Dr. Nick Athens has spent 42 years building a chiropractic practice in San Carlos, California — and by his own account, the early years happened the slow way. Giving talks that got rejected roughly eight times out of ten, then following through hard enough on the two-out-of-ten who said yes that they told their friends, who told their friends. In conversation with Mark Anthony, he described that grind as the foundation for everything that came after: decades of watching patients arrive following the same handful of patterns, and learning to guide people out of those patterns faster than a doctor who simply tells them what to do.
That approach shows up in how he runs his office today — less a single treatment room than what he called "a body shop," combining chiropractic adjustments with massage therapy, guided stretching, and rehabilitation tools. And it's the throughline of his new book, which he described as an attempt to simplify the connection between mental and physical health into habits ordinary people can actually stick with — not another list of supplements to buy.
Key Takeaways
- Dr. Athens has practiced chiropractic for 42 years, and in 1990 he gave Joe Montana a chiropractic adjustment on a pre-Super Bowl television special — an appearance he says helped bring chiropractors onto training staffs across professional sports.
- His new book centers on training the brain's subconscious "autopilot" system — which he says handles roughly 90–95% of our mental operating system — to generate calm from the inside rather than leaning on outside coping mechanisms like alcohol, sugar, or medication.
- He shared low-cost, practical habits from the book: correcting sleep position, monitoring hydration through urine color, breathing through the nose instead of the mouth, and building a personal "accountability team" of instructors or workout partners.
- Athens read a passage from the book on the downstream effects of chronically elevated cortisol, including immune suppression, anxiety, sleep disruption, and increased susceptibility to illness.
- He frames the book around "proactive aging" instead of "reactive aging" — describing his own routine at 66, which still includes international hiking trips and bike touring.
Chiropractic's Joe Montana Moment
The turning point in Athens' career, as he tells it, happened almost overnight. In 1990, 49ers quarterback Joe Montana let him perform a chiropractic adjustment live on a pre-Super Bowl television special — an appearance Athens estimates was worth a couple million dollars in free publicity, on top of roughly ninety seconds of national airtime. He wasn't the only chiropractor practicing at the time, but he says being the one associated with Montana changed how the profession was perceived almost overnight: "if it's good enough for Joe, it's good enough for me."
Athens read a line from the book's foreword, written by Montana himself, crediting him as a trailblazer whose work is part of why most professional sports teams now have chiropractors as part of their training staff. Athens was careful to frame the moment as bigger than his own practice — he pointed to NFL, MLB, and NBA teams that employ chiropractors today as evidence the profession moved into the mainstream in the years that followed, something he says wasn't the case before that broadcast.
Two Brains, One Organ: Training the Mind's "Autopilot" for Calm
Much of the conversation centered on a distinction Athens returns to throughout the book: a conscious brain, which he estimates handles only 5–10% of our mental activity, and a subconscious "autopilot" brain that runs the rest — and only knows what it's been taught. He described most people managing stress from the outside in, reaching for alcohol, sugar, tobacco, or medication to chase the same dopamine and endorphin hit the brain is already wired to want. His argument in the book is that the same feel-good chemistry can be triggered from the inside out, through movement, breathing, and what he calls staying in "the eye of the storm" — a state of calm maintained even while chaos continues around you.
"If you can stay in this calm and make it part of your life, all this chaos isn't as intense. It's not as magnified. It slows down, and you're able to live more of that calm."
— Dr. Nick AthensHe connected this directly to decision-making, arguing that a calmer nervous system leads to clearer choices and, over time, changes that ripple into a patient's relationships. He described patients telling him their marriages improved and their households felt calmer once chronic pain and stress were addressed together rather than separately.
Practical Tools From the Book: Sleep, Breathing, Hydration, and Community
Beyond the mindset work, Athens walked through several concrete, low-cost habits covered in the book:
- Sleep position: he said many patients sleep on their stomachs, which torques the body, and that correcting sleep position alone can meaningfully improve rest and, in turn, immune function.
- Hydration: rather than drinking only when thirsty, he recommends monitoring urine color — aiming for pale yellow to clear — to keep the body's tissue "flexible and pliable."
- Breathing: he flagged mouth breathing under stress as counterproductive, and teaches patients to breathe through the nose, particularly during high-intensity interval training, which he recommends for heart health.
- Community: pointing to research on "blue zone" populations who live to 100, he described building a personal "accountability team" — hiking partners, a Tai Chi or yoga class, workout friends — as a realistic counterbalance to the brain's distorted self-perception, similar to the role a coach plays for an athlete.
He also described his office's referral network, sending patients to massage therapists, stretching specialists, and instructors in yoga, Pilates, and martial arts depending on what they need — rather than assuming every issue calls for a supplement or a medication. On outcomes, Athens said roughly 98% of the patients who come to his practice get well, a figure he attributes to referrals and reviews built over decades rather than advertising.
Proactive Aging, Not Reactive Aging
Athens read a passage from the book describing what happens when cortisol stays elevated for long stretches — a state he said is common for many people around the clock. He listed effects including suppressed immune response, headaches, anxiety and depression, sleep issues, high blood pressure, heart disease, autoimmune conditions such as lupus, memory and concentration problems, digestive issues, diabetes, and weight gain. One habit from the book he singled out: stepping away from the news for a few days, or even a few weeks, to see how much easier it becomes to stay calm.
He tied this back to his own life at 66 — still hiking, still bike touring, with trips to the Acropolis and Italy's Dolomites among the ones he mentioned — as an example of what he calls "proactive aging": building good habits early rather than waiting until health problems force a change. Asked what he hoped to accomplish with the book, Athens said his goal wasn't recognition for the writing itself, but for readers actually using what's in it — he joked he'd want to win "the implementation award."
He also pointed listeners toward the guidance he shares on Instagram, where he posts under the handle "Better From Within."
