Episode Description
Dr. Alex Casey talks about his start in becoming a chiropractic physician from discovering the practice all the way to starting his own business in Birmingham!
Mandi: Hey Dr. Casey! Not much, how are you today?
Dr. Casey: I’m awesome!
Mandi: well great what are we doing here today?
Dr. Casey: We are getting to know each other, even though we already know each other. But no, Mandi’s been awesome! She’s been a great friend of ours. And she’s come on board to help us out on a couple different occasions. Now she has baby number two. So she is back on board and helping us out in ways too. Today we’re going to go over a couple of things that Mandi wants to interview me about.
Mandi: oh yes you should be nervous about these questions. we’re going to be professional.
Dr. Casey: Ish..
Mandi: Ish… So Dr. Casey, tell me about what made you get into chiropractic practice.
Dr. Casey: That was not an easy one for me. I wasn’t born knowing that I want to get into chiropractic. That was an unraveling story that just every year that went by things kind of just pushed me into that direction. But starting off I was going to be Nick Saban before Nick Saban was Nick Saban
Mandi: Of course. Roll tide!
Dr. Casey: I was going to win all the national championships and then I realized that coaches get fired for not winning a national championship every single year.
Mandi: Yeah that could hurt your career.
Dr. Casey: Yeah so I said “you know what we might need to do is change things up” and say “we need to get something a little more stable”. So at that point I was like I don’t know what the heck that means. Graduating was a big deal so I had to get out of college. So I was like let’s finish the diploma. What else do I like to do? And I said, athletes, you know, football!
Mandi: well you actually were an athlete
Dr. Casey: Yeah I played football at West Georgia and that’s kind of what led into the next step. I got injured and so part of dealing with a grade three separation shoulder I had to go through stuff with the athletic trainers. So when I was at that transition of what to do next I said “hey, maybe let’s see what this whole athletic training thing is about” so I got really good at taping ankles and throwing ice bags on things.
After that I started to see other types of healthcare providers involved in athletics and one of the guys that were there with the trainers regularly was a physical therapist. I kind of got to see how this guy didn’t work nearly as hard and seemed to have made more money. So I was like huh maybe we need to look into physical therapy and it still gave me all the same things. I was able to work with athletes and help them through injuries and get them back to the field as fast as we possibly could.
So I actually started doing a lot of my physical therapy rounds and after about a year and a year and a half of doing that I was saying, “okay it’s time to apply, we’re about to put our application in”. And I just asked a couple different questions and I said, “you know, do I want to go through all this school and all this debt?” Then why is it that physical therapist required a prescription from medical providers in order to see patients and I just couldn’t justify going through all of that.
Now it’s like why did I go to doctor school and then not be able to take in patients. So I was kind of at an ends meet if you will. And so my dad’s a medical physician and I talked to him. I was like “Well dad you know where do we go from here? What’s next? Because I’m kind of at a roadblock on this. And he goes, well if you want to stay down this pipeline you have two options. You can either do what I do. Which is being a medical physician or you can go to chiropractic school. And I was like well what’s chiropractic?
Mandi: Yeah let’s do that
Dr. Casey: At that point I didn’t even know what Chiropractic was. I played for little league baseball team back in pinto days and that’s all I knew about chiropractic. So I didn’t know jack squat. And so I said, “dad, do you know any chiropractors. Yeah I got a couple of buddies here in town and they were reputable chiropractors. So I shadowed those guys for a little bit. First day into their practices I didn’t have a clue what happened but I knew that was exactly what I wanted to be a part of. Because the energy of the practice, the patients that were coming in didn’t have long wait times, they weren’t real sick, real depressed. They were just coming in real upbeat and real positive and real quick treatments. I didn’t understand how all of it worked, but I knew that’s exactly what I was looking for and so I got into chiropractic school
Mandi: awesome!
Dr. Casey: and then now we’re here
Mandi: where did you go to school?
Dr. Casey: so I went to life university and so when you study all the chiropractic schools life university is probably the most popular one worldwide to go to. And it’s located in Atlanta, Georgia. Even though it’s in the heart of the south it is not very popular amongst southerners. We were the minority. All kinds of people worldwide go to Life University. You have people from South Africa, Korea, all worldwide. But then also nationally, you have people coming from New York, California, and Florida I mean just from all over
Mandi: that’s really cool!
Dr. Casey: all of us Alabama folks sought each other out pretty quickly
Mandi: You have got to like that diversity too
Dr. Casey: That’s right! I know chiropractors all around the world now. So if it’s not me I can help you the right one!
Mandi: and I know that for a fact because there’s patients that come in or if they move or if they’re going on a vacation they’ll just call up Dr. Casey and he’ll be like oh I know that’s uh Susie down there she’ll fix you right up
Dr. Casey: Costa Rica? I got your guy
Mandi: well so why did you choose Birmingham instead of Costa Rica?
Dr. Casey: well my wife to be and I, we didn’t know each other when I was in chiropractic school or even coming out of chiropractic school. After I had already had a couple of businesses, and I’m from Anniston, so I had a practice there and I had taken over practice over in clay county. Once I opened up my Anniston or oxford practice that’s when I met my wife to be. I didn’t have that in the plans of saying hey let’s do practice here forever and then I was gonna have a wife and family and everything else. So when we got serious about future relationship. We said well where do we really want to be and where do we want to anchor our roots with our practice. Because being in Calhoun County, we just did our life there for almost 25-30 years. We wanted to kind of have our extended life somewhere else. So we looked at a couple places. Atlanta was a top option. Birmingham is also at the top of the list. My wife’s family is more closer to the Birmingham side. When we were talking family and wanting to have kids, it was one of those things that, we said it might be best if we kind of stick closer to where family is instead of having to come hauling all the way from wherever we wanted to be. Whether it was Nashville or Atlanta or wherever. So Birmingham just felt at home when we came here and visited right here in Bluff Park. They treat us like family
Mandi: it’s a really good community like it’s a close-knit community
Dr. Casey: yeah I mean honestly we walk into Mr. P’s they know us by first name. They treat us like we’re family. So I mean we love this area. We wouldn’t imagine be anywhere else
Mandi: I love this facility I bet you got so excited when you first walked in you like visualized how you were gonna
Dr. Casey: oh that part wasn’t exciting we actually had another facility next door that was um granted to us and my wife and I were going to costa rica for a honeymoon and we had our thought we had a contract ready to go and you know just a little paint on the wall and then we came back from our honeymoon and that deals off the table but we have these other two facilities so I walked into it and you know and it wasn’t as exciting as you make it out to be but I definitely sat in here in the dark and visualized and said all right what do we got to do to make it work and so here we are
Mandi: you’re such a go-getter I can’t imagine you’re just sitting here being like I’m not gonna do that
Dr. Casey: no I didn’t have candles and all that other stuff set out, I was literally just sitting here just kind of like mapped it out walked it out sat in here and said okay you know does this work can this work
Mandi: and he did most of the work here himself
Dr. Casey: I had some help you know but there was a lot of sweat equity
Mandi: I was impressed when you told me about about the counters and the doors I was like whoa
Dr. Casey: my mom got a paintbrush in her hand you know so you know my niece was here a little bit too but there was a lot of sweat equity put into it
Mandi: that’s the good thing about being in Birmingham and they’re just right there yeah like hey could you guys come over here
Dr. Casey: I know y’all aren’t busy so that’s right that’s right
Mandi: that’s awesome so you mentioned your personal injuries whenever you were playing football and that encouraged you to look into physical therapy so you skipped physical therapy went to chiropractic school and do you heal yourself or do you treat yourself there’s some tricks or some tips that you can give other people
Dr. Casey: so you know I have um you know very limited things that I can you know treat myself from a chiropractic standpoint um to myself you know I have other chiropractors that are very reputable around town even my dad who’s a DO an osteopathic physician you know he does a lot of the manual manipulations and kind of you know what intrigued me to even pursue chiropractic as well so there’s very limited that I can do from a chiropractic standpoint myself but to stay healthy and keep things moving and muscles sliding and gliding like they’re supposed to and keep inflammation now yeah I mean you know I work out regularly you know at one point in time I just had to look at myself in the mirror and say look if you don’t take care of number one you’re not gonna be able to take care of your family you’re not gonna be able to take care of all your patients you’re not gonna be able to you know grow a lifelong business here you know and be a part of it because you’ll blow out a shoulder you’ll blow out a hip
Mandi: and what you do is very physical
Dr. Casey: yeah it can be yeah for a lot of times it can be like when we take care of kiddos no it’s not um and then when we have like some older patients that come in that may have like osteoporosis no not so much but you know for a lot of people that have been through injuries like I have been and need more of the physical manual manipulations yes it’s tough on me to do especially when you’re seeing 20 30 patients a day and then we’re growing into seeing more patients so
Mandi: and you see all kinds of patients like athletes to kids which would you say your favorite would be
Dr. Casey: oh man they’re all I don’t know there’s a single most favorite because they all have different levels of joy that are all equal and I can say I love you know like one of the first things when we have kids come in especially like our little toddlers that know just well enough that they’re going to the doctor’s office and typically when they go to the docs office you know they’re getting they’re getting you know finger prick they’re getting blood drawn they’re getting shots it’s not a pleasant experience and so then when I come into play you know it’s like they think that I’m gonna do the same thing and but maybe they’re going through some ear infection issues maybe they’re going through colic issues maybe it’s constipation that first visit they’re real timid and then you see that you gotta fight them to get them on the table they’re crying a little bit and then they start getting adjusted which you can probably testify to this and after that first adjustment they go well one that didn’t hurt this doctor doesn’t hurt and holy cow like my ear even though they don’t know what’s going on with their ear other than it hurts they know that their ear infections are starting to get better
Mandi: I see Dr. Casey I have two little girls and he adjusts my girls when my oldest was three she’s five now she was three she had constipation I had taken her to the pediatrician’s office twice and like within two weeks nothing and I brought her up here to see Dr. Casey and she was in the bathroom before we left and then she just got adjusted last week for her ear infection it’s fine
Dr. Casey: pretty common if you battle constipation and we get a an adjustment in pretty much you might have to run to the bathroom so just you know be near that if you have if you come in with that
Mandi: I’m just amazed that he can do all these things like just these tweaks and these adjustments can make such a benefit on someone’s well-being like why don’t they tell you that when you’re at the doctor’s office like at the physician
Dr. Casey: there’s probably a lot of reasons that we can really dive into honestly I just think it’s a lack of awareness of what chiropractic brings to the table
Mandi: well I was unaware
Dr. Casey: if you sit around and watch tv or you know watch a lot of the advertising that’s traditionally done from maybe radio or tv newspaper things that grab people’s attention is pain related conditions so like neck pain back pain headaches and that’s usually the top of the list
Mandi: that’s what you’re thinking about
Dr. Casey: the next things are you know things that are maybe related to other joints like knee pain, hip pain, you know tendonitis like diagnosis people have problems with those things and chiropractic is very effective also to help you out of those conditions but that’s what draws people’s attention and then it’s just overdone and you know run down people’s throats so there’s a misconception that all we are is back pain, neck pain, headache doctors when there’s a lot of other types of conditions that are going on. And ultimately it’s just like look we’re just to maintain spinal health and if you get good spinal health everything that’s connected to it will perform better. As long as we don’t have too many years of degenerative issues and injuries that are left untreated and you’re facing you know surgical components many times we’ve been able to keep people away from the knife and further medical procedures that may have been unnecessary had we done a lot of this chiropractic component. But that’s not taught in medical school and it’s just a lack of awareness so I like to pride myself on making sure that when we talk to other medical physicians or we have patients that come in that have been either referred from their medical physicians that we absolutely go through the full gamut of saying hey this is what we do in our clinic you know we’re not just back pain, neck pain, headache doctors but this is why that’s very effective for those things.
Mandi: think one of my favorite not one but my favorite thing to see with your current patients or past patients that come in is to hear the stories of how oh I was like scheduled for surgery a week and then I came to saw Dr. Casey and I completely avoided the knife like that’s just it’s amazing to me
Dr. Casey: just right off hand I got a patient in mind that you know his story is just absolutely phenomenal for over a six year period of time you know he had almost 36 or 37 injections because of how much neck pain and degenerative issues he was having and yeah you know he’s like man I just don’t want to have surgery but I also really don’t want to do chiropractic care because i’ve already done that and it kind of made it worse but he sought us out because we do acupuncture and when we talked to him I said well look you know there’s probably a structural thing that needs to be addressed through chiropractic from what I’ve seen from your x-rays and MRI’s but there’s also an acupuncture component I think that would be highly beneficial too and over the what I don’t know the past two and a half three years since he’s been here now he’s only had one injection over that period of time versus over the previous six years where he had almost 40.
Mandi: that’s insane
Dr. Casey: and now he’s kind of up for another shot and he’s trying to do his best to avoid it and I was like look man if you stay out from underneath your car trying to do car mechanic stuff and let this thing get better we might be able to avoid it even though he’s still doing it and kind of making it worse he’s still getting better and maybe avoiding that procedure too so
Mandi: that’ll be so awesome I’m excited to see not excited but I’m looking forward to seeing if he um avoids that needle again
Dr. Casey: well he’ll have to stay out from underneath the boat and get things happy and healthy first and then you maybe get back into it
Mandi: goodness when I asked him how he was feeling since his last visit he was like I don’t want to tell you so whenever your patients come in like I hear you talk a lot and you know so much and even myself like I’ll ask you a question and you don’t just know the answer to it you know how that answer came about and how THAT answer came about and like you’re you’re literally like a walking google machine where did you get that from
Dr. Casey: I’m not the best studier like academics is not my um there’s some people that can just see it once here at once and they got it and they got a 98 or 99 or 100 on their test you know I require a little bit more work to break down how things okay I get how you’re scientifically saying this and I know how to get that answer on the test but how do you take this and make it make sense to me to do what I need to do really well and then how do you make sense to the patient to make it understand that it’s like hey well here’s your test answer but how like I want to be eye-to-eye to my patient so when I’m studying everything I’m like how do you get this point across the patient and I just basically wanted to make sure that you know when patients come to see me they said oh I’ve never heard it explained that well before
Mandi: I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve heard that I’ve heard people say that like oh well now that makes sense
Dr. Casey: and you know one of the top things that I think because the way that we explain it down and break it down for patients is that they now have a real comprehension of what’s going on and they go how come nobody’s else ever told us that before. And a lot of times I just really think that’s purely and simply because it’s a lack of awareness and you don’t know what you don’t know and we’re trying to help you know from our patient base first then our community second is help understand and raise awareness about what it is that we do at Birmingham Health why it’s effective and why it needs to be regularly part of your lifestyle. There’s patients that don’t believe me at first and that’s okay you know I’m here to help when they’re ready for the help. We’ve had a lot of patients come back in after a period of time saying I got off track and I know it and I’m not going to shame you. I don’t slap them onto the wrist too hard. We love you back in here and we get you bounced back into a great direction that helps you meet your goals so you can live the healthiest lifestyle that you want to live
Mandi: so the maintenance is a very big component in wellness
Dr. Casey: if you think about it like this let’s say we’re trying to get on muscle fitness magazine
Mandi: Yeah I’m super close
Dr. Casey: I’m right behind you. We did the work and I mean we did all the exercising we did all the dieting you know you got up and made sure that you know you could go to the gym and get all your work stuff done and you know one to two or three years go by muscle fitness magazine calls you up you’re shredding and you’re the highest selling magazine cover ever and then you’re like all right goal number one done next donuts pizzas hot dogs and colas come on bring it my way
Mandi: that’d be me
Dr. Casey: do you think that you’re gonna maintain those same results and that same energy levels no you’re not and so when we talk about a wellness lifestyle there’s so much that happens to us not just you know people think well I didn’t do anything how in the world did I get this way I’m like you don’t have to have painted your house or laid sod in your yard or was in a car accident
Mandi: or playing some parkour
Dr. Casey: yeah you know no you didn’t have to put your body through something in order for things to wreak havoc in your body many times it’s like what kind of stress was loaded on your plate and how do you internalize that stress and what does it manifest to physically. You’ve seen me, known me long enough and we get curveballs thrown at us all the time. So you know it’s very important for me yeah to maintain getting adjusted because of stuff that just happens to me. Not necessarily what I put my body through. So yeah I maintain adjustments for myself so I can keep doing what I’m doing for everybody else here. So yeah it’s very important to maintain adjustments and what everybody’s goals are different. Some people see us less often. Some people see us more often because if their body is not moving well and doing well, they can’t work they can’t put food on the table, they can’t pay their bills. So it’s more important for them to make sure that their body’s functioning at a high capacity so that they can do the work that their family needs them to do so everybody’s goals are different
Mandi: makes sense to me
Dr. Casey: yeah it’s easy
Mandi: now when you get an adjustment, I know me personally, you’ve explained this to me so many times but each patient reacts a little differently. My reaction is I suddenly get super hot and I know that you said that was the the fight or flight. Am I fighting or am I flighting?
Dr. Casey: so you know I guess you have the gigglers. People laugh and giggle when they get adjusted. You got some people that call me all the names in the bible and you got some people that just go into full blown you know sweat mode. And yeah you know there is a reaction to what happens when we actually do an alignment. Especially for some area that’s been really just locked up and rusted for a period of time and never really been addressed and then you finally start to address it. Yes it can throw your body into full-blown sympathetic mode like if a tiger jumped out and scared you
Mandi: sympathetic mode?
Dr. Casey: right yeah heartbeat goes flying through the roof. Sweat yeah we’re gonna break out into a sweat. I think we’ve all kind of been in that scary moment and that’s one of the things that can happen sometimes when we have an adjustment. That’s not everybody. Depends on what they’re coming in with
Mandi: what happens to you when you get adjusted?
Dr. Casey: automatic relief. Yeah you know I don’t break out into sweat. But you know I have long history of injuries and my recurring areas that I’m like okay I got a good adjustment in and I just know it’s like okay that’s gonna last until the next curveball’s thrown to me
Mandi: I mean I feel automatic relief when it happens like I literally run around but I’m just sporting a sweat-stache
Dr. Casey: you know I mean I think like if I want to break down step by step what happens. Many times I feel like blood flow is rushing back to my head. It’s just like things that are just locked up it’s not getting the circulation or getting the nerve flow that it needs. And so for me I can just feel not just relief to where my there might be something stiff or tight, but sometimes it’s like I feel like my eyes work better because it’s getting all that circulation back. Sometimes if you have muffled ears, I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced that too? People will tell me all the time that their sinuses are draining or that decreased pressure occurs. So I mean time to time it can be a little bit of this or a little bit of that but for the most part it’s just like you move better you feel better. For me you I know that I’m gonna get a way better sleep that night too because it’s just taking all that physical stress that’s there and relaxing that stress on something that’s real sensitive. Right? Spinal cord is kind of important…?
Mandi: a little bit!
Dr. Casey: so you take pressure off of that area and spinal nerves. It’s just relaxes the brain and allows some balance to happen. For me, I get adjusted I actually get better sleep. When I’m in an irregular sleep cycle, I know that it’s time to get adjusted again. It’s not necessarily because something feels kinked up or messed up.
Mandi: I mean you raised a good point like this season that we’re in it’s a good time to get some maintenance work done
Dr. Casey: stress is big right now
Mandi: well just the stress and allergies and you know any time if you cough people assume you have COVID now
Dr. Casey: oh yeah
Mandi: so I mean if you’re feeling all stopped up I think an adjustment is a good answer
Dr. Casey: It helps it’s a puzzle piece
Mandi: I’m not a doctor-
Dr. Casey: It’s a puzzle piece though
Mandi: but I work with one
Dr. Casey: there we go. What else do we have or is that all of them?
Mandi: I think that’s about it. Is there anything else you’d like to add? This is our first podcast
Dr. Casey: we are just opening up our podcast. So we’ll be doing a lot of different things in the clinic. You’ll be hearing from some of our other employees. You’ll also be hearing from some of our professionals that we reach out to and refer to. You may see some of our neighborhood friends that you know. May or may not even be a patient here. But we’ll be making this a fun thing to follow so tune in and we hope to make it exciting
Mandi: if you have any questions that you want Dr. Casey to answer, just give us a message and I’ll add it to the list
Dr. Casey: it can be anything about chiropractic or acupuncture. It doesn’t have to be anything about Birmingham health
Mandi: it could be personal
Dr. Casey: yep so make it fun bring it to us we’d love to help and be a part of engaging this podcast to everybody too