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Rethinking Recovery from Traumatic Brain Injury with Nate Pope
38 Plays7 months ago
Neuroimaging from functional MRIs gives us powerful insights into what happens to the brain after a traumatic head injury. By reactivating brain pathways, patients can see remarkable recovery from the lingering symptoms of a concussion or stroke in as little as a few weeks. Discover the leading best occupational therapy practices in brain recovery.
Nate Pope is a neurological occupational therapist and the founder and clinical director of NCX Brain Recovery. Learn more and schedule a free consultation at https://www.ncxbrainrecovery.com/.
In this episode:
- The many (many) ways people can hurt their heads
- When to worry about concussion symptoms
- How not to treat a traumatic brain injury
- The limitations of traditional insurance in brain recovery
- What functional MRIs show us about brain injuries
- Building a program to reactive brain pathways
- Why recovery often feels worse before it gets better
- Advice for anyone looking to sharpen their brain
Connect with us at SuenoLabs.com. We're currently looking for contributors and podcast guests!
This episode is brought to you in part by Auphonic.
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Transcript
Introduction and Acknowledgments
00:00:01
Speaker
Free audio post-production by Alphonic.com.
Understanding Concussions and Their Causes
00:00:06
Speaker
Tonight, we're talking about the brain. We've done a number of recent episodes related to mental health, but what about the physical health of your brain?
00:00:15
Speaker
There are hundreds of thousands of concussions in the United States every single year, and probably even more than that because many head injuries go undiagnosed, at least in a clinical sense. Many of these are sports related, but they could be from falls or
Challenges of Unresolved Concussion Symptoms
00:00:29
Speaker
accidents. I mean, there's so many ways that you could hit your head, right?
00:00:33
Speaker
And often concussion symptoms do clear up on their own. But what happens when they don't?
Meet Nate Pope: Brain Recovery Specialist
00:00:41
Speaker
Tonight my guest is someone who specializes in recovery from traumatic brain injury.
00:00:47
Speaker
He's going to talk about not only what they do at his clinic to help with brain recovery, but also some exercises and lifestyle best practices that we all can do for better brain health, regardless of whether or not we've recently been injured.
00:01:08
Speaker
Tonight, I talk with Nate Pope, a neurological occupational therapist and the founder and clinical director of NCX Brain Recovery. We discuss the symptoms of traumatic brain injury and the amazing ways that the body can heal itself when we point it in the right direction.
00:01:27
Speaker
I'm Jimmy Leonard. This is Sueño Labs.
00:01:35
Speaker
Nate Pope, welcome to Swenya
Nate Pope on Brain Injury Recovery Techniques
00:01:37
Speaker
Labs. How are you today? I'm good. Thanks. How are you? I'm doing really well. Glad to have you here. So and this is a ah pretty interesting topic for me. And I think that we're going to uncover a lot of things here that maybe people don't always think about. But I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about yourself before we get started.
00:01:57
Speaker
So Nate, you are a neurological occupational therapist. Did I get that right? Is that how you introduce yourself? Yeah. Yeah. I don't usually say the whole thing because it's kind of a long title.
00:02:11
Speaker
Yeah. What's the short version? What do you say? Like I i i fixed brains. Yeah. I I'm an OT and I work with brains, you know, that's what I usually talk about. But, uh, Yeah, a neuro or a neurological occupational therapist um is just ah an occupational therapist that focuses a lot on the the brain rehab. For me in particular, it's post-concussion syndrome or people who have had mild traumatic brain injuries.
00:02:36
Speaker
and have had lingering symptoms despite the fact that all other medical evidence suggests their brain is completely healthy.
Persistent Concussion Symptoms
00:02:44
Speaker
Recent discoveries via functional um MRIs, which is more like a video of the brain than then a snapshot of the brain, have shown that there actually is a big difference in what the brain is doing, even though it's totally healthy brain tissue and it's not damaged.
00:03:00
Speaker
Certain areas are are getting more or less blood flow and it causes an imbalance and and it's totally fixable, but it is something that's a legitimate thing. And people have these symptoms after they hit their head for for many times, you know, years afterwards, and it just doesn't go away because it's the news the new brain's habit. And so that's what we that's what I focus a lot on. had eight and a half years of experience with a lead research doctor.
00:03:27
Speaker
a clinic with that that helped me kind of ah gain a passion for helping people with brain injury because the symptoms that come with brain stuff are far-reaching and and they're not fun to live with and and it's awesome that there's answers for those people so and it was kind of a therapist dream job really so I starting my own clinic was just my desire to take it to the next level even. So how recent is that with like the fMRI that you mentioned that we've kind of changed our understanding of what's happening with the recovery from a brain injury?
00:04:04
Speaker
Sure. Yeah. It's, well, it's really about the last 10 years is where it's really made some headway. Functional um MRIs have existed before that. It's, but it's what you do with the functional MRI that really matters. if If the data you're getting is not um super meaningful, in other words, it's not targeting areas of the brain that is that are getting less blood than they should get and not making the a meaningful interpretation of of what's going on.
00:04:35
Speaker
in other words, you kind of need to know what a normal brain should look like exactly and then be able to know, oh You definitely had a concussion, and it's showing that your visual motor area is getting less blood than any normal brain would get, unless you've had a concussion and you haven't recovered, and you have the symptoms that are associated. So there's always these associated symptoms. So you really could go off the symptoms, which is what we do in in our clinic.
00:05:03
Speaker
But the research clinic that i was with for years used the functional MRIs, which really drove the research more than anything. But the therapy can be driven by more of a symptoms ah checklist, you know, you can because they really correlate pretty strongly.
Therapeutic Strategies and Patient Care
00:05:21
Speaker
um But yeah, in the last 10 years, the research basically showed if you've hit your head and it's been post one month and you still have symptoms of any sort,
00:05:33
Speaker
It's probably connected to you hitting your head and you have probably have post-concussion syndrome. And you can see which areas are getting less blood. And usually a corresponding area is getting more blood flow.
00:05:46
Speaker
So there's a compensation. It's amazing our brain can do it and it's awesome. But it's also not a great permanent solution for the brain. Because areas that are not designed to do a certain function just are not as good it.
00:05:59
Speaker
And so when they take over, we're grateful because we can still get by. People with post-concussion syndrome are getting by. They can do all the things they used to do usually, but the quality of everything they do has decreased. And it's for that reason, it's kind of the invisible injury. like They can...
00:06:19
Speaker
people are like you're you're doing it all you can still do everything like well i do have an eight out of ten headache you know a lot of the time or a five out of ten severity headache and that's one of my 20 symptoms you know my memories uh brain fog and i have but you can't see all of it's inside me and i'm still coming to work or i'm still going to school so it's kind of an invisible injury that way but um Those symptoms are directly associated with the fact that the brain is now underperforming in certain areas, getting less blood flow, and other areas are compensating getting extra blood flow.
00:06:57
Speaker
And the brain ah decided that's the new norm. And now it's just, you it's a creature of habit. The brain is, so it just sticks with that, even though it's not very efficient.
00:07:08
Speaker
And there's no real reason for the brain to change an ingrained habit because it likes to just, you know, path of least resistance, you know, do what's easy. So in our clinic, we just make it change. We don't, we, there are ways to activate the areas that are inactive to get them working again. And pretty soon the brain will figure out if you're doing something many hours in row, many days in a row, which is what we do at our clinic. It's very intense.
00:07:36
Speaker
um you're going to engage those areas. They can't stay inactive just by the nature of the activities we do. And when they activate, the brain starts to recognize this is easier.
00:07:50
Speaker
than working the wrong way. So when you can show the brain that working the right way is so much better than working the wrong way, um it actually starts to hold on to that. And then you form a habit of a balanced brain, when you know, working the right way again.
00:08:07
Speaker
We have to do it in many hours in a row. We have an eight-week aftercare program where even at home after they leave the clinic, they have to do things every day just to maintain for about eight weeks so that we have a solid habit.
00:08:20
Speaker
And most of them by the end of that have made full recoveries and they may have had years of symptoms that that are now gone. So it's pretty fun. I'm definitely curious to hear more about some of those exercises, but I think it'd be helpful to have the full picture.
00:08:38
Speaker
How does somebody get to you in the first place? So when we're talking about concussions or head injuries, yeah what are some of the the common cases or common demographics you see? i think probably most people are thinking football field. What else? Or maybe that is the number one. like I'm just curious to hear what brings people to you. Yeah, well, you'd be amazed at how many ways you can hit your head. um he Yeah, some pretty funny stories. Not funny to them and or to us at the time, but they're pretty unique.
00:09:08
Speaker
But yeah, the most common are sports injuries. We work with ah college and high school and junior high age kids. you know, athletes that have been, you know, soccer is a big one for a lot of our younger kids too. you know, they're so often encouraged to do headers, you know, with the ball and, ah but just the nature of, you know, not,
00:09:30
Speaker
ah Just going full speed with soccer, you know, you have a lot of collisions. and But we have a lot of football too you know, and then all of your other yeah other sports, playing volleyball or basketball or some other sport that they end up.
00:09:43
Speaker
We have a lot of the, you know, mountain bikers, a lot of that stuff as well. um Car accidents is probably one of our major things. just And then our older populations can be your slip and fall kind of patients.
00:09:56
Speaker
So with any ah and all of those um age groups and demographics, you know, people are hitting their head and they're going through the acute stage, which is in the first few days to to a couple weeks or so.
00:10:11
Speaker
And most concussions kind of reset, even without therapy, they kind of just get better. You know, a lot of people have concussions and and there's no residual, nothing afterwards, you know, they're just fine.
00:10:24
Speaker
And, um, but there's about 20% that have lingering symptoms and that's still a pretty high number considering how many concussions are out there. So, um, and those people are after a month, it seems like the brain takes, uh, about three to four weeks, you know, within three weeks, usually it's, it's reset.
00:10:45
Speaker
yeah If it hasn't, it starts going to a, okay, this is the new norm phase. We don't know exactly why that's how it is, but even about two and a half weeks, if you've got a bunch of symptoms, two and a half weeks to three weeks, they usually don't change much by the fourth week.
00:11:06
Speaker
But we usually wait to the fourth week and we hope that it'll reset, you know? And we encourage people in that period, that's the acute stage, we're like, please do not go in a dark room and do nothing because you're depriving yourself.
00:11:21
Speaker
they They say the brain needs rest, but it really needs stimulation as well. And so what you have to do is not go somewhere dark and quiet because you just eliminated visual, dark. You just eliminated auditory, quiet.
00:11:37
Speaker
You're not up and moving or doing stuff. So you just eliminated ah body movement, balance centers, processing information. you You kind of deprive the brain of its ability to recover.
00:11:50
Speaker
And so it, unfortunately, that's the traditional approach that many doctors still hold on to. And they say, yeah, just go somewhere dark and quiet and do nothing. It's cocooning is what we call it.
00:12:01
Speaker
You don't want to do that. We try to help people avoid coming to us all the time. Like if they'll call in and if they're still in that acute phase, I tell them, this is what you got to do. If you, if you've had a sports injury and you want to get back quick, you got to do cardio every single day.
00:12:17
Speaker
maybe twice a day, but it can't be jarring. like Not like jogging is too bouncy. You have to go get on a stationary bike or go swimming or something that's not jarring. So non-jarring cardio.
00:12:30
Speaker
And then you need to be out and about, prefer preferably outside where you're processing infinitely more visual information than if you're inside. And so go outside, go for a walk and and talk, you know, just go for a walk and, and go with somebody. So you're engaged in, you know, verbal auditory processing. Cause you're talking,
Therapy Process and Motivation
00:12:51
Speaker
you're, you're outside. So you can, you, your eyes can diverge. There's birds and flowers. Exactly. Yeah. All of that kind of notice, don't go tunnel vision even, but just kind of take it all in.
00:13:05
Speaker
but take it easy. And so that's the only rest part is you don't want to jump back into stressful work or into your sport or whatever it is where you're having to engage at a high level because that can stress the brain. So um people need to understand that's that's the only part of rest that really is is valid. you know that's the That's the most rest you should get is just by taking it easy, but still getting a lot of stimulation visually, auditorily.
00:13:33
Speaker
um And you just want to be moving your body too and getting the cardio. So someone follows those steps. It's been three to four weeks. they You mentioned they still have lingering symptoms. What are those typically? So if we get to that four weeks you know, stage and they still have the lingering symptoms, then we're saying the brain has decided it's not going to keep trying to reset and it's just going to compensate. Now it's in compensation mode, really. It's a compensation pattern.
00:14:02
Speaker
And that causes the symptoms. And they they can be headaches, brain fog, blurry vision, usually it's intermittently blurry like sometimes it's clear sometimes it's not that's because the eyeballs are fine the eyes are fine it's the muscles on the outside of the eyes that are controlled by the brain that aren't pointing the eyes perfectly at the point you're looking at creates a blurry image sometimes it gets it and sometimes it doesn't and so that's a brain thing not an eye thing but they'll have blurry vision light and noise sensitivity sometimes
00:14:34
Speaker
Irritability, there's a whole emotional dysregulation part. So all a sudden they are more irritable and they may have depression, anxiety, apathy, or lack of motivation, or just more emotional in general.
00:14:51
Speaker
So there's some emotional pieces. um They could have ah balance issues. They're bumping into stuff They can't play their sport or do what they normally do because they just they're just off. you know um Some of that's with they have dizziness and nausea as well.
00:15:10
Speaker
Lightheadedness, you stand up quick and you're like, whoa, and I didn't used to get lightheaded, but now I get lightheaded. Memory issues is often... um A big thing too, like especially short term, but it can be both, but they'll just like they're forgetting stuff and they're like, I don't know why, i can't remember stuff, which also affects new learning. So any student, you know college or high school student especially, are noticing something.
00:15:38
Speaker
Like I'll study twice as much to try to get that in there and I can't retain it. The brain fog I mentioned, but that's a big one because, you know, just lack of clearness of thinking. So you'll walk into a room and with some purpose and you're like, I don't know why I'm even in here, you know, like, and that's happening all the time.
00:15:57
Speaker
All of us probably have a little bit of that. Sometimes I do that. If you have brain fog all the time, you're, you're just doing that a lot, a lot more. And um word retrieval issues. So it affects your social stuff. You'll be talking and you're like, I just can't come up with the words like I normally do.
00:16:17
Speaker
You know, in conversation, you'll notice like you're not getting... the point of what someone's saying, even though you're hearing their words, you don't get jokes or you get the punchline too late, you know, or, and you can't, so the interaction piece, you can't formulate things the way you want to. So and it does affect a lot of your language stuff, but especially that word retrieval usually is what they'll notice.
00:16:42
Speaker
It's such a wide array um yeah of symptoms. There's a, there's a list of even more than that, but, Yeah, sure. And it's probably a little different for each person. And yeah and even just going off of what's what's your baseline? What's your normal? Like, i I heard you say that, like, if you walk into a room and you forget what you're doing, but you don't normally do that, like, maybe you have a baseline of like, hey, actually forget where I put my keys pretty frequently, even when I don't have a concussion, for example.
00:17:11
Speaker
and And that was one thing that as I was hearing you name those things, I'm thinking, okay, wow, you know, sometimes I get lightheaded. Sometimes I feel depressed or anxious. You know, it's like some of these things I feel like are are common.
00:17:23
Speaker
Do you ever encounter where somebody is almost in denial about having a concussion or or maybe denial is too strong of a word, but like they, they aren't sure yeah of the diagnosis because it's some of these things just happen to ah quote, normal brain. Yeah.
00:17:39
Speaker
Quote unquote. For sure. For sure. Yeah. So the, the first indicator as to what might be going on is the chronology. So if you hit your head and those things all seem to increase, you know, whether you had them or not,
00:17:56
Speaker
yeah If there seems to be an increase and or you have new symptoms you've never had before and they came after you hit your head within like a few months even ah of having had that, then And sometimes it can even be like a year. Like your brain is, when it's not working right, you're a little bit like an overheating engine where one of the parts is is not doing its job right and it puts strain on the whole system, but you don't recognize it until down the road when it starts causing some overheating issues. And so there are some symptoms that just kind of grow and you don't notice till later. So we've we've had some that are like,
00:18:38
Speaker
i I was fine. I hit my head. I had a really bad concussion, but I was okay. And like a year later, I started getting all these symptoms. And we've had that even. And we're like, okay, well, and when I was working with the clinic I was at before where we did the functional MRIs, we'd say, let's look at your brain scan. Yeah.
00:18:59
Speaker
So in those cases, it was pretty helpful. And we can say you definitely have some areas that are not getting nearly as much blood as they should get for the activities. Because with a functional um MRI, you're doing activities, cognitive activities while you're being scanned.
00:19:14
Speaker
And so you can see, ah okay well, this is a verbal part of your brain. Your auditory verbal processing centers should be ah showing increases of blood flow at that moment.
00:19:28
Speaker
yeah If you don't see that and you see it somewhere else, you're like, okay, we got something else going on here. So the first indicator is chronology. I hit my head, didn't have this stuff, or at least at this level until after that.
00:19:44
Speaker
It's probably not a coincidence. you know if you' And we'll go through like 40 different symptoms. And we'll sam we'll do a symptoms checklist of a severity from zero, which is no symptoms, to six, which is the really severe, profoundly affecting your everyday life, you know.
00:20:03
Speaker
And they rate this
Innovative Therapy Methods and Outcomes
00:20:04
Speaker
every one of those 40 symptoms on a zero to six severity scale. So when I get done filling that out, and I have the history of what happened, okay, you've had three concussions, your last one was three months ago, you've got um all of these symptoms and you've got a lot of threes and fours and fives and sixes and they're not just like ones or zeros.
00:20:26
Speaker
um but I'm like, there's, this is beyond the soft indicator, like soft marker stage. You know, if you only have a few little things here and there, I call them soft markers. It's like, it could be, or it might not be, you know, we don't know.
00:20:42
Speaker
But when you have a lot of the ah typical post-concussion syndrome symptoms and the severity of those is like three or above for you, or you have ah even a lot of twos, you know, it depends on how many you have too.
00:20:57
Speaker
um That starts to give us a clearer picture of, okay, you didn't have this stuff before you hit your head. And now you have this stuff and there's enough of them.
00:21:08
Speaker
We're pretty confident this is connected.
00:21:14
Speaker
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00:21:38
Speaker
And so then what? I think, you know, for if somebody is maybe on the outside looking in, it it almost seems like correct the brain. You know, you mentioned a few things, but what what is that? What is that process like?
00:21:52
Speaker
Yeah. but What's difficult about it yeah for you or for the patient too? Sure. Yeah. I love the question. So traditional approach to that, ah to almost all brain injury and post-concussion stuff.
00:22:08
Speaker
is they'll do an hour a week of therapy. That's usually what insurances pay for. So people will go okay for an hour a week. They may have an hour of physical therapy and also an hour of vision therapy because they had some vision issues or speech therapy you know because they're word retrieval or maybe it's severe enough they're stuttering or or something like that even. so But those hour a week therapies...
00:22:36
Speaker
Usually, if you've got a brain that is imbalanced, a lot of areas are inactive and a lot of areas are overactive. to change that habit.
00:22:46
Speaker
um It rarely changes with just an hour here and there kind of approach. What happens is during that hour of therapy, the parts that are overworking just overwork even more.
00:22:59
Speaker
They're compensating harder. And so you're actually not helping anything at that point. So usually a a therapist and the patient give up on fix-it approaches diet and jump into the deal with it approaches.
00:23:16
Speaker
And the deal with it approaches are, you know, okay, a lot of it's prescriptions. If you have headaches, ADHD, anxiety, depression, or sleep issues, those are commonly treated with prescriptions.
00:23:31
Speaker
And so that somebody will just say, hey, we're going to give you ah pill and they're like, give it to me. I just need something quick. I need i don't blame them. you know They want something that'll work quick.
00:23:42
Speaker
um But the problem is those medications rarely have a very lasting or even momentary good effect because the cause is different than what those medications are usually treating.
00:23:57
Speaker
This cause is is post-concussion syndrome, and it's not something else. And so the traditional approaches usually do a little bit of remedial, fix it kind of approach, figure out that's not working, and they jump really quickly into deal with that approaches, which you're those drugs or it might be you know if it's light sensitivity it might be sunglasses wear sunglasses all the time or if it's yeah memory it might be like you know what you need to write everything down now you know just you you got to be a better planner you got to be better organized you know and so they'll focus and some of those strategies are very valuable if there wasn't another option for sure but i don't think
00:24:40
Speaker
you ever want to settle for a deal with it approach if you have not exhausted your fix it approaches. And so the one hour a week is the is the biggest problem with that.
00:24:52
Speaker
So in our clinic, we had the patients are in our clinic seven hours a day with an hour like lunch break in the middle. So it's really like six hours of therapy a day um for a week or most of them do the two weeks.
00:25:07
Speaker
And by the end of the two weeks, most of our patients, like 95% of our patients, have 75% reduction in symptoms as per their self-reporting.
00:25:19
Speaker
And they report ah eight to 10 times a day, like we go through all of their major symptoms. Okay, what's your scale? Zero to six. And they'll say what they are, and we get an average of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. So by the end of so The two week pro ah period, um their symptoms are mostly better. Some of them, a hundred percent, some of them more like 60%. So, you know, the average is 75%. Then we have an eight week aftercare program where we're like, okay, some things are like flipping switches. Like that intense program is like flipping switches. They see big improvements.
00:25:57
Speaker
And then the rep, but none of them are satisfied with 75%. Like always happy. they're always happy but they want to keep going. And I don't blame them. like say you want If you're like, this is possible. I've had years of symptoms and now most of them are gone.
00:26:14
Speaker
Is there any way I can get all of gone? you know And so many of them are athletes. you know They're competitive. They're trying to win. Exactly. Yeah. So by the end of the eight-week aftercare program, whether they've been doing you know, an hour, hour and a half-ish every day.
00:26:30
Speaker
Sometimes they don't have the time and they just do what they have time for, like a half hour a day of like their home therapy program for that eight weeks. By the end of the eight weeks, most of our patients are like...
00:26:44
Speaker
we love you guys, but we don't need you anymore, you know, and they're ah either at a hundred percent recovery or on their way to it. And they kind of feel like they have, they know what to do to keep going in the right direction. so If you do the right things, like the one hour a week traditional approaches just are not very effective.
00:27:03
Speaker
Very rarely does that change a an ingrained brain habit. I mean, it makes sense. you know brain Brain is not the same as as your bicep or, you you know...
00:27:16
Speaker
these another part of your body. like we We do these hour-a-week therapies, and because of how insurance is, they've just tried to decide that everything should be an hour a week, even brain stuff.
00:27:28
Speaker
And um it's not consistent with the research, and it's just the way the system is. and it's So that that makes it kind of difficult for people when they're trying to... They usually have bounced back and forth between all of the therapies, doing the hour-a-week kind of stuff, or a few hours a week even.
00:27:48
Speaker
um And then a lot of them are good patients. They'll do home exercises for an extra hour, you know, and that's still nowhere close to you know, six hours a day of therapy, many days in a row, you know, for a couple weeks.
00:28:04
Speaker
um So by the end of that, the brain really doesn't have much of an option, but to change because of what we do. It's a multi-sensory integration approach. So what we do, yeah you're not going to be sitting and talking or sitting and doing something visual or just doing a balance exercise.
00:28:26
Speaker
You're going to be doing all of those things at the same time. So everything we do You're going to be challenging your body movement, motor planning, at the same time that you're moving your body.
00:28:37
Speaker
So your vestibular app proprioceptive systems, like where you are in space and how you're moving your body, and those systems are engaged at a high level. at the same time that we're challenging your auditory verbal so we're engaged in conversation or word retrieval games or it's like categories or taboo or you know you've a lot of these traditional games they're having to do it while they're moving their body and balancing and catching balls um that's the visual piece they have to track and catch balls a lot of times or
00:29:10
Speaker
um So there's we have probably 50 activities that are our typical multisensory integration activity, and they're all pretty different from each other.
00:29:21
Speaker
But the thing they have in common is they're making the body... And the vision and the auditory verbal centers of the brain really process and are challenged in all of those areas at the same time.
00:29:35
Speaker
So those areas can't compensate for each other very easily anymore when you're asking them to engage and integrate because you've got to, those areas have to work together now.
00:29:48
Speaker
not help each other out, if that makes sense. Sure. Yeah. Each part of the brain has to carry its own weight a little bit. yeah Yeah. When you describe it it, it actually sounds kind of fun. Like i I'm thinking like some of these things, I i want to try them.
00:30:01
Speaker
But I imagine that maybe for somebody on day one, it's frustrating. I mean, like what, what is ah like a, a bad day look like when somebody is coming in and they're all four or fives and sixes on the scale. And I'm curious how you motivate somebody through that. My favorite days, all of our favorite days are our Thursdays and Fridays, you know, of the last week. Um, and the first Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, you know, like those, those are harder.
00:30:30
Speaker
You can do some, um mild challenges, but still engage the multiple areas of the brain at the same time. For example, if if you're going you know outside and walking on some even uneven terrain, maybe, so your brain has to process where your feet are going. It can't just do autopilot, like when you're on pavement or sidewalk. you know So the brain is naturally... We try to find natural activities that will kind of naturally engage people
00:31:02
Speaker
that part of the brain and for whatever reason that seems to be less um triggering or aggravating of the symptoms and so usually patients will find even on the first few days they'll find some things improve even if their headache gets worse you know like okay my headache's worse but I also feel like Like my balance is better. Does that make sense? but Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. So, but there's certain symptoms that are kind of like your secondary symptom.
00:31:34
Speaker
Like we don't target a specific area for headache, for example. Headache is like, that's the whole engine overheating kind of thing. Like ah whole system's not working. So you've got headaches and there's certain things like, you know, anxiety and depression and some of the emotional stuff.
00:31:51
Speaker
That's also more of a secondary symptom. And so a lot of those symptoms are going to be a little bit like a roller coaster at first, because as we make the brain change, as we target areas like the vision and the balance and the verbal auditory processing,
00:32:07
Speaker
As those areas engage and start working better together, um the brain is, there's a period of adjustment and the brain, sometimes it'll get worse before it gets better even. They're like, okay, my symptoms are worse now.
00:32:19
Speaker
And we tell them, Okay. Change is good. Normally, you almost always, your headache is steady at a four all the time, and now we're getting some seven, sixes and sevens. like that's That's okay.
00:32:34
Speaker
We hate to be too celebratory when you're in pain, you know? um but But it's like, you know what? You need to expect that if you, if it stayed the same and your symptoms just stayed the same and we, we didn't challenge you enough, we wouldn't be able to see the brain change.
00:32:53
Speaker
Change is good because eventually it'll, it figures out how to integrate in a way that take the symptoms down. And that usually happens like, you know,
00:33:05
Speaker
If we are two week patients, we usually see that about Wednesday of the first week where they just start coming down. Okay. And this is why a lot of people choose the two weeks because they usually make some improvements on Wednesday where they're like, oh and,
00:33:20
Speaker
I slept for the first time in long time all through the night and my headache, half of what it normally is. And I'm, my brain fog's gone. Like I, I have clear thinking, but I still have light sensitivity and they'll have, so you know, a bunch of other things and like, that's okay. Just keep going. And so they'll do Thursday and Friday and, and, uh, they're usually doing pretty good on Friday But there's still some to do. And so a lot of people are like, is is two weeks going to be better? And it always helps with that.
00:33:54
Speaker
that residual stuff that we don't get in the first week. And some people are slower. They don't start seeing the, and oh, I'm just starting to see the improvements and it's Thursday or, you know, um even Friday, you know, and so then that second week is helpful. But by the end of the second week, most of our patients are pretty happy campers where it smiles and, and ah your comment about the things we do sound fun.
00:34:23
Speaker
There's a lot of laughing. Like you want me to do what? Sure. i I don't know how to juggle. Well, we're going to try to juggle and you you're on a balance beam and we're playing this for, and they're like, what? I can't do any of those things. And you want me to do all three of them at the same time? Like, you know, like, but first we're just going to toss the ball up and down.
00:34:43
Speaker
We're not juggling yet. Sure. and And, we're going to walk on the balance. If you fall off, it's okay. You know, later, It's hot lava if you if you step off. you know you in a week We step up the challenge. you know But brain recovery depends on um a healthy
Broader Applications of Brain Recovery Techniques
00:35:02
Speaker
mindset. And if you're not laughing and smiling, then we're not doing part of what we're supposed to do. We're not doing as therapists, I feel like. Sure.
00:35:13
Speaker
We have to hit that just right challenge. So Nate, I'm curious if ah some of these things you're describing, even if somebody hasn't had a traumatic brain injury, i mean, is this still just helpful to occasionally challenge yourself in some of these ways just for ongoing brain health?
00:35:33
Speaker
Yeah, so we have our brain recovery program, and we have been asked by, often it's by like the spouse of someone who's recovered, you know or a family member, or people who just know what we do. They're like, would you consider...
00:35:50
Speaker
having me come i don't have any concussion or issues but i i feel like i could be sharper i feel like you know or i'm getting a little older my memory is a little off not a lot but you know for my balance or you know there's there's various things or maybe just my emotional you know dealing with life would this give me more resiliency and you know And the answer to that is yes.
00:36:16
Speaker
um And so that's that would be our brain enhancement program, which we haven't had time to like really really get up and going, but the activities would pretty much be the same. We've had patients that have come through that haven't had concussions or had injuries of any sort.
00:36:32
Speaker
but they've heard about us. And um this happened even when I was with the other clinic that did um a lot of the research. And they one cool thing they did while we were there is they looked at the research of all the patients that had something else other than hitting their head.
00:36:50
Speaker
And they said, what what improvements did they have compared to ah post-concussion syndrome patients? And if you look at it on a graph, the improvement rate was pretty steep for post-concussion.
00:37:05
Speaker
And everything else was thrown into one pool, but it was it was like that. you know It was still significant improvement. It just wasn't quite as steep. But you wouldn't expect it to be quite as steep because they had some so real significant symptoms, you know, that um but improved. So, of course, they were the super happy about that. But, um yeah, the answer is it's general health.
00:37:32
Speaker
You know, my wife is like, can I go through the program? You know, like um there's a lot of there's a lot of good I think that could, you know, happen if someone was like, I have the time and the means to come to your clinic.
00:37:46
Speaker
will Will you help me? um because I want to be sharper, we would for sure do that. And I would have a pretty high level of confidence that they would come out being happy that they came through. Stroke patients, they have permanent damage areas of the brain because it's a stroke, but the brain can navigate around that damaged area a lot more efficiently than what it figured out right after the stroke. You know, it's kind of in survival mode.
00:38:13
Speaker
In survival mode, the brain has to figure out what to do and and then it decides that's what it does. And it's not very effective. And so when we do what we do here, it really helps them. So they'll usually graduate like well, I had my stroke and I went to therapy and because I can get dressed by myself and I can use the bathroom and I can get in and out of bed. And because of all of those things, they said I'm done with therapy, you know? And, uh, yeah, we're just setting the bar a lot higher. Yeah.
00:38:45
Speaker
None of them, but none of them are happy with that. You know, um, right. If there's and some improvements to be made beyond that, more in the quality of life category, you know, they're going to want that. And that's what we've seen.
Patient Stories and Program Impact
00:38:59
Speaker
Almost every stroke patient that's come through has been super happy because their brain has, i think, rerouted around the damage area in a more efficient way, which speeds up processing time,
00:39:11
Speaker
and accuracy and ah creates less strain and so they're not as as tired and so they have more energy and so there's just so many positives that have come out of that but the That's a big population. We've worked with all the emotional stuff like anxiety, depression, had patients that have never hit their head but have had unsuccessfully responded to medications what I call talk therapy.
00:39:40
Speaker
And with that, I say, just come in. you know It may be that your brain, for whatever reason, is imbalanced. And it's those things happen not just with concussions. you know There can be traumatic traumatic events.
00:39:53
Speaker
um In the brain, I've had some ah ladies who have, after they had babies, you know not the pregnancy, but more like the labor you know and going through all that. Then they get through it and that that postpartum stuff doesn't go away, the depression, and then they also end up with all these other things and And they're like, I feel like I've had a brain injury because of my memories gone.
00:40:18
Speaker
yeah know and and yeah so we've worked with them as well. And so post long COVID um is another one. ton of people are having brain ah like, ah you know, post concussion like symptoms.
00:40:35
Speaker
after having long COVID. and um And fortunately, they respond quite well to the exact same treatment as post-concussion syndrome.
00:40:45
Speaker
That's incredible. And i I think it's inspiring to think that there's just so many different stories and histories and conditions that can benefit from this? but You know, if you or any of your listeners have ever hit their head and had symptoms that lingered, you know, of course we would be, we do a free consultation. I guess that's one thing I should probably mention.
00:41:10
Speaker
It's too much to expect people when they're just going through so much to to to worry too much about you know paying for something that they don't understand. And so we're just like, you know what? Come in This is what we do all the time. if we never see you again, we're completely happy to help you or give you home you know suggestions. or And it might not be post-concussion syndrome. We can guide you in the right direction, you know possibly, if if it's not something we can help with.
00:41:39
Speaker
We have a vested interest in making sure anyone who walks in our door that we decide to treat walks out of our door, you know, happy that they came. We don't want to recommend ourselves to anyone that we're not pretty confident we can help.
00:41:55
Speaker
And for that reason, we're, we're still all five-star reviews. So um that's, that's a good thing. So Nate, where can somebody go to learn more about you and what you all do?
00:42:07
Speaker
Sure. The easiest way is to just go to our website and call us ncxbrainrecovery.com. And if you just go ncxbrainrecovery.com, there'll be a phone number there to contact us and you can set up a free consult and those can be virtual. So you can just do it from your home.
00:42:27
Speaker
We make it easy. We have probably more out of state, out of country patients right now than we have in state patients. So most of wow our consults are not in person. They're virtual. And, um, we're happy to do that. We can,
00:42:42
Speaker
pretty much get to the bottom of things. um I like to do some performance testing with vision and balance and a few other things when they can come into the clinic. gives me a little bit um more information, but that symptoms checklist that we go through is pretty thorough.
00:42:59
Speaker
And especially if we have a good history of head injury, we can usually have a pretty good idea if we can help someone or not. Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because I was definitely going point that out, that it you don't have to be in person to start the conversation. and And even just if you aren't sure if what you're dealing with is a head injury, like it's a great first step to just have that free consultation and you can help somebody figure out what the next step is once they've done that.
Conclusion and Contact Information
00:43:26
Speaker
For sure. All right. Well, I'll put that link down. It's NCXBrainRecovery.com. What does the NCX stand for? should ask that at the very beginning. Yeah, well, we so we started as NeuroConnections Brain Recovery Center, but that was just a mouthful.
00:43:44
Speaker
So we were NeuroConnections with an X, kind of a creative spelling. So that was the NCX. NCX just stuck. Well, Nate Pope, thank you so much for your time today. Yeah, thank you, Jamie.
00:43:59
Speaker
Swenyo Labs is a show about sleep, memory, and dreams. For more content, visit our blog at swenyoelabs.com and connect with us to learn more about how you can share your story related to brain health and the daily habits that help us to rest and live better.
00:44:17
Speaker
Thanks for joining. We'll be back soon.
00:44:21
Speaker
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