TruMotion’s Dr. Erik recently had the privilege of being a guest on the Preferred Company with Joel and Friends radio show. On the show, Joel shared his own experiences with TruMotion and the process of recovering from an injury in a truly patient centered and holistic practice. The conversation went on to discuss some difficulties in the current healthcare environment as well as an overview of services provided by TruMotion to help patients make meaningful and lasting improvements in their health, including our newest device, the Neubie.
Listen in with the link below or see the transcript attached and of course, check out our friends at Preferred Radio.
http://www.preferredradio.com/
Listen to the interview on our homepage
Transcript of the interview:
Joel: I do want to welcome at this moment a gentleman, and I mean a gentleman by the name of Dr. Erik Hums. Dr. Erik, good morning to you how are you?
Erik: Good morning you guys. Thank you so much for having me.
Joel: You’re very welcome. And you’re here as a guest today. Typically Lori and I, we interview people because we interview people that are brought to us through the station and we are sent books and we talk to them. And this interview is different. This interview is because you own a center in Eatontown called TruMotion, which I have had the pleasure, the privilege of attending. And it is a physical therapy center. Dr. Hums, tell us how this all got started.
Erik: Well, Joel, first and foremost, I just want to say that in opening a practice, the thing that makes me happiest, that makes me most excited is hearing an endorsement and how satisfied patients are with our care. And whether that be on a platform like yours, where you’re on the radio for a couple hours a day, or someone just sitting in their friend circle discussing what’s going on in their lives. It’s wonderful to hear how happy the process has been, how well our team is doing at delivering the care that we wanted to provide. So thank you. I really appreciate it.
Lori: Well, Dr. Hums, I do want to say this that, it’s one thing for Joel to say nice things when the mic is on, but he talks about you guys all the time. I mean, every time we go into break, he’s like, oh, I feel so much better. So he really does… He shares his endorsements, very fluidly with everybody out there. So.
Erik: [crosstalk 00:01:52] I do, I pay him a lot of money to do that.
Joel: That was, that was my line. He stole my line. I, how much did he pay you, Lori, but I do want to tell the audience, my story, which is that I went to a driving range about three years ago and it was really two or three years ago. I’m always confused because of COVID regardless, I went to driving range and I just took a club and I probably bought one of those big thing of balls where I just hit 80 in a row. And I really hurt myself just from probably too swinging. I did something that hurt me for years.
Joel: So maybe there was something wrong to begin with, but I didn’t feel it until after the swing. And I did go for injections. I went for a couple of consultations and suddenly I saw a center near where I work, called TruMotion in Eatontown, and I decided that I was going to go in. And that was the beginning of my getting better. Dr. Hums, I have to tell you that my pain has gone away. I am totally fine right now. And I just don’t know what it is that you guys do to make that happen.
Erik: Well, a lot of it is really just getting down to this specific patient and this patient centered focus is why I opened the practice, right? So we see in healthcare a lot, there’s a lot of consolidation these days. It’s very rushed oftentimes, and the patient gets kind of the short end of the stick. They’re stuck between higher cost to deliver care by these massive healthcare systems.
Joel: Yes.
Erik: And then on the other end, decreasing reimbursements by the insurance companies and who gets caught in the middle, the patients. And it’s not to say you can’t receive good care at these places, but we really believe that focusing on the individual and the examination and the holistic approach of looking at everything from your shoulder to your neck, to your back, to even strategies like nutrition and how your diet and how the immune system and inflammation can affect pain that we have is a much better approach at getting people better and getting them to stay better as well.
Joel: Dr. Hums the first time I walked into TruMotion I want to say that I’m greeted by a woman at the front desk, Lori you have to hear this, her name is Mary Ellen and you know how you’ve walked into doctor’s offices or any other clinical setting, and they kind of just look at you like a librarian and you’re just…
Lori: What are you doing here?
Joel: Exactly. Like they just have this librarian, Mary Ellen, from the minute I walked in Lori, it made me feel like a person that she really cared about my well being.
Lori: It makes all the difference.
Joel: It made all the difference to begin in with, because you’re new, you’re unfamiliar with the center you’re unfamiliar with; you have no, I had no idea what physical therapy was going to be like. And I walked into TruMotion, I’m greeted by Mary Ellen, and I then am introduced to some physical therapy they call aids or assistants Dr. Hum?
Erik: Yeah. Aids or techs, either way is fine.
Joel: Techs. Okay. I’m introduced to some techs, then to the physical therapist, the wonderful Dr. Shafer that I worked with and Lori, it’s little by little that you’re introduced and you become a part of TruMotion.
Joel: It’s almost as if you don’t want to leave. I kid you not. It is a center that is so welcoming to people who need physical therapy. I’ve never been to a physical therapy center before, but I can’t imagine anything being like this.
Lori: And how often did you go Joel? Twice a week, once a week?
Joel: So, I was going three times a week. Then I was going two times a week. I am going to have to, because I’m not quite done yet, I will continue going two times a week. Dr. Hums, give us a little bit of the background, meaning like why did you decide to open the center?
Erik: Well, a big part of it was what I was saying before with, with healthcare. I’ve been in practice more than a decade and I’ve been just watching this system become less and less focused on the patients. And I’ve worked in multiple offices for multiple companies and it’s all been fantastic in so many ways, but I see the change happening and I did want to be part of it.
Erik: So, we opened our doors in December 2020 just diving head first in the middle of a pandemic, jumped into this practice and surrounded myself with a fantastic team. And again, I love hearing how well every team member has done with what their role is in your experience [crosstalk 00:07:41]
Joel: I say that you would not be here. Dr. Hums. this is all a compliment to you and TruMotion. I know that TruMotion is rather new. Am I right?
Erik: That’s correct. And again, thank you for the compliment, I love to hearing it. We opened in December 2020, so it’s been almost 11 months.
Joel: Now, I can imagine during COVID how difficult it was to open up a healthcare center.
Erik: Yeah. I can’t say on paper that was the wisest thing I’ve ever done, but I felt confident in the system and the model that I had set forth. I felt confident that as we get through this pandemic, healthcare is going to see this resurgence. And fortunately it has, a lot of people were stuck at home and unable to see their doctors, and they’re in a lot of pain. And there was a need to come back and be available to help everyone that’s having a tough time.
Lori: [crosstalk 00:08:46] Well you were hopeful and I think that means that you were bringing hope to a lot of people too, your hopefulness transcends to your patients that come in there.
Lori: Joel, let me just ask the doctor a couple of questions here if you don’t mind. I would love to know about what makes you different? Are you doing something over there in addition to your patient focused care? Is there some, are there any new innovations? Cause we have a lot of people that listen to the show that may have done physical therapy before and went, eh, it’s okay. It worked, it didn’t work. What are they going to find? What’s the experience going to be over there that’s going to be different maybe than anything they’ve had done in the past? Joel: Could you do that again, Lori? Eh, it worked. Lori: Eh.
Joel: You sound like you could do a voiceover.
Erik: [crosstalk 00:09:40] response is never what I hear from patients about their experience with me. So let’s try to make sure that doesn’t happen, but it’s a really good question, Lori.
Erik: Really, the focus is on the holistic approach. It’s all about the whole individual, not just the injury. So, I was mentioning before we do offer nutrition for chronic pain and how we can work on inflammation in the body to reduce pain levels, using a nutritional strategy.
Erik: We educate patients on what’s called pain neuroscience, which has been shown to be very helpful in understanding why we hurt and why things are happening to us in reducing our pain levels and improving our functions. And then the main part of the traditional PT that we also emphasize is manual therapy, fellowship trained and orthopedics and manual therapy. And that resonates with my clinicians and with our approach.
Erik: Now you mentioned different technologies and one of the really cool things that we’ve been using the last few months is called the NEUBIE. And the NEUBIE is a really funny name for a medical device, but it’s an acronym and it stands for Neuro-Bio-Electrical Stimulator. And it’s a form of electric stimulation that is much more capable of optimizing the nervous system and allowing us to heal from injury and perform better.
Erik: Now I know a lot of people listening right now that have had stim in the past; they’ve had it with the PT, they’ve had it with the chiropractor, they have a tens unit at home. Yeah I’ve used stem. It feels nice; it buzzes. And then when it turns off the pain comes back, but the NEUBIE is very different. It works almost opposite of how traditional stim works. It’s on direct current versus alternate current. And that direct current is a much more capable signal for healing and repairing nervous tissue. And if you don’t mind, I’ll give you a quick premise on how it works.
Joel: Of course.
Erik: Okay, great. So it essentially works on the concept that when we’re injured, right, we have injured tissues or some trauma occurs, the injury is going to be healing naturally over time. But sometimes, the nerves stay upset. And this is kind of how we’re wired. The nervous system really only cares about survival. It wants to make sure that we can see tomorrow, right? That’s the most important thing.
Erik: Second on that list would be performance, right? So first is just protecting us and much, much further back in the list is performance. So when there’s injury or trauma, we go into this protective mode and we can stay there long after the injury is healed. This protection mode causes our nerves to remain oversensitive and our muscles to guard and protect, and it even causes our body to move differently. So Joel, you had the should injury and I can guarantee that when you were moving, using your arm, it felt different and moved different and you treated it differently than the other side. Is that right?
Joel: That is right. Correct.
Erik: And that’s a protective mode and that that’s good for a period of time until the tissues are healed. But sometimes the nervous system doesn’t know when to turn that off. So we remain overactive or over sensitive and these nerves can stay very upset. And that’s essentially what chronic pain is.
Erik: So we use the NEUBIE now, which is a really cool process. We use this thing called maping and we take the machine with an electrode and we scan around the area that there’s pain, and we identify things called hotspots.
Erik: These hot spots are areas where the nerves are over firing or over sensitive. And we place electrodes on the hotspots, we turn the machine on, and then from that point, anyone that’s ever had stim before is going to realize the difference; how different this form of a electrical stimulation is different than normal stim.
Erik: So the machine goes on these hotspots, we have the patient start moving with very basic exercises that we have protocols for. And the direct current from the NEUBIE communicates with the nerves, calms them down, and helps restore normal function. We can use this for acute injuries, chronic injuries, neurological conditions, like multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease and even for athletic performance.
Erik: So, the last little segue that I have here is you guys know Saquon Barkley, right? The Giants running back.
Lori: Mm-hmm (affirmative)
Joel: Of course.
Erik: Well unfortunately just sprained his ankle pretty bad on Sunday, but he just had this big endorsement for the NEUBIE. He was during that recovery from his ACL reconstruction, he was having trouble about four or five months in, and wasn’t hitting the markers, wasn’t going to be ready to start the season. And he found the NEUBIE, started using it, and within a couple sessions, got his leg strength back up, got his muscles to activate again. And that allowed him to be ready to play for week one about a month ago. That’s
Lori: That’s fascinating really.
Joel: Jeez.
Lori: You’re kind of like giving the body permission to go back to normal again. Right. You’re kind of erasing the emergency setting in your nerves and kind of saying it’s okay, we can return to normal again. A fascinating way to treat pain really.
Erik: Lori, I think you actually just said that better than my entire spiel.
Lori: Well, thank you doc.
Joel: And I’ll tell you that I’m slightly insulted here because I thought that I was the newbie at the center, but obviously there’s something more important than me that walks in there, so. [crosstalk 00:15:21].
Joel: Dr. Hums, yeah, I think there’s a lot of advertising about physical therapy centers, and I honestly made an appointment elsewhere in a center that’s well advertised and I happened to walk by your center, TruMotion, which is right on main street in Eatontown. We’re going to give out the coordinates very shortly. But I walked by, I walked in, and as I said, it is such not an intimidating place. Unintimidating. I told you that I was greeted by a woman by the name of Mary Ellen. I was then introduced to a couple of the lovely women, the aids. Then I was put into the hands of a physical therapist by the name of Dr. Shafer.
Joel: Lori, I kid you not this ran like the most well oiled machine that you could ever want from a healthcare center. And I know Lori that so many people that listen to this show need physical therapy. We have stroke victims.
Lori: Hundred percent, I need it.
Joel: By the way, Dr. Hums, what is the number one reason that people come into the center?
Erik: By and large it’s back pain.
Joel: Back pain, interesting. And is there anything special in other words, is there anything specific that’s done for back pain or it’s not one size fits all?
Erik: Yeah, it’s very individualized. Some patients do great with a lot of hands on some do much better with more exercise focused, but it’s all individualized to that patient’s specific needs.
Lori: I’ve also known. I just want to tell everybody too, that it’s a very convenient place to go to. There’s a huge municipal parking lot behind your building. So, there’s plenty of parking back there too folks. So if you’re worried, like, oh, where am I going? It’s super easy to get there. And it’s just down the street from Joel’s office. So, if you’re like me, you’ll go get physical therapy and then go to Joel’s office for candy.
Joel: Coffee, [crosstalk 00:17:35] Danish. What else do you bring the audience in for?
Lori: Dr. Hums, if you haven’t been by Joel’s office, you’re missing out all the goodies are in there.
Erik: I mean, we have candy, but we don’t have Danishes. I’m going to have to stop by.
Joel: Anytime Dr. Hums, I owe you more than Danishes for the treatment that I’ve had at your center I should buy you the bakery. So, I’m going to start wrapping up with that. Thank you. Dr. Hums, give us the phone number.
Erik: You got it. It is (732) 334-6741.
Joel: And let’s say that one more time. 7 3 2
Erik: 3 3 4 6 7 4 1.
Joel: Dr. Hums, TruMotion. You’re a gift to New Jersey.
