Britt Reuter, MS: Hi to everyone who’s joining us. This is another interview in my Women in Wellness series. These are candid conversations that I’m having with female professionals who have a heart to serve others. And I use this time to talk a little bit about what it is that they do, who they support and what resources they may have available for you to explore. I’m Britt Reuter and I’ve earned a Master’s of Science in Human Nutrition from the University of Bridgeport. I am also a Certified Nutrition Specialist candidate and my approach to supporting clients is informed by functional medicine. I run an online virtual clinic from my home in the Boston area. And if you want to learn more about me and what it is that I do, you can visit my website www.brittreuter.com, or you can find me on Facebook or Instagram @nutritionbritt. Today, my guest is Dr. Taylor Meyers. Taylor is a Doctor of Chiropractic at Core Health Chiropractic Clinic in Minneapolis. She sees patients of varying ages and activity levels, but finds that the most that most of her patients she attracts are young professional women. She believes in empowering her clients to be strong advocates for their own health, and aims to help them understand the physical and emotional causes of their ailments. Thanks so much for being here, Taylor!

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Thanks for having me.

Britt Reuter, MS: Yeah, absolutely. I’m so excited to get to share you with my little audience here. So, thank you again. Let’s just dig right into the first question. So, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and how you decided to become a chiropractor?

Tell us a little bit about who you are and how you decided to become a chiropractor.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Yes. So, I am from a super small town in Canada. And I grew up super active outdoors all the time. Like, it was before kids had cell phones, we would just get home from school and like run outside until dinnertime, and then we’d be back outside again. And I played a ton of sports, and I’m super tall. And so, when I was in seventh grade my mom was like, “All right, you need to go chiropractor because your posture is horrendous.” She took me in and I was like, oh, sounds really cool. I didn’t really think anything of it. And then kind of as I grew up and was more active in high school, sports and everything. I continued to see a chiropractor and I was like, “Whoa, this is like kind of really cool. Like, maybe I would like to do it.” We’re active people. You’re moving around, not sitting at a desk (which is pretty much my least favorite thing to do). Then actually, I was talking to my chiropractor and he was like “You’re going to college soon. What are you going to do?” I said, “Well, maybe I’ll be like a physical education teacher or maybe be a chiropractor.” He was like,” You should be a teacher.” I just kind of like taken aback. I’m like, oh my gosh. He’s like, you get all these amazing benefits: pension, you get summers off, good pay, you don’t have to deal with patients, all this kind of stuff. He must have been having a bad day. But anyways, so I was like, “Whoa, maybe I should just rethink this.” And anyways, I went on to school, and I studied kinesiology at a university in Thunder Bay and loved it. And I took a couple education classes while I was there, and I was like “I don’t think this is for me”. Just not digging it. And then I like was thinking and I’m like, “I don’t even like teenagers. Like, they’re the horrors. Why do I want to hang out with them all day? And I really like what I’m learning and I kind of want to apply it to a greater population and help people.” And then as I was coming up on graduation, I hurt myself quite badly doing P90X Insanity videos in my bedroom. Word to the wise, maybe avoid those videos. I found a chiropractor there. I was like going from not being able to move or sleep to being like back to normal in a couple of weeks just because of my chiro. And I was like I think this is what I’m going to do. Then I moved down to Minneapolis and started school. And I guess the rest is kind of history from there.

Britt Reuter, MS: That’s awesome. Yeah, we share being very tall. So, I definitely understand some of the struggles, like everything is so much lower, because it’s built for people of a certain height and you find yourself always like bending over things.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Oh, yeah. Well, I think when it started all my friends are like four foot when we’re in school. And I’m like, “What’s going on down there? I really want to be on your level.”

Britt Reuter, MS: Yeah, elementary school is tough for tall people.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Totally.

Britt Reuter, MS: That’s a great story. Yeah. Thanks for walking us through that. So, what does the day in the life of Taylor look like? As far as your health routine goes?

What does the day in the life of Taylor look like?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Yeah, I mean, there’s definitely a difference between what does my typical like 11-hour work day morning routine look like and what is my optimal morning routine look like. But I think that what they share is that I do try to like create time for both my mental and physical health. That’s super important for me, especially with being I mean, anybody I’m sure you’re interviewing is it kind of like a service-based job where you’re dealing with people all day. And it’s very important to take time for yourself. Especially if you’re like me, you’re an introvert. And you’re just giving, giving all day and you go home, and you’re like, I don’t want to talk to anybody. But I think like, in my ideal day (which is typically my Thursday is because I have the morning off), I won’t start working till about 3pm. I do get up without an alarm. Unless, in the summer I actually do in-line marathons. So, I will check the weather and if it’s going to be really hot, I’m going to get up early and get my motivated. But otherwise, I try to sleep in and just give my body the rest that it needs. I get up and, every morning regardless, I try to drink a liter of water. It helps me feel better, feel hydrated, makes your skin look better. It’s one of those things I read years ago, like hydrate your body. First thing, you need a cup in the morning. And that’s the first thing I do. I have my big hydro-flask and I just drink it down. And then usually I’ll have some coffee and just kind of unwind and relax the morning and do a little bit of journaling, maybe a little bit of reading, just kind of spend time with myself. And I’ll have breakfast, which is pretty much always the same thing. I typically have three eggs, and then I try to have some greens of some sort. Usually, in the summer, it’s some greens with berries and some nuts, and sometimes bacon or some toast depending on the activity levels going to be like that day. And then I’ll usually get a workout in and kind of just spend some time cooking lunch in the afternoon or meal prepping and just kind of doing errands I need to get done and having some me-time. Then I’ll go into work. So, it’s nothing crazy. I don’t do a ton of supplements. Usually in the morning I am working on my adrenal health. So, in the morning I’m taking adrenal support. And then at night I usually do magnesium and CBD. And that’s pretty much it. For me for supplements, I don’t do a lot of protein powder. I kind of use collagen from time to time. I’m not super good about being on a regimen with that. But yeah, that’s pretty much my day right there. And then I go to bed really early. I go to bed anywhere between 9 and 10.

Britt Reuter, MS: Wow. On your longer work days, you said that you work sometimes like 11 hours. Just like go-go-go. How do you find that you’re able to like sustain your energy, especially as an introvert, like what is it that keeps you going during those long days?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: The fact that I only have two of them. So, my Mondays and Tuesdays are long. So, I just kind of power through knowing the rest of the week is going to be smooth sailing, right. But also, because I run my own business, I have the ability to take time off in the middle of the day. So, I usually work from 7:30 until about 11:30. And then I take a three-hour lunch break. The first thing I do is I go and I work out and then all typically go home and have some lunch, just kind of relax before I go back to work. And just having that time for myself in the middle of the day, just to kind of recharge even though a lot of people don’t think that working out is recharging, for me it just kind of is like my time to not have to talk to anybody. It’s like forced solitude almost. And so that’s energizing for me. Then I just eat lots of food and drink lots of water and just get there. I do have pretty good relationship with most of my patients. I don’t have a lot of patients that I don’t get along with or that I don’t love treating. So that’s helpful. A lot of times patients walk in, and it’s very exciting to see them and get caught up on what’s going on in their life. And that makes a big difference. Because there are definitely patient’s out there that are energy drainers. And those are the ones I tried to be like, all right, well, bye. And I don’t try to reschedule them.

A lot of times patients walk in and it’s very exciting to see them and get caught up on what’s going on in their life. And that makes a big difference.

Britt Reuter, MS: You have to have those energy boundaries, right?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Yes. I have not fired a patient yet. Although I’m sure the day will come. But speaking of energy boundaries, I do actually carry an Apache tear in my pocket, which is like kind of a negative energy repeller and just kind of absorbs the crappy energy. And then also I have a patient who is does a lot of spirit animal work. And she went on a journey for me and told me that my spirit animal is a white dove and that I should crawl into the belly of my white dove when I’m treating patients.

Britt Reuter, MS: So just like kind of visually putting yourself in that place, creating that barrier?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Totally. She’s like no energy will get in, the animal will protect you. And so, I mean, I don’t always do it, I kind of forget sometimes. But it’s a nice reminder to just be like, even if it’s just like puts you in a different thought process and different place would be like, okay this is separate. This energy is not entering me. Interestingly enough, we’re getting into the woo-woo side of things, when actually first started working, I was getting a lot of wrist and elbow pain. And it wasn’t like it was my first four months in chiro, like getting used to it. It was like six months and I started getting like I had just like a bunch of crap in my right forearm. And my massage therapist and a couple people were like, it’s probably just people’s energy is just kind of getting stuck in you, just kind of clogged up. Like, okay, interesting. Interesting. So that’s so cool.

Britt Reuter, MS: Yeah, it’s interesting, because obviously, like going through a doctorate program, or like the master’s program that I’ve been through, it can be very left-brain/analytical/evidence based. And, I think that once you kind of get out and you start implementing some of these things, you see how similar science is to spirituality and energy and all of these different concepts that you like to label as woo-woo. But it’s really all just kind of a spectrum of our human existence.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Totally. At the basis of everything is energy, right? No one can dispute that. I think that it’s becoming more and more mainstream and a lot less like, “Oh, what a weirdo. What a witch.” So, I embrace it. Like, I totally like, when I feel like I’ve established a decent rapport with my patients I’ve totally talk about this stuff. That’s where a lot of like the talking to people about how their emotions are affecting their bodies. Were that almost like starting to kind of funnel into the treatment process. Not everyone’s ready for it.

Britt Reuter, MS: No, that’s true.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Like, I don’t care. Just fix this if you can. Do whatever, I don’t care. Don’t talk to me about my dad.

Britt Reuter, MS: I think that even by being open to just share your experience, I think that even if someone can’t really resonate with your story, they’re like, “I don’t know about carrying this stone around, or I don’t know about spiritual animals and stuff.” I think that it at least hopefully encourages people just to kind of believe themselves, that they can experience something that maybe other people aren’t going to understand. But that doesn’t make their experience like any less legitimate, any less valid. So, I feel like by you giving yourself that authority, just to say, “This is my experience and this was what helps me” that on some level, you’re also opening the door for your patients to express themselves that way too.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Totally. People totally sense that. Like if you’re shut off, they’re just going to kind of reciprocate that and shut themselves off. Especially when you’re physically touching your patients. Like, I actually had a patient say yesterday, she’s like, “You have a really weird job.” As I’m like, pulling on her arm, right? And I was like, “Yeah, you’re right. But but I love that you’re that you feel comfortable enough with me to tell me these things. Like, that’s great. Let’s keep this rolling.”

Britt Reuter, MS: So cool. Awesome. So, what would you say is the most common misconception that your patients have about health?

What would you say is the most common misconception that your patients have about health?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: It’s super basic. It’s just that people think that, “Hey, I don’t have a disease. I’m not taking medication; I don’t have pain. I’m healthy.” And that’s 100% not the case. Health is not black or white. It’s totally a spectrum. Everybody is somewhere along that disease spectrum. But what are you doing to keep yourself in the low end? From tipping over? People are always like, “Where did this pain come from? Like, it just randomly started.” And I’m like, “It’s been building for a long time, it didn’t just happen. You have had this issue or this sickness, whatever you want to call it, kind of creeping up and creeping up for a long time. But now it’s just kind of tipped over the edge where you can’t ignore it anymore.” So, I think that people just thinking that, “Hey, if I don’t have a problem, I’m fine. I don’t need to do anything – take care of myself, change my habits – until it’s too late. And now I have to start taking care of myself.”

Britt Reuter, MS: Yeah, it’s like health seems to be more about optimizing. Right? How healthy can we feel? How much vitality can we cultivate? Not always just that symptom-based approach where it’s like, you’re kind of dealing with the ‘how little can I get away with’. You’re like, “How great can I make myself feel?”

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Totally, that’s the main objective of chiropractic: instill vitality in people. But we get this rap as just like pain doctors and last resort for people before surgery. At the end of the day, we just want to help you feel as good as you can, function as good as you can. But that is a big misconception about my job.

Britt Reuter, MS: It’s kind of a related question, but what would you say that the technique or food or supplement or whatever, what do you tell your patients most often to stop doing?

What do you tell your patients most often to stop doing?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: A lot of things. But I think there’s two big ones. One is, I don’t do a ton of supplementation recommendations to people unless they ask me, but I do tell them to stop taking supplements at random. Like, at the end of the day, you could just have a really expensive poop, because you’re just like throwing stuff into your body, you’re not absorbing it, you have no idea what you’re taking. That’s a big one. And then the other one is to stop wearing shoes. Like that’s such like a me thing. Like I hate shoes. And so, people are like “It’s just because you hate shoes.” But seriously, they’re so unnecessary. People’s feet are just like so numb. And they’re such an important part of not just like sensation in the body, but activation of musculature. And people just wear them all the time, like in their house. What are you doing? Take your shoes off. So, I think those are the two biggest ones I tell people.

Britt Reuter, MS: I had recently gone to a podiatrist with ankle pain. And they gave me orthopedic inserts, and they said, “Wear them hundred percent of the time. Inside your house, at the gym, all the time.” I asked like, “Is this going to correct the issue?” And they were like, “No, it’s not going to correct the issue. You just have to wear them like every hour of your waking life for the rest of your life. They’re a part of you now.” Yeah, and maybe some people would be satisfied with hearing an answer like that. But I was not.

…people think that, “Hey, I don’t have a disease. I’m not taking medication; I don’t have pain. I’m healthy.” And that’s 100% not the case. Health is not black or white. It’s totally a spectrum. Everybody is somewhere along that disease spectrum. But what are you doing to keep yourself in the low end? From tipping over?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: So, my biggest thing is like I am the anti-orthotic person. The reason why is because if your body is so used to walking a certain way, and then you throw a lift on it, it’s going to completely affect the mechanics of your entire body, whether it’s good or bad. But it’s going to result in some issue and, like they told you, it’s not actually fixing anything. It’s just putting a band-aid on it, but you have to wear all the time. So that’s why I’m a big, like get stronger. Let’s fix your body. Let’s not just throw a band-aid on it. You could take ibuprofen for the rest of your life.

Britt Reuter, MS: Exactly, yeah. Symptom suppression like you’re saying. Is there like a minimal shoe or like minimal footwear that you prefer that you use?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: I do not have like a brand that I recommend at all; I wear Birkenstocks pretty much exclusively. The main reason is that because there’s no scrunching of the toes, you’re not compressing toes into toe-boxes. And so, there’s like less chance of bunion formation and all those things. But anything that’s a zero-drop shoe, like a Converse, that’s not lifting your heel up or anything like that is really important. I’m not necessarily telling you to go buy a pair of Converse, but that idea. When you have a heel lift it actually shortens the Achilles tendon, which then shortens calf musculature, the hamstring and kind of all the way up the chain. And that’s why there’s such a greater occurrence of Achilles tendon rupture these days in young people who are healthy because they spend all these time in shoes that are heels. Especially in women. When they get into their training shoe, which is flat, or barefoot shoe, there’s so much more tension pulling through that calf, and through that tendon, it just can’t keep up with the force.

Britt Reuter, MS: Yeah, in researching my feet and ankle issues it’s very like mind blowing in a way, like how everything so connected in a certain sense. It shouldn’t have been that surprising to me, being in functional medicine saying all the time how everything is connected, but I was always thinking of that in a much more internal way, like, what you eat affects your body in these ways. But really like how what you put on your feet matters, like even, learning about how it changes the way that your jaw is carried and how that can be part of your balance system. It’s like, I never would have connected anything to do with my footwear, or the strength of my ankles or feet, muscles or calves are all the way up with something that was going on and with my face.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Yeah, I know. It’s crazy. I think I made a post about that on Instagram a while ago about like “Hey, chicks. Stop wearing heels because it’s probably – like, especially if you have a tight jaw – because that’s could be caused from the instability in your ankles, because you’re always wearing heels and all those things.” It seems just like this wild like correlation like, “Oh my gosh, how could that ever be?” But it’s just basic mechanics.

Britt Reuter, MS: When you think about it, like you really sit with it, it does make sense. It does seem intuitive. I think that people just aren’t used to hearing it. It just sounds so farfetched when you first are introduced to that concept, which is so great that you know that you have such a good rapport with your patients, because then you can say outlandish things like that and they’ll believe you. As tall girls we don’t even need the heels anyway, so.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: And then there’s those people who are like, “Whatever. You’re tall. You don’t get it.” Okay, whatever.

Britt Reuter, MS: Even though like a pair of running shoes with the heel lift on those, they can be pretty substantial. Even like two to three inches.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Oh, yeah. 100%. And then you’re running already on your toes, and you’re already weakening your posterior chain typically. That’s how you end up with running injuries. So, I mean, obviously, like we live in a world where we can’t go running barefoot, for the most part. But at the same time, like if we grew up wearing shoes less, then minimal style shoes wouldn’t be such a departure to move towards something like that instead of needing like a three inch cushion on the bottom of your running shoes because you have such bad foot pain when you run.

Britt Reuter, MS: Right? Yeah, it’s about awareness and just trying to do a little bit better. And, maybe even just better for your own kids.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Right. Those are the adults that are going to be coming up. Right. So, exactly. Small changes.

Britt Reuter, MS: Future chiropractic patients.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: I’ve got like 10 infants in my practice right now, which is super sweet.

Britt Reuter, MS: Get them set straight right away. Awesome. Well, this has just been so much fun. Where can people that are watching this learn more about you and connect with you and the work that you’re doing? Keep in touch, all that.

Where can people connect with you and the work that you’re doing?

Dr. Taylor Meyers: Yeah. So, Instagram my handle is @drtaylorm and then our website for the clinic is https://www.corelifestylemn.com/ and that can link you to bio, and scheduling and all of those things and just learning more about our practice what we do. We’re pretty integrative. So, we have everything from personal training to massage therapy, PT, sauna, dry needling, chiropractic, a little bit of everything.

Britt Reuter, MS: Well, just to plug your Instagram, I follow you on Instagram, obviously. And I get a lot out of your posts like just like visually, very, aesthetically very pleasing. But then you have some really killer content in there, too. I feel like I’ve learned a lot. Just even like how to modify my form during exercises or, maybe helping me to explain, like when I’m feeling this discomfort, what might be the root cause of that. So, I highly recommend that people follow your page, because I’m getting so much out of it.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: I’m super excited that you’re getting content out of it. Because some days is hard. I don’t know what people want to know.

Britt Reuter, MS: I know. There’s this is void on social media. There’re people on the other end like me that are receiving this information and that are actually putting it into practice in our daily lives.

Dr. Taylor Meyers: It’s good to know. Thank you.

Britt Reuter, MS: Yes, yes, you’re welcome. Keep up the good work. So, thank you again, and this has been another Women in Wellness interview. And if anybody you know wants to is watching this over video and wants to link to any of these things that we talked about today, you can head to my blog at www.brittreuter.com and you’ll find the transcript there with all the hyperlinks. Thanks so much.