Surviving the Side Hustle

From Health Food Store Roots to Global Chiropractic Influence: Jason's Journey of Holistic Healing and Wellness Advocacy

• Coach Rob • Season 1 • Episode 73

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Jason Gilbert's journey from his family's health food store to becoming a chiropractor with a global impact is nothing short of inspiring. This episode offers a glimpse into Jason's dedication to holistic health, as he recounts his transformative experiences treating patients in South America, battling spinal degeneration, and overcoming mercury toxicity. His personal health challenges have not only shaped his approach to wellness but have also fueled his passion for helping others, including his mother, during her fight against cancer. Join us as Jason shares the resilience and insights that have guided his professional journey.

Balancing the demands of health and business can be a tightrope act, and we explore this intricate dance through the eyes of our guest, who has navigated roles within the World Surfing League and the realm of online chiropractic education. Despite initial hurdles with business management and staff relationships, the shift towards a spiritually evolved lifestyle has led to reduced stress and enhanced well-being. From grounding mats to supplements, learn about practical solutions for a healthy lifestyle and discover valuable resources for chiropractors seeking to thrive in their practice.

What truly defines health and wealth? We challenge conventional ideas and confront the disconnect between our genetic makeup and environmental exposures. The financial costs of neglecting health are vast, yet early prevention and proactive management can save both money and hardship in the long run. This episode underscores the importance of understanding gut health, stress management, and the quality of our environment. Listen in for tips on prioritizing well-being before issues arise and resources to support a lifetime of health and growth.

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Speaker 1:

what's going on, guys? Today we've got jason gilbert on the show. Hey man, what's going on? How's it? How is it down under?

Speaker 2:

rob. How are you, mate? Thank you for inviting me to talk with you today, mate. Life down under is really great, especially where I live. It's a healthy area. We're coming into summer, everyone's starting to exercise and shake off those winter blues, so, yeah, it's a really good time here at the moment that's perfect.

Speaker 1:

That's like the complete opposite from here. So, where it's nighttime, about to be nighttime and getting into fall, winter, so crazy, um well, so let's dive in. Actually, uh, you, could you mind sharing a little bit about yourself, because I know you got a cool story and I'm excited to learn a little bit more myself.

Speaker 2:

Sure, mate. Well, I'm 55 years of age. I feel 30. However, that is due to a few challenges with my health during my life. If we took it back to when I was a kid, my family owned a health food store. I worked in a health food store. I was always around health, healthy people. Health food store. I worked in a health food store. I was always around health, healthy people, always admired elderly people who were rocking it and started to join the dots at a young age in regards to the habits that they were, I guess, dedicating themselves to their posture, their demeanor, all of this sort of stuff. I feel grateful for that opportunity. I feel grateful for that opportunity.

Speaker 2:

A couple of big challenges for me. I've left the health food store to study chiropractic. So I did two degrees, a master's degree in chiropractic and I guess throwing myself heart and soul into a profession that I love took me to South America for a surf trip and instantly looking for opportunities to work with people who'd never been exposed to chiropractic. So, in the process of going up to the Andes and the Amazon and taking my heavy table and treating sometimes up to 200 people a day, but on average 120, 20 hours work nonstop. You'd rock up and you'd, you know, go onto local radio or television stations with broken Spanish and then, all of a sudden, you'd, you know, arrive the next day at 8 am, and people had been arriving at 4 am from you know, hundreds of kilometers away sometimes. But long story short, my spine suffered for that. So that's what led me to spinal degeneration and subsequent surgery. What led me to spinal degeneration and subsequent surgery. So, ironically, my specialty in South America, both in Brazil and Peru, was helping people avoid surgery. And because it was new, the profession, doctors had heard about me, orthopedic surgeons and neurologists, and quite often, when they didn't want to operate but that exhausted physio and medication, all the rest, I would receive patients from these specialists and then, ironically, I had one of the worst cases that I'd ever seen. You know like. So surgery. That was a humbling experience.

Speaker 2:

Number one and the second one was, I guess, going back to the days when I was working in the health food store. I was made aware by a couple of people um how having mercury fillings in our teeth could be very dangerous for our health. So that was always my mind. I'd come home one year from south america and speedily went to my dentist and asked him to remove all of the fillings in my teeth and I had like six or eight and it wasn't done need to follow a correct procedure. I got severe mercury toxicity from that and I was in a bad state for eight years okay, eight years brain fog, incessant gastrointestinal problems, low energy, but insomnia. I just knew something was wrong.

Speaker 2:

You know, and luckily, in that process, one of my clients in my clinic in Sao Paulo was a pioneer of orthomolecular medicine, functional medicine, in Brazil, and he invited me to study with him and a group of doctors and I would say that saved my life. Not only saved my life, but helped me save or help other people's lives because of the information I learned applying it to myself. I applied it to my mom, who was diagnosed with late-stage lung cancer seven years ago and she's still alive. So that's a summary made of a condensed life full of experiences. But what do I do? I'd say I specialize in optimization or devolution, restoration of function, whether it be in the spine, the joints or the body?

Speaker 1:

Jeez, yeah, that's pretty crazy. I remember I was reading through your bio a little bit there and I was like, oh, mercury, poisoning and all this other stuff. Can you explain what was that timeframe? Because you kind of went through that.

Speaker 2:

I don't know if I caught it, yeah. So for the mercury toxicity?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, well, for the whole thing.

Speaker 2:

So from like the surgery. Funny enough, though, actually, what I should mention is that I suffered back pain from I don't know, seven years of age. I associated back pain with every single physical activity I ever did running, playing rugby, surfing and because I was young and I didn't have a reference, at least not one that I could remember, I couldn't remember how I was at four before I started those things, so I accepted that as normal. So that, obviously, combined with the loads and everything else through my work, led me to spinal surgery. So I'm 55 now.

Speaker 2:

I had spinal surgery at 39 yeah, wow. And I had removed my fillings around 35, 36, which was like about an eight year. I guess let's say it was a long time. It was a slow reduction of health to the point that, thank god, I discovered it was mercury, because all the other tests said nothing, that I was perfect, and when I had like diarrhea 20 times a day, that was like my average. It was just ridiculous. Um, so I guess the resolution of that was, let's say, early 40s yeah, wow. And honestly, I'll be 55 in December. I feel and function as well or better than what I did when I was 30, without a shadow of a doubt.

Speaker 1:

Nice, december. What for your birthday? Sorry, what day in December.

Speaker 2:

The 29th.

Speaker 1:

I'm the 13th. Oh yeah, that's close.

Speaker 2:

You're coming up soon, mate.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, you probably should get your birthday present.

Speaker 2:

I might have 13th. Oh yeah, so that's close. You're coming up soon, mate. Yeah, you took your birthday present. I'm on a. Christmas present yeah, confusion.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so what was it like when you were going through that whole process with identifying it was the mercury, because I imagine it was just kind of like trial and error for the longest time, right.

Speaker 2:

Oh, mate, very anguishing because I, I would go, I do the tests, I do the research, admittedly, like information on the on internet, it's, it's improved, it's, you know, like every year, um, almost in a what's the word? Um, I guess the fashion that's accelerating so much. But back then it wasn't that easy. So I look back at my life as a series of not coincidences, because nothing's a coincidence, but just real, opportune moments where the right people were put in front of me and maybe the message was reinforced not long after. But that was can you imagine eating or taking a supplement and seeing it pass through your hole? So can you imagine how many years that's occurring? And you're like, hang on, this ain't good, I'm not absorbing nutrients here. And because I had to show up for people every day, like I mentioned those numbers before of around 200, but they were big gains. On average it was about 50 to 60 people a day, but that's a lot of people to show up for every day and draw deep on your energy reserves.

Speaker 2:

So I did notice, um, I made, I basically felt that at one point in the future, if I had a if and when I'd get on top of it, that there'd be a whole lot of spiritual and emotional growth ready to occur, and I I felt that that wasn't occurring. I really felt that that wasn't occurring. I really felt that that was linked, and so it was a whole series of situations that had me feeling down. However, it also teaches you about adversity, you know. It teaches you that challenges aren't always a week long. You know, sometimes they last years or even, you know, up to a decade or more. So you can never give up hope. You know you have to truly believe, and I think I drew deep on techniques such as visualization, imagining how I'd be later on, but not believing for one second that I wouldn't get on top of it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, when did that come from? Like having that positive understanding of like yeah, I'm going to get through this, because that's got to be daunting, like you're working with a lot of people, that's a lot of energy you got to muster up every day.

Speaker 2:

Like I imagine a lot of parts of your life is suffering because of all this okay, just, you know, the first couple of things I think of would be a really strong sense of purpose. So there was purpose. Okay, maybe there's a little bit of ego as well, because you know I was one of the first chiropractors there. I was always on television, you know, being on television and promoting what I did Not, when I say promoting talking about spinal cord problems, was what got people to me.

Speaker 2:

And I'd also say I'd say a part of it's in our composition, not every, you know, it's not all the time, but if we're having examples around our mentors, whether they be uncles, aunts, mother, father, whatever, for some reason that managed to keep me optimistic. You know, you've got to be careful of those dark moments, when you're a little bit pessimistic and negative. And I think I truly feel that if you prioritize sleep and you prioritize what you understand about health, if that means introducing nutrients, keeping up with exercise, keeping up with the basics and trying to keep the bad stuff out, like I didn't drink, for example, or if I drank, it was very rarely. So I think there's also a series of lucky factors as well that I didn't realize how important they were back then. But I do look back. I I say I think for sure that gave my body the ability to hang in there until I finally found the solution to solve it.

Speaker 1:

And like bringing it towards a professional setting. Like so that's insane. Like you're working with a lot of people and continuing to provide all of that, that support and work for so many people. Like did any point in time did your business start to kind of suffer?

Speaker 2:

or mate, um, look, I would say no because the numbers were always high. However, I would say yes. On the other side, in regards to, um, let's say, your relationship or management of staff, you know, like, for sure that would have suffered for sure, um, I, I guess it. It didn't always have me focusing on priorities and how to get them. You have have to be very clear, you know. So I felt, yes, looking back, I was probably more in survival mode than in a mode that was more, let's say, preparing at the end of every day for the next day, waking up and having your practices and all that sort of stuff. So I'd say yes and no on both of those, you know. And you know, like, at the same time, I was juggling my commitments with the World Surfing League. I work with professional athletes In the early days of USC, quite a few fighters in Brazil and the World Surfing League, which is the professional surfing league, obviously traveling around the world and working with them, you know. So there was a lot going on.

Speaker 2:

And, look, I think a lot of mums can relate to this mate, actually a lot of people, but let's say mums, especially when they've got kids, they're the center of the family. They're juggling everything, that often sickness is put to the side. Or if they've got, if they've got, their sense of purpose is that strong that they simply can't. Their body doesn't get the chance to be sick. What you'll often see is when they get past a busy time, when the kids are old or when somebody's looking after a very sick, let's say, companion, on the other side of it, they'll often fall ill.

Speaker 2:

So it's almost as if the body puts all that on hold until you get through the crisis and then boom.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. So what's? What's the business like nowadays now? Better health, best health ever or best health in so many years. What's it looking like now for yourself, business wise, yeah.

Speaker 2:

So now, thankfully, with the I guess, the process of evolving spiritually, as I said before, that was always on hold and recognising what priorities are, I reduced, I guess, the 10 clinics I had in Brazil and the four in Peru. I sold out of Peru and I closed nine of the 10 in Brazil. So I managed that and I work with online education of chiropractors and other health professionals in Brazil and here in Australia. I was lucky. I always dreamt of a model where I could work from home in a small area. I went from living in cities of 20 million people and 10 million people Sao Paulo and Lima respectively to a town now with 6,000 people where you can buy locally sourced vegetables. All of your produce is local.

Speaker 2:

I surf. If there's no surf, I walk barefoot and do grounding stuff every day, and you know I don't actually advertise my physical work, that sort of work, online, so it's all word of mouth, which is a great way to receive people. However, of course, I get contacted by people all around the world for online consults, and that's fine. So I guess I've had the luxury of customizing a life that's more conducive to health and I always prioritize at least the first two hours every single day to me, whether that be the detox procedures that I follow, the exercise, as I said, the walking, whatever it is. That's all way. That's, that's probably been the best investment that I've, that I've made I love that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I'm a huge, huge fan of uh, walking sunlight, getting outside real actual nature. Unfortunately, I live in. I live in high rise up here on like 12th floor. There's a lot of distance between me and the ground and a lot of like signals and everything going on, so it's hard to get out uh.

Speaker 2:

So any chance of opportunity I get, I try to take that well I want to ask you a little bit that situation I can relate to, you know, because that is a challenge of modern life and I think it's really important that people learn what they can do to compensate for that. For example, the, the, the earthing uh sheets you can get, for example. Hey, why not emulate how you'd be and get that uh energy, the pmf energy, from the earth? I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but it's a sheet that plugs into the wall that is grounded. Yeah, you get that uh. Let's say you're around wi-fi. Well, you can take things like iodine to protect yourself from the radiation. That's daily. Um, your red light panels if you're missing the sun, you know, if you're missing the sun on a certain day, a liposomal vitamin d really important. So in a modern life, we just have to be aware of what we need to complement. You know when we're missing out on these things, and I truly believe our body can function.

Speaker 1:

You know as well as love that I got most of those missing the grounding mat, but got all those other ones on check. So, um, I want to bring back to the business though. So, because you say now you're working with, uh in like the online education of other chiropractors, I'm guessing are these the individual you're working with? Are they already experienced and established chiropractors? I'm guessing are these individuals you're working with? Are they already experienced and established chiropractors, or are you teaching like technique, like hands-on technique with chiropractors, are you?

Speaker 2:

Good question. So I launched a book a couple like, probably four years ago now, in English that I'd already launched in Portuguese and Spanish, called the Secret of a Healthy Spine, and what this book documents is my career, like all of the causes of back pain that I encountered, and for many years I'd write down every new cause when a new client would come in, and obviously the list grew to a certain point and then it stopped. So most of us are suffering from the same things. Most of us fail in going to the cause of a problem. A successful intervention would be suppression of symptoms okay, using medication or some other natural or complementary health alternative. However, it's still allopathic. It's not looking for the cause. So, with time, what I recognize, especially in Sao Paulo, where people are really busy and they compromise their diet and they're stressed out I recognize the importance and the role of chemical and emotional factors. So my book focuses on that. Now, I guess a lot of us have this challenge in not assuming that people know what we know, because when you work with a topic enough, you assume when you're talking to people that they understand that, and when I realized that wasn't the case, I not only went from you know, upping what I was doing in regards to educating the population, but also focusing on educating professionals, because, hey, why wait 20 years to learn what I'd learned in 20 years? Why not condense that into a shorter time? So, the Brazilian chiropractors I'm looking after a group of them and coaching them, but also this course I've just put an online course out there.

Speaker 2:

It was actually a little bit of a disappointment because it's a very comprehensive course. You want to know about the spine? It's all there. There it's called the strong back method. However, there's a lot of investment in time to do that and I I felt as soon as I launched in the same day, I was like you know what's too big? It's too big. Most people I had. I had a bd group out there and it was given away to five people. Two of them had had spinal surgery and even those two didn't really get into it, even though there's gems in there. So I thought, ah, this course is probably more apt for professionals. You know, students and I'm focusing on very short courses, ebooks and condensing it because it seems like that's the way we're going with technology and our attention span yeah, that's exactly what i're going with technology and our attention span.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's exactly what I was going to lead into. Is the attention span Like I've gone through? I can't even count how many coaching courses I've gone through business and my own stuff and I get through like anywhere from 60 to like 90% of the way, but I don't even know if I've ever fully finished a course and I've taken all of them and it's tough, especially when they're longer videos and such, and now with social media, our attention spans are basically like not existing yeah, it's incredible, isn't it?

Speaker 2:

and like we all suffer from that. So I think I actually try to check in with myself and think well, how is that affecting other functions in my brain? You're like what can I do to compensate for that? Because it's insidious. It just creeps up on us negatively without us knowing. It's like most pathologies you know that they're occurring and the symptoms are lasting to appear yeah, yeah, um, so is that?

Speaker 1:

what's next for you? Is the creating shorter and smaller courses that are, uh, more specifically for the general public, or you now you're just going full into, like the more experienced individuals?

Speaker 2:

no, they're definitely the education of uh professionals, also a very specific course for to guide people through the process after spinal surgery. That, mate, there's nothing on it, there's very little out there and people if you're talking about anguish, that's next level, because you go through one of the most harrowing, painful, depressing, challenging moments in your life and you leave the surgery, even if the surgery was a success, even if it was a success, and you're told a couple of yeah, no, it's all good sorry about that man.

Speaker 2:

So you, you just passed one of the most harrowing, challenging experience in your life and all you are told when you leave that surgery is what not to do. You know, like oh, wow, wow, there's, there's no guide. So anyway, that's one course. The other course is on um strong back for surfers. You know, I've worked for surfers, professional surfing 20 years, so it's time to you know, pass on that knowledge.

Speaker 2:

And in this whole process of functional medicine there's things that have helped me. You know, like this is what I should mention also, that whole Mercury Challenge. What I learned was that we all need to change our definition of health, our definition of health based on how we feel most of the time and how we we look. You know so-and-so looks healthy. Now, when mum was doing the special immunotherapy, I was taking to the chemo ward and there was people that looked really healthy in there. They had cancer. You know, and everyone knows of a case where someone wakes up in the morning feeling great and they pass away in the afternoon of a heart attack. So you know, if we're basing it on how we feel, we can be very, very wrong, very mistaken on that one. So the true definition of health is how we function, and it's 100 function.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that's, that's correct function 100 is homeostasis and that's health. So that can only occur when we're getting a sufficiency of nutrients and a minimum or zero of toxins. So if we look at our world these days and we compare our cells that are genetically the same as what they were thousands of years ago. We weren't exposed to toxins back then that we are exposed to now. So genetically we're not congruent with that. Yeah, now why am I saying that? Because this is another part of toxins back then that we are exposed to now. So genetically we're not congruent with that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, now, why am I saying that? Because this is another part of my specialty. This is from my own experience and being blessed actually to be studying with these functional medicine doctors in Brazil, helping people sort out their gut problems, helping people understand what good water quality is and how important that is and how they should mineralize it. And you know stress is and how important that is and how they should mineralize it, and you know stress is a really important one as well. So there's a whole lot of e-books that in the next six months there will be quite a few, and I'm really excited about it. I feel that that is a real modern way of meeting people halfway on their education.

Speaker 1:

So you've got a lot of that material coming out where how do people stay in touch with you and stay up to date when, when all that material does start to kind of unroll?

Speaker 2:

yeah. So the best way is my web page. It's jasongilbertcomau, and on that also you'll see this. You know I do speaking, I do a lot of corporate stuff. I do also retreats. So I know I don't know where your audience is from, but people do come from all over for consultations and retreats and the whole idea of the retreats is that we often can't get on top of a problem in a one-hour consult. A one hour is a lot more than we get from a gp, you know, in a, you know medical consult. But even still, in three days we can really get some serious stuff done. Because hey, whether we like it or not, one day we're going to be made obliged to think about our health. So it's better not to wait, it's better to choose that now.

Speaker 2:

Invest in health. It's very similar to wealth. You invest in health, you pay for disease. But disease or sickness is the number one cause of bankruptcy, the number one. It blows me away that, more than bankruptcy through business or divorce and separation, it's actually paying for medical bills.

Speaker 2:

Many people, you know, plan for their retirement strategy. In australia we call it superannuation, you know. But they're underprepared. They're planning for, you know, a life where they might make it to 80, but what about if cancer kicks in at 70 and that? You see, I see this all the time. People have to sell their houses. They've worked their whole life security and they lose it due to a disease that was occurring in that time. So, anyway, I went off on a bit of a tangent then. But the whole idea about investing in that time is to, I guess, invest, and harvard did interesting study years ago showing that any investment in health gives a two thousand percent return on your money or on your time. 2,000. Wow, I mean people are jumping up and down about a 6% return on property, you know, like 2,000, you know, that's wild.

Speaker 2:

Wow. So I'd say, mate, as I on my Instagram, jason Gilbert official, every day I'm posting free content to help people out. That is based on my clients. It's based on what I'm being exposed to to help people out. That is based on my clients. It's based on what I'm being exposed to every day and wanting to pass that on to others.

Speaker 1:

Nice, yeah, there you go, guys. You got to make sure you follow him, check out his website and shoot him messages and get involved. When is your next retreat that you have coming up?

Speaker 2:

My next retreat will be early next year, February.

Speaker 1:

Cool, cool, cool. Well, dude, I appreciate you taking the time to hop on carving it out in your morning. For me this was great A lot of great information, and I love the conversation. I love everything about what you've got going on. You're very aligned with everything that I'm working on over here in Connecticut. So, I love it. I love it a lot.

Speaker 2:

My pleasure, thank you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for being dedicated to getting information out there to help people, of course. But before I let you go, I've got to ask you that cliche question If you could boil everything that you've learned over the years and bring it down to just one piece of advice, what would be that one piece of advice you'd pass on?

Speaker 2:

Don't wait for symptoms, don't wait to feel bad, don't wait for something to advise you that something's wrong. It's a bit like not putting oil in the car and waiting for a light, but in our body that light doesn't always come on as officially as what it does in the car. So for some people that's fine, for others it's not. So please don't wait. 't wait, love it.

Speaker 1:

Final health problems, you know yeah, jason man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time. This was great. Uh, I really really enjoyed this episode.

Speaker 2:

Thank you so much rob all the best mate, thank you all right guys.

Speaker 1:

Peace, peace, peace.