Are you suffering from stubborn chronic pain in any part of your body?
Then you’ll get a lot from this article!
More and more people are finding that chronic pain, physical dysfunction and limitation in mobility, which has not responded to other types of treatment, may still respond well to various types of neuroplastic treatment. There are now a wide range of neuroplastic treatments to choose from. The method I use as a chiropractor is NSA care, which is a powerful neuroplastic treatment. My objective in writing this article is to help more people learn about the new possibilities available with Neuoplastic treatments. In this article I will also explain what neuroplasticity is, how NSA care works, and why it can be considered a neuroplastic treatment. I will also present research that found some very positive potential health benefits that may be gained by receiving NSA care.
Feel free to have a low-cost initial consultation with me, and then after that, if you decide NSA care is not applicable to your needs, I hope this article will have helped you to find a neuroplastic treatment that is right for you.
Neuroplastic Treatment can provide a very different approach to pain reduction and enhanced performance.
I have been asked by hundreds of patients ‘What is NSA care?’ and ‘How does it work?’ I answer these and other questions in this article, while also providing some of the scientific understanding that supports NSA care.
One of these principles includes using very gentle touches to "match the force" from one specific part of the body to another. Dr Donald Epstein, the developer of this chiropractic method extended the work of Dr Logan, also a chiropractor, who discovered how gentle contact to the sacrotuberous ligament, can stimulate the nervous system to recognise a second location in the spine and make corrections at that second area. Epstein has developed this method further and called this process an entrainment.
In a conversation I had with American neuroscientist, Dr Bob Blanks, he said he was fascinated by the predictability of the NSA method to create what he called "a strategy of self-correction". While he and I watched people receiving NSA entrainments, he pointed out the predictability of the observable responses created by touching one place in the spine and affecting another location via the nervous system.
What is neuroplasticity?
Neuroplasticity is what makes learning possible. Like throwing a ball, accuracy can only be improved with practice. This happens because our brain has the ability to develop new neural pathways (also known as neural networks).
The understanding of neuroplasticity and its potential clinical value is explained by Norman Doidge, M.D. in his popular book, The Brain That Changes Itself.
Doidge wrote “I became interested in the idea of changing the brain because of my work as a research psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. When patients did not progress psychologically as much as hoped, often the conventional medical wisdom was that their problems were deeply “hardwired” into an unchangeable brain..."
He continued with "I began a series of travels, and in the process, I met a bunch of brilliant scientists, at the frontiers of brain science, who had made a series of unexpected discoveries. They showed that the brain changed its very structure with each different activity performed, perfecting its circuits, so it was better suited to the task at hand
‘If certain “parts” failed, then other parts could sometimes take over. Scientists began to call this fundamental brain property ‘neuroplasticity.' Neuro is for 'neuron,' the nerve cell in our brains and nervous systems. Plastic is for changeable, malleable, modifiable."
Perfecting your circuits
I invite you to work at perfecting the neural circuits in your body by utilising NSA care. Optimising the neural circuits involved in coordinating function after injury appears to be an effective way to assist recovery. Injury may have been sudden and traumatic or due to repetitive injury caused over time due to poor habits. I have found NSA care can be a very effective way to minimise dysfunction and symptoms in the body because it is a powerful form of neuroplastic treatment.
Here's how NSA care can be used to effectively reduce symptoms and potentially help you live a happier, healthier, more productive life.
With over 30 years studying and practising NSA care, I have found that it can support some people in a wide range of ways, including:
improved mood
enhanced physical performance
increased flexibility and strength
reduction of overall symptoms, such as many types of deeply entrenched pain syndromes, including long-term chronic tenderness.
In some cases, NSA care can provide a very different approach to other forms of chronic pain treatment. It appears to do this by enabling a change in the communication between the brain and body as well as developing feedback from the body back to the brain.
BRAIN FUNCTION: The brain has a role to play in controlling every function of the human body.
This is achieved by:
sending messages to the body via the spinal cord and nerves;
receiving messages back from the body, including the muscles, organs, joints and even the skin must give feedback to the brain which processes and responds to that information.
BodyMind MindBody Interaction: throwing a ball is a great illustration of just how important the feedback loop between the brain and body is for enabling the extraordinary ability we have to move though our day while avoiding injury and to heal when we do get injured. The thousands of functions our brain and nervous system must initiate and coordinate is mind-blowing (pardon the pun). Let's imaging you are throwing a ball. Here is what would need to happen:
You first need to set the objective. In this case the ball to hit a very specific small target 20 metres away.
Your brain must make complex calculations and choose a neural network that you already set up as a child;
The chosen neural network will receive new instructions based upon the calculations that take into account the weight of the ball and the distance it has to be thrown as well as the cross wind etc;
In order for those calculations to be accurate, the brain must first receive information about the exact position of every joint in your legs, back, neck, shoulders and arms.
a decision is made that you are ready and the messages are released;
the messages must be sent in the form of nerve impulses down the spinal cord, out though small gaps between the vertebrae via nerves to the muscles;
if left just up to chance alone, without learned input from your brain and neural pathways, the likelihood of you hitting the target would be close to zero. But if you have done this many times before, practicing to refine those neural pathways then you will be much more likely hit the target!
To have accomplished that amazing feat is something just about all of us can do with practice. Some of us are wired in such a way that it's easy to achieve accuracy like that, and for others, it could take many dozens of hours of practice. But in my experience, nearly anything is possible if we put our mind to it. And it can happen much faster if we have a coach. In the example above, our brain would have needed to monitor the changes in position of all the joints of your neck, shoulder arm and hand. It must calculate the distance to the target as well as the speed you are moving toward or away from the target. It must do all this while you are in the process of throwing the ball. Can you imagine what an incredibly complex task that is? That’s why, the more times you practice throwing that ball at that target, the more your brain can refine your neural networks which will improve your accuracy. This is the process called “learning” and it applies to anything we want to learn.
To get the ball into the hoop his brain must receive information from almost every joint in his body.
Spinal Problems
Problems in the spine such as misaligned vertebrae (or back bones) can interfere with the vital communication pathway between the brain to the body, as well as the feedback messages that must constantly be rushed back to the brain. There are dozens of different chiropractic methods which can help restore optimal brain/body communication.
An artists impression of nerve cells interacting together as part of a neural network.
A core goal of NSA care for me, is to develop new neural pathways in a way that helps the brain to improve its ability to coordinate the body. I think that's why NSA care may provide hope to you even if you have not yet achieved the results you’ve been looking for.
Nerve messages jump between the nerve cells called neurons. Messages are sent down a part of the neuron called the axon and received by a neighbouring neuron in an area called a dendrite. Messages move through a single neuron in the form of electrical impulses. These electrical impulses must 'jump' between the ends of axons to the dendrite of another neuron. The transfer of information from one neuron to the next is achieved via the release of chemical substances into the space between the axon and a dendrite. These chemicals are called neurotransmitters.
How might NSA care be able to help you?
As a form of neuroplastic treatment, NSA care may help you with a wide range of long-term stubborn symptoms by improving the way your nervous system and body functions. Not only do I find that NSA care can be an effective way to reduce certain symptoms, but every day in my practice I measure the way it enhances the body’s performance. I do this by performing a range of functional tests (please see my video called "What to expect on your first two visits."
Here's a list of symptoms and conditions I find NSA care may be able to assist people to reduce and in some cases resolve:
neck pain
shoulder pain
arm pain
wrist and hand pain
leg pain
lower back pain
upper back pain
some types of headache
facial pain
jaw pain
scoliosis
numbness and tingling.
Please note, results cannot be guaranteed and individual results vary.
Here's more on how NSA care can be used to effectively reduce symptoms and potentially help you live a happier, healthier, more productive life.
With new patients, my initial focus is to:
develop greater ease and fullness of breath to the spine and body.
reduce passive spinal stiffness and asymmetric restriction of movement
encourage the spine to realign itself, rather than rely on me to correct spinal misalignments
help you optimise your strength and range of motion.
With NSA care, the development of this response is known as ‘creating a strategy of self-correction’. The first time I heard that term, it was used by Professor Bob Blanks in the early 1990s when he sat beside me during an NSA entrainment session at a Transformational Gate event that involved at least 40 people, all receiving NSA entrainments at the same time.
Professor Blanks, a neuroscientist and the first author of a study that looked at data from 2818 people receiving NSA care, said at the time that it was the largest wellbeing study ever conducted¹.
I remember Professor Blanks commenting on the predictability of self-corrective responses generated by the NSA practitioners as they entrained people. For example, his passion was neuroscience so I saw him get quite excited a few times saying things like (and I paraphrase) "look, look, the practitioner is touching that point in the sacrum but vectoring up to the neck and it's going to respond in the upper cervical spine" and sure enough it would!
How I first became interested in neuroplasticity.
I completed my degree in anatomy at the University of New South Wales and received first-class honours in 1989. My thesis was titled “Neuroplasticity In The Trigeminal System.” During my research, I discovered a nerve that helped to answer questions that had puzzled scientists for years. I have attended over 40 seminars and workshops on NSA in the United States and Australia between 1990 and 2017. In the early 1990s I made the link between NSA care and it being a form of neoplastic treatment.
Instead of the word ‘treatment’, NSA chiropractors use the word ‘entrainment’ to describe what we do to achieve specific results for our patients.
‘Entrainment is defined by a temporal locking process in which one system's motion or signal frequency entrains the frequency of another system. This process is a universal phenomenon that can be observed in physical (e.g., pendulum clocks) and biological systems (e.g., fire flies). However, entrainment can also be observed between human sensory and motor systems.’ 8
Similar research has now been published about NSA care3. However, rather than using sound, NSA research shows how touches to very specific locations in the spine can entrain self-corrective spinal movement patterns, resulting in numerous health benefits.
An NSA entrainment involves gentle touches to the spine and/or body.
That definition comes from a team of researchers who were studying music therapy. They showed that inherent periodicity of auditory rhythmic patterns could entrain movement patterns in patients with movement disorders.
Similar research has now been published about NSA care3. However, rather than using sound, NSA research shows how touches to very specific locations in the spine can entrain self-corrective spinal movement patterns, resulting in numerous health benefits.
How does the entrainment work?
In order for the second crystal glass to be entrained by the first glass and start vibrating, both must be identical. Even the two gasses in the picture above might not be identical, so if you try this at home, whether or not it works will depend upon the quality of the glass.
To answer that question I'd like to use a common example of entrainment. Have you ever put two identical crystal glasses near but not touching each other then tapped just one of them gently with something like a teaspoon? If you have tried this, you may have noticed that when you stop the vibration of the one you tapped by touching it with your fingers, you’ll be able to hear the other one making the same sound that the original glass made. This happens even though you did not touch the second glass. It is because the second glass picked up the vibration from the first glass. This can only occur if both glasses are exactly the same size and made of the same material. Only only then will they have precisely the same pitch and be able to respond to the vibration of the glass that was tapped by the spoon. When this happens, we say the first glass entrained the second glass.
I used to do this a lot as a child and most people I ask say they have done this as a child because they were fascinated by the process. It will also work with two identical tuning falks. If you have not tried it please give it a go and please let me know how it goes!
In NSA, we utilise this entrainment process to achieve something similar in the spine and body by matching the force at one point in the spine with the force (or tension) in the target location. When done correctly, it will create a self-corrective response at the target location. It can take a while to achieve this which is why you'll notice the practitioner's finger or thumb contact will be used in different locations and for different lengths of time. It takes longer for this to develop in some people compared to others, yet many people find it exciting when their body learns this process, even if they are one of the people that has so much stiffness and other issues that must first change before these powerful mechanisms of self-correction can begin to appear during the NSA entrainment session. In these cases it can require more visits per week over a longer period of time before the brain can learn to overcome those barriers to change.
Think of it like learning anything worthwhile like playing an instrument. We have a term for those that learn some specific task more quickly than others and we say "She's a natural". And we also know that just because someone does not "pick it up" right away, it does not mean they won't learn to play the instrument beautifully if they work harder at it.
Practice members versus patients.
Another curious aspect of NSA care terminology is that instead of using the word ‘patient’, which implies there is something wrong with the person receiving NSA care, NSA partitioners will often use the term ‘practice member’. This is because, while many people with severe pain and physical limitations benefit therapeutically from NSA care, other people without any symptoms at all, choose to receive NSA care because it helps them in other ways. This can be things like stress reduction, enhanced muscle strength, less sense of stiffness and greater flexibility. In fact, the Blanks study listed below concluded that NSA care led to a very large improvement in quality of life. I discuss the types of benefits that were seen by those researchers in my article called Gentle & Effective Chiropractic Care in Canberra.
Can neuroplastic treatment deliver results even when years of trying other methods have not?
In my experience, if you’re in this situation and have not yet given up hope, you may already be looking for a very different treatment approach. An effective neuroplastic treatment such as NSA care might provide a solution because it can be very different to conventional treatments.
A primary objective I bring to the way I utilise NSA care is to correct the cause of symptoms. Many other practitioners also look to correct the cause of symptoms, but if that has not worked for you, then it may be that the methods used did not sufficiantly change the way your nervous system is functioning. That is, it may not be a strongly neuroplastic treatment.
Why might a neuroplastic method work for you?
Your brain plays a vital role in controlling every function of your body. Together with the spinal cord and nerves, the brain not only controls things like balance and movement but regulates our level of sensitivity to painful stimuli. This is known as our 'pain threshold'. NSA care appears to be very effective at reducing tenderness levels. I test and document tenderness levels on all my patients, therefore I can say with confidence, that at least nine out of every ten people notice reduced tenderness in over a dozen points in their spine and body immediately after their first NSA entrainment session.
For some people, physical and/or emotional trauma, whether as a one-off event or repetitive trauma, has unconsciously taught their brain and body to be overly guarded. This could also be the case for you.
Being overly guarded can lead to a lower pain threshold which results in having more pain because a lower pain threshold means you only need a very small event such as a bump or even emotional stress to trigger pain.
My hypothesis
Please note, that having a hypothesis is just the start of the scientific method. To prove a hypotheses usually takes many years of research. There is an interesting discussion on this concept here that states "When a (certain IT) function was designed, the developers feared that some errors might occur. However, these errors never occur and workers have used it for years." They then go on to explain that the function had never been proven because it may still fail. These discussions go on in philosophical circles, yet for practical purposes, I think it is important to test these things for ourselves if there is evidence it may work when there is a need and the risk of injury is low.
My approach to clinical practice, which includes carefully measuring and documenting multiple functions before and after NSA entrainment, has led me to an important observation. This clinical approach revealed to me, that people with long-term severe pain in multiple areas of their body, often have abnormally low pain thresholds. This has meant they experience pain for either no apparent reason, or they experience pain in the area of old injuries that, according to medical assessment, have "healed well". Even when pain or dysfunction still exists, I have found that I have been able to retrain the brain-body communication in some of these people, so that their pain reduces or, in some cases even resolves. My hypothesis is that the NSA has either helped their nervous system increase the pain threshold and thereby ignore stimulation from minor bumps or other forms of stimulation with the help of NSA care, or the NSA care has reduced the tension in the spine and body resulting in lowered inflammation levels. It could be a combination of both.
To illustrate the connection between tension and inflammation, imagine for a moment that you are carrying a 5kg bag of potatoes in each hand. Instead of just letting it hang by your side, you bend your elbow to 90 degrees and hold it like that for 5 minutes. Can you now imagine the pain building in your bicep muscle? The tension creates inflammation and inflammation creates the pain. The pain reduces within seconds after you put the bags down. Try it out if you have not done something like that in a while and I'm sure you'll experience that for yourself. Three of the tests I perform during the initial consultation are to measure spinal stiffness, muscle tightness and tenderness levels. The stiffness and muscle tightness nearly always reduce to some extent after the first NSA entrainment, which helps to explain why many points of tenderness also very often reduce at the same time.
Evidence for this pain threshold hypotheses has been formulated from:
combining my traditional chiropractic training, which utilised objective measurements such as tenderness, muscles strength and range of motion with new NSA measurements.
quantifying and documenting specific points of tenderness on new patients and at re-evaluations,
rechecking these scores immediately after their first NSA entrainment and observing that tenderness scores noticeably reduced in over 95% of patients during that first NSA entrainment.
adding up all the tenderness scores for ten consecutive patients and finding an average improvement of over 50% in tenderness during the first treatment. I am currently working on publishing the data I have gathered from more than 100 patients.
NSA care as a Neuroplastic Treatment
A neuroplastic treatment is one capable of significantly altering neural pathways which can result in positive changes such as helping the body to gain greater function, repair damage and improve performance.
PAIN THRESHOLDS: Chronic pain can be a result of an abnormally low pain threshold. This is where even a small stimulus, such as a mild irritant, or a minor bump can cause significant prolonged pain. Any treatment that can help the brain to raise an abnormally low pain threshold can be considered a neuroplastic treatment. As noted above, I observe that NSA care appears to be able to achieve this in very effectively in some cases.
Similarly, treatment methods that can help the brain to learn how to strengthen and coordinate movements of the spine, as well as the arms and legs, would also be considered neuroplastic treatments. I have also observed that NSA can achieve those functional changes effectively in some cases.
Every day in my practice, I document the way NSA care, in some cases, can make changes in all of those functions. However, not all neuroplastic treatments are equal in terms of the range of problems and conditions they can address or the consistency of their effectiveness. For example, some types of neuroplastic treatment focus on very specific problems such as balance or vision.
What does the NSA practitioner actually do to generate self-corrective neurological responses in the body?
NSA chiropractors usually avoid putting direct attention (i.e., extra stimulus) into symptomatic areas of the body. This means instead of adjusting, rubbing, doing surgery or injecting the area that is painful, the NSA practitioner endeavours to find ways of encouraging the brain to develop a new self-corrective strategy in those problem areas.
We do this by using the NSA system of spinal analysis to identify and monitor a range of indicators for spinal dysfunction. Some examples of these spinal health indicators include passive spinal stiffness, ankle tension and pelvic distortion. For my evaluation, I also consider other spinal health indicators, including range of motion, tenderness, muscle strength and posture.
Spinal health indicators
I use the following four indicators to find out how to apply gentle thumb or finger pressure along the spine and body. Close attention must be paid to each of this indicators for the person's body to respond.
1. Location of NSA contact: A further system of analysis tells the practitioner exactly where in the patinet’s body, the practitioner’s finger pressure needs to be applied. If this is misplaced by even 1 cm, the response of the patient can be greatly reduced or not occur at all.
Photo by Javardh on Unsplash
"Profound healing is initiated in my patients by gentle touches that can be as light as a feather."
Dr Jason Barritt, (chiroractor)
2. Amount of force applied: This force ranges from between being “as light as a feather” to being quite firm. However, this is usually not more than the finger pressure we can tolerate when pushing on our eyelid when our eye is closed.
3. Length of contact time: In order to develop the desired NSA self-corrective response, the length of time must be varied. Sometimes this needs to be less than a second, while at other times this may need to be held for many seconds.
4. The patient's defensive mechanisms: The patient's defensive mechanisms: We have all had various emotional and physical stresses in our past. I have observed how parents are often surprised to see how much their child’s body has responded to stress by tightening up the muscles in the back and neck. That can then cause pain and even reduce strength and coordination. Increased stiffness between the vertebrae (bones) in the back is another common result of stress. The older we get the more time we have to build up this tightness and tension in our body so it becomes a deeply rooted defensive pattern that can take considerable time and effort to change. This is where a neuroplastic treatment method can be an ideal choice.
Long term tension and tightness can create resistance to positive change. In some cases, this can be due to tension in the nerves. Some people can release this type of tension very quickly, while others need considerably more "brain training" in order to learn a new way for the brain and body to interact before the stiffness and tightness can be released.
If you were to receive NSA care form me, one of my primary goals would be to retrain parts of your brain and nervous system so your body could learn how to reduce or even eliminate abnormal function that may be the cause of your current symptoms. The Blanks study found NSA care resulted in not only symptom reduction, but also a large improvement in overall health and well-being for a high percentage of people.
This very gentle method is designed to:
teach the body to develop well defined, self-corrective spinal movements;
create proactive self-correction of the spine and body, which in a high percentage of people leads to profound improvements in health, even in cases where the person has not been able to make progress in the past;
redefine how the body and brain communicate, underpinning the concept that positive change can occur in the nervous system, even with a non-intrusive and gentle approach such as NSA care. Researchers have found that NSA care can achieve this, for example, “...the sEMG (surface electromyography) signal of NSA reveals a new class of complex nonlinear dynamic behaviour..." ²
develop increasingly stronger and more complex self-corrective spinal movements.
Improved human function, performance & health
The more complex these self-corrective movements become, the more your nervous system will learn new ways of refining how it functions. I have discovered how to help the brain and nervous system to target problem areas in the body. In some cases, this approach can then lead to enhanced capacity for extraordinary functional and symptomatic improvement.
Flexibility is one of the human spine's important attributes. Chiropratic care can help to maintain your range of motion and overall mobility.
This ability of NSA care to create positive neuroplastic change is well illustrated by the following excerpt from another scientific paper:
‘...the synaptic strengths are adjusted, the neural pathways are established, and consequently, the signal becomes less random.”³ In essence, these scientists are saying that potentially, there can be very positive neurological changes resulting from NSA care.’
Many practitioners say they are treating the cause, not just the symptom. Here’s a few things to look out for that may help you to better asses whether or not there is actually evidence for that assertion.
A major difference between NSA care as a particularly strong neuroplastic treatment approach compared to some other treatment methods, is that the practitioner seeks to help the patient's body identify areas of dysfunction and develop a proactive process of self-correction in order to minimise those dysfunctions. A process that, over time, most people will feel happening within their spine and body as well as be able to see it happening.
Imagine that you have injured a part of your back or neck, or perhaps your shoulder, wrist, hip, knee, ankle or even your jaw. My approach would be to help your spine learn to respond to NSA care, which involves creating spontaneous self perpetuating contractions in the spine. This usually starts by the person responding to my gentle touches with increased breath in a stiff area of their back or neck. When this is repeated one, two or three times per week for a few weeks, it can develop into movements between individual vertebrae (AKA backbones). These are points of oscillation. Once that occurs, my goal is to direct your nervous system's attention into the problem area and develop self-corrective movements in that location. In my experience, this process can create some very positive results.
This approach can be an ideal way to correct the cause of stubborn debilitating symptoms and/or mild to severe physical limitations. I think this is because NSA care utilises very different physical assessment tools. I also use several more traditional chiropractic assessment tools. These tools help me, as the practitioner, to identify both obvious and subtle dysfunction in the spine that may not only be causing symptoms like pain, numbness and tingling etc, but to also identify spinal dysfunctions that are causing performance limitations. The following physical limitations that may improve with this approach includes poor physical endurance, weakness, non-optimal coordination, as well as mental/emotional, life enjoyment that diminished overall quality of life. Those performance limitations are discussed in my article titled “NSA Care Research at Irvine College of Medicine”
You may be like many of my patients who notice improvement in at least some of these dysfunctions immediately after their very first consultation. For example, given symptoms are the body’s alarm bells alerting us to abnormal function, when NSA care enables the brain to improve the way the body functions, the body is in a better state to be able to reduce symptoms, even if they have been present for many years.
The NSA care approach can also be different to may other methods of health care in the following way. Rather than look for a tight muscle and rub, stretch, dry needle it or inject a drug into it, with the goal of forcing the muscle to relax or the inflammation to go away without necessarily having corrected the cause of those issues, the NSA practitioner utilises a system of analysis and treatment consisting of gentle touches done in a special way, so the brain and body can learn to make its own corrections.
Downside Or Benefit?
Please note: Some people find there is a down side to the neuroplastic approach. This is because in come cases it can require more frequent treatment sessions in order for the nervous system to "learn" how to function differently. NSA care can pose the same challenge. While sometimes it will deliver very rapid symptom relief when other methods did not deliver any relief, but for many people it is slower to achieve this. In some cases, I think this can happen because my main focus during the first few entrainment sessions, is to identify and minimise dysfunction, not just to suppress symptoms. That approach can be particularly problematic if it allows the cause of those symptoms to fester in the background only to come back with a vengeance later. Having studied and practiced chiropractic and worked with thousands of people for over 30 years, I have come across many people who, quite understandably, find themselves in a situation where they can’t afford the time or money to thoroughly identify and resolve their issues by focussing on the enhancement of function and performance. They simply need to get back to work by minimising symptoms and choose to worry about the deeper issues later.
If that might be a concern for you, it does not mean I am not going to be able to give you rapid relief and perhaps provide that more quickly than some other approaches to health care. Therefore, it could still be a good idea to take a look at my website’s Services Page for the article called consultation options. You may then decide between the Low-cost Initial Consultation or my Full Initial Chiropractic Consultation. Some people have found it useful when I am bale to show them areas of dysfunction in their body because this can then help them make decisions about their treatment going forward, even if that is with another practitioner.
How long will It take to feel better?
I'd like to make one last comment about this issue of how quickly you might respond to NSA care. I estimate that well over 50% of my patients notice some symptomatic improvement after their very first NSA entrainment. I can also confidently say, and indeed all clinical records of hundreds of my patients document, that at least 90% of people do gain some degree of noticeably improved function on their very first NSA entrainment, even if they didn’t notice positive symptomatic changes.
The fact that some people can gain significant functional improvement and not reduce symptoms on their very first NSA entrainment session, is why I always set up an extended consultation 3 to 4 weeks into the treatment program so we can discuss your progress. I find, that even for those few people who have not yet noticed symptomatic improvement by that time, they will do so during that discussion. How do they do that you may be asking? It's because when we look at my detailed notes quantifying their symptoms from the first consultation, I am usually able to help them see that they have in fact made significant symptomatic improvement. While this only happens in a small fraction of cases, it can be because they initially had multiple symptoms, and when a couple of those improve, the remaining symptoms dominate their awareness and they didn't notice the progress.
Some people continue with NSA care well after their symptoms are gone. The gentle forces applied by the NSA practitioner is given in a special sequence that can stimulate the brain to improve the way it is communicating with the parts of the body that are functioning abnormally. This means the abnormal pattern of communication between the brain and spinal cord with the muscles, tendons and potentially even the organs of the body, which initially led to symptoms, may then start to normalise. What many of my patients have discovered, is that while they no longer have symptoms, they can still make further progress toward a state of greater wellbeing with NSA care. This is like a musician who already plays the piano very well but wants to feel the joy of playing even better. Please note, your health insurance usually only pays for “treatment of symptoms” and not for “wellness care”.
Creating an active strategy of self-correction with 'The Network Wave’
A 2016 study investigated the spinal wave phenomenon termed The Network Wave. This involves a visible undulation and specific rocking movement of spinal segments, which is elicited through gentle contacts in a defined sequence to the spine at specific areas.”³ The Network Wave phenomenon has been developed within NSA protocols. The word ‘wave’ comes from the fact that the recipient can experience, and the observer can see, an obvious wave-like movement that runs from one end of the spine to the other during an NSA treatment session in people who have achieved a higher level of response from their NSA care.
When walking, a horse has three hooves on the ground most of the time. Trotting, cantering and galloping each use totally different CPGs resulting in changes to the patterns of leg movement.
When galloping, like the horse in the picture above, there are times when there are no hooves touching the ground. This never happens when walking or trotting.
Measuring "The Network Wave" – a new scientific discovery
The Network Wave has been studied⁴ since 1998 ‘through the use of surface electromyography (sEMG) to measure the electrical changes in the muscle system. Since 1998, sEMG has been used as a window into the central nervous system.’ ³
Researchers have analysed the sEMG signal to determine whether The Network Wave had different attributes based upon the NSA levels of care.⁵ Another study published in 2009 concluded that ‘the objectively established fact that the signals become less random and more predictable can be interpreted to reveal a better “organization” of the neural circuitry at advanced levels of care.”⁶
New mathematical approaches were developed by Irvine College of Medicine scientists to further understand the phenomenon of The Network Wave⁷. Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) are found in all vertebrate animals, of which humans are a member. A CPG enables complex patterns of movement to feel automatic to the person or animal engaging the movement.
NSA researchers discovered a CPG in the human spine that was previously unknown. It was first reported in 2016 by Senzen et.al.³
You can think of a CPG as being like gears in a car. Let’s use a horse as a way to understand this more easily. A horse has 4 CPGs in its nervous system that predetermines its four unique patterns of movement. These are walking, trotting, cantering and galloping. The horse selects totally different CPGs, for each different speed range. That is similar to what we do when we change gears in a car. However, unlike gears, each CPG does not simply determine speed through ratios between cogs. Instead, this is achieved in horses and other animals, by being able to choose between different patterns of leg movement.
Practice makes perfect
At the beginning of this article, I quoted researcher and psychiatrist Dr Norman Doidge. He was talking about the early discoveries in the science of neuroplasticity. He wrote "They showed that the brain changed its very structure with each different activity performed, perfecting its circuits, so it was better suited to the task at hand." I find that I am able to document at least some functional improvement in the very first NSA entrainment for at least 90% of my patients.
“There’s no way around hard work. Embrace it. You have to put in the hours because there is always something you can improve on”
Roger Federer
These people are also usually able to observe those functional improvements during their first NSA session. However, it's also important for me to let you know that, just as Dr Doidge points out how it's a process of perfecting the neural circuits; in other words, something that people need to learn over time and it's usually not an immediate magic bullet, so too is NSA care a learning process. The positive changes tend to become more significant and last longer with repeated 'lessons'. This means regular NSA entrainment sessions are usually needed over a period of several weeks in order to learn the self-corrective process.
If you are looking for someone to “fix” you in one or two sessions, then NSA care may not be for you. While I have had cases where a severe long term symptom has disappeared on the first session and never returned, that is unusual.
If you have stubborn long term health issues such as ‘chronic pain’, ‘severe generalised tenderness’, ‘pins and needles’ or scoliosis, just to name a few, and are looking for a very different approach that may offer a solution, then NSA care could be a good fit for you. A primary goal of mine is to help your body learn an enhanced strategy of self-correction. This is how I have been able to help many hundreds of people to heal from old trauma or dysfunction that developed from so called 'bad' habits. Bad habits can be things like poor posture, sitting on your wallet, spending many hours in a chair or matress that does not support you properly.
Another positive feature of NSA care is that once your body learns its strategy of self-correction, then this learned strategy tends to remain so the reduced symptoms as well as improved function enables you to perform better. This is why, at the Body Mind Empowerment Centre, we say that we want to help you to Move better, Feel better, and LIVE BETTER.
The choice will always be yours:
Some people still find it beneficial and enjoyable to receive NSA care regularly, even after their major symptoms have abated. This is usually at a reduced frequency such as once a month.
Others feel like it has helped them to meet their health goals and so stop care all together.
Dr Jason W. Barritt B.Sc (Hons) DC
Chiropractor
© Optimal Health Centre Pty Ltd February 2022 (All rights reserved)
Further reading
- View NSA entrainment demonstrations in our video library.
- Read my summary of the Blanks study 1. In this summary article, I explain the evidence that supports NSA care and how it can reduce symptoms and enhance overall performance, such as strength, endurance, flexibility and range of motion, as well as support positive mental and emotional states. While individual results cannot be guaranteed, the Blanks study found 95% of 2018 NSA research subjects reported their expectations had been met.
Book your initial low-cost consultation
During my 20-minute low-cost initial consultation you will receive:
several gentle, non-invasive tests that can help me know if you have spinal problems that may be the cause of your symptoms, and
demonstrate how your overall physical performance may be connected to specific problems in your spine.
If I am able to find that connection, then I am confident in my ability to use NSA care as an appropriate and potentially very effective next step for you on your healing journey.
Request your initial consultation now...
References:
(1) Blanks, R.H.; Shuster, T.L.; Dobson, M.A. Retrospective Assessment of Network Care Using a Survey of Self-Related Health, Wellness and Quality of Life, Journal of Vertebral Subluxation Research, 1997,Vol. 1, No. 4, p. 15-31.
(2) Jonckheere, E.A.; Losoonthorn, P.; Boone, R. (2003). “Dynamic modeling of spinal electromyographic activity during various conditions.” Proceedings of the 2003 American Control Conference. 1:465-470.
(3) Senzen S, Epstein D, Lemberger D. The Network Spinal Wave as a Central Pattern Generator. J Altern Complement Med. 2016 Jul 1; 22(7): 544–556
(4) Bohacek S, Jonckheere E. Chaotic modeling in network spinal analysis: preliminary report. Nonlinear canonical correlation with alternating conditional expectation (ACE). J Vert Subl Res 1998;2:188–195
(5) Jonckheere E, Bohacek S. Chaotic modeling in network spinal analysis: mathematical classification of levels 1, 2, 3 patients. Los Angeles: Department of Electrical Engineering and Department of Mathematics, University of Southern California; 2000
(6) Jonckheere E. Network spinal analysis. J Altern Complement Med. 2009;15:469–470
(7) Jonckheere E, Lohsoonthorn P. Dymamical modeling in network spinal analysis: bursting versus background mode discrimination. Los Angeles: Department of Electrical Engineering Systems, University of Southern California; 2002
(8) Michael H Thaut 1, Gerald C McIntosh 2, Volker Hoemberg 3
Neurobiological foundations of neurologic music therapy: rhythmic entrainment and the motor system, Front Psychol, 2015 Feb 18;5:1185