From Pain To Peace With Dr. Mindi Jentes

 

Dr. Mindi shares how she went from pain to peace, finding how the alignment in her body is supporting her work and improving her overall health. Dr. Mindi has always had a heart condition on top of her frequent headaches and neck pain, in this episode Liz Hoefer speaks with her about how Blair Chiropractic changed her life, not only physically but in other areas as well.

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From Pain To Peace With Dr. Mindi Jentes

An Open Conversation With Dr. Mindi Jentes On How Blair Upper Cervical Chiropractic Changed Her Life

I’m excited about my guest, Dr. Mindi Jentes. She began her chiropractic journey as an assistant in a chiropractic office and was so in love with the profession. At 38 years old, she decided to go back to school with four young children and a pastor husband in tow to become the most extraordinary Activator doctor that I’ve ever met. I’m so excited to have her on the show. I’m excited to hear her heart behind why she believes that having co-management with patients is so important. Welcome to the show, Dr. Jentes.

Thank you, Dr. Hoefer. It’s good to be here.

We were introduced because both of us are members of the California Chiropractic Association. I’m still a member. We would see each other at the local Orange County events. We became friends because it’s so important to have comradery within our field, especially women in chiropractic. It’s growing, but it hasn’t always been a thing. When I met you, we had a lot in common. We were both funny opera singers and we were both sold out for Jesus. We both forged our chiropractic journey in an untraditional way. It was neat when you started to understand the importance of what Blair Chiropractic is. We started co-treating patients together. That’s been one of the biggest joys of my career is having other doctors of chiropractic value the care and want to treat with me instead of be in competition with. Can you tell the audience a little bit about what you were personally going through before you had a desire and an experience with the Blair for cervical work?

I remember very vividly, but I don’t know if you recall. I called you, begging you to get me in on your schedule. At that time, you had quite the waiting list. I was like, “Dr. Hoefer, I don’t care if I have to pay $1,000 to see you. I don’t care if it’s 2:00 in the morning. If you don’t get me in, I’m going to the hospital and I’m having surgery.” I do not go to the doctor for anything because I don’t ever need to. For me to say that, it’s pretty intense. I was having truly severe off the chart pain with my neck and it was radiating into my shoulder and down into my arm all the way into my hands with numbness and tingling. I was losing motor strength. I could hardly use my hand or my arm and as a chiropractor, that’s not a good place to be.

I noticed that with it, I was also having incredible headaches that were bad. I’ve always been a headache sufferer my whole life. I had a traumatic birth. As a result, I always had headaches. I had been to other chiropractors and found some great relief, especially with the technique that I use, which is a different technique than you. It’s something’s very complementary. The headaches weren’t going away. The arm pain and neck pain were continuing to increase probably about three years into practice. I was at that point desperate. I was afraid because the last thing I wanted was to have to close my practice and go on disability because now I can’t do anything. I called you in tears, crying, begging you and you got me in one day in late Friday afternoon. I will never forget it. Everything changed from that point on. Literally upside down, it flipped my health and my life around.

It never gets old hearing this testimony, but knowing how amazing you are as a doctor and the way that you practice. She uses an Activator, which is a handheld tool that she’s got advanced certification training in. She trains other doctors and students. To have that level of professionalism come to you and say, “I need your help,” it’s humbling. It’s also scary because you’re like, “This is where the rubber meets the road. What if what I’ve been saying to her isn’t real?” I believe what I do and I believe in the Blair technique. I value the Activator so very much. I use Activator as a support system. I value the testing and the research that they’ve done.

It was a lot of pressure but I was excited about the opportunity to get my hands on your neck. I remember doing the exam and giving you the correction. The things that unfolded going forward even into a couple of months later, watching you go through the healing process was nothing short of a miracle. It even impressed me and I see miracles every day. It was so neat to be able to be a part of that. I look at the way that I’ve been given this tool as a gift from God. I loved being on that journey.

I was feeling like I was the hands and feet of Jesus to you because He gave me the skillset to be able to meet you in your time of need. It has transformed your life. It’s been so incredible to watch you grow as a doctor and as a professional and to take steps in faith. They make my knees weak. Going back to what you were feeling, you had that excruciating neck pain, but there was something else that has been incredibly interesting. You had a heart murmur. Talk to the audience about what you were doing and specifically tell me about that day that you called me.

Your body has an amazing ability to heal itself when given the right circumstance and the right opportunity. Click To Tweet

I was born with a heart condition called mitral valve prolapse. That’s a portion of the mitral valve in the heart that doesn’t close all the way. Sometimes it would stay open and it would leak. It’s like a leaking heart valve. It’s not dangerous when you’re born with it. As you get older and you start to go through hormone changes, especially heading into midlife, it can become problematic more in the fact that it is discomforting, but it’s not necessarily life-threatening. In addition to all those headaches, I was also having pretty intense heart palpitations and racing heart rate. My blood pressure was elevated and I was also getting some chest pains. I knew that this is a phase that my heart will go through on occasion throughout my life. I wasn’t concerned about it, but it was becoming more discomforting. With everything else going on, it was alarming. That was the last thing I wanted.

Now I’m having a heart problem on top of everything else and I’m only a few years into practice, “This can’t be happening.” There were a lot of those things. I remember going in to see you. The first visit, you checked my blood pressure and my blood pressure was super high. I’m like, “That’s not right. There’s something wrong with your cuff. It can’t be that.” You’re like, “No, I think it’s fine.” I’m like, “I don’t know.” I remember that first visit I got adjusted and then went home. I had told another friend of mine about my condition too and how it was scary. She felt like it was a spiritual battle. There are times in my life where my spirit says, “Yes, this is a spiritual battle.” There are times when my spirit says, “No, this is not spiritual. This is physical.”

At that point, I remember thinking, “No, that’s not spiritual.” That made me nervous because I’m pretty certain now we’re dealing with this as a physical problem. I’m more scared. I remember having had that conversation with her then I saw you and I went home. I don’t even think it was two days later. I’m sure it was the next day I was sitting in the living room. I’m having a lot of heart palpitations at this point. It’s later in the evening and we’re sitting there watching TV. Nothing crazy is going on. I’m not stressed out. All of a sudden, I felt my heart hit the front of my chest wall and the back of my chest wall, like a flip-flop. That was enough to make me go, “I need to call 911.” There was no pain. I wasn’t having any symptoms other than that one moment. I was like, “They’re going to tell me there’s nothing wrong and that it’s stress.” There goes $1,000 or $2,000 hospital bill for them to tell me there’s nothing wrong.

My daughter, who happens to be one of your interns, was home at the time. I called across the house for her to bring her blood pressure cuff and everything to check my heart. She was like, “Why? What’s going on?” I’m like, “I don’t know. There’s something wrong.” She takes my blood pressure. She listens to my heart and she’s like, “Mom, there’s nothing wrong. Your blood pressure is fine.” I was like, “Check it again. There’s something wrong. Kayla, listen hard. There is something wrong.” She listens and she listens. Kayla is a good student. I wasn’t concerned about her level of skill in doing this. She says, “Mom, there is nothing wrong.” I said, “Give me the sphygmomanometer.” I listened to it myself. I listened to my heart. I was like, “Kayla, listen again.” I hand it back to her and she’s like, “Why can’t you trust me, mom? There’s nothing wrong.” I said, “That’s the problem. There’s nothing wrong.” She’s like, “What?”

It hits her too. “That irregular heartbeat that you have had your whole life, that sound of the mitral valve not closing fully is gone. It’s not there. That’s normal. Your blood pressure is normal. What the heck?” I remember thinking, “What happened?” All the science starts going through my head as to like, “The vagus nerve, the vagal tone, the effect that it has on the heart and the rhythm.” I’m going through the whole thing. I’m like, “I have a feeling that that adjustment healed the mitral valve prolapse.” It was probably a few days later that I came back to see you for a follow-up visit. Sure enough, you’re like, “I don’t hear it. There’s nothing there. This is a miracle. It’s cured and it’s gone.” To this day, I do believe that’s the case because I never had that issue again. I haven’t had the official EKG done to prove that that’s the case.

We’re going to get it done. The thing is she’s had this her entire life since she was born. There’s a massive amount of medical documentation to show that she has this issue. Sometimes when people get a diagnosis, the doctors will reverse it and say, “We misdiagnosed you.” That’s not the actual case. She had a mitral valve prolapse and now she doesn’t. I’m not sitting here saying you’re cured or I cured you. The truth is your body has an amazing ability to heal itself when given the right circumstance and the right opportunity. I was pretty excited about that. That circumstance and that event have transformed how you look at things. After that, the referrals from Dr. Jentes started flooding in and it’s been a joy.

Sadly, she doesn’t live in the same state as me. She went on a journey herself, took a leap of faith and trusted that God was calling her across the country to North Carolina. It’s neat because now she’s involved with an upper cervical practice that allows her to do her Activator. She’s learning a different upper cervical technique, but Atlas-driven nonetheless. To watch her grow into that and be resolute in the fact that knowing that having upper cervical and CCJ, Craniocervical Junction integrity, is the foundation of health is so awesome. Besides the physical impact that the Blair Upper Cervical correction made in your life, Dr. Jentes, give me a little bit more understanding outside of that. What improvements have you noticed and experienced in your life?

There have been a lot of things. It’s almost countless. I used to have chronic low back pain, always aching in my low back. When my Atlas is in, I have no low back pain. That’s a big help for me, especially being on my feet all day. Working with patients myself, I need my low back, especially to be strong and not be in pain. That has made a big difference. The neck pain, the shoulder, the numbness and tingling, the motor, all of that came back so fast. It healed so quickly. It was within a matter of a few months. I’m like, “It’s gone.” I noticed everything changing. The pain that I was in literally saved my career. I could not imagine being in a practice right now feeling the way I was. There’s no way I could have continued.

 

The biggest impact that it had on me was my brain function. When we understand the relationship of the Atlas to the brainstem and the critical importance of the central nervous system and how that information flowing from the brain through the spinal cord into the body and back is severely impaired, if the Atlas especially is not where it needs to be, that impact is profound. Until you have that cleared out, you don’t realize what you don’t know. You don’t realize what you’re missing out on. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.

People always tell me and I confirm it with them. You don’t know how sick you were until you’re not. People are so used to living with this level of disease that they think that it’s normal to have an ache and pain, a headache, a brain fog, that they need to have caffeine six times a day. When they get cleared out and their heads are on straight, they’re like, “I have never felt more vibrant. I’ve never felt more clear-minded. I feel like I’m firing on all cylinders and everything’s going right.” That leads to the next question, how does being in alignment support your work?

For me, a lot of my focus in addition to the chiropractic adjustment is helping patients with their nutrition. It’s not just, “Eat this and don’t eat that.” I’m using a program that some of you may be familiar with called functional nutrition and functional medicine. That requires a lot more skill for changing your diet. A lot of the patients that I work with are very sick. A lot of them are under care with me, but they’re also under care with other chiropractors around the country. They need more intensive care with regards to nutrition. A lot of these patients have severe chronic diseases that in some cases are life-threatening.

Before I have had the Atlas correction, I found that I felt frustrated in my ability to work with these kinds of cases because they’re very hard cases. It required so much mental capacity on my end. It required so much and it still does require so much additional training on a regular basis and a lot of research, a lot of studies that I was utterly exhausted at the thought of seeing a patient that I needed to work within this level. I didn’t have it in me. That was so frustrating to me. As that began to clear out and I started to see the change in my brain health, I started noticing that I was able to be much more present with my patients and felt much more energy and confidence even in the recommendations and the care that I was providing them.

I started seeing better results because I was able to be a better doctor for them. From that perspective, that made a big difference. The interesting thing is God has a way of throwing it all out there for me. It’s never a simple journey. It’s never easy. It’s always going to be like, “Here’s an entire tornado for you to handle. In addition to taking care of everybody else, you’re going to also go through this.” It was not long after I’d started working with you that I went through quite an emotional journey myself. I can honestly say that had I not started under Atlas care, I can’t even fathom how awful that journey would have been. It was hard enough.

It may not have happened at all because you are already at the capacity. You were tapped. Your bucket was full. I feel like when you go to these healing processes, the levels and the layers that get shaded, it happens at the right time because you have the capacity to deal. Your emotional journey and the healing that has come from that, my biggest healing was emotional as far as I didn’t have a lot of physical pain when I had my first Blair correction. I was suicidal. Getting a Blair correction saved my life because in an instant, I had hope and I didn’t want to die anymore for the first time. To be able to understand that the mental and the spiritual component of this has much to do with your life as does the physical, that’s why we talk about chiropractic. It’s emotional, mental, physical, spiritual and financial.

It has an impact on every area of your life. That’s why I started Well Connected Chiropractic because I want you well connected to every aspect of your life. It’s been a blessing again to watch you grow and to see you go through that emotional journey. What you did with that was you took that and now you’ve transformed it into an offering for people. I don’t think we go through anything. God doesn’t waste a thing. We go through these turmoils and valleys. We also go to the highest peaks of the mountains so that we have a testimony and an ability to help the person coming down the path who is about to go on a journey and needs a guide. What are you doing now with your training and with the experiences that you’ve had? What’s the next step for you?

After God got me through all of these other life-changing things for myself, I believe that that was part of the journey that has led me to where I’m at and has prepared me for this phase in my life now. We decided that it was time to leave California. My husband and I and our children that are still at home, we packed up and moved across the country to North Carolina. I’m now working with a chiropractor here in North Carolina at Atlas Chiropractic of Raleigh, who is an Atlas chiropractor. I’m also working with him with Atlas. We support all of the adjustments with Activator. It has taken me from being in a place of being a business owner to now be an interning doctor where I was interning students to now being an associate doctor and working alongside someone who has even more years of experience than I did.

We all have a calling and a gift. When we join forces together, the synergy in that is exponential. Click To Tweet

I’m learning more and more about how upper cervical techniques can benefit and complement with other techniques that are there, especially with regards to Activator. In addition to that, it’s given me the opportunity to start a private practice. I work with patients doing functional nutrition and also a lot of more emotional healing opportunities. God has opened doors here for me to take what I learned working with you there in California. Combine that into one practice and also be able to help women who are similar in age to ourselves and even older going through lots of trials in their lives, but also a lot of their physical ailments that they may have and help them find healing on the other side.

It’s been perfect with the Zoom calls. COVID-19 has offered us a great opportunity for this. All of my nutritional stuff is done via conference calls and we do video conferencing. I meet with my patients that way. We discuss what’s going on in their nutrition and how I can help them and lay out an appropriate plan for them. I’m also working on creating online wellness. It’s like a personal retreat but because we can’t retreat right now, it’s an online retreat. It’s a journey for patients to walk through to help them go from pain to peace. Part of the things that are incorporated is obviously the need for chiropractic care, the need for spiritual health, the need for emotional health, physical health and financial health. All those things so that on the other end that they can visualize and create their ideal life, find it and live it.

I want to sign up. How can I do that? How can I find you?

The easiest way is to go to my website at www.BrioWellness.com. You can find all of that information there, all the different service offerings that I have. Most of that is done via teleconference. It’s simple to be able to do it from the comfort of your own home and yet you get the face-to-face time as well with me. The process is much easier.

It’s nothing like the little pandemic to jumpstart an entire business model.

First, I heard all this happening and I was like, “No,” and then I went, “Yes.” That’s terrible but now I have time to put it together.

Again, God doesn’t waste the thing. Even in this crazy pandemic where the whole world has gotten shut down, I know myself, I’ve taken advantage of the slower pace and being more intentional with what I’m doing. Hence the fact that I finally have been able to get around to doing some more podcast interviews and it’s such a blessing to have a friend like you who has always been a champion for my career and for the work that I have to offer.

We all have a purpose. We all have a calling. We all have a gift. Each of us together when we joined forces, the synergy in that is exponential. The heart that you had to collaborate with me has been nothing short of a blessing to all of the people that we’ve served together in Southern California proper. You’ve taken this experience and now you’re transplanting across the country. Lots more people are going to be able to have the benefit of all of the training and the expertise that you have to offer. It’s a blessing. I know I’ve got somebody in Raleigh I can refer to because I didn’t have anyone before.

 

I still refer people to you as well. If I meet people and I know people in the area, they’re looking for a chiropractor, I’m like, “You’ve got to see her.” I don’t care if it’s 45 minutes of a drive.

Dr. Jentes, it’s been a joy to have you on the show. I’m so excited that we got to explain a little bit more to the audience about what it looks like to co-treat, what it looks like to have your head on straight, even as another chiropractor. The power in acknowledging that you probably have all the answers and reaching out for help, even if it’s something different than what you’ve done and the healing journey that you’ve been on is incredible. Thank you for blessing me with your time and for allowing our audience to understand your heart. I look forward to having people find you at BrioWellness.com and 100% sign up for the Pain to Peace retreat. I know that I’m going to do that and I’m looking forward to the journey that I’m going to go on. Even more so, get to a place where my physical, mental, and spiritual are in alignment. I’m truly living the best life I can. Thanks again, Dr. Jentes, for coming on the podcast and we look forward to talking again.

Thanks for having me

Important Links:

• Dr. Mindi Jentes
• California Chiropractic Association
• Atlas Chiropractic of Raleigh
• www.BrioWellness.com

About Dr. Mindi Jentes

Dr. Mindi Jentes, is the owner of Brio Wellness Center. She began her journey to become a chiropractor after being a patient and a chiropractic assistant for several years in Columbus, Ohio. Because Chiropractic made such a huge impact in her and her family’s life and health, she decided to go back to school later in life to become a chiropractor herself to give to her patients the same life-giving help she was given many years ago.

As a 38 year old pastor’s wife and mother of 4 young children, she began the journey of a lifetime to becoming a Doctor of Chiropractic. In addition to her B.A. in Opera Performance, Dr. Jentes is a graduate of Southern California University of Health Sciences where she earned her Doctor of Chiropractic degree. She holds advanced certification in Activator Methods Chiropractic Technique (AMCT)— a gentle, low-force approach to chiropractic care—, is trained in Atlas Orthogonality working towards Board Certification, and is also certified by the Women’s Academy of Breast Thermography as a Breast Thermography Physician (WABT-BTP) and Breast Thermography Technician (WABT-BTT) – a non-invasive superficial screening procedure which monitors the blood flow in the breasts. She is also pursuing a post-doctorate certification towards a Diplomate of the American Board of Functional Medicine (DABFM)—a holistic nutritional approach to supporting the metabolic pathways of the human body.

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