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Today on the Johnson Medical Associates Podcast, Cameron Center discussed the fascinating world of brain function and its impact on overall health. As the head of the brain division at Johnson Medical Associates, Cameron shared his unique journey into the field, heavily influenced by his father’s work in neurofeedback and QEEG assessment.

The conversation delved into the importance of neurofeedback in improving brain function and addressing mental health symptoms beyond traditional therapies or medications. Cameron’s personal journey and his collaboration with Dr. Johnson to integrate neurofeedback into the medical practice highlight a holistic approach to healthcare that prioritizes brain health and function.

In the second part of the discussion, Cameron elaborated on the use of a 19-channel z-score montage in EEG to assess and retrain brain activity. The conversation also touched upon neurofeedback training for individuals with ADHD, focusing on the importance of attention in receiving feedback responses.

The third section of the interview brought to light the challenges faced by medical professionals in the current healthcare landscape. Both Cameron and Dr. Johnson emphasized the importance of continuous learning, embracing technological innovations, and maintaining a patient-centered approach in healthcare.

Finally, Cameron discussed the importance of functional medicine and holistic care, emphasizing the need to consider a patient’s extensive history and empower them to take control of their health. The conversation also touched upon the role of diet in brain function and the use of neuromodulation techniques to alleviate symptoms like anxiety, depression, and ADHD.

Join us for this insightful discussion that sheds light on the transformative potential of neurofeedback in addressing mental health challenges and enhancing brain performance.

Transcript

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Dr. Johnson (00:00:08) Good morning. I am Dr. Johnson with Johnson Medical Associates. I am the primary physician and owner, and it is my pleasure today to have with me Cameron Center. Cameron is head of our brain division at Johnson Medical Associates. At Johnson Medical Associates, we deal with many chronic disease problems. Those problems involve all parts of the body. The brain is affected by many of those. So if a person has allergies, it affects brain function. If they have a traumatic brain injury, if they have a toxic exposure, food reactions affect brain function. So it’s very important for us to understand the brain part of how we feel and then how actually it affects the rest of our body’s systems. It is the control part that controls not only our thought process, but our digestion, our movements, our breathing, our sleep patterns. So it is important we understand it. Over the years, it’s been my experience that we need to develop techniques to evaluate the different parts of the body, whether it’s pulmonary function for lungs, whether it’s stress test for heart, or diagnostic test that help us determine what the liver, the kidneys are doing. Measurement of toxins in the system to look at our body’s load of toxins, our genetics on how our body is handling what we’re exposed to, whether it’s exogenous toxins, or whether it’s medications. So today we’re going to discuss with Cameron the evaluation of the brain. There’s many ways to evaluate the brain. Most commonly, we see people have CAT scans or mris, the brain to look at brain structure. Then there’s different ways to look at brain function. And today we’re going to talk about brain function evaluation, which involves central nervous system evaluation, how good your memory is, what it looks like in short term, long term memory, as well as then how to help repair the brain. And so, Cameron, it is a pleasure to have you today with us. Cameron has a bachelor’s of science in psychology, business, and counseling.
Cameron Center (00:03:02) Correct.
Dr. Johnson (00:03:03) And then he also is board certified in neurofeedback. And it’s been my pleasure to work with him. And also prior to that, I worked with Cameron’s father, who’s in Fort Worth and is a PhD psychologist. So it’s been a family thing for you.
Cameron Center (00:03:21) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:03:24) Could you tell us a little bit about your background and then exactly what neural feedback is and what it’s useful for and how it can help people to improve their sleep patterns or different functions of the brain that they may be struggling with?
Cameron Center (00:03:43) Absolutely. So there’s a lot to unpack there. Right. So we’ll start by how I kind of got into the field of neurofeedback and QEG assessment. So, as you alluded to, my father works in the field, and he started working in neurofeedback when he was finishing his counseling and psychology degrees and was working in mental health care hospitals. And he’d come home, never forget, he’d come home at 10:00 at night, be exhausted, way more exhausted than when he would come home from military service, spent 23 years in the Marine Corps, retired, and then got involved in counseling and psychology. And he would complain about how the system was sicker than the people that came in to get help. And so I just never forget him expressing that frustration with the fact that he wants to help people but doesn’t really know how to help people. And so he started working with Dr. Amon in the change your brain, change your life book, realizing that why is it that psychiatrists are the only doctors in the medical industry that don’t image the organ they work on? It doesn’t make any sense. If you broke your arm and you went into the hospital and they tried to put a cast on you without an x ray, you’d say, wait, we’re skipping a step here. But people who go into mental health facilities frequently don’t have their brain imaged or any other organ imaged to see what’s going on in terms of biological processes. So, long story short, my dad started getting EEG equipment so that he could kind of unpack and unravel what are ways to assess the brain to combine with other therapy modalities, like counseling? Or eventually what it led it into was neurofeedback. So my first experience was his guinea pig. In high school, I got hooked up to the EEG because my sisters didn’t want the gel in their hair, so I was voluntold. Right? And so that was my first experience just with the hookup process and seeing how the technology worked. And then I helped him set up his business just putting furniture together, and just saw him kind of grow from working in the mental health care hospitals into working specifically with patients using this technology. So when I went off to college, I went to go do my own thing. I was pre law and got the opportunity around my junior year of high school, or of college, rather, to work as an intern while I was finishing up my psychology degree. And so I gotten a call and said somebody was looking for some technical help who needed somebody to just set up computers and printers and all that kind of stuff. And so that was my first experience just working in a clinic. And it was with a social worker. It wasn’t even with a medical doctor. And what they were working with was specifically biofeedback, teaching people how to calm their heart rate through different breath exercises, and then also into the introduction into QEEG. So we kind of alluded to measuring brain function and using technology to assist in our assessments of brain health. And what we use is quantitative eeG. And quantitative eeg is similar to neuroquant, which is a quantitative MRI, where it takes the raw data of an electroencephalography and compares it to a normative database so that you can see, in a comparison to healthy brains, what areas of the brain may be overactive or underactive in terms of using too much energy or too little energy, talking too much or talking too little or going too fast or going too slow. And so that was kind of my intro was just getting thrown into it with my dad being involved in the field and then getting some hands on experience in college. And so when I started working as an intern, I was like, man, this is really cool work. People are getting a lot better when they’re training the brain instead of just talking about their issues or just taking medication to try to address their mental health symptoms. And so I finished my degree in, like you said, psychology, counseling, and business, and had wanted to go on for a higher education, but there really wasn’t anything available to me at the time. So I got my certification in neurofeedback, continued working at the clinic that I was interning at, but was now the lead neurofeedback technician. And then around 2020 was when I got a call from you saying that you were looking for somebody to come on to bring neurofeedback into the practice. Right. Because you were already doing some QEG assessments for your hyperbaric patients, for those people who were coming in either with history of head injury or toxicity that was causing neurological symptoms. And you were already doing those assessments for pre and post hyperbaric oxygen therapy, but you wanted to add neurofeedback in. Right? And so what is neurofeedback? Neurofeedback. I mentioned biofeedback earlier, where biofeedback is a process where you measure any biological measurement. So what? Heart rate, galvanic skin response, EEG. And you use that measurement and the education of what you’re measuring to change the function. So the easiest way to think about it is through heart rate. When we breathe at a certain pace, our heart rates will follow that breath pacer. And if you measure the heart rate and you measure the breath rate. You can actually see it on a screen in front of you, change as you change your heart rate. And so what neurofeedback does is it’s EEG biofeedback. We are informing the brain on what it is doing electrically to try to encourage a change via operant conditioning through a positive and negative reinforcement. So the way that looks or the way that works is you’ve got an EEG cap on your head while it’s measuring all the little squiggly brainwaves as they’re going on in real time. And there’s a lot of different ways to montage the EEG out. We use a 19 channel z score montage, which allows us to look at deeper structures in the brain, not just the cortical structures. And we measure the electrical efficiency in comparison to those databases. We see what areas are underactive, overactive, et cetera, like I was just explaining. And then we retrain the brain by encouraging it when it’s electrically efficient and by de habituating when it’s not. So the way that looks is you’re watching a tv screen, and when the brain is in that sweet spot of it’s doing what we want it to do, if we’re working on focus and attention, we want the fast wave activity to come out and the slow wave activity to calm down. And when that happens, the screen goes bright and the sound of whatever they’re watching goes up. And then as that slow wave activity comes back that is associated with the symptom of inattentiveness, the screen goes dim and the sound goes down. So through that positive and negative reinforcement, the brain can actually retrain itself how to be more efficient. So that’s kind of why we introduced it, or why you introduced it, rather, into your practice, as another modality of treatment for certain brain deficiencies, as well as the assessment tool of what’s going on and what’s changing in people’s brains as we go through treatment processes. I know that was kind of a long winded how I got into it and what we’re doing with it.
Dr. Johnson (00:11:42) Thanks so much. Very good explanation. So, basically, what you’re doing is looking at how to reinforce the good parts, decrease the negative input in the brain so that the brain can function and communicate within itself, connectivity wise, so that it is efficient in its function. So you aren’t using extra brain energy, but also optimizing the areas that need to be optimized for optimal brain function. And we see that many different people have problems with focus, with attention. And one of the things we were talking about earlier was people like with add focus problems, kids particularly have problems with it. What’s your experience with working with these type of individuals?
Cameron Center (00:12:39) Well, ADHD is, I think, the sweet spot of neurofeedback training because of the nature of having to pay attention in order to get the feedback response. So first of all, in terms of assessment for ADD, the DSM five is calling it ADHD. Now there’s ADd is no longer in that diagnostic category. But at the end of the day, we’re really not that interested in what the categories are labeled. Right. We want to see what is the function of a person’s central nervous system and why are they not able to pay attention. We see that the lack of ability to pay attention as a symptom and what’s causing that symptom. Right. So for your typical inattentive ADHD, the brain is stuck in a brainwave frequency called theta, which is one of the slower frequencies and it’s associated with daydreamy, restful, but not necessarily into sleep. And when we’re measuring their eeg and they’re sitting there in a resting state where a normal brain would be oscillating at nine to 10 hz, theirs are oscillating somewhere between six to 8. So there is a lack of fast wave activity for them to be able to push their attention towards something that they are intending. So the misnomer is that people with ADHD can’t pay attention and that’s not necessarily true. It’s they can’t choose what to pay attention to. Right. It’s the squirrel moment, right, where you just get pulled away from whatever it is that you’re wanting to keep your attention on. And so through the assessment process, we’re trying to see what are those brainwave frequencies and ratios looking like? Is there more theta activity in a resting state than alpha and beta? And if there is, then that person is going to struggle with those symptoms.
Dr. Johnson (00:14:38) Let’s back up just a bit so people can understand what we’re talking about. Because you have slow waves and then you have fast waves, right? So the slow waves are what you need for what type of activity and the fast waves are. Then what do you need?
Cameron Center (00:14:54) Just. Yeah, let’s simple term, I’ll take a step back and just go through all of them. So when we’re talking about waves, what we’re looking at is on an eeG, how often does the signal go up and down? Within a second. And however many times it goes up and down within a second is the hertz or the frequency. So one to four times per second is delta, a delta wave. And it looks something like that, where it’s slow and rhythmic. And that happens when we get into deep sleep, deep, restful sleep, especially into true deep sleep, not quite rim as the eyes are moving rapidly. But when we’re getting deep restorative sleep, our brains get into delta waves. Now that’s a healthy delta wave. We’ll see excess delta wave activity in aging populations. For people who are going through dementia type processes, Alzheimer’s and dementias, those are.
Dr. Johnson (00:15:55) The people that are older that are sleeping all the time, hard to arouse, right?
Cameron Center (00:15:59) And when you put an eeg on them and they’re awake in your office, but their brains are making excess delta activity, that’s usually no good. And if you think about it just from a physics standpoint, if things are moving slowly, then you’re not going to be able to have fast excitatory processes. And so when a person’s brain is in delta, they’re usually resting, they’re sleeping. Now, when we see a lack of delta activity, it’s usually evidence that that person has not been getting enough deep, restful, quality sleep. So that’s one to 4 hz delta associated with sleep and rest. Five to 8 hz is considered theta, which I mentioned earlier. And theta in a healthy brain is associated with inattentive daydreamy, not focused and paying attention or mindful, but internally focused. So when you meditate, your brain goes into a deep theta state. In fact, when they do eegs on the tibetan monks, when they go into deep meditation, it’s incredible how much their brains completely go into a theta state. It’s like they’re not on this planet anymore. They’re completely in their own heads. And the experience of the meditator would tell you that that makes sense. We see that again, excess theta activity, though, in people who’ve had history of head injury or have had a recent concussion, the thought is that as the brain is injured, it goes into those slow wave functions for healing, resting and repairing. And so when you have a hit to the head, oftentimes the brain will get stuck in a theta state where you’re inattentive and daydreaming, not really focused on what’s going on around you, but more internally focused. A reduction in theta can oftentimes be seen as restlessness. You’re not able to get into those meditative, calm, relaxed states. Nine to 12. Next frequency range is alpha. And it’s called alpha because when they first started putting eegs on people’s heads. That was the first brainwave frequency that was picked up. And alpha is kind of the gatekeeper between focus and concentration and rest and relaxation. So it’s like neutral in your car. If you can’t idle an alpha, you’re going to have a hard time speeding up or slowing down. We see too much alpha, especially in the frontal lobes. With adults, it can be indicative of depression symptoms where the executive functioning network and that frontal lobe functions are idling too much can be an issue. And a reduction of alpha can be similar to the same thing as a reduction in theta, where you’ve got the inability to be focused and relaxed. And then as we move on in frequencies, we get into the different beta ranges. And the reason why I say beta ranges is because beta is the brain in action. So the first range is that twelve to 15 hz, where we see that, especially over the sensor of motor rhythm, the SMR frequency, which is awake, alert and ready for action. So if you imagine, like your shortstop, who’s still. But as soon as that ball is hit, they’re going to react to it and they’re ready to move. Their brains are resting in a little bit faster state than what we are just sitting here, right. We see a lot of different things pop up in beta, especially when I first started working for you, we noticed that a lot of those people who were dealing with mold toxicity had this interesting pattern of high beta activity right on the top of the skull. And as we did our research, we realized that that’s actually an inflammation biomarker. And so we started to see that that inflammation biomarker went down when people were being treated with hyperbaric, which was really interesting. We can talk about that in a minute. So beta is the brain in action, right. And the faster you get, the more energy that’s being spent as the fast frequencies use a lot of energy, even though they’re small in terms of their voltage. So healthy beta brain function in terms of processing information, learning, doing any sort of high order thinking, if you have too much beta, it can be indicative of anxiety or stress, the overrumination of the brain or hyper vigilance. And then a reduction of beta is similar to an excess of theta, where you don’t really have all of the energy necessary to have all your mental faculties about you. So if you have a reduction in beta, you’re going to find it hard to focus and concentrate, to learn new things, to have areas of the brain connect that don’t normally connect, that you need to connect in terms of learning. Right. And so, for our ADHD population that we alluded to, we see excess theta and reduced beta, and we look at that ratio of what the theta to beta looks like. If a person is complaining about those symptoms, I can’t focus, I can’t concentrate. I’m having a hard time. I feel like I’ve got brain fog all the time. And we’ve obviously done all the panels of what could be causing these symptoms. And at the end, there’s nothing that we see, but they’ve got a genetic history. Mom and dad have a hard time focusing, paying attention. They’ve been diagnosed with ADHD and been put on ADHD medication at times before, but it’ll work for a little bit, and then it stopped working. And so a lot of adults who were given the ADHD label and have been dealing with medication on and off, oftentimes find that the meds aren’t doing their job as they were at the beginning. And so if they’ve got these biomarkers that we can track and then train, we can address those symptoms through retraining the brain. So my job, when I’m working with folks like that, I’m a trainer, I’m showing them what their brain is doing. I am informing them on tips and techniques and tricks in order to bring their focus to the forefront of their attention. And then the feedback process of using the EEG to inform the person that, yes, you’re on it, you’re focused, or you’re attentive, allows them to go through that training process in the same way that you would go to the gym and lift weights until your muscles get bigger. Right. It’s the person sitting in the chair who’s doing the work themselves in order to retrain their brain based on the biomarkers that we measure that correlate to those symptoms that they’re dealing with. So that kind of gives you a brief explanation of the brainwave frequencies and how they’re important, both in terms of a healthy brain and also what we expect to see in people who are dealing with symptoms. And so the QEG assessment helps us to analyze and find those areas of deficit, and then the neurofeedback process allows us to use those measurements to then retrain the brain to address symptoms.
Dr. Johnson (00:23:32) Excellent explanation.
Cameron Center (00:23:33) Thank you.
Dr. Johnson (00:23:33) Thank you so much. It is important, as we go through and evaluate patients with chronic type problems, as you have been describing, that we understand what the brain is doing. The brain is the control mechanism. If the brain is not functioning right, then it’s hard for the person to feel good and to function well in the environment. And as you pointed out, anxiety is a big issue today, and it’s part of what could be ADHD. It can be just part of our constant exposure to stressful situations in our daily living, with all the input we have from social media, from people around us, from stressful situations. So that that plays a part in trying to help people to feel better, to cope with their environment. At Johnson Medical Associates, we see there’s many environmental factors that affect the person’s individual function. And it can be foods, it can be the environment around you, which is pollens, dust, molds, exposure. It can be indoor mold exposure, toxins, as you talked about, which affects the brain, and it can be prior head injuries. And this is one of the things we see fairly frequently. If you do not take a full history and ask them about prior head injuries, it does not show up, but it is picked up very easily with a QEG. And we see people that have fallen as kids, were dropped as babies, even sports injuries, people that play soccer, that head the ball frequently.
Cameron Center (00:25:25) They don’t think about it, do they? They don’t think about those as head injuries.
Dr. Johnson (00:25:28) No, they don’t, but they do show up. And what is significant when we run a QEG. So if people are having cognitive function or dysfunction, trouble with focus, with concentration, headaches, sleep problems, QEEG is very helpful in defining what actually is going on, and then a definitive treatment can be formulated for them, whether it’s neural feedback. What we have found in doing our studies with and in conjunction with hyperbaric is that you were telling me the response that the patients have if they’re doing hyperbaric with neurofeedback is much more rapid.
Cameron Center (00:26:24) They’re definitely synergistic. Yeah, there’s no doubt about it. Where when I first started working for Dr. Johnson, I had worked at a clinic previously that just did neurofeedback and biofeedback. So I had some experience on what I expected for response time for people when we’re doing neurofeedback training. And I started getting a handful of patients who had already completed 20 to 40 hours of hyperbaric, and they were doing five to ten sessions of neurofeedback before they would go off to school or whatnot. We had a lot of college students that come in because dorm rooms are notoriously moldy. And, yeah, we saw them train really well and really quickly towards. We call it towards z equals zero, because we’re looking at standard deviations. We always want those most deviant measurements to work their way towards the norm. And I was noticing that, yeah, after people were doing hyperbaric oxygen, that movement towards the norm was happening at an accelerated pace. And after doing some research into hyperbaric, that makes a ton of sense because, well, you get a lot of accelerated paces with the hyperbaric oxygen, particularly in the way that it affects cellular function. And at the end of the day, when we’re encouraging certain brain function, those things are happening at the cellular level. And so if you can increase cell function by eating well, sleeping right, and getting good exercise or doing other treatment modalities like hyperbaric, then the system is going to work a whole lot better. And I wanted to mention, as you were explaining different things that we’ve used before with head injury. Oftentimes, as I’m training people using these technologies, I’m also teaching them about their own the things that we do on our everyday life that affect our brain function and our physical health, which are these three, diet, sleep, and exercise. And it’s incredible how many people come to us and are complaining about symptoms, and no one has ever talked to them about those three things. They don’t talk to them about what they are putting in their body and what they’re eating. People don’t ask enough questions about sleep and sleep hygiene. You mentioned about how much of our environment can affect our brain function and our health. So much of the environmental issues are self administered. We have our phones on too long at night. We stay up watching tv for far too long. We don’t drink enough water. We drink too much sugary beverages. We all like to put tons of sugar and milk into our coffee in the morning. We’re highly caffeinated, which is not necessarily a problem. But if you’re not sleeping and you’re using caffeine to get your focus in the day, you’re working up a creek without a paddle. The best thing you can do for focus is get good sleep. And when people are saying, oh, I sleep 8 hours a day, and you’re like, well, what time are you sleeping for 8 hours from 04:00 a.m. To noon, it’s like, but that’s not good sleep. Yeah, you may be getting 8 hours, but you want to sleep when the sun is down. So much of our hormone system and the way that our brains and bodies function is based on what’s going up in the sky. And so if you’re avoiding the first early morning sunlight, and then you’re like, well, I can’t focus. It’s like, well, try being up when the sun is up, right. And so a lot of what we try to do, and one of the reasons why I was so excited to start working with you a few years ago was the idea of actual, true functional medicine and holistic care. Right. Where we’re not just looking at one test, and we’re not just looking at one thing, but taking into consideration not only an extensive history, but also explaining and teaching people what they can be doing on their own. So they’re not just looking to you, the doc, to fix them.
Dr. Johnson (00:30:27) Right, exactly. So many patients I see come in and say, well, this medicine is not working. That medicine is not working well. It’s not a medicine that’s causing the problem, and the medicine is only trying to alter some sort of function in our body. Medicines are important. Don’t get me wrong. They really help a lot of things. But when we’re trying to look at optimal health, how to take care of yourself, and how to fix a lot of these chronic, ongoing problems, you have to look at underlying factors, and one of them, like you say, is sleep. And you have to have good sleep for your brain to function well, and the rest well. And I see people coming in all the time saying they’re fatigued and they’ve never had a sleep study done or monitoring overnight whether they are hypoxic. There’s a simple device that I give my patients that fits on your finger measures your oxygen saturation. People are much more familiar with them since COVID because everybody has an oximeter. I have them in the office where they monitor overnight your oxygen saturation. And I’m surprised at the number of people that desaturate during the night. They have apnea type episodes. If you have those episodes, you do not sleep well, you do not get restful sleep. So that’s an important issue. So Cameron and I work together to help people improve their overall health, their brain function. And in order to do that, as you were explaining, you have to have a good diet. People that have food reactions causes brain dysfunction. It also causes stimulation. One of the old, old techniques to measure food reaction was to eat one food at a time and measure your pulse before and after eating those foods. If your pulse increased ten to 15 times more emitted from before to after eating, that was a stimulatory food to you, and would be implied that maybe omitting that food would help decrease your anxiety, help your focus. And from that point, people work. Then forward. Now we do different blood tests to help define food sensitivities, we do skin tests to define it. And then we put people on healthy diets, omitting the foods that they are reactive to or stimulatory to help with this, to calm their brain down. We see that a lot with hyperactive kids, that different foods will affect them. We see it with adults frequently. We see people that are dairy intolerant, people that are gluten intolerant, and then people that react to different spices, like garlic and onion, oftentimes cause problems with people. So as we work together, if people are having problems, we look at diet. Cameron then works with them with helping to normalize their brain function through the neurofeedback. And then there’s some other techniques that you use. Also, there’s different devices that work with the vagus nerve, different devices that work with the alpha waves. Can you explain some of what those devices are? There’s even light devices, right?
Cameron Center (00:34:07) Yeah, the light devices. Yeah, they’re cool. So we break down different techniques. So we got neurofeedback and biofeedback as training techniques, and then we’ve got what we call neuromodulation, which is anything that is going to encourage the brain to do something different, or the central nervous system to do something different than what it’s doing before using stimulation anywhere from small electrical pulses, using transcranial alternating current system or stimulation, a transcranial direct current stimulation. Pink noise and random noise, which have an influence on the way that the brain responds to that. Used to, like, even 1015 years ago, we thought hitting the brain with random noise confuses it. What we realized now is that the brain is the most random noise generator in the known universe. Our brains are more complex than what we understand universes as. Like, star systems are. So it’s way bigger than what we expect it to be. And so the way it responds in modulation, oftentimes is it actually will reset itself when it’s given random noises to play with or different types of random noise stimulation. So there’s white noise, what we know as background noise. That’s just really, truly random pink noise, which is an inverse solution of a random noise generator that causes the brain to reset. In a way, it’s a very broad description of what’s happening in that. And then a little less intense stimulations in the electrical side of things is a PEMF. So we work with some practitioners that use the large magnetic coils, like Dr. Miller, using the mert and magnetic resonance therapy. We have PEMF in our office, pulsed electromagnetic field stimulation, which uses coils to create a very small, about five volt magnetic frequency field that will increase blood flow. So when you put a coil of Pemf on a shoulder, knee, head, anywhere, it’s going to increase blood flow in that area. You’re going to have an activation of glial cells, which are all the non neuronal cells within the central nervous system, all the supporting figures, and then you can modulate to stimulate at certain frequencies. And because the brain is an energy efficient organ, which is both to our benefit and demise, part of the reason why things like depression, anxiety, and ADHD become cyclical cycles, or rather cyclical experiences of the brain, is because the brain is an energy efficient organ, and those are defense mechanisms. Anxiety is a defense mechanism. Something happened that’s causing me to be on high alert and stay on high alert so that nothing bad happens again. Right. And so the energy efficiency part of that needs to be worked on. You have to show the brain, hey, it’s actually more efficient. Now you’re out of that situation. If it was an experiment or environmental issue or if it’s genetic, you have to show it, hey, it’s better to function like this than like that. So when we’re using PEMF at specific frequencies, you can encourage the brain. So if you’re working on ADHD, you can encourage it to hit it with an alpha Hertz frequency so that resting state isn’t quite in the theta and the brain will follow it. You’re showing it what to do, but it doesn’t, not always stick in the same way that medication doesn’t stick. Those are stimulation techniques that can be helpful in the immediate future for symptom relief. And we’ll use it to kind of show the brain what we want it to do. And then we’ll go through the neurofeedback process and actually have it do it on its own, reward it with positive reinforcement when it’s doing what you want it to do and then deabituating when it doesn’t. So that’s pemf. Then you’ve got vagal nerve stimulators, which has really become our favorite. Right, because so many deficits that people are dealing with is affecting their vagus nerve. And so really quickly, for those of you who don’t know what the vagus nerve is, it’s one of the longest nerves in the body, starts at the brain stem. It works all its way down. It innervates in the neck, it attaches to the heart, it attaches to the diaphragm and then it goes and attaches to the colon. The vagus nerve comes from the latin word vagabond, which means to wander. And when you see that nerve in the body, it looks like a tree branch that’s wandering up the body and even wanders up the neck and then attaches at the brain stem. And it’s in charge of the parasympathetic side of our central nervous systems. So we’ve got sympathetic rest, our fight or flight parasympathetic rest and digest. And the vagus nerve modulates when we go into rest and digest. We saw that people with long call Covid were having a lot of issues in vagal tone and their vagal nerve function, where their digestion was off, their sleep was off. All the things related to the parasympathetic nervous system function were dysregulated. And there’s a couple of different ways to stimulate that nerve. The easiest and cheapest way is through diaphragmatic breath, because that nerve attaches to the diaphragm. So when we teach people HRV techniques, we’re teaching them how to stimulate the vagus nerve.
Dr. Johnson (00:39:46) Explain HRV technique.
Cameron Center (00:39:47) Yeah, so I mentioned it earlier where we’re measuring the heart rate, and then you’re showing the person a breath pattern to follow. So if we are in a resting state and you’re using your diaphragm to breathe, your heart rate should follow a pattern of your breath rate, so that when you breathe in, the heart rate goes up, and as you breathe out, the heart rate goes down. And what you’re measuring is the variability of the beat to beat interval. So how high does the heart rate go and how low does it go in the middle of the breath? And the greater that variability of the upbeat and the downbeat, the healthier or the more resilient the heart. This is why we see runners have really low resting heart rates, but they can also have a high heart rate for an extended period of time, and their heart be pumping efficiently. Well, we also want our hearts to be pumping efficiently when we’re resting. Right. And so oftentimes we see people with anxiety, especially, or some of these other food related symptoms, that their heart rates are elevated. They’re in a sympathetic fight or flight mode when they’re not supposed to be what we would consider a dysregulated sympathetic nervous system response. And if you teach them how to calm their nervous systems down on their own, well, then they don’t need to pop that Xanax so that breathing looks.
Dr. Johnson (00:41:22) Like Watt, when you are teaching somebody.
Cameron Center (00:41:24) So you got a heart rate monitor going, they can see their heart rate on screen in front of them, and you show them a breath pattern, and the breath pattern will go sinusoidal. One of the easiest ways to do it is on your Apple Watch. Your Apple Watch mindfulness app has this. I don’t know if I can get that on the screen, but if you go to the mindfulness and you go to your breathe app, it’s measuring the heart rate through the little electrode on the bottom, and it tells you when to breathe in and when to breathe out. And it will tell you what your heart rate is at the end of the exercise. So people can take their apple watches, measure their heart rate, do a little breathing exercise, watch their heart rate go down. Congratulations. You’ve just done biofeedback, the most basic form of biofeedback, and I would argue the most helpful. I think everybody needs to know how to do diaphragmatic breathing exercises.
Dr. Johnson (00:42:11) And so when you do that, what’s the ratio of breathing in to breathing out?
Cameron Center (00:42:15) Good question.
Dr. Johnson (00:42:16) And then some people work with holding their breath in between.
Cameron Center (00:42:20) There’s a lot of different techniques. The military teaches box breathing, which is a way where you inhale for four, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four. They call it a box because it looks like a box. Right. And that helps with holding the gun steady as you’re aiming. The technique I tend to teach is a sinusoidal breath. And what I mean by that is an even breath rate in and an even exhale ratio out, about a twelve second breath. So five breaths per minute. When you’re setting them up on these devices, that’s how they get set up. So it’s a five second InHale, a 1 second hold, five second exhale, and a 1 second hold. And I have people put one hand on your belly, one hand on your chest, and make sure that it’s your belly hand that’s rising and falling and that your chest cavity is staying still. If you breathe with your chest, that’s no good. Your lungs actually want to expand down into the end of the abdomen, and that’s how the vagus nerve actually gets stimulated in that.
Dr. Johnson (00:43:26) Actually, when you breathe, there’s different muscles that are part of your whole breathing mechanism, right? You have chest muscles, but the main muscle is the diaphragm muscle, right? And the diaphragm looks like a big dome sitting here under your ribs. And it goes up and down.
Cameron Center (00:43:45) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:43:45) And that’s why singers, runners, everyone, that has efficient breathing is mainly from the diaphragm, but then the chest has to be free to move so it can expand to its optimal breathing capacity. And a lot of times I see patients come in and they don’t know how to breathe.
Cameron Center (00:44:03) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:44:04) And you try to do a pulmonary function test on them to see whether they have asthma or not, and you have to explain to them how to breathe first. So you get an accurate pulmonary function test.
Cameron Center (00:44:14) Yeah. It’s interesting, isn’t it?
Dr. Johnson (00:44:16) Yeah, it really is.
Cameron Center (00:44:18) So through doing HRV, that’s the first way to do vagal nerve stimulation. We’re still on the vagal nerve, right. And there’s a lot of different, because that nerve is so long, and it goes so many different places. There’s a lot of different ways that you can hit it. One of the first places I ever used when I was working in the other clinic, you put two little electrodes on the mastoid bone right here behind the ear, and you stimulate. There are different frequency protocols. The one that we tended to use was fairly simple. It would cycle through about three or four different frequencies as a delta theta, an alpha wave, kind of going through the whole gambit. But it was just stimulating back there and hitting that vagus nerve. While I was having people do breathing exercises at the same time. And it’s funny, every time you’d hit somebody who was anxious with it, the first thing is like, man, I feel like I’m in a hammock rocking a little bit. It’s because you’re hitting that vagus nerve, and then this is kind of nice, and you’ll see them, they’ll get a little smile out of their face, and then they’ll start breathing. And then after a while, because I’m measuring the eeg the whole time. And one of the things that really is the biggest enemy of good neurofeedback training is muscle tension. If people are carrying tension in their jaws or their forehead, then I can’t pick up what’s coming off of the brain. It’s all what’s going from the muscles. And so one of the first things that happens when you see people go into a relaxation mode is the tension releases. And so we get the tension released, and then now, all of a sudden, we can do really good biofeedback training and neurofeedback training, rather, because we’re not just training what’s going on with the muscles around the face. So we’ve got different devices, one of them that we rent out to people or we check out it’s called a gamma core, and it stimulates using two electrodes that go right here on the neck, and it’s on both sides. And that device is specifically indicated for migraines and headaches. Because migraines and headaches are vagal in nature, the vagus nerve modulates the activity that can cause a migraine or cause a headache. And so we get people that device, they’ll hit themselves with it. A couple of times we’ve had some people who’ve had some digestion issues. Their GI tract is just inflamed and unhappy. Their gut doesn’t want to accept anything. Stimulate the vagus nerve, do a little breathing exercises. All of a sudden, the gut has calmed down a little bit, and those symptoms are relieved.
Dr. Johnson (00:46:53) Well, one of the things with the vagus nerve is in all nerves, all cranial nerves, is there’s afferent and eferent. I mean, outgo and input.
Cameron Center (00:47:04) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:47:04) And the vagus nerve has a lot of feedback from the parts it innervates.
Cameron Center (00:47:09) Right. We talk about the gut brain connection. Right. And that’s that connection.
Dr. Johnson (00:47:14) Exactly. And so you’re not only working with what the brain is telling the end organ, but also what the brain is receiving back. And that whole system has to be in balance for you to feel good.
Cameron Center (00:47:29) Absolutely. And that’s part of the reason why HRV is so helpful, because our brain can tell our body, hey, something’s not right. You need to be anxious. It’s like your eyes see the lion and it tells your heart, pump faster. It’s time to run. Right?
Dr. Johnson (00:47:45) Right.
Cameron Center (00:47:46) Well, the opposite is true. The heart can be in that mode of function, whether it’s because you’re not breathing right or it’s because you’re eating stuff you shouldn’t be, you’re not sleeping. But if the heart rate is pumping fast, it can then go up and tell the brain, hey, we’re anxious. And then now all of a sudden, we’ve got these anxiety symptoms. And so it’s shocking. You mentioned earlier how often people with ADHD are also dealing with anxiety and vice versa. And they’re going in to get help, and they’re getting help via medications that don’t truly break those vicious cycles. And oftentimes we see that people have attention issues because they are anxious. But the only thing they realize is, I’m not as successful in school or at work as I used to be. My focus is gone. I can’t pay attention. And you start to do a little deep dive analysis, and you’re asking, well, why can’t you pay attention? Because they’re chronically anxious. They don’t rest, they don’t eat right, they don’t exercise. And so in order to help them with their attention, you’ve got to help them with their anxiety. And so if you just give them an adderall to help, because that’s the symptom that they’re expressing to the professional that they’re struggling with, well, you’re just going to make them the problem worse, then.
Dr. Johnson (00:49:04) Exactly. And I see patients all the time that come into the office that says, I saw my family practice, I saw my psychiatrist, and I started on some antianxiety medicines or antidepressant medicines, and they say they are working. They worked a little bit at first, but they aren’t working now. And a lot of the Medications used now are ssris, where there are serotonin reuptake inhibitors. And there is a test we do in the office that looks at your neurotransmitters and how well your body is able to produce those. We often see that the body is incapable or not producing enough of those neurotransmitters. So you have low serotonin, and you wonder why the antidepressant is not working. So one of the areas we look at is, in conjunction with what Cameron’s been talking about, is doing that specific urine test for the neurotransmitters to see whether you have enough of serotonin or norepinephrine, dopamine, gaba pea, that helps with focus or helps with calm, calming you down, whether the serotonin is sufficient to help have adequate sleep. If not, then we use precursors, which are natural substances that help you make serotonin, like tryptophan, five Htp, or precursor to serotonin.
Cameron Center (00:50:35) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:50:36) And so that helps. And then Cameron’s able to evaluate and help retrain the brain, but you have to make sure that it has adequate hormones to work with.
Cameron Center (00:50:49) Right. Yeah, you’ve got to have the resources.
Dr. Johnson (00:50:51) Exactly.
Cameron Center (00:50:52) Or you’re just working up creek without a paddle. So one of the things, too, that I find is interesting is taking histories and asking people multiple questions because we talked about head injury. It’s one of the things that we see a lot of, because people are interested in hyperbaric for it. But oftentimes people will come in, they’re complaining about depression, anxiety, focus and attention. You ask them, do you have any history of head injury? No, I don’t have any history of head injury. And then you. Okay, have you ever had any car accidents? Oh, well, I’ve been in like three or four car accidents. Never hit my head, but I’ve always had whiplash. Whiplash is a head injury.
Dr. Johnson (00:51:33) Exactly.
Cameron Center (00:51:33) Your brain is a really soft, squishy tissue floating in fluid like an oil, the same density as motor oil in a sharp skull. Well, as soon as your head whiplashes forward, that really soft object is being forced into that really sharp object. You’re going to get head injuries. I’ll never forget this one time I was asking somebody about their history of head injury, and they’re like, no, I’ve never really had a history. I did have one time where my little brother hit me in the back of the head with baseball bat and I blacked out for five minutes. And I thought to myself, how did you at first think that that wasn’t a head injury? But oftentimes we’ve got to ask a lot of questions. We’ve got to ask a lot of family history questions because we know that there is a huge genetic component to what’s going on with people’s symptoms. We talk about the precursor to those resources for the brain to have what it needs in order to get the job done efficiently. That’s all food, that’s all diet, right? And we can supplement with those things if there is a deficit and it needs to be addressed. But at the end of the day, part of what our jobs is as healthcare providers is to teach people how to eat and how to eat appropriately so that they don’t have these things happen. It’s interesting, we go to a conference, we’ve gone a couple of times in the last few years, the change, life and destiny conference, which is a group of medical professionals that are focused on not treating diseases, but preventing diseases through education and healthy lifestyle tips and tricks, as well as healthcare practices, and having the information about yourself on what does your brain function look like? What do your neurotransmitters look like? All of this information that we have access to, that never had access to before. It’s important to know, even if you are feeling good, so that if one day you do, unfortunately ever get into a car accident, you have a reference to where my normal is. And so oftentimes I encourage people who are healthy, but I like to play hockey. So all my hockey buddies, I try to encourage, hey, you should come in, get a brain scan so that you know what your brain looks like normally. So that if, God forbid, anything ever happened on the ice, you’ve got good information to make informed decisions about how to address your brain. We do this for a lot of other organs in our body, but we don’t think about that with brain health, and that’s arguably, and I think very easily arguably, the most important part of our biological functioning.
Dr. Johnson (00:54:31) Yeah, exactly.
Cameron Center (00:54:32) That.
Dr. Johnson (00:54:33) Brain health is so important because this controls your whole being. And if your brain’s not working well, you’re not getting good sleep, your mental processes are not following through, where you can relax, think in a logical manner, decrease your anxiety, then it makes sense to look at what are the underlying factors. And Cameron’s been so helpful with the techniques that he’s described, looking at a QEEG, which looks at those brainwaves, have you been describing? And part of that is that it analyzes for, as you’re talking about post or past concussions, past traumatic brain injuries that hinder the brain’s function, even though it may occur years and years ago, and maybe the underlying cause for headaches, chronic migraines, that type of thing, even seizure activity. And so it’s important to look at those, figure out. So if you have problems that are ongoing as an individual, my whole goal at Johnson Medical Associates is to look at the underlying causes, the triggering factors, what’s gone on and what continues to go on, and then look at specific treatments for that. If you don’t have an accurate diagnosis, whether it’s brain, as we’ve been talking about, or some other part of the body, and then you can’t have a focused treatment program.
Cameron Center (00:56:14) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:56:15) And I see many, many people come in that have seen 1015 different doctors. They’ve described the symptoms to the physicians. They’ve been given the medicine for the symptom, but it missed the whole underlying reason for the problem. And once you’re able to find out what the underlying reason is, the underlying cause, and look at addressing that directly, then you can get a good therapeutic response, typically from that type of treatment. And that’s where the neurofeedback comes in. But assessment has to be done first. Absolutely. So you know specifically what you’re dealing with. And just as you’re doing your neurofeedback, there’s many different techniques that you use during neural feedback to help normalize that brain function, that stimulatory or calming type.
Cameron Center (00:57:14) You know, there’s. There’s ways to address that. Know other organs like the know, we like to follow that process that Eamonn talks about in that change your brain, change your life, to assess, address, and then reassess so that we’re not relying on the patient to give an accurate depiction of what’s going on in their everyday function, because a lot of times people don’t know. They’re aware there’s a problem, but they don’t know the severity of the problem or how to quantify it. And that’s why it’s helpful to use these assessment tools. But also the assessment tools are embedded in the training tools. And I say training specifically and not treatment, because what you do on your side is treatment with medication and the things that you do as a doctor, but as a neurofeedback practitioner and again, trainer, I’m more like somebody who you go to at a gym that helps teach and train people how to take agency over their health. And I think at the end of the day, holistic treatment in the medical field, you have a level of responsibility to educate patients on how to take care of themselves. Otherwise, everybody’s coming to you, running to you for a problem.
Dr. Johnson (00:58:46) Exactly. And as we go through and look at these different patients that have chronic eye problems and have ongoing difficulty with their central nervous system, it is important then to define what are the specific areas that’s going to give you the best results with it. And so one of the ways that we look at it is, as we’ve talked about, do an assessment. We do a cognitive assessment to look at the memory, how much anxiety, depression, stress is actually in that person’s life. Look at the brain waves to determine exactly what is going on with the different brainwave patterns. And then that gives us a baseline for working up a treatment program, whether it’s neurofeedback, whether it’s hyperbaric, whether there’s underlying food reactions, underlying environmental toxins that the person is dealing with, right? And as we described, this can be from childhood, whether it’s the baseball bat from your brother, or whether it’s genetics, such as gluten intolerance, or whether there’s been ongoing reactive processes that occurred. We see that different genetic patterns can be expressed with a stressful situation.
Cameron Center (01:00:34) Right?
Dr. Johnson (01:00:35) And so that genetic pattern can be turned on. It’s just like with COVID We’ve seen so many people that Covid was a very, very stressful situation, but it stimulated the sympathetic nervous system tremendously. People couldn’t sleep. They were very anxious, they were short of breath, which was a constant stress factor, adrenaline producing situation. An individual’s endogenous epinephrine, the epinephrine that you make, is much more stimulatory than what we can give you from external sources. And so that can keep your heart rate up. It can keep your mind fuzzy. Difficulty in focusing all those different areas. So looking at the mind, evaluating the whole central nervous system process with the QEG is essential. And then, as he was mentioning, is when we deal with people that have had strokes, traumatic brain injuries, encephalitis, all those different things that can affect brain function, which we treat with hyperbaric to help heal the brain tissue, then we can measure that process and healing process with.
Cameron Center (01:02:06) And so as a list of what are the things that we use QEG for, or what are the list of symptoms or areas of deficit that we would like to assess with a QEG. This is depression and anxiety. ADHD, your big three in a psychiatric PTSD history of head injury. Like we’ve said, environmental toxicity or anything else that might be causing central nervous system inflammation, autism. We’ve got folks who are doing peak performance training, people who are like, I’m functioning to a high level, but I want to see how much better can I be? People go and do brain training just like they go to the gym to do training. They just want to be the best versions of themselves possible. And so there’s a lot of different things that we can work with. And you don’t always have to have a problem in order to work on these things and take care of your brain and take care of your body.
Dr. Johnson (01:03:13) Well, you’re talking about peak performance. And we see a group of athletes that we work with. Some of them have had injuries like concussions or head injuries. Others want to figure out their peak performance, how to get better rest, how to recover quicker. Hyperbaric helps with recovering help. Hyperbaric helps heal traumatic brain injuries that they’ve had, whether they’ve been playing football, soccer, or we see a group of hockey players that have head injuries. It helps heal that brain. You can measure then the healing factors by QEG and then help the brain recover with treating the connectivity defects or the brainwave dysfunction that has occurred due to this trauma.
Cameron Center (01:04:11) Right.
Dr. Johnson (01:04:13) So thank you so much, Cameron, for.
Cameron Center (01:04:15) Being with us, for having me on.
Dr. Johnson (01:04:16) Yeah, you’re welcome. We appreciate your valuable asset to Johnson Medical associates and have provided great wealth of information today. I hope it’s helpful to those that are listening, those that listen to this program. If you have questions, do not hesitate to call Johnson medical Associates at 972-4790 400, or you go to our website, Johnson Medical associates, and it describes what we’ve been talking about today. There are other podcasts on the website to help you understand further some of the things that we’ve been talking about, but not addressed in great detail today. Thanks again. Appreciate you.
Cameron Center (01:05:06) Thank you. Thank you.
Dr. Johnson (01:05:07) You’re welcome.

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]]> JMA Podcast: Functional Brain Health with Dr. Wes Center https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/functional-brain-health-with-dr-wes-center/ Mon, 26 Feb 2024 18:28:17 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=31102 The post JMA Podcast: Functional Brain Health with Dr. Wes Center appeared first on Johnson Medical Associates.

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In this episode of the Johnson Medical Associates Podcast, Dr. Al Johnson welcomes Dr. Wes Center, an expert in brain health and functional medicine. Together, they explore the challenges of today’s environment, including social media overload, sleep problems, and mental stress. Dr. Center emphasizes the importance of assessing various factors like diet, sleep, exercise habits, and genetic vulnerabilities to address brain health issues effectively. They discuss the impact of mild traumatic brain injuries and the significance of small, manageable lifestyle changes in improving brain health.

Dr. Center highlights the value of lifestyle modifications over medication alone and empowers patients to take control of their health. He emphasizes the prevalence of head injuries and their impact on cognitive function, advocating for thorough assessments like quantitative electroencephalograms (QEEG) to understand patients’ health better. Dr. Center’s holistic approach focuses on individualized care and empowering patients to make positive changes for overall well-being.

The conversation transitions to understanding brain function beyond conventional labels like depression or anxiety. Dr. Center stresses the influence of substances like alcohol and marijuana on cognitive function and discusses assessing brain hormones and neurotransmitters to address mood and energy levels effectively. They delve into inflammation as a root cause of brain health issues and highlight interventions like vagal nerve stimulation and dietary changes to regulate the central nervous system for improved well-being.

Lastly, Dr. Center discusses the impact of excessive smart device usage on interpersonal interactions and overall well-being. He suggests setting boundaries with technology to enhance face-to-face communication and advocates for creating designated device-free spaces. Dr. Center’s insights shed light on the importance of balance in utilizing technology for optimal well-being.

Transcript

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Dr. Johnson (00:00:08) Good morning. I’m Dr. Johnson with Johnson Medical Associates. I’m happy to have with me this morning Dr. Sinner. Dr. Sinner is a person that I’ve known for a long time with great expertise in brain health and a background with functional medicine. He was a marine, combat marine, went on to get his Ph.D in psychology and has been practicing psychology now. For how long?
Dr. Wes Center (00:00:40) Almost 20 years.
Dr. Johnson (00:00:41) 20 years. And so I’m also very proud to have his son work for me and do similar things as to what we’re going to talk about this morning. His son’s name is Cameron Center, and Cameron was to be with us this morning, but he’s not feeling well, so you will get his dad, along with myself, to talk about how we can have better brain health, how we can feel better, function better in today’s environment. Today’s environment is quite challenging, as most of us have experienced with unsurity in many, many areas in our life. Constant bombardment with social media, not knowing who to trust and what to really rely on as far as factual information. And then this, in its totality, then causes mental stress, sleep problems, and eventually it affects our health and our daily function. So in your background, you’ve worked with functional medicine people. You have your own clinic where you work and focus on brain health. What should a person look for if they aren’t feeling well, having trouble with their thought processes, having trouble with their mental acuity? So many people just come in and say, I have brain fog. They can’t get their thoughts organized. And a lot of what I see is they’re just overloaded or they aren’t getting good sleep, or they’re having reactions to different foods they’re eating, and their brains do not function well. In our clinic in Johnson medical associates, we do qegs, neurocognitive assessments, and we also assess for food sensitivity, concussions that have occurred in the past, brain injury, which all hinder our sense of well being and our ability to function. When patients come to you, how do you approach them, and what do you look at to help them get organized and how to approach better health.
Dr. Wes Center (00:03:16) So we kind of view the journey to health as part of the overall life journey. So we’re always doing things that affect our health. The foundations of health are really the pillars of diet, sleep, and exercise. And so when we want to understand why people are struggling, the first thing that we’re going to want to assess is, where are you in terms of diet, sleep, and exercise habits? It’s important to know things like your genetic vulnerabilities so we do functional genetic testing. We do neurotransmitter stress hormone testing. We do food sensitivity tests. We also spend a lot of time talking about sources of stress. And any aspect of our life is the potential source for stress. So diet, sleep, and exercise can be stress points, but so can financial stressors, educational stressors, relational, emotional, spiritual, all of those things can be sources of stress. And so in order to understand why a person might be struggling with this, that, or the other issue, and how can we restore them to health, we really have to know what’s going on in the background. And many people are unaware of the things that they’re doing that actually are working against their health. They may not recognize that using smart devices within 45 minutes of going to bed is going to affect their ability to go to sleep, or that having pets in the bed with them is going to affect their ability to maintain sleep. Because our pets have sleep cycles that are well inside of our own, and as they move around, they’re waking us up. Same thing with kids. I mean, that’s why we discourage having children in the bed, even for young adults, that we need to keep those things separate. When we’re not sleeping well or when we’re fatigued, many times we will eat the things that exacerbate, that make it worse. So simple and refined sugars, simple carbs, that using a coke in the morning to wake yourself up is a terrible idea, as is that vente sugary drink that you get from your favorite dispenser of caffeine. Those things are actually working against health. Most of us that attain the age of 30 have had one diagnosable mild traumatic brain injury, whether we remember it or not. So TBIs are really common, and if they’re not properly treated, and if you’re not exercising, and if you have poor diet, the consequences of those head injuries can last for years. We’ve seen people who’ve had head injuries 30 and 40 years in their past that are continuing to cause problems in terms of attention, focus, concentration, attention, stamina, the ability to stay on task, complete a task. And so our model of assess, address, and reassess is a constant. Going back to those fundamentals of health and saying, what’s going on with diet, sleep and exercise? What are your current stressors? How are you handling those stresses? And then where may you not be doing things that are particularly helpful for you, that are going to affect you in terms of your mind, will, emotions, energy, and things like that?
Dr. Johnson (00:06:49) Wow, that’s overwhelming.
Dr. Wes Center (00:06:51) It can be. It can be very overwhelming. And that’s a common response amongst our patients. Right. Is that, oh, my gosh, you’ve told me all these things. I just feel overwhelmed. I don’t know where to start. So we generally have people start at the easiest thing to address. And so if the easiest thing to address is making some simple dietary changes, well, then we encourage those. Or maybe it’s to take a supplement like an antioxidant nacetylcysteine or alpha lipoic acid, or some of the very easy things to do, or it may be to eliminate something from the diet, maybe cutting those two sodas a day down to maybe one or two sodas a week. And to do that gradually, we don’t want to do anything drastically because generally drastic changes don’t last. We want to start low, go slow, so that we can maintain the gains that we get from making these changes. Because if you try to change too many things too quickly, generally it all kind of crumbles.
Dr. Johnson (00:07:51) Yeah. So what I’m hearing is it’s important to focus on what the individual that comes in that’s having problem, what their main issue is that they come in with. So if they come in with a problem of focus or come in with a problem of fatigue, then to approach a diagnostic modality or modalities that will help them. I know at my office, if someone comes in and they’re tired and fatigued, one of the first things is to look at their diet, look at their habits. Do an overnight oximeter study to see whether they’re desaturating with low oxygen levels during the night, which does affect their sleep.
Dr. Wes Center (00:08:38) Absolutely.
Dr. Johnson (00:08:39) And then there’s different devices that a person wears that can look at their sleep patterns. And we were talking about that before the show about which ones are the best and what ones work well to kind of help us look at our sleep patterns. So when a person comes in and wants brain health and they have a certain pattern, are there certain initial screening assessments to help get focused, to help you focus on what the patient is concerned about and then how to assess whether that’s the real problem or whether there’s an underlying problem, which we deal about in medicine on a daily basis, looking at the underlying. The triggering causes.
Dr. Wes Center (00:09:29) A lot of people come in, they want a diagnosis, right? They want to tell me what’s wrong with me and then give me something to fix that. And so I don’t know that’s particularly helpful when we’re talking about a functional perspective, because many things that we’re going to give you are things to do, not things to take. And I think one of the things that’s been a consequence of technological innovations and the medical field just broadly is the idea that there’s a pill for everything. And so what we want to do is disabuse people of the notion that there’s a pill for this. Many things are going to be directed at making lifestyle changes that you can do. One of the things I like about, there’s a popular author out there by the name of Jordan Peterson right now, the psychologist. And one of the things he says is, what’s one thing that you can do that you will do today that will make your life better? And so there’s a whole range of things that we can ask our patients to do that they can do, but it’s a different question altogether is, will you do that? And so when I ask people to stop drinking sodas, they can do that, but a lot of them won’t do it. They’re just not willing to. Part of the assessment is, what are the things you can do? What are you able to do, and what are the things you’re willing to do? I’m not going to ask you to do something you’re not willing to do because it’s going to frustrate you and make you angry at me. And then that puts me in a position where I can’t help you anymore. And so our assessments are going to be oriented toward finding out what a person’s strengths are, what their current abilities are. And most people, when they come to us, feel like they don’t have any strengths. They don’t feel like they have any.
Dr. Johnson (00:11:17) Resources, just out of control.
Dr. Wes Center (00:11:19) Right. And so part of what we’re trying to do for them is to reestablish. No, there are things you can do. You may not feel like it right now, but there are things that you can do. They’re going to help you get better, and many of those things you already know how to do. So we’re just going to remind you of those things you already know how to do that work and then remind you to implement those as a part of a daily strategy. So we start with some just basic questionnaires. I’m an amon method professional, and Dr. Amon has taught us to ask some very good questions about diet, sleep and exercise. We ask about a head injury a minimum of five times because most people who have a mild traumatic brain injury actually will forget that they had it. And it’s not until you just probe incessantly, they go, oh, you know, I fell out of the high chair when I was two and then down the stairs when I was four. Does that count? Yeah, that counts. Or I was in an injury on my bicycle and I cracked my helmet when I was 14. Does that count? Yes, that counts. And so we assess with questionnaires. I do a protracted interview. I’ve just found out that being lavish with my time up front saves me in an ordinary amount of time later and trying to figure out what’s going out. So my interviews with my patients can last anywhere from an hour and a half to 2 hours, where we go over all of those questionnaires that we gave them. And then from that, I can select what instruments I want to give in terms of cognitive test, neurocognitive tests, do the EEG QEG, take that whole head recording, then do functional genetic tests, neurotransmitter stress hormone test. And sometimes when people are not able to afford all that testing because it can be quite expensive, then we’ll do, like, a zytoscan, which is a way of using galvanic skin response or our body’s natural electrical communication system, and to assess what the body is wanting or needing, or maybe some of the things that are going on in terms of viral load, bacterial load, heavy metal load. It’s not nearly as accurate as the lab results, but it may give us a little bit of quick insight and also be able to help those that may not be able to afford that. So those are the kinds of things we do to assess.
Dr. Johnson (00:13:45) You were talking about head injury. I had a patient this week that came in and said, oh, I haven’t had a head injury. And I sent him down to get the QEG to look at brain function, and it also looks at traumatic brain injury and whether you’ve had traumatic brain injury. And sure enough, it showed traumatic brain injury, and came back in, said, no, I never had it, and didn’t realize that I had a traumatic brain injury until I went to get my hair cut, and the person was washing my hair and said, what’s this lump back here in the back of your head? And then it dawned on him that he had fallen. Well, he had been struck in the back of the head at age three and had to have staples in his head, and that the head injury that was showing up was from age three, which was very significant in the diagnostic Q EEG exam.
Dr. Wes Center (00:14:43) Yeah. So as a retired military guy, combat vet, having spent over 20 years in the Marine Corps, that’s a head injury rife environment. I mean, you just stay in long enough, you’re going to get one. And things like dynamic overpressure from explosions or ids, you don’t have to have shrapnel on your body to get a closed head percussion. Right, exactly. And the concussive forces are incredible. But we live here in Texas. I mean, we’re the football state. Right. And so almost all of our young adult males have played football at some level. A lot of our girls are playing soccer. And so if you had one or two wet footballs or soccer balls, you’re going to sustain subconcusive forces. And if you get enough of those, they equal a head injury. And we tend to live lifestyles now that are head injury inducing lifestyles. And so we can’t mitigate against every risk, but we can wear helmets and things like that.
Dr. Johnson (00:15:44) But it could be as simple as raising your head up underneath a cupboard.
Dr. Wes Center (00:15:47) Exactly right.
Dr. Johnson (00:15:49) And banging your head or on the mantle.
Dr. Wes Center (00:15:51) Absolutely right.
Dr. Johnson (00:15:52) And then it affects your brain health, your function aspect of it.
Dr. Wes Center (00:15:57) Absolutely. The thing about head injuries is that, and we’ve been researching this now for a good 40, 50 years, really intensively, and that we found that there’s 1.5 million Americans that are going to get a TBI this year. So it’s pretty much common. Yeah, it’s really common. So of those 1.5 million, 80% to 90% are mild traumatic brain injuries. Very few are moderate or severe. And if you’ve had a moderate or severe head injury, you’re likely to remember that because you spent some time in the hospital, you had positive neuroimaging, you may have a gray matter leaking onto your shoulder. I mean, you’re going to know it. The mild ones, however, the further you get away from, less likely are to remember that you had one. And if you’ve had several of them, you’re even more likely to not remember that you had one of them, because one of the effects of a head injury is it affects your memory. Right. So head injuries are incredibly important for us to understand how they’re playing a role in your sleep. Attention, focus, irritability, all of those things in short term memory, really important.
Dr. Johnson (00:17:13) So the message to the audience is that if you’re having these problems, as you just mentioned, which is focus, irritability, memory, it pays to look back, think about your history, what has happened to you from banging your head, being knocked out, falling off your bicycle and then getting assessed. And that assessment is really pretty easy with a QEG, and it’s quantitative, it’s factual and it’s based on very good science, and it’s non invasive. And we do that at Johnson Medical associates. You do that at your practice in Fort Worth. Cameron, your son is an expert at this, and he works for me. And thanks to you, you got us hooked up, and we are able to evaluate that. And it’s a very valuable part of an assessment for health in general, because your sleep patterns and how your brain works determines what you do each day.
Dr. Wes Center (00:18:25) Yeah. The reason I got into this field of very beginning with was I was working in the hospital doing hospital based therapy intake assessments with the psychiatric patients, and I just became really disillusioned with the kind of, here’s your label now. Here’s the pill that goes with that label. And I was told by the medical director of the hospital I was working, hey, why don’t you read this book, change your brain, change your life, by Daniel. Amen, and see what you think. You’re apparently disillusioned with the way we’re doing things. He’s got a different way. And so when I was reading that book, there was one sentence in there that just really hooked me, and that was well over 20 years ago that I read that book. And I still remember to this day reading the statement, why are psychiatrists the only physicians in all of medicine that don’t image the organ that they work with? And I was like, wait, I had to read that again. And so Dr. Amon had also been doing neurofeedback, which is the interventional side of QEG, not the assessment side. And he actually started in that before he got into spec imaging. And so since I’m not a physician, I couldn’t do spec, but I could do the EEG QEG. And so that’s actually what launched me into my career. And so being able to look at the EEG having a symptom pattern, then I can go back into the EEG and look and say, well, where does that thing live? So, attention tends to live in the frontal lobes and then the anterior cingulate. Those are the things responsible for attention. Our mood, temporal lobe, frontal lobe, visual processing, occipital lobe, and then there’s more discrete areas within those for more discrete functions. But when we start looking at the brain from a functional perspective, then we start getting rid of all these labels about depression, anxiety, whatever. The deal is, if your brain doesn’t work right, you can’t work right. It’s not like you don’t want to. You just can’t. And so we want to remove those labels that tend to be debilitating just in and of themselves. I can remember working in the hospital, and I have somebody, a new patient, come in and go to interview them, and I’ll say, hey, I’m Dr. Center. I’m here to work with you. And they go, well, I’m bipolar. And I said, well, it’s funny because the chart says your name is Bob Smith, not bipolar, and so you’re not your label. And so let’s get rid of the labels and find out what’s going on. What’s going on genetically, what’s happened with your life and circumstances, what your diet, exercise, and sleep patterns look like. What are some substances that you may be taking that are not necessarily good for you? We know that alcohol can be a mild sedative, but it can also tear up your sleep. Take too much of it. It’s intoxicating. A lot of people think that marijuana, particularly the active ingredient THC, tetrahydrocannabinol, they think that it’s not harmful. But if you start taking that in your early teen years and you continue to take it, you’re going to have a ten point permanent loss of IQ. And I don’t know any of us who can afford to lose ten points of IQ. I certainly can’t. And so these things that we are ingesting are going to affect our brain health, and we just need to be really careful of what we’re taking into our bodies.
Dr. Johnson (00:21:56) Well, you see so many people now having trouble functioning in the workplace or have anxiety. And what we’re talking about today is how to look at the underlying stimulating factors that create this in an individual, whether it’s their brain hormones we talk about measuring, those are neurotransmitters like serotonin, epinephrine, norepinephrine, dopamine, pea, which involve your mood, your sense of well being, your focus, your energy level. So it’s important that we look at brain function as we do with q eeg.
Dr. Wes Center (00:22:38) Yes.
Dr. Johnson (00:22:39) And then we look at brain hormones, which affect our mood. In standard type medicine, a lot of people are placed on different mood altering medications. Well, typically, we don’t have a Prozac deficiency or a Xanax deficiency.
Dr. Wes Center (00:22:58) Precisely.
Dr. Johnson (00:22:59) We have brain dysfunction from whatever underlying reason, whether it may be injury, as we’ve been talking about diet, whether it’s an actual food allergy, or whether it’s a food intolerance. I see many people that are gluten intolerant or close to having celiac disease. And there’s a genetic test that we do for gluten intolerance. And I find that people are much more compliant with a diet of gluten free diet if they know genetically that they can’t tolerate it.
Dr. Wes Center (00:23:37) Absolutely.
Dr. Johnson (00:23:38) And so I use not only the test as a diagnostic tool, but also as an incentive and understanding process so that they are more compliant and understand what will happen if they are not compliant.
Dr. Wes Center (00:23:52) And we don’t assume that any of our patients want to feel badly. I mean, if you knew that this thing was making you feel bad and you knew that that was the source of it, you probably wouldn’t do that. So we approach our patients with the information that what we’re going to give you is going to give you some insights as to why you may be feeling this way. And there may be a combination. It’s almost always a combination of something that you’re doing or not doing in combination with your genetic makeup that’s causing these things to happen. So if you have the gluten intolerance or celiac that has a genetic basis, and it may be different from siblings, children or parents, maybe one parent that had it, but the other one didn’t. And so there may be things that people in your household can eat that you can’t. And that becomes a challenge, particularly if you’re the mom who has the issue and you’re trying to feed these people, and yet there’s things that you’re having to make for them that you can’t eat, or vice versa, becomes very difficult to meal plan for a family around the individual variations. And yet it’s what you’ve got to do.
Dr. Johnson (00:25:01) Well, I find it’s the easiest that the mom has the problem.
Dr. Wes Center (00:25:04) Yes, mom just makes everybody eat what she eats.
Dr. Johnson (00:25:07) Exactly. But also the offspring then have one of her genes. And so if she has quite severe gluten intolerance, then most likely the offspring, or the offspring will have one of those genes. If you really ask the question, well, what are their bowel habits? Do they have abdominal pain?
Dr. Wes Center (00:25:26) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (00:25:27) Are they getting sick frequently? Then they’re having the problem, too. And a lot of times, mom gets her diet straightened out, and the kids do a lot better in their attention. Less hyperactivity, sleeping better.
Dr. Wes Center (00:25:44) Well, actually, we’ve kind of wandered into accidentally, but maybe on purpose, really. The root of all diseases we think of disease is inflammation. And so when we look in the brain, for example, everything that you can think of as a brain health diagnosis, whether it’s depression, anxiety, PTSD, all the Alphabet soup, OCD, odd, all that stuff is pro inflammatory. And so if we look at the source of inflammation, diet is right up there, but also lack of sleep is inflammatory. And once you get an inflamed system, the brain is actually at the tail end of that. That means the rest of the system is already inflamed. There’s very few things where the brain is the primary source of inflammation. Encephalitis is an example of where you get a bug bite and it goes to your noggin, or you get something that affects the central nervous system in terms of inflammation.
Dr. Johnson (00:26:43) Yeah, well, that’s like when West Nile virus came through.
Dr. Wes Center (00:26:46) Precisely.
Dr. Johnson (00:26:47) And they had encephalitis from the west Nile virus, and people have had long term effects from that. And so that’s where the brain is affected.
Dr. Wes Center (00:26:58) Right. But the brain has its own immune system. It tends to do a pretty good job of keeping inflammation down. But the way that the brain and gut communicate, there’s nine times as many pathways coming up to the brain as there is going back down. And so if the gut’s not happy, it’s telling the brain that there’s an issue.
Dr. Johnson (00:27:19) Exactly. And that’s the vagus nerve, just for people who are wondering. And it’s the longest nerve, the biggest nerve from the brain to our body.
Dr. Wes Center (00:27:27) The 10th cranial nerve, the word vagus actually means wandering in Latin. It’s the wandering nerve, and it innervates everything north to south. And so one of the things that we’ve done for chronic constipation, particularly our kids with autism, is use vagal nerve stimulation to improve vagal nerve tone, because low tone results in constipation. And there are certain medications and other kinds of interventions that will induce constipation. And we found that coffee enemas will straighten that out really quickly and keep people away from taking the medication for this problem and then taking another medication for the symptoms that the first medication caused and then another medication for the second medication’s side effects. And so we try to use as many of these natural approaches, and some of them come to us from traditional chinese medicine and others come from traditional western folk medicine. But there’s a lot of good plants and dietary interventions. Just staying hydrated will help you keep from being constipated. So there’s a lot of things that we can do in that regard.
Dr. Johnson (00:28:41) Yeah. Well, just a side note, you talked about constipation and irritable bowel and that. And of course, we see that in autistic kids, we see that in adults and children and so forth, that many people assume that if you’re celiac and the gluten picture it’s all loose stools, where what we find clinically is that if you’re gluten intolerant, you’re more likely to be constipated.
Dr. Wes Center (00:29:10) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (00:29:11) Versus those with true celiac disease, which have uncontrollable bowels. In a lot of cases.
Dr. Wes Center (00:29:18) Yeah. Rapid transit.
Dr. Johnson (00:29:19) Yeah. So it’s amazing how the body works and how that nerve feedback works from your brain to your gut, because the vagus nerve innervates your stomach and the diaphragm and all your bowels. And then the return feedback to your brain is tremendous from that, because there’s a communication both ways.
Dr. Wes Center (00:29:44) Yeah. And again, the central nerve system, we would hope, is the director of all that. But sometimes it gets dysregulated. When the vagal nerve gets dysregulated. When vagus nerve gets dysregulated, then the interventions have got to be aimed at calming that down. And there’s easy things to do. I mean, you can take a cold shower, just turn off all the hot water for the last 30 seconds of your shower will increase vagal nerve tone. You can sing out loud in the car as long as you don’t have anybody in there with you. You can scream and yell. You can put your face in a bowl of ice water for as long as you can hold your breath. There’s lots of things you can do. Stimulate the gag reflex while you’re brushing your teeth. Before you brush your teeth, you can put it on the back of your tongue. You stimulate that gag response.
Dr. Johnson (00:30:33) That’s before breakfast too.
Dr. Wes Center (00:30:35) Yes, before breakfast as well. Before you’ve eaten. But those things can induce that vagal nerve tone. Essentially, what we’re trying to do is in people with low tone, the sympathetic nervous system is dominating. And what we want is to increase the parasympathetic nervous system, para alongside. That’s what it really means to come alongside, to keep the sympathetic nervous system from dominating. And most of us know people who have low vagal nerve tone, they tend to be very irritable, have that short fuse. They tend to go into chest wall muscle breathing when they’re anxious. So instead of breathing diaphragmatically, they do rapid, shallow breathing. And all of those things are the sign of poor vagal nerve tone.
Dr. Johnson (00:31:25) Well, that’s why one of the simple things that you teach, Cameron teaches at my office, is proper breathing to help control that sympathetic parasympathetic system, calm the sympathetic down, increase the parasympathetic exactly.
Dr. Wes Center (00:31:42) If you want to see what the picture of low vagal nerve tone is, look at a two year old or a three year old in a temper tantrum. That’s precisely what that poor nerve tone is. They haven’t learned to control their own vagal nerve tone. I don’t even know what it is, but they immediately go into rapid, shallow breathing, out of control, physical externalization of their stress, screaming, crying. But if you want to see great vagal nerve tone, watch a baby sleeping. Those deep, deep, deep breaths and the very relaxed body posture. And so we know how to do these things, we just have to remember them.
Dr. Johnson (00:32:30) Give us an example of how to calm that sympathetic nervous system down with your breathing techniques.
Dr. Wes Center (00:32:36) So one of the things that we had people do is to place a hand on their chest and another on their belly, just right below their rib cage, and to breathe naturally or normally. And watch what hands move. If that top hand is the one that’s moving and the bottom hand isn’t, well, then you’re using your chest wall muscles to breathe and you’re going to be predisposed to poor nerve tell. It’s a sign of that. So the way to overcome that is to do a little bit of plank in your chair and to take some deep, deep, deep breaths. See that top hand move, our bottom hand move, and that top hand stay still. And then to increase your breath cycle length so that you’re going all the way in, you hold it for account generally, of 20 to 30, and then let it out slowly, slowly, slowly let it out. And then hold there again. And do that for about ten or 15 breath cycles. And do that throughout the day, and you’ll feel yourself being calmer coming out of that.
Dr. Johnson (00:33:35) So you count, how long do you count on the inhalation part of it?
Dr. Wes Center (00:33:41) So it depends on how long you’ve been doing that. So I’ve been doing diaphragmatic breathing now for about 40 years. I learned to do it in the military, believe it or not, when I was learning how to shoot, because you can’t shoot if you’re breathing erratically. And so I can do maybe two breath cycles a minute. We recommend people do more like five to six breath cycles a minute. So they’re not holding their breath to where they’re gasping at the end of it.
Dr. Johnson (00:34:10) Right.
Dr. Wes Center (00:34:10) And then to just let it out slowly in through your nose, out through your mouth. That’s kind of like one of the keys.
Dr. Johnson (00:34:16) Well, one of the things I’ve heard, into the count of four, hold for the count of four and out for the count of four.
Dr. Wes Center (00:34:23) So it depends on how you count to four. Right? Are you doing 1001, 1002, which is what most people do when they’re doing a count of four.
Dr. Johnson (00:34:35) So 4 seconds in, how long to hold?
Dr. Wes Center (00:34:39) Again, you want to hold until you feel the urge to exhale.
Dr. Johnson (00:34:43) Okay. Yeah, that’s the optimal.
Dr. Wes Center (00:34:45) That’s the optimal. And it’ll take you. Well, the longer you do it, the longer it’ll be before you have the urge to exhale. So as soon as you feel the urge to exhale, then exhale. Exhale through your mouth and blow it all out. You want to feel like you’re getting it all the way out. And when you’re breathing in, you want to draw it like you’re feeling like you’re pulling that breath all the way down into your toes. Pull it as deeply as you can, and then hold it. And initially, it’ll give you a little bit of a burn sensation. You’ll feel like you got a little bit of lung burn going on there, but eventually you’ll be taking it. There’s an estimation that Americans probably only take 25% to 30% of the lung capacity as they’re breathing, they don’t take full breaths. And again, one of the things that we have with smart devices like Apple watches is that it’ll measure your breath cycle, and it’ll give you an estimation of your vo two max. It’ll give you an indication or an approximation of how much air you’re actually getting in when it is that you do breathe. And it’s a measure of breathing efficiency.
Dr. Johnson (00:35:51) So I often wonder, and you may have the answer, how much focus, like on the Apple Watch for these vital signs or the monitoring of your breathing is healthy and how much is getting into the OCD type realm.
Dr. Wes Center (00:36:12) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:36:13) Because I see people come in really focused on just one area or another area, and it’s really caused imbalance in their thought process. So how do you help those people and help them to get focused on the right amount of knowledge, monitoring versus being overly concerned?
Dr. Wes Center (00:36:35) Well, you raise an interesting point, and that is, can we focus on our health to the neglect of our health? And the answer is, yeah, we can focus on anything to the neglect of things that are really important. We encourage tech breaks, even from your health monitoring devices. And so I know that people want to track their sleep, and then they want to track their steps, and they want to track their calories, and they even have programs now where you can take pictures of what you’re going to eat with your phone and estimate your calorie intake based on the picture, you can go overboard with that. We would suggest that you monitor those things once a day, not all day. And the best time to do it is just before you go into your evening mindfulness exercise, where you’re getting rid of all technology. The last thing you close out is that health stats. Just take a perusal through it. Notice what you notice about what you’re doing amongst all the things that it measures. And don’t focus on any one to the neglect of the others, and then put it down. If you’re spending any more than five to seven minutes a day looking at your health stats, you’re misusing the tool. The tool wasn’t designed for you to focus on for any significant part of your day.
Dr. Johnson (00:37:58) So we just talked about how to kind of calm yourself down if you find yourself becoming anxious, kind of irritable, that type of thing. And the breathing exercises during the day is a super easy way to do that. You can do it wherever you are.
Dr. Wes Center (00:38:12) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (00:38:12) Just take a couple of minutes, do the breathing exercises that will help calm the brain, calm your whole body system down. You just mentioned about using smart devices, watching tv, and that’s helping to calm your brain down at night, is to give your brain a rest. What do you perceive as a healthy type pattern during the day on how you structure a healthy day and then how you get yourself set up for a healthy sleep at night?
Dr. Wes Center (00:38:49) Well, one of the things we tell people is that smart devices will make you stupid. You got to be really careful with how you’re using your smart technology. First of all, don’t introduce it to your children in an all at once fashion. So we don’t hand them a smart device at elementary school and then have unlimited access to that device during the waking day. There should be limits on it. And again, kids, we’ve seen it. We’ve gone into rooms with children who all have smart devices, and they can be sitting next to the person that they’re communicating with, but they’re doing it over their smart device. They’re not even talking to one another. We’ve seen adults do that, all be in the same room together, but they’ve got their phones out. And so we need to disconnect from those as often as we can, as much as we can, so that those things don’t dominate our lives. Part of the problem is that many of us have busy schedule, have moved our schedule over there. We get our email there. We get our text messages, our phone calls, our directions to get to and from places. And so we are interacting with them a lot, and sometimes it’s healthy, and at other times it’s not. So the question is, well, when is it not? Well, when it’s keeping us from being able to interact with people because we’re having to check our phones and we’re having to attend to what’s going on on our smart device instead of the person that’s right in front of us. So I recommend you have a place to park your device when you don’t need to have access to it. A lot of corporations die. Are recognizing that there’s a significant loss of time and dedicated effort to the company due to smart devices. And so they now are requiring employees to lock them away in a central location. And you have to come check your device out. You can’t use it all the time because of time lost. And so the devices themselves have the ability to track your usage of them. And if you find out that during the waking day you’re using those devices more than three or 4 hours, you’re probably in the danger zone of too much usage. In the 45 minutes before you go to bed, you should eliminate all of those devices altogether. A lot of the devices, you can now take the blue light away from them so that they don’t affect the onset of sleep as much and get smart device induced insomnia. But people think that, well, if I just use my filters, then I can use it all the way up until bedtime. No, because you’re still stimulating yourself with the information that you’re consuming. I say, well, I can read a book on it, get a paper copy, and read it the old fashioned way. Go old school with your nighttime reading. Use yellow lights or incandescent lights or those that can mimic warm light. The leds now can be tunable to warm lights. Do that again in the 45 minutes. Turn the tv off. Put your iPad away. Don’t sleep in the same room as your smart devices. So I hear people say, why use it for my alarm clock? Go to target and get you a $5 alarm clock. You don’t need to use your smart device to wake you up. Now, I think the exception would be and where I would be willing to fudge a little is if they’re using an Apple Watch to track their, you know, you can have that tech because it knows to silence itself from know texts and things like that, phone calls. So that would be maybe one exception is the smart warn devices that help track your sleep. Otherwise, get them out of the bedroom for one of the things, you get an EMF from them. The electromagnetic fields are all around us, and if we have cell phones on, iPads on things like that, those things are radiating us, particularly if they’re within 6ft of our heads while we’re trying to sleep. So it’s best to get those in another room, plug them in, turn them off. That’s the best thing to do with those.
Dr. Johnson (00:43:12) Exactly. So we’ve talked a lot about assessment, being aware of your own body, how you’re functioning and what you’re doing to cause dysfunction, whether it’s food you eat, the devices you’re using, putting yourself in situations where it creates anxiety or stress. And then we’ve talked about how to assess the individual, whether it’s with food sensitivities. QEG to assess your brain function, whether you had TBI, and as you’ve stated, anybody that has played sports to any extent that requires a helmet or heading the ball, or you’ve fallen and hit your head or fallen off your bicycle, it’s important that assessment be made to see about TBI. And the easiest, most economical way to do that is with a QEG.
Dr. Wes Center (00:44:19) Absolutely. It’s got great facility. It’s relatively inexpensive when compared to other neuroimaging techniques. It is a functional brain study, it is not a structural study. So you think of structural studies as being like mris, ct scans, x rays. Those look at the structure of the body. Functional imaging, like spec, single photon emission computer tomography, functional MRI, fMRI, PET scans, positon emission tomography, or QEG, quantitative electroencephalography. Those are specifically looking at brain function. So how is the brain working? Or not? And of all of those, EEG is by far the least expensive. You don’t have to climb inside a tube and listen to loud sounds like Woody Woodpecker banging on your skull. It’s passive. We’re sensing the electrical activity that’s coming off the scalp. So we’re not talking about anything that’s going to. We’re introducing any radioactive isotope into your body, like we do with spect or pet or fMRI. We’re just looking at what’s coming off the head. It can be done in an hour. The results are almost immediately available and we have some great insight into how you’re functioning. The only caveat about QEG that differentiates it from the other studies is that we cannot use it diagnostically. In other words, we don’t diagnose a head injury with QEG. We have a head injury either by diagnosis or history. Before we do the test, and then we see what are the functional deficits as a consequence of that?
Dr. Johnson (00:46:06) Well, none of the other functional tests actually are diagnostic of a head injury, unless you have a significant traumatic brain injury where it’s actually killed the brain cells.
Dr. Wes Center (00:46:20) Right. FMRI, being a hybrid, can do a little both the structural and functional, but it’s rarely used that way.
Dr. Johnson (00:46:29) Exactly. And it’s quite expensive and most insurances.
Dr. Wes Center (00:46:32) Won’T pay for it. Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (00:46:34) And early on, I used spec scan quite a bit, but the cost of spec scan has just gone up astronomically. And so for a person that is cash pain, or their insurance won’t pay for it, a spec scan can cost $4,000.
Dr. Wes Center (00:46:50) Right. And unless we’re expecting Parkinson’s or we want to differentiate it from maybe Lewy body dementia, then we would do a spec scan, just the dat of the spec, just to see whether or not we might have a.
Dr. Johnson (00:47:03) Exactly.
Dr. Wes Center (00:47:04) Barrier case.
Dr. Johnson (00:47:06) Yeah. And that’s generally paid for by insurance. If you suspect Parkinson’s, that test is indicated? Yeah, that test is indicated with it. So as we go through, we’ve got made some diagnostic testing or done some diagnostic testing, kind of focused in on what the person’s goal is, then what treatment modalities are effective or available out there that you use. And I’ll talk about some of what I use to help the person actually heal. We talked about the breathing techniques for just the anxiety part or calming your system down. What other techniques, then you talked about neurofeedback as a technique. Can you explain a little bit on how those are used and how you use them, what you see as results?
Dr. Wes Center (00:48:01) So I’m going to back up just a hair. So I told you, the process we use, we kind of label it, assess, address and reassess. And so the point of the assessment is to find out the what and where. And we hope that we have convergent validity, which is a technical term that all that means is that all the tests that we’re doing are pointing to the same thing or things. And so our neurocognitive test is point to memory, mood, and maybe attention issues, and then our QEG is pointing to that. And our neurotransmitter and stress hormones are saying there’s a phenyl ethylamine pea deficiency. Well, that’s going to affect attention, and there’s a dopamine deficiency. It’s also going to affect attention and mood a little. And serotonin and gaba may be low, or glutamate may be high. Those things can affect mood and memory and also attention and focus drive, so to speak. So now we have all these tests that are saying, hey, we’ve got issues that are going on in the brain and body that are related to mood, memory and focus. So our interventions are going to be related to mood, memory and focus. And so we may do neurofeedback and work on the frontal lobes and the limbic lobe to reregulate that chain. We may be doing photobiomodulation, which is infrared, near infrared, and red light therapy, to increase cerebral blood flow and oxygenation and mitochondrial dna activity. And it’s been shown through research that if you can increase cerebral blood flow and oxygenation, you do two things. You give the brain more of what it needs, oxygen to burn for metabolic things, but you also increase the trash hauling capability of the bloodstream to move toxins out of the tissues. Our brains are 80% glial fat by volume, so our brains are mostly fat. Well, toxins love fat. That’s where they hide out. And so the toxic burden of the brain is dramatically impacted by the fat and the toxic burden of the brain. And so you’ve got to find out a way to oxygenate, and you can either do it through increasing exercise, through photobiomodulation, or for those who really have acute issues, hyperbaric oxygen therapy, as you well know, is the best way to get at that, because we can saturate those tissues with oxygen.
Dr. Johnson (00:50:30) Well, typically, all the modalities that you’re talking about require oxygen to be carried by hemoglobin.
Dr. Wes Center (00:50:38) Correct.
Dr. Johnson (00:50:39) And so whether exercise, which just increases blood flow, increases oxygen delivery to the cells by hemoglobin, where with hyperbaric oxygen, which we use, and I use in my office all the time, to enhance healing, you saturate the whole blood vessel, the serum as well, so that you have ten to 15 times more transport than you normally would, regardless of what you’re doing of oxygen, it’s a supercharging to the tissues.
Dr. Wes Center (00:51:10) Right.
Dr. Johnson (00:51:10) And so we see enhancement of repair and enhancement of recovery in all kinds of different areas, particularly brain health. When it comes to recovery from concussion. Typically, people may take up to 30 days to recover from a concussion with hyperbaric studies that showed 80% recover within five days.
Dr. Wes Center (00:51:35) So some of my patients struggle with post concussions equally for as long as two, three, five years.
Dr. Johnson (00:51:42) Oh, yes.
Dr. Wes Center (00:51:44) One of the things that we found is that doing red light therapy over the carotids while a person is laying down not only increases that oxygenation, actually increases blood flow, you also get a boost in the function of the glymphatic system. And the glymphatic system is incredibly important for healing from injury and from reducing toxic. So, and things like red light therapy are becoming more and more accessible. You can buy those things off Amazon now and really are helpful. We’ve also discovered with photobiomodulation this red light therapy, that your body position actually has a lot to do with how well the intervention works. And so using a neck wrap with a red light or infrared therapy while you’re laying down is going to have a significantly greater effect than if you’re sitting up or standing. And so how to use these devices really can be enhanced by consult with a functional medicine professional who knows how to use that particular technology. And unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of us out there. And so patients really don’t know. Well, who do I talk to? I’ve seen this thing advertised. I get it on my facebook. I get this red light therapy thing on my face, but I don’t know how to use it.
Dr. Johnson (00:53:14) That’d be excellent. Another session to have together to bring in some of the devices, show exactly how they should be used, what’s the best way to use them, and what’s underuse or overuse. Because more is not necessarily better in a lot of cases, if not most.
Dr. Wes Center (00:53:35) Right, exactly. So we talked about hyperbaric, and I’m a big believer in hyperbaric. Dr. Aman actually is the one that turned me on to hyperbaric. And I know the Amon clinics here in DFW sends their patients to you for hyperbaric because they recognize the value of hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Neurofeedback, which is EEG biofeedback, is a wonderful way to get at this. I have found that using it in combination with any other intervention is generally better than using it by itself. So we can combine it with photobiomodulation, we can combine it with targeted nutritional supplements, we can complement it with an exercise program. But we very rarely do neurofeedback by itself. And many times we need to do counseling or psychotherapy because as the brain changes, then the person becomes aware, and sometimes more acutely aware of other things in their life that are causing them stress or discomfort. And so having the ability to talk to somebody about how to make changes and implement them in their life, in relationships or job environment, things like, and having somebody to be able to talk about and process those things is really important. And so brain health coaching is a great way to do that. You don’t necessarily need to talk to a licensed psychotherapist, although there are times when that’s absolutely essential. But being able to talk to a brain health coach or a health coach in general can be extremely helpful about how do I incorporate these changes that are coming as a result of all these good things that I’m doing? Because you’re going to find resistance. I mean, you think about couples. Anytime one of the spouses decides to get healthy, there’s going to be pushback from the other spouse who may not be ready to be healthy. They may not be ready to take on diet, sleep, and exercise changes. And so being able to talk to somebody who can keep you encouraged to keep doing those things that are making you feel better and not feel like you’re leaving your spouse in the lurch. But when they’re ready to get healthy, and maybe when they see me feeling better, happier, more engaged with life, then they’ll, hey, I want to do that, too. And then you’re in a better place to help, but you don’t want to conflict over that.
Dr. Johnson (00:55:51) Yeah. The other day, a patient brought in a workbook that they bought off the Internet. I looked it up, and they have all kinds of workbooks now you can buy to help with your behavioral problems, whether it’s borderline personality disorder or whatever. Have you looked at those workbooks?
Dr. Wes Center (00:56:15) Some are better than other. It’s kind of like the old joke about the guy that goes into the bookstore and he asks for the self help section, and the person in the story says, well, if I told you, that would defeat the purpose. The idea of self help is it can be empowering, but all of these things come with a philosophical underpinning or a perspective that they come from. And you need to be aware that there’s baggage with all of those things. So be a smart consumer. You certainly, if you’re an evangelical Christian or a Catholic, may not find a particular book that comes at it from shamanism or from the perspective of Zen Buddhism is going to be particularly helpful, although it might, there might be some things in there that you find are very helpful. Generally, we encourage people to stay within their faith system or belief system, their framework for their worldview, and get not too far outside that because that can induce other anxieties that can then become a problem in and of themselves.
Dr. Johnson (00:57:26) Exactly.
Dr. Wes Center (00:57:26) Be careful.
Dr. Johnson (00:57:27) The message is, it is important to get guidance as you go through with this. And I find that that’s very important because people come in asking me all the time, well, I want to do this therapy or I want to do that therapy. Well, is that therapy appropriate?
Dr. Wes Center (00:57:44) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (00:57:45) And so you have to go back to the basics, as we’ve been talking about, of what is the underlying cause, what is the main issue? And then once you define that, just as you pointed out here in our discussion, then you can have a plan to help for improvement and hopefully healing and cure well.
Dr. Wes Center (00:58:10) So as folks are searching, if you get on the Internet and you’re looking for who can I find to help me with this? I’ve heard about neurofeedback. I want to do Neurofeedback, be a really wise consumer. There’s a lot of people out today who put on their websites that they’re a neurofeedback provider, but they may have gone to, bought an equipment from a vendor. The vendor did a weekend workshop and said they’re certified to do that. Well, that is not the kind of certification that you want your provider to have. You want a nationally or internationally recognized board certification that’s connected to a clinical license in some way and get your neurofeedback or biofeedback or other interventions from that person. So, for example, for neurofeedback, there is one certifying body in the United States for biofeedback and neurofeedback providers. It’s the Biofeedback Certification International Alliance, BCIA. And they have different certifications. They have certifications for neurofeedback, for biofeedback, for pelvic muscle floor dysfunction and for heart rate variability. If you’re going to have the most complicated system in the universe, which is your brain trained, you don’t want to do it by somebody who went to a workshop one weekend and then decides to start sticking electrodes on people’s heads. You want somebody who’s had documented, supervised experience and training and have passed a rigorous certification exam and gone through mentoring. And for many people, it takes two years to get the certification. That’s who you want working with your brain. You do not want somebody working with your brain who just bought equipment and may not even have a degree in a brain health field, who’s working with, again, the most complicated system that we know of in the universe is a human brain.
Dr. Johnson (01:00:07) That’s very important because you hear people coming in and say, well, I tried that and it didn’t work, or I’m worse in some cases.
Dr. Wes Center (01:00:16) Precisely.
Dr. Johnson (01:00:17) And the next question is, well, who did you see and what did they actually do? And so many times you hear equipment used inappropriately, they’re working on the wrong thing. They’re following a cookbook protocol which has really nothing to do with. What is that individual’s problem.
Dr. Wes Center (01:00:42) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (01:00:43) So at our office and in your practice, we focus on looking at the main problem, having the appropriate test done, then having the appropriate prescribed treatment for that, and having people do it that are well trained, like yourself, like your son, Cameron. That makes all the difference.
Dr. Wes Center (01:01:08) It does. And if you don’t see those letters, BCN or BCIan or BCB, if you don’t see those certification, the credentials behind a person’s name, you really should be careful. And it’s a caveat. Mtar buy or beware. If you’re not going to a certified person, you really can’t expect much. And there’s a lot of things you can do when you’re researching, you can look and see, is there any research been published with the equipment or software that’s being used? And do they say there’s a potential for harm? Because if there’s a potential for good stuff, if it’s used correctly, there’s also potential for harm if it’s not used correctly. What are the experiences of this particular clinician worth working with? What you have. So if they’re an ADHD specialist, you may want to consider going to somebody else if you have a mood or anxiety issue, if they’re a general practitioner, how long have they been doing this? How many years of experience do they have? If you’re doing Neurofeedback? Every neurofeedback intervention should be preceded by an EEG assessment. It can be done with fewer than 19 channels. You don’t have to do the whole head, but some sort of assessment needs to be done prior to the intervention. We prefer the quantitative 19 channel EEG, so we can see everything in two and three dimensions. But not everybody has that latest, greatest state of the art techniques, but they should proceed whatever they do. We have a little moniker that we use at our practice. We don’t move anything before we measure it first. And anything that we move, we continue to measure to make sure that we’re headed in the right direction. So it’s kind of like moving your furniture in the house. You may move it 2ft to the right, but your wife comes in and goes, hey, I wanted that move 2ft, but I want to move 2ft to the left. And so we want to make sure that we’re moving things in the correct direction. And the only way you can do that is to measure frequently and your practice and my practice, because we follow the same standards every five to ten sessions. We’re remeasuring to make sure that things are headed in the right direction. And we do that with all of our interventions, not just with neurofeedback.
Dr. Johnson (01:03:26) Yeah, exactly. And that’s so important because people then can see what their progress is. And one of the things that I see frequently, and you’re talking about toxins earlier, is mold toxins. For years and years, I’ve dealt with toxic exposures affecting individuals. Back in the early eighty s, it was more solvents, volatile chemicals. Then it became herbicides, pesticides, and as people became aware of the toxicity of those, government has labeled them, made people aware, made msds sheets available, which is what’s in the chemical in the workplace. So we see a lot fewer workplace exposures or inadvertent exposures to, like, pesticides and herbicides.
Dr. Wes Center (01:04:20) Right.
Dr. Johnson (01:04:20) But now we’re seeing exposures to mold and mold, certain molds, the black molds, produce toxins, which are lipophilic, which you were talking about, fat. Loving that. They stick to the fat. They stay in the system, in your body’s system, and they’re hard to get out.
Dr. Wes Center (01:04:40) Right.
Dr. Johnson (01:04:40) And they affect the nervous system. So I see that every day in the office of people that have had their brains affected by their indoor environment from the mold toxins. The molds produce a chemical, and the mold can grow behind the wall, under the counter, behind the shower, and you can’t find the spores necessarily, but the chemical is in your air, and you breathe that chemical, you bioaccumulate it, and then it sticks to the cells, and it’s hard to get out. And they show up with abnormalities, as we’ve been talking about, from the toxic effect where people are fatigued. Brain fog have gastrointestinal problems because it affects the vagus nerve, the digestion process. They get joint pains and aches, and then you have to treat the neural toxins. And as you were talking about, you got to use antioxidants to help with that. We look at the brain dysfunction with the techniques you’ve been talking about, and then many times we have to treat those people with hyperbaric to really force the systems, because oxygen and glucose are the two main ingredients needed for mitochondrial function, for detoxification process to occur.
Dr. Wes Center (01:06:07) Yeah. And your brain consumes 20% of your resting state oxygen, but it also consumes anywhere between 20 and 40% of your blood glucose. And so the brain is an energy resource pig. It’s only three pounds of glial fat and water. And yet it consumes a disproportionate share of the body’s resources. One of the things that you said reminds me another one of our sayings at the office, of which we have many, and one is that we don’t remodel the house while it’s still on fire. And so until we put the inflammation out, we don’t really do very many remedial interventions. The first thing we do is go after inflammation with a vengeance, because if we don’t, all the good things that we’re doing will just get burned up by the inflammation. So we got to find the source of inflammation, address it, and then we can start the remodeling process. But it’s a great analogy. If your house is on fire, you wouldn’t call the remodeling guy, you’d call a fire department.
Dr. Johnson (01:07:08) Exactly. And I see people all the time that have mold exposure, that they’ve been trying to fix themselves or get healed, still living in a damp, moldy environment, and that just doesn’t work. The same thing with GI problems. People have come in with chronic complaints of gastrointestinal problems, and they’ve seen different gastroenterologists, four or five different ones. They still aren’t better, and they’re still putting the same allergic foods down their intestinal tract.
Dr. Wes Center (01:07:38) Or they’re taking, you can’t heal it.
Dr. Johnson (01:07:40) With the inflammation being created from what you’re eating.
Dr. Wes Center (01:07:44) Or they’re looking on the Internet and they’re seeing all these advertisements for probiotics. And then you look at it, and the probiotic and prebiotic are packaged together, and they don’t realize that their probiotic is actually getting in. The prebiotic is getting away with the probiotic in many occasions, particularly if they’ve got small intestinal bacterial overgrowth to begin with, or sibo. So they’ve got a little bit of this irritation going their gut because the acid loving birds of the small intestine have been outnumbered by the alkaline loving large intestinal bacterial flora. And so they’ve got this dysbiosis going on, and then they’re putting prebiotic in with a probiotic, which just makes things worse. And if they would separate them. But they’re not talking to functional medicine folks, and so they don’t understand that that thing that should be doing good for them isn’t going to do any good for them because an assessment wasn’t done to begin with to say, what’s the right strategy here and how do we handle that?
Dr. Johnson (01:08:54) The strategy is the most important because even the test that we do for gi, whatever it is, function will not tell you what the problem is unless you have a safe food diet to begin with.
Dr. Wes Center (01:09:10) Exactly.
Dr. Johnson (01:09:11) And so it has to do with that initial exposure. You’ve been most helpful today.
Dr. Wes Center (01:09:18) It’s been fun.
Dr. Johnson (01:09:19) Your insight in how to approach brain health and just a healthy lifestyle and what we can do, some simple things that we can do to get started. Pay attention to the foods that we are eating. If you notice that your stomach’s upset after dairy or after spice, I see a lot of people that are sensitive to onion or garlic creates a problem.
Dr. Wes Center (01:09:50) Or the night shades.
Dr. Johnson (01:09:51) Or the night shades. A lot of times the two biggest things are dairy and gluten. From the food standpoint, then appreciate all you’ve said about the sleep patterns, how we think about our day, getting our day organized, and then what modalities are present and useful that are readily available at your office. At my office to help people with their brain health in getting through each day in a healthy, be joyful manner. Thank you so much for being with us today.
Dr. Wes Center (01:10:29) Thanks, Dr. Johnson. My folks at brain behavior associates and I really appreciate the invite. Thank you.
Dr. Johnson (01:10:34) Well, you’re welcome. Thank you for all your information, your time today.
Dr. Wes Center (01:10:37) Thanks.
Dr. Johnson (01:10:38) You’re welcome.

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]]> Exploring Long-Haul COVID Syndrome with Dr. Johnson, Dr. Peter McCullough, and John Leake https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/exploring-long-haul-covid-syndrome-with-dr-johnson-dr-peter-mccullough-and-john-leake/ Wed, 29 Mar 2023 16:15:41 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=31057 The post Exploring Long-Haul COVID Syndrome with Dr. Johnson, Dr. Peter McCullough, and John Leake appeared first on Johnson Medical Associates.

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Dr. Alfred Johnson interviews Dr. Peter McCullough, and John Leake to discuss the latest on Long Covid treatment, including hyperbaric.

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]]> Featured in Natural Awakenings Dallas: Holistic, Functional and Integrative Therapies Abound https://www.nadallas.com/2022/08/31/409971/holistic-functional-and-integrative-therapies-abound#new_tab Wed, 07 Sep 2022 22:26:09 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=31021 Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been used for many years to treat decompression sickness, non-healing wounds and severe burns. The...

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]]> Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) has been used for many years to treat decompression sickness, non-healing wounds and severe burns. The hard-sided hyperbaric chamber has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat 13 different conditions, but HBOT has shown to be effective in treating a host of off-label ailments, explains Alfred Johnson, DO, founder of Johnson Medical Associates.

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]]> All questions Covid with Dr. Al Johnson and Dr. Peter McCullough https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/all-questions-covid-with-dr-al-johnson-and-dr-peter-mccullough/ Mon, 23 Aug 2021 13:54:29 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30999 The post All questions Covid with Dr. Al Johnson and Dr. Peter McCullough appeared first on Johnson Medical Associates.

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Dr. Alfred Johnson interviews Dr. Peter McCullough on what you need to know about Covid-19 and early treatment.

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]]> Protecting Yourself From COVID-19 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/protecting-yourself-from-covid-19/ Fri, 21 Aug 2020 18:42:39 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30953 Patients frequently ask me what works best in specific medical situations that relate to medications, devices, nutrients and activity. Now...

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]]> Patients frequently ask me what works best in specific medical situations that relate to medications, devices, nutrients and activity. Now that we have COVID-19 the specific questions have increased with the general question, “What do I need to do to be healthy and protect myself?” The following are my thoughts based on 40 years of practicing medicine.

The mask debate. Masks protect us and others. Not all are made the same. Surgical type masks, the blue ones with elastic ear straps, have been used for years in surgery to protect the patient from bacteria spread from the surgery personnel to the patient on the table in the surgery suite. They are used also by medical personnel in rooms with immunocompromised individuals to protect the patient.

Medical personnel also wear surgical type masks to protect themselves from infected patients.

With COVID, the goal is not to spread the virus if you have it and also to protect yourself from the spread by others. The tighter the mask fits to the face the less likely spreading occurs and also that you will be protected by breathing filtered air thru the mask and not from around it.

The N95 mask is designed so it fits to the face better and with a bigger pocket for the nose but may be harder to breathe through. Homemade masks and face coverings are definitely better than nothing to protect you and others. Using some sort of face covering is important to reduce spread so choosing the one that you can tolerate and will use is so important. Try the different types for fit and tolerance.

I’m seeing face shields being worn without masks. Shields were designed to protect health care workers from the direct contact of body fluids to the eyes and face. They are meant to be worn with a mask.

Wearing the shield without a face covering only prevents direct contact of particles from a cough or sneeze by others around you. You are unprotected with your next breath, as you breathe in the expelled respiratory particles from around the shield that are still suspended in the air. When you cough or sneeze you spread the expelled particles to the shield and the particles are directed down and out into the air, clothing and surfaces below the shield.

Overall, not much protection either from you spreading particles or receiving particles. Wearing one does remind the wearer of COVID-19 and the need to distance.

Keeping a strong immune system. Supporting your immune system is important. Zinc suppresses viruses from multiplying as well as the amino acid Lysine. Vitamin D is also reported to be a protective nutrient. In my practice many patients are severely Vitamin D deficient when I first see them and measure their blood level. Proper guidance by a health professional is helpful in determining what level of supplementation is right for you.

Which are the best tests? Testing can be confusing. The nasal swab, PCR for COVID-19, looks for the virus being present by detecting its specific genetic material. This tells us the virus is present in the nasal cavity and is capable of being spread to other people. True illness occurs when that person has symptoms such as fever, chills, cough, aching and fatigue.

Antibody testing looks for your immune response to the virus. IgM antibodies may be present within a few days of exposure, showing an acute exposure situation. IgG antibodies form after days to weeks after the virus contacts your body and show prior exposure or infection and may indicate some immunity to the virus has developed. IgA antibodies indicated a mucus membrane immune defense response to the virus and generally is seen early on like IgM.

Antigen testing looks for specific proteins on the surface of the virus indicating virus is present. Just like IgM positive you may or may not have symptoms when positive. Results that are obtained quickly are the most helpful in the symptomatic patient.

How testing and treatment all ties together. In medical treatment of a disease early detection and treatment is useful in decreasing the severity of the medical problem. In my experience the same is true with COVID-19. Testing to confirm infection with results obtained within one to two days is important in symptomatic patients to begin early treatment. The longer the time the virus has to multiply before treatment the greater the infective load the ill individual’s immune system has to overcome.

Early treatment in infections generally provides a better outcome. The recent study from Henry, hydroxychloroquine, cut the death by 50 percent. Seeking medical help early when symptoms occur is important in improving the individual’s outcome and recovery.

Dr. Alfred Johnson, D.O. is a physician practicing in Richardson, specializing in internal medicine, environmental medicine and chronic disease. For more information, visit johnsonmedicalassociates.com or call 972-479-0400.

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]]> Some Causes Of False Positives https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/some-causes-of-false-positives/ Fri, 07 Aug 2020 18:34:59 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30951 Lyme disease is a highly common health issue in the US. People can get it from being bitten by blacklegged...

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]]> Lyme disease is a highly common health issue in the US. People can get it from being bitten by blacklegged ticks because they inject the bacteria called Borrelia burgdorferi which can have serious effects on humans. Many will experience symptoms such as fatigue, fever, headache and rashes. This requires immediate treatment. If ignored, the infection will worsen by spreading across the body. The heart, joints and nervous system will all suffer. The problem is that other diseases have similar symptoms and testing does not always yield reliable results. In this article, we discuss how Lyme disease and mold exposure connect to create false positive diagnoses.

Getting a diagnosis. It can be hard to get a proper diagnosis because not all doctors are familiar with Lyme disease. Finding a doctor that frequently treats Lyme, such as myself, improves your chances of knowing what is really going on in your body. That physician can recommend the best available testing methods and interpret the results correctly because they know what other types of information can be helpful thanks to their experience in evaluating and treating the disease among their patients. This should be done as quickly as possible because the lab results for long-term Lyme disease is not as accurate. The body may stop producing antibodies after a while.

The two-step test. The Center for Disease Control recommends a two-step test which much both turn out positive before Lyme disease can be confirmed. If a person has a negative result in either of these tests, then Lyme can be ruled out and other causes may be explored. The first test is called ELISA which is an acronym for enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. The next step is the Western Blot Test. These are just two ways to check for antibodies that can confirm the presence of the B. burgdorferi bacteria in the blood. If only one of these is performed, then the risk of having a false positive is high.

Why direct testing is not advisable. You might wonder why the tests are looking for antibodies instead of the bacteria itself. Other diseases, including COVID-19, can be found through direct testing using the PCR test or polymerase chain reaction. The answer is that direct tests are difficult for Lyme because the bacteria can hide to protect itself from antibiotics. If the test is conducted while they are in hiding, then false negatives are likely. It’s fortunate that the bacteria has no control over the production of antibodies. These are easier to search for in infected persons.

The ELISA Test and Western Blot Test. This is the standard testing protocol. This is good for short-term diagnosis using antibodies as targets. The body produces antibodies to fight infection. Different pathogens like viruses and bacteria result in different antibodies. Their presence indicates that the person’s immune system is fighting the B. burgdorferi bacteria. A negative result is deemed to be conclusive that Lyme disease is out of the question. No further tests are necessary. If positive, then confirmatory test is required. The Western Blot Test is an immunoblot test that also looks for antibodies.

Why false positives occur. There are many reasons why false positive results come out of these tests. Usually, the culprit is the presence of another infection. If your body is currently fighting mold infection, then you might get a positive test even if you don’t have Lyme disease. Physicians should explore other possible causes to prevent wrong diagnoses by asking about possible mold exposure and other issues that are commonly associated with false positives. Mold infections are particularly problematic since the symptoms are like what you would find with Lyme.

There are even cases wherein the patient has no symptoms at all and yet the tests turn out positive. There are two possible explanations. The first is that the bacteria is present in the body but the immune system is so strong that it is not affecting the person. The second is that it is a false positive in which another type of infection is causing the problem. New tests may be needed to pinpoint the exact issue. After all, symptoms might emerge later and make life harder for the individual. Early intervention will lead to better outcomes.

Mold infection can be assessed using a culture of suspected areas. DNA probes and standard growth techniques are utilized. The toxicity in the body can be analyzed using urine, blood, hair, or saliva samples. Longer exposure in a problematic environment increases the chances of inhaling the spores. Known symptoms include fatigue, headaches, joint pain and chronic cough. Consulting a physician familiar with mold illness, Lyme, and the conflicts between them can help you ensure proper diagnosis and treatment. With my years of experience with the matter, my staff and I have been able to help many find their way to better health despite these difficulties.

Dr. Alfred Johnson, D.O. is a physician practicing in Richardson, specializing in internal medicine, environmental medicine and chronic disease. For more information, visit johnsonmedicalassociates.com.

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]]> Looking At Chronic Fatigue https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/looking-at-chronic-fatigue/ Fri, 24 Jul 2020 18:24:44 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30949 Do you wake up feeling tired? Drag through the day and hit the couch in the evening? I hear this...

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]]> Do you wake up feeling tired? Drag through the day and hit the couch in the evening? I hear this complaint from many patients. Then their question is “What can I do to get better? I’ve seen many physicians and they have run blood tests and tell me that the results are normal. I am not anemic and do not have an infection or organ abnormalities as my blood count, liver, thyroid, adrenal and kidney function are all within an acceptable range. I’m frustrated, still feel bad and am tired!”

Evaluating the underlying causes. This is a complicated situation for the physician and the patient and requires time and patience for both the patient and the physician to work through the process of evaluating for underlying causes or triggers. Triggers can be allergies to mold, food, dust mites or animal dander. It also may be due to viruses such at Epstein Barr (Mononucleosis), West Nile Virus or Lyme Disease. Exposure to toxic chemicals in the workplace or at home such as solvents or pesticides affects cell function, thus fatigue. Excessive dampness in a home or building can produce mold growth that in many cases produce mycotoxins, a neurotoxic substance, that affects the nervous system including adverse effects on brain function.

Be mindful of when and where you experience your symptoms. A chronological history is important in understanding the time and place of onset of symptoms including work and living conditions. Frequently, I hear that the illness began shortly after the patient moved from out of state, moved to a new residence or started a new job.

When this is the situation indoor air quality issues are a strong consideration such as mold or chemical exposure. Dampness in a dwelling creates an environment for mold growth that causes allergic conditions such as asthma, cough, eye irritation, nasal congestion and yes – fatigue. If that mold is one that produces mycotoxins such as aspergillus, penicillium or stackyboytris, which are neurotoxins, that affect not only the brain but also the cell mitochondria ATP production (the energy producers) resulting in fatigue.

Food sensitivity and fatigue. If fatigue starts after a meal, then food sensitivity needs to be considered. Foods include what you drink, seasonings and all types of ingredients that one ingests. Recently, I saw a lady that was falling asleep when driving home from work. In taking a history of her problem I asked what was different in what she was eating for lunch. She thought for a moment and then said she had added tea. Skin testing showed a sensitivity to tea. She stopped and the problem resolved.

Many food problems can be defined by doing a Four Day Rotation Diet. This involves eating two to three individual foods per meal and not repeating any of those foods until four days have elapsed. Keep a diary on how you feel after eating. Reactions may occur quickly or be delayed hours, some to the next morning. Pay attention to how you feel on awakening and the quality of sleep you had. Repeat for at least three times for 12 days in total. If you find a reactive food omit the next time around.

Viral infections that can cause fatigue. Some viral infections just make you feel bad and not diagnosed unless the correct tests are run. IgG antibody tests show past exposure or infection. IgM antibodies present in high amounts generally means acute infection. PCR (DNA detection) means the virus is present. Possible offenders could be EBV, West Nile, or Lyme if one has been bitten by a tick. Appropriate testing can be run by a physician.

COVID is the current virus concern. If you have symptoms get tested. Nasal swabs pick up the DNA of the virus. Blood antibody tests evaluate for acute infection, IgM positive, and past exposure is expressed by IgG positive test results. Early treatment as in any infection should lessen the adverse effects of the infection. The recent Henry Ford study is proof of that response.

Stay healthy, pay attention to safeguards and hopefully this will help you understand some of the underlying triggers of fatigue.

Dr. Alfred Johnson, D.O. is a physician practicing in Richardson, specializing in internal medicine, environmental medicine and chronic disease. For more information, visit johnsonmedicalassociates.com.

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]]> Lowdown On Seasonal Allergies https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/lowdown-on-seasonal-allergies/ Fri, 26 Jun 2020 16:21:11 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30940 This article written by Dr. Johnson was originally published in Katy Trail Weekly. Every day, I see patients that are...

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]]> This article written by Dr. Johnson was originally published in Katy Trail Weekly.

Every day, I see patients that are having trouble with their allergic symptoms. For some individuals, over the counter medications such as antihistamines help but does not give sufficient relief for the comfort of the patient. Others have tried prescription medications which include stronger antihistamine and medications that reduce the inflammatory process, such as montelukast or steroids, with varying results and side effects.

Understanding seasonal allergy triggers. To achieve effective treatment, it is important to understand the cause or triggers of the symptoms you are experiencing. Avoidance or reducing exposure is the first step in treatment.

In Texas, that is almost impossible. There are airborne pollens year-around, differing in spring, summer, fall and winter. Winter brings Mountain Cedar in December, January and February. In spring, pollens are in grasses and trees. Summer has carryovers from spring and then ragweed begins in August thru October. Fall pollen contains different trees from spring tree pollen and weeds.

The most significant weed is ragweed that carries over from late summer. Molds are present year around with levels elevating with wind and damper conditions. Additional allergens that may add to the individual’s allergic load are dust mites and animal dander, such as dog, cat and feathers (birds or pillows).

Reactions for some individuals may be very specific, such as dust mite or ragweed. Others may have more extensive allergies and have symptoms year around.

Reducing your allergic reactions. Blood tests for IgE allergy (Type 1 allergic response) can define the worst offenders. Skin tests also define those reactive substances and may be more sensitive picking up the less reactive but troublesome items.

Once a person knows what specific items are causing them problems, reducing exposure is important to decrease symptoms during that individual’s high pollen season. Staying inside during peak pollen times, exercising indoors and traveling with windows up and air conditioner on recirculate helps reduce exposure.

Many newer cars have cabin filters that help reduce the in-vehicle pollen. If your vehicle has one, be sure to change it on a regular basis. Home air purifiers, especially in the room where sleeping, helps also. This gives the person six to eight hours of cleaner air.

Another simple process to reduce exposure is to use nasal saline to rinse out the pollen in the nasal passage before going to bed and after being outside.

Natural substances may be helpful in reducing symptoms. Vitamin C, taking at least 3 grams a day, is reported to have antihistamine effects. Quercetin also is reported to help.

Steroids either by shot or oral administration generally reduce symptoms quickly. Long term use may have significant side effects and are generally only given by physicians once or twice a year for a short period of time for symptoms not resolving with antihistamines.

Immunotherapy, allergy shots or sublingual drops (called SLIT- sublingual immunotherapy) builds up your body’s tolerance to the specific pollens. This therapy is specifically designed for you from your blood or skin testing results and administered on a frequent basis, usually weekly, over three to five years.

Consulting a physician for additional treatment options. If over the counter medication is not helping and you are miserable, consulting a physician to discuss additional treatment options is important to improve your health in a safe and effective manner.

Dr. Alfred Johnson, D.O. is a physician practicing in Richardson, specializing in internal medicine, environmental medicine and chronic disease. For more information, visit johnsonmedicalassociates.com.

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]]> Foods And Adverse Health Effects https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/foods-and-adverse-health-effects/ Fri, 12 Jun 2020 16:36:48 +0000 https://www.johnsonmedicalassociates.com/?p=30942 This article written by Dr. Johnson was originally published in Katy Trail Weekly. “Peoples Pharmacy” had a recent article in...

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]]> This article written by Dr. Johnson was originally published in Katy Trail Weekly.

“Peoples Pharmacy” had a recent article in The Dallas Morning News reporting that dietary intake may increase acne. This stimulated me to add additional information on foods and the potential adverse health effects.

The CDC has numerous articles and guidelines on Food Allergy and Digestive Allergy from foods. The most dramatic and life threatening are the anaphylactic shock reactions such as acute asthma, laryngeal edema, body swelling and hives.

Ninety percent of these reactions are produced by eight foods: milk, eggs, peanuts, tree nuts, fish, shellfish, soy and wheat. The main treatment is avoidance and to be prepared to treat with Epinephrine injection and antihistamine with immediate transportation to the hospital for stabilization.

Food allergies link to other conditions. Individuals with this type of food allergy are two to four times more likely to have other allergic conditions like asthma, eczema and seasonal allergies. In this situation often tolerance can be developed over time to the seasonal allergies by using allergy shots called allergy immunotherapy. This is done thru skin testing by physicians to determine the item you are sensitive to and then preparing a specific formula for your treatment protocol. Tolerance to allergic items is achieved over time.

Digestive Allergy involves foods that trigger abdominal pain, swelling, cramping, constipation or diarrhea. Secondary effects of adverse food reactions may also include fatigue, less mental clarity (“brain fog,”) joint pain, rash and itching. The eight foods listed above may be the trigger or other commonly eaten foods such as corn, rice, garlic, onion, pepper and peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and all the grains that contain gluten. Elimination is again the treatment.

Figuring out which foods are causing you issues. Defining which foods are the trigger is often difficult. The quick onset reacts can generally be determined by skin tests or IgE blood tests. Delayed reactions are harder to be isolated.

One method is the “4 Day Rotation Diet” involving eating two to three foods per meal and not repeating any of the foods in the four-day time period. While doing this it is important to keep a diary of the foods eaten and how you feel recording the reactions. Reactions can be delayed by hours or extend into the next day. (There is help with this diet on the internet).

Celiac Disease is the absolute intolerance to gluten which is in all grains except corn and rice. Individuals with this Disease must strictly avoid all gluten containing foods to avoid the severe symptoms experienced by an exposure, severe abdominal pain, cramping and diarrhea that may go on for days.

Other individuals may have gluten intolerance and experience milder symptoms of bloating, constipation or diarrhea, fatigue, poor mental clarity, generalized aching, headache, rashes and swelling. Often these individuals have additional foods intolerances or allergies that make the job of getting relief difficult due to the many food variables.

Skin and blood testing for foods can help to define the specific foods. However, this testing often misses many reactive foods and it is necessary to use the “4 Day Rotation Diet” as a challenge method to define which foods for you are causing your symptoms. Then avoid those triggering foods for optimal health. For those individuals with many food allergies/intolerances staying on a rotation with avoidance is the best treatment.

Additional help for digestive allergies.

Help for individuals with Digestive Allergy is available through genetic testing, especially for gluten intolerance and Celiac Disease. Enterolabs at enterolabs.com offers a buccal swab test that will define your specific genetic makeup defining how you handle gluten. You acquire one set of genes from your mother and one set from your father. The combination of these two gene sets determines how your body will potentially handle ingested gluten, true celiac verses intolerance. With a physician’s guidance this can be a big help in how you regulate your diet for optimal health.

Dr. Alfred Johnson, D.O. is a physician practicing in Richardson, specializing in internal medicine, environmental medicine and chronic disease. For more information, visit johnsonmedicalassociates.com.

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