Why I Quit Chiropractic and Dedicated My Life to Functional Medicine (Part 1)
“Better Health Begins At The Cell.” -Dr. Bill Cole
(If you have or suspect you might have thyroid related problems go to ColeClass.com and watch the short video (about 23 minutes) that I made for you. It’s free… You don’t even have to give me your email.)
Hey guys! I had a conversation with a patient the other day, and they were like, “Man, you gotta tell people that story you just told me.” It’s a story that I talk about all the time at my workshops. It really gets to the heart of why I do what I do today. Something in my past impacted me greatly. I used to be a chiropractor doing chiropractic. That’s what I did. I was doing what I was trained to do, and I loved it! And I loved the chiropractic philosophy. I had one of the largest practices in my state, maybe even in the country at the time, and things were going along until right after 9/11.
It was September 13th, just two days after, that one of my best friends show up at my door at lunchtime. He was another chiropractor that I was actually in practice with at the time. We didn’t go in until the afternoon on Thursdays, and he came to my house. It was unusual for him to do that. He never ever did that. He came in, and he’s like, “We gotta talk, man.” And I said, “What’s up?” And he’s like, “I’m sick.” And I thought he meant he had the flu, but he went on to describe how, for a year, he had been hiding a sickness, a developing sickness in himself, from the rest of us. It was really shocking because in my life I’ve never known anybody who was more of an example of health. He not only talked the talk but he walked the walk. He was a picture of health.
He was a national level mountain bike competitor. Very, very fit! In fact, I got a quick story for you. My brother, Bryan, and I owned a Gold’s Gym franchise back in the day. My brother is a little bit crazy. He had this standing offer where if you could turn one of our treadmills up on its highest incline and on its fastest speed, and if you could make it for one minute running as fast as you could, he would give you a free gym membership. Well, in the ten years we owned the gym, only one person was able to do that. My friend that I’m talking about now. So, this guy was a picture of health, right. He didn’t deviate from his diet. He was annoyingly on target all the time. To hear him describe what was going on with him, how he just, over time, he had gradually lost his health, his energy, had chronic fatigue, couldn’t sleep at night time, and had anxiety. Just terrible panic attacks, and he eventually over time, even became suicidal. But beyond the chronic fatigue and the anxiety issues, he had gut issues. He had young children, and he would not be able to be around any kind of commotion because it would just send him over the edge.
It goes even deeper than that, but this guy went from a picture of health to a shell of himself. He had been hiding it, but he couldn’t hide it anymore because there were times he was not even able to make it to work because of the chronic fatigue, the anxiety, the depression, and everything else he was going through. Well, I didn’t fully appreciate it at the time, you know? I’m a chiropractor doing spinal stuff, and I didn’t know a lot about functional medicine. It was bewildering to us because how could somebody who was this picture of health get to this point where nobody had answers?
He went from doctor to doctor, test after test, but nobody could give him an answer. They came up with weird things that weren’t even close to the mark, and he struggled for years. I think it was over four years, close to five years, that he struggled watching his health go continually downhill. He got no answers, even trying all the right things. He was eating right. He just doubled up on everything, trying to do the things that he knew were healthy, and nothing was working. He was getting worse over time.
Well, he finally came across a doctor that said to him, “You know what, man? It sounds like you have mercury in your brain.” And he said, “No, I’ve been tested for that and they said that I’m good.” “Well”, the guy said, “How did you test?” And my buddy said, “They did a blood test.” And he said, “It’s not accurate. It’s gonna show you an acute situation. It’s not gonna show you what is being stored in your body, particularly in your brain tissue.”
He said, “It sounds like you have mercury issues,” and they did another test on him. And this test, a urine toxic metal test, came back with mercury off the charts! He had his answer. And actually, he went back and looked at his training diary. Another friend of his had suggested this, and he went back and looked at his training diary, right before he had his first symptoms that developed, he had two silver fillings removed from his mouth. All of his research and digging, trying to find out answers, it all made sense to him at this time. Something happened with those silver fillings at that time. What we now know is that he had years’ worth of mercury released all at once because of the dentist not doing things the proper way. The dentist didn’t know. He was just doing what he was trained to do, but that mercury just sent him over the edge.
Today, we say it caused his bucket to overflow, and then all of the symptoms came on. Well, he had his answers, but he didn’t have a way to figure out how to get this stuff out of his tissues, particularly his brain tissue because mercury is a neurotoxin. Even back in the day, people who made hats got what they’d call “Mad Hatter’s Disease” because they worked with mercury. I don’t know why exactly they used mercury, but I guess to cure the felt for the hats.
They would wind up going insane because it’s a neurotoxin. It affects brain tissue. It can also affect your gut and every other part of your body. It’s one of the most toxic things that we know of! So, he had all of this mercury in him, and it was affecting his health in a really, really bad way. It took him another five years to figure out how to get this mercury out of his brain.
It was a process, and he believes today that God took him through this. What he talks about is how he turned his pain into purpose. Now, he can help other people, and that’s what he does today. He travels around teaching doctors and patients what true toxicity is all about.
The thing that we think of when we think about somebody detoxing is completely different than what we now know to be true detox. It has to take place at the cell level. The cell levels of our body and our brain. Mostly, when people talk about detox, its liver cleanses, colon cleanses, foot baths, coffee enemas, infrared saunas, etc. Not that those things are useless, but they’re way too far downstream from where the real issues lie.
The real issues are in the cells of our body, especially the cells of our brain. What we teach people today is that for you to be well you have to fix the cell.
Hope this helps. I will continue the story in my next post.
For now, take care, guys. God bless.
