Head Injury: it feels so good when you stop.

In many ways, looking around at my fellow bloggers, the lovely people who write in, hell some of the people I meet on the street, I feel a bit like a fraud.

Really.

I’ve been depressed, sure. Cried at work, check. Stayed in house for extended periods of time, check. Almost lost job, check. Generally listless and lacking joy or motivation in almost any area, check. Totally emotionally vulnerable and reactive, check.

But really all that pales in comparison to what some of the people out there live through, are living through, would sometimes rather die than live another day of…seriously. What they “live” with is staggering.

Some of the worst sufferers? People with traumatic brain injury. TBI can cause everything I experience with ADD or depression times ten, with a touch of blinding headache, personality change, and memory loss, just to sweeten the deal. Or worse.

But here’s the thing.

I don’t care.

[Stay with me here…I’m pausing for dramatic effect]

I can empathise, sympathise, and many other ises, I’m human.

But we humans are all about the me, the I, and possibly the us, but mostly the first two. Because when it comes down to it, we’re trapped in here.

We have these marvelous machines that do all our seeing, smelling, thinking, feeling, and a million other jobs for us. They’re so important in fact, that we have to protect them by locking them away in a pitch black, bone-encased, fluid-cushioned cave. And that’s where they stay. Every so often one of our sense organs, or a nerve bundle, will send our big ol’ brain a message, just to let it know how things are going on the outside. But for all intents and purposes, that sucker’s doing the equivalent of a life sentence in solitary, without so much as the occasional conjugal visit from one of the other inmates (it does get the imaginary porn channel though so it’s not all bad).

And it doesn’t like it one bit.

Want to know how much your brain hates being trapped in there? Try what’s called a sensory deprivation tank. Like a seven-foot coffin filled with body-temperature water. You lie in it with a face mask or ear plugs, they shut the sound-proof door and voila…nothing…nothing…still nothing…um a little more nothing…no sound, no light, not much feel…nada. After a little while, your brain gets sick of not getting any input and starts making shit up. I kid you not. It is SO desperate to not be trapped in there without reading material that it just starts to make up visions, images, smells, whatever it has to to stop from going insane.

That’s crazy! who would design such an insane system? Of course we should have our brains on the outside. In neat transparent bubbles with little holes and stuff so it could see and hear everything without this complex eye and ear junk.

Unfortunately the world is a cruel place and the whole brain on the outside thing would pretty much guarantee that you wouldn’t survive falling off the couch, never mind a grade three classroom or a New York sidewalk.

So, despite a solid potential career as a Star Trek (call me geeky, I am so seeing this) extra, this isn’t going to work out. Stuck with the skull prison cell thing.

How do we know about things, trapped in there? Is the tree green? I dunno. I know a bunch of vision nerves told me about this light they saw a little while ago, and some sound nerves told me that some waves in the air were a lot like those other sound waves that happened a long time ago when the vision nerves were seeing those lights that mean “people” making those “talking” noises and one of them made the green noise while it was pointing to something that had the same sort of light coming off it. Was I seeing the same light as the other people shape? Um sure, if that people shape and I have exactly the same brain, with exactly the same eyeball and the same nerves connecting them. So…no, we weren’t. No two people have the same experience of the universe at the same time. We ain’t made that way. In fact it’s a freaking testament to the human social structure that we can talk to each other, never mind build cities, or make rockets, or breed and make more tiny little soon-to-be-messed up humans.

So…it’s a pretty tenuous system, no? There’s an awful lot riding on our skull’s ability to keep the brain intact and functioning. It’s an unbelievable complex system that can be severly damaged by just screaming at it enough (aka emotional abuse). What does actually hitting it do?

Well, when it gets whacked…things get sloppy – fast. We (me and all them doctor-y types) are coming to the realization that many of our most treasured moments on the sport field were the times when we were pounding our brain into a permanent stupor. Really. I don’t think those jocks started out that thick.

More and more, doctors and neuroscientists are seeing that even minor head injury leaves permanent brain damage. Got your bell rung? Had a concussion? Fallen off a horse? Done boxing? Crashed your bicycle without a helmet? Chances are you are now stupider than when you started. You might not notice. It might be subtle. You might be just a bit worse at math. Maybe you just don’t have the memory you had. Or maybe you get irritable easier now.

And maybe you were always like that.

The fact is that this skull of ours is real good at protecting our heads, but not so good at some other things, like being born.

Our heads are now so large in comparison to our hips (I blame the thighmaster) that we may be damaging the brains of our children in the birth process. Lack of oxygen during difficult labour, forceps, the drugs we take to ease the process may all be contributors. Pre and post labour scans show that up to 10 % of infants have significantly changed brainwave patterns immediately before and after birth. So either they are just really impressed with their new view, or one in ten of us got a raw deal at the outset.

Just so we are clear, I’m not talking about you. You’ve never been hit in the head, never played sports, never been in a car crash, and obviously, you work just fine…no way you could be one in ten…

My record is clearly less stellar. Seven years of rugby, playground “accidents” (yes I’m talking to you Patrick), skiing, a minor concussion running around a gym with my head down, getting mugged by a guy with a bat. Any one of these might have seriously affected my ability to function. And brain injury tends to be cumulative. So maybe all of them.

And really, even if you had some minor brain injury, it’s not like you really notice the difference. Why would you actually do anything about it?

Because you can, first off. Neurotherapy has a great success rate helping even major head injuries. One small study noted improvements from 61% to 181% in the functioning of participants with brain injury. It doesn’t repair damage, but it can help your brain train surrounding areas to be the best they can be, taking up some of the slack.

Second, IMHO, it is your god-given right to be the best you can be. If you broke your arm, you’d go to the doctor and get a cast. This is the same thing.

So what I guess I’m saying is…life is hard. Our brains get broken. You don’t have to take that shit lying down.

Wordsworth said “We come into this world trailing clouds of glory, Getting and spending [and getting the smackdown – ed.] we lay waste our powers.”

When I was young, I always wanted to be a super hero with powers and stuff. Now that I have the prospect of fixing some of those brain bumps and bruises we all seem to acquire, I do believe I’m gonna go out and reclaim a bit of that glory. And maybe a cape.

Getting the hang of this…maybe.

Neurotherapy, as it turns out, has the capacity to be as much a roller coaster as anything else in life. For me, what pulls the brake off the beast is the sense of stepping out into a different skin. Then wondering if you get to keep that skin, then feeling like you might, then knowing you can’t possibly, then…God dammit, I tire my self out in a single sentence. How the fuck would anyone else stand being around me for any length of time? It’s good kids have to legally hang around for a while. Just sayin.

*re-reads last* And I may have to reconsider cutting the anti-anger/anxiety placement out of my brainwave cocktail tomorrow…

Part of it is that the process of NT makes you WAY more introspective and self-noticey than certainly I had been. Which as anyone will tell you is pushing the boundaries of human possibility. I figured any more introspection and I would simply implode in an all-about-me singularity. A dark hole from which no compliment escapes.

But no…as so terribly often happens, I seem to have been wrong. I CAN get more introspective.

Way more.

Neuro (at least othmer-style) seems to focus one very strongly on things that had always been taken for granted. You spend a lot of time looking at things you never thought of before, looking for clues to things you never thought could change.

I’m pissed off! (wait. is that really the asshole in the other car, or is it just my brain being generally angry?)

Oh god, do I have to? (hey, what’s up with my frontal cortex today? It was FINE yesterday!)

My leg hurts…(damn, I KNEW I shouldn’t have tried that stupid .003 setting…what the hell was I thinking?)

Emotions, sensations, pain, thoughts – everything – are all now subjects for examination and inclusion in a sort of vast game of chess, combined with hide and go seek, combined with blind man’s bluff, combined with Clue(tm). And possibly one of the more obscure drinking games involving pennies and an athletic supporter. Or not…Hard to tell as I lost consistently and thus have very poor recollection of the rules.

One thing’s for sure though. I do love a mystery. And this is the best one going…

But I’m pretty sure the butler did it.

Dear Timmy, Depression is Trendy!

Humour courtesy of Savage Chickens

So it turns out that the upbeat thing I’m writing about today is the fact that depression blogging is just, like totally hot right now. I suppose that’s a good thing, right?

Apparently, however, the other depression bloggers are edgier than I am and have fans and people who ask for advice and stuff. Which is a little bit depressing…not depressed enough for the high-flying world of depression blogging. How long oh lord…

So…if I want more readers do I spill my guts more? Be randomly cranky? Abuse the people who write in? [couldn’t do that, way too nice] Offer more links to things I think are a bit wonky? Create an agony aunt section for people who write in?

So many options…

I really like that last one though. I hereby promise to feature (anonymously) anyone who writes in and wants their questions answered by a completely random stranger. Honestly. Happy to. Bring it on.

Send your questions to tim@neurowave.ca and prepare to be astounded!

Passion

Here’s a question for the depressed, the trapped, or the merely unmotivated.

What drives us?

Hunger? Fear? Passion?

For now, let’s forget hunger and fear. They’re pretty basic. Solid. They can be shifted, a little, but mostly you have them or you don’t; as solid and ancient and immobile as time and tide.

But passion…ephemeral, exquisite, entrancing passion. It drives us and tears us down. An inside force that pulls like an outside force, a force that can build, or destroy us. Humanity speaks of the drive that comes from passion as an outside influence. We speak of the muses as gods that bestow passion to the lucky few. We speak of those with passion as being blessed.

Perhaps they are, or perhaps they aren’t. They used to kill men, letting them be dragged to death by wild horses. Pure need seems to have pretty much the same effect. Look at van Gogh.

But is that worse than a life lived without passion?

There are some things all humans just know. When a baby is upset, or really hurt. When someone is angry. And being different. Even the challenged kids know when every one else has something that they just don’t seem to possess. They don’t like it either.

I think I lived my whole life wondering what drive looked like from the inside. Pressed up against the storefront glass, watching the way the driven people moved, how they ate, how they spoke. And mostly I played a pretty good game, pretending; I’m not untalented, just uninvolved. But what I saw as I watched, was enticing. You can see what it is…you just can’t touch it. That’s maddening.

[Side note: Is this what television does to us? Does it show us the things we are not, creating an ever-spiralling circle of unfulfilled hunger? Some may disagree, but I don’t think we are bright enough or sufficiently in control of our base selves to truly know, on every level, that it ain’t real.]

Yet none of us are completely devoid of passion, they ebb and flow – and the one thing that always made it possible for me to continue was people. They’re lovely, endlessly fascinating, and when someone around you has passion and drive, it’s almost like you have some yourself. But, in the end, it’s just an act. It burns away and on to the next…you end up skipping across the surface of your life, never really digging in. You never succeed the way you should, and lets’s face it – you never really live.

Perhaps humans are built this way; some leaders, some followers. Perhaps without a sensible ratio, the human race bobs around in billions of tiny boats, bumping hulls, stealing fish and singing “My Way” at the top of our collective lungs.

Whatever the genetic necessity however, it REALLY wasn’t working for me. Clearly a leader, trapped in a follower’s body, like some sort of motivational transvestite. [Yup, I already regret that simile. Too late now, though.]

My cure? Sit on my ass and wait for passion to come. Occasionally do something fun or scary. Against all odds, this worked. Naturally it backfired immediately, but hey, it’s not all pool parties in the Hamptons, is it.

Gods willing, the neuro will help with the rest of it or reduce the level of distraction that forces me to keep finding new sources of passion.

So, if neuro does help…

Is passion the natural human state, absenting sadness and distraction? Can we just reawaken it with technical wizardry? Must we wait for outside forces to provide inspiration or can we, without an ember or a spark to warm, ignite the fire by rubbing sticks?

Does anyone have a match?

PS. Next time I promise to write about something more upbeat. Like brain injury.

Depression – A ten-letter word

Whoops.

This was an inadvertent test of the system. Had this been a real emergency you probably wouldn’t have really noticed but vaguely wondered much later, “gee, I wonder what happened to that guy who was doing that thing with the eeg therapy deal…”

Anyway, in the rush of getting home, getting unpacked, catching up on doing stuff with my children, trying to re-organize the rest of my life, and various other challenges, I just didn’t get my new machine working till last night. [tech geeks – My neurotherapy system is designed for PC – I have a MacBook and needed to get Windows, install Bootcamp, system drivers, etc. Naturally everything was more difficult than it needed to be. Welcome to Windows…]

And it showed. Stopped doing neurotherapy with Sue about a week and a half ago.

Days 1-5 – Course, travel. All running too fast to feel much of anything except the rush of wind past my face.

Day 6 after neurotherapy stopped – still on fire – great list, hyper-organized, everything got done, super motivated, no time for blog but that’s ok.

Day 7 – little bit worse. List not as complete, things slipped off it to the next day – just didn’t get to blog

Day 8 – no list. totally scattered, got one or two things to get machine set up, hit a minor bump, got discouraged – felt like I didn’t have anything to contribute on the blog

Day 9 – tried to make list but couldn’t find pen. Felt really discouraged, questioned reason for doing all this in the first place, got totally down about something pretty minor, got really scared by that which was useful motivation to get the machine going…Got eeg going (yay)…finally did another neurotherapy session at 11 that night, which is really not optimum. Too scared by getting close to the cliff to blog.

Day 10 – Feel great today, writing this blog entry with no problem (notice how it didn’t happen before?), despite having the girls here. Fitting it in between activities and no problem keeping train of thought despite having to activity hop.

Are we noticing a trend?

Anyway, back on track now. This slippage makes me:

A. really convinced neurotherapy’s effects are real and tangible,

B. a bit worried about how long it lasts.

Neither of these is really new though, so…

Let’s talk about the big one.

Depression – Big awful awful word. For many, “you’ve got depression” is just slightly this side of “you have a social disease”. It can mean that you are a total failure and just too damn lazy to pull up your bootstraps and get on with the work of living.

But what if you just weren’t born with boots on? I speak from bitter personal experience when I say that many people have strappy, high-priced six inch stiletto brains. They sure look nice but see how far you get when the terrain gets a bit rocky. [and that’s MISTER Blahnik to you…]

So me, and a whole bunch of others, aren’t particularly lazy, or weak…just a bit tippy. Our brains don’t have a solid base from which to work. And let’s face it: life hits you sideways. Every single time. It would be easier if it were random, or even predictably mean. No…it waits until your mouth is full and your head thrown back before it hits you in the gut. Checking behind you? Wrecking ball…Stage left. Devised a carefully constructed fence with kevlar protection and proximity warning devices? Piano from the fifth floor window above you.

Monty Python once said “No one expects the spanish inquisition!” There’s truth to the fact that some things are so awful we cannot predict them because we cannot bear to look and see them coming. It’s fairly predictable that bad things happen. Life’s…kinda like that. The difference between the depressed and the non-depressed lies in the response to that smackdown. The depressed person feels crushed, unable to get back up, by the strength of the blow. The non-depressed takes the same hit in the same spot, shrugs it off and says “that all you got?” That’s not about bravery, or gumption or hutzpah. It’s about the flexibility of your brain in a stressful situation.

A motivated, flexible and un-depressed person can’t see any of that. So they tend to tell us to just pick ourselves up and keep at it. I know you mean well…it’s not helpful however. Almost nothing is, really. Sometimes you can coax out of depression. Sometimes life gets better while you have your head down. But you’ll drop right down the next time it gets bad.

What to do?

Find friends to help – As mentioned, sometimes this isn’t so helpful, because being fixed doesn’t really make you feel anything except more broken. What we are all looking for in the end is a bit of control in our lives. Being rescued from yourself doesn’t provide this. Sometimes this makes the bad things go away enough that you can get your head up tho – pluses and minuses. It’s just a band aid. Not a fix.

Drugs – SSRIs (prozac et al) will take the edge off, largely by making you not feel the bad things quite so much. I don’t really like this. At some level I think sadness is as fundamental a human right as joy. It would just be nice to be in control of it a little though, to have it not wreck you and leave you all messy for so long. To maybe just be sad, then pick yourself up and walk on when you feel like it. Man that would be great. Also they make me feel sluggish and not quick thinking. Some days that’s all I have, and giving it up is like trading your house for a new car.

Suicide – Although an effective way to prevent yourself from feeling anything at all, forever, this is a sucky option. Please don’t. It is possible to feel joy again. We just need to get your body and brain to cooperate.

Neurotherapy – Neurotherapy stretches the flexibility of your system so that you still feel everything (um…yay?) but it doesn’t wreck you. Leaves you able to take the punches, rock back a bit, regroup and move on…

And moving on, it’s time to take this energy and go play with my girls.

Neurotherapy – Day 11 – Wave Goodbye, Say Hello…

It could just be the neurotherapy talking but, man what a great bunch of people. I’ve been in classes and conferences where you were wondering why the exit door seemed to be moving in slow motion, dreading that someone would catch up with you. I can honestly say that there was not a single person that I met with whom I wouldn’t cheerfully spend a day. Interesting, dedicated, open and open-minded. A good few will be friends, collaborative partners and potentially colleagues for years, I’m quite sure.

So I say goodbye cheerfully, warm in the knowledge that goodbyes and beginnings are two sides of the same coin. Bye, all. LA…well, I’ll see you soon. And San Diego. And Portland…

Clinicians Course – Last Day

Today was the last day of what has to be one of the hardest short courses I have ever encountered.  Honestly, I was boggled by the level, depth and sheer volume of information. Under the general rule of you get as good as you give, this was also one of the most rewarding courses I have ever taken.

Normally there are little spots where you can take a bit of a breather. You know. A quick glaze over and no one will really notice if your head starts to roll a bit. Not such a good plan here. I think I did that once, thinking about something or other, only to snap back into focus hearing a bunch of words that made absolutely no sense whatsoever. None. Like the babel fish just fell out of my ear and breathed its last, leaving me merciless at the hands of a completely incomprehensible Vogon. No one expects their aliens on the smallish side with glasses and a little vest. That’s how they infiltrate.

Anyway, the other 31 hours, 58 minutes were spent in rapt attention. I think I was down to alternating eyes for blinking, just in case. The one exercise where we actually closed them was nearly sinfully lovely.

And let’s use that as a segue into the real heart of the matter:

Did Neurotherapy Work?

Well, let’s look at it from a few angles. Random bursts of excitement and Deus Ex Machining aside, I’ve seen a lot of evidence from a number of sources over the last two weeks:

ME

1. There is no way in hell that I would have been able to devote that kind of focus and attention to anything two weeks ago. No way. In hell. Period. (note – admit to this potentially being in LA doing cool stuff, learning cool things, meeting cool people – see in the long run)
2. I was both focused and engaged. I felt upbeat, excited and happy to be there pretty much every minute. (as per note above)
3. I am actively seeking plans for the future, with some solid, or at least excitingly ephemeral results.
4. I am now hungry three times a day. I increasingly bow to the common understanding that this may be a good thing, although it’s largely a moot point.
5. Although I am hungry, I seem to know when I am full. I worry that the unfinished food may suffer self esteem issues.
6. I just don’t seem to want sugar much anymore. This is ok, but confusing.
7. I am now drunk on one beer. This causes me shame.
8. I have a more general thirst for life that I haven’t seen in far longer than I really want to think about.
9. I haven’t had a migraine in 2 weeks. This is a while, but by no means a record. Bears watching but not conclusive.
10. I seem to be surprisingly sensitive to blood glucose level changes. Minor (minor! – still strange) headache today after big carb lunch, same a s I used to get from beer in the afternoon. This is not a good thing but is clearly a change from my previous last one to the box ‘o cookies is a rotten egg system. Significant negative effect still equals effect. And it’s probably fixable.

OTHERS

1. The other members of the class were not dummies or rubes. There were clear effects using the machines for even the few hours of demonstration time we had.
2. The effects are sufficiently powerful that when people made mistakes during class, the person doing the training clearly felt the effects. Headaches, tight chest, rapid mood swings, clenched jaws, instant grogginess and many other symptoms showed up in the light of our inexperience. Needless to say people learned fast.
3. Also clearly, when the settings were right, the person felt a sense of immense well-being. This would sometimes happen when they didn’t know the settings had been changed.
4. Occasionally settings were changed with a stray elbow or arm. Neither the tester nor the subject knew this. The effects were still extremely obvious and had to be corrected quickly.

FACTS AND FIGURES

1. There is solid, published research behind it, on lots of test subjects but no where near the numbers that exist in pharmacuetical studies – the cash just ain’t there.
2. The Othmers have compiled data on several thousand cases the clinic has dealt with. These numbers seem solid and in several cases really, really impressive.

Looking at it skeptically, there are still many areas where I want more knowledge, more facts, more understanding of what’s happening and why. Then again, I also don’t know how an MRI works, or even that Blizzard machine at Dairy Queen. They still do the job.

I never take statistics as proof of anything. Spent too many years making them dance to believe them in isolation. Once they start to get confirmed by real world test subjects (or as I like to think of the class, my fellow guinea pigs), I start to think hmmmm…maybe.

And once I feel them myself, I hope.

I truly believe that this has had a significant effect on me. I feel like a new man, utterly and completely. As I continue to work with Sue from Victoria, we will see how these effects settle, build, change and last. Once I know all that, well… I will find a good avenue to do this for other people. No question about that. It’s a gift.

Stay Tuned,

Same Bat-channel, Same Bat-place (that one’s for you, Darla)

Neurotherapy Day 10 – Deus ex machina!

Ok – that’s over the top, even for me, but very excited about the neurotherapy system I bought today to take home and work with (in consultation with Sue).

So excited that I’m going to ignore the blog and play…

I leave you with the gift of loud, crunchy guitars and the roaring sound of melting brain cells.

Neurotherapy – Day 9 – Four out of Five Experts are Flabbergasted.

First things first, I felt fantastic today. No treatment the last two days (obviously, since I’m in class) and absolutely no fall off on concentration, motivation or mood. Not over the top, just really really good. Before Neurotherapy, I often had a sense of fear or overwhelming exhaustion when starting a task. It’s just gone…completely. Was discussing this stuff with some of the counselors in the room (can’t throw a rock without hitting one and even if you did they would just ask about my feelings. Except the woman from New York. I’m pretty sure she’d just hit me with the nearest chair.).  Mentioned trying anti-depressants back home, and the fact that, while they helped mood some, I never felt myself, not sharp, not clever. Never stayed on them as a result. This isn’t like that at all. I don’t expect it would last if I stopped now, but I have absolutely no intention of stopping before I finish the 20 or 30 or 40 sessions I need to really make this, well, maybe not permanent but close enough for me.

The Course

Today was the start of practical application of the theory behind the Othmer system. Just in case we were under the impression that it was going to get easy, the morning was more challenging than the day before. It’s tempting to run away, but the lunch is so good you have to stick around.

About the theory (and if you hate stuff like that just jump ahead)

Over the course of the morning I talked with a bunch of the people in the course, asking them what they thought thus far. I talked to a few doctors, a psychologist, and a math professor from a California university. Each one had their own take on it, but the general consensus was (and I’m paraphrasing) “Well, I’ve got an open mind, but this is really different from anything I’ve seen before. I’ll have to wait and see whether it works in practice.” Individually, each could look at pieces in their own area of knowledge (network theory, pain management, trauma counseling, etc.) and see the possibility. It’s a dizzyingly large body of completely new concepts or old concepts reimagined in new way or a blurry combination of the two.

Luckily, the primary work of scientists is relentlessly finding new ways to be wrong without ever admitting they believed something completely different the week before. If the Othmer’s theory proves to be true, there will be a massive and complete about-face so breathtaking that long term use of chemical anti-depressants, anti-convulsants and so on will make the “flat earth” model seem like quite a good idea. Many will declare that they always believed it so, while others will declare those ones big fat liars it was their idea first.

I can follow most of it, understanding-wise, but I don’t even have the beginnings of the knowledge I would need to critique it, so I’m largely along for the ride, hanging on and hoping my intellectual pants don’t fly off. I’m grateful to have at least a few people in the room ready to call bullshit if they hear it. Like a security blanket sewn out of smart people. [Ed. Note – This is a metaphor, and it’s late so it’s the only one I could think of. I generally renounce violence of any sort. Do not phone the police.]

Ok – You can start reading again.

The remainder of the day was teaming off into pairs and having a go with the machines. This, it seems, is pretty much what everyone was waiting for. Even those of us with the little drool marks started working with the sort of focus and attention normally reserved for bomb disposal. Which it kind of looked like. Damn…where does the gray wire go again? Oh…sorry Ed.

This part was, definitely, really really fun. I’ve talked about the process before so I won’t bore you but, in the same way as driving is not the same as being a passenger, working as the clinician monitoring the subject was a radically different experience.

We had all been warned ( and I had already seen it firsthand), how insanely fast the body reacts to the right (or the wrong) reward frequency (the brainwaves you are telling your head to make more of). Even so, everyone in the room was flabbergasted when symptoms like headaches, sweating, anxiety and muscle tension broke out across the room while they searched for the reward frequency that worked for the individual. The Othmer’s new technology allows the machines to be set anywhere from 40 to 0.001 hz (which is crazy low). Interestingly, 0.0001 hz is pretty much where many people seem to like their rewards. Although I had previously found with Sue thathis was my personal frequency, I let my partner (I’ll call him Ed, mostly because that’s his name) hunt around a little, in order to get a feeling for the question-asking process. Even after dialling it back, the muscles in my chest didn’t untighten for two hours.

I remember thinking the day before, “Wow, these are committed and serious individuals (which they are). Look at them all paying such close attention.” After the demonstration, that just totally fell apart. There’s really no other word to describe the class but giddy, with poor Sue having to shush people and shout over the noise like it was free candy day at the Kindergarten. At a guess, I’d say they were all pretty excited at the prospect of finding a tool that could actually make a huge difference in the lives of their clients. The physical reactions had, for the first time, made that a tangible possibility.

Which, after all, IS pretty exciting.

News Flash – Academia Finds Ass With $2 Million Study and Small Pocket Mirror!

So, today was day one of the four-day course on neurotherapy and clinical practice, designed largely for clinicians (doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, nurses, counselors, etc.) who intend to provide neurotherapy to patients in their care.

It was kind of like being hit in the head with a big knowledge hammer. And then maybe a real one, just in case the metaphorical hammer was too airy fairy.

Sig Othmer, the chief scientist at EEGInfo, knows an awful lot about the brain and how it works. Interestingly, his theories on why it works that way and what to do about it directly conflict with the ones held by the vast majority of the scientific, and certainly the medical community. Being a scientist, he likes to back up his opinions with lots and lots of data, which he really likes to share with people foolish enough to pay for the privilege. Lord, he’s probably reading this. Sorry Sig. It’s not as though I disagree with the model. It’s just that I spent years thinking the brain worked one way and reversing that in one day may have dropped the tranny out of my head. Do you smell toast?

Anyway, the guts of Sig and Sue Othmer’s treatment process, their machines and their research is based on the notion that, although brain chemistry is an important factor in how we function (got to have the right chemicals to keep the mind functioning), it’s not the real key to understanding why things go wrong. Their theory states that communication in the brain, between neurons and the different sections of the brain, underpins how we function, how we make our bodies work, and how our bodies make our brains work in turn. They go further to say that when things in the brain stop working, it’s often due to a dysregulation of that communication, and thus a nerve, brain-electricity problem, not so much a brain chemistry problem. Which is how we currently treat things (with pills, ritalin, prozac, seizure medications, etc). They have their place, but they can’t effect lasting change the way changing regulation with neurotherapy can.

Sig is not above heaping coals on the heads of people who continue to believe otherwise willfully and sometimes maliciously. He has good reason in some ways. Solid research has been done. Journals have ignored papers, possibly worried about reputations because the results seemed too good. He’s kinda pissed about that.

I really am not sure how he’ll react to an article published last month in the March issue of Brain Research Reviews.

Today’s news reports on it breathlessly state that an entirely new theory of brain function, based on dysregulation, may one day make it  possible to REVERSE AUTISM! (emphasis added, but only just barely)

I think the shock may just about kill Sig and Sue, who have been successfully treating autism in their clinic, using this exact theoretical model, for years.

OMG, people. Keep up.

[Ok, fine. I’m a neophyte without the knowledge even to have coffee with the grad students that got coffee for the professors that did that study. I still think they could spend a few bucks on a decent literature search before they start out.]

Research, research, research

My nearest and dearest know me to be a serious sceptic (what do you mean my feet are on the ground…prove it) and an even more serious research junkie.

Tonight hit both buttons nicely.

Sigfreid Othmer, chief scientist at the EEG Institute ran down the list of data that backs up the science behind EEG Neurotherapy. As Sue is the clinical director, Sig runs the science/research arm. The data he had tonight was fantastic. Great studies, including a Canadian one with 2776 prison inmates, that reduced recidivism (leaving jail, then doing bad things and heading right back in) from 65% of the criminals to 20%. So, over the three year study, they expected over 1,800 to return after they got out. But, after neurofeedback, only 554 did.

What would happen to our jails, hell to our society, if 2/3 of the people who habitually fill them just decided to stop coming and be all law abiding. Better place to live anyone? Less expensive jail system? Any takers?

On the opposite end of the scale, they did a study on improving performance for musicians at the Conservatoire at Imperial College, London. This is Britan’s answer to Julliard. The students are already some of the best around. The judges did not know who was performing. They tested exercise, Alexander technique, mental skills training and a number of neurofeedback protocols (different brain placements and reward frequencies).

The only thing that had any real effect was Neurofeedback, using Alpha-Theta training protocol. Using that method, students’ performance improved in every measure, between 13.3 and 17 percent. Note that some of the neurofeedback techniques, that work well in other areas, didn’t work any better than exercise or Alexander method. Ya got to have the right tool for the job at hand.

As a musician and a prisoner (oh wait..), I’m just so excited by these studies. The individual case studies, especially the recent ones, even cooler.

A Vietnam vet with huge improvement in symptoms in just 18 sessions. Nightmares, suicidal thoughts and flashbacks were gone in just three sessions. This from a man who thought the whole process was bullshit when he started (sorry about the fuzz):

And recent technique improvements have made even more stark gains. This is a graph of improvements for a 36 year old woman who completed 20 sessions, removing problems with PMS, sleep difficulties, compulsive behaviours, even nose bleeds:

That’s the thing. It’s not like drugs. It fixes so many things, because it’s helping the brain to repair root causes. No, it doesn’t work for absolutely everyone or everything. But it’s pretty damn good.