Would you like to know if your brain is healthy?

What happens when it starts to fail?

Would you like to know if you are doing what it takes to make your brain more healthy?

This Brain Nourishment scoring system will help you do just that.

If you want, you can get started right now by clicking on the image.

Or, you can read on to see how this Brain Nourishment Score came into being.

After you answering the questions (~30 minutes on the full version and ~5 minutes on the “Brief” version), you will be sent an email with your results and some action steps.

 

Take the Healthy Brain Score now, if you are ready.

There are 2 questions I get asked most often:

  1. Can you help me?
  2. What will it cost?

First, the answer is, “Yes, I can help you.”  In fact, I have a system that gives you the tools to help yourself.  So, for those who are unable to come to our facilities, you never even need to see me.  But, there is a catch.  You have to apply what I teach you.

About cost, it’s free to take the Healthy Brain Score.  …can’t beat that.

To go through the program at our facilities, I’m sure it is less than you think, considering all you get.  We’ll discuss the details later.

Knowing the Problem is Real, and that We Want to Help

This journey to the best solution for dementia and Alzheimer’s began as I was researching for solutions to chronic pain.  Transitioning from Pain to dementia may seem like a large jump for some of you, as it did for me. As a Chiropractic Neurologist,  the most common conditions I see are chronic, pain-related.  As part of maintaining my board certification in neurology, I must read research continually.  So, the logical condition for me to research was chronic pain.  The ultimate pain conditions to research are phantom limb pain and complex regional pain syndrome (CRPS). I found the research on successful treatments of these conditions fascinating.  As I began to talk to other doctors, even medical neurologists, I found that they were familiar with these pain conditions, but they knew nothing of the successful, non-drug/non-surgery treatments, apparently because it was not within the realm of traditional approaches taught in medical school and those promoted by medical associations.

Early on, and even today is some back-woods mindsets, the medical community believed that those who complained of tinnitus or chronic pain from phantom limbs were over-imaginative or that they were crazy.  Of course, with dementia, we start to wonder if we are crazy perhaps before others even notice.

Different - Yellow umbrella

The doctors I know don’t think these folks are crazy.  But even with compassionate doctors that want to understand and believe you, they often say, “Nothing can be done;  don’t waste your time with natural approaches.”

Anti-depression, Pain suppression, and anti-psychotic medications are often the drugs of choice.

Does that remind you of your experience with a loved one?

Now, with functional MRI (fMRI), we know can see the chemical, structural, and functional changes in the brain early in the disease.  This information has been combined with practical treatment approaches to help people before it is too late.

D--NIMHRoot-IL-LibraryImages-Medium-thumbnail_schizmatterloss

As research has demonstrated approaches that are successful and reasonable, I have applied them to my own patients.

I have always been driven to make things better  — since I was a child.  I remember the company that advertised,

“We don’t make things; we make things better!”

That has been my unofficial motto ever since.  My wife (We’ve been married a short 15 years now.) wonders out loud, “Why are you always trying to change things?”

Unless something works wonderfully, I automatically look for a way to improve it.

The Root of the Problem is Common

As I developed effective systems for Chronic pain, Tinnitus(ringing in the ears), and Dementia treatments, I began to notice the common patterns for these brain-based conditions.

These patterns of brain dysfunction involved:

  1. Normal brain tissue that,
  2. Lost Normal nerve Stimulation, resulting in,
    1. brain that did not function, or in some unfortunate cases,
  3. Became Overactive and irritable where it used to react normally.  If it was normally an area that perceived touch on the hand, it now perceived pain, itching, other irritating sensations on the hand.

I was finding that the research on Chronic Pain, Tinnitus, and Dementia all had these similarities of what  seemed to be normal brain going bad.

At first this perplexed me, but now that I had the pattern figured out, it was obvious!  Why hadn’t I seen this all along?

As I shared this with other medical professional, they were very interested, but new very little of the latest research related to these natural approaches.

Undaunted and excited with this new discovery, I began my own research project.  In this case, my research was in the auditory portion of the brain, with tinnitus.

Three years later, I had some amazing success and some disappointing failures.  I suppose I should have been content with the successes, but, as I say, “We don’t make things; we make things better!”

The Missing Element

What was I missing? I kept changing the factors in the research — looking for the perfect combination that would spark the brain to a balance of normal activity.

This is when I found the missing piece…once again painfully obvious, with hindsight perspective.

My revelation came in the form of 2 wonderful pieces of research on dementia REVERSAL.  Dementia is what happens with folks with Alzheimer’s, perhaps the most prominent brain diseases of our time….and, yes, I said REVERSAL of dementia. From this research, I developed the Brain Nourishment Score.  This score is based off of multiple criteria proven to affect brain health.  A low score means your brain is being nourished well, that it’s fertile ground for healthy, growing and rejuvenating neurons and neuron connections….but we’ll get back to the score later.

Or,if you wish, you can take it now:  Healthy Brain score questionnaire,

Previously, if we wanted to research the treatment of dementia MEMORY we would have people practice REMEMBERING things and see if they improved or stopped forgetting as much.  It worked, barely.

That’s logical, but it is incomplete.

This new research addressed almost everything.

And it worked… beautifully.  The dementia was reversed!  We are planning a study to replicate these research findings, and I have been excited to apply what we already know to my patients.

What is the secret to its success?

The brain needs 4 things:

  1. Specific Activation
  2. Global Activation
  3. Maximize Nourishment
  4. Minimize Irritants

Brain circutry - Motionbrain-NIHWe first learned this about Chronic Pain and Tinnitus, now we have research demonstrating these truths with dementia and Alzheimer’s.

It’s also important to catch it as early as possible.  I almost NEVER give up hope for people who are willing to put in the work, but you can certainly get more benefit for the effort if you start early.

 

 

I went back to my research data, looking for those tinnitus sufferers who had been Activated Globally, Nourished Maximally, and Irritated Minimally.  All of  this information was there, because I had asked each individual for it as part of the enrollment process.  I knew it was important, but I had gotten lost in the researchers paradox of looking for changes in the body’s complex system when only studying the effect of one simple factor.   I had seen hints of this combination resulting in greater success emerge earlier, but it was hidden deep in the data.  When I analyzed the results with this new viewpoint, the pattern was obvious.  Those who had the most “nourishing” combination had the greatest success.

Of course!  We are talking about the same brain!…whether it is the part of the brain that perceives sound or perceives memories.  In fact, the sound centers of the brain, where tinnitus comes from, and the memory centers, where dementia and Alzheimers’ come from, are only centimeters apart.  They literally almost touch each other in the brain!

Of course, not everyone fit PERFECTLY in this box, but it had proven to be VERY powerful and predictive.

Learning from the Past to Improve the Future

Then I compared this “nourishing combination” to the Healthy Brain score criteria.  It fit almost perfectly with my brain Nourishment Score I had developed for Dementia treatment.

With this information I can predict with some accuracy who will respond to treatments well, AND, even more exciting, we can recommend the changes to help restore brain function!

Now, it is a matter  of your knowing WHAT to do, HOW to do it, and, of course, DOING it well.

What to do:

Here at Synergy, we have a 6-Steps to Health approach that we have found to be effective:

6 Synergy Steps to Health

These steps will be applied to the Elements of Health: what/how you: Eat, Drink, Breathe, Think, Move & Sleep.

The  priority order to these Elements of Health will depend upon your individual situation.

For example,one person may be entirely sedentary (poor “Move” element) and another may eat very poorly (poor “Eat” element).  Each Element may take on the priority position of being the most important element to improve and without improving it, one cannot be healthy.  That is where Step 1 comes into play, the Healthy Brain Score.

6-Synergy-Steps-and-Elements-to-Health

6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 1-Test

The Synergy Brain Nourishment score will accomplish Step 1 for you.

It will take you about 30 minutes to complete the thorough questionnaire.

There is no charge.  All you will need is your height, weight, name and email, so we can send you the  results.  We will also have you find your resting heart rate…pretty simple, but since the questionnaires are built from standardized questionnaires, the results are VERY predictive of real health status.

Healthy Brain score questionnaire Brain Nourishment Score graphic + text-small Click the link to get started.

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Okay, that was the questionnaire.  It’s truly amazing the information we can get from that. It’s because researchers have done the hard work of doing what we call “standardizing” it. To be clear, the entire Brain Nourishment score has not been standardized yet, but most of its pieces have been. For example, the physical fitness portion has been compared to people’s fitness ability in doing a 1-mile walk test. This set of questions is at least as accurate as that. In fact, it even correlates significantly with the “gold-standard” testing done on a treadmill where they measure oxygen intake and gases used by individuals. (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831835/pdf/1471-2458-10-59.pdf)

Once you have identified what your body needs, you start addressing the problem to help  you get better.

Over the last 20 years, I have put together the resources for you to accomplish this without coming to see me.  There are 2 reasons I did this:

  1. Since the time I was in 8th grade, I have had a passion to help others get well by addressing multiple areas of their health.  I knew, even then, that if you just try to address the health area that comes easy, or the one that is the latest fad, you will fail in the long run.
  2. Most people need a little information and guidance to help themselves in a natural approach to restoring their body’s health more than they need a specialist to help manage their disease condition.  Through years of seeing patients who had health conditions that varied from Migraines to Back pain and from Acne to Celiac disease, and from Tinnitus to Alzheimer’s disease, I found that there were common elements that contributed to causing or worsening their condition.  I also found that those elements common to each of those conditions needed to be addressed in a personalized way, because everyone is a little bit different.  So,I developed the “6 Steps to Health” approach for each health condition that I saw often.

Certainly, there is a time to get the doctor involved personally to help you treat your condition.  Sometimes, infections or other serious conditions require a medical doctor’s testing and prescription, you may need the support, direction, and  spinal adjustment by a chiropractor, you may need the personal attention and training of a physical therapist.  But all of this will work better when you have begun addressing the foundational work of the 6 Steps.

When you want to start helping yourself get healthy, it’s nice to have set of tools to start going through that process of getting healthy, naturally.

Until now, someone had to be a patient of mine to go through this 6-step process.  Now, with the Healthy Brain score questionnaire,  you have access to this process without becoming a patient.

******************NEED TO ADD HYPERLINKS below for each resource********************

To learn more about how we address each pillar of your health, follow the links below:

  • Eat
  • Drink
  • Breathe
  • Think
  • Move
  • Sleep

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For example, let’s say someone has Sleep Apnea. It could have several causes.  Obesity is a common one.  Sometimes it seems to be purely neurological.  My program for sleep, “Sleep is Good, Good Sleep is Better,” will not rid you of obesity.  So, if you have sleep apnea, you need to be evaluated for that.  But if you sleep problems are not that severe, or even as you get personal, professional help for your apnea, you will want to apply what I have taught MANY others about the common problems preventing good sleep.

6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 2-Add Good

The goal is to help balance level of inflammation, blood sugar, and insulin so that the brain cells live in a nourishing environment.

We do this through a personalized food and drink plan that is FRESH, LOCAL, IN-SEASON, NUTRIENT-DENSE, COLORFUL, LOW-GLYCEMIC, LOW-GRAIN, and LOW-INFLAMMATORY.

 6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 3-Avoid Bad

The goal is to reduce triggers of gut irritation, auto-immunity and inflammation so that the brain cells do not have to fight against constant damage.

We do this by reducing or eliminating food sensitivities, highly processed food, most grains and sugars, and artificial ingredients.

 6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 4-Move Use Body

The goal is to stimulate the brain cells to grow stringer and more interconnected.

We do this by getting good Sleep, Exercise (Physical and Mental), Improved Muscle and Joint Function (4-6x/week).

 6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 5-Supplement

The goal is to overcome genetic or environmental  deficiencies to promote brain cell healing, strengthening, and growth.

We do this by taking nutritional supplements based on your functional lab tests.

 6 Synergy Steps to Health-Step 6-ReTest

The goal is to track progress in a measurable way and determine if more or quicker results can be achieved.

We do this by using Questionnaires and Functional lab tests that revealed significant & modifiable results in Step 1.

 

There is hope for your future and the future of your loved one.

Here is a movie trailer about the powerful transformation that occurs and the strength and courage to deal with it.

Our desire is to improve brain function to reduce the number of people who must “deal with it.”

With the Healthy Brain score questionnaire,  you can begin this process.

If you would like more information about how to get started, give us a call, 559-635-8266.

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