Unlock the secrets of your mind with me and Dr. Geoff Weckel as we venture into the transformative world of neurofeedback therapy, a realm where brain workouts lead to newfound mental strength and agility. Dr. Weckel, a beacon in the field, shares insightful analogies that make the complex science accessible, drawing parallels between strengthening the brain and toning our muscles. Our dialogue promises to unveil how neurofeedback, paired with biofeedback, becomes a formidable duo in the quest for comprehensive mental wellness, offering you tools to take control of your cognitive and emotional states.
Embark on a discovery of how mind-body therapies like HRV training can not only soothe your stress but also promote cardiovascular health, as we navigate the fascinating interplay between breathing, heart rate, and mental state. The episode is a testament to the empowering effects of neurofeedback — an extraordinary process that provides visual feedback from brain mapping, allowing individuals to witness and influence their brain's activity in real time. This is a tale of transformation, where those touched by conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and trauma find hope and agency through technology and therapeutic practices that offer a non-invasive path to healing.
Wrapping up our journey, we examine practical ways to integrate these therapies into daily life, from the comfort of your own home to the convenience of smartwatches that guide your breathing. As Dr. Weckel and I share stories of individuals who have reclaimed their lives, you'll learn how neurofeedback not only offers short-term relief but can also engender long-lasting changes, equipping you with the knowledge to strive for a balanced state of mind. Remember, this conversation is just the beginning, and by subscribing, you're taking a vital step toward embracing the full spectrum of mental wellness.
Unlock the secrets of your mind with me and Dr. Geoff Weckel as we venture into the transformative world of neurofeedback therapy, a realm where brain workouts lead to newfound mental strength and agility. Dr. Weckel, a beacon in the field, shares insightful analogies that make the complex science accessible, drawing parallels between strengthening the brain and toning our muscles. Our dialogue promises to unveil how neurofeedback, paired with biofeedback, becomes a formidable duo in the quest for comprehensive mental wellness, offering you tools to take control of your cognitive and emotional states.
Embark on a discovery of how mind-body therapies like HRV training can not only soothe your stress but also promote cardiovascular health, as we navigate the fascinating interplay between breathing, heart rate, and mental state. The episode is a testament to the empowering effects of neurofeedback — an extraordinary process that provides visual feedback from brain mapping, allowing individuals to witness and influence their brain's activity in real time. This is a tale of transformation, where those touched by conditions such as ADHD, anxiety, and trauma find hope and agency through technology and therapeutic practices that offer a non-invasive path to healing.
Wrapping up our journey, we examine practical ways to integrate these therapies into daily life, from the comfort of your own home to the convenience of smartwatches that guide your breathing. As Dr. Weckel and I share stories of individuals who have reclaimed their lives, you'll learn how neurofeedback not only offers short-term relief but can also engender long-lasting changes, equipping you with the knowledge to strive for a balanced state of mind. Remember, this conversation is just the beginning, and by subscribing, you're taking a vital step toward embracing the full spectrum of mental wellness.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to Episode 3 of Restoration Beyond the Couch, brought to you by Restoration Counseling. In this episode, Dr Lee Long teams up with Dr Jeff Weckel, a renowned specialist in neurofeedback, and a multitude of therapeutic approaches. Together they'll explore the innovative world of neurofeedback, discussing its benefits for mental health and its application in therapy. This enlightening conversation promises to reveal actionable advice and valuable insights into how neurofeedback can support cognitive and emotional well-being. Join us on this informative adventure into the science of mental health.
Speaker 2:
Your path to mental wellness starts here, Dr Weckel it's an absolute pleasure to have you with us today. Well, thank you.
Speaker 3:
It's good to be with you as well.
Speaker 2:
Yes, sir. So we're going to talk about neurofeedback. I've heard of this. Yes, you have. Yes, so let's do a little demystifying for our listeners here. Could you explain in layman's terms what neurofeedback is and how it works?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, you know I've often been asked this question and it's not the easiest thing to describe, so let me give this approach. It's like taking your brain to the gym. Right, and if you're going to work out a muscle, you need to go to the gym fairly routinely, because going once a month or whatnot is not going to work. So what I mean by taking the brain to the gym is that we're having the brain do some exercises that may not feel like it's easy to do, so sometimes it's trying a new exercise and you're trying to keep your balance, but you're not figuring out how to do it, and it's more of an intuitive movement that you're encouraging your brain to work a different track than what it's used to, and by working that different track, you're literally rewiring how your brain operates by doing this.
Speaker 3:
Let me get to the nuts and bolts of it. Is that basically, here where we practice neurofeedback, we put someone on with kind of like a swimmer cap and it has 22 sensors and two clip-on ear rings. So basically, the clip-ons are sensors as well. So 24 sensors and all, and those sensors are always picking up the neuroactivity of the brain. One of the fascinating things is that the neuroactivity of the brain is so strong that it's been found to light up a 20 watt light bulb. No way.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, that's fascinating. So you're not doing anything, you're not putting anything into their brain.
Speaker 3:
Not at all. You're just reading what their brain is doing, what their brain is doing, and we're measuring. So there's two things that the brain is operating with. There's the chemical aspect and that's the in between the neurons and I might be getting a little too science here. In between the neurons we have neurochemicals that are sending messages and those messages so that's your serotonin dopamine that are signaling to the next nerve. Hey, send this message to your buddy, and it goes on down the line to whatever the activity that's needed at the time. Well, in order for this message to get down from what we call the synastas all the way down the nerve into the next nerve, this is an electrical activity that sends it down here. So the one chemical messenger is one thing that in our field that we're concerned about. But the other aspect is the electrical activity that sends the message down the nerve, and that's what the sensors are picking up on, is the natural electrical activity that your brain is always putting out.
Speaker 3:
And in order to measure that, we want to provide reinforcement. We want to say good job, brain when it's exercising well. So we have a TV monitor and the TV monitor is saying it's during the holiday seasons we're watching a lot of Buddy the Elf. So Buddy the Elf comes on and when the brain is watching and doing well with the electrical activity, all of a sudden you can see the picture of Buddy the Elf. And when the brain starts getting what I call dysregulated, buddy the Elf goes away. And so we're teaching like we teach a child to ride a bike. We know the child's doing a good job riding a bike because he stays upright or she stays upright. Likewise, we know someone's doing well in neurofeedback when the picture stays on.
Speaker 2:
So they're getting instant feedback, immediate. That's fantastic.
Speaker 3:
And by doing that, we're training the brain to work more efficiently. More effectively and a healthy brain likes to work efficient and effective.
Speaker 2:
That's fantastic. So what differentiates neurofeedback from biofeedback?
Speaker 3:
Biofeedback is measuring things within the body. So galvanetic skin is measuring the perspiration by detector. They're doing biofeedback because the body will always well, not always, there's some people who are good at lying but the body will display something that the trained professions are able to pick up on. Or another biofeedback method that we actually practice quite a bit is HRV heart rate variability. So we're measuring the heart rate and the variability in the up and down of your heart to see when you're operating in the most coherent condition. So we're providing reinforcement when you're doing well. Neurofeedback we're measuring the brain activity. Biofeedback we're measuring things of the body.
Speaker 2:
And so they could be very complementary 100%, 100%.
Speaker 3:
And there are some people when we're doing neurofeedback in the office and they're like what can I do to practice this when I leave the office? And that's when I'll educate them on biofeedback and maybe using we have there's lots of good things out there on the market for heart rate variability and measurement and I encourage them to practice it three, five times a day because connecting the body and the head is where we find holistic function of mental health.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, it's like. What you're talking about, I think, is that we are teaching people how to show up in their own body, and by doing this through actual feedback, through Buddy, the Elf or whatever is on the screen, the monitor yeah, and also through heart rate variability if we're doing it through the biofeedback, and so it's really helping with this mind-body connection that we hear so much about.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I mean, I think I can even illustrate that a lot of times ADHD kids are highly impulsive and they're saying what were you thinking? And they look at you like with a blank stare because they weren't thinking, they were just impulsively acting because they wanted that cookie, right Right. So they weren't paying attention to their body and maybe I'm hungry or maybe that looks really good, and they weren't fully there in the present moment. Or you've probably seen someone who's anxious and they're like I feel fine, my body is all worked up, and that disconnect of what's going on that created that anxiety. And what we want to do is help them become more present with their body. But in order to do that, we got to get the brain on line and then also teach them how to be present with their body so that they can let the two of them work together.
Speaker 2:
So this is a little bit like or a lot of it like a holistic mindfulness.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I'm always an advocate. I think the best way to teach mindfulness is through the body, using your senses, being able to. We have a term called neuroception now, and it's you know, we have the five senses. Well, with the neurology, we're beginning to identify there's something that we can't put a word to. So someone went ahead and said let's call this neuroception. And so now we're encouraging people to have that body awareness. It's not just the physical sense, touch, sensation it's the intuitive nature of I just don't feel right.
Speaker 2:
Being a sense of knowing Right, yeah, right.
Speaker 3:
So when you walk into a room and you're like, oh my gosh, it feels like death just happened, right. Or you walk in a room and like, hey, here's a party, and that neuroception of you, oh, in this person's presence I feel happy, I feel sad.
Speaker 2:
It's like reading, like, like you said, reading the room, feeling the aura or the essence of the energy that other people are putting off. Literally, literally, right. Yes, enough to power a 20 watt light bulb. That's fascinating. Yeah, yeah. So this great neurofeedback. Who can benefit from this?
Speaker 3:
You know one of the things. Yeah, I think it's amazing. A lot of people have told me I think everyone needs to do neurofeedback. That's what it sounds like, and I would have to agree that I think anybody and everybody can benefit from it. I was just reading here recently HRV is one of the proven ways of reducing blood pressure without medication?
Speaker 2:
Wow, did the article give you insight as to how that helps reduce blood pressure?
Speaker 3:
Well, yeah, blood pressure is when we're under stress, and so it gets elevated. Well, how do we reduce stress? We focus on breathing, and if you're using what we call diaphragmatic breathing, then we're engaging the body in something that it's naturally supposed to do, but a lot of times when we're stressed, we don't engage the full body in breathing, and so, by encouraging the body and finding the rhythm of breathing, we're helping reset our heart so that it doesn't have to operate under so much stress, because most of our stress is not because of physical activity, it's because of the emotional activity, that which we're trying to get away from Right.
Speaker 2:
Unhealthy ways. Right Back in the day it was, the stress was provoked by a bear chasing you or an animal coming after you, right? But now the stress is a deadline's coming after you, and the way you meet that deadline is sitting at your desk and hammering out. Whatever it is you're hammering out.
Speaker 3:
Right, or finances, or yeah, the kids have some problems at school, and so what we're finding is with the HRV, is that once you start training and I know we're supposed to be talking about neurofeedback, but I think this is very similar is that once we start training, how the heart is breathing and it helps reset the heart, then what science is showing is that that can have up to a four hour benefit of reducing your distress levels, and so the daily practice of that. Now let me jump back to neurofeedback. What we're finding with neurofeedback is the people who benefit from it are those who have neurological dysregulation, so executives are using it to help calm their nervous system down, because problem solving is reduced when your blood flow is for survival as opposed to thinking, being creative, Right. So executives, athletes, are using it to improve performance.
Speaker 3:
Some of the neatest things that I've seen in my office is ADHD and anxiety be able to benefit. A lot of people are they want to stay away from the stimulates with ADHD the Ritalin, Concerta, Adderall, these type of things because they're concerned about the negative effects of those medications. Well, the neat thing about neurofeedback is side effects are next to nothing. Sometimes people will have a slide head ache right after because you just had a workout, and so I encourage people drink water because you're working out Right. So the brain is made of predominantly water, so what the body is predominantly made of. So anxiety, depression, depression I've seen evidence of that working well the more and more research.
Speaker 3:
This has been around since 1970. We've been applying well. It's been around a lot longer than that. But in the States we've been studying it since 1972 with epilepsy, and that was one of the first things that we said hey, this can be helpful for epilepsy. Wow, Brain injuries are another that we. So after a traumatic brain injury or a concussion, we want the brain to kind of rest a little bit. Give it a couple of weeks off and then we'll come back and we'll train it to help it get reactivated and working efficiently.
Speaker 2:
That's so fascinating because you think about some of the trauma treatments that are out there you are excluded from if you have epilepsy and you're saying that neurofeedback not only does it not exclude you if you have epilepsy, it's actually recommended earlier this summer there was an article published that the I believe it was APA approved it for trauma, wow.
Speaker 2:
So our American Psychological Association not only thinks that this is effective for trauma, but they're saying we're giving it the seal of approval, right? Wow, that's encouraging, yes, yes, that's super encouraging because what it sounds like to me in thinking about all of this is that Neurofeedback really does give a sense of agency back to the individual, because you think about working out, you're going to the gym, you're making these decisions, you're the one that's seeking this information and stuff out, and this is not something that's being done to you, which I think a lot of people have. That perception that when you put a cap on your head, I'm going to do something to you. Right, that this is the opposite of that, is that I'm actually going to empower you to find that space in your body, your brain, your neurofeedback, biofeedback, hrv. All that good stuff is that you are finding that sense of control inside of you.
Speaker 3:
Yes, a lot of people initially don't feel that way because they're like I can't figure out how to intuitively turn buddy the elf back on. So there's some frustration and that's when we work on. The mindfulness aspect of it is being openly accepting to the reality as it is.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, Well, if a person walks into the gym I mean in the new year, people walking into a gym, right, and they're picking things up and they're saying, oh my gosh, really, what have I gotten myself into? There's a lot of frustration.
Speaker 3:
So I definitely see the correlation there and what I think cheers people on the most is we do what I call a brain map.
Speaker 3:
At the beginning of every session, the beginning of treating anyone with neurofeedback I take a map of their electrical activity so that they can actually see a picture of their brain activity, and it's almost.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes people get tearful going. You mean, I'm not crazy, my brain is not working, and I was like that's exactly what this picture is, and our job is to get the picture looking better. And so after so many sessions a handful, maybe half a dozen sessions we'll take another map and we'll see the changes that the brain is making over that time. And so that is where people are like come on, give me in more, because they want that. That's a powerful reinforcer To see that their brain is literally being rewired and working more effectively and less dysregulated, because a lot of times another thing that I warn people is, this is going to feel like watching grass grow, and Texas grass will grow really good for a short season, but for most of the summer the grass doesn't grow there, and so sometimes people experience the grass growing quickly with neurofeedback and they're like yeah, I can really tell a difference, but usually people don't get the concept of the grass growing until after about the 10 or 15th round.
Speaker 3:
So that's the other thing that I want to make sure people know is that neurofeedback isn't like a pill You're taking. You immediately feel right with ADHD. Oh, I can focus now. Adhd is about giving the routine down and training the brain, which requires a lot of training sessions.
Speaker 2:
Sure, when you're talking about somebody who feels out of shape, it's going to take session after session of lifting or running. I mean, I think about the aerobic system, right, right, and how long that takes. It takes six weeks of consistent work for the aerobic system to be in play, right, and it takes two weeks to lose it. Now, that's just not fair. But I love what you're talking about with the mapping, because if we're sticking with that gym analogy, it's like a before and after picture, right, which who isn't motivated by seeing that after Right and it's juxtaposed to the before Right. That's incredible. Is there an age range or a demographic that you think is most affected, or do we go back to the? This is really good for everybody across the board.
Speaker 3:
Well, from my experience it's good across the board, but it's the last one I have research support that I love it. The problem is when she gets younger in age it's hard for kids to sit still Right and in my office generally I try to keep it around seven or eight because that's what I've found that it'd be most beneficial. Now there's other offices that they may do it, a more simpler approach, and they may be able to help it. But yeah, babies have been found to benefit from neurofeedback. People who have had strokes and they're later in life or trying to make sure they stay away from the dementia and working on their memory. They've shown some benefits to it. Yeah, we're still flesh and human and the body eventually wears out. So this isn't to make a super brain, but it would definitely help it. The quality of life is there for the older population as well.
Speaker 2:
That's so interesting. And, again, keeping with your gym analogy, it's not like somebody who's, oh, say, five, eight, is going to walk into the gym and lift their way into being six foot two. Right, that doesn't translate, but you can walk in being able to bench press 150 pounds and over time you can work up to 250 pounds, right, potentially, yeah, and that's a good expectation for us to set. So seven is the youngest that you would feel comfortable treating because of the attentiveness that you treat them all the way up into the right wise ages.
Speaker 3:
Yes, yes, but once again, there's other clinics that can possibly train younger.
Speaker 2:
What is a typical neurofeedback session look like here at Restoration.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, generally it will take about 45 minutes. There's half prep time and half training time and so during the initially coming in, it's just a review of how the week's been going. Have they experienced any difference to their symptoms? Not because of the neurofeedback, but just because of I want to keep track of their life, right, it's the relational component of it. And then as we're setting up the cap and by setting up the cap I'm saying we're put the swimmer cap on, and then there's gel required because, you got to, some of us have thicker shawls than others, but we've got to increase the connectivity where the sensors being able to pick up the electrical activity. So we use gel within the sensors and making sure each one of those sensors are working at its best.
Speaker 3:
Because we're dealing with people's neurology, I want to make sure we're doing it well. So the first 20 minutes or so are generally setting up the cap, and then we transition to actual training, and the training when we're initially starting it, you know, like going to the gym, you don't want to put someone under 300 pounds and say you be up, go have fun. Right, and we're going to start light and work our way up heavy as the brain shows that it's able to manage. So we pace the training and, just like the gym, we'll maybe go three sets for three minutes the first time, but as we get more and more developed in advance, we're quickly working up to five sets of five minutes. Oh wow, so that 25 minutes is taken and then, once that's done, I give you a towel and take off the cap and say good luck getting the gel out.
Speaker 2:
That's the maybe. That's one of the potential drawbacks is are the side effects is?
Speaker 3:
your feedback head. Right, right, it is true, okay.
Speaker 2:
And so what about with a brain map? Does that look similar to a typical session?
Speaker 3:
Well, yeah, with the brain map, especially as we get more and more proficient and someone gets more used to the actual training, we'll be able to accomplish a brain map within about five minutes. And then, because by the time that I've done you know a couple of brain maps, I know what we're working on. So, and also I begin to understand that the pattern of this individual's brain and then I designed a different training, right? Here's another analogy to our gym is that the guys who go to the gym and all they do is vent, press their bodies aren't looking that good, right, because they're not proportionate. They may be looking good in the chest, but it's not proportion to the pencil legs, Right, what we want your brain to be proportionate. So the another reason why we do the brain map is not to cheer you on and show you a picture of the progress, but it also informs me of how to make sure we're well rounded in the gym and working.
Speaker 3:
Every aspect of the neurology we're still learning more and more about the brain is highly complicated, and one of the things that I found they're doing neurofeedback for many of years now is that it's unpredictable how it's going to rewire itself, and so what I'm doing is constantly monitoring and making sure that I'm training your brain to what we call the healthy parameters. And so, after, let's say, a set of five and we're working on, say, adhd, and we're working on improving impulse control then I'll remap and then, based on that, we're going to see some changes within the brain and what might show up is that we need to focus more on the brain. That's a part of salience and looking at things of are you being salient? Are you? By salient, what I mean is, are you focused on what you want to focus on or are you highly distracted? Right, so we're adapting, based on the brain maps, so that the training keeps the brain working holistically and function well all the way around.
Speaker 2:
That word, holistic is the word that keeps coming back to me as we're talking. It is so important that we approach our treatments keeping the whole person in mind and that, as you're mapping, what you're looking for is not simply, like you said. Yes, there's a cheerleading aspect to it, which we always want to encourage people to continue to change. However, it's also that we want to make sure we're hitting the targets that we've lined out. So are we doing what we set out to do?
Speaker 3:
And that's why at Restoration we want our brain maps, we want our neurofeedback to look at the whole brain. There's some neurofeedback out there that they use only one or two, maybe three sensors. We're using 21 sensors because now we can triangulate different parts of the brain and literally see what parts of the brain deep within the layers of the brain, not just the outer cortex of the brain, but we're getting down into the amygdala section and saying come down to amygdala Right.
Speaker 2:
The excitatory piece, right, yeah, wow. So again that holistic piece. We want to look at the whole brain, the whole person. Yeah, yeah, that's neat, that's encouraging. So what's one of the most fascinating, exciting, strange things that you've seen as a result of neurofeedback?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, yeah, books could probably be written on that. So there's my stalling to choose one of them. You know I've seen people be so anxious that they literally hide to avoid intervention, to avoid therapeutic intervention, treatment or talk therapy. But the neat thing about neurofeedback is it's not as intimidating with the vulnerability of talk therapy, and so a lot of times people have, I think, of a lot of my anxious patients who they don't want to be that vulnerable.
Speaker 3:
But it's by doing neurofeedback that their brain begins to calm down so that they are able to regulate their emotions and it gets them prepared to actually do the talk therapy that will help them completely heal with their anxiety and the interpersonal difficulties. So to pop in my mind right away when I talk about that avoid and literally hiding in our waiting room just to avoid it and being able to work with one individual and another individual wasn't quite to that severity. But yeah, that was pretty awesome to see. And now both these people are out in the community like movers and shakers and they're helping out at other people and it's just phenomenal to see how much they've overcome.
Speaker 2:
I love that, because our mantra here is that we want to make sure that you have a life worth living, but in the end, we want you to celebrate restored freedom, and so the excitement that you're talking about is that these individuals came in with lesser of a life worth living, but at the end they were able to move about the world in such a way that was celebrating their restored freedom.
Speaker 3:
They were free. They came in the bondage of anxiety and they were freed from that. Yeah.
Speaker 2:
So for our listeners at home, what's something that they could do in this neurofeedback, biofeedback world?
Speaker 3:
Well, it's kind of hard to do neurofeedback without the equipment.
Speaker 3:
This is true, yeah, so the first is to Sue if they're interested in neurofeedback, being able to find places that provide it, and nowadays there's many different ways that we have not just our neurofeedback in office, but we also have take home neurofeedback, and it's not as thorough as the, and if people are appropriate for them to have a take home therapy meaning that it's more of the outer cortex the outer cortex being the bark of the brain that the outer region of the brain, not the deeper end Neocortex is what we refer to it, as there are some people who would benefit from take home neurofeedback.
Speaker 3:
And the nice thing about take home neurofeedback is that you don't have to travel Right, and that takes time to do that, but you can do it in the convenience of your own home. So there are devices in the software to provide that. There's other things, like you could go to Amazon, and there's a device called the Muse and it's not tailored to your specific brain like what we do here at Restoration, but it's tailored to help you relax. So there's a lot of different devices out there.
Speaker 2:
It sounds like there's opportunities to maybe dip your toe in the pond, like the idea of having a gym at home. You're not gonna have a comprehensive gym necessary 100% but you may have like a pull up bar or a dumbbell of some sort, right, and those opportunities are out there. But really to do neurofeedback to the deep, holistic place that we try to operate from here at Restoration, that's more so done under the care of a professional. Well, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense, and you gave a great tip earlier. That I wanna come back to is the whole idea of diaphragmatic breathing and biofeedback, right, and as you were saying that, I was thinking about how many times I'm sitting across from someone and their watch lights up, their smart watch lights up.
Speaker 3:
Mm-hmm, because it's a biofeedback measurement on our watch. That's right yeah.
Speaker 2:
And what is it telling them to do? Breathe.
Speaker 3:
Right or get up and move.
Speaker 2:
Right, exactly, and so the idea of just being aware of your breathing and breathing deep into your diaphragm is a possible tip for the listeners at home 100%, even sitting here listening to us chat that they can focus on their breathing while listening to us talk.
Speaker 3:
Right right, and I think even with the depressed patient who doesn't wanna get up, right, it's biofeedback to actually get up and start moving and it feels like the last thing you wanna do. Right, but how many of our depressed people actually begin to get up? One of my patients who I'm not doing their feedback with he started doing biofeedback on himself by getting himself up and he's slowly progressed, walking multiple hours a day and experienced his mood improve. Wow, talk about feedback my mood's improving as I get more active.
Speaker 2:
No kidding, wow, our bodies are so Fascinating, right? So amazing. Yeah, and it's that tapping into our body wants to heal, and it's tapping into that which is already there, mm-hmm, just to utilize it more effectively, right?
Speaker 3:
And it's natural right. A lot of the there's a lot of people out there who they may be against medication. There's some who are leery of the medication. Sure, because there's side effects and long-term effects. You know there's lots of research that's going into that and that can be daunting and scary. Well, why don't you consider using Holistic, natural type things like walking or biofeedback or neurofeedback? That's what we're seeing is that there's no averse of Side effects to it.
Speaker 3:
You know, a slight headache, maybe a Cramp from walking or right, but you know by a new pair of shoes right Now the only pushback is it's cost-effective. Right now walking is a whole lot more cost-effective. Then coming up to a train neurofeedback clinician but taking years of stimulates for the ADHD, that gets to be expensive too. So that you know that there's a lot of research out there that's saying that cost-effective neurofeedback tends to stick, whereas with medication you have to rely on the medication to help. You have to leave having to refill the pills right.
Speaker 3:
It is a state of homeostasis. Once the brain achieves where it feels like it's comfortable, it wants to stay there, and a lot of my patients don't come back after they finish neurofeedback because the brain Holds it, maintains it. Now, that's the caveat is that when we go through stress and trauma, then the brain you know it's like, you know, my glory days I I blew a knee or two out and so I still have to take care of that knee but it wants to maintain homeostasis as long as I exercise it, and so sometimes people do come back for boosters there. It is.
Speaker 2:
Well, the beauty is is at least they know what homeostasis feels like, so that they know what they're trying for. Yeah, and secondly, they know of a pull of, they know where to come mm-hmm to to re achieve that right, right, yeah Well, dr Weckl, dr Long is good to be here. Yeah, this is great. Thank you for this information, you bet.
Speaker 4:
If you found value in our discussion and wish to uncover more about the fascinating world of mental wellness, don't forget to subscribe to the podcast. Stay tuned for our upcoming episodes, where dr Long will continue to delve into empowering therapies and strategies for mental wellness. Your journey to understanding and embracing mental health is just beginning and we're excited to have you with us every step of the way. Until next time, keep exploring, keep growing and remember to celebrate restored freedom as you uncover it.