May 26, 2025 • 60 mins
In this episode of Broken Brains, host Bruce Parkman welcomes Dr. Michael Lovich, a concussion specialist and expert in neurological rehabilitation, to explore the hidden complexities of repetitive brain trauma.
From the sidelines of youth sports to the frontlines of military training, concussions and sub-concussive impacts are often overlooked—and underestimated. Dr. Lovich dives deep into the science behind brain injury recovery, breaking down phenomena like dysautonomia and glutamate excitotoxicity, and why observation and nuanced assessment are essential for early diagnosis.
They discuss the long-term effects of concussions, the danger of premature return-to-play protocols, and the rising concern of pediatric brain trauma. Dr. Lovich also shares why a holistic and multidisciplinary approach, including chiropractic care, is critical to healing from traumatic brain injuries.
Whether you're a veteran, athlete, parent, or practitioner, this episode delivers the tools, insights, and hope needed to navigate the invisible wounds of brain trauma.
Follow, share, like, and subscribe to Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts to stay informed and support the movement for better brain health awareness.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
Support The Mac Parkman Foundation by donating today!
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=CR24MY2GDUCZL
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Repetitive Brain Trauma
02:33 Dr. Michael Lovich's Journey into Brain Care
04:24 Understanding Concussion Symptoms
07:41 Observation Skills in Concussion Diagnosis
10:33 Tools for Assessing Concussions
11:19 Dysautonomia and Its Impact on Concussions
12:10 Sympathetic vs. Parasympathetic Systems
14:40 The Effects of Concussions on Autonomic Function
15:07 Identifying Hidden Concussions
17:42 Return to Play Protocols and Their Limitations
20:57 The Brain's Healing Process
24:28 Repetitive Head Impacts and Long-term Effects
28:30 Inflammation and Brain Health
30:51 Protecting Children's Brains from Trauma
31:50 Understanding Glutamate Excitotoxicity
34:13 The Impact of Sports on Brain Health
36:43 Concussion and Mental Health
39:57 The Role of Chiropractic Care in Recovery
51:48 Integrating Chiropractic Techniques for Brain Health
57:49 Finding the Right Care for Brain Health
https://www.mpfact.com/headsmart-app/
Follow on LinkedIn and follow her on social media today!
LinkedIn: Michael Lovich
Instagram: deltasperformance
Website:deltasperformance.com
Produced by Security Halt Media
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
Hey folks, bruce Parkman here, welcoming you to
another episode of Broken Brain,where we look at the issue of
repetitive brain trauma in theforms of repetitive head impacts
from contact sports andrepetitive blast exposure to our
veteran communities, and whatthese conditions are doing to
the brains of our kids, ourathletes and our veterans, and
why you must pay attentionBecause this condition is not
(00:33):
taught in our medical, nursingand psychological communities
and very few people are able tomake the correlation between
contact sports and militaryservice and mental health,
leading to misdiagnosis andright now, which is the largest
preventable cause of mentalillness in this country.
So we bring on patients,advocates, doctors, researchers,
players to come on here andgive you that 360-degree
(00:54):
perspective on this issue sothat you can protect yourself
and the ones that you love.
Today we have another amazingguest, dr Michael Lovick,
calling in from Denver, colorado, where my daughter lives, as a
nurse practitioner, psychiatricmedicine.
Dr Michael Lovick has about 18consonants after his name,
indicating that he's a very,very well-educated man.
(01:17):
But he's a board-certifiedchiropractic, functional
neurologist and sports physicianthat specializes in the brain
and body health.
As the founder of Delta SPerformance, he leads clinical
teams in Colorado, in Boston, sohe's nationwide, focusing on
functional neurology, sportsmedicine and concussion care.
He has a list of educationcertifications like doctor of
(01:38):
chiropractic, a master ofscience in exercise and sports
space, bachelor of science inhuman biology.
I don't even know where he gottime to practice medicine, man.
This guy is super well trained.
His professional roles he's thefounder and clinic director of
delta s performance.
He's a clinical adjunct facultyfor the university of western
states creator, instructor ofevidence-based concussion
(01:58):
management and care course,which we really want to dial in
on this.
And he's a team doctor for alcolorado alpenglow, which is the
professional women's ultimateFrisbee team, one of my favorite
sports outside.
I love that.
I love those brain-safe sportsout there.
And he's a medical staffdirector for various
professional, collegiate andamateur athletic organizations.
And he's recognized for hisinnovative, evidence-based
(02:19):
approach and his dedication toelevating the standard of care
in neurological and sportsrehabilitation, which is why we
are on this call.
Dr Michael Lovick, welcome tothe show and thank you for
coming on.
So talk to us about.
I mean, how'd you get intobrain care?
I mean, you're a concussionspecialist.
What led you out of all the,let's just say, the focuses of
(02:44):
foci of chiropractic medicinethat and and and and that are
out there.
Why concussions?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
so it's actually kind of funny.
So 11 years ago I was skiing onmountain hood in oregon and
there's this thing that happens,uh, at mountains like that
where there's a, there's a waterline, where you go from nice
light, soft snow to dense, heavy, wet snow.
I hit that, going pretty fastand exploded, for lack of a
(03:12):
better term, and I got concussed.
And when I was going throughschool, I went to the student.
I was a student at the moment.
I went to the student clinic.
They were like, hey, you lookfine to me.
I went to major doctors in thePortland Oregon area, people who
are neurologists, people whoare so quote unquote, experts
and they said you're, you'refine.
(03:34):
But I knew that I wasn't fine,for for me, I knew that I needed
to get back to the level ofwork that I knew I'd be able to
do, and so I ended up saying,well, if nobody's going to
figure this out, I might as wellbe the one to do it.
And I ended up finding aprovider in the Portland area
who does the same work that I dothe functional neurology and
(03:57):
said, well, this is thedirection I want to go in,
because this is how peoplereally need the help, and it
goes back to something you said,which was that concussion
prevention is probably thebiggest mental health prevention
, and I think that that isbecoming more and more and more
true as as our environmentchanges and things like that in
(04:19):
the world.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So what were you when you got hit?
Now we call that a yard sale,right, I'm a skier man.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So when you blast down the mountain and you come
to an abrupt stop and stuff goeseverywhere and you spend the
next 15 minutes picking it allup.
We call that a yard sale.
At me he's like, wow, one ofyour pupils is huge right now
and I was like, I don't know, Ijust feel kind of out of it.
I didn't even know that I brokemy knee at the time I tore my
PCL.
I just knew that I felt off.
Something wasn't good.
(04:57):
I took the red sled down withski patrol after the yard sale.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And the guy didn't believe me.
He didn't believe me he, uh, hedidn't believe that I was
injured.
He went down and got dumped outtwice.
So you know out of the sled.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, god dang we're going down some blue groomers.
I don't know if, uh, I don'tknow if it was that difficult,
but I guess it was.
So you know, you feel off, youfeel like something's not quite
right, and it doesn'tnecessarily mean that you can
put a finger on it or have aquote, unquote diagnostic
complaint of oh, I feel like Ihave a headache, or what you
(05:38):
know.
When you do the SCAT-6, you gotthe list of 22 things that you
can fill out and say these aremy symptoms that I feel A lot of
them are so vague because thething you're using to figure out
and answer the question how amI doing today Is the thing you
use to do.
That is the thing that'sinjured.
So how are you supposed toanswer that question accurately?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Right, no, and that's important for parents and kids.
I mean, here you are.
Were you a student at the timeor were you already practicing?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was a student at the time.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah.
So I mean you're sitting thereknowing that you got banged up
and you can't even recognize thesymptoms of concussion, because
that's the issue withsubconcussive trauma or lower
than concussive thresholds, thatyou've got to enlarge people,
yet you don't have the symptomsthat you would associate with
the concussion stumbling aroundlike that.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So, but this, is the big problem concussion, because
half the testing that you do isall like well, how did it feel
when I did this, how do you feelwhen you do that?
And if you think of it likethat, then it's like what.
We're asking so many questionsthat we're asking people who may
not be able to feel their bodyto subjectively answer and that
(06:47):
we're going based off that.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, and the fact that the brain can't heal.
I mean, how do you describesymptoms that don't exist yet?
And let me ask you thisquestion so you know you got
patients here that you know alot of our audience have had
concussions.
I've had multiple concussionsin rugby and military training.
I've had multiple concussionsin rugby and military training.
You know, from your perspective, you know how do we dial into
that to let you know, outside ofthe, you know the issues that
(07:11):
we're talking about fromlong-term exposure, but we're
talking about a concussive eventwhich happens to almost
everybody in their lifetime,right?
So how do we, you know, as adoctor, how do you dial into
that?
You know concussion, when allthe questions that they ask are
symptomatic, right, if you don'thave symptoms, you know how can
you, you know, recognize thefact that the brain's been
(07:33):
impacted?
And then you know, what do youtell your patients to do
afterwards?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know it comes from good observation skills.
That's one of the big thingsthat I think separates us from a
lot of the other approaches forconcussion.
You look for physical changesthat you can see that show
changes in brain function, eyemovement changes.
Look for vestibular changes,look for proprioceptive or where
(08:00):
you think your body is in spacechanges, and it doesn't have to
be this big pathological oroutside of normal limits issue.
There could be a number ofthings that are quote unquote
normal, that are just abnormalenough that when you add them up
they add up to somethingabnormal, and that is the main
deal.
So it's funny.
My sister was going through vetschool and she was doing her
(08:22):
neurology coursework.
And she was doing her neurologycoursework and I said, how do
you do your neuro exam on yourpatients when they can't answer
the question?
How did this feel?
And there were a number ofthings that I've actually taken
some of that observation skillsand incorporate into my practice
to get an idea.
Now I'm not lifting up people'sleg and saying, do you hop away
(08:43):
, but the idea is, how can youfigure out, how can you see
these changes?
There's been a change recentlywhere people are now including
the visual, something calledBOMBS, the visual ocular motor
screen.
The way they're using it isthey're looking at eye movements
.
It's like side to side, up anddown, doing some head turns, and
(09:03):
at the end of the day they'restill just saying did it make
your symptoms feel worse?
But they're not looking at thequality of those movements and
there are so many little detailsthat you can find that you can
then rehabilitate directly andbased on that you can find the
(09:26):
minutia that might be keeping asymptom around or keeping a
poorer patient experience around.
Instead of just kind of goingfor, let's just make it look
normal if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
You know we have an app out there called HeadSmart
and we've been looking to attacha pupillometer on there.
So if a parent thinks theirchild is being concussed they
might have a concussion, theycan take a look at that.
Thinks their child is beingconcussed, they might have a
concussion?
They can take a look at thatRight now with these, the eye
movement detectors that you use.
Is that something you'reholding in your hand or is that
(09:53):
following your finger andlooking at the eye?
Is that a device?
What are you using right now?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If you know what you're looking for, thumbs work
plenty well.
If you're, the whole idea isyou're looking for changes or
movements that shouldn't bethere.
For example, if I had you lookat my thumb and we followed it
across, or if you were lookingat like a bird flying across the
sky, you should be able to keepyour eyes on that bird
following across.
Your eyes shouldn't lag behindor then jump to catch up.
(10:25):
Your eye should be leadingahead and jumping backwards, and
hopefully they're not jumpingover it back and forth and
something called an oscillation,and those are things that can
be seen to the naked eye.
Regarding pupilometry, though,there is an app that we use and
recommend.
It's called reflex pro, andit's something that you can use
with any iPad Pro and just kindof hold it up and give you good
(10:48):
measurement of pupil dilationand constriction based off
fatigue, and we use it often inchecking out concussions and
making sure that their autonomicintegrity is there, because
something that you might haveseen now, with all the guests
that you've had on this show, isa lot of concussions also have
something called dysautonomia.
(11:10):
Have you been are?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
you familiar with that term.
That's a new one, man.
Check that one on the audience,bro man, I couldn't even want
to spell that Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Hey, no worries, dysautonomia it is
D-Y-S-A-U-T-O-N-O-M-I-A You'llhear it a lot associated with
COVID and post-COVID syndromeand POTS, things like that
vasovagal syncope.
Essentially, your autonomicsystem of sympathetic and
parasympathetic should betightly regulated, not a seesaw,
like I always use the example.
(11:38):
You go to a yoga class andevery so often you'll get
somebody a little overzealous,talking about how you want to be
very parasympathetic and youwant to have as little
sympathetic as possible in orderto be in a wellness state.
And that's not how the scienceworks.
Because you don't want it to beall parasympathetic and not
(11:58):
sympathetic, you want it to betightly controlled, like a
thermostat.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Explain to the audience the parasympathetic and
sympathetic aspects ofphysiology.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So the easiest way to understand it and the most
psychological way to think aboutit is parasympathetic is rest
and digest.
It is sitting, more stasis,calming, ability to absorb
nutrients, things like that.
Sympathetic is fight, flight,freeze.
(12:28):
Those are the things.
And they came out with a fourthterm I saw recently, but it's
still the same idea of more.
Sympathetic means your pupilsget big, blood flow comes
towards your extremities so thatway you're able to run and get
away from a tiger or fight atiger or something like that.
It comes down to are you mostpeople.
(12:49):
It has morphed throughdifferent lenses into
sympathetic meaning stress, andparasympathetic meaning calm.
That, I think, is a little bitof a dangerous way to think
about it, because it means thatpeople start having a worldview
where they think the way to fixthe things I'm feeling is drive
(13:10):
towards this parasympatheticactivity.
And if one is bad and one isgood.
But what I was going to say isthey're both good, they both
have checks and balances inthere where when sympathetic
starts going up, yourparasympathetic will go up as
well to balance that out, andsame thing vice versa.
And what I'm saying is you wantit to be like a thermostat
(13:32):
where, if you have it set on 70,you don't want it swinging from
60 to 80 back and forth, youwant it swinging from 69 to 71,
tightly controlled.
So that's a lot of the thingsthat we're looking at and when
you're looking at pupils you cansee those changes, you can see
how stable the autonomics areand it gives us an opportunity
to see are we making realmeaningful physical changes with
(13:54):
our patients just by seeing howthey react from a light being
shined in the eye within normallimits?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, and those are apps.
Those are, and how are theyaffected by a concussion?
They get, get out of whack, orhow do you see that?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So remember when I said I yard sailed and then I
got a one pupil was bigger thanthe other.
Typically when you see onepeople bigger than the other or
two big pupils on both sides,those are usually associated
with things like lightsensitivity, but also is
indicative of having some sortof brain dysfunction, because
you're not reactingappropriately to the amount of
(14:29):
ambient light around you.
What you're having, what'shappening, is you're fatiguing
out and it's just defaulting tomore sympathetic tone, so it's
just going bigger and bigger,which means you're getting even
more stimulus.
That's probably more than yourbrain can handle at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So do you have patients that come into you and
they don't even know they haveconcussions, or they, they don't
even know that they've been.
You know they, just they justknow something's off.
And then you know, you're,you're, you're finding out that
they this like what's theirreaction?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
you tell them yeah, you've had, you've had a
concussion, you actually damagedyour brain well, think about it
like this there's not justtraumatic concussion, there's
acquired brain injury likemetabolic concussion, talking
about how the neuroimmune axisor things that change the uh,
the immune system in your brain,can also create the same exact
(15:21):
physiology of concussion withouthaving a blast trauma or
traumatic insult to your brain.
Uh, really actually have a fun.
I have a story about that.
I was a when I was a student inportland, oregon, we were
working at one of the threeclinics uh, for experience.
So we were working people whowere on welfare, and one of the
people she was an out-of-workhairdresser and she was.
(15:42):
She was married, she has kids,but her entire life started
spiraling after a car accident.
And the way we found that outwas I was doing my exam and I
was like this is not amusculoskeletal pattern by
itself, this is a concussionpattern.
You've got slowed bowelmovements.
(16:04):
You've got gi tracks, thingsthat are moving slowly.
You probably heard about vagusnerve and things like that.
Uh, yeah, but there's a lot ofstimulants for that.
We want to make the thing thatstimulates it happen on its own
as opposed to trying to dothings directly for it.
But we can talk about thatlater.
But I was noticing all of likethis entire pattern.
I was something's going on inyour brain and I asked have you
(16:26):
ever been in a car accidentbefore?
And she said yeah, and she gaveme the date and I was like,
have you ever had like bowelmovement issues and stuff like
that?
And she said I don't know.
She went home and when I sawher two days later she said she
called her ex-husband and saidthat since the car accident she
didn't move her bowels for twoweeks straight.
(16:48):
She and that's when everythingstarted spiraling out of control
and she couldn't really handlelife, including getting a
divorce, including not beingable to hold a job, including
not being able to basically haveforget great quality of life,
have a minimum viable quality oflife basically ended up where
(17:09):
she was.
And so a lot of patients thatI'll have coming in now in my
practice here usually patientsself-select where they call me.
They're calling me up, findingme and flying in or driving into
work with me, knowing that theyalready have something going on
.
But when I work in othercapacities, especially with some
athletes, I'll be looking atthem like your concussion is not
(17:31):
fully healed there are.
Yes, you are ready to return toplay, but you still have
neurological things going onthat we want to work on.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Let's talk about a little bit, because you know,
concussion recovery is, you knowit's an open book, right?
I mean, everybody's got their.
You know concussion recovery isyou know it's an open book,
right, I mean, everybody's gottheir.
You know, I remember, when youknow my concussions, I just went
to work.
Actually, when I woke up frommost of my concussions on the
rugby field, I just went downthe other end and made a tackle.
It was none of this recoverystuff.
(18:00):
And then you have a job man.
It's like, ah, I got to go towork, right stuff.
And then you have a job manit's like, ah, I got to go to
work Right.
So, um, but you know, we havereturned play in school, we have
returned to play sport.
You know professional leaguesand I personally don't think
they actually account for theneurological damage or
dysfunction.
And I and I think that, uh, youknow, with some of the, you
know the same, the same issuesare in both categories kids who
(18:22):
just identify through sports.
They've got to get back on theteam, they love their stuff, and
athletes have got to pay thebills, man, right.
So what are your opinions onthe current return-to-play
protocols that are being used atthis time, some of them are
time-based or whatever.
What's your opinion on all that?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
There's a lot of external factors that are
involved with that, includingmoney, stakeholders, people play
.
We talk about high level prosports, I mean, without going
into individual football players.
You can also think of it likeOK, well, he's your quarterback,
you got to get him back in andthere could be pressure.
It's the doctor's job to or thehealthcare provider's job to be
(19:03):
that boundary that looks afterthe welfare of the athlete and
not just the.
If they don't do this now, thenthey're going to miss out on a
scholarship.
In reality, if they don't, ifthey do this now, they might not
even need the scholarship, ifyou know what I mean,
unfortunately.
So I okay.
(19:24):
So the return to play thing, Ithink, is still kind of nebulous
because there are certainstandards that need to happen
depending on which part of thehealthcare industry you're in.
The greater return to playprogram, that's inside the scat
six, is still the one of thebetter ways to do it.
Um, but I view it a little bitdifferently from my office,
(19:45):
because we're looking for thosefiner points, those little
details, I would say.
Brains don't heal, theycompensate, which allows a lot
of patients to kind of get thebreathing room that they needed
in order to know that, hey,things might take longer to heal
or things might take longer Ilook at it, see, too easy to say
(20:09):
it's things might take longerto get back to normal, to get
back to I don't feel awful whileI'm doing this.
And it comes down to the waythe brain works.
If you had your muscle, youtore your muscle.
It heals, maybe some scartissue now, but it's technically
(20:31):
healed because the exactfunction of it has completely
returned, because all it did wasmove your hand here to here.
Right, if you have every singlecircuit in your brain as a
network, from an individualmemory to an individual motor
task, to an individualpsychological task, every single
(20:54):
circuit in the brain needs tofire in a pattern and that's how
you create the consciousexperience of I remember my
friend baking cookies, somethinglike that.
I remember my friend bakingcookies, something like that.
If some of those neurons arenow gone or that circuit has now
been rendered dysfunctional,then it's very possible that
(21:17):
those things won't come back.
No-transcript neuron startssprouting again.
(21:53):
So sometimes there is someviability to these things where
some people think there isn't.
But the other thing to thinkabout is if your brain isn't
healing and it's compensating,that means your brain is using a
completely different systemwhere it doesn't have this
perfect map of where things aresupposed to go, how things are
supposed to be.
It's just doing its best guess.
(22:13):
So if you have a brain that isrecovering from concussion and
it says, well, now I have thisperception that I'm always
turning in this direction, whatis it going to do?
It's going to build up somesort of compensation that says,
oh, I'm going to always pull inthis direction.
To balance out, it doesn't meanto fix the problem.
(22:36):
It means that it created atemporary fix.
Then it makes another temporaryfix for any issue that causes.
It makes another temporary fixfor any issue that causes, makes
another temporary fix for anyissue that causes.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave headaches.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave pain.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave any other symptoms nausea,
dizziness, any of these things.
(22:56):
All it cares about can you stayupright, can you feed yourself,
can you survive, and so a lot oftimes when patients come to us,
we're looking at it and saying,all right, cool, so you have
this layer that we've got topeel off, and then this layer
that we have to peel off and wehave to rehabilitate some of
these basic things.
So what I find is, instead oftrying to chase the symptoms at
(23:16):
the top, we get pretty goodresults by working on the basic
fundamental reflexes that yourbrain uses for survivability and
for a lot of other functioning.
And then it creates a prettysimple way to understand
concussions and takes it awayfrom this big scary thing of I
feel awful and I don't know whatto do about it, and we turn it
(23:39):
into sensory input, comes in,your brain figures out what it
means and then you have a motorresponse or a psychological
response.
If you want to improve themotor or the psychological
response, you improve theinterpretation of it or you
improve the sensory input comingin and so it makes it easier.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, no, I mean but, and and that we're talking
about a concussion.
Right, we're talking about asingular event.
Now, what happens when thatathlete's in a sport with
repetitive head impacts, likeyou know where that brain is
continuously being jostled it bytackles, hitting soccer balls,
checking in hockey, you know,hitting the head and wrestling
(24:18):
gymnastics, whatever it is right.
So, uh, what?
What is that impact on thatrecovery process?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Have you ever seen a brain like an actual brain?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I have, I actually have.
I've been to the B2CT centerwhere they dissect them.
I've seen lockers of them.
Not pretty, Did you touch it?
They wouldn't let us touch them.
No, and they had already beenprocessed for dissection.
So I've never seen, but I'dnever seen like a live, like not
a live, but a real brain, likein its state, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
When you have a brain , your whole brain, in your hand
is processed for dissection,it's treated and it's
significantly stiffer than it isnaturally, significantly
stiffer than it is naturally theactual.
So the brain itself, the tissue, is very malleable.
Think of it like jello, butinstead of jello as like a
(25:15):
single mass of sugar, jello andwater, you have a ton of strands
and those strands become themass At any point in this first
week of the class that we teachat university of western states.
But at any point you can haveshear stress, tensile stress,
(25:39):
you can have stretching andtwisting of these neurons, and
just a stretch and twist on itcan create an inflammatory
response.
You can then have some tears inthose areas as well.
But here's the thing if you'vegot 100 neurons that are there
to move your arm like this andyou break 15 of those, now
(26:00):
you're at 85% capacity, you'restill going like this right, but
within the brain and whenyou're thinking about it like
repetitive stress and repetitivethings going on stretch,
stretch, stretch, twist, twist,twist you're getting this
repetitive microtrauma thatchanges functionality, creates a
(26:21):
level of dysfunction andtheoretically, according to a
structural world and astructural world only, that
should be fine as long as itdoesn't break, but when you're
working with a living systemthat is staying living through
time.
Structure can determinefunction, but function can
(26:42):
determine structure.
That's the difference betweenhaving something off axis in a
shoulder joint and then yourwear and tear over time creates
the need for surgery, and so youcan have that in the brain,
where function now determinesstructure and it creates a
change in the way the brain isstructured.
(27:05):
When you're talking about therepetitive trauma, the
sub-concussive trauma that canhappen over and over and over,
talk about linemen crashingtogether, however many plays
they run in a game you'retalking about um, here's a scary
one, but hopefully it's notthat scary based off, we're
saying how this can all beimproved.
We're talking about stoppingshort from as little as 10 miles
(27:25):
an hour.
If somebody's not payingattention, not ready for it,
that's enough to createstretching and twisting of these
neurons in a way that is in acar.
In a car, yeah, just stopping,sure, not being ready for it,
like we have these machines thatput a ton of forces through our
bodies and we don't feel it.
I mean blast trauma is theperfect example where nothing
(27:48):
touched you, just waves, justair pressure.
Waves moving through your bodyis enough to create this effect
and it just comes down to whenyou're working.
When you're working with thesecases, those often be taken into
account.
So but if you want to say, like, what happens when you see the,
the BTE, the BTE sorry, theBUCTE concussion center, and the
(28:13):
and the CTE center, it'srepetitive microtrauma, which
means it's an inflammatory pulse.
It's another inflammatory pulse, it's another inflammatory
pulse, layered and layered andlayered.
And what happens?
Let's take another example of aninflammatory process gone wrong
.
What does arthritis look likein the hands?
(28:34):
It's the same process.
It's inflammation.
It's the same process, it'sinflammation.
So we're not to say thatinflammation is bad, because if
you read into the literature onhow memories are formed, it
requires pro-inflammatorycytokines in order just to
create a memory.
So it's not like we want noinflammation.
We want a healthy, appropriateamount of inflammation that's
(28:56):
responding appropriately tothreats in the body.
But if you're looking at itfrom that perspective, arthritis
in the hand is an inflammatoryprocess gone wrong.
And you look at the brains thatundergo CTE, it's an
inflammatory process gone wrong.
And you see the same chewed upappearance.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, and that stretching.
There's all kinds of studiessaying that once you start
stretching the myelin and itstarts, you know, micro tearing,
then you lose a lot of theefficiency of the neuron in
terms of transmission.
So you and that's associatedwith other forms of mental
health as well.
So, even though the neuronsremain intact, the myelin around
(29:36):
them, once it starts stretching, does affect, you know, the
health of the brain.
And so, yeah, so you got allthis structural dysfunction
going on in the brain in termsof concussion Then.
So what's your opinion on, likeyou know, kids' brains?
So we are, you know, after youknow there's not a lot of
studies done on children,because it's almost impossible
to get a child number one tostay still but to participate in
(29:59):
studies.
But if you look at what we'retalking about in a healthy adult
brain, I mean, you know,doesn't it make sense that if
you've got a brain, not onlythat's, you know, younger, it's
also developing, like it's noteven fully whole yet it's still
figuring out?
I mean, the prefrontal cortexdoesn't even start developing
until 14, right, and you got allthis.
(30:20):
You have a concussion, then yougot all this other you know
damage going on because the kidkeeps playing.
Then you throw inneuroinflammation, which some of
it's healthy, but this chronicstate of neuroinflammation turns
, you know, toxic over time.
So I mean, when it comes to achild's brain, doesn't it make
sense to just say stop.
You know, when it comes to achild's brain, doesn't it make
(30:42):
sense to just say stop movingthe brain around?
I mean, the kid's not even anadult yet.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So there's two halves to this coin.
There's one half, which is yeah, we want to protect children
and make sure children aren'tdoing anything that is, let's
say, course-altering to theirlife.
The other thing to think aboutit, though, is which?
So I'm giving you two peoplewho has more neurons in their
(31:08):
brain?
A baby or a 50-year-old dancer?
The baby I think the baby willhave.
The more amount of neurons thedancer is going to have, the
more amount of neurons thedancer is going to have more
connections in their brain.
And at the end of the daybecause here's the thing there
(31:32):
are processes that happen in thebrain.
We can talk about thepathophysiology of anxiety and
depression and how that actuallyis from a brain perspective,
before we even talk about thepsych world is like from a brain
perspective, before we eventalk about the psych world.
And what happens is in whatinvolved is weaker neurons
popping because they can'thandle the stress I don't like
the word stress because it getstaken in such inappropriate
directions they can't handle thestimulus that is placed on them
(31:55):
, they can't handle the physicaldemand, the metabolic demand
that is placed on them, and sowhat they do is they drive too
hard and they pop, and then allthe glutamate and
neurotransmitters inside thereping all the other neurons
around them and creates aspreading wave of something
called glutamate excitotoxicity.
And glutamate excitotoxicity,which you see in concussion
(32:16):
literature all the time, is aspreading wave of hyperactivity
followed by spreading depression.
So spreading depolarization isthe term that, if you search for
it, just spreadingdepolarization, and then it's
spreading depression becauseafter you have this
depolarization, it's not astroke.
You don't have all neuronsineffective, but you have some
(32:40):
neurons ineffective and now youhave this spreading wave of
depression where you haveneurons that aren't working as
well.
And so the idea is, this is anatural process, this will
happen.
No one is going to have an, noone's going to be able to live a
life where they where thisdoesn't occur, but part of this
(33:03):
occur as this occurs.
This shapes personality, thisshapes the way that you think
about things.
This shapes the way that yourbrain functions and provides.
I love the opinion where themind is an output of the brain.
So it shapes the way that yourmind responds to the physical
stimuli of the world.
But this effect also happenswith different things, like, you
see, certain recreational drugs.
(33:24):
This will happen and peopleview it as a positive effect
because they're having a mindexpansion thing, but in reality
they're just havingpathophysiology, self-chosen
pathophysiology, and thisprocess.
If we can, instead of trying toprevent it, but if we can
stabilize it, and if we canlimit swinging too high, too low
(33:49):
, then we have a betterconscious experience.
So, from this perspective, withkids, the number of factors
that go into.
When you're talking about kidsplaying sports, I'm of the
agreement.
Like I don't personally, likewe grew up as a baseball family,
not as a football family, andwatching football players and
things like that, especiallyworking with a few, now not
(34:12):
something that I have any desireto and I personally wouldn't
put my kids at football.
I would put them in othersports Also risk of injury, but
it doesn't necessarily createsports.
Also risk of injury, but itdoesn't necessarily create the
same risk of injury because it'snot direct collision sport.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Um, yeah, there's a big difference between you can
break your leg or you can breakyour brain, and that's the,
that's the whole.
The whole issue here, um, isthat you know it's like you said
, like just synaptic pruning.
There are processes which youknow tate.
You know, like you said, likethe synaptic pruning, there are
processes which you know whichwill eliminate some of the
synaptic neuronal capabilitiesof the brain over time.
(34:46):
Because that's life, that's theinfluence of drugs, alcohol,
personal choices, whatever right.
But when we start impactingspecific regions of the brain,
like the prefrontal cortex,temporal lobes, over and over
and over again, this is, justknow to me, unhealthy and
especially when it comes downyeah, I mean, I mean it's it
cannot have a positive impact.
(35:07):
As a matter of fact, I, I toldthe nfl, I tell everybody, I
said show me one study where ithas been shown that jostling,
shaking the brain, which isknown to happen, is positive in
any way, shape or form.
The brain doesn't need exercise, not like's, not like a leg
right Stop.
So let's just prevent it anddelay it until the brain's
healthy or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I think there are benefits for kids playing sports
and kids getting out there anddoing things that involve some
level of competition and involvesome level of teamwork and
doing something where sometimesyou've got to learn how to have
grit and push through.
But I do and this is a toughthing.
But, like I said, I probablywouldn't let my kids play
(35:49):
collision sports, but it depends.
Like I feel like hockey wouldbe something to play later on,
but the checking part is a thingthat isn't in the old release,
so delay checking.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You can play hockey at four, just don't check.
You can play flag football till14.
You can play no head soccer youcan play.
You can play any sport in theworld.
Just keep the head out of it inthe best interest of the child,
in their future, that's all.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
so here's the question, though, since we
already established that juststopping short from 10 miles an
hour if, if you're not ready forit, is enough to create
jostling of the brain andpotential concussion Where's the
threshold of which?
Sports don't create anywhiplash effect of the head Like
?
Ultimate frisbee laying out anddiving Like we can't have an
(36:37):
entire world of golfers.
I think that might be a littletough to keep people interested
right.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
But the issue is there are certain sports where,
like football is one of the fewsports where you can't take the
head out of the game rightwithout tackling.
The point is, how do youeliminate exposure through?
You know better, practicinglike you can, you can.
You don't have to tackle andpractice all day to be good at
tackling man, you know right.
Just like you don't have toshoot guns every day to be good
at shoot guns in the military.
(37:04):
So the issue is total aggregateexposure and to prevent the
damage.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Now, yeah, to stop in a 10 feet away, how far away
the exposure is.
Does it have to be right after?
Because you're talking aboutcompounding inflammation where
there is no ability and when yougo through the.
So there's a paper, it's beenaround for a while, it's called
the metabolic cascade, theneurometabolic cascade of
concussion by Giza and Havda,and there's another one that
(37:31):
they put out called the newneurometabolic cascade, and if
you read it line by line, youwill see how long concussion
physiology happens, from bloodsugar dysregulation to a bunch
of other processes.
You're looking at two monthslater, sometimes that it's still
happening and you might noteven feel like you're having a
(37:52):
concussion, or you might noteven feel symptoms, but you'll
still have this alteredphysiology.
Then the question is at whatpoint does another concussion
create a second impact syndromeor create a compounding effect,
even if they feel fine and theycomplete all the metrics?
Speaker 1 (38:10):
We funded a study that absolutely showed that the
increase of suicidal reality anddepression after concussion for
the next 35 days.
That's at the point where a lotof these children are deciding
that, hey, I can't be here andnobody in there talking.
Right, but to your point, noteven a concussion.
But what if you're back in thegame, a repetitive head impact
game?
You're back practicing ortackling checking in hockey,
(38:32):
whatever we have to, you know,brain health right to me is
where chiropractic comes in.
I'm learning a lot about theapex.
I want to talk about that realquick and how that affects
cerebral fluid flow, but we'rejust not fully on it.
It's logic, right?
We have to take care of thesebrains and we're not.
(38:52):
I didn't take care of mine andI had a mental health breakdown
two and a half years ago.
I was diagnosed, been shot inthe face, fragmentation, all
kinds of stuff been around,thousands of explosions and
bullets and all that stuff.
But I hurt myself, didn't evenknow and I just drank my way
through it.
Here we're talking about whatwe're doing to our children and
young athletes.
I mean, the brain doesn't startdeveloping till 25.
(39:14):
And some people now saying thatthing keeps going, man, it's
still developing.
It does, and so when peoplecome to you and they have
concussions, is there alsoaspects of mental illness
involved with their symptomology?
And then how do you treat that?
I mean, are they doing you know?
(39:35):
Because my question is what'sthe impact of SSRIs, ssnis and
benzos on a brain that'srecovering after a concussion,
where there might be mentalhealth symptoms, and these
doctors are just chucking pillsat people?
How does that impact therecovery process?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The current standard in concussion and, first and
foremost, recommending specificprescriptions or anything like
that is completely out of myscope.
But the current the currentrecommendations for concussion,
even in the SCAT-6, is don'tmedicate for symptoms, because
then you won't know if they'regetting better or worse.
Cool, ok.
(40:14):
The other, which again, there'salso the part of it where you
go to the health care providerthey get paid, whether or not
they write a script.
They get paid whether or notthe person comes in, and at the
end of the day sometimes they'rejust saying, well, the
patient's coming in and wantingsomething.
If I tell them no, then they'regoing to have a bad experience
and they just they're not.
(40:34):
The doctor is not as bought inwhere they need to be and to say
no, we do it the right way.
So not as bought in where theyneed to be and to say no, we're
going to do it the right way.
They're so like.
Here's the easy way out.
There's also, but we can thinkabout it from a you can play
with those systems dopamine,serotonin, your catecholamines.
You can play with those systemsusing supplements as well,
which I see all the time usedinappropriately, because anytime
(40:56):
that you do anything thataffects the brain, you're
creating neurotransmission andyou're creating growth in a
direction and you're creatingpruning in a different direction
.
So for patients who are comingin or coming with a laundry list
of supplements, especiallyneurotransmitter active ones,
first and foremost, they come in, they take a neurotransmitter
test like blood or urine.
(41:17):
How do you know if thoseneurotransmitters are coming
from their brain, their gut orthe microbiome?
Absolutely I can't tell.
I don't know anybody who cantell.
And then they're like oh, yourserotonin is low.
Well, is the serotonin lowbecause they are having a?
Uh, because it's truly low.
Is it low because it's notcoming from the brain, gut or
(41:39):
microbiome?
Or is it low because it's notclearing?
So you have, every time aneurotransmitter goes across and
connects to another neuron, ithas, it, gets attached to the
receptor site, and then there'sanother process that allows it
to actively release from thetransmitter site.
And if you don't have thatrelease, then all of a sudden
your brain's like I have enoughserotonin, so it stops making
(41:59):
serotonin.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, so let me ask you a question.
You know a child comes in or anadult, right, they've got a
concussion Are you askinganything about?
And they say they have mentalillness.
Are we aware that they havemental illness whatever?
They have mentals whatever?
Are you asking any questions aspart of your assessment on
(42:24):
their contact sports or militaryexperience history to determine
if there could be a biologicalcause to their mental illness
that could be from the sport,not from the concussion, that
could be from their past?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Absolutely, you do, we do Good for you man, awesome,
our intake forms cover all thatstuff.
And we get complaints about thelength of our intake form
sometimes.
And then when they come in, I'mlike, well, which questions
should we drop out?
Not, dr.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Lovick, you are one of the first professionals I've
talked to, that you know.
I don't know if you ever heardof the traumatic encephalopathy
protocol, syndrome protocols.
You know four basic questionsthat you can ask.
You know that can at least sayhey, you might have another
issue here other than yourconcussion.
Looking at your history, yourconcussions in the past, your
(43:12):
military exposure, you probablyshould go see a neurologist and
get your you know, your brainassessed, because you might have
another cause of your mentalillness.
You're actually doing this.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, because the mind is an output of the brain
for you If you're not, if you're, if you're viewing the mind as
a separate entity and the mindis output of the brain, or I
know I hope nobody hates me forsaying this, but I don't know if
I care it's.
Some people say no, the mind isthe output of the soul and the
body is completely separate.
The mind is an output of yourbrain.
(43:44):
Your conscious experience thatyou have is based off of
different parts of your brainlighting up.
There's an area in yourbrainstem called the nucleus
tractus solitarius, where thetop is cardiorespiratory, the
bottom is gustatory oh no, I'msorry.
The top, the top, is gustatory,so taste and smell, and the
bottom is cardiorespiratory.
It controls that and modulatesthat.
(44:06):
And if that system, if thatnucleus remember I was saying
fires closer to threshold, highfiring, revved up, that's how
you get the conscious experienceof nausea.
It comes from that.
What, what you did before thatmight rev that up may is what we
associate with it, like, oh, Iate something bad, so I'm
(44:26):
nauseous.
No, you ate something bad.
It created a response.
Now your nts is feeling thatdifference and then you get
nausea.
And if you don't get nausea,you might have, like you can
have any dysfunction along thatchain, along that pathway.
And so, from what you weresaying before about.
Do we look at mental healthAbsolutely?
But here's the issue, and thisis one of my frustrations with
(44:48):
the mental health revolutionthat we're currently
experiencing that we're sofocused on swinging the other
direction of mental health is soimportant to look at.
But then the treatments thatthey're being provided is only
looking at the output.
Going back into the, into there, they're looking at the
symptoms.
The symptom itself is theconscious experience and the
(45:10):
personality behaviors that theydo, because behaviors are based
on the environment.
You put them in absolutely.
You put them in is 100 due tothe sensory input that they get,
because that's how they figureout what their environment is
and the way their brain works.
So they can figure out thissensory input means my world is
this.
And then it says, oh, so I'llreact this way.
(45:32):
And now we're saying, well,have you tried reacting
differently or thinking about itdifferently?
Why don't we just go to thephysical aspect and improve that
?
So one of the projects I'mworking on is I'm pouring
through the literature now.
I always said I wanted to writea book and I figured out what
to write on.
I'm working on a book right nowof all the biological things
(45:56):
that are directly correlatedbiological and metabolic, that
are directly correlated in theliterature to mental health
issues, from tpo antibodiesbeing directly correlated with
bipolar syndrome to verticalnystagmus or spontaneous
nystagmus in a vertical planedirectly associated with you
(46:17):
need to stop right now, becausebig pharma is listening, man,
you're gonna be out.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Now you started, you start impacting their pill
industry, dude, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
But you to your point , keep going, because I do
believe that if we treatedmental illness from a biological
or a physiological,pathophysiological perspective,
a lot of it um could be improvedand it's not a near a sum game,
which means the stuff that I'mdoing and I'm talking about
doesn't mean that if you do thisyou can't do everything else
that the psych world does, butit does mean that we can't just
(46:45):
sit and think that, oh well, ifyou think about it differently,
or if you do these strategies oryou talk about it or you have
this because there's greatexample is so depending on if
it's your left brain or yourright brain.
Each brain has a dominanthemisphere and a non-dominant
hemisphere and that helps driveyour personality and your and
(47:07):
everything, because it's anoutput.
If you have dysfunction in yourdominant hemisphere, whichever
side that is, you'll havecertain phenomena and you'll
usually it's reported as if youhave dysfunction, the dominant
hemisphere.
You're going to kind of youever know somebody that they got
some stuff going on and there'slike they don't notice data
(47:27):
doesn't really affect them butand they don't take care of it
because they're like, yeah, Idon't know whatever.
But you have other people whoare like acutely aware of their
own suffering and those are thepeople that have the
non-dominant hemisphere havingthis dysfunction because their
dominant hemisphere can lookover and say something's not
right and then they hyper-focuson it.
(47:48):
Treatment for those is different.
One of them involves gettingout of your brain and into your
body physical, like the peoplewho work, who they do a really
tough workout and they just feelbetter.
And the other one is people getout of their body and into
their head or into their brain,and those are the people who
meditation work for.
But there's a whole stigmawhere they have all of these
(48:12):
wellness treatments that seem sosimple but if they don't work
for you.
Now patients have come into myoffice saying I've been trying
meditation and I've been tryingthese like belly breathing and
parasympathetic triggeringthings to try and create this
wellness for me, because I seeit on Instagram, they see it on
YouTube, they see it from theirproviders.
(48:33):
This was if you have thesethings, you have patients coming
in and they're sayingmeditation doesn't work for me
and I feel bad because I feellike I'm failing something like
that.
It might not be.
It's people are so quick andhealthcare is so quick to blame
the patient.
(48:53):
It's not the patient's fault.
It's their physiology, it'stheir body, their situation that
they have won't improve frommeditation.
Their situation needs, theyneed to go and do a physical
workout from this isolatedperspective and so but here's
the thing, there's, but you canalways get deeper.
(49:15):
You always can get furtherfocused, and so a lot of the
stuff that we do in the officeis we're saying, okay, before we
give you the generic advice,let's figure out exactly where
the issue is.
If you have a spontaneousasthmus in the vertical plane,
we're going to work on thatdirectly.
If you have a, so BPPV isusually what happens when they
(49:36):
have any sort of dizzinessassociated with it.
But you can have very low leveldizziness and that can be
perceived as a patient justfeeling like they're off.
It's not like they're going tocome in and say I'm dizzy.
They're going to come in andsay like I'm having these other
weird things, my body hurtsbecause I can't coordinate, and
we're looking at it.
And it's not that their innerear is broken, it's that the
(49:58):
software in their brainstem isnow not receiving the
information that it needs.
And they have this the way Itell my students you can have
100% of something, you can have5% of something and it still has
an effect.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
So real quick, cause you know getting towards the end
.
Tell us how you knowchiropractic work, cause that's
something new to me Uh, affects,you know concussions.
You know you think of brain,right, spine, neck down Right,
so, and I've had my, I've hadsome very successful work done,
uh, by chiropractors in the past, helped me out, help me out.
(50:37):
So talk to us a little bitabout how chiropractic medicine
can help people with concussionsor maybe those that have had a
lot of subcust, of exposure fromyears of playing sports.
You're dealing with, you know,nfl players.
Now, how is you know I'm nottalking about making my back
feel better how are youimpacting the brain?
So?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
here's the thing If you're looking for a
chiropractor that can do thiskind of work, you're going to
want to look for somebody who istrained in it.
So the letters you're lookingfor are D, a, c and B.
Now here's the thing.
There's different levels ofeducation that you can go and
some people do have moretraining than others and more
education can end up doing more.
But those are the lettersyou're looking for.
(51:15):
A regular chiropractor, even ifthey say they are a neurological
chiropractor.
There's a certain techniquecalled uh, torque release
technique.
That's pure musculoskeletal.
They say it is neurologicallybased and I I've had a lot of
patients get kind of go thatdirection and then come back to
me and they're all stressed outbut they spent a bunch of money
on something that wasn't, thatwas more marketing than what
(51:38):
they were looking for.
Look for the letters D, a, cand B.
That's going to let you know ifyou have somebody who actually
knows how to work with thecentral nervous system, the
brain and the way it is is.
Yes, we're doing musculoskeletalinput, but mainly it's from the
idea that I'm going to dosensory input to an area,
because at the end of the day,if you were going to hold a gun
(51:59):
to my head and say describe whatyou do as simply as possible, I
would say.
I make you know where your bodyis in space better.
That's how we do concussionrecovery and by doing that now,
the sensory input of where yourbody is, the sensory input of
where you think you are inrelation to gravity so
(52:21):
vestibular rehab, which we do.
The sensory input of where youare in relation to the world
visually so vision therapy,which is also things we do.
And cognitive rehab, which isfrontal lobe exercises, which is
things we do.
If you take all of those andcombine them together, you're
now creating a better experienceand a better understanding of
where you know your body is andwhen you move your body, it
(52:44):
matches up to predictions, itmatches up to where you think
your body should be and itcreates a better, more
continuous experience for yourbrain and symptoms start to
reduce.
So for how do we do it?
It's vision rehab, vestibularrehab, physical rehab, cognitive
(53:05):
rehab.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
What about the apex?
I'm hearing some work that'sbeing done on the very top
vertebrae that's helping spinalor cerebral spinal fluid move in
and out and cleanse the brain.
Is that something else that youfocus on?
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Absolutely so.
While we don't have like thereare certain clinics out there
that are upper cervical,specific clinics that will focus
on that directly we do work onthat as well as part of a bigger
picture.
Here's the thing when you'relooking at the atlas and the
axis and how that moves that wasit.
Sorry, man, my bad.
Oh, you're good.
(53:42):
How that moves, you can feel it,Like you can feel it on
yourself.
If you go right behind the jaw,right over here, you'll feel
like a slight little bump andyou'll feel on both sides and
you can slide that side to side.
Those are the transverseprocesses of your atlas and so
if you push side to side you'llfeel like, hey, yeah, it's more
slid one way or the other orless slid, because that
(54:06):
physically can't happen withoutcreating a lot bigger effects.
But from a concussionstandpoint you'll see more
tension one way or the other,where it'll be more restricted,
and less motion in that spineone way or the other where it'll
be more restricted, if we can,and less motion in that spine
one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
You'll also see.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
So if you have somebody like, this is a quick
test that everybody can do.
You just have them look up Doestheir chin track in front of
their neck or is it twistedThings like that?
There's a lot of different wayswhere you can see that, hey,
maybe the muscle balance at thetop of the neck because there
see that.
Hey, maybe the muscle balanceat the top of the neck because
there are so many overlappingmuscles, the muscle balance at
(54:41):
the top of the neck may beasymmetrical.
And the other perspective isand we do this a lot with our
patients we also do TMJ work.
We work on the muscles insideand outside the mouth of the jaw
, muscles inside and outside themouth for the jaw.
We do exercises for it.
We work on some of the socranial bones.
While theoretically they do not, they are sutures, there is
(55:04):
some motion to those cranialbones, and so we'll we'll end up
doing work on those areas,working on those as well,
creating motion in those areasthat might have been changed
when they, like you know, took avolleyball to the face,
something like that.
And so the whole idea is nothyper-focusing on one approach,
(55:26):
but getting an idea of all thedifferent inputs and outputs and
what we can do.
And so, from an upper cervicalspine thing, these are where so
we'll get patients with liketinnitus or changes in their
hearing, and it comes fromincreased muscle tension in an
area, reducing reverberation,reducing resonance in that area,
and then we start working onthe muscles of the jaw and then
(55:48):
all of a sudden the hearing orthe tinnitus improves.
And it's not like we're doinganything miraculous I wouldn't.
That's great with.
That word is used.
What we're doing is we're justgoing systematically, logically,
through the different systemsand working on them and seeing
how they play together.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Well, I mean, it's fascinating that you know
chiropractic, you know practicecan can impact concussions.
And also to your point andthank God for you, doc is that
you know it's just another waywhere our health care system can
identify people that have had alot of exposed subacusum trauma
and can get them looking.
Another what?
(56:25):
Whether you've had a concussionor you've had many concussions
or you have a history ofrepetitive head trauma, then you
know this is something thatdoesn't take pills, but it takes
people that know what they'redoing.
(56:46):
So before we go, doc, tell usabout, you know your book,
what's coming up next, how dopeople find you?
And then you know, and then ifthey can't find you specifically
in their area, united stateswho they should be working for.
You mentioned the um.
You know the, the, the letterd-a-c-n-b, and that is diplomat
american chiropractic neurologyboard.
(57:07):
Just look that up.
And so tell us how they find uh, what, how they find you, so
that they can uh get moreinformation on their, on how to
treat themselves so so I'm veryGoogleable, michael Lovitch,
just do your search for that.
Speaker 2 (57:20):
There's also my business, deltasperformancecom.
Go on there, if anybody wantsyeah exactly If anybody.
We do free 30 minute phone callsfor anybody who's interested,
because I'd rather people feelcomfortable and confident coming
in as opposed to showing up andcold turkey.
(57:41):
So what we'll do is, uh, if youhave the website, click the get
started form.
We will happily hop on a 30minute phone call with you and
answer any questions you haveand see what we can see.
If we were able if the casewe're able to help with.
Uh we are located in.
Unfortunately, we're notlocated in Boston anymore.
I used to have offices there,but now we're just Denver and
(58:03):
Golden, colorado.
But for people who are all over,I think that, like I said, the
provider you're seeing is in.
The doctor-patient relationshipis always the most important
part in that connection, and itdoesn't mean that I'm the best
for somebody.
It could mean that, hey, maybeI could fix it, but I'm not the
best fit and the patient'sbetter off going to another
(58:23):
provider.
On my website, under resources,I have a functional neurology
map.
These are people that I havepersonally shadowed and seen and
I was like, yeah, this issimilar to what I do or this is,
this is reasonable.
Uh, and and I, there are plentymore that probably do great
jobs as well, but in terms of,instead of just making a
(58:45):
pay-to-play map, which I thinkis too too familiar in this
country, I put a map up therethat is yeah, dude, I just put a
map of this.
Yes, this is.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
These are people that I would see if I had this issue
the ability to play with othersis very important and not part
of our society at this time.
You're absolutely right, drLubbock.
I cannot thank you enough forcoming on the show today.
What an amazing conversation,man.
This is great, and thank you somuch for assessing the past
(59:18):
experience.
This is the largest assessmentgap that we have for this issue
Outside of mental illness.
There's no indicator that thebrain's been harmed.
Nobody asks these questions.
The kids keep playing sports,the adults keep playing sports
or they continue to spiralbecause we're not treating the
brain.
You are part of the solution.
We need to get to treating thebrain in order to prove mental
(59:39):
health, and you're a big part ofthat, and thank you so much for
the time today, folks, anothergreat episode.
What a fascinating conversation, man, after all the
chiropractors I've been throughin my life.
Don't forget free book websiteYouth Contact Sports and Broken
Brains the only book out therefor parents.
It Youth Contact Sports andBroken Brains, the only book out
there for parents.
It's for free.
Read it, get it to yourgrandkids, send it, get advanced
copies for Christmas I reallydon't care, but please get
(01:00:03):
informed.
Don't forget that the secondinternational summit on
repetitive brain trauma istaking place here in Tampa
September 3rd and 4th.
Go online and see.
We got some amazing group ofspeakers out there.
It's really getting looking alot of fun this year and finally
, take care of yourself, takecare of the ones you love, take
care of their brains you onlygot one and to protect it as
(01:00:27):
best you can.
God bless you all.
We'll see you next time on thenext episode of Broken Brains,
with your host, bruce Parkman,sponsored by the amazing Mack
Parkman Foundation.
Hey folks, bruce Parkman here, welcoming you to
another episode of Broken Brain,where we look at the issue of
repetitive brain trauma in theforms of repetitive head impacts
from contact sports andrepetitive blast exposure to our
veteran communities, and whatthese conditions are doing to
the brains of our kids, ourathletes and our veterans, and
why you must pay attentionBecause this condition is not
(00:33):
taught in our medical, nursingand psychological communities
and very few people are able tomake the correlation between
contact sports and militaryservice and mental health,
leading to misdiagnosis andright now, which is the largest
preventable cause of mentalillness in this country.
So we bring on patients,advocates, doctors, researchers,
players to come on here andgive you that 360-degree
(00:54):
perspective on this issue sothat you can protect yourself
and the ones that you love.
Today we have another amazingguest, dr Michael Lovick,
calling in from Denver, colorado, where my daughter lives, as a
nurse practitioner, psychiatricmedicine.
Dr Michael Lovick has about 18consonants after his name,
indicating that he's a very,very well-educated man.
(01:17):
But he's a board-certifiedchiropractic, functional
neurologist and sports physicianthat specializes in the brain
and body health.
As the founder of Delta SPerformance, he leads clinical
teams in Colorado, in Boston, sohe's nationwide, focusing on
functional neurology, sportsmedicine and concussion care.
He has a list of educationcertifications like doctor of
(01:38):
chiropractic, a master ofscience in exercise and sports
space, bachelor of science inhuman biology.
I don't even know where he gottime to practice medicine, man.
This guy is super well trained.
His professional roles he's thefounder and clinic director of
delta s performance.
He's a clinical adjunct facultyfor the university of western
states creator, instructor ofevidence-based concussion
(01:58):
management and care course,which we really want to dial in
on this.
And he's a team doctor for alcolorado alpenglow, which is the
professional women's ultimateFrisbee team, one of my favorite
sports outside.
I love that.
I love those brain-safe sportsout there.
And he's a medical staffdirector for various
professional, collegiate andamateur athletic organizations.
And he's recognized for hisinnovative, evidence-based
(02:19):
approach and his dedication toelevating the standard of care
in neurological and sportsrehabilitation, which is why we
are on this call.
Dr Michael Lovick, welcome tothe show and thank you for
coming on.
So talk to us about.
I mean, how'd you get intobrain care?
I mean, you're a concussionspecialist.
What led you out of all the,let's just say, the focuses of
(02:44):
foci of chiropractic medicinethat and and and and that are
out there.
Why concussions?
Speaker 2 (02:50):
so it's actually kind of funny.
So 11 years ago I was skiing onmountain hood in oregon and
there's this thing that happens,uh, at mountains like that
where there's a, there's a waterline, where you go from nice
light, soft snow to dense, heavy, wet snow.
I hit that, going pretty fastand exploded, for lack of a
(03:12):
better term, and I got concussed.
And when I was going throughschool, I went to the student.
I was a student at the moment.
I went to the student clinic.
They were like, hey, you lookfine to me.
I went to major doctors in thePortland Oregon area, people who
are neurologists, people whoare so quote unquote, experts
and they said you're, you'refine.
(03:34):
But I knew that I wasn't fine,for for me, I knew that I needed
to get back to the level ofwork that I knew I'd be able to
do, and so I ended up saying,well, if nobody's going to
figure this out, I might as wellbe the one to do it.
And I ended up finding aprovider in the Portland area
who does the same work that I dothe functional neurology and
(03:57):
said, well, this is thedirection I want to go in,
because this is how peoplereally need the help, and it
goes back to something you said,which was that concussion
prevention is probably thebiggest mental health prevention
, and I think that that isbecoming more and more and more
true as as our environmentchanges and things like that in
(04:19):
the world.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
So what were you when you got hit?
Now we call that a yard sale,right, I'm a skier man.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
So when you blast down the mountain and you come
to an abrupt stop and stuff goeseverywhere and you spend the
next 15 minutes picking it allup.
We call that a yard sale.
At me he's like, wow, one ofyour pupils is huge right now
and I was like, I don't know, Ijust feel kind of out of it.
I didn't even know that I brokemy knee at the time I tore my
PCL.
I just knew that I felt off.
Something wasn't good.
(04:57):
I took the red sled down withski patrol after the yard sale.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
And the guy didn't believe me.
He didn't believe me he, uh, hedidn't believe that I was
injured.
He went down and got dumped outtwice.
So you know out of the sled.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Yeah, god dang we're going down some blue groomers.
I don't know if, uh, I don'tknow if it was that difficult,
but I guess it was.
So you know, you feel off, youfeel like something's not quite
right, and it doesn'tnecessarily mean that you can
put a finger on it or have aquote, unquote diagnostic
complaint of oh, I feel like Ihave a headache, or what you
(05:38):
know.
When you do the SCAT-6, you gotthe list of 22 things that you
can fill out and say these aremy symptoms that I feel A lot of
them are so vague because thething you're using to figure out
and answer the question how amI doing today Is the thing you
use to do.
That is the thing that'sinjured.
So how are you supposed toanswer that question accurately?
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Right, no, and that's important for parents and kids.
I mean, here you are.
Were you a student at the timeor were you already practicing?
Speaker 2 (06:07):
I was a student at the time.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah.
So I mean you're sitting thereknowing that you got banged up
and you can't even recognize thesymptoms of concussion, because
that's the issue withsubconcussive trauma or lower
than concussive thresholds, thatyou've got to enlarge people,
yet you don't have the symptomsthat you would associate with
the concussion stumbling aroundlike that.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
So, but this, is the big problem concussion, because
half the testing that you do isall like well, how did it feel
when I did this, how do you feelwhen you do that?
And if you think of it likethat, then it's like what.
We're asking so many questionsthat we're asking people who may
not be able to feel their bodyto subjectively answer and that
(06:47):
we're going based off that.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Right, and the fact that the brain can't heal.
I mean, how do you describesymptoms that don't exist yet?
And let me ask you thisquestion so you know you got
patients here that you know alot of our audience have had
concussions.
I've had multiple concussionsin rugby and military training.
I've had multiple concussionsin rugby and military training.
You know, from your perspective, you know how do we dial into
that to let you know, outside ofthe, you know the issues that
(07:11):
we're talking about fromlong-term exposure, but we're
talking about a concussive eventwhich happens to almost
everybody in their lifetime,right?
So how do we, you know, as adoctor, how do you dial into
that?
You know concussion, when allthe questions that they ask are
symptomatic, right, if you don'thave symptoms, you know how can
you, you know, recognize thefact that the brain's been
(07:33):
impacted?
And then you know, what do youtell your patients to do
afterwards?
Speaker 2 (07:37):
You know it comes from good observation skills.
That's one of the big thingsthat I think separates us from a
lot of the other approaches forconcussion.
You look for physical changesthat you can see that show
changes in brain function, eyemovement changes.
Look for vestibular changes,look for proprioceptive or where
(08:00):
you think your body is in spacechanges, and it doesn't have to
be this big pathological oroutside of normal limits issue.
There could be a number ofthings that are quote unquote
normal, that are just abnormalenough that when you add them up
they add up to somethingabnormal, and that is the main
deal.
So it's funny.
My sister was going through vetschool and she was doing her
(08:22):
neurology coursework.
And she was doing her neurologycoursework and I said, how do
you do your neuro exam on yourpatients when they can't answer
the question?
How did this feel?
And there were a number ofthings that I've actually taken
some of that observation skillsand incorporate into my practice
to get an idea.
Now I'm not lifting up people'sleg and saying, do you hop away
(08:43):
, but the idea is, how can youfigure out, how can you see
these changes?
There's been a change recentlywhere people are now including
the visual, something calledBOMBS, the visual ocular motor
screen.
The way they're using it isthey're looking at eye movements
.
It's like side to side, up anddown, doing some head turns, and
(09:03):
at the end of the day they'restill just saying did it make
your symptoms feel worse?
But they're not looking at thequality of those movements and
there are so many little detailsthat you can find that you can
then rehabilitate directly andbased on that you can find the
(09:26):
minutia that might be keeping asymptom around or keeping a
poorer patient experience around.
Instead of just kind of goingfor, let's just make it look
normal if that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
You know we have an app out there called HeadSmart
and we've been looking to attacha pupillometer on there.
So if a parent thinks theirchild is being concussed they
might have a concussion, theycan take a look at that.
Thinks their child is beingconcussed, they might have a
concussion?
They can take a look at thatRight now with these, the eye
movement detectors that you use.
Is that something you'reholding in your hand or is that
(09:53):
following your finger andlooking at the eye?
Is that a device?
What are you using right now?
Speaker 2 (10:04):
If you know what you're looking for, thumbs work
plenty well.
If you're, the whole idea isyou're looking for changes or
movements that shouldn't bethere.
For example, if I had you lookat my thumb and we followed it
across, or if you were lookingat like a bird flying across the
sky, you should be able to keepyour eyes on that bird
following across.
Your eyes shouldn't lag behindor then jump to catch up.
(10:25):
Your eye should be leadingahead and jumping backwards, and
hopefully they're not jumpingover it back and forth and
something called an oscillation,and those are things that can
be seen to the naked eye.
Regarding pupilometry, though,there is an app that we use and
recommend.
It's called reflex pro, andit's something that you can use
with any iPad Pro and just kindof hold it up and give you good
(10:48):
measurement of pupil dilationand constriction based off
fatigue, and we use it often inchecking out concussions and
making sure that their autonomicintegrity is there, because
something that you might haveseen now, with all the guests
that you've had on this show, isa lot of concussions also have
something called dysautonomia.
(11:10):
Have you been are?
Speaker 1 (11:12):
you familiar with that term.
That's a new one, man.
Check that one on the audience,bro man, I couldn't even want
to spell that Go ahead.
Speaker 2 (11:17):
Hey, no worries, dysautonomia it is
D-Y-S-A-U-T-O-N-O-M-I-A You'llhear it a lot associated with
COVID and post-COVID syndromeand POTS, things like that
vasovagal syncope.
Essentially, your autonomicsystem of sympathetic and
parasympathetic should betightly regulated, not a seesaw,
like I always use the example.
(11:38):
You go to a yoga class andevery so often you'll get
somebody a little overzealous,talking about how you want to be
very parasympathetic and youwant to have as little
sympathetic as possible in orderto be in a wellness state.
And that's not how the scienceworks.
Because you don't want it to beall parasympathetic and not
(11:58):
sympathetic, you want it to betightly controlled, like a
thermostat.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Explain to the audience the parasympathetic and
sympathetic aspects ofphysiology.
Speaker 2 (12:08):
So the easiest way to understand it and the most
psychological way to think aboutit is parasympathetic is rest
and digest.
It is sitting, more stasis,calming, ability to absorb
nutrients, things like that.
Sympathetic is fight, flight,freeze.
(12:28):
Those are the things.
And they came out with a fourthterm I saw recently, but it's
still the same idea of more.
Sympathetic means your pupilsget big, blood flow comes
towards your extremities so thatway you're able to run and get
away from a tiger or fight atiger or something like that.
It comes down to are you mostpeople.
(12:49):
It has morphed throughdifferent lenses into
sympathetic meaning stress, andparasympathetic meaning calm.
That, I think, is a little bitof a dangerous way to think
about it, because it means thatpeople start having a worldview
where they think the way to fixthe things I'm feeling is drive
(13:10):
towards this parasympatheticactivity.
And if one is bad and one isgood.
But what I was going to say isthey're both good, they both
have checks and balances inthere where when sympathetic
starts going up, yourparasympathetic will go up as
well to balance that out, andsame thing vice versa.
And what I'm saying is you wantit to be like a thermostat
(13:32):
where, if you have it set on 70,you don't want it swinging from
60 to 80 back and forth, youwant it swinging from 69 to 71,
tightly controlled.
So that's a lot of the thingsthat we're looking at and when
you're looking at pupils you cansee those changes, you can see
how stable the autonomics areand it gives us an opportunity
to see are we making realmeaningful physical changes with
(13:54):
our patients just by seeing howthey react from a light being
shined in the eye within normallimits?
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Okay, and those are apps.
Those are, and how are theyaffected by a concussion?
They get, get out of whack, orhow do you see that?
Speaker 2 (14:08):
So remember when I said I yard sailed and then I
got a one pupil was bigger thanthe other.
Typically when you see onepeople bigger than the other or
two big pupils on both sides,those are usually associated
with things like lightsensitivity, but also is
indicative of having some sortof brain dysfunction, because
you're not reactingappropriately to the amount of
(14:29):
ambient light around you.
What you're having, what'shappening, is you're fatiguing
out and it's just defaulting tomore sympathetic tone, so it's
just going bigger and bigger,which means you're getting even
more stimulus.
That's probably more than yourbrain can handle at the time.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
So do you have patients that come into you and
they don't even know they haveconcussions, or they, they don't
even know that they've been.
You know they, just they justknow something's off.
And then you know, you're,you're, you're finding out that
they this like what's theirreaction?
Speaker 2 (14:58):
you tell them yeah, you've had, you've had a
concussion, you actually damagedyour brain well, think about it
like this there's not justtraumatic concussion, there's
acquired brain injury likemetabolic concussion, talking
about how the neuroimmune axisor things that change the uh,
the immune system in your brain,can also create the same exact
(15:21):
physiology of concussion withouthaving a blast trauma or
traumatic insult to your brain.
Uh, really actually have a fun.
I have a story about that.
I was a when I was a student inportland, oregon, we were
working at one of the threeclinics uh, for experience.
So we were working people whowere on welfare, and one of the
people she was an out-of-workhairdresser and she was.
(15:42):
She was married, she has kids,but her entire life started
spiraling after a car accident.
And the way we found that outwas I was doing my exam and I
was like this is not amusculoskeletal pattern by
itself, this is a concussionpattern.
You've got slowed bowelmovements.
(16:04):
You've got gi tracks, thingsthat are moving slowly.
You probably heard about vagusnerve and things like that.
Uh, yeah, but there's a lot ofstimulants for that.
We want to make the thing thatstimulates it happen on its own
as opposed to trying to dothings directly for it.
But we can talk about thatlater.
But I was noticing all of likethis entire pattern.
I was something's going on inyour brain and I asked have you
(16:26):
ever been in a car accidentbefore?
And she said yeah, and she gaveme the date and I was like,
have you ever had like bowelmovement issues and stuff like
that?
And she said I don't know.
She went home and when I sawher two days later she said she
called her ex-husband and saidthat since the car accident she
didn't move her bowels for twoweeks straight.
(16:48):
She and that's when everythingstarted spiraling out of control
and she couldn't really handlelife, including getting a
divorce, including not beingable to hold a job, including
not being able to basically haveforget great quality of life,
have a minimum viable quality oflife basically ended up where
(17:09):
she was.
And so a lot of patients thatI'll have coming in now in my
practice here usually patientsself-select where they call me.
They're calling me up, findingme and flying in or driving into
work with me, knowing that theyalready have something going on
.
But when I work in othercapacities, especially with some
athletes, I'll be looking atthem like your concussion is not
(17:31):
fully healed there are.
Yes, you are ready to return toplay, but you still have
neurological things going onthat we want to work on.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Let's talk about a little bit, because you know,
concussion recovery is, you knowit's an open book, right?
I mean, everybody's got their.
You know concussion recovery isyou know it's an open book,
right, I mean, everybody's gottheir.
You know, I remember, when youknow my concussions, I just went
to work.
Actually, when I woke up frommost of my concussions on the
rugby field, I just went downthe other end and made a tackle.
It was none of this recoverystuff.
(18:00):
And then you have a job man.
It's like, ah, I got to go towork, right stuff.
And then you have a job manit's like, ah, I got to go to
work Right.
So, um, but you know, we havereturned play in school, we have
returned to play sport.
You know professional leaguesand I personally don't think
they actually account for theneurological damage or
dysfunction.
And I and I think that, uh, youknow, with some of the, you
know the same, the same issuesare in both categories kids who
(18:22):
just identify through sports.
They've got to get back on theteam, they love their stuff, and
athletes have got to pay thebills, man, right.
So what are your opinions onthe current return-to-play
protocols that are being used atthis time, some of them are
time-based or whatever.
What's your opinion on all that?
Speaker 2 (18:40):
There's a lot of external factors that are
involved with that, includingmoney, stakeholders, people play
.
We talk about high level prosports, I mean, without going
into individual football players.
You can also think of it likeOK, well, he's your quarterback,
you got to get him back in andthere could be pressure.
It's the doctor's job to or thehealthcare provider's job to be
(19:03):
that boundary that looks afterthe welfare of the athlete and
not just the.
If they don't do this now, thenthey're going to miss out on a
scholarship.
In reality, if they don't, ifthey do this now, they might not
even need the scholarship, ifyou know what I mean,
unfortunately.
So I okay.
(19:24):
So the return to play thing, Ithink, is still kind of nebulous
because there are certainstandards that need to happen
depending on which part of thehealthcare industry you're in.
The greater return to playprogram, that's inside the scat
six, is still the one of thebetter ways to do it.
Um, but I view it a little bitdifferently from my office,
(19:45):
because we're looking for thosefiner points, those little
details, I would say.
Brains don't heal, theycompensate, which allows a lot
of patients to kind of get thebreathing room that they needed
in order to know that, hey,things might take longer to heal
or things might take longer Ilook at it, see, too easy to say
(20:09):
it's things might take longerto get back to normal, to get
back to I don't feel awful whileI'm doing this.
And it comes down to the waythe brain works.
If you had your muscle, youtore your muscle.
It heals, maybe some scartissue now, but it's technically
(20:31):
healed because the exactfunction of it has completely
returned, because all it did wasmove your hand here to here.
Right, if you have every singlecircuit in your brain as a
network, from an individualmemory to an individual motor
task, to an individualpsychological task, every single
(20:54):
circuit in the brain needs tofire in a pattern and that's how
you create the consciousexperience of I remember my
friend baking cookies, somethinglike that.
I remember my friend bakingcookies, something like that.
If some of those neurons arenow gone or that circuit has now
been rendered dysfunctional,then it's very possible that
(21:17):
those things won't come back.
No-transcript neuron startssprouting again.
(21:53):
So sometimes there is someviability to these things where
some people think there isn't.
But the other thing to thinkabout is if your brain isn't
healing and it's compensating,that means your brain is using a
completely different systemwhere it doesn't have this
perfect map of where things aresupposed to go, how things are
supposed to be.
It's just doing its best guess.
(22:13):
So if you have a brain that isrecovering from concussion and
it says, well, now I have thisperception that I'm always
turning in this direction, whatis it going to do?
It's going to build up somesort of compensation that says,
oh, I'm going to always pull inthis direction.
To balance out, it doesn't meanto fix the problem.
(22:36):
It means that it created atemporary fix.
Then it makes another temporaryfix for any issue that causes.
It makes another temporary fixfor any issue that causes, makes
another temporary fix for anyissue that causes.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave headaches.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave pain.
Your brain doesn't care if youhave any other symptoms nausea,
dizziness, any of these things.
(22:56):
All it cares about can you stayupright, can you feed yourself,
can you survive, and so a lot oftimes when patients come to us,
we're looking at it and saying,all right, cool, so you have
this layer that we've got topeel off, and then this layer
that we have to peel off and wehave to rehabilitate some of
these basic things.
So what I find is, instead oftrying to chase the symptoms at
(23:16):
the top, we get pretty goodresults by working on the basic
fundamental reflexes that yourbrain uses for survivability and
for a lot of other functioning.
And then it creates a prettysimple way to understand
concussions and takes it awayfrom this big scary thing of I
feel awful and I don't know whatto do about it, and we turn it
(23:39):
into sensory input, comes in,your brain figures out what it
means and then you have a motorresponse or a psychological
response.
If you want to improve themotor or the psychological
response, you improve theinterpretation of it or you
improve the sensory input comingin and so it makes it easier.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Yeah, no, I mean but, and and that we're talking
about a concussion.
Right, we're talking about asingular event.
Now, what happens when thatathlete's in a sport with
repetitive head impacts, likeyou know where that brain is
continuously being jostled it bytackles, hitting soccer balls,
checking in hockey, you know,hitting the head and wrestling
(24:18):
gymnastics, whatever it is right.
So, uh, what?
What is that impact on thatrecovery process?
Speaker 2 (24:27):
Have you ever seen a brain like an actual brain?
Speaker 1 (24:31):
I have, I actually have.
I've been to the B2CT centerwhere they dissect them.
I've seen lockers of them.
Not pretty, Did you touch it?
They wouldn't let us touch them.
No, and they had already beenprocessed for dissection.
So I've never seen, but I'dnever seen like a live, like not
a live, but a real brain, likein its state, right yeah.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
When you have a brain , your whole brain, in your hand
is processed for dissection,it's treated and it's
significantly stiffer than it isnaturally, significantly
stiffer than it is naturally theactual.
So the brain itself, the tissue, is very malleable.
Think of it like jello, butinstead of jello as like a
(25:15):
single mass of sugar, jello andwater, you have a ton of strands
and those strands become themass At any point in this first
week of the class that we teachat university of western states.
But at any point you can haveshear stress, tensile stress,
(25:39):
you can have stretching andtwisting of these neurons, and
just a stretch and twist on itcan create an inflammatory
response.
You can then have some tears inthose areas as well.
But here's the thing if you'vegot 100 neurons that are there
to move your arm like this andyou break 15 of those, now
(26:00):
you're at 85% capacity, you'restill going like this right, but
within the brain and whenyou're thinking about it like
repetitive stress and repetitivethings going on stretch,
stretch, stretch, twist, twist,twist you're getting this
repetitive microtrauma thatchanges functionality, creates a
(26:21):
level of dysfunction andtheoretically, according to a
structural world and astructural world only, that
should be fine as long as itdoesn't break, but when you're
working with a living systemthat is staying living through
time.
Structure can determinefunction, but function can
(26:42):
determine structure.
That's the difference betweenhaving something off axis in a
shoulder joint and then yourwear and tear over time creates
the need for surgery, and so youcan have that in the brain,
where function now determinesstructure and it creates a
change in the way the brain isstructured.
(27:05):
When you're talking about therepetitive trauma, the
sub-concussive trauma that canhappen over and over and over,
talk about linemen crashingtogether, however many plays
they run in a game you'retalking about um, here's a scary
one, but hopefully it's notthat scary based off, we're
saying how this can all beimproved.
We're talking about stoppingshort from as little as 10 miles
(27:25):
an hour.
If somebody's not payingattention, not ready for it,
that's enough to createstretching and twisting of these
neurons in a way that is in acar.
In a car, yeah, just stopping,sure, not being ready for it,
like we have these machines thatput a ton of forces through our
bodies and we don't feel it.
I mean blast trauma is theperfect example where nothing
(27:48):
touched you, just waves, justair pressure.
Waves moving through your bodyis enough to create this effect
and it just comes down to whenyou're working.
When you're working with thesecases, those often be taken into
account.
So but if you want to say, like, what happens when you see the,
the BTE, the BTE sorry, theBUCTE concussion center, and the
(28:13):
and the CTE center, it'srepetitive microtrauma, which
means it's an inflammatory pulse.
It's another inflammatory pulse, it's another inflammatory
pulse, layered and layered andlayered.
And what happens?
Let's take another example of aninflammatory process gone wrong
.
What does arthritis look likein the hands?
(28:34):
It's the same process.
It's inflammation.
It's the same process, it'sinflammation.
So we're not to say thatinflammation is bad, because if
you read into the literature onhow memories are formed, it
requires pro-inflammatorycytokines in order just to
create a memory.
So it's not like we want noinflammation.
We want a healthy, appropriateamount of inflammation that's
(28:56):
responding appropriately tothreats in the body.
But if you're looking at itfrom that perspective, arthritis
in the hand is an inflammatoryprocess gone wrong.
And you look at the brains thatundergo CTE, it's an
inflammatory process gone wrong.
And you see the same chewed upappearance.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
Yeah, and that stretching.
There's all kinds of studiessaying that once you start
stretching the myelin and itstarts, you know, micro tearing,
then you lose a lot of theefficiency of the neuron in
terms of transmission.
So you and that's associatedwith other forms of mental
health as well.
So, even though the neuronsremain intact, the myelin around
(29:36):
them, once it starts stretching, does affect, you know, the
health of the brain.
And so, yeah, so you got allthis structural dysfunction
going on in the brain in termsof concussion Then.
So what's your opinion on, likeyou know, kids' brains?
So we are, you know, after youknow there's not a lot of
studies done on children,because it's almost impossible
to get a child number one tostay still but to participate in
(29:59):
studies.
But if you look at what we'retalking about in a healthy adult
brain, I mean, you know,doesn't it make sense that if
you've got a brain, not onlythat's, you know, younger, it's
also developing, like it's noteven fully whole yet it's still
figuring out?
I mean, the prefrontal cortexdoesn't even start developing
until 14, right, and you got allthis.
(30:20):
You have a concussion, then yougot all this other you know
damage going on because the kidkeeps playing.
Then you throw inneuroinflammation, which some of
it's healthy, but this chronicstate of neuroinflammation turns
, you know, toxic over time.
So I mean, when it comes to achild's brain, doesn't it make
sense to just say stop.
You know, when it comes to achild's brain, doesn't it make
(30:42):
sense to just say stop movingthe brain around?
I mean, the kid's not even anadult yet.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
So there's two halves to this coin.
There's one half, which is yeah, we want to protect children
and make sure children aren'tdoing anything that is, let's
say, course-altering to theirlife.
The other thing to think aboutit, though, is which?
So I'm giving you two peoplewho has more neurons in their
(31:08):
brain?
A baby or a 50-year-old dancer?
The baby I think the baby willhave.
The more amount of neurons thedancer is going to have, the
more amount of neurons thedancer is going to have more
connections in their brain.
And at the end of the daybecause here's the thing there
(31:32):
are processes that happen in thebrain.
We can talk about thepathophysiology of anxiety and
depression and how that actuallyis from a brain perspective,
before we even talk about thepsych world is like from a brain
perspective, before we eventalk about the psych world.
And what happens is in whatinvolved is weaker neurons
popping because they can'thandle the stress I don't like
the word stress because it getstaken in such inappropriate
directions they can't handle thestimulus that is placed on them
(31:55):
, they can't handle the physicaldemand, the metabolic demand
that is placed on them, and sowhat they do is they drive too
hard and they pop, and then allthe glutamate and
neurotransmitters inside thereping all the other neurons
around them and creates aspreading wave of something
called glutamate excitotoxicity.
And glutamate excitotoxicity,which you see in concussion
(32:16):
literature all the time, is aspreading wave of hyperactivity
followed by spreading depression.
So spreading depolarization isthe term that, if you search for
it, just spreadingdepolarization, and then it's
spreading depression becauseafter you have this
depolarization, it's not astroke.
You don't have all neuronsineffective, but you have some
(32:40):
neurons ineffective and now youhave this spreading wave of
depression where you haveneurons that aren't working as
well.
And so the idea is, this is anatural process, this will
happen.
No one is going to have an, noone's going to be able to live a
life where they where thisdoesn't occur, but part of this
(33:03):
occur as this occurs.
This shapes personality, thisshapes the way that you think
about things.
This shapes the way that yourbrain functions and provides.
I love the opinion where themind is an output of the brain.
So it shapes the way that yourmind responds to the physical
stimuli of the world.
But this effect also happenswith different things, like, you
see, certain recreational drugs.
(33:24):
This will happen and peopleview it as a positive effect
because they're having a mindexpansion thing, but in reality
they're just havingpathophysiology, self-chosen
pathophysiology, and thisprocess.
If we can, instead of trying toprevent it, but if we can
stabilize it, and if we canlimit swinging too high, too low
(33:49):
, then we have a betterconscious experience.
So, from this perspective, withkids, the number of factors
that go into.
When you're talking about kidsplaying sports, I'm of the
agreement.
Like I don't personally, likewe grew up as a baseball family,
not as a football family, andwatching football players and
things like that, especiallyworking with a few, now not
(34:12):
something that I have any desireto and I personally wouldn't
put my kids at football.
I would put them in othersports Also risk of injury, but
it doesn't necessarily createsports.
Also risk of injury, but itdoesn't necessarily create the
same risk of injury because it'snot direct collision sport.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
Um, yeah, there's a big difference between you can
break your leg or you can breakyour brain, and that's the,
that's the whole.
The whole issue here, um, isthat you know it's like you said
, like just synaptic pruning.
There are processes which youknow tate.
You know, like you said, likethe synaptic pruning, there are
processes which you know whichwill eliminate some of the
synaptic neuronal capabilitiesof the brain over time.
(34:46):
Because that's life, that's theinfluence of drugs, alcohol,
personal choices, whatever right.
But when we start impactingspecific regions of the brain,
like the prefrontal cortex,temporal lobes, over and over
and over again, this is, justknow to me, unhealthy and
especially when it comes downyeah, I mean, I mean it's it
cannot have a positive impact.
(35:07):
As a matter of fact, I, I toldthe nfl, I tell everybody, I
said show me one study where ithas been shown that jostling,
shaking the brain, which isknown to happen, is positive in
any way, shape or form.
The brain doesn't need exercise, not like's, not like a leg
right Stop.
So let's just prevent it anddelay it until the brain's
healthy or whatever.
Speaker 2 (35:28):
I think there are benefits for kids playing sports
and kids getting out there anddoing things that involve some
level of competition and involvesome level of teamwork and
doing something where sometimesyou've got to learn how to have
grit and push through.
But I do and this is a toughthing.
But, like I said, I probablywouldn't let my kids play
(35:49):
collision sports, but it depends.
Like I feel like hockey wouldbe something to play later on,
but the checking part is a thingthat isn't in the old release,
so delay checking.
Speaker 1 (35:59):
You can play hockey at four, just don't check.
You can play flag football till14.
You can play no head soccer youcan play.
You can play any sport in theworld.
Just keep the head out of it inthe best interest of the child,
in their future, that's all.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
so here's the question, though, since we
already established that juststopping short from 10 miles an
hour if, if you're not ready forit, is enough to create
jostling of the brain andpotential concussion Where's the
threshold of which?
Sports don't create anywhiplash effect of the head Like
?
Ultimate frisbee laying out anddiving Like we can't have an
(36:37):
entire world of golfers.
I think that might be a littletough to keep people interested
right.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
But the issue is there are certain sports where,
like football is one of the fewsports where you can't take the
head out of the game rightwithout tackling.
The point is, how do youeliminate exposure through?
You know better, practicinglike you can, you can.
You don't have to tackle andpractice all day to be good at
tackling man, you know right.
Just like you don't have toshoot guns every day to be good
at shoot guns in the military.
(37:04):
So the issue is total aggregateexposure and to prevent the
damage.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
Now, yeah, to stop in a 10 feet away, how far away
the exposure is.
Does it have to be right after?
Because you're talking aboutcompounding inflammation where
there is no ability and when yougo through the.
So there's a paper, it's beenaround for a while, it's called
the metabolic cascade, theneurometabolic cascade of
concussion by Giza and Havda,and there's another one that
(37:31):
they put out called the newneurometabolic cascade, and if
you read it line by line, youwill see how long concussion
physiology happens, from bloodsugar dysregulation to a bunch
of other processes.
You're looking at two monthslater, sometimes that it's still
happening and you might noteven feel like you're having a
(37:52):
concussion, or you might noteven feel symptoms, but you'll
still have this alteredphysiology.
Then the question is at whatpoint does another concussion
create a second impact syndromeor create a compounding effect,
even if they feel fine and theycomplete all the metrics?
Speaker 1 (38:10):
We funded a study that absolutely showed that the
increase of suicidal reality anddepression after concussion for
the next 35 days.
That's at the point where a lotof these children are deciding
that, hey, I can't be here andnobody in there talking.
Right, but to your point, noteven a concussion.
But what if you're back in thegame, a repetitive head impact
game?
You're back practicing ortackling checking in hockey,
(38:32):
whatever we have to, you know,brain health right to me is
where chiropractic comes in.
I'm learning a lot about theapex.
I want to talk about that realquick and how that affects
cerebral fluid flow, but we'rejust not fully on it.
It's logic, right?
We have to take care of thesebrains and we're not.
(38:52):
I didn't take care of mine andI had a mental health breakdown
two and a half years ago.
I was diagnosed, been shot inthe face, fragmentation, all
kinds of stuff been around,thousands of explosions and
bullets and all that stuff.
But I hurt myself, didn't evenknow and I just drank my way
through it.
Here we're talking about whatwe're doing to our children and
young athletes.
I mean, the brain doesn't startdeveloping till 25.
(39:14):
And some people now saying thatthing keeps going, man, it's
still developing.
It does, and so when peoplecome to you and they have
concussions, is there alsoaspects of mental illness
involved with their symptomology?
And then how do you treat that?
I mean, are they doing you know?
(39:35):
Because my question is what'sthe impact of SSRIs, ssnis and
benzos on a brain that'srecovering after a concussion,
where there might be mentalhealth symptoms, and these
doctors are just chucking pillsat people?
How does that impact therecovery process?
Speaker 2 (39:53):
The current standard in concussion and, first and
foremost, recommending specificprescriptions or anything like
that is completely out of myscope.
But the current the currentrecommendations for concussion,
even in the SCAT-6, is don'tmedicate for symptoms, because
then you won't know if they'regetting better or worse.
Cool, ok.
(40:14):
The other, which again, there'salso the part of it where you
go to the health care providerthey get paid, whether or not
they write a script.
They get paid whether or notthe person comes in, and at the
end of the day sometimes they'rejust saying, well, the
patient's coming in and wantingsomething.
If I tell them no, then they'regoing to have a bad experience
and they just they're not.
(40:34):
The doctor is not as bought inwhere they need to be and to say
no, we do it the right way.
So not as bought in where theyneed to be and to say no, we're
going to do it the right way.
They're so like.
Here's the easy way out.
There's also, but we can thinkabout it from a you can play
with those systems dopamine,serotonin, your catecholamines.
You can play with those systemsusing supplements as well,
which I see all the time usedinappropriately, because anytime
(40:56):
that you do anything thataffects the brain, you're
creating neurotransmission andyou're creating growth in a
direction and you're creatingpruning in a different direction
.
So for patients who are comingin or coming with a laundry list
of supplements, especiallyneurotransmitter active ones,
first and foremost, they come in, they take a neurotransmitter
test like blood or urine.
(41:17):
How do you know if thoseneurotransmitters are coming
from their brain, their gut orthe microbiome?
Absolutely I can't tell.
I don't know anybody who cantell.
And then they're like oh, yourserotonin is low.
Well, is the serotonin lowbecause they are having a?
Uh, because it's truly low.
Is it low because it's notcoming from the brain, gut or
(41:39):
microbiome?
Or is it low because it's notclearing?
So you have, every time aneurotransmitter goes across and
connects to another neuron, ithas, it, gets attached to the
receptor site, and then there'sanother process that allows it
to actively release from thetransmitter site.
And if you don't have thatrelease, then all of a sudden
your brain's like I have enoughserotonin, so it stops making
(41:59):
serotonin.
Does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, so let me ask you a question.
You know a child comes in or anadult, right, they've got a
concussion Are you askinganything about?
And they say they have mentalillness.
Are we aware that they havemental illness whatever?
They have mentals whatever?
Are you asking any questions aspart of your assessment on
(42:24):
their contact sports or militaryexperience history to determine
if there could be a biologicalcause to their mental illness
that could be from the sport,not from the concussion, that
could be from their past?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Absolutely, you do, we do Good for you man, awesome,
our intake forms cover all thatstuff.
And we get complaints about thelength of our intake form
sometimes.
And then when they come in, I'mlike, well, which questions
should we drop out?
Not, dr.
Speaker 1 (42:52):
Lovick, you are one of the first professionals I've
talked to, that you know.
I don't know if you ever heardof the traumatic encephalopathy
protocol, syndrome protocols.
You know four basic questionsthat you can ask.
You know that can at least sayhey, you might have another
issue here other than yourconcussion.
Looking at your history, yourconcussions in the past, your
(43:12):
military exposure, you probablyshould go see a neurologist and
get your you know, your brainassessed, because you might have
another cause of your mentalillness.
You're actually doing this.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Yeah, because the mind is an output of the brain
for you If you're not, if you're, if you're viewing the mind as
a separate entity and the mindis output of the brain, or I
know I hope nobody hates me forsaying this, but I don't know if
I care it's.
Some people say no, the mind isthe output of the soul and the
body is completely separate.
The mind is an output of yourbrain.
(43:44):
Your conscious experience thatyou have is based off of
different parts of your brainlighting up.
There's an area in yourbrainstem called the nucleus
tractus solitarius, where thetop is cardiorespiratory, the
bottom is gustatory oh no, I'msorry.
The top, the top, is gustatory,so taste and smell, and the
bottom is cardiorespiratory.
It controls that and modulatesthat.
(44:06):
And if that system, if thatnucleus remember I was saying
fires closer to threshold, highfiring, revved up, that's how
you get the conscious experienceof nausea.
It comes from that.
What, what you did before thatmight rev that up may is what we
associate with it, like, oh, Iate something bad, so I'm
(44:26):
nauseous.
No, you ate something bad.
It created a response.
Now your nts is feeling thatdifference and then you get
nausea.
And if you don't get nausea,you might have, like you can
have any dysfunction along thatchain, along that pathway.
And so, from what you weresaying before about.
Do we look at mental healthAbsolutely?
But here's the issue, and thisis one of my frustrations with
(44:48):
the mental health revolutionthat we're currently
experiencing that we're sofocused on swinging the other
direction of mental health is soimportant to look at.
But then the treatments thatthey're being provided is only
looking at the output.
Going back into the, into there, they're looking at the
symptoms.
The symptom itself is theconscious experience and the
(45:10):
personality behaviors that theydo, because behaviors are based
on the environment.
You put them in absolutely.
You put them in is 100 due tothe sensory input that they get,
because that's how they figureout what their environment is
and the way their brain works.
So they can figure out thissensory input means my world is
this.
And then it says, oh, so I'llreact this way.
(45:32):
And now we're saying, well,have you tried reacting
differently or thinking about itdifferently?
Why don't we just go to thephysical aspect and improve that
?
So one of the projects I'mworking on is I'm pouring
through the literature now.
I always said I wanted to writea book and I figured out what
to write on.
I'm working on a book right nowof all the biological things
(45:56):
that are directly correlatedbiological and metabolic, that
are directly correlated in theliterature to mental health
issues, from tpo antibodiesbeing directly correlated with
bipolar syndrome to verticalnystagmus or spontaneous
nystagmus in a vertical planedirectly associated with you
(46:17):
need to stop right now, becausebig pharma is listening, man,
you're gonna be out.
Speaker 1 (46:20):
Now you started, you start impacting their pill
industry, dude, you know.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
But you to your point , keep going, because I do
believe that if we treatedmental illness from a biological
or a physiological,pathophysiological perspective,
a lot of it um could be improvedand it's not a near a sum game,
which means the stuff that I'mdoing and I'm talking about
doesn't mean that if you do thisyou can't do everything else
that the psych world does, butit does mean that we can't just
(46:45):
sit and think that, oh well, ifyou think about it differently,
or if you do these strategies oryou talk about it or you have
this because there's greatexample is so depending on if
it's your left brain or yourright brain.
Each brain has a dominanthemisphere and a non-dominant
hemisphere and that helps driveyour personality and your and
(47:07):
everything, because it's anoutput.
If you have dysfunction in yourdominant hemisphere, whichever
side that is, you'll havecertain phenomena and you'll
usually it's reported as if youhave dysfunction, the dominant
hemisphere.
You're going to kind of youever know somebody that they got
some stuff going on and there'slike they don't notice data
(47:27):
doesn't really affect them butand they don't take care of it
because they're like, yeah, Idon't know whatever.
But you have other people whoare like acutely aware of their
own suffering and those are thepeople that have the
non-dominant hemisphere havingthis dysfunction because their
dominant hemisphere can lookover and say something's not
right and then they hyper-focuson it.
(47:48):
Treatment for those is different.
One of them involves gettingout of your brain and into your
body physical, like the peoplewho work, who they do a really
tough workout and they just feelbetter.
And the other one is people getout of their body and into
their head or into their brain,and those are the people who
meditation work for.
But there's a whole stigmawhere they have all of these
(48:12):
wellness treatments that seem sosimple but if they don't work
for you.
Now patients have come into myoffice saying I've been trying
meditation and I've been tryingthese like belly breathing and
parasympathetic triggeringthings to try and create this
wellness for me, because I seeit on Instagram, they see it on
YouTube, they see it from theirproviders.
(48:33):
This was if you have thesethings, you have patients coming
in and they're sayingmeditation doesn't work for me
and I feel bad because I feellike I'm failing something like
that.
It might not be.
It's people are so quick andhealthcare is so quick to blame
the patient.
(48:53):
It's not the patient's fault.
It's their physiology, it'stheir body, their situation that
they have won't improve frommeditation.
Their situation needs, theyneed to go and do a physical
workout from this isolatedperspective and so but here's
the thing, there's, but you canalways get deeper.
(49:15):
You always can get furtherfocused, and so a lot of the
stuff that we do in the officeis we're saying, okay, before we
give you the generic advice,let's figure out exactly where
the issue is.
If you have a spontaneousasthmus in the vertical plane,
we're going to work on thatdirectly.
If you have a, so BPPV isusually what happens when they
(49:36):
have any sort of dizzinessassociated with it.
But you can have very low leveldizziness and that can be
perceived as a patient justfeeling like they're off.
It's not like they're going tocome in and say I'm dizzy.
They're going to come in andsay like I'm having these other
weird things, my body hurtsbecause I can't coordinate, and
we're looking at it.
And it's not that their innerear is broken, it's that the
(49:58):
software in their brainstem isnow not receiving the
information that it needs.
And they have this the way Itell my students you can have
100% of something, you can have5% of something and it still has
an effect.
Speaker 1 (50:13):
So real quick, cause you know getting towards the end
.
Tell us how you knowchiropractic work, cause that's
something new to me Uh, affects,you know concussions.
You know you think of brain,right, spine, neck down Right,
so, and I've had my, I've hadsome very successful work done,
uh, by chiropractors in the past, helped me out, help me out.
(50:37):
So talk to us a little bitabout how chiropractic medicine
can help people with concussionsor maybe those that have had a
lot of subcust, of exposure fromyears of playing sports.
You're dealing with, you know,nfl players.
Now, how is you know I'm nottalking about making my back
feel better how are youimpacting the brain?
So?
Speaker 2 (50:51):
here's the thing If you're looking for a
chiropractor that can do thiskind of work, you're going to
want to look for somebody who istrained in it.
So the letters you're lookingfor are D, a, c and B.
Now here's the thing.
There's different levels ofeducation that you can go and
some people do have moretraining than others and more
education can end up doing more.
But those are the lettersyou're looking for.
(51:15):
A regular chiropractor, even ifthey say they are a neurological
chiropractor.
There's a certain techniquecalled uh, torque release
technique.
That's pure musculoskeletal.
They say it is neurologicallybased and I I've had a lot of
patients get kind of go thatdirection and then come back to
me and they're all stressed outbut they spent a bunch of money
on something that wasn't, thatwas more marketing than what
(51:38):
they were looking for.
Look for the letters D, a, cand B.
That's going to let you know ifyou have somebody who actually
knows how to work with thecentral nervous system, the
brain and the way it is is.
Yes, we're doing musculoskeletalinput, but mainly it's from the
idea that I'm going to dosensory input to an area,
because at the end of the day,if you were going to hold a gun
(51:59):
to my head and say describe whatyou do as simply as possible, I
would say.
I make you know where your bodyis in space better.
That's how we do concussionrecovery and by doing that now,
the sensory input of where yourbody is, the sensory input of
where you think you are inrelation to gravity so
(52:21):
vestibular rehab, which we do.
The sensory input of where youare in relation to the world
visually so vision therapy,which is also things we do.
And cognitive rehab, which isfrontal lobe exercises, which is
things we do.
If you take all of those andcombine them together, you're
now creating a better experienceand a better understanding of
where you know your body is andwhen you move your body, it
(52:44):
matches up to predictions, itmatches up to where you think
your body should be and itcreates a better, more
continuous experience for yourbrain and symptoms start to
reduce.
So for how do we do it?
It's vision rehab, vestibularrehab, physical rehab, cognitive
(53:05):
rehab.
Speaker 1 (53:06):
What about the apex?
I'm hearing some work that'sbeing done on the very top
vertebrae that's helping spinalor cerebral spinal fluid move in
and out and cleanse the brain.
Is that something else that youfocus on?
Speaker 2 (53:21):
Absolutely so.
While we don't have like thereare certain clinics out there
that are upper cervical,specific clinics that will focus
on that directly we do work onthat as well as part of a bigger
picture.
Here's the thing when you'relooking at the atlas and the
axis and how that moves that wasit.
Sorry, man, my bad.
Oh, you're good.
(53:42):
How that moves, you can feel it,Like you can feel it on
yourself.
If you go right behind the jaw,right over here, you'll feel
like a slight little bump andyou'll feel on both sides and
you can slide that side to side.
Those are the transverseprocesses of your atlas and so
if you push side to side you'llfeel like, hey, yeah, it's more
slid one way or the other orless slid, because that
(54:06):
physically can't happen withoutcreating a lot bigger effects.
But from a concussionstandpoint you'll see more
tension one way or the other,where it'll be more restricted,
and less motion in that spineone way or the other where it'll
be more restricted, if we can,and less motion in that spine
one way or the other.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
You'll also see.
Speaker 2 (54:21):
So if you have somebody like, this is a quick
test that everybody can do.
You just have them look up Doestheir chin track in front of
their neck or is it twistedThings like that?
There's a lot of different wayswhere you can see that, hey,
maybe the muscle balance at thetop of the neck because there
see that.
Hey, maybe the muscle balanceat the top of the neck because
there are so many overlappingmuscles, the muscle balance at
(54:41):
the top of the neck may beasymmetrical.
And the other perspective isand we do this a lot with our
patients we also do TMJ work.
We work on the muscles insideand outside the mouth of the jaw
, muscles inside and outside themouth for the jaw.
We do exercises for it.
We work on some of the socranial bones.
While theoretically they do not, they are sutures, there is
(55:04):
some motion to those cranialbones, and so we'll we'll end up
doing work on those areas,working on those as well,
creating motion in those areasthat might have been changed
when they, like you know, took avolleyball to the face,
something like that.
And so the whole idea is nothyper-focusing on one approach,
(55:26):
but getting an idea of all thedifferent inputs and outputs and
what we can do.
And so, from an upper cervicalspine thing, these are where so
we'll get patients with liketinnitus or changes in their
hearing, and it comes fromincreased muscle tension in an
area, reducing reverberation,reducing resonance in that area,
and then we start working onthe muscles of the jaw and then
(55:48):
all of a sudden the hearing orthe tinnitus improves.
And it's not like we're doinganything miraculous I wouldn't.
That's great with.
That word is used.
What we're doing is we're justgoing systematically, logically,
through the different systemsand working on them and seeing
how they play together.
Speaker 1 (56:05):
Well, I mean, it's fascinating that you know
chiropractic, you know practicecan can impact concussions.
And also to your point andthank God for you, doc is that
you know it's just another waywhere our health care system can
identify people that have had alot of exposed subacusum trauma
and can get them looking.
Another what?
(56:25):
Whether you've had a concussionor you've had many concussions
or you have a history ofrepetitive head trauma, then you
know this is something thatdoesn't take pills, but it takes
people that know what they'redoing.
(56:46):
So before we go, doc, tell usabout, you know your book,
what's coming up next, how dopeople find you?
And then you know, and then ifthey can't find you specifically
in their area, united stateswho they should be working for.
You mentioned the um.
You know the, the, the letterd-a-c-n-b, and that is diplomat
american chiropractic neurologyboard.
(57:07):
Just look that up.
And so tell us how they find uh, what, how they find you, so
that they can uh get moreinformation on their, on how to
treat themselves so so I'm veryGoogleable, michael Lovitch,
just do your search for that.
Speaker 2 (57:20):
There's also my business, deltasperformancecom.
Go on there, if anybody wantsyeah exactly If anybody.
We do free 30 minute phone callsfor anybody who's interested,
because I'd rather people feelcomfortable and confident coming
in as opposed to showing up andcold turkey.
(57:41):
So what we'll do is, uh, if youhave the website, click the get
started form.
We will happily hop on a 30minute phone call with you and
answer any questions you haveand see what we can see.
If we were able if the casewe're able to help with.
Uh we are located in.
Unfortunately, we're notlocated in Boston anymore.
I used to have offices there,but now we're just Denver and
(58:03):
Golden, colorado.
But for people who are all over,I think that, like I said, the
provider you're seeing is in.
The doctor-patient relationshipis always the most important
part in that connection, and itdoesn't mean that I'm the best
for somebody.
It could mean that, hey, maybeI could fix it, but I'm not the
best fit and the patient'sbetter off going to another
(58:23):
provider.
On my website, under resources,I have a functional neurology
map.
These are people that I havepersonally shadowed and seen and
I was like, yeah, this issimilar to what I do or this is,
this is reasonable.
Uh, and and I, there are plentymore that probably do great
jobs as well, but in terms of,instead of just making a
(58:45):
pay-to-play map, which I thinkis too too familiar in this
country, I put a map up therethat is yeah, dude, I just put a
map of this.
Yes, this is.
Speaker 1 (58:57):
These are people that I would see if I had this issue
the ability to play with othersis very important and not part
of our society at this time.
You're absolutely right, drLubbock.
I cannot thank you enough forcoming on the show today.
What an amazing conversation,man.
This is great, and thank you somuch for assessing the past
(59:18):
experience.
This is the largest assessmentgap that we have for this issue
Outside of mental illness.
There's no indicator that thebrain's been harmed.
Nobody asks these questions.
The kids keep playing sports,the adults keep playing sports
or they continue to spiralbecause we're not treating the
brain.
You are part of the solution.
We need to get to treating thebrain in order to prove mental
(59:39):
health, and you're a big part ofthat, and thank you so much for
the time today, folks, anothergreat episode.
What a fascinating conversation, man, after all the
chiropractors I've been throughin my life.
Don't forget free book websiteYouth Contact Sports and Broken
Brains the only book out therefor parents.
It Youth Contact Sports andBroken Brains, the only book out
there for parents.
It's for free.
Read it, get it to yourgrandkids, send it, get advanced
copies for Christmas I reallydon't care, but please get
(01:00:03):
informed.
Don't forget that the secondinternational summit on
repetitive brain trauma istaking place here in Tampa
September 3rd and 4th.
Go online and see.
We got some amazing group ofspeakers out there.
It's really getting looking alot of fun this year and finally
, take care of yourself, takecare of the ones you love, take
care of their brains you onlygot one and to protect it as
(01:00:27):
best you can.
God bless you all.
We'll see you next time on thenext episode of Broken Brains,
with your host, bruce Parkman,sponsored by the amazing Mack
Parkman Foundation.
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.