Dr. Heidi Haavik is a chiropractor and a neurophysiologist who has worked in the area of human neurophysiology for 15+ years. She has a PhD in human neurophysiology from the University of Auckland. As a researcher, she has investigated the effects of chiropractic adjustments of dysfunctional spinal segments (vertebral subluxations) on somatosensory processing, sensorimotor integration and motor cortical output. Dr. Haavik is also the founder of Haavik Research, which gives chiropractors clarity and confidence about what it is they do and the value they provide to their customers.
In this episode of TechTalk Podcast, Brad Cost, Dr. Jay Greenstein, and Dr. Heidi Haavik sit down to discuss:
How Heidi's upbringing launched her into her lifelong, passion-filled mission!
Research that is bridging the gap between chiropractic science and philosophy.
Using real data from real people and real chiropractors for real chiropractic evidence.
SHOW NOTES:
5:12 – Visiting roots to changing lives! “My mother's a New Zealander and my father's Norwegian, so I grew up in Norway. As a 20-year-old, I came back to New Zealand to revisit my roots and found out about the New Zealand College of Chiropractic. I'd planned on going back to do medicine or psychology or something in Norway but found out about this new chiropractic college and decided to do that. My uncle and aunt are chiropractors in New Zealand and my great grandfather was one of the first thousand chiropractors to graduate from Palmer College in 1924. I have a legacy on my mother's side, so I knew about chiropractic but started it not really fully understanding what it was. I have one of these crazy ‘I need to know brains,’ so I would pester my science lecturer at the chiropractic college about all sorts of questions. This is what got me interested in doing more research, but I actually didn't think I was smart enough. I literally remember bumping into Bernadette Murphy, my professor at Auckland Uni, and she was telling me I could do it. My entire ambition with getting my PhD in human neuroscience was to volunteer and work a couple of days a week as Bernadette Murphy's research assistant. Before I finished my PhD, she left and went back to Canada, so the only way I could continue with the research was to become the research director at the New Zealand College.”
8:04 – Juggling motherhood, research, schooling, and her own practice. “I didn't juggle it very well. I practiced for 10 years, but I had my two children, I got my PhD, I was now the research director at New Zealand College, and I burnt out completely. It just became too much. Because I was teaching everything neuroscience and research methodology, I was the research director, I'd finished my PhD, I’d gone through a divorce. I burnt out completely and decided that one full-time workload would be enough, so I decided on the research gig. I’ve always believed that you use your highest-level gifts that you are capable of for the benefit of others and therein lies your best possible mission in life.”
9:08 - Bridging the gap between chiropractic science and chiropractic philosophy. “In the beginning of my PhD research days, we discovered we were actually changing brains more than we were changing spinal cords or brain stems or anything like that. When we were adjusting subluxations, we were actually directly changing brain function in a lasting way, which is why it's called neural plasticity. The brain is capable of changing, but it doesn't always change. We saw these dramatic changes within the brain, and we followed that data. We ended up in Denmark, which was a big study for us, where we found out that when we adjust the luxations, we change processing in the prefrontal cortex. This was big because the prefrontal cortex is so important for our intelligence, emotional control, movement control, executive functions. It even has huge connections with the immune system, so we continued to follow the data. We now see these very specific changes in networks, which are responsible for our own sense of self. That's what we're changing when we're checking and adjusting spines. We're changing the way the brain is interpreting sound and visual information. Your reality is changing by getting adjusted in the spine.”
16:28 – The impact of her research. “It's huge! If you've got a biological plausible mechanism for how it works, that's massive and we've never had that. There was no evidence for it, so it was an easy way for people to wipe us off and ignore it. Now, they can't do that anymore. We actually have a biologically plausible mechanism that has quite a bit of scientific backing to it. It's full steam ahead and it's really exciting, especially since all of the mechanisms research is explaining so much of what we see in practice. It shows that chiropractic care can impact just about anything because we're directly impacting the brain. It's so safe that you can pretty much give it a go for anything and it's what people see in practice. We can explain it now and there is a real beauty in that because it's so much easier for us as practitioners to communicate with other health practitioners. There's real value in that.”
19:25 – Real data from real patients. “When it comes to the data aggregation system for health that we’re working on together, I am excited that we're able to record data from real chiropractors from their real patients. This data we're going to capture hasn't been captured in clinical trials in the past. We haven’t been able to show that data in the past but it's going to come out when we're recording for millions of real people. In a way, this dash system we're building can bypass the clinical trials, which cost millions, and get real data from real people in real practices. It's the most impactful thing the chiropractic profession and patients will have experienced in 130 years.”
22:55 – The data will show up. “It will become the forefront and be the cornerstone of health. As an example, if you're into exercising and you're exercising your arms and legs, but you've got all this spinal dysfunction, your brain might be sending the wrong messages to your arms and legs. You're causing micro traumas, but if you start to get adjusted on a regular basis at the chiropractor, your brain can send the accurate messages and you're no longer going to be hurting yourself. As long as your spine is adjusted and is functioning properly, your brain is accurately aware that it can drive the whole system better. You will just reach the optimal potential you're trying to achieve. I guarantee you it's going to come out in the data, because once you've got millions of people, it's going to show up.”
36:17 – Childhood trauma turned superpower. “Funnily enough, I think it's from a childhood trauma, which has actually turned into my superpower. My dad's Norwegian, my mom’s a New Zealander, and we lived in New Zealand, then England until I was five, and then we moved to Norway. It was very traumatic for me because I was sent to school, and my teacher wouldn't talk to me because I was too young in her opinion. Instead of taking it out on the principal that had allowed me in early to learn the language, she just didn't speak to me for six months. I learned as a little girl that if I wasn't understood, I was completely isolated. It's been a real thing for me to be understood. When I started teaching at the New Zealand College, I'd spent five years studying a language that very few people understand. It took me multiple years, but I was so panicked over the fact that my students didn't understand me that I just kept going until they understood me. Each year, I'd fix it and change it and fix it and change it. The translation piece has become one of my strengths, but it's also really important to me that people understand it. It's got to get out there to the chiropractors, so I'll try and teach them first, but I want to go straight to the public. They need to understand how important their spine is for their brain's ability to properly function. That's literally become my mission in life.”
39:09 - Chiro’s Hub. “Everything I decide to do now is bringing me closer to enlightening the world about the science of the spine. I've built this entire platform for chiropractors to be able to communicate this science of chiropractic, which is really the science of the spine to their patients, which is called Chiro's Hub. Part of that is a learning platform for chiropractors and chiropractic assistants. We also have a whole host of materials that can be integrated into multiple different technologies. We have little video animations and summary articles that go topic by topic. The library is so big now. When chiropractors join, they tell me it's like drinking from the fire hose, but it's a resource library. It's not just summarizing the research - it's summarizing it into language that chiropractors will understand. It's fun and useful for them because I'd like them to want to know it. We also put it into bite-sized pieces that the normal lay public can understand and that's what's really important to me.”
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