Revolutionizing Chiropractic Through Blair Upper Cervical

Chiropractic medicine is well-received by many because of its non-surgical approach to many physical disorders. For Dr. Cameron Bearder, constantly looking for improvement allowed him to start the only Blair Upper Cervical practice in the entire North Carolina. Joining Dr. Kevin Pecca, he looks back on how he started to dismiss this specific area of chiropractic medicine to eventually become a leader of the field in his own right. He shares how he managed to break out of traditional X-ray methods and come up with much more comprehensive processes that changed the game forever. Dr. Cameron also shares how he keeps himself motivated to continue moving forward in the medical industry, explaining how important it is to embrace your fears, get proper moral support, and always be confident with what you can offer.

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Revolutionizing Chiropractic Through Blair Upper Cervical

Welcome to the show. For weekly episodes, be sure to hit the subscribe button. You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube, @DrKevinPecca, Facebook @MontclairUpperCervical. If you have any questions or comments about the show, you can email me at DrKevinPeccca@Gmail.com. On the show, we have Dr. Cameron Bearder. Dr. Bearder is a Blair Upper Cervical Doctor at his practice in Charlotte, North Carolina, Keystone Chiropractic. Dr. Cameron also has a focus on Clinical Neuroscience and unifies upper cervical chiropractic and Clinical Neuroscience to help get his patients better. He is a fantastic Upper Cervical Doc and is doing some great work. It was an honor to have him on the show. Please welcome, Dr. Cameron Bearder.

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We have one of my favorite Upper Cervical Doctors, Dr. Cameron Bearder. A quick story before we jump into the show. We had a patient reading the blog and was looking for some solid upper cervical care. They found Dr. Bearder in the Greater Charlotte, North Carolina Area. Is that correct?

That's me.

Dr. Bearder gave that woman a solid upper cervical adjustment. I'm pretty sure she credits him with saving her life. If you are in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, you are going to get some very solid upper cervical care from Dr. Bearder. Without further ado, please welcome, Dr. Cameron. Doc, how are you?

Thank you, Dr. Pecca. I'm doing good. I'm still at the office. It's been a long day. It's putting heads on straight, the usual.

Doc, as I like to start every episode, I love to know how people got from A to B. Where are you from originally?

I was originally born in Atlanta, but I grew up about four miles from where my practice is. We're a little bit North of Charlotte, North Carolina in an area called Lake Norman. My practice is in Lake Norman. There are three towns that primarily make up a certain side of the lake, Davidson, Cornelius and Huntersville. Davidson is famous for Steph Curry. He went to school in Davidson. I grew up in Huntersville. My wife and I were like, "We're going to open the practice right in the middle in Cornelius."

You did not strike me as a Southern guy. I knew your practice was there, but you don't have the drawl or anything. Is that common or uncommon for the area you're in?

My parents are from Jersey and Long Island. When we get around, things start flying for sure, explicatives. I don't have an accent. My wife does. She's an Earnhardt. If you know anything about NASCAR racing, she is one of the Earnhardt's. There's a little bit of concussion head injury. That's the thing with upper cervical. No Southern drawl. It's right in the middle.

Cameron, how did you find chiropractic? Was it something you did early on as a kid getting adjusted? Was it something you found later in life?

There's no major story like you had an Atlas adjustment and it changed your life. I graduated from Appalachian State in North Carolina, which is in the mountains. I had a dual degree in Urban Planning and Digital Mapping. The economy crashed and I put in hundreds of resumes. They wanted five years of experience and a Master's, which is crazy stuff. Anyways, I ended up getting a little sick. I was helped by a local chiropractor, who is now one of my best friends, Dr. John Bartemus who moved into functional medicine. That is how he helped me. He was like, "You should go be a chiro. Everything fits." I remember looking at the curriculum and thinking, "There's no way that this is possible. There's no way that this is humanly possible." I remember I was out for a walk with him and his family and another chiropractor friend. He was talking and I said, "Yes, I looked. It looks interesting." He turned around and told everyone, "Cam is going to chiro school." I thought, "Shit, I got to do it. I can't go back now."

It was a little unconventional. It's funny you were helped. Many people have been helped by chiropractic upper cervical. I remember my first day. It was 7:00 AM on a Monday morning and it was the intro to chiro class. Dr. Ralph Davis was like, "By raise of hands, how many people were adjusted and now they want to be a chiropractor?" Out of 200 people, twenty raised their hand. No one raised their hand. He was like, "I'm seeing this every year. More and more people are coming because they think they can make money or they liked the philosophy." He said, "How many people have never been adjusted?" Fifty percent of the room raised their hand. Long story short, I did not get into upper cervical. I was not helped by upper cervical. I did not start out wanting to do upper cervical. I was one of the guys who was making fun of the one-boners. I was like, "They're crazy."

It's pure comedy in some chiropractic schools when you bring up, "Toggle recoil upper cervical." People start laughing.

It was the fourth quarter. No one took that class seriously, myself included. I'll be very honest. It was the guy who looked like BJ Palmer but with white hair. His name is Dr. Koch. I don't know if he's still there. He had the vest. He was very eccentric. I loved him. He was great. Anyone who's reading who I went to school with knows exactly who that is. He took it very seriously, but no one took it seriously because they were like, "This is a joke." Little did we know that it’s not a joke.

You've started off not wanting to do upper cervical or not knowing much about it. What changed?

Do you remember the student clinic?

Yes.

Usually, if you have a spouse, partner, boyfriend or girlfriend, you bring them in for credit. You get X-rays and all this fun stuff. At the time, my girlfriend who is my wife who I met right down the road in high school, I brought her in. She was an accomplished athlete. She was in great shape. We took X-rays and her neck was a mess. I had been adjusting her and I thought, "Holy shit, I'm spending so much time, money and effort into this education and I can't even get a normal person better. How am I going to be able to get someone who has a ton of chronic issues better?" I don't remember who it was but they pulled me aside and were like, "You should look into X, Y and Z." That started down the rabbit hole and then a good friend of mine, Dr. Chad Billiris.

He's in Jersey, right?

Yes.

He's been on the show. He's an amazing dude. He has one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard. He lived in China.

He's got a Master's from England. He studied with Roy Sweat and the ortho guys. He's done Blair. He's talked to Stan Pierce. Chad is so well-rounded.

He is unbelievable.

It's unreal. He’s got me into Blair. It was like, " I'm going to do upper cervical. Blair seems cool. By the way, look at this 3D picture of a neck." This was 2013. Cone beam wasn't what it is now. I remember Dr. Charmaine Herman, who was teaching Blair at Life. I went up to her and said, "What the hell is this image? What is it? I'm sold. I'm done. This is what I want to do." She explained the principles of Blair and upper cervical Blair. I was like, "You've ruined this for me. I cannot do anything else." Long story short, I got into upper cervical through Blair with Chad. I don't think we took that class together.

John Stenberg, who I believe you've had on. He and I were in the first Blair class in over a decade with Dr. Herman. That was interesting. It was the mechanics of an Atlas Subluxation in terms of there's asymmetry and this is how it moves. Here's the proof on how it moves. It blew my mind. I went on to learn from Roy Sweat. I did all of his AO seminars. I've learned about half of Orthospinology. I have friends who do ortho NUCCA, Jon Chung and Ty Wilson. These guys are good friends. It all has its place. I've been so stuck on cone beam and Blair, underlap and overlap.

That 3D image makes sense. I think we're going to get a lot of upper cervical docs now in the near future. When you're looking at standard X-rays, people are like, "This is it. This is an ASR." You're like, "Okay."

What if you turn it just a little bit?

Especially for the lower cervical. People are like, "This is anterior." You're like, "I don't know. That could be posterior." You then get the 3D image and you can show that to your patients and they get it. That's what's cool.

Here's where I've been and I don't think we've talked about this. You have the misalignments. You have anterior and posterior in three dimensions and all of that stuff. I've started taking rotational cone beams.

How do you do that?

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A static scan then turns their heads to the left and to the right.

Do you take three different scans?

Yes.

What are you doing with the three different scans?

It's been a little bit of research. I had a lucid dream about two years ago that I was talking with Dr. Blair. I woke up and had this idea. I went back into the Blair manual and was like, "I wonder what would happen if?" I don't remember. It was a patient who was having trouble turning their head. I was like, "Let's turn and see what happens." That changed everything.

What did you find?

There are two types of Atlas misalignments. There's a static misalignment and then there is a fixated misalignment. When you turn your head to the left, biomechanically, the Atlas should slide posteriorly relative to the condyle. On the right, it should slide anteriorly relative to the condyle. In essence, it creates a misalignment. It moves. That's normal motion. When you turn your head to the right, the left should slide anterior and the right should slide posterior. What happens when it doesn't?

It's stuck.

You talked about lower cervicals. You can see the coupled movement of lower cervical biomechanics and if there's misalignment.

You can figure out if it's just compensation from the Atlas or it's an actual, true lower cervical misalignment?

Maybe. I don't know.

Are you working on it?

Yes, I'm working on. It in terms of like, is the fixated side, the primary side? We have track and slipped side and Blair. I don't know now, but I can tell you those that have a fixated misalignment have been what we call the sickest of the sick. I talked to a friend of mine, Bryant Harris, who practices in Annapolis. I don't remember what he said. I also studied knee-chest. I believe certain knee-chest camps believed that that was something extra or the people who got great results was because of the rotation. Think about this. If you're turning your head and that is stuck, you're pre-stressing the correction, especially if it's by hand. You're pre-stressing the correction into the direction of correction. Maybe it breaks that fixation free. I don't think it's that simple. Right now, it's a theory. It's been pretty crazy stuff.

I love how people say like, "Upper cervical doesn't evolve. It's the same thing." It's like, "You have no idea what you're talking about." Jake Hollowell deserves a Nobel Peace Prize for what we do. He completely revolutionized what we do. You ask him about it and he's like, "Yes, no. Maybe." He's the humblest dude you'll ever meet.

I cannot thank him enough for the endless messages that he's answered. He's in Brazil. I don't even know the time difference there. Cone beam is what sold me. That's what I use in the practice. I don't have it in-house like you do. I refer, but I take the images myself.

Is it an imaging center or a dental office?

Periodontist.

Do they let you go in there? This is big for students who think they need to have it in-house or to start up an upper cervical practice, and you need all this money. You don't need to put expenses into that.

There is a fee associated with that. I hate the whole, "You can do it on a shoestring budget." Yes, you can, but you can also refund all the money. You don't need to spend $60,000 on a Kodak or Vizio.

Tyler Evans recommended me one that was over $100,000. I was like, "Are you out of your mind?"

That's the one that's going to set the standard for rotation lateral flexion. I took lateral flexion cone beams on a car accident patient. It was tough because we didn't have a big field of view, but rotation, flexion extension, lateral back Vizio is going to be huge. Not too many people have that. Randy Culig in Atlanta who is Pierce's doc, who's mixed Orthospinology, I believe he's the grandson or he's related to Dr. Pierce. He ordered one of the big ones. We were talking about guys who are getting into it. I think you would agree with this. The cone beam is going to change upper cervical. We're going to have to change how we do things because we can see so much more.

Honestly, X-rays give you great information, but you're missing so much.

We grew up on X-rays. When I was down in Montana, I took in a year minimum. I had the number. It was 200, I lost count after 275, sets of Blair X-rays, protractors, VPs, stereos, everything.

"Let's twist and turn."

Yes, we got the little protractor, the Blair headpiece, all that crazy stuff.

If you are taking X-rays, you're still going to get great results because the big misalignments are going to jump out at you, whereas with the cone beam, it's very easy to get lost in C2, C3, C4 and C5 and double-double. Let me take that back. In some form of reference, X-rays, some people might even get better results because they're looking at the major things.

There's still more versatility in that you can do lateral flexion and flexion-extension films. Especially as upper cervical guys, we see people who have had serious injuries. They might have ligament laxity or joint capsule issues. Doing those flexion-extension X-rays can be a lifesaver. If you're referring out to Regenexx' Chris Centeno is out in Colorado. We have a patient going out there. There's a value to X-ray 100%.

What's one of the things you notice with ligament instability on the cone beams? A lot of people always come in and ask, "Do I have ligament instability? I was in this car accident. Do I have it?" Sometimes it's tough to be straight.

From a cone beam standpoint, to go in and say, "You have ligament instability from a bone imaging modality," that's a little bit of hot water. This is where we defer to Dr. Scott Rosa. He's the godfather with the MRI-type stuff. A perfect example, an eighteen-year-old had been in a car accident and knocked unconscious. I had his parents bring in a CT from the hospital. Within five seconds, scrolling through that axial, there's a lateral shift. That Atlas was sitting on the dens. I thought, "No, this was lying down. We need to get upright and some motion films." It's a little bit easier to say, "There's probably some instability here," but it's acute.

You see this as much as I do every day. You see calcification of the upper cervical ligaments, membranes, anterior longitudinal ligament, tectorial membrane, the one that sits right at the bottom of the clivus and where the dens meet apical transverse. We see so many different things that we can at least say, "You probably had an injury or a series of injuries that has created laxity. Your ligaments are now calcifying for stability."

I love the patients that their neck is an absolute disaster and they're like, "I've never banged my head. There's nothing." I'm like, "Something happened along the line. I don't know when it happened, but it doesn't get like this by accident.

Here's the thing. I have no problem with medicine. There's a time and place for all of it. My family is steeped in the medical model, but we were told to believe certain things. As new research and things come out, we get stuck on, "I was told this. I was told that." I don't even remember where I was going with this because my brain starts going off. It's like, "I didn't have an accident.” How can an accident cause arthritis? Down the road, you get compensation. The bones stop moving. You get a lack of mobility. It starts to calcify. We get it. Sometimes it's difficult to transition that over to human talk.

Dr. Cameron, I want to talk about your experience in Montana and your internship. How did you find that internship? Did you go to school with Life?

Life East in Marietta, Georgia, right near The Big Chicken for those who went to Life.

I hear that practice is amazing. What's the doctor's name who runs that practice?

Dr. Scott Matz, Sr. We just call him Senior. He started that in the late '80s. He built that up with his family, brothers and sister.

All chiropractors?

Yes. When I left, he had sent 36 people to Palmer. His family is the 2nd or 3rd largest in terms of chiropractic families, like relatives and extended relatives who were chiropractors. Scott Matz, Sr. started that practice. His daughter is a chiropractor. His son is a chiropractor. His son-in-law is a chiropractor. The brother of the son-in-law is a chiropractor. It’s unreal. That was out in Missoula, Montana.

Is that because he's just on fire about chiropractic? He's the next level, right?

He learned from Muncie. If I'm remembering correctly, he sent Hubbard to school. He is learned from the greats. My wife and I had flown out to Seattle in between quarters and breaks. I remember looking on the Blair website for a seminar for whatever reason. There it was in Missoula, Montana, he was hosting a primary or an advanced or something. I thought, "Missoula, Montana, what the shit is this?" My wife and I always wanted to visit Montana. We ended up stopping there on the way through when I did the seminar. He pulled me aside after and said, "Would you be interested in working here? I was surprised because I remember my angles were off and all this shit. I was like, "I'm screwing this up," but he said, "I love to have you here if we can work something out." About a year later after graduation, we moved out there and drove. At the time, I was doctor 5 or 6. There were a lot of people. There were 10,000 square feet, two stories. It's huge, unbelievable.

Is it open bay?

No, all closed room. It was a high-volume. When I was there, we were seeing about 1,000 patients visit a week in Missoula, Montana. People would travel from hours on end and it was everyone. It was sick people and well people. I saw everything, epilepsy, Parkinson's, MS. These range from students to older folks to ranchers. It was all over the map.

Did you spend a year out there?

I spent a little bit over a year. I had printed out everything in terms of my numbers and how many I saw. In that year, it would have been over 3,500 patient encounters. It was nuts, a lot of reps.

What was your takeaway from that experience?

I'm still trying to process it. I left in 2018.

One thing is for sure. You left prepared.

Yes, I left prepared. I'll be very honest. My practice is very different than that practice. I learned a lot from Scott and I owe Scott everything. He is a father figure to me, truly. I think you might have met him. If you ever get the chance to go out to Montana, go to Missoula, shadow him. He has been doing it for many years. The energy every single day is unbelievable. He treats the adjustment like Bruce Lee. He has got the one-inch punch. The way Scott adjusts, you know when that table drops, you can hear it because he makes a little bit of noise. It's a little weird upfront, but you get used to it. You find yourself almost making that noise when you adjust. When that table drops and hear that noise, you know lives are changing. The entire Matz family are some of the most generous people you will ever meet. I know Senior will not have a problem with this. Anyone who wants to see a high-volume, results-based practice, go out to Montana, shadow them and live the dream while you're out there. I bought a motorcycle. My wife and I rode all over Western Montana. It was unreal stuff. To answer your question, I learned a lot.

On top of that, you got to enjoy life and see things straight out of a movie out there.

I wish I would have done a little bit more in terms of I would have spent a little bit more time exploring. It's God's country. It's a big sky. It's beautiful. If we didn't have family out here on the East Coast, we probably would have stayed. It's a fantastic place.

At your practice now, I see you’re also introducing some functional neurology with the upper cervical a little bit? Was that something you were excited to have as a poster?

You and I both know when all the upper cervical docs out there adjusting the craniocervical junction, you're going to get great results. It is my personal philosophy. Based on my personal experience, doing a little bit extra can also help, especially with upper cervical conditions, vertigo, migraines, dizziness, concussion and things like that. Functional neurology looked like voodoo in school. I didn't pay attention to it. Jon Chung is a NUCCA doc and a great guy. If you haven't talked to him, talk to him. He loves vestibular-type stuff. He's got NUCCA vestibular. Ty Wilson is up in Canada. He has a killer practice. He's still sticking a little bit more upper cervical.

I'm right in the middle of, "I don't want to do functional neurology. I want to have the expanded knowledge of, 'Here's the entire system. My exam process takes about three hours.'" What I'm trying to do is I am trying to funnel in everything I can to weed out and truly know, "Their subluxation is on the right. It's an ASR. I know that there's a cerebellar issue on that side. The frontal side is a little depressed." I know when I adjust that side, it's going to lighten the cerebellum, fire over to the frontal and might even fire down to the brainstem on that side to ramp up autonomic symptoms. It's not like we do a bunch of functional neurology. We don't.

It helps support your adjustment.

I wanted to know if that one adjustment is going to clear out everything or, "Are we going to be here for 3 to 6 months trying to stabilize X, Y and Z?" It's worked out well. I've been able to tell patients over the years, "We're going to adjust your neck. I'm sure we're going to see 90% improvement like that," or "You have a couple of things going on. You've got stuck lesions over here. You've got this, this and this. The misalignment is on the opposite side, but we also have a lower cervical. These don't line up." Innate I trust, but at the same time, I also have a couple of things in my back pocket. My goal is to synthesize some things that can be taught to Blair guys and ortho guys.

I would be interested in that.

It's not like you're going to take a 300-hour course. It's bedside. Look at the saccades, balance, Romberg's, Fukuda or finger tap. Here's how you can hone in on. You're going to adjust that side and it's going to do exactly what you want it to."

That sounds like everybody could benefit from it. If you put something together online or something you could bang out in a weekend, I'd sign up.

I know Dr. Chung has beaten me to it and I defer to him. He's putting something together through the Carrick Institute, upper cervical and functional neurology. I don't know where that's out, but I do believe in the age of COVID, it's going to be online or live stream. You can purchase it after the fact. Anything Jon puts out, that guy is a wizard when it comes to Neurology. Carrick Institute is great. There are other great guys. You've got Michael Hall and Longyear at NeuroLIFE. We have such wealth. For anyone wanting to put these things together, you can. I know Drew Hall, if he reads this or Frederick Sugar, any of these guys adjust the Atlas that's going to fix it.

It doesn't end. There's so much information. There's so much to know. You can say the same thing about imaging, "Why go even look for anything else? We're happy with what we got. Jake finds that." It's only beneficial. There's something to be said about as you mentioned, Drew Hall.

He’s an OG. I got nothing but respect. Clearly, in two practices, he saved your life. He saved so many lives. He knows what he's doing.

I don't know what it is. I don't know if you can ever put your finger on it. There's something to be said about confidence and communication. Drew was like, "Sit on the table. We're going to get you your fucking life back." That’s what I’m talking about.

Did he have that demeanor too?

He did. I remember I came to him in between patients and said, "I'm seeing this. I can't put that pattern together, but I know it's there.” He looked at me and was like, "You got it." It's that intuitiveness of knowing what you know when you know it and being confident in your skills. It's called practice for a reason. You and I both know that. Every doc and student, especially students, have to realize that.

You said something very interesting about energy. It's a very real thing that your energy is transferring into your patient. I don't want my patients to see this, but if I'm having a bad day, it carries over to the adjustment. There are days where you feel like there is magic coming out of your hands and you're on fire. Energy is fucking huge when it comes to getting people better.

One of the perks of private practice is I get to choose my own music. While we don't have Wu-Tang playing when patients are here, we rocked out to 311, Sublime, AC/DC and Led Zeppelin. The energy was high.

While seeing patients or before?

While seeing patients.

You can hear it while you're adjusting. I want to do that.

I don't have doors in my treatment rooms. It's an open frame. We have two Sonos speakers in the front and the back of the office. We had several patients who said, "That's 311. Nice," or "That's AC/DC."

I want to do that. I took over the practice and it was like 30% Medicare. There are some older people walking through. Sometimes, I think to myself, "Damn, if I had the song on now, I would groove through the entire day. I might start doing it."

I love Ozzy and Black Sabbath. We've had a couple of things play sometimes. I'll poke my head out and Lisa, my office manager was like, "Let's change this real quick." There's a line there, but the energy from the doc needs to be there because the patients need to know that they're in the right place. I'm sure you've heard this. I've heard this countless times, not saying that I'm a shitty adjuster, but you can be an okay adjuster. If the patient knows that you care about them and they feel that energy, you're going to do and the innate is going to flow. Energy is important.

That's exactly why you can give somebody "a wrong adjustment" and they clear out. I've had a couple of people where I got my digital X-ray and cone beam. There's been a couple of adjustments that they were like, "This is unbelievable." Down the road, they were like, "I'm not doing so well." You throw them in the cone beam and they were like, "You're an ASR, not a PIL."

From a CCJ standpoint, things are mobile. It could work itself out. The energy is right. Neurology has a good way to explain this. You adjust on "the wrong side" or in "the wrong direction." When it comes to the brain, it's not like there are solidified pathways, cables and tubes. It is a pile of electrical mush. There are so many different areas that feed into the other. That wrong adjustment could have gone over to a particular side of the brain by a particular pathway and lit it up. That was it. That's been my thing, I was like, "Damn, how can I know 99% this is what needs to happen based on the misalignment, mechanics and neurology so that, ‘I wanted to take one visit?’"

I hate repeat business. That's a horrible business model, but I try and get people better as fast as I can because I would rather them be out talking about me than here talking. I love my patients. They know that. At the same time, we do what we do because we want to do it. They don't want to be here with us. I get that. It's this lifelong pursuit. We're young. I'm three years into solo practice. I know we're both humming along. COVID be damned.

I had a patient who came in one time. He was like, "You survived your first pandemic." I was like, "Yes."

We're in the healthcare field. There's always going to be something that we have to be aware of. Whether it's a global issue or a regional issue, we're still going to be correcting to next. It's got to happen.

Upper cervical is also a very humble profession. It's like you get the miracles and you're feeling great. Everything is great and then you get that one patient that isn't responding. It's so humbling because then you got to go back like, "What am I doing?" You got to perfect it all over again. It's never-ending. It's never mastered, but you can damn sure try. That's a beautiful thing.

Especially for the students, patients and anyone reading, you have to learn from the failures. Honestly, you start to forget the successes. One of the reasons I got into neuro, I remember it specifically, it was a migraine patient. I did everything right and she was getting worse. I didn't understand it. Lo and behold, knowing what I know based on a lot of continuing education with migraine, it's not that I was doing the wrong thing, but I was doing it the wrong time. She had other things going on that I didn't know. I don't want to call them failures, but those lessons have been very costly in that I haven't helped the patient like I wanted. I went out and spent tens of thousands of dollars on continuing education to try and figure it out. We learn. We could have done it a little differently. There's a Meniere's patient who I was seeing. Unfortunately, they're no longer a patient because I didn't deliver. It hurts to say that. It's embarrassing, but at the same time, I learned and knew what I would do differently now for that next patient.

It's funny too because you had twenty people who went in that day and eighteen people who were jumping up and down, singing your praises, and you got that one person that you wholeheartedly wanted to get better at and it didn't happen. All of us get a little stuck on that and then you forget about the eighteen other people who were jumping for joy in your office. It's huge to learn from your mistakes. I was reading that Upper Cervical Practice Mastery book and Bill Davis was like, "Read your reviews. Read all the good things. Be your own biggest fan." Because of that one patient, you forget all the great stuff you're doing.

There's a ton of support in the Blair community with the Facebook groups, conferences and seminars. Upper cervical as a whole, even though we battle each other when it comes to, "This is posterior. This is anterior. The shoulder should have been here," when it comes down to it, it's a tight-knit group. We're all trying to achieve the same goal. We're just using a slightly different name-brand tool type of thing. One of the biggest secrets to my success is my wife. I'm not saying that because I need to say that. I'm saying that because truly having a partner that has been so supportive. It doesn't have to be a partner. It can be a parent, brother, sister or best friend.

On the days where you go home and you're like, "Holy shit. Half of my day, people weren't doing good. They were doing worse or something happened," you go home and talk to that person and they're like, "It's okay." We all need a little bit of encouragement. Even when we think we're doing good, we think we're not the type of thing. I know you have one. Find you a partner that supports you. Whether they're in their practice or not, it has made all the difference. That also leaves a little bit more wiggle room to make a couple of mistakes. You can do a couple of things. Support is a big deal in the profession and out.

Doc, where can people find you? Where are you online? All your social media stuff too.

I'm everywhere. We've got our social. I'm very active on social. We're all on technology. We've got the Google listing. I keep that active. The Facebook is a little bit more professional, KeystoneChiropracticLKN. Instagram is a little different. I blend it a little personal and professional. That is, @DrBearder. We're rebranding here. We got everything from the state. Personally, if I can help one person in that regard, put upper cervical in the name. It would go a long way. I’m not saying that chiropractic in the name is bad, but I moved to an area where there's no upper cervical. I was the only upper cervical chiropractor. Ray Drury is about 30 miles South, but I've got no one for a 30-mile radius and even farther North. I'm the only Blair guy in NC. That's going to change here because of a lot of different things.

Putting upper cervical in the name, we're getting rid of chiropractic. It's going to be Keystone Upper Cervical Spine Clinic. We're letting people know exactly what we're doing. That way, there's no confusion, especially starting out. If you’re out and about, if you're starting a practice from scratch, you got to be able to differentiate yourself. Chiropractic puts you in a particular category and being able to say, "We do upper cervical. I'm an upper cervical chiropractor. If you got the DCC, JP, you're an upper cervical specialist."

We're on social. The website is KeystoneChiropracticLKN.com. We're out there. I'm trying to create some good content, especially locally. People got to know. When they don't know, they don't know. This show, I know you know this, but you have helped so many people. It's unbelievable. Drew Hall helped you and you are helping thousands of people. I can't tell you how much I appreciate you in what you do and what you continue to do.

Thank you.

We're fighting a good fight. Some of us are a little bit more vocal than the others, yourself, in terms of what you're putting out there. That's how the needle moves. Kudos to you. A lot of respect.

I appreciate that. Dr. Bearder, what is one piece of advice that has resonated with you that you would like to give the audience? It could be anything.

I've thought about this. It could be anything and there are millions of things that I could give. There's what I would call beat poets from the '70s, '80s, whatnot. It's a band, Alternating Current/Direct Current, AC/DC. One of my favorite songs, It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll). For students, it's a long way to the top. For patients, it's a long way back. Whether you get that one adjustment, we want to rock and roll, get back to shit, get to our lives, and do what we want to do. It's a long way to the top if you want to rock and roll. I think that applies to a lot of different things. It's a good fucking song too. Maybe I thought like, "I am Iron Man." AC/DC, "It's a long way to the top to rock and roll." That's a great quote. Especially students, I feel like we could connect with patients easily. At the same time, that younger generation, reach out to any of us, any upper cervical doctor. If they don't want your end, get rid of them. Don't go to that doctor. There needs to be more docs. If we inspire folks with podcasts, quotes and results, that's what we need, but it's a long way to the top.

Cameron, thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for laying all the cards out on the table and telling people what you do. I would love to have you back on anytime.

Let's do it.

Important Links

• YouTube
• @DrKevinPecca
• @MontclairUpperCervical
• DrKevinPeccca@Gmail.com
• Keystone Chiropractic
• Chad Billiris
• John Stenberg – previous episode
• Dr. Scott Matz, Sr
• Upper Cervical Practice Mastery
• KeystoneChiropracticLKN
• @DrBearder

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