Train to Maintain & Retain Your Brain!
by Kayle Sandberg-Lewis, LMT, MA, BCN-Fellow
March is Brain Injury Awareness Month.
Although football players are exceedingly good at hurting their brains, and are getting many of the headlines regarding traumatic brain injuries (TBI), they are not alone. Everyone with a brain is susceptible. In fact, it’s estimated that in the United States a new brain injury occurs every 17 seconds.
Brains are highly vulnerable to injury and yet we have survived as a species.
How’s that work?
The brain is complex with trillions of redundant circuits allowing garden-variety bonks & konks to the noggin and even blows strong enough to cause one to see “stars” to generally be considered inconsequential. Unfortunately, the insults do accumulate and by the time we reach our fifth or sixth decade, many of us feel we’re not as sharp as we were when we were younger.
Back in the olden days, the mid-1990s, when I started my practical training in neurofeedback, the primary caveat was to NOT use neurofeedback with anyone who had had a brain injury. Clinical use of neurofeedback was relatively new and TBIs were not well understood – there was a fear of the unknown and “what might happen” if one worked with an injured brain.
Flash forward 30 years and now we understand that it is extremely difficult to get through life without having had brain injuries. It’s part of being human, but it is also the cause of some of the problems encountered by the ageing brain. Fortunately, even as we age, the brain retains much of its capacity to learn and repair itself, given the proper support.
That’s the blessing of neuroplasticity.
How do I propose we sharpen an ageing brain?
First, we establish a baseline with sets of data we can return to in order to calibrate progress:
CNS Vital Signs – a neuropsych evaluation - gives us an idea of current performance and areas that could use some improvement.
A quantitative EEG (qEEG or Q) lets us know what parts of the brain, if any, are lagging or out of sync with other parts.
Infrared photo of the frontal lobe allows for a session to session “snapshot”.
Then we get to work:
LENS (Low Energy Neurofeedback System) generally helps clean up residual effects from previous insults to the brain and gives us an indication of whether we’re on the right track.
EEGer tends to bring about a balancing of arousal levels, improves equanimity, and improves sleep.
Interactive Metronome helps tune up the timing of the brain, improves balance, proprioception and aids short term memory.
pirHEG helps improve focus by addressing the blood supply to the frontal lobe and can help address chronic pain.
Alpha/Theta helps access untapped creative resources, helping to reframe the past and proactively plan for the future.
ZScore training and/or sLORETA to target residual spots found on the qEEG, issues that haven’t cleared up with the other forms of feedback.
Photobiomodulation to help “clean” the brain of metabolites whose buildup contribute to the slowing of the brain and incomplete sleep cycles.
Why so many different tools?
I know of no analogy that captures the brain’s complexity. It is electrical, biochemical, vibrational, and totally reliant on timing. Our chances of improving overall performance increase with each added modality. But what we do in the office must be supported in the person’s daily routine.
Therefore, in addition to the above, tuning up the brain requires:
Good nutrition, personalized to the individual.
Coordinated exercise.
Supportive social relationships.
High quality sleep.
When I’ve told people this, some have sighed and said, “Well then there’s no hope for me. I haven’t slept more than a couple of hours a night in years.” I can almost guarantee that if you follow the rest of the program, sleep will improve.
Case study:
“Bucky” was a 68 year old bachelor who was worried he was following in his father’s footsteps and developing dementia. His sleep was fractured with delayed onset and poor maintenance (meaning he had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep), had a sedentary lifestyle, lived on TV dinners and beer, and frequently couldn’t remember where he’d parked his car or where he’d put his keys. Neurofeedback helped him sleep better and his short-term memory seemed improved but I knew it wasn’t going to hold for him as long as he was eating processed foods and not moving his body. We suggested all sorts of dietary changes and exercise regimens, none of which appealed to him. Knowing that Bucky occasionally went to a country-western bar, one of our students said, “Bucky, how about line dancing?” And Bucky lit up. He said he had watched people doing that and thought it looked like they were having a good time. A few weeks later, a slimmer, trimmer Bucky informed us that not only was he participating in the line dancing, but he had also met a special lady who insisted they eat “real” food. His working memory had improved and he was waking feeling rested and restored.
Kayle Sandberg-Lewis holds a M.A. in Behavioral Medicine, the study of how what we do affects our well-being. She has over three decades experience in stress management and is board certified in neurofeedback, which she introduced to her practice in 1996.
Hive Mind Medicine blog posts are for educational purposes only and are not intended as medical advice. Please consult with your health care practitioner for personalized guidance.