Innovations in Brain Imaging and Neurofeedback Part 2: Emerging Neurofeedback Methods
Neurofeedback is simply reading brainwaves, setting goals for them, and then showing the patient the results.
If the feedback is within a half second of the actual brain wave change, the training works. If it takes the computer longer to process and deliver a sound or light on the screen, the brain will not learn to change.
Today we have choices about what we can train, and most of the time we can stack or layer these methods on top of each other if we have powerful software and processors. The methods in general are these, and they are growing every day:
1. Amplitude training
2. Coherence training
3. Infraslow fluctuations
Amplitude training is the oldest method, and it shows where in the brain a certain wave is overfiring or under firing in power. We can think of this as loudness, power, volume, or volts or amps. We compare these to Z-scores and try to achieve a healthy resting brain wave state all over the brain, and if we have s-LORETA equipment, we can even to the deep brain limbic regions that regulate emotion, endocrine and immune function.
Coherence training is an exciting new addition to neurofeedback training that measures how much chatter or cross talk happens between regions of the brain. Think of the brain as a vast office with people in cubicles doing their work. Each person is a brain cell or neuron and their job is to process information. They each get information in their cubicle and must decide to send a signal up to their superiors or their colleagues about whether the information is actionable and important or not.
Imagine that some of these workers get behind on their work because of a concussion or brain injury. Now those workers seek help from their neighboring coworker neurons in the office, both nearby and far, and sometimes in other departments. They ask for help processing their information.
Now we have cells talking with each other too much, mostly due in this scenario to reduced functional capacity to maintain their firing rate and do their job. Training in coherence allows us to teach the brain that this is not a good solution, and another might work better. You can see how training-only does not heal the cells, it just steers their activity, and they require nutrition and detoxification to heal properly and electrically.
On the other hand, we may measure coherence (and something similar called phase) and find there is less cross talk than is ideal. We then train these areas to talk to each other more. This method and its many variations can help people who do not respond to amplitude training because it is a totally different electrical event in the brain.
Beyond simple coherence, which tells us which cells are firing together and working on processing the same information, we now can measure directional coherence. This tells us which partner is driving the cross talk. It is like knowing who is the lead when two people dance. It matters when you know which member is leading this codependent firing, and we can train that specifically to correct. We can do this all over the brain for 6200 independent surface and deep regions.
Infraslow Fluctuation is a totally new brainwave. This wave is so far below the lowest brain wave we knew, which was Delta waves, that it needed a new name. It is 4 decimal places lower in frequency than delta which is 1 to 3 cycles per second or Hertz (0.0001 Hz is the range of infraslow waves).
These brainwaves and ISF neurofeedback methods were published in the prestigious science journal Nature and others several times and university studies are underway. This wave appears to regulate the Optimal frequency, which is the balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic expression. For example, if you are not sufficiently aroused to meet life’s challenges, you may have your wavelength set too slow to adapt and need to try a higher frequency.
The opposite scenario might be that your nerve cells are vibrating at too high a fundamental frequency, and you feel jittery and anxious, and could benefit from a reduced fundamental frequency so you can feel calmer.
We have lots of experience not only with brain maps and customizing neurofeedback but also with all kinds of other natural, holistic and science-based lab and lifestyle balancing and wellness methods. Let us know if you have questions about this article and want to see more.
4 Phases of Healing Thyroid & Autoimmune
Phase 1: Detect
- We order specialized test to determine your root cause of disease. I like to say “if you aren’t testing, your guessing.” After a throughout history and evaluating your needs, I recommend testing and their specific priorities, which will determine the treatment protocol. Each person is different. We can order these test to name a few:
- Complete thyroid panel testing to evaluate the 28 patterns of thyroid disease & test for autoimmune to thyroid
- Food sensitivity test – to determine if the food you are eating are causing immune reactions in your body
- Gastrointestinal test – to determine if you have imbalance gut bacteria, parasites, low or high digestive enzymes, etc
- Adrenal test – to see if your cortisol pattern throughout the day, which can be a cause of fatigue or inability to sleep
- Hormonal test – to determine if your hormones are high or low, or if you are not able to clear your hormones which are building up in your tissue
- Mold test – to see if you have mold in your body and also test your home to see if you have mold in your home
- Heavy Metal test – to determine if you have mercury, antimony, arsenic, lead, silver and more in your body
Phase 2: Remove
We start with removal on most burdensome toxins that we find from the specialize testing, while also supporting your phase I & phase II detoxification pathways.
Phase 3: Balance & Heal
Here we go deeper into balancing your gut, hormones, stress, brain and emotions.
Phase 4: Sustain & Maintain
This phase builds on all the others, ideally teaching you how to be your own healer by listening to your body, for improved body awareness. We look at your healthy and unhealthy habits. We recommend retesting, and what your maintenance to a deeper more vital you look like for your goals.
6 Steps to Heal Your Thyroid
Working with hundreds of thousands of patients and balancing their thyroid, I’ve invented this simple, 6-step system.
Step 1. Optimize Your Diet - “Eat to Thrive not Survive”
I know you have probably heard it all before or read eat this, or don’t eat this. What or who do you listen to at this point regarding which foods are healthy for you or not? I completely understand, how it can be overwhelming with so much misinformation out there.
Reversing chronic disease or achieving optimal health require foundational steps that really need to be addressed. For this reason I believe it’s important to work with a doctor who is seeing patients in practice, therefore has clinical experience, and positive results to provide the best health for each patient. Results and numbers are the proof which determine if a treatment is working or not working.
Remember what you put into your body is meant to fulfill, your body’s needs for vitamins, minerals, co-factors and more to sustain life. Really, we eat to survive at lot of times, not to help our body thrive. In this fast-paced world, with prepackaged foods on every shelf, it can get confusing what is considered food or not, therefore we grab and go, eating dead food with no nutrient content.
Vegetables and specific foods contain the best medicinal healing properties, and by learning more about how they can help you with your thyroid healing and overall health, you will have a greater appreciation for their power.
Step 2. Remove Toxins & Clean up Your Environment
This is also a very crucial step of healing and staying healthy. If you are continuing to add more toxins in your body by what you eat, breathe, drink, touch, etc. then the healing process can be slow.
Here we remove toxins and chemicals toxicities- including Food sensitivities, plastics, round up (glyphosate), metals, formaldehyde, benzene and more. Replace the foods you eat with organic & grass-fed beef, farm fresh poultry, and wild caught fish. Also replace what you allow in your environment including what you put on your body.
I detox several times a year, which I highly recommend you do the same. Yet it’s great to be guided through a detox until you have achieved a specific place in your body, one because not all detoxification work or accomplish the same plan of action. Secondly, depending on each person you can have detox symptoms.
Step 3. Kill Infections & Fight the Immune System Attackers
Bacteria, viruses, yeast (candida), parasites, mycotoxins, mold, & co-infections are all around us on a daily basis. The air we breathe has bacteria and virus, the food we eat can have bacteria, or parasites, and your body can create yeast and more bacteria from unhealthy gastrointestinal delicate balancing system.
These invaders can live in your body (your environment) for years to decades going under-diagnosed, therefore produce chronic low-grade infections leading to you not feeling your best but not great either. Or one day your catch something like a virus, yet you never have been the same since. It’s important to have a healthy host “YOU”, so you can live a life of vitality.
Step 4. Heal Your & Repair Your Gut
Your gut and intestinal lining needs love too. It is one of the barrier’s that protects your whole body, and in the end regulating your immune system. It’s the gateway to health. 80% of your immune system is located in the gut. You are connected from the outside world, from your mouth to your inside world…. Your gut. Thus, this is where the problem can lie.
Reversing chronic disease or achieving optimal health it’s imperative to address killing infections and repairing your gut. Your gut has a delicate balance between good and bad bacteria, aka microbiome. In our office we recommend specialty testing to determine
Step 5. Decrease Stressors & Immune Support
Decrease and try to remove the stress in your life. We have accomplished decreasing the stress on your body, by cleaning up your life. Now we go deeper by looking at people and things that add to that stress. Stress is the #1 cause of diseases, in turn depletes the immune system so you can’t fight off the common cold, virus or bacteria.
Yes, our immune system is made to defend and fight off infections. I call it your Army. Your immune system does a great job keeping you alive. However, often times we create a constant immune attack by the foods we eat on a daily basis. This constant immune attack upregulates the immune system, leading to confusion, unclear what is good or not (invader). Then it starts to tag you (self) as an invader or bad, leading to auto-immune disease. Auto-immune disease is when the body attacks itself.
Step 6. Heal Your Hormones
Too much or too little hormones can upregulate disease and create more imbalances. In the body we have a wide scope of hormones, with an even more delicate balance. If one is off, meaning too little or too much, this creates an imbalance up stream or down stream. A few hormones are cortisol, thyroid, estrogen, testosterone, progesterone and more. Typically if you handle underlying causes the body’s hormonal balances out naturally, if rectified in sufficient time as not to burn out or over tax.
Innovations in Brain Imaging and Neurofeedback Part 1: Brain Imaging for Neurofeedback and Beyond
The old days of retraining your brain are over. New methods are here that can save time and money, and work in most cases with or without drugs-and no electricity enters your body. Any condition that affects, drives or is driven by brain function may benefit from brain training. Brain wave mapping and neurofeedback are highly studied methods and there is a huge body of studies published on how they work and what they can and cannot do.
Let us explain a little background here first. Using instruments to read the autonomic signals of the body such as temperature, sweating, and pulse and then train ourselves to calm down is collectively called biofeedback. When we specifically measure the brainwaves and learn to control them we call this neurofeedback. A device plots the brainwaves, and the patient is rewarded by seeing or hearing signals that they are getting closer to a goal of different brainwave production. For example, training more power or less power in a certain frequency band was common. In the old days neurofeedback started with an interview or questionnaire, and then the practitioner guessed where to place a few electrodes on the head to target certain places on the brain to train a single brain wave. Those days are over.
Today we still realize that 90% of diagnosis comes not from snazzy imaging technology, fancy lab tests, or even examination but from a good medical history. But there are limits to an interview. Now we still perform that essential interview process and collection of medical history and physical examination, and we add the QEEG examination and imaging. Regular diagnostic EEGs are still used by medical neurologists to investigate seizure and sleep disorders reliably, but these tests are diagnostic and are different than QEEG.
Quantitative electro-encephalography means taking images of the brain waves and analyzing them statistically. That means not just a snapshot of function but a careful average over a span of time at rest. This is not a diagnosis by itself, but such a powerful study of biometric data can add to the decision process that doctors and patients make. The next step is comparing the person’s brainwaves to reference data on over 1000 people’s brains that are normal and healthy. This is called a brain map, and when it is compared to normal we call that a Z-score.
So Z-scored QEEG brain wave maps can really guide a practitioner in where to place electrodes and what to target. But that is not the whole story.
All those neurofeedback and EEG and QEEG methods from the past were very valuable, but they could only read surface brain cells about 6 mm deep into the brain, after getting past the skin and skull bone. That is less than most adult pinky fingernails deep. An innovation has emerged which can read inches into the brain, revealing the brainwaves of the deep limbic lobes. It is a method that requires a math formula, a powerful computer and a full 19 channel cap, and its called ds-LORETA. Today we can perform a QEEG map with this s-LORETA method to read and train inches into the brain. Its holistic, natural, and safe. S-LORETA stands for low resolution tomography, but it is quite high resolution. They call it low resolution because its compared to functional MRI images that are super high resolution, but it is not used in clinics, only university research departments. With the s-LORETA QEEG method we can resolve down to 5x5x5 mm cubes in the brain. In fact, we can track over 6500 of these cube areas. They are called voxels, which is a 3D pixel.
Perhaps more exciting than simply using brain wave imaging to guide neurofeedback in the new trend that doctors are discovering-that mapping brain waves helps measure the success of any treatment on the brain. Some holistic doctors are using this imaging to take before and after measurements for therapies as diverse as counseling, nutritional supplements, exercise, chiropractic, and even acupuncture to see the changes they make in the brain and plan their treatments.
All that information was about mapping the surface and deep brain and comparing it to healthy brain waves. In part 2 we will explore the new neurofeedback methods one by one.