Let's Talk about bone and joint health…

On this week's episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry we have Dr. Jason Hammond, who is a practicing orthopedic surgeon specializing in sports medicine and knee replacement surgery. This week the lunch and learn community is in for a treat as Dr. Hammond take some time away from giving us an inside look at all of the amazing surgeries he performs to discuss the importance of maintaining bone and joint health.

I talked about osteoarthritis in the past but am very fortunate to have someone who ends up dealing with the end result of the matter. We are going to get a chance to hear some of the common issues he deals with as an orthopedic surgeon. The Lunch and Learn community is also in for a treat as we learn some of Dr. Hammond's favorite surgical and non-surgical interventions.

What makes Dr. Hammond unique is that he has taken a keen entrepreneurial approach to healthcare and not only has a patented invention he uses in the operating room but a line of products to support nonsurgical health. You are in for a treat with this episode.

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Download Episode 115 Transcript

[showhide type=””””post”””” more_text=””””Episode 115 Transcript…”””” less_text=””””Show less…””””] Introduction Dr. Berry: And welcome to another episode of the Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. I’m your host, Dr. Berry Pierre, your favorite Board Certified Internist. Founder of drberrypierre.com, as well as the CEO of Pierre Medical Consulting, which helps you empower yourself for better health this week with the number one podcast for patient advocacy. We bring you Dr. Jason Hammond, who is an orthopedic surgeon. Who actually very excited for you guys to get a chance to listen to because he is not just a surgeon, which I like to think about it. He has his own patented product, which we will talk about on the episode today. He has a line of products that's also sold on Amazon through his own personal company – AireSupport. And he has an illustrated book, the GUUD Book on Stem Cells for Joint Pain, which was written to really simply explain alternatives with joint replacement surgery in a fun and very creative way. He's married and he does have three beautiful children, which are actually triplets, right? Which is which I thought I was having sleepless nights because that a twins, but he has triplets, right? So Bang for your buck on that. With Dr. Hammond this week, we were going to be talking about the importance of bone health. I'm going to be, you know, kind of getting into his business, trying to find out like why he went into orthopedic surgery and really with most important especially for Lunch and Learn community members. What are some of the best surgical as well as non-surgical ways to deal with chronic pain, especially in your knees, especially in the shoulder? Contrary to popular belief, he actually favors the non-surgical approach to a lot of different things and I think that sometimes gets taken aback and it gets lost when we talk about surgeons because we always feel like all we want to do is do surgery. And but he's a big champion of making sure we could try and do everything as conservative as possible to avoid surgery and make surgery the last possible option if needed. So definitely you're in for a treat this week and if you have not had a chance remember to subscribe to the podcast. Tell a friend to tell a friend to subscribe to the podcast. Share the podcast, screenshot the podcast in IG. However you like to listen to podcasts. You can tweet me always. If you mentioned me, I would definitely make sure I like and retweet. I'm always looking out for that aspect of it, whether you're using the hashtag, whether you're just, you know, you throw the mention on me, especially if you're on Twitter. I'm at Lunch and Learn pod.com for the podcast fret. So you guys have a great blessed day and get ready for another amazing episode here on Lunch and Learn with Dr. Berry. Episode Dr. Berry: And alright Lunch and Learn community. You heard this amazing introduction from someone who have actually been kind of goes following for a little bit. Who’s been given us an inside look on what it takes to, you know, be orthopedic surgeon. And he was someone who I wanted to kind of have come on the show and just kind of educate us and really get a little bit background story on all this amazing stuff that he's does. Because you know, obviously Lunch and Learn community, you know we have people who are physicians but people who are more than just physician, right. As I think that's always the big thing for us. Yes, you could be a doctor but you could do a lot more things just within that field. First of all, thank you for coming on Lunch and Learn to discuss your greatness. Dr. Jason Hammond: It is a pleasure. Thank you so much. I appreciate you having me on. Dr. Berry: So that can have it. If we went through your bio and you know, if someone didn't happen to read your bio or happen for some reason skip right to this main story, right? What could you tell them about yourself that they probably wouldn't be able to pick up? Dr. Jason Hammond: So a little bit of background. I was born in Baltimore and actually born at Johns Hopkins. And you know, it's funny, I made my way back there for medical school and residency some, you know, 18, 20 years. Actually 22 years later. I grew up in Virginia and went to high school down in Hampton area, Hampton, Virginia. I learned how to play the trombone. So that's the one little thing about me. I still play the trombone and I have a lot of fun doing that. Went down to Morehouse in Atlanta for four years, which was an awesome time. I was down there to 93 and 97, just a lot of fun. And then came up to Baltimore when I went to med school. And that's where I met my wife. She actually went to University of Maryland's med school and so we met and so I've been in the Baltimore area since 2007. I have three kids. Triplets, actually. Three 14 year olds who just graduated eighth grade. So they're going to be starting high school soon. So it's going to be a whirlwind for the next four years. Dr. Berry: I have twins. I have that athletic girl. (How old are your twins?) They're six. No, my wife will kill me. They’re three going on four. My oldest is six. Dr. Jason Hammond: Probably seem like there's six by now. I'm sure. Dr. Berry: Yes. It's so fun. This is a side note. I remember when my wife first sent me the ultrasound. Right? She sent me an ultrasound, it was like A and B and I'm like, what is this? You're having twins daddy, that’s what that. Dr. Jason Hammond: I always kind of, I always little in denial myself when I found out we were having triplets. So I used to call them the baby for a long time until my wife was like, look, you're having three kids, so just get used to that. (Did you say…) So you know, then I went to, finish my residency and then I started practice with MedStar in the Baltimore area and I've been in practice since 2007. Dr. Berry: So tell us, because this is a question I always get from Lunch and Learn community members. What made you go into orthopedics in this way? What made you go on to this specific field? Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So I knew I wanted to be a physician ever since I was nine years old. I used to collect stickers, that's what we did back in the day. And one of the stickers that I collected was described my name and I never really knew or paid attention to what it meant. And Jason actually means one who heals. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. I said that. (Oh nice, ok.) And then after that I really, I've always had a leaning towards the sciences and math and more so than the arts and history and English. It turns out, you know, I became a musician, so I did like that aspect, but I knew I kind of want to go into a science field. And when I was in high school, I was in a track meet, indoor track meet and I was, doing high jump. And I went into jump over the bar and I was a little too far towards the end and my back and head laying on the mat and my foot went over and hit the ground and I broke a bone in my foot. And so that was, and then I was introduced to an orthopedic surgeon at that time and I was placed into a cast for three weeks. And initially it was great because I got a lot of love from the ladies, you know. They’re always wanting to take care of me and open the door for me. But after about three weeks or so that love went away because cast started to stink and they do with it. But I was out of the cast and my leg had shrunk to half the size of my other leg. But it was a very interesting experience. I didn't realize how much I took my limbs for granted and not being able to walk and just be able to get up and grab a sandwich or get up and turn on the TV. It's an ordeal and when you don't have a leg. So I really pricked me and I thought, okay, this is something I would like to go listen, I'm interested in. And the fact that I was able to heal so quickly and get back to what I wanted to do, even though I had to rebuild strength and everything, that was intriguing to me as well. So, you know, when I went into medical school and actually had a chance to start seeing surgeries and then getting an idea of what I liked, I then decide, okay, I like to be able to work with my hands, I want to do surgery, I like to be able to build things and use hammers and saws and screwdrivers and all that stuff. And you know, it was between ophthalmology and orthopedics and you don't really use screws and nails in the eyes. So it was, let me go into Ortho and have a chance to be able to do something like that. And I liked the engineering aspect of orthopedics. I like the optics and the physics of ophthalmology as well, but I think that orthopedics is more kind of my speed. Dr. Berry: Okay. That's very interesting. Especially as an internist and we hear a lot of, especially the surgical residency or orthopedics obviously is, as you know we hear it's usually all about the surgery, surgery, surgery. But it's very interesting to hear you speak at it from, especially from the scientific aspect of function and functionality and you know, getting people to move and you know, and even at the point where you kind of take for granted the ability that we sometimes we do all the time, right? They've just being able to walk up and go somewhere. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, exactly. The use of your hands and shoulders, being able to reach in and grab things. It is really something that you really don't think about. And it's a good thing you don't have to think about it because it means you're not in pain or you're not injured. But once you are starting to think about those things or just being able to turning your head to look in a certain direction, if you have neck pain, those things can be quite a nuisance and affect your quality of life and significant ways and you know, want to help be able to help people better their lives in that respect. Dr. Berry: I love it and even especially kind of piggy backing on that when we talk about some of the people that you encounter, patient wise. What are some of the typical reasons someone may come to see you? Dr. Jason Hammond: I am a sports medicine doctor. I specifically treated a lot of athletes. I specifically treat shoulder and knee problems. A lot of athletes have injuries to the shoulder and knee, and that's what we focus on in our fellowship after residency in a year, focusing on that type of thing. So when I have athlete with a knee injury, we want to make sure that they don't have any damage to the cartilage tissues to ligament such as the ACL which you may have heard about or the ligament injuries. And for the shoulder, we know you can have problems with the rotator cuff muscles or some of the other ligaments in the shoulder, that help keep the shoulder in place because we see athletes who sort of dislocations or people who may not have a full dislocation with the shoulder. Kind of slips a little too far and that can cause chronic problems. And so those are the kinds of issues that we see in a lot of athletes. And you know, we get a fractures and you know, the broken bones and the other ankle sprains and the common things as well. And my other subset of patients I see in older subset of patients who have arthritis and I do a lot of knee replacements and treating knee arthritis from that standpoint. And I saw a lot of stuff in between, you know, a lot of conservative treatments as well. Dr. Berry: And I definitely want to touch on, especially later on because I think a lot of times, and sometimes, you know, I'd have to educate my patients like, Hey, just because I'm sending you to the surgeon doesn't necessarily mean you're going to have surgery, but you know, they're x-ray pain is needed. I think that's something that kind of gets glossed over when we talk about the surgical specialties. I think a lot of times people only think you guys, you know, no, just to do surgery and that's it. And I think sometimes they're taking a back when they're like, oh no, no, no surgery, but let's try some other things first. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. And it's very interesting. And I had a patient actually just yesterday who is a semi professional football player and he has an injury to his PCO, which is one of the ligaments in the knee. And it is a ligament that is not really talked about much because it is not necessary, if you injured is not that you don't necessarily have to fix it to be able to play your sport such as the ACL. And apparently he was told or thought that he needed to have it fixed. And so when he came to my office, he would expect me to talk about, you know, how are we going? He wanted to be able to play professionally and want to talk about getting it fixed and so he can get on with his career. And he was actually pleasantly surprised when I was like, oh no, you've been able to play for many years and you haven't any issues. There's no reason for me to fix that. I can make you worse. You know, I can't. You already playing very well. So I can't, you know, if I'd go in there and do surgery, you can have complications, you can have stiffness, you can have other issues. And then when weakness from having to, you know, be off for so long and then have to gradually build up your strength. So we don't have to fix anything. If it's not broke really, don't fix it. So I'm not treating this specific injury. I'm treating the OR, the X-ray or the MRI scan. I'm actually treating the patient and the patient is functional. Dr. Berry: I love it. That's just unfortunate especially in medicine where sometimes we kind of get away from that. I'm a program director so I take care, I'm in charge of some residents and a lot of times, you know, they fall into that same issue where they're treating lab results, they're treating illnesses and ask, well, how's the patient feeling? And it's like a blank blank stare on their face because for some reason like that's like the last thing that's like looked upon like, oh well the patient really isn't complaining of anything. Like, Oh then what are we doing? Dr. Jason Hammond: Exactly. Right, exactly right. I mean, a lot of what we hear from patients that are they want to prevent problems in the future or is there anything that we need to do now so that I don't have an issue and you know, it's hard to treat the future as well. There are things that we can do to prevent disease, you know, weight loss, exercise, strengthening, things like that. There are some surgical procedures that may be helpful to prevent disease, but if you're completely fine, you don’t having any issues and there's better be a very good reason for us to prophylactically do something, then we did that more in pediatrics. But you know, for the most part that's the exception and not the rule. Dr. Berry: Now, is your span of a treatment, because I’m an internist, I take care. If you're 18 up. I got you. But you talk about, you’re 17 and I started getting nervous and I started getting weary. In your field, are you treating from adults? Is there a range when we talk about orthopedic surgeon and you have like the whole gamut? Dr. Jason Hammond: So orthopedics, we do have specialties and within the subspecialties, and the specialty of orthopedics. And so they're the so specialty for pediatric orthopedics, pediatric orthopedics, there's lots of orthopedic problems that kids have such scoliosis or different things that you, you know, you may not think about for kids. None of the specific, especially for that. Now a lot of kids play sports and we are trained to treat sports injuries that kids have as well. So you know, usually kids start, if they injure themselves, if they're under 10 it's pretty minor things. Or if they have a broken bone or know something we can set and that's pretty something similar. They’ll heal from and do very well. So most kids, lessons are really displaced broken bone and it's a sports injury that really don't need surgery. We can kind of treat it without surgery. And so, you know, we're usually thinking about surgery is something that very easily in their teens or early adolescence. So we do treat a younger adults in athletes and athletes that are young. But for the most part, they go to pediatrics orthopedics specifically for children with bone problems. Dr. Berry: And I know you said, your focus, especially from a sports standpoint is the shoulder and knees. Is there any, do you have any common surgeries that you like to perform? Any ones that you do like day in, day out? Is there something that you're like, oh yeah, that's the thing I do? Dr. Jason Hammond: For the most part, most procedures with knee I do. The most common procedure is gonna trimming out a piece of the meniscus or a piece of cartilage that's torn the knee, what's called a knee scope. And that's a knee arthroscopy where we go in there for camera through little, two little small poke holes and look around the knee. And so, orthopedics has advanced significantly over the course of the last 20 years where we are doing more minimally invasive surgery where we can just go through and look at in an item in a joint through small little poke holes. And so I do a lot of that. And so ACL reconstructions, the main ligament in the knee that's injured. I see a lot of the surgery I love to do because you can get high level athletes who aren't able to perform. You can get them back to perform at an extremely high level and just about, you know, within a year or so they really can get back into doing a lot of what they want to do. Same with shoulder problems. I do minimally invasive shoulder arthroscopy or shoulder scopes with rotator cuff tears and other problems of ligaments that are torn such as the labor room, which was torn when your shoulder dislocates or your shoulders slips out of socket. And then we're doing that with knee replacements as well for older individuals. And that's another very good procedures because within six to 12 weeks, patient who was really not able to get around for a significant amount of pain are able to be very functional and keep up everybody else by three months and they're really doing really well. So I like knee replacements for that reason as well. Dr. Berry: Alright, and let's talk because of course, you know that I have that contingent of Lunch and Learn members who don't want to do no surgery, right? So they always want to know, the nonsurgical things that you can help me with to try to get that function in that quality life back as much as possible. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So the tend to treating most orthopedic problems non-operatively is by decreasing inflammation and strengthening. And we decrease inflammation with first modifying your activities. If there's something that is causing you to have a pain or have a problem, you gotta cut back on that or stop that activity or alter or do it with a different way. And that's something that most people don't really think about. Like for instance, I am taking a boxing class and with my son and he did, we went to the for the first time yesterday, but I've been doing it for about six weeks now and hitting the bag over over the course of, you know, even one class over an hour you can develop some wrist pain and just have some, just kind of really hurts. And he was trying to, after I saw him kind of wrapping it straps tighter in the class and afterwards, yeah, he say, he told me, “dad my hands and my wrists were hurting after the class”. And I was like, well you were just punching the bag too hard and just kind of back off on that and then it'll start to feel better and soon you'll be able to start getting better and be able to hit the back harder and do more. But you've got to start slow and then gradually build up. And so most people, when they first started to do something, they're overzealous and doing it too quickly or too much weight. They're moving or pressing or doing it just doing too much. And so, you know, gradually begin your activities. But if you're already in pain, then you want to cut back. The other things that we can do are decreasing the inflammation with anti-inflammatory medicines. The most common medicines that we use or Ibuprofen and Naproxen, which is also a leaves. And so those anti-inflammatory medicines are really helpful because they worked at the source of decreasing the inflammation where the problem is. Tylenol is also helpful but that's more of a pain pill that kind of works in the brain, blood pain in the brain. But it still can be very helpful, especially for those who may have stomach problems and go get stomach upset from anti-inflammatory medicine. So those are the most common things. And then we can start thinking about strengthening. Physical therapy is very helpful. A lot of people who put there because they feel like I go to work, I do a lot of walking around. I got therapy on my own. But they don’t do specific things to strengthened specific muscle group that would help them. You know, I was a victim of this as well. I was having some back issues at the joint, my back, my pelvis bone, my SI joint. The therapist were telling me, look, you just got to do some core strengthening, strengthening your abdominal muscles and your back muscles and you'll get better. And I was like, hey, I'm running a lot and doing it all this stuff and that it really, it wasn't helping. As soon as I started doing my core exercises, it started and that was, this was years and since I started doing my core exercises, it went away. So I'm a victim of that, but there's a specific treatment for in therapists are really helpful for many, many, many problems, you know. Then after that we got with different types of injections, the most common injection that we use for a knee arthritis or any type of arthritis or inflammation is cortisone to steroid medicine and decrease the inflammation. And that can be extremely helpful for patients with many different problems. In certain places that we can do injections of cortisone and there are certain places that were not able to do injections as well. Dr. Berry: You know what's interesting, I remember as a medical student when I went to my first mission trip and we had multiple disciplines there, so it was medical, dental, pharmacy, OT, PT and all these. And it was like the first time that I was able to kind of realize like, oh wow, like the therapy folks. Like actually we were planning this on work because I just never, obviously I never interacted with them, so I never knew how much work it actually did. And of course now as a hospital physician, I know they're extremely important, one getting my patients out the hospital. (That’s for sure.) And especially if I take care of a lot of the post-operative patients from orthopedic standpoint. One of the first things they're doing is they're consulting internal medicine, but they're not consulting physical therapy, occupational therapy, right? Like it's like we got to get the ball rolling as early as possible, which is always an interesting thing too. Like, especially from a hospital standpoint. Like, oh, you guys can like replace the knee, replace the hip and folks are like up and walk him in like that day. Like it's not even like literally that day people are already I got to walk. I had to go to the bathroom. Dr. Jason Hammond: Things are changed from that standpoint significantly. When I was first in my training back in the early two thousands patients would routinely stay in the hospital for three days for knee replacements at the minimum, sometimes five days. And now we're doing outpatient knee replacements where you go home the same day and so not the majority of them, but a lot of patients basically going home the same day. But at that they're just staying overnight. So in therapy is really important for that. Dr. Berry: So especially when we talk about things to change, I kind of alluded in the beginning. One of the things I like about you is the fact that you document, like I ain't talking about the hysteroscopy and the ligament tear. I've seen you do videos on that. Right? I want to start there. Right? What made you like say, you know what, I want to start documenting the amazing stuff I do because I think most people are like usually taking them back. Like, oh my God, that's what I need. And that's what it looks like inside of me. Like it's again, I'm in the field and I still get interested in seeing that type of stuff. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So it's very interesting. It's something that, there's a lot of things that kind of came together for me to really start doing that. One is, you know, guess we'll talk later. I have an entrepreneurial side and there's some things that I really wanted to be able to do, but I also need you to be comfortable with social media. Be comfortable with either talking on the platform or educating or just in general it'd be comfortable having people, you know, followed me. Facebook and Instagram and you know, and opening myself up. All the stuff that comes with it. Right? So I had to kind of get over that and cause for many years I didn't even have a Facebook account. But I knew that if you're going to do you think from an entrepreneurial standpoint you should probably learn social media because that's the way things are going now. I had to do that. So then I had to figure out, okay, what am I going to do that good at? That might be an easy transition into this field. And so I decided that I think I'm going to give people a peek into my world and what I like to do. And so as I started to, I started off with just kind of talking about some of the things that I like. Started talking about things that we've been talking about as well. What we kind of treat things to operatively, non-operatively. But I felt in some of the people, some of the comments I got were, is there something that we can be able to see? Is that, I thought that would be really interesting. And I thought about it. I would have loved when I was going in learning and wanting to be orthopedic surgeon. I would love to be able to see, okay, what is it that you actually do? Because I didn't get any of that until my third year of medical school. Right? So, and now I have students from medical, from middle school to high school in College. Everybody, people were interested in medicine, medicine orthopedics, but at least they get a chance to see kind of what this is and you know on the side, oh that's nothing that I don't want to do at all or it's pretty cool. I might be interested. So from that standpoint, that's the reason why I really started doing that. And my patients have been very supportive. They like to be able to, first of all, when I asked the patient if they would mind, you know, me videoing them, it seemed that we consent for that in our surgical procedures. And also, you know, it's all plan. I don't. It's all confidential and everything else. Dr. Berry: Yeah. I talked about the hip hop monster before. You definitely don’t want to step hip hop monster toes. (That's for sure.) Anytime you see, I always have timelines as well. Like hey, if y'all seen me post, I talk about a patient and do this, easily leave. I've asked that patient multiple times and I have it written down. I might have it videotaped that yes I have permission to talk about it. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yes indeed. And so it is definitely important and I found that most patients actually love it. They love to be able to help others. They don't mind being able to share. I haven't really interviewed any patients about their problem. What I've done is when I'm in the office, you know, I'll be the one that's talking, you now have them move their leg or do something. But they really liked the fact that okay I'm educating others because you know, this is something that they had to learn about the hard way actually get injured to learn about this and they probably would be fine not knowing about it cause they don't want to be entered in the first place. But you know, I've had a lot of patients who have actually gone on my page because they've had the same problem. And I was like, look, I've posted about this. If you want to see it now, most patients don't want to see a surgery before they had the surgery. They’ll wait until after the surgery. They just don't when that anxiety. But I really have gotten a lot of good feedback from patients. Dr. Berry: I love it. Yeah. And it's so funny cause even on this podcast I have patients all the time who want to come and talk about their story and I have had one of my patients actually that was a former teacher of mine and she talked about her breast cancer diagnosis and kind of go into that process. But it is very interesting that patients really do like being a part of this process. Like it's not something that most patients shy from, which was always a scary thing because I thought like, oh my God, the patients don't want to do it. But you get more and more. And I guess while I'm over social media, I'm not sure what it is, but more and more people who actually kind of want to do it and want to be a part of it. They want to be able to say like, hey, that's my knee right there. Dr. Jason Hammond: I haven't really had to make a big leap though and get out of my comfort zone because I didn't know how it was going to go. I didn't know where, you know, how patients were going to react, how my colleagues were going to react, how just the whole social media universe, people will say all kinds of stuff. So I was really nervous and then, it took a couple of months for me to kind of get my groove and say, okay, people are digging this or something. I'm actually providing a service for folks and this kind of, it's gonna grown from there. Dr. Berry: So the thing, this is my most important, this is the part I love about this podcast, right? Then I'm able to bring guests and I have kind of two hats, right? Like I have the, obviously the physician hat. I do this medical thing. I do it well. Right? And then I have the entrepreneur hat that loves to see physicians really step outside themselves and like, and really kind of say like, hey, like I'm more than just a physician right? Shout out to Dr. Nii Darko, Docs Outside The Box. Right? Like so and actually I said podcasts, probably should be out. Let's talk about Dr. Hammond the entrepreneur, right? Because I'm very interested, right? Like, especially when I see a physician who able to kind of stand within our laurels, within their profession, but say, you know what, I want to do more. A lot of times I get a lot of physicians who want to do more outside of medicine, but you actually are doing more still within it. And I think that's even more like, oh wow. Nice. So let's talk about like air support first, right? Let's talk about AireSupport. Then we're going to talk about your patented invention, which is crazy to me that you actually have an intervention that you were able to patent. It's just crazy because again, as a physician going to medical school, this isn't something we're taught. Unfortunately. I wish it was like, I wish that someone would say like, hey, take this business side of courses so you can, you know, do, do, do, do. We're like you gotta have mentioned his patent, so we're going to talk about that. Let's talk about AireSupport and kind of lean in to the invention you got. Yeah, so AireSupport is a company that I started to kind of help within orthopedics. It is a company that will produce orthopedic braces and I've started off with the posture corrector. I launched a lumbar support brace with a hot cold pack. Then I've got a shoulder brace in, a hip brace coming up. It was really created it because I had developed another product that I'm still in the development process for Bunion pain. Back maybe two or three years ago, I was learning how to ski and I was getting really into skiing. And with skiing you've got to wear the ski boots that are very, I would say tight because have your foot kind of sloshing around with the skis at move with your body and your leg and as one. And my boots were a little too tight and I'd developed a Bunion and I'm on the inner part of my foot right at the base of my big toe. And it was, it was extremely painful. I've never had anything like that. And it was painful to have to wear shoes because any pressure against my foot would hurt. I was training for a half marathon at that time and I couldn't even run. So I'll go with the product that would push the shoe away from the Tinder area on my foot. So I would be able to walk. And it works really well and then decided, okay, I want to be able to figure out how can I develop this and distributed myself. I didn't know anything about marketing or I didn't have any distribution channels or anything like that. And you know as this was during the same time I was trying to invent my other products and but I decided that I didn't want to license this one out. I wanted to kind of do it myself. So that's what AireSupport was born because I needed to develop a model for me to launch products and have a distribution channel. And I decided to go with Amazon and so learning how to find the products that I would like to sell, finding a manufacturer and another country halfway around and around the world and China and going through developing it to my specifications and then having them, the, you know, manufacturers and then getting it shipped to the US and that's a whole another story now for the terrorist that… Dr. Berry: I'll guess I'll say I was like terrorists doing thing. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. That's going to be another factor. And then we have getting into the States and then getting into Amazon and then getting into all the different customers and been advertising and all that stuff. But to back up a little bit, I really wanted to start something where I wasn't dependent on working to make money. I wouldn't, depending on actually having to physically be somewhere to make a dime, because you're limited. You have a ceiling. You can only work so many hours a day. I have two hands and two feet and one mouth. Depending on what your industry is, there's only so much you can do during the day and that is your cap. You can hire employees and other things, but then you're limited based on your number of employees. But you know too, there's a difference between being an employee yourself, being self-employed, which is you've got the luxury of just owning your own job and you can do what you want, but you still are limited in the amount of hours that you can work. And there's a great book by Robert Kiyosaki called Cashflow Quadrant that I love. Dr. Berry: Oh, I love that book. (Yeah. Awesome.) That when you go on from E, to S, to the B. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yes. So going to that side, when you become a business owner or an investor, then that opens your door and there's no limit on the amount of income that you can create. But it's not that simple because we're not taught this anywhere. I mean, we're not taught that in schools and that's Robert Kiyosaki's mission to teach people how to do this kind of thing. So I was trying to create ways to be able to invest in and start businesses that would work for me that I wouldn't have to work in. And going through a lot of trial and error for a lot of different types of things. I said, I decided, look, I'm wanting to do what I know best. What do I know? Okay. I know orthopedics. So let me go within that niche because we know that other thing, we started a restaurant, we've done some real estate. I wrote a book recently. I've done a lot of different things but so I wanted to work in my orthopedic field and that's kind of really how that was born in my inventing started to come about and how AireSupport was born. Dr. Berry: And so let's talk about the invention, right? Because again, Lunch and Lean community, all of the links to AireSupport, invention, will all be in the show notes, so you'll definitely get a chance to look. And of course, especially his Instagram, right? If you've got to choose one thing to follow, right, you follow his Instagram so you can see the videos. I'm not sure are the videos on Facebook too? I know I just followed you on Instagram, so I don’t know if the… Dr. Jason Hammond: I’m post the same thing in Facebook. (Okay.) It is harder to scroll on Facebook than Instagram. Dr. Berry: That's interesting. So you know, if you gotta choose one, follow the Instagram. His Instagram is great sight to see. So let's talk about this invention. Right? Because again, I'm always, I'm like wow, the invention, that's crazy. That's just crazy to me to take it to that level. But I could see you if you're already in that mindset where you're trying to get to the point where you don't, and this probably hits home harder for a surgeon where your bread and butter is with your hands doing a procedure, doing the work. But again, you can only do a procedure on one person at a time. Right? So that's that. So regardless of how much you get paid to do that, you can only do it at four o'clock. You can only do it on one person like that. You can't do it on 10 people at the same time. Right? But when you expand yourself and you get these businesses and you get this, then you're able to kind of serve so many people all at the same time and not take your time away. Which I think is the biggest commodity as a physician that we don't realize we have that we give away, unfortunately. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So you know, being an inventor, I felt like I was on an island because I never knew anybody who invented anything. Or people say they invented stuff, but you know that really all I thought about that, oh yeah, I should have done that. Somebody stole that idea from me. But nobody's really doing anything that I knew of so I had to kind of walk through the weeds myself and just kind of swimming through mud, trying to figure out where do I even start. And I always have an eye, you know, whenever I look at something, I was like, how can I make this better? Or this gotta be a better way to do something to do this. And then something a little bit more seriously in then I say okay. If I see something and I wanted to see how I make it better than I would Google it and say, okay, is this thing already out there? And then the vast majority of times somebody has already done it, somebody is already figured it out or how to make this better or kind of come up with the idea or something like that. And so I started doing it in a surgery as well. What is it that I can do to make this procedure better? Or just getting some technical pearls. And I started working on the actual procedure and making the procedure easier for me to do. That's where anything that I was inventing. I was just inventing slick ways to do a knee replacement, how, you know, like a little trickier, a little trick there. And then, for shoulder arthroscopy in particular, there we are working through these little small poke holes in the skin. And what happens is we got to get these little thin instruments through the skin and the muscle into the joint. And in order to do that we've got to make a little conduit to be able to get the instrument in and out easily so it doesn't get snagged the tissue. And so there's kind of, which are called cannolis and the vast majority of these cannula are hard plastic and a lot of them are clear plastic. So it's kind of like taking a paper towel to the role and side of the paper towel or toilet paper. It's like similar to that or like a straw even on a smaller scale. And you and so it pushes the tissue away and you can go in and out of the cylinder and easily, if I getting snagged on tissue. There is a company that made a soft of this, made out of silicone and there's some benefits to the soft one because when you have your instrument in the tissue, through cannula and in the joint. You can move the instrument around a lot easier because it's not restricted by the hard cannula. The problem with trying to put this soft cannula into this portal is that you got to jam it in there. You got to clamp it on and then you jam it into the joint and that was very frustrating because the clamp, it would dislodge from the clamp because it slip off. It would just not go where you want it to go. Dr. Berry: The technical aspects of that is as loose as it should. Dr. Jason Hammond: No, it was matte. A lot of surgeons that are not even use cannula, because cannula is hard to get in and I'll stick with the original one. The original one are fairly easy. You just kind of shove it in and then it's in there. But the flimsy ones are not. So that was very frustrating for me and I was talking to some other surgeons and like, yeah, that they also had the same issue with it. And so I decided I was going to talk to company and see if we can come up with an idea to be able to get this cannula in there a little bit better. So I went and talked with the company and they were, they were, you know, kind of lukewarm because they get hundreds of doctors talking to them about inventions all the time. It's just there like, okay, what do you got? Majority of people don't have anything real that they can work with. And so they said, okay, we can, I like the concept and this. So they decided to start doing a little prototype. And the prototype that they came up with didn't work. Kind of tore, the silicone was pretty soft and then whenever you're inserting it would tear the silicone. So they abandoned, they're like, no, we're not going to climb up at this. You're going to do it on your own. And so I had to come up with a design and then figured out how to get it to work. And you know, what I came up with was, you know, a weight. So if you take a string, it's hard to push a string, but you can and get it to go anywhere because it fold up. But if we pushed it back into the string and folds up, but if you take the front end of the string and you pull it, then it can go wherever you want it to go. So what I did was if you take like a paper clip and you kind of put a little bit of the string in the paper clip, then you can pull the string where you want to go. And if you have it. And so if you can imagine that paperclip with the string and then going into tissue, the string, this folds and then you can pull it into the joint. Well, something similar to what I developed. I had a little stick device with the oval cutout similar to a paper clip and you just put the cannular inside of that oval cutout and then you just kinda pull it into the joint and it works. And it really was, you know, it was something that I wasn't expecting this to work so well actually. (Any doubts at first?) So at first I had like a sliding device that would pinch it in place. And whenever a pinched them in place and I put it into the joint, they would tear every time. So I just got rid of the sliding device that we're pinching the place and just like the whole open and just kind of have us sit in the hole. And then it just went in and it will pop three and a slide the tick out. And every time it would work. And so I took it back to Arthrex and they worked for us is the company that I decided to work with and they said, this is really nice. Let me just, let's take it to some of our surgeons have having come in evaluated. And the overwhelming majority of the surgeons really liked it. It was a big difference compared to the previous. And then they decided, okay, so then they decided to, before I really worked with them though, I put in the provisional patents, so I got some protection and then the patent office actually granted me the pen because it was a unique and novel and then the aspects at the licensed the product from, and so with licensing, you know, every time a product is sold, get a royalty from that. And so, and they, you know, Arthrex is a worldwide company and so. (I love it.) It's starting to grow. I just, we just got the first products out in September and every quarter. I see that it's growing and growing. Dr. Berry: Do you have any promotion with it or is the company essentially kind of like man in that? Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, so the beauty of licensing is the company takes care of everything. You just sit back and you know, you don't have to really do much at all. You know, I can talk about the invention at the level of people know about it, but they're doing most of the marketing and promoting. That now there's pluses and minuses to that because they have full control. You get paid less because they've got full control. Right. But that's with any royalty agreement, they pretty much, you give them the rights to pretty much own the crowd, even though you, I do own the patent and everything, you give them the rights to promote and do everything else, you know? So that's, that's the pluses and minuses of doing something on your own versus licensing it. But this isn't a product that I would be able to promote on my own anyway because it's directly… Dr. Berry: It’s the niche that is in that you would need someone like within that circle to be able to kind of do whatever, yes, I love it. Absolutely love it. Like that's the level ingenuity. I love to see out of our physicians and I hope someone listens to this, especially, you know, our physician colleagues and they say, wow, you know what, let me get off my butt. Right? Because I've been talking about that same like I shouldn't have did this. I should've did that. And how long was this process? Right? Just to give people an idea. Was this like a year? 10 years? Dr. Jason Hammond: I first started talking to Arthrex in 2000. I first started the idea in 2015 and I went to them and so that was like around January, February, 2015. And I went to them in April of 2015. And they decided to do a product and then the status and it didn't work for them. So they abandoned it and then I figured it out. And then in like early 2016 I went back to them with the, with the product and then they said, okay, we're going to license it. So we signed a contract in September of 2016 and the product didn't get launched until September of 2018. So it was a three year process. But you know the time was going to go regardless. (Exactly. Oh thank you.) Yeah, whether I was going to work on it and not, it was still going to be 2018 and that would have been looking back like man, I should have did that. Dr. Berry: I should have did that in 2016 I should have started and now 2018 and I'm still talking about starting. I like it. Dr. Jason Hammond: Exactly. But it's not an easy process. It takes time and you know, out of hundreds of thoughts and ideas, maybe five will be worth pursuing and then out of those five, maybe 0.5 will actually pan out. But it is worth it and it's something that you get some level of satisfaction as well when we accomplish something that people haven't done. Dr. Berry: Wow. So again, first of all, thank you for serving as that lead because again, I really do feel that you're probably going to motivate some physicians, some medical students, some premed, not only to go into orthopedics or just to go on medicine in general just because they're seeing amazing things you're doing. But then say like, oh, I can do a step further. So, and I appreciate you serving as the pioneer and you know, putting your foot out there and say like, I'm ready to go and put some work yet. So definitely thank you for that. Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah, sure. Thank you. Dr. Berry: So of course, before you know, obviously I catch you long here, so before I let you go, is there anything like, because this is like, I call this the promo hour for my guests, right? Is there anything like, are you kind of alluded to the book, I know you have an illustration, but like you kind of alluded to the book, you kind of alluded to some, what are the things you have out there that people may be able to consume? And you know, obviously most important thing is where can we get this stuff? Cause that's obviously going to be in the show notes, but let the folks know where can they find some of this stuff to be able to kind of look up and see how you're doing? Dr. Jason Hammond: Sure. I have written a book on stem cell used for joint pain. So for people who want to know what that is all about and trying to do conservative treatments instead of going after a knee replacement and they want to know what stem cells are and what they're not. Or you can find that in the book and sign. So you can go to my author page, just amazon.com backslash author backslash Dr. Jason Hammond or even just go to amazon.com and search for Dr. Jason Hammond. And the book is called the GUUD book. And that’s G U U D. The GUUD Book on Stem Cells for Joint Pain. And if you're interested in some lumbar support, braces, hot and cold gel packs or pasta correctors, you can go airesupport.com and A. I. R. E. S. U. P. P. O. R. T. There's a 20% discount Promo code on that as well. Just, you know, like I said, follow me on Instagram or Facebook. You just go to Dr. Jason Hammond, to search with that and you'll find me there. Dr. Berry: Love it. So I always ask my guests this question, how can what you do help empower really others to really take better care of their physical joint, bone health, all of that? Dr. Jason Hammond: Yeah. So you know, I think that decreasing your stress in your life is huge. For mental health and for physical health. And I think a major stressor is your financial health. If you can get your financial health together in that being significant debt, try to start a business. You have an alternative forms of income that will, if you can be debt free, that will take so much stress out of your life as a person out of your marriage, out of your… or with your kids, all kinds of stuff. So just try to find a niche that you're interested in and then get rid of that stress in your life from money. Money should not be a stressor. It should be an avenue for you to be able to help others. You know? I think also just stay active and you know, that's what I try to help other people to do. Stay physically active. But go we, when you start running or you start getting in the gym, whatever it goes slow start with at, it’d been gradually built up. And so, you know, you want to have emotional health, you want to have financial health. You want to be physically healthy and you're gonna really be able to impact your family, your community your future. If you can do all those things. Dr. Berry: Perfect. And of course my family would kill me right if I didn't get you to talk about this. Of course, we're actually recording this the day after game five of the NBA finals. It's so funny because I was like, oh, you know what, I was actually talking to a sports medicine specialists like tomorrow. The conspiracy theory that's running around my house now, right? Is that Kevin Durant always had an Achilles injury and he just like reinjured it, right? Like they pushed him that. I feel like he had a calf injury at first and then he got to kill his injury, right? Like you're obviously, this is you, right? This is your field. This is your Ballpark, right? Like and again, I'm not sure if you watch basketball, but like what? Dr. Jason Hammond: So I didn't see the, you know, I saw the injury, the replay. I wasn't watching it when it first happened. It's hard to tell from a replay where, what and stuff like that. The most common calf strain as you get is a caching and the actual muscle belly just below the muscle belly where you know where the lump on your calf muscle is right in the mid-calf. That's the most common place where you can get a calf strain and that usually will heal on its own with just rest. But usually can take up to four weeks or so, a while for that to heal up. And you know, I don't know exactly where he reinjured it, but they said Achilles that is further mess further down, you know, near the heel bone at that core right behind your ankle. And so that is significantly more severe injury than a calf sprain that is higher up. They could have been trying to say that it was not as bad as it was. I think that he probably had more of a strain right at the tendon muscle junction before. It's hard to know if this is something that if he needs surgery for this, this isn't that good. And I think he probably, I wouldn't think, I would think he reinjured the same thing. This is probably worse. It's probably, it would be really unfortunate to have a completely separate injury right on in the same leg. That it's probably something that's made the initial injury worse. But this is significantly an unfortunate. Obviously I don't have the MRI records of what happened to him but if he had a separate Achilles injury that would be, you know, that would be devastating for him. Dr. Berry: And I think that's where conspiracy theorists are going because they're like, well, he always had the ice closer to his, the bottom of the foot and not really near the meat, you know the calf. So they always assumed it was the Achilles and then they pushed them out too far. This is what's going on the social media sphere as we speak. Dr. Jason Hammond: This is significant. I think he may have been pushed too soon cause they can take a while for this calf to get better for sure. Dr. Berry: I know I have to ask that question because I knew they were going to like what are you, why you didn’t ask him yet? Dr. Jason Hammond: Oh I understand. This is big. Somebody thinks he's the best in the world. So this is this a big hit for him especially during is a new contract year. Dr. Berry: Alright. So again, thank you Dr. Hammond for coming on and really just enlightened and encouraging and empowering Lunch and Learn community with giving self together physical health to bone health, joint health and then really kicking up the entrepreneurial spirit here as well and letting us know that it definitely more you can do within all of the great stuff that you're doing. Dr. Jason Hammond: Well appreciated Dr. Berry, thanks for having me. Thing you need, you know, I'm here for you. Anything Lunch and Learn community needs from me, they can reach out to me, they can direct message me or reach out to me through you. I’m here for them. Dr. Berry: Perfect. Perfect. Again, ladies and gentlemen, we will see you guys next week. Again, remember, subscribe. Tell a friend and tell a friend and please fall out a hammer. Like I said, like especially if you're not gross at home. If you’re gross, obviously don't blame me for it, right? But if you not, most of the people I follow at, definitely worth the follow for sure. [/showhide]

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