Healthcare is changing; Are you?

Introduction to Brain Health and Development 0:00

If you believe you're stuck, you are stuck. But if you believed that there is a possibility, then you were well on your way. You have to want it like you've never wanted anything else in your life. I think this is disturbing to me that lately there's a lot of conversation that we should just embrace. all this diversity of autism and children that are not typical and just become more accepting of it. And I got to be honest with you, I'm shocked because then you're saying that there's nothing you can do about anything.

Everything is connected and I'm here to tell you how. I am Dr. Laura Hanson with Connect My Brain. This podcast is for moms who are concerned about their child's development. The brain impacts our mind, body and overall health. I explain how your brain is wired, what happens when it's out of balance, and how early childhood development not only impacts your child, but can affect you as an adult years later. Want to know how to improve your life? Join me and learn about your amazing brain and what it can do for you.

Hi, everybody. It's Dr. Laura with Connect My Child's Brain. But I also like to say connect my brain, connect your brain. Connect everybody's brain! So let's dive in. I haven't done a solo podcast in a while. And I was really thinking about it going, I just want to do my podcast. Just want focus on so many things with my audience. and tie a lot of ideas together. If you've been following the podcast you have seen recently, I've had all kinds of guests on my podcast. I have had pediatricians, medical doctors, naturopaths, people that work in labs like with the fecal transplants.

Jason did a really good job. But the thing that really intrigued me, first of all, it was great meeting so many people, and there'll be more. But I am going to always do a couple of solos because I enjoy it. And I like to connect dots. That's what I'd like do. The thing what really happened for me through this process so far is realizing that we're all going about this in a very functional way.

Why Early Brain Wiring Matters 2:50

Meaning, the ideas of traditional healthcare are really changing. The idea that there has to be one person that looks at your heart, one that person looks that your gut, One person who looks your skin, whatever the case may be, I see it really changing. Every one of these practitioners that I spoke to looks at the big picture. They look at a person and they realize how human physiology has to be addressed. And I love that because we're all very like-minded. Here at Connect My Brain, we have a mechanical, chemical brain approach.

What I also really like is that I've been listening to Dr. Amon's podcast recently, and I love what he said. How many people claim they're working on the brain, but they never look at the I was thrilled to hear that because we look at the brain. Now, not everybody does brain mapping, and honestly, I think it's a very important part. Everybody can't do everything, but it'd be great if some providers would also think about, let's at least incorporate what's going on with your brain and get a brain map.

We certainly have done brain maps for so many people that aren't necessarily involved in our program. So it's like an a la carte. You can have a brain map and take it to whomever that you're working with. and let them see your brain. You know, here it is in a nutshell how this comes together and why I get so intrigued by pediatrics. But regardless, it's not always pediatrics, we have a lot of adults that come here too. The idea is that no one bypassed this season of their life. Everybody was a baby in the womb, everybody was, a Baby on the planet learning how to crawl then walk.

Everybody went through that journey and the majority of things coming together happen very early on. So I'm going to give you a couple of points and then I'll give a few examples. So, there's this thing in the brain called pruning that it begins to happen actually in a womb and goes into the second decade of life, into your 20s. It's called Pruning. In the very beginning, they actually call it apoptosis, which means cell death, but I just think that sounds so aggressive and so I always keep it into term of prune.

I was actually talking to a behavioral therapist at an expo that I attended last weekend and I asked him if he knew what pruning meant and he actually told me no. So when we're working on the brain, when were working the person who has a brain we must always be able to at least know all the body parts that we are influencing. That's why I love what Dr. Amen said. I said, that's perfect. Here's a person who's an elite in his field, and he even recognizes that. It is so important because this pruning aspect, this is what creates the efficiency in the brain.

You have all these neurons, you don't get to keep them all, So even what the baby in the womb is practicing is going to get polished up and become efficient to that level before they're ever born. That's why things are working when they get here. But that process isn't done. And in fact, the first five years of life, it's really ramping up because now you've got all this sensory motor going on after you're born, and now, you are still polishing up pathways. This is what makes circuits. When you come into the world, you're down in your brain stem.

You're using more of the back of brain because that's where the visual cortex is. Visual cortex, how you see, acuity, meaning clarity, as well as movement.

Pruning, Brain Mapping, and Emotional Regulation 7:50

And we've talked about eyes a great deal on this podcast. In autism, they're not pruning efficiently, even in the womb. And in fact, in an assessment, we are now measuring heads because the size of the head is also one of your findings to say something isn't right. Then the why factor comes in. Why is that? So, pruning is a very big part. As you come into the world, you're using the back of the brain, that is influencing how you see and how your taking that information into your brain. And different eye movements influence different parts of brain and the brains is going to come on in a sequence.

That's very important. We are going to really build up that right side of the brain. That's our emotional quotient. And then around anywhere between 16 and 20 months, that data is really going to influence the left side of the brain. And that's where we're gonna get our intellectual quotient. Lots of times that pattern is very visible, not only in children, but also in adults. People with any kind of emotional dysregulation, any anxiety, Typically, there's something going on on the right side of the brain and we can measure this.

We can look at it and then you can support it. Actually speaking to someone this morning that literally told me that there was nothing you could do to change the situation. Basically, they're stuck with it if you believe you're But if you believe that there is a possibility, then you're well on your way. You have to want it like you've never wanted anything else in your life. I think this is disturbing to me that lately there's a lot of conversation that we should just embrace. all this diversity of autism and children that are not typical and just become more accepting of it.

And I got to be honest with you, I'm shocked because then you're saying that there's nothing you can do about anything. I believe I've shared this with your before, but one of my children went through a traumatic brain injury. a decade ago and they had to relearn how to walk, talk, eat, toilet, dress themselves. If I had had that attitude that there's nothing you could do about it, there would have been no change and their life would've been a devastation. And I know that to be true because, and I was sharing this story this morning, I remember very shortly after the hospital stay was done, we were shopping at IKEA looking for a desk and there was a gentleman there who it was very obvious that he had had a craniectomy, meaning that, he'd had traumatic brain injury, the pressure was so great, they had to remove a plate from the cranium and then once that acute part has resolved, if it works out, they'll go put the plate back on the brain.

But you could see, you can see the distortion in his head shape. And you also could really feel and see that depressiveness of function. When we were talking to him and sharing our story, he looked at me and he said, how did you know to do all of that? Wow, what a response because I actually heard that same response from the neurologist's PA because a couple of times I had to get, you know, some type of requisition to be able to go do something. And she asked me that the same question. Now, this is the PA working for the Neurologist.

And he's in fact, he is a neurosurgeon. And she asked me the same thing. How do you know to do all of this? My response to her, I did not say this to the young man, but my response was I don't know how you don. There is world out there. There is so much available. There are so many things that you can do to improve the state of function outside of this traditional model of healthcare that we've been in. that you got a problem, the only thing you need to do is go get a medication, go to get surgery and deal with it.

And nothing could be further from the truth. You have a sequence of events that go on. And they're very early in life. And this is for everybody, regardless if we're talking about a child or an adult. Like I said, nobody bypassed this season in their life, and now if something is going on, be willing. Be willing to fight for your ability to change.

Challenging the Idea That Nothing Can Change 13:40

Look at everything you possibly can. Find the things that are the right fit for you and go after it. I had a little boy in here this morning and he's just about eight years old. And he is really changing. That's such a big time between seven and a half and eight and half. And on earlier podcasts, we've talked about the subconscious mind. It's forming from the time you're in the womb until about seven and a half to eight and half. That's why what goes on for you as a parent is so influential into the wellbeing of your child.

This particular family unfortunately had spent five plus years in the traditional healthcare model. And by the time they found me, I'm telling them things that they had never heard. He even shared with me this morning that someone else, a therapist as a matter of fact, why are you spending so much money on buying these supplements for the gut? Why are you doing all of this? Because he's only seven and a half. Why would you stop? That is on the grown-up. It is not on a child. You have to fight for the well-being of your child.

You need to look under every rock and make sure you're not missing something. We have too much information today to keep you from not doing that. The body is innately designed to heal. Just look at an old-fashioned paper cut. You don't keep bleeding for years on end, right? It usually stops within moments. What did that? Did you put super glue on it? did you hold it together? You might have put a paper towel around it, squeezed it help coagulate the blood cells, and then it seals. you have the most incredible ability in your body to heal.

And if you give it the right things, and if go and you listen to every one of these podcasts that's on my studio or channel or whatever you call it, everybody's saying the same thing. Think about the fecal transplant. Do you understand what that means? And listen Jason's podcast. It's terrific. First of all, there's an incredible screening process, so don't just put it out of your head. You have to be between the ages of 10 and 30 You had to have been a vaginal birth, breastfed, and no red flags in your family.

So you can imagine the picking pool is very small. And then what they're doing, you could even now bring it, it all goes into a laboratory process that gets cleaned, all that kind of stuff. But it literally can be put in capsule form now. I was blown away by that. And I've got a couple of kids we're gonna set out on a journey to make that happen because they need as much help as we can put in there without wrecking the nervous system. So many of these children are so dysregulated that their emotions are all over the place.

It's either they're all the over place and you might call them hyperactive or they're literally withdrawn and dampened from everything. It's both ends of the spectrum. And I don't mean the autism spectrum, I mean just like if I use a bar graph going this one's all revved up and this ones really rev down. Our children are suffering and you have an opportunity to make the change. And when you pull the whole family into the process, it is life-changing. In fact, one of the things that I'm gonna do, I hope I can get it accomplished in August.

This is August 1st, as a matter of fact. But we're gonna start doing what we call scan days for adults. When I got into neurofeedback, It was in 2008. And I was invited by a colleague, Dr. Barwell, to come down and look at this software because he wanted me to teach primitive reflexes. When I saw this piece of equipment, which is called a neuro infinity, I was blown away because for the first time I had a piece of diagnostic equipment,

Stress, the Autonomic Nervous System, and Neurofeedback 18:40

because I do, I love data, that allowed me to measure the stress response. Now that's huge. So connect the dot to the primitive reflex, the Moro reflex. Moro Reflex starts around eight and a half weeks of pregnancy. It is going to bring about the arousal, the CO2 O2 reflex, and the sympathetic nervous system. Sympathetic nervous systems is that same word, fight or flight. And there's lots of podcasts on that particular reflex, go back, type it into the search bar on the website, connectmybrain.com, and you can do deeper dives into these individual reflexes.

So this particular software is measuring the stress response. What's included in that is looking at The breath, looking at respiration. Breath, meaning the pace of the breath. And is it in rhythm with the heart rate? That's called heart-rate variability. Looking at respirations for the amount of work going into that. Skin conduction, which is sweating. Then temperature. You got cold hands and feet. urine chronic stress, and then muscle tone. And actually the leads also go on the brain so that you can see what happens to the rain waves throughout the stressors.

This is so important. We talk about stress like it's, let me pull a tissue out of a box. Stress is a measurable physiological event. And if you get locked in this pattern, your physiology is changing. Your physiology isn't working the way that it should. You don't get blood flow going everywhere. Your eyeballs have lots of blood vessels in them. You don't get to absorb food. you get damaged to your gut like leaky gut, typically leading to leky liver and lekey brain and now leeky throat. This is a real component.

And I'm going to first start with parents, but anybody would be welcome to come out and have a scan and take a look at their own well-being. This is vital for you to know What state is your autonomic nervous system? Autonomic Nervous System means it runs automatically. You don't tell yourself to take a deep breath. Fight or flight, rest, feed and breed. So fight or fight, cold hands and feet, poor digestion, just anxious, fatigued, overwhelmed, or go 180 degrees the other direction and be low motivation, depression.

Now, what about the others side of the coin? Rest, feet and breathe. What about infertility? What, about anything having to do with the ability to sleep? All those things are components of the parasympathetic system. So what you should really begin to say to yourself is, you know what, that sounds like then, this is the precursor to things going bad or going south in your body. And it is. It absolutely is! In fact, one of very first things we learn in our higher levels of neurofeedback training is you must break the arousal pattern.

So arouse in baby land has to do with the rhythmicity of that little baby waking up ready to feed. About every two and a half to three hours, a newborn should be startled inside of themselves and wake up because glucose is going to be used in the brain faster than any other part of the body. So waking up, being alert, and being ready to go. And our school-age kids, if you're under arouse, that's going to be associated with attention deficit. You don't have the fuel to get yourself up and going. Now, attention is absolutely a developmental journey and everybody has the capacity to pay attention.

In fact, my next solo, I'm going do a lot of work on attention and interoception. But for right now, simplicity under aroused children, they have a lot of slow waves. They have lot under power waves in their brain, but they also have very typical high carbohydrate diet rather than protein. Please feed your child protein before they go to school.

Connect My Brain Services and Parent Resources 24:20

If not, by, I don't know, let's say they leave your house at eightish by nineish, they're crashing. And the teacher is going to look at them and go, oh, this kid can't pay attention. Then you're going start going down that rabbit hole. Now, the other side of the coin is over aroused. This is gonna be our kids with hyperactivity responses. meaning that they just cannot regulate and they'd just spiral. And adults can have the same thing going on too. So we have to look at this. We have look the physiology, we look to the chemistry, and we've to to at the brain so that we can put the pieces together, create that individual plan that is going to allow that person to change.

If you do the work, You can't help but change. Think about if I want to lose weight, okay, I'm going to watch my calorie, make sure I am exercising, and if i keep that up, i should be able to get toned, get my muscles going. If I only throw it in a couple of times a week, no, you're not going get the same kind of response. So you have to have an intensity and a frequency to turn the ship in the other direction. Now I want to spend the last few minutes just kind of giving you an update what's going on over here at Connect My Brain.

We have excellent intensive programs here and anyone and everyone is invited to do an intensive program if that's the right fit. But we also want you to know, like I said at the beginning of our podcast, maybe you're working with somebody and you just love what's going on. You could come and just have a brain map. Maybe you want to try our pulse table. We have red light therapy, we have chiropractic care, neurologically based chriopractic care and you can come in just for that. So this is a holistic approach to addressing your body and addressing you brain.

Keep that in mind. Now the other thing is our kits are are available on connectmybrain.com under how you can work with us, click on shop. So the parent kit is designed to help parents understand how to work your child if any of this is resonating with you. and you go, wow, my child is really stressed out. It's a way for you to dip your toe in wherever you are, because you will be able to follow a very simple little program. Now, it's not a program of all the things that we do, cause I don't think that's really safe to put stuff like that out there, but it is a for for to you truly understand stress, connect the dot to the moro reflex, There's actually a little quiz in the parent book to help you rate numerically where do you think your child lands when it comes to stress.

And then there are some regulation cards, little activities that you can do throughout the day that are simple. There is also some tools in there, a pulse oximeter and a breathing pacer, all in line with everything that we've been talking about. You also get access to our foundational stability method exercises. And it's just a really simple way To get your child moving, to get you really understanding that if you get that child's body regulated, you will see a change. And then we hope your next step is you're going to do a full blown consultation with us and you feel free to, do the exercises right alongside of them.

You know, that's one of the things I've always enjoyed when I see families that are very dedicated to the cause. The outcomes are always fantastic. Thanks for tuning in today. I hope you got some pearls and if you know somebody that could really benefit from this information, share the podcast and be on the lookout We want to give you access to our newsletter. So as soon as it gets posted, I will let you know, but we're going to add a button. Subscribe to your newsletter and that way you can get some more information right there in your email box.

Remember it's connectmybrain.com and we look forward to talking to you soon. And as always, be blessed. Thanks for listening. I hope today's lesson will help you or someone you love. Do you have a question or just really want to talk to somebody about brains? Connect with me over on Facebook or Instagram. at Connect My Brain. Looking to understand and optimize your particular brain? Check out connectmybrain.com for course information and resources. See you next class.