Friday, January 2, 2009

Rewiring The Brain

"Of all the findings, though one is rewriting the texbooks. It is the dawning realization that a brain older than 3 years old is not the rigid structure that scientist long thought, but a malleable, "plastic organ"....."But a flood of discoveries show that the brain constantly reorganizes itself. It's called neuroplasticity. And it means that "YOU CREATE YOUR BRAIN FROM THE INPUT YOU GET" (my emphasis) - Rewiring the Gray Matter, NEWSWEEK, January 1, 2000.



The concept of neuroplasticity can be either good or bad. In the case of fibromyalgia and pain, it is a bad thing. Stress (physical, chemical or emotional) has rewired the brain to be more sensitive to pain. BUT, the good news is we can use the very same concept of neuroplasticity to correct the problem.



Your Brain and nervous system need two things - FUEL and ACTIVATION.



Fuel comes in the form of oxygen and glucose. Glucose comes from a healthy diet (we hope - we can provide guidance and support if necessary). We also use supplemental oxygen during our treatments to help our patients heal faster.



Activation is accomplished through our treatments. We can use your five senses to increase frequency of firing (FOF) in specific areas of the brain determined through a detailed neurological evaluation. We may use unilateral adjustments (ULA) - either by hand or using gentle instruments, Active Threapeutic Movements (ATM), cold laser therapy, spinal decompression, Whole Body Vibration (WBV), heat, electrical stimulation, sound, visual and olfactory stimulation.



This unique aproach, called Brain Based Therapy, is based on the work of Dr. Michael L Johnson - one of the countries leading chiropractic neurologist and author of the book "What Do You Do When The Medications Don't Work? A non-drug treatment of dizziness. migraine headaches, fibromyalgia, and other chronic conditions."



To watch Dr. Johnson's video on fibromyalgia visit http://www.askdrjohnson.com/.

To find out if you qualify for this type of care, call our office (814)238-0232 and schedule a free no obligation consultation.

They were right. It is all in your head.

Have you ever been accused of making up your illness or been told it is all in your head? Maybe they even tried to give you antidepressants.

Well it turns out they were right - it is all in your head and now science proves it. Actually it is in your brain. A study published in the November 2009 Journal of Nuclear Medicine reports that photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) detected functional abnormalities in certain regions of the brain of patients diagnosed with fibromyalgia. These abnormalities directly correlated with the severity of the disease and were found in the regions known to discriminate pain sensitivity and emotional responses to pain. Stress (physical, chemical and/or emotional) has changed the way your brain processes pain.

You aren't crazy and you weren't making it up and now there is proof.

Now that we know what the problem is what can we do about it? We will cover that on the post that follow.