Beth Clay serves as the ICA Executive Director/CEO and Director of Government Relations. A globally recognized expert in complementary and alternative (integrative) health policy, and a long time advocate for health freedom, Beth brings to the ICA a unique background of government, private sector and life experience. Beth has been a lifelong patient of chiropractic. Her first experience with chiropractic was with an ICA State Representative Assembly Member and her exposure to ICA’s mission and philosophy on health and healing early in life helped set the stage for her life’s path. Beth has extensive experience internationally, living for three years in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and with business development consulting in the Middle East, North Africa, and the Caribbean.

Beth began her US federal service at the National Institutes of Health, working administratively in the international, rare disease and alternative medicine activities of the Institute. She served as the first Committee Management Officer of the Alternative Medicine Program Advisory Committee. In 1998, she was invited by then Chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform in the US House of Representatives (Congressman Dan Burton) to join the staff and lead an investigation looking at the role of complementary and alternative therapies in the U.S. health system. Her responsibilities as Senior Professional Staff would be expanded to lead investigations of high priority matters ranging from autism spectrum disorders, dietary supplement regulation, to racial disparities in health care.

Beth is the primary author of two Committee staff reports – Mercury in Medicine and FACA: Conflicts of Interest in Vaccine Development. In her official capacity, Beth traveled to Russia, Germany, Canada and across the United States to represent and speak on behalf of the Chairman and conduct health related investigations. During her federal service, Beth served as a delegate to a WTO level Committee of the CODEX Alimentarius.

After leaving federal service, Beth re-entered the private sector as a government relations consultant focused on integrative health policy and business development in the Middle East. During this time she consulted on the development of projects related to the energy sector, health sciences education curriculum, emergency housing post natural disaster, technical writing including for an FDA device approval.

She has authored numerous papers, reports, including the 2009, article, “Study of Chelation Therapy Should Not Be Abandoned” in the Journal of the American Physicians and Surgeons as a rebuttal to an attempt to shut down the first multi-site trial of EDTA chelation therapy funded by the NIH to evaluate the cardiovascular benefit. The study would continue and have statistically significant findings of safety and benefit. She also co-authored a chapter in the leading textbook, The Scientific-Basis of Integrative Health Care, 3rd edition.

Beth has always been philanthropically minded with years of service as a hospice volunteer, scouting, advocating on children’s health and human rights in mental health. On behalf of the ICA, Beth co-Chaired the Integrative Health Policy Consortium (IHPC) Federal Policy Committee and the IHPC Committee on Bioenergy and Health.

TRANSCRIPT

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  You've made it to Chiro Hustle. Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one Chiropractic podcast. Before we dive into this powerful episode, please remember to subscribe to our channels and give us a 5-star rating on iTunes and to continue hustling. This episode is sponsored by Transact Card, Align Life, NeuroInfinity, Imaging Services, Chiro Health USA, Chiro Moguls, Pure Chiro Notes, Titronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, New Patients in a Box, Life Chiropractic College West, Pro Hockey Chiros, Pro Baseball Chiros and the IFCO. Let's hustle.

LUKE MILLETT (PRODUCER):  Hey guys, welcome to episode 514 of the Chiro Hustle podcast. I'm your producer, Luke Millett, and here's your host, James Chester.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So today we have the opportunity of interviewing Beth Clay of the ICA. And if you want to hear a story about how the future of health care is in the hands of chiropractic, stay tuned. Welcome back. This is another episode of the Chiro Hustle podcast. Today I have Beth Clay on president of the ICA International Chiropractic Association. She has a big event coming up this weekend out in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada. It's the annual gathering of the ICA. So we're going to talk about that a little bit. But before we get into this episode with Beth Clay, I'm just going to let everybody know the big why. Why do we do what we do over here at Chiro Hustle? Well, first and foremost, we believe in the First Amendment. A lot of people kind of gloss over that Beth and they don't really understand what that is, but it's freedom of speech. And the reason that our show exists is because we've been protecting freedom of speech for chiropractic for five and a half years with this show. And I think that that's integrity and we need to do that. Second thing, and I know we're going to take some dives on this one today. We're going to go down the path of medical freedom and family health freedom, which I think are essential to a free state and a free nation. And I think that those things sometimes get glossed over too because the people that I bring on are chiropractors and they might not be so well established to discuss those topics. But I think today we're going to be able to talk a lot about medical freedom and what it means to our nation. And I know we have a presidential candidate in the run now that we are very, very proud of. So we can talk about that a little bit too. But second part of my intro is we do protect BJ Palmer Sacred Trust. If many of you know what that means, if you don't know, go to your favorite search engine right now and look for BJ Palmer's last words. And here's a really cool piece of history. BJ Palmer started the ICA. So he started the International Chiropractic Association Group that Beth is the president of. So I think it's really cool that we stand for a lot of the things that you guys support. And I think there's a lot of synergy here with this show. And we also support Subluxation-based chiropractic. I know that that's talking to chiropractic circles. That doesn't mean so much to them. But to the public, when somebody doesn't know anything about chiropractic and they start listening to our show, they start to go and Google all this stuff. They start to go and look on their favorite search engines as to what are these things that James Chester is talking about on the Kyra Hustle podcast. And then a couple of things that really matter to us too is when someone gets adjusted, man or woman in the physical, we believe in innate intelligence and universal intelligence. And we believe that when a man or woman gets adjusted, it connects them to an innate source, which connects them to universal source. And I think that those are things that are really important for people to understand about chiropractic too. So without any further, this is episode 514 of the Kyra Hustle podcast. And I just want to welcome Beth Clay.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  Welcome. Well, thank you, James. I am certainly happy to be here. And I just want to correct my title is I'm not the president of the ICA. I'm the executive director. Dr. Salina Sigafuse-Jackson is the president of the ICA. So I just wanted to make that correction as we got started so that that wasn't lost in the wayside. And I am excited that she will be interviewed by you in a few days during the annual convention here in Las Vegas. We just landed. The home office team is just landed here in Las Vegas and getting things set up. And we have a great lineup of speakers for our continuing education program and our board and our representative assembly will be here meeting, developing strategies for the future of the ICA and for the profession. And I'm so excited to be here on this podcast with you. You know, you're talking about my life passion, which is freedom. I have certain goals in my life in this to promote health freedom, to seek truth and justice. And the importance of Kyra Pratik in my life has been a part of my life since I was about three years old and just very excited to be the executive director of the ICA for the last three and a half years and to be here in Las Vegas for us to be together in person for an event for the first time in a year since we were at the Sherman campus last April.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  So yeah, there's a lot of momentum. And I think health freedom is something that I'm really curious to talk about more. But let's go back into your Kyra Pratik story a little bit. How did you get involved with Kyra Pratik and you said since three years old?

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  Certainly. Well, both of my parents, my father's an attorney, my mother, typical housewife with a parcel of kids and they both had serious back issues. My father had introduced back jumping out of airplanes to keep to earn extra money. He was in the reserves after being in the army in Korea. And so it jumped out of airplanes and had a few rough landings. And my mother had had issues. And so she was driving in a town next door to our small town in South Carolina. And there was a chiropractor's office there and she felt called to stop in. And you will love this story. She met with him and he said, now, now, Ms. Clay, you go home and you talk to your husband about this and you bring him in. And if he's willing to let me treat you, I will. And then of course my father came back. They both became patients, the whole family became patients and we became very close friends with this particular family. And as it turns out, I would learn in about five or six years ago that my first chiropractor was a state representative for the representative assembly of the ICA. And so I got my first lessons about what creates health and how to be healthy from an ICA chiropractor. And Doc Bolin was amazing and just a tremendous individual and many members, several of his children and other members of his family continued in the profession. And that's something that for me, it speaks volumes of the chiropractic profession that so many families are multi-generational. We have doctors in our leadership that have 35 members, 35 chiropractors in their family or 13 chiropractors in their family or second or third generation chiropractors. And that says something about if this wasn't such a powerful profession and a healing art, this entire system of chiropractic, then people wouldn't continue to develop to have this as a family profession.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, I think there's so much to be said about that. And I've met also a long lineage of people, even if it's like two people and they pass it down to the next generation. I think that that's really cool that there's a lot of chiropractic support from seeing it as a viable profession that can be passed down. And I think it's really cool. I just interviewed a gal last week that she was second generation chiropractor. She was talking about how she really enjoys it. She enjoys working in the associate model with family.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  I think that's tremendous. When I chuckle, the ICA has some mentoring activities that we work with and some urban environments in the Washington, D.C. area. And I always chuckle and I'm like, this is an opportunity for individuals, for youth to look at having a doctor in front of their name, to our work hard and earn having being called doctor, but not becoming a drug dealer. Because basically the medical profession today, they're just legal drug dealers. And that's sad because the word doctor is equivalent to being a teacher and chiropractors as a doctor of chiropractic. You're teaching people about health and what the role of the innate is in helping the body to heal and the role of the adjustment and doing that. And I've personally had so many experiences in my life where my great headaches, recovery from being thrown from a horse, issues where the first stop was the chiropractor. Because if I didn't get an adjustment, then I was just wasting my time. Because I wasn't letting my body be set up to be able to heal itself.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, once again, I think that there's a lot that goes into this profession of chiropractic. And understanding that there's such a depth of education that needs to be had. And you are right chiropractors, it's a healing art. And that's something I fell in love with about the profession too. It adds nothing extra into people's bodies. It simply removes interference. It allows body to have its full life expression, which is vitalism. And I think that that's something that the wellness model of the pharmacy world and the CVSs and the Walgreens of the world, they capitalize down this so early. And they started talking about that being wellness. But I think now we have a confused consumer out there that doesn't know really what wellness is. Or it's never been talked about what vitalism is really mainstream. People don't know the first thing about vitalistic lifestyle.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  Well, you know, what's interesting is I didn't become a chiropractor. I didn't, you know, that was not my life path. My life path ended up being in the policy world. I, 30 years ago, I ended up working at the US National Institutes of Health. I spent seven years there working with some amazing scientists and working in the original Office of Alternative Medicine with experts such as Wayne Jonas. And I got to be at the right hand of all of the developments that of the Office of Alternative Medicine, which is now the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Healthcare. And so there's a whole lot that's happened in the background that I have been firsthand a part of. And some of it been a play the role in developing certain things like the White House Commission that took place about 20 years ago, under the Clinton, between the Clinton and the Bush Administration transition that we actually had a chiropractor on the commission. And there was a focus on the role of integrative healthcare in our society. And I actually moved from the National Institutes of Health to working with the US Congress. And that was the reason I was hired was to focus specifically on the role of complementary and integrative health in our healthcare system. And as I have, you know, three decades later and lots of science exposure and lots of hearing, congressional hearings and lots of other factors in life, chiropractic is a separate and distinct healthcare profession with its own science, art and philosophy is, for me, it's the first stop. You know, if I have something going on in my life and I like to get regular chiropractic adjustments on a weekly basis if at all possible, because it's like if you're a mechanic, you're fine tuning your car all the time to keep it at its prime. But as a human being, well, as a spiritual being, having a human experience, which is how I like to look at it, getting an adjustment helps keep our information flow from the brain to the rest of the body in tune. And you know, for somebody who works in a high stress environment like I have in the political world and in Congress and now for the ICA is the executive director, you know, there is no need to make sure that I'm my optimal self. And I'm an imperfect person. I have a lot of things that I can do better in my life. But getting an adjustment is the first step and having a good chiropractic interaction. And the fact that you're going to a healthcare professional whose first option isn't to offer you a chemical interaction to put something else in your body. It's more focused on let's align the spine, let's address the joints and remove any interferences so that the body's own ability through the innate to focus on being its optimal best is to me the solution, you know, the whole the body wasn't designed to have to have a chemical interaction to be well. Now, there are times when medicines, drugs are necessary. I always when I worked with Congress, I would tell people if you have a three alarm fire, then yes, open that fire hydrant and put some water on it. But if you just need a drink of water, don't open the fire hydrant. And most of what we have in society in our own lives doesn't require the fire hydrant. It requires that drink of water. And so chiropractic is like that. It's about addressing the issues on an individual basis specific to what my needs are or your needs are or anybody else's. And when you have healthcare statistics that say 85% of diseases on the planet are lifestyle related, we don't put 85% of the research dollars into addressing that. We put 85% into drug development. So the model of healthcare research is even wrong and how are we finding solutions. So when you see your chiropractor, as they are, are they telling you, you need to drink more water plant based, you know, 85 80% plant focused diet potentially or or going for walks and de stressing all those are the science science has shown actually can do things like reverse heart disease and chiropractic has a plays a role there. And one of my passions is the science. And so this week at our convention, we actually have some of the best scientists in chiropractic presenting at our continuing education program, Dean Harrison, Stephanie Sullivan, Curtis with orchuck. I mean, we have some amazing scientists presenting and from somebody who spent seven years at the NIH, if you have science directly is tied to policy and and regulations. So we need more science and from my perspective, we need to be investing more and high quality research, not just literature reviews, but in actually doing clinically based chiropractic research whole person, the whole person effective chiropractic for me is a goal to have a large practice based research network with academic ties of looking at the whole person effect of regular chiropractic care across the lifespan. Because I believe from what I have read in the preliminary studies that exist that we will see everything from cardiovascular benefit to immune function benefit to the whole gastric system issue, 75% of the immune system is in the gastric system. So if you could there's nothing is nothing in the body isn't connected to the rest of the body. So when you have that communication flow that's working at its optimal best and the body has the chance to be its best self.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well you nailed it right there. You talked about the science philosophy and art of chiropractic. And I really believe that the people that listen to our show, they need to hear that message more frequently and they need to hear that message, you know, is open and honest as you can describe it. And I do think that one of the things I talk a lot about on our show is cradle to grave care, womb to tomb. And I tell people also that, you know, I've never recommend the chiropractic lifestyle to somebody that their quality of life diminished. I only see people that do chiropractic services and follow the chiropractic lifestyle to have better quality of life. And they don't they don't have to go to the doctor for the pills, potions, and lotions and shots. They actually have better quality of life with somebody that's going to tell them how to regulate what they do for their day to day activities, somebody that can tell them what to regulate for how they feed and, you know, for lack of better terms, feed and water themselves. Like you have to you have to take care of your body through the basic premise of existence. And then I also believe like my good friend Eric Plasker, he's going to be at your convention. And he always tells me chiropractic first chiropractic second chiropractic third chiropractic fourth chiropractic fifth chiropractic in the sixth chiropractic in that seventh chiropractic in that eighth. And don't stop chiropractic with these other interventions. He's like always include chiropractic along that journey back to health.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  You know, and he's exactly right. And I'm glad you brought up Dr. Plasker because he has he's amazing and he's he coined the term hundred your lifestyle. And the whole premise is if you know you're going to live to a hundred, how do you live your life? And you know, I don't know how long I'll live. I hope I live to a hundred. But if I live to a hundred, I want it to be with a high quality life. I don't want to be, you know, institutionalized and unable to function and and on 24 meds and all of these other things that so many people who's life, you know, the average woman who's 65 years of age is on 10 medications, 10 medications at one time at any given time. And part of that is the system because now in Medicare, medications are reimbursed so that they're covered under Medicare now. So now of course, if it's paid for, the doctor's going to prescribe more because that's what they do. The tool in their tool block is a prescription pad instead of their own hands to be able to make the adjustment and to help the body, you know, focus on its own optimal cell. And so the medical model has made people into dependent on medications. And I'm not saying you should never take any medication. That's the personal, everybody's needs are different and unique and people's philosophical choices of how they seek help or their own own to make that choice. I mean, I have relatives that if there's a pill for it, they want it. And I'm like, I'd rather go to an adjustment. If there's a vitamin for it, I'd rather do that instead. You know, I'd rather look for a more natural solution, but it's also a philosophy that's different mind than someone else. And that's what's so important in the whole picture of healthcare is that we have to know what rings true for ourselves. And I spent my entire life exploring what is truth. And that comes from a spiritual basis. It comes from a governmental basis and a regulatory basis and the work that I did in Congress. You alluded to it a little bit. I was hired to work focus on complementary and integrative healthcare. But then I was shifted into why do we have an autism epidemic? We would first want us to talk about an autism epidemic in the year 2000. And now here we are 21 years later. And instead of 1 in 2000 children, we have 1 in 36 children in the United States on the autism spectrum.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  You've made it to Chiro Hustle. Sit back and learn from the greatest influencers in the profession on the world's number one Chiropractic podcast. Please remember to subscribe to our channels and give us a 5-star rating on iTunes and to continue hustling. This episode is sponsored by Transact Card, Align Life, NeuroInfinity, Imaging Services, Chiro Health USA, Chiro Moguls, Pure Chiro Notes, Titronics, Sherman College of Chiropractic, New Patients in a Box, Life Chiropractic College West, Pro Hockey Chiros, Pro Baseball Chiros and the IFCO. Let's hustle.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  And you know, so, and that is what happened. We don't have a genetic epidemic. We have children who have been exposed to something that has changed their bodies make up in their neuro neurological response to issues. And so we have chiropractors across the country and the pediatric realm who are taking care of these children. There's some specific clinics across the country who specialize in taking care of children who are new or diverse, who are dealing with things like not being able to speak, not potty training, not being able to focus, having ticks or other issues or seizure disorders. And those are all things that families living with autism live with. And I got to know many thousands of these families. And we all have a moral responsibility to be a part of the solution. And that's how when I finished my work with Congress, I actually stayed involved, very deeply involved in doing things like Freedom of Information Act requests and studying the issues that we had done in Congress looking at the issue which you brought up, the issue of vaccines and health freedom. We, you know, there was a lot of evidence that supported what the parents were saying. And sadly, there was also some corruption in the process of investigating those issues at the court level with the vaccine compensation program, all of which I'm happy to see that children's health defense and Barbara Low Fisher's organization, National Vaccine Information Center, the two expert organizations that really have taken that on and taken the lead in addressing and informing people, you know, doing the hard work, the litigation that's coming through the children's health defense and I just heard that Mississippi is going to be required to have a religious freedom exemption restored, which is a huge victory in the courts. The fact that any state would take away somebody's religious liberty is unconstitutional. And I'm glad to see that the right fight was fought in the courts and is at this point a victory.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Yeah, yeah, you know, you hit me like in a deep spot and I think that it's been really rare for me to actually cry on any episode I've ever done. But it just hit me so hard because I feel that it is a family's choice as to how they take a product, whether it's knowing what's in their drinking water or knowing what's in the ingredients to some food, you know, and we put a lot of scrutiny on that because kids have allergies. And if there's a kid that's going to allergy and there's a peanut thing going on anything, we want to know is there peanuts in this because there's kids that have allergies to this and this this class. So we want to know more about what's in our food than what we do take from an injection or a pill.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  You know, you you've hit the nail on the head here and talking about this issue because it all comes back down to the fundamentals of life. You know, in public health, the most important thing, the most important accomplishment that ever happened in public health is not the development of vaccines. It is the development of a clean water supply and the sewage system, basically in urban environments in particular. Those two things, you know, clean water is the basis of having a quality public health and it has, of course, across history been the solution to issues, dealing with with epidemics of cholera or other things. It always comes down, you know, you have outbreaks of cholera, for instance, in Haiti. Well, it is because they don't have the proper drainage system and the infrastructure developed and in the 21st century and a country that's not very far from the United States. We have an island that has yet to be able to build the infrastructure even though we and other countries have invested a lot of donations and charitable works. We have not been able to resolve these issues and we need to. Those are the things we should be putting our money into is not putting chemicals in the environment but helping people to develop their infrastructure and then focusing on healthy and clean foods, whole foods rather than foods that have been so processed, you don't know what's in them or the, and former governor Huckabee years ago, he said, if you can't pronounce the words of the ingredient list and you don't know what the words probably shouldn't be eating it. Yeah. That was a very smart thing that he, you know, he was, he just lost 100 pounds at the time. He said, this is what I did. If I couldn't read, if I read the ingredient list and I couldn't read, you know, pronounce them, then I did need that food. And by following that lifestyle at that point in his life, he lost 100 pounds over about a year and a half.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well, I think, you know, you speak a lot of truth there and if people actually knew what was they were like feeding their families, they'd be, they'd have a lot more scrutiny for it.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  And, you know, when you talked about the water supply and, you know, it's interesting. Clinton Ray Miller was the, what I call the father of health freedom in this country. He was from Utah. He got very upset about the fluoride in the water system and he actually became very politically engaged and fought the health freedom battle for 50 years. I mean, he lived at the ripe old age of, I think, 92. And he was a dear friend and was a mentor. And, and he said, you know, he fought this battle and he got pushed back. But now science is caught up and, and we are beginning as a society because the science is catching up to agree with him that should we be putting fluoride into a water system to swallow fluoride when if you're doing dentist office, you spit it out. Or should you have a toothpaste that has fluoride in it? There are things, there's a balance there that the science needs to be done correctly and it needs to speak. And instead of people who have an invested interest or invested interest, making money on seeing a policy take place or having a water system have fluoride in it or products in it. You know, for 40 years, I've never looked at the ingredient list on my toothpaste until recently because I read or I listened to a podcast that talked about toothpaste and completely changed into a product that doesn't have some of the chemicals in it that I didn't realize were in toothpaste and the standard brands of toothpaste. The little things like that that we can do being informed consumer is important for being in control of our own lives. And that's where we are in the, you know, 2023 in this country. And we've gone through a period where our freedom to speak in a public forum on social media was cotailed. You know, you as a broadcaster, having your, you know, being worried to mention the V word because you're worried that it'll affect your capacity to share your message. We should not have fear in the communications infrastructure of this country. In social media, Facebook, Twitter, all of these other forums, should, you know, we here are now finding out they have become tools of those who want to monitor what we're saying as opposed to control that environment and control the messaging. When I type in something on Facebook and it sends me to a government website for information, there's something wrong in our world because this is the United States of America. I'm not in Cuba. I'm not in a communist country. I'm in a country that's based on freedoms. And so I shouldn't have a government forcing me to a page that I didn't seek out. And I'm glad to see what Elon Musk is doing. And, you know, letting people know what's behind the curtain. It's like the Wizard of Oz where you pull back the curtain and who's running the machine. He's doing a lot of that this year. And I think that's very important to where we are as our society because the public, each of us is really tired of people trying to take away our freedoms. And this correlates exactly into the message of what happened in chiropractic, where the 1950s and the early 1960s, chiropractic was growing. You know, there was, you know, people were becoming aware and all of the state licensing were taking place. And the American Medical Association pushed back. They created a committee on Quackery. And then they marketed to their doctors that you should not even socialize at the same country club as a chiropractor, much less referrer patient or receiving patient from a chiropractor. So there was an organized effort to restrain the trade of chiropractic. And there was a desire to destroy the profession. And thank goodness they were not successful. However, we're still dealing with the vestiges of that discrimination. For instance, in Medicare, the language that was put in in 1972 was in the middle of the federal case, Wilk versus the AMA. And there was discriminatory language put into the law, which ICA has a bill that will be reintroduced very soon to remove those discriminations against Medicare beneficiaries who seek chiropractic care. So the whole point of not being able to opt out if you want to have private contracting with your chiropractor or not being able to be reimbursed for the routine exam or the imaging, the x-ray imaging, that are both required to have a quality to determine the adjustment. It's a good standard. It's a standard of care. But right now there's a discrimination not just against the chiropractor, but the Medicare beneficiary who's having to pay out of pocket and to a system they've already paid into for decades. So we're working on having that reintroduced. And we very much want to see this passed into law. And we hope that all the Chiro Hustle listeners will get on board and help us get transpancers and see it become law.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Well, there's so much that goes into supporting this profession of chiropractic. And I think that we all have a position on that team. I love teamwork. And I love the fact that you do have great leadership within the ICA. And you have people that are helping perpetuate some of these missions and get the message out there about how to support the ICA. And I think that there's a lot going on. I could probably talk to you for another two hours on topics involved with medical freedom, family health freedom. But I am curious, I usually ask this question to people that are on the show. And it's almost self serving for me, but I'm going to close the gap down a little bit. I always ask like 20 years from now, where do you see the profession of chiropractic going? But I want to shorten the lead a little bit for you. Let's talk five years. Where's chiropractic going? With you being the executive director of the ICA in the next five years?

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  Well, if I'm able to achieve my vision of where chiropractic is in five years, if we can get the profession to work together and not to keep, as I say, circling the wagons and shooting inward, which seems to happen a lot in chiropractic, if we can get past the tribalism and you're a mixer, so I can't talk to you or you're super straight and you're a straight hater or whatever, all these terms, we can focus on promoting chiropractic as a separate and distinct profession that has the capacity to work miracles and lives, which happens every day in offices around the world. I see chiropractic becoming a predominant health care profession around the world, where every human being on the planet has the opportunity to choose to be a chiropractor, if that's their path, life path, and to have access to chiropractic care because we have been able to grow the profession so that there are chiropractors in all 200 countries around the world. That's my vision is that chiropractic needs to be everywhere. I read the big idea frequently because between the sacred trust and the big idea, that's the solution. If we can, as a profession, if the chiropractic profession can work together to work out any challenges of communication and being comfortable with each other and focus on being chiropractors, you don't need to be a jack of all trades and do everything in your office to be a chiropractor. You need to be providing the adjustment to have the access to do your imaging. If you want to specialize in upper cervical or pediatrics or sports and fitness, those are all amazing and wonderful. ICA has councils that help that lead the profession in those trainings and specialized in their diplomat programs. But it's about being the best chiropractor that you can be so that every day, some child walks through your door with their parents and you're having a conversation with them and you're talking to them about getting an adjustment so that your body has its ability to stay well. You're talking about with that parent who's dealing with a lot of stress or a couple of jobs or taking care of their ailing parent. You're providing that not just the adjustment and the environment, but you're also providing an environment of hope. And talking about learning, we talk about the 33 principles in chiropractic and ICA a lot and we share that message. And I have to say, Dr. Selena Sigafus-Jackson teaches the 33 principles. She lives the 33 principles and I have learned so much working with her as the president of the ICA because she is the exact, the example of what it is to live in chiropractic lifestyle. And this is what Dr. Plasker talks about. It's what people like Dean Harrison are researching the effect on the human body when you get regular chiropractic care and studying it in a scientific realm gives us the answers that you see in chiropractic offices every day. When you have somebody who's had migraine headaches for 30 years and have had to take drug after drug after drug that doesn't fix anything and they go and get a series of adjustments. Maybe one, maybe two or three and those migraines don't come back. That is a miracle in somebody's life. When you look at somebody who's a mentor and a friend, Dr. Jerry Klum, who was losing his vision as a young man and who went through the medical route and his whole story is amazing and became the president of Life West University, worked at Life, we came to Life West and living today with some health challenges of his own but he's a gentleman and a scholar of chiropractic and one of the wisest kindest people I would ever meet and his story is a miracle. I mean it's the same thing. Chiropractic became a profession not because you fix somebody's back and neck pain because it restored somebody's hearing. These are miracles that happen all the time and I've had that happen my own life with having, you know, taking a roller skating and taking a dive and having a headache and not realizing it one time I didn't get the chiropractor first and go to the medical doctor and could throw you in a hospital and do all these x-rays and stuff and, you know, didn't bother to go below this goal, didn't look at the neck, went to the chiropractor after checking out of the hospital and he did and we haven't done x-rays on you in a while. Did the x-ray, saw the misalignment, fixed it, headaches are gone. So those are the things that happen in everybody's life. I hear them, Dr. Selena talks about them on our videos that she does on a weekly basis, some of the experiences in her office, sharing things and other people share it on your show I'm sure as well. But you know it's just really important that we protect and promote the profession, that we work in ICA works in advocacy in Washington and around the states, that's why we have state representatives in the assembly to stay engaged and help where we can. And we also, because we are an international organization, we have members in over 50 countries in the world and plan on growing more. So in five years, if we can focus on the positives of chiropractic and the things we have in common as organizations and as people interested, we can be so much further in delivering chiropractic not just a million a day adjustments a day, but 10 million adjustments a day. We can make sure that chiropractic is in every VA facility or referred to in a system that's working for veterans in their local environments, to chiropractors in the local community. And that every, and we have a member of Congress who wants this, wants to have a chiropractor on every Navy vessel that's deployed so that everybody and then across the military to have chiropractic for all of our military. These are things that are goals of the ICA to see happen, goals of mine to see implemented, but also we need to make sure that the system where chiropractors are compensated is both fair and efficient. And right now, they're neither. Those are all the big things that we have to accomplish. We have to work, ICA can't do it alone. We are very engaged with, for instance, the strategic planning, however, future strategic plan, we're very engaged there. We work with the integrative health. We're major partners in the integrative health policy consortium. So we work across the professions of the integrative health community. And we're very active in Washington. You know, I'm on a Capitol Hill frequently. I have lots of colleagues and friends and we have others involved in the office that are also very involved in Washington. And our chiropractors are very much, I mean, one of our board members, one of our officers just testified at a state legislature hearing on issues. So that's how, you know, we all work together on these important issues.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Beth Clay, I love you so much. I'm so thankful for you to be our guest today. I'm so thankful for your passion and your consistency. You stay so tight on brand with this beautiful profession. I once again, I'm just really thankful that we're in network now. We can work better together. I do think that we have a lot of alignment pun intended when it comes to protecting this profession moving forward. I look forward to doing great things with the ICA. I do want to ask you if people were wanted to support the ICA, how do they do that? And how do we connect them with you?

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  So the chiropractic.org is our website. And so you can go there. We also have Facebook pages and Twitter. And you know, you can reach out and we're even on LinkedIn. So you know, you can engage through the face social media. We also have a 501c3 foundation. People wanted to make donations that this is for research and scholarships in chiropractic. And that's the foundation. It's called Fax is the acronym. The foundation for the advancement of chiropractic tenants and science. And if anybody wants to make a donation to the facts, you can call the office or you can go online and promote and make donations. And you know, there's anything that anybody can do to support chiropractic and support the ICA in its mission, which is, you know, we are focused on protecting and promoting the profession and keeping it, you know, when Dr. George Curry brought me on board as I initially started as a consultant with the organization, he said, we have two hard lines in the sand, no surgery and no drugs. And so those are the hard lines in the sand because chiropractors don't need to be surgeons. You're not trained to be. And you don't need to be prescribing drugs because there's enough people out there that are doing that already. And if somebody needs a medicine, send them to somebody that that's what their training is because her infectious training is focused on or it should be focused on providing the best diagnostic through imaging and other tools that have been developed specific to chiropractic and then delivering the adjustment. And I can tell you, every time I get an adjustment and they move those bones in my spine, take that deep breath, it is mind blowing to me how different the body is after an adjustment and then 90 minutes later and then the next day and going on and on. And you guys, literally the future of health care is in the hands of chiropractic and we need to be focused on making that what becomes a high priority and across all systems of health policy and every country. I am blessed to have lived in the Middle East. I lived in Saudi Arabia for three years. I want to see universities, chiropractic colleges across Saudi Arabia and China and Russia and all across the Middle East and Africa and South America. I want to see every country have multiple schools so that everyone has a capacity to become a doctor of chiropractic and do what our doctors at the ICA do on a daily basis.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  Beth Clay, your episode 514 of the Chiropascal podcast. You guys should go out and support this group, the ICA. I believe everybody in chiropractic should be a member. They should be giving their time, their talent and their treasure. Give all three to the ICA. Support their missions and visions and let's make a better future for chiropractic. Beth, just want you to have an awesome rest of your day out there in Las Vegas. I'll see you there on Thursday. I'll be there throughout the weekend with you and just thank you for organizing and bringing so many great people together to move this beautiful profession forward.

BETH CLAY (GUEST):  Right, and it's not too late to register. Anybody that wants to go online and register at chiropractic.org. There's a link right on the front page and you can join us right here in beautiful Las Vegas.

JAMES CHESTER (HOST):  All right, Beth. Well, I'm going to close out by telling everyone you're just one story away. Keep hustling. I'll see you guys on the next episode. Beth, thank you so much for your time today.

Thanks for listening to Chiro Hustle. Don't forget to subscribe and check back next week to continue hustling.

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