- Offer every new, active and inactive patient the opportunity to be evaluated to determine their eligibility for your six-week “Optimal Energy” anti-aging life enrichment program.
- Make sure all patients, whether enrolled in the “Optimal Energy” program or not, are taking a high-quality multi-vitamin and mineral product every day. To encourage patients to purchase and re-purchase their multi-vitamins from you instead of a discount store, be sure to use a company that provides high-quality products. Educate patients so they understand the quality differences.
- Put all patients on a good anti-oxidant regimen that includes phytonutrients to promote health and body detoxification. While there is no replacing a well-balanced, wholesome diet and healthy lifestyle, increasing the phytonutrient intake in the form of specialized phytonutrient supplements may help reduce the risk of many age-related diseases – including the leading killers, heart disease and cancer.
- Consider using more herbal therapies to treat patients’ ailments. For instance, compromised adrenal function can negatively affect a patient’s blood pressure, energy level and resistance to infection. A gradual loss of adrenal function is widely recognized as a contributor to a decline in health, and is considered to be both an indirect cause as well as a side effect of many acute and chronic illnesses. Licorice and ginseng are said to promote energy. Chinese yam and cordyceps are recommended for asthma, coughs and female complaints.
- Instruct your patients to learn to prepare and eat soy-based foods. If they don’t care for tofu, have them consider a full-spectrum isoflavone concentrate product, free of genetically modified soy. Epidemiological studies have shown a correlation between the consumption of soy foods and low rates of certain diseases, including coronary heart disease, hormone-dependent cancers such as breast, prostate and colon cancer, osteoporosis and problems associated with menopause and menstrual irregularities.
In the first textbook about chiropractic, D.D. Palmer wrote about the three things the body needs to be healthy. He labeled them as structural, chemical and emotional balance, and called the concept the triune of health. What does this have to do with anti-aging healthcare? Everything.
Every year, Americans spend about $9 billion on vitamins, supplements and minerals, primarily in an attempt to improve their chemical and emotional balance and slow down the aging process. If chiropractic patients are spending that kind of money, it makes sense for them to get professional advice from trained chiropractic specialists.
Dr. Regina Herzlinger, a Harvard Business School professor, says in her book “Market Driven Healthcare”: “An earthquake is transforming our health-care system. If you can’t sense it, wake up; this quake is for real. When the market forces have completed shaping the new health-care system, it will have lost its fat, but it will have kept its muscle. A new market-driven health-care system will emerge.”
Chiropractors who are knowledgeable about anti-aging nutrition have the opportunity to participate in the new anti-aging market-driven health-care system of the future and become leaders in their communities.
Anti-Aging Research Supports Chiropractic:
Aging is universal. But the rate at which we age is not. New research exploding onto the health-care scene is producing some major discoveries. Many prominent researchers view aging as a disease in itself. It is the ultimate accumulative disease caused by a lifetime of environmental assaults on our cells.
Research conducted at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston, on 70- to 90-year-old people, found the rate at which one ages is not a static, irreversible, biological condition. Irwin Rosenberg, MD, and William Evans, Ph.D, authors of the research, recommend patients forget their chronological age.
The researchers suggest that age in years has little to do with how old people are biologically and how old they feel. Instead, patients should think about their bodies in terms of key biomarkers that influence vitality and can be improved with lifestyle and nutritional changes, even as late as the ninth decade of life.
The research conducted at Tufts University is very impressive in its analysis of reversing the aging process through the use of proper nutrition and exercise. However, the research overlooked one very large longevity component – structural/mechanical stressors. All chiropractors know increased structural/mechanical stressors lead to decreased patient vitality and a multitude of other health challenges. Chiropractors are the most qualified doctors to treat those problems through the use of specific chiropractic adjustments and adjuncts such as orthotics and physiotherapy. Chiropractors who can offer nutritional counseling along with structural care are able to offer patients a holistic and highly effective solution to their anti-aging quest.
DCs Can Own the Anti-Aging Marketplace
By using a diagnostic tool such as a three-compartment, full-body bio-impedance device, you can measure some of the biomarkers of aging without invasive involvement. A very small AC electrical current travels through the patient, entering at an electrode on the hand, traveling through the arm, torso and leg and exiting at the foot. The amount of current is much too small to feel or cause any harm.
Rosenberg and Evans listed muscle mass as the number-one biomarker of aging. Many doctors think simply measuring a patient’s fat-free mass provides this data. However, unless the diagnostic equipment is able to separate the fat-free mass into its two components, body cell mass (muscle) and extra cellular mass (bone, ligament and water), you cannot truly monitor a patient’s aging process.
Many non-clinical body composition units will measure total body water, an indication of a patient’s state of hydration. However, unless the device is capable of separating the total body water into intra-cellular water (water inside the cells) and extra-cellular water (water outside the cells) you have no objective way of measuring if the nutritional protocols the patient is following are creating “anabolic drive” and reversing the aging process.
You can charge for the evaluation on a one-on-one basis or in a workshop setting. It is important to use a bio-impedance device that the scientific community accepts, with accuracy dependent on the predictive equations used. The evaluation will yield a baseline estimate of several critical key biomarkers of aging. The bio-impedance test is a serial evaluation. Patients should be monitored on a regular basis to demonstrate the effectiveness of the anti-aging protocols they are following.
Other simple tests that measure additional key biomarkers of aging include: the zinc tally taste test, saliva ph, axaliary temperature, aerobic capacity and blood pressure.
The key to reversing the aging process and yielding a healthier, more sustainable result for your patients is to offer them a program that includes chiropractic adjustments, diet, nutrition, exercise, lifestyle changes and ongoing body composition goals.
New Patients, New Income
Ken Dychtwald, Ph.D, author of the book “Age Wave: How the Most Im-portant Trend of Our Time Will Change Your Future,” wrote: “If your current business can provide consumers a solution to their anti-aging obsession, you’ll have access to the single biggest payday in the history of the world.”
Patients eager to maintain their youth and vitality are more than willing to pay a reasonable cash fee for a consultation with a chiropractor trained as an anti-aging expert. Within every community there is a growing population of more sophisticated patients willing to privately pay for better health. They are demanding services to attain and maintain optimal health and wellness. They are willing to invest their hard-earned dollars to achieve better health and more productive lives, even if these services are not reimbursed by health insurance.
There is now an unprecedented opportunity for providing life enrichment therapies through the knowledge of anti-aging healthcare and other nutritional therapies. You can, with a minimal investment in training and equipment, offer your patients a more vital and productive life. You can regain the satisfaction of being able to count on a long-term relationship with a grateful patient.
Establishing a Program
If you want to break into the anti-aging field, one option is to offer patients a six-week “Optimal Energy” anti-aging life enrichment program. You can offer the program on a one-on-one basis or in a workshop setting. You can set the price at $395 for the six-week individual program, with private doctor’s visits, or $195 for the six-week program in a group workshop format. By offering this type of anti-aging counseling, you can earn nearly $100 per hour in the individual programs and up to $500 an hour in the group setting. These profits do not include the revenue generated from the sale of related nutritional supplements.
Adding anti-aging nutritional counseling to your practice is an ideal way to expand your patient base and attract more cash-paying patients. You should separate your services and offer standard chiropractic care in addition to an anti-aging form of principled, centered healthcare that incorporates lifestyle and nutritional counseling.
Gerald Celente, president of The Trends Research Institute, and author of “Trends 2000: How To Prepare For And Profit From The 21st Century,” suggests what chiropractors of the future should focus on. Celente states: “Driven by aging Baby Boomers, the health, fitness and nutrition trend will accelerate, producing longevity centers devoted to extending healthy life and a new multi-billion-dollar business.”
As with any trend, it’s best to strike when the iron’s hot. If you haven’t already added an anti-aging nutritional component to your regular chiropractic practice, there’s no time like the present. Your Baby Boomer patients are ready whenever you are.
