I’m taking an advanced neurological rehabilitation course on-line and here are some of my thoughts as the screens go by.
Spinal cord stimulators are surgically implanted into your spine to manage intractable central and peripheral regions of pain. Chiropractors often can get the same results and benefits without the surgery. Robotics is going to be the future of rehabilitation. One of the methods is called Functional Near Infra-Red Spectrum (FNIRS) combined with EEG monitoring is helping patients with loss of limb function to help rewire it to the brain.
This is one of many modern methods for creating neuroplasticity, which is what chiropractors have been doing with patients since 1895. It means connecting different pools of neurons. That is how we learn. The more synaptic connections to different neurons the more human we tend to be.
Catching a baseball in 3 dimensions is much better for us than playing a sport on a computer screen in two dimensions. One reason for more learning disabilities now is because kids are living in a two dimensional world when our brains are meant to be using all three dimensions. When I was a kid, there was only one way to play baseball, and that was to actually play it. Watching the ball approach your face at high speeds was very healthy for you, if you had the neuroplasticity developed well enough to catch it. The neurology behind that simple act for many of us kids, is quite complex. We did not know any of it, but we got the benefit from it anyway.
For the patients that I can’t help their vertigo, I recommend them to go to a Brain Balance Center. They are incredibly high tech and very effective. Of course, they are very expensive as well and I always hope that I can get them back to normal without having to seek this high level of treatment. But if they are not responding well, I’m very thankful and so are my patients that there is a next higher level of care. It may be listed as mCTSIB therapy. It stands for Modified Clinical Test of Sensory Integration of Balance. I do it everyday for myself as a form of fall prevention. I stand on one leg and close my eyes. It is not easy to do in the 7th decade of life because our neck joints have become compromised with arthritis known today as degenerative joint disease. Neck joints are incredibly important for us to be able to not fall over.
They have pressure mats that can quantitively measure the amount of sway while trying to put on a pair of shorts. I used to asses a patient by watching them stand still with their eyes closed. There are so many very cool high-tech ways of measuring what I used to clinically assess in a basic neuro exam. I imagine accountants and engineers would prefer this method, but for us ordinary folks, my evaluation might very well suffice for a few thousand dollars less.
Some clinics are using Continuous Glucose Monitors (CGM) along with tri-axial accelerometers and ECG/EKG testing with respiratory sensors to better monitor your ability to stay safe during activities of daily living. It’s very high tech. I’m embarrassed to say that I can’t afford that stuff. However, my clinical evaluation skills could probably come to the same conclusion, but without the fancy printout in multicolored graphs. While it seems I’m making light of all this super high tech advancements, if I was a total mess, I’d be interested in giving it a try.
