For those going through recovery, overall health and well-being are crucial. Balance is the key to successful recovery. There are many factors that can affect sobriety. The acronym HALT, for Hungry, Angry, Lonely, and Tired, is a well-known tool for understanding what outside forces and internal feelings increase vulnerability during recovery. Part of balance involves not only avoiding using but also ensuring that your body and mind are well.
Read MoreTopics: exercise, Neurofeedback, brain map, Brain heatlh, Healthy Eating and Exercise, Diet, Balanced Well-Being, Triggers
Self-care is a phrase frequently talked about but rarely understood. We all seem to have plenty of time for stress, but never enough for self-care. A healthy, happy life requires we find a balance between managing care for others while prioritizing care for ourselves.
No matter what takes center stage in your life— family responsibilities, work deadlines or end-of-semester finals— you will be better equipped to everything that comes your way if you are also taking the time to care for yourself. Here are a few ways you can sneak self-care into your everyday routine.
Topics: chronic pain, Insomnia, Neurofeedback, brain map, Sleep, Heart Rate Variability Biofeedback, Self-Care
Neurofeedback is a computer-based system that corrects brainwaves safely while you watch a movie or listen to music. Irregular brainwaves are responsible for many neurological conditions such as ADHD, learning issues, anxiety, depression, insomnia, migraines, memory loss, and more.
The Biofeedback Certification International Alliance (BCIA) defines EEG biofeedback (also called neurofeedback) as:
“EEG Biofeedback is employed to modify the electrical activity of the CNS including: EEG, event related potentials, slow cortical potentials, and other electrical activity either of subcortical or cortical origin. Neurofeedback is a specialized application of biofeedback of brainwave data in an operant conditioning paradigm. The method is used to treat clinical conditions as well as to enhance performance”
Read MoreTopics: Neurofeedback, brain map, Brain Mapping, Brain heatlh, Anxiety and Stress, Biofeedback, Mental Health
We offer exercise with enhanced air therapy (sometimes called exercise with oxygen therapy or EWOT) to enhance brain function and energy production. The system we use is called Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy, manufactured by Ergo-Flex Technologies, LLC.
The basis of the protocol on Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy is to induce O2 deprivation and then once recognized by the software data, flood the body with O2 saturation and take advantage of the vasodilation/saturation by pushing it to as much tissue as possible via exercise (in this case our NordicTrack ® Commercial VR21 recumbent bike). Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy is designed to facilitate healing by super-saturating nearly all body tissues (especially brain, kidney, liver) plasma and lymph with very high levels of oxygen that permeates the tissues because of the exercise component.We can use Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy as a stand alone therapy or prior to neurofeedback training to increase oxygen levels in the brain. Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy is supplied via the Total Brain & Body O2 apparatus and is non invasive and painless. It can be combined with the Dr. Johnson’s neurofeedback therapy to provide faster and more synergistic results.
Total Brain & Body O2 Therapy ensures the maximum amount of oxygen reaches where it is needed the most; to damaged and inflamed tissues and allows them to return to normal aerobic metabolism. Total Brain & Body O2 starts a healing process where the process halted due to poor cellular healing capacity.
Oxygen is vital for every function of the body and brain. No matter what your present level of physical and mental health, you will benefit from flooding your cells with live giving oxygen.
Read MoreTopics: Neurofeedback, ADHD Treatments, Healthy Aging, Total Brain & Body O2, EWOT
Neurofeedback training typically begins with a computer analysis of brainwave patterns which provide results in the form of a quantitative electroencephalogram (QEEG), also known as a brain map. The QEEG results are often displayed in a colorful map of the brain with different colors representing different brainwave frequencies or patterns. This information can be compared to an extensive normative database to determine appropriate treatment protocols.
Topics: ADHD, Anxiety, Neurofeedback, QEEG, Brain Mapping
What’s the generally accepted medical practice for treating someone with clinical depression, anxiety, ADHD, migraines, seizures, or many other “brain” problems?
The usual answer is to prescribe a pill, such as a stimulant, an anti-depressant, an anti-anxiety medication, or in some cases, a mood stabilizer/anti-convulsant, or an anti-psychotic
Disadvantages to medicating the brain are becoming more widely known. Many people who take medications still struggle with symptoms. For many others, stopping a medication causes the problems to reappear or even get worse. In addition, there can be side effects ranging from mild to severe.
Further, it is common to take medications for a very long time period, which is not only problematic as dependence can develop, but there are also growing concerns about the long-term use of medications and for good reason.
The pills don’t TEACH you how to change your own brain. They just temporarily help manage symptoms.
For certain “brain problems”, such as autism, Asperger’s, learning difficulties, PTSD, and even stroke and traumatic brain injury, there are no medications that really work well or work at all. Yet, these are clearly brain problems.
Read MoreTopics: ADHD, Brain Health, Neurofeedback, Medication, ADHD Medication
Neurofeedback began in the late 1950s and early '60s through the work of both Dr Joe Kamiya at the University of Chicago and Dr Barry Sterman at UCLA.
Dr. Kamiya was studying consciousness, and discovered that by using a simple reward system, people could learn to alter their brain activity. This was the first ever EEG neurofeedback training.
Along similar lines, Dr. Sterman ran an experiment to see if cats could increase their sensory motor rhythm (SMR). A simple machine gave them a food pellet every time they 'got it right', and they quickly learned to control their brainwaves to get the treat.
Several years later he was doing an experiment for NASA, again using the cats from his lab. This time, he was testing the effects of exposure to lunar lander fuel. For most of the cats, as the levels of toxic fumes increased there was a linear progression of brain instability; first drowsiness, then headaches, followed by hallucinations, seizures, and finally death.
However, some of the cats seemed to be immune. Sterman noticed that the cats who were immune were the same cats he had used in the SMR brain training experiment a couple of years before. The SMR training had given those cats utra-stable brains. Sterman moved on to train SMR in humans to control their epilepsy; 60% of his subjects reduced their seizure level by 20-100%, and the results lasted.
As a result, NASA trained their lunar astronauts to control their brain's SMR rhythms. Fifty years later, neurofeedback is still part of the astronaut training program.
Topics: ADHD, Neurofeedback, Brain heatlh, History of Neurofeedback, NASA
