throughout this year and beyond and really give docs the tools and resources necessary to be able to help more people in their community in a way that is approachable, applicable, easy to implement and profitable. I love all of it. I'm going to encourage every doc listening and watching to click on down below and connect with your team, have a conversation, you know, ask the questions that you want to ask, connect with Dr. Jeff's team and ultimately see if this is something that does make sense in your practice. It's a conversation that not only is good for you financially, but more importantly can really help you help more people in your community and beyond for that matter. And that's massively powerful. Before we wrap up, Jeff, anything I missed, anything you want docs to know.

Before we wrap, just want them to know that again, this is such a simple thing to do. There's little like I asked docs like, why would you not do that? They like, yeah, why would I not put this in my practice? I mean there's literally, it's the easiest thing and it's designed that way on purpose where there's no stress for the office to get this implemented. It's just, wow. It's like, wow. A nice thing where a professional company comes in, they're not asking for this 40 grand up front and equipment and inventory all this marketing cost. It's a very simple thing, elegant, and it really helps a big chunk of their practice and again, adds revenue for the doctor too, which everybody likes that.

So no doubt about it. Jeff, thank you so much for coming on and chatting today. Docs listening and watching, click on down below. Connect with Dr. Jeff and his team and bring a new program into your practice that is easy to implement and that can impact the lives of a big percentage of the patients coming into your practice each and every day. Jeff, thanks so much for chatting today.

Thanks a lot, Jeff. Take care.

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