Functional neurology and the importance of touch for the brain

From the moment a newborn is placed on its mother’s stomach, feels the touch of its parents, and roots and suckles to nurse, the stimulation to the brain from this physical contact is laying the foundation for future brain health and function. In other words, the human brain needs regular healthy touch to develop normally.

Studies show children who are deprived of healthy, loving touch in early life go on to be at greater risk for a number of brain-related disorders, including anxiety, depression, low self-worth, a lower IQ, less empathy, addiction, and mental illness. A greater incidence of general health problems is also a common occurrence.

Functional neurology can help rehab the touch-deprived brain

Just as we can rehabilitate the brain of a person who has had a stroke or brain injury, so can we rehabilitate the brain of a person who grew up depressed and anxious from lack of health touch in early childhood.

Lack of touch, physical violence, and sexual abuse in childhood create pathways in the brain that determine the course of its development, and hence a person’s sense of self, emotions, behavior, brain function, and immune function.

This leads to certain areas of the brain being under active, while others are over active. We can use functional neurology rehabilitation techniques to activate or dampen different areas as needed.

For example, functional neurologists may use eye movements to activate or dampen areas of the brain. Scents, such as an essential oil, can be used to trigger a positive cue to rewire the brain in a healthier direction.

Brain exercises that improve function of the inner ear, or vestibular system and the cerebellum, which both regulate balance, can also help relax and emotionally regulate the hyper vigilant brain of the touch-deprived, anxious individual.

These exercises are customized to each person based on how their brain functions.

Everyday ways to rehab the touch-deprived brain

For instance, consciously practicing generosity can begin to rewire the brain in a healthier way and release dopamine and oxytocin, which can help a person feel better about themselves and those around them.

Making time in your schedule to volunteer regularly or to do something for someone else without expecting anything in return is one way to start rewiring your brain. Writing in a gratitude journal for a few minutes once or twice a day is another way to reinforce that.

Retraining how you think is also an important part of this process. Seeing a therapist can help you develop awareness of negative self-talk and strategies to start talking to and thinking about yourself more positively.

Positive social support is also vital as the human brain is designed to operate as part of a tribe. Finding a healthy, supportive group of people to get together with regularly will help fill in the gaps created by lack of early healthy touch.

Simply observing others touch and relate to each other in a loving way can activate these under developed and starved areas of the brain. Someone who grew up touch deprived simply may not be able to immediately give and receive non-sexual healthy touch. One way to begin that rehabilitation process is to be in the presence of it so your brain can create a mirroring process for its own neurology.

Get a massage, foot reflexology, and other forms of safe and healthy touch. If you’re not in a situation to receive touch from friends or family, investing in a massage can help deliver some of the same benefits.

Functional neurology and addiction: Managing brain health is key

Two people are hospitalized for injuries. After about a month on opiate painkillers, one patient recovers from their injuries, stops taking the painkillers, and goes back to normal life. The other patient recovers from their injuries but can’t stop taking painkillers. Life is never normal again as a full-blown opiate addiction takes over. Why are some people seemingly at no risk for addiction while others are easily sucked into the vortex of dependency? Functional neurology offers some important insights and rehabilitation strategies to help people improve their chances of recovering from addiction.

Childhood learning and behavioral disorders can raise addiction risk

Learning and behavioral disorders, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders have been linked with an increased risk for addiction. Autism spectrum disorder doubles addiction risk, ADHD quadruples it, and ADHD with an above average IQ increases the risk eight times.

The link may be explained in part by the personal and social struggles these disorders invite. However, scientists have also found a connection between the repetitive thinking and behavior associated with these brain-based disorders and the compulsions that drive drug addiction.

Drug use activates an area of the brain called the ventral area, which is involved in motivation, pleasure seeking, and impulsive behavior. However, when drug use turns into addiction, activity then moves to the dorsal striatum, which automates behavior into patterns triggered by cues. This is useful for learning but detrimental for turning compulsions into destructive habits.

Researchers believe people with brain-based disorders are more prone to getting stuck in repetitive patterns. Genetic and neurochemical predispositions in these populations also seem to line them up for an increased risk of addiction.

Sadly, the social challenges this population faces also creates neurological barriers to connecting with others in support groups commonly used for drug addiction. They may experience anxiety in anger in a situation where they are forced to share their emotions, which can be interpreted as defiance.

Functional neurology help for addiction recovery

Although researchers say there have been no studies on how to address addiction in people with autism, ADHD, and other brain development disorders, in functional neurology we see some clear avenues of action.

Individuals with learning disorders, ADHD, and autism spectrum disorders often have compulsive and impulsive behaviors, and “perseveration,” a neurological symptom that causes a person to feel stuck in a loop of repetitive thought and behavior. This happens in part when the brain is in an overly primitive state that lacks the checks and balances offered by a properly developed frontal lobe — the area that governs judgment, impulse control, and social behavior.

As a result, a person becomes victim to these primitive impulses without the neurological ability to suppress them.

In functional neurology examination looking at their visual and motor reflexes, we see these issues with impulsivity and poor inhibition confirmed through basic visual and motor responses to varying exam procedures.

We can use functional neurology to support the addiction recovery process by rehabilitating areas of the brain that didn’t develop properly. Regular follow up examinations can measure the progress of rehabilitating these areas of the brain.

We also support the health of the brain through diet and lifestyle interventions that control inflammation, stabilize blood sugar, and address gut health, several factors that profoundly impact brain function.

This is a broad overview of how integrating functional neurology into an addiction recovery program can significantly improve a person’s chances of recovery. By dampening those compulsive, impulsive, and obsessive tendencies so common with brain development disorders such as ADHD, autism, and learning disorders, a person has a better shot at interrupting and diverting the neurological habituation towards drug use. Ask my office for more information.

Functional neurology picks up where standard medicine drops off

A teenage girl suffering from multiple seizures a day spends two weeks in one of the top clinics in the world. There she undergoes about $100,000 worth of testing and is seen by multiple specialists, many of whom witness her having the seizures. However, brain scans and EEG testing show no evidence of a seizure disorder and she is sent home with an anxiety diagnosis.

After a functional medicine neurology visit and three weeks on a gluten-free anti-inflammatory diet, plus some supplements to tame inflammation and support brain health, the seizures stop completely. They return only briefly when she goes off her diet during a holiday and eats foods that trigger inflammation in her brain causing it to seize again.

Why would a conventional medicine approach involving tens of thousands of dollars and multiple specialists turn up empty while functional neurology produced a simple solution?

The answer lies within how conventional medical doctors are required to give a diagnosis that conforms to ICD-10 codes. ICD-10 stands for the International Classification of Diseases.

The ICD-10 is a system all medical doctors in the United States are required to use to classify and code diagnoses, symptoms, and medical procedures. It is copyrighted from the World Health Organization and contains about 70,000 different codes doctors must choose from (compared to about 14,000 with the previous ICD-9 version).

And yet with so many disorders to choose from for a diagnosis, physicians were unable to find a proper one for a girl having multiple seizures a day.

Functional neurology fills a large void in medicine

Functional neurology and functional medicine fill a large and ever growing void in the world of conventional medicine — disorders of inflammation. Depending on whether or how health insurance is used, functional neurology in practice is not always required to conform to ICD-10 codes.

In the case of the girl having seizures, it turns out gluten was the primary trigger of her seizures. There is no ICD-10 code for this when test results are negative as hers were, yet people can have extreme neurological reactions to gluten due to a gluten sensitivity or celiac disease.

In fact, research shows the tissue in the body most damaged by an immune reaction to gluten is neurological tissue. Dairy is another common and potent trigger.

Gluten and dairy trigger a wide range of neurological disorders, including tics, obsessive compulsive behavior, movement disorders, memory loss, migraines, seizures, depression, anxiety, fatigue, and even schizophrenia.

However, if neurological damage does not show up on approved testing, doctors cannot make a diagnosis. This proves extremely unfortunate for many patients. For instance, about 90 percent of nerve sheaths have to be damaged before the autoimmune disease multiple sclerosis shows up on a brain scan.

In functional neurology we catch the people who fall through these cracks. We are seeing an explosion in disorders related to inflammation and autoimmunity thanks to the many environmental and dietary triggers so common today. Autoimmunity happens when an imbalanced immune system goes haywire and attacks and destroys tissue in the body.

Patients struggling to recover from brain injuries are told nothing can be done when, in fact, research shows nutritional therapy and brain rehabilitation strategies can help them recover their brain health.

People alarmed at perpetual brain fog, memory loss, and confusion are not too far gone to warrant intervention for advanced brain degeneration.

Patients often have a strong intuitive knowing when something isn’t right with their brain health, and there is often something that can be done to improve it, even if that something does not have an ICD-10 code. Although we depend on conventional medicine for the excellent care they provide in acute situations, you do not need to suffer through years of misery and ever declining performance until you become an acute case too.

Ask my office how functional neurology and functional medicine can help you regain back your health and your brain function.

Extreme sports joins football in repetitive brain trauma fallout

The suicide of BMX legend Dave Mirra this year has forced an uncomfortable topic to surface — many extreme sport athletes, and the adolescents and weekend warriors they inspire, face a higher risk of long term brain disorders due to repetitive crashes and hits to the head. Suicide rates, for instance, are three times higher in people who have suffered concussions. Other symptoms include mood disorders, bouts of rage, sensitivity to light and sound, fatigue, poor concentration, memory loss, depression, anxiety, impulsiveness, addiction, poor balance, and migraines.

The renegade nature of extreme sports means long term risks of repetitive head injuries are not tracked like they have been in football. From football we have learned that CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head traumas that leads to significant problems later in life. Autopsies of the brains of 94 former professional football players showed 90 of them had CTE.

You don’t have to have a concussion to sustain brain injury. And while wearing the best helmet may prevent a skull fracture, it doesn’t protect the brain from impact within the skull during a crash after catching big air or face planting on concrete. Twisting, rotation, acceleration, deceleration, and damage to the neck, spine, and inner ear (vestibular system) also impact brain function.

A study analyzing emergency room visits during 10 years saw concussion injuries rising steadily in surfing, mountain biking, motocross, skateboarding, snowboarding, snowmobiling, and skiing. Snowboarding was the most concussive activity.

Not only do these accumulated traumas, both micro and macro, progressively damage the brain, they also foster the development of tau proteins and neurofibrillary tangles, the markers of Alzheimer’s disease.

Functional neurology for extreme sports

Functional neurology has treated its fair share of extreme sport athletes. Perhaps one of the bigger tragedies among the sports world is the idea that nothing can be done for head injuries beyond rest.

In functional neurology, we know this is far from the case. Not only do we have patient experiences to back this up, but we also have peer reviewed studies on brain inflammation and brain rehabilitation.

Brain injuries inflame the brain. However, this inflammation may not turn off, continuing to damage brain tissue like a slow spreading fire. Some people suffer more than others from brain inflammation due to their diet, food intolerances, hormone imbalances, blood sugar regulation issues, chronic infection, pre-existing brain development disorders (such as ADHD), and so on. The factors that lead to Alzheimer’s disease are the same factors that respond to brain inflammation, which is why it’s suggested brain inflammation increases the risk of Alzheimer's.

In functional neurology we assess the chemical environment of the brain — it’s nourishment, oxygen, neurotransmitter status, whether dietary or environmental compounds are worsening brain health, and already existing brain development issues.

Also, instead of prescribing blanket treatments for brain injury, we perform thorough examinations to see which areas of the brain are damaged. This includes examining the function of the inner ear, or vestibular system, the fragile system of canals that play a large role in brain function and are easily damaged during impacts. Rehabilitation and nutritional therapy are then customized to target the specific areas of brain compromise.

By quickly addressing brain health after a concussion, a crash, or a series of crashes that seems to have robbed you of “you,” you can significantly rehabilitate your brain and dramatically lower your risk of bigger problems in the future, including suicidality and dementia.

As for continuing in extreme sports, that is an individual decision. In the age of GoPro cameras, high-tech gear, viral videos, and fierce competition for few paying gigs, athletes are encouraged to go bigger, faster, and higher with ever increasing risks.

Baseline testing and repeated follow ups will give you a clear indication of whether your lifestyle is damaging your most vital organ. Also, following an anti-inflammatory diet and other brain health lifestyle strategies give the brain its best chances. Ask my office for more advice.