#127: How Functional Neurology Helps You Heal | Dr. Paul Link
A doctor of functional neurology joins us to explain a new, cutting edge healing science that’s used to heal dysfunction in our bodies and minds, and help us live and perform at our best. It’s already being used by professional athletes and even Navy SEALs.
We dive into what it is and how it can help you, plus:
Why people from divorced families struggle more in relationships from a scientific standpoint
Why one-size-fits-all doesn’t work with healing - it must be personal and custom
3 amazing stories of people who’ve benefited from functional neurology, including a
boy who was confined to a wheelchair that was able to walk
American Chiropractic Neurology Board
American College Functional Neurology
Links & Resources
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TRANSCRIPT
Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!
Joey:[00:00:00] I'm joined today by a doctor of functional neurology. It's a new and cutting edge healing science that's used to heal dysfunction in our bodies and in our minds and really just help us to live and perform at our best. And it's already being used by professional athletes in hockey, football, and basketball, and even by Navy SEALs.
And so in this episode, we dive into what it is and how it can help you. Plus we touch on why people from divorced families struggle more in relationships from a bit of a scientific. Point of view. We also discuss why a one size fits all approach to healing just doesn't work. It really needs to be personalized and customize each person.
And my guest also shares three amazing stories of people who've benefited a ton from functional neurology, including a boy who is actually confined to a wheelchair that was then able to walk. Thanks to the therapy, really good stuff. Stay with us. Welcome to the Restored Podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents divorce, separation, or broken family, so you can break the cycle.
I'm your host, Joey Panarelli. This is Episode [00:01:00] 127.
We're so thrilled that so many of you found the podcast helpful and even healing. We've heard awesome stories, awesome feedback. One listener said this. I love your podcast. I listened to one of the episodes today and found it very engaging and professional. I sent a link to the podcast to people I know who need it.
Thanks again for the amazing work you are doing. Again, we're so happy to hear that it's been helpful and even healing. We do it for you.
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My guest today is Dr. Paul Link. He's a functional [00:03:00] neurologist and director of clinical education at NeuroSync, as well as a staff clinician at St. Joseph's Chiropractic in Steubenville, Ohio, and CERO, S E R O in Canada. He has published over 100 papers and case studies in neurology, ranging from concussion, ADHD, mood disorders, and various genetic conditions.
Uh, he applies an approach of without drugs and surgery to neurology and wellness by using eye movements and other neurologic pathways to assist in brain health and healing. Really fascinating conversation. Here's my conversation with Dr. Paul.
Joey: Dr. Paul, welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. I'm really excited for this conversation.
Dr. Paul:when, when you reached out, uh, you know, realizing, uh, doing a lot of work on your background and looking into, I realized this is not only incredible, but it's an incredible opportunity for me to not just spread the word of functional neurology, but, uh, get a chance to learn from, uh, Another patient demographic and population.
I've been working a lot with so I think it's going to be a great from both [00:04:00] ends
Joey: I appreciate that. And now I just heard a little bit about functional neurology. I know I mentioned to you that. A couple of siblings of mine have been through some functional neurology treatment for some injuries, but also just kind of general health. And, I am really intrigued by what they've told me so far, but I really don't know a lot about it.
So I'm going to be learning alongside our audience to this conversation, which I'm excited about. So starting out, you know, we have this audience of people who come from broken families, whether it's just a lot of dysfunction at home or their parents, you know, maybe are divorced. And so I'm curious, like, why should they care about what we're about to talk about
Dr. Paul: When it comes
to when it comes to functional neurology I think one of the best ways to look at it is not just that it applies solely to those who are sick or going through avenues of health abnormalities or anything because you know One of the things that makes functional neurology unique and what it is in general is if you can imagine living in a in the gray zone.
You know, a lot of the most medical community when everything is, it's black or it's white, you know, you pass this test or you didn't and nothing more than that. I mean, there's plenty of [00:05:00] times you go for health screenings. You're doing lab work and everything is showing up. It's either good or it's out of range and nothing in between, you know If you can imagine functional neurology And this sort of triage we've been able to create with our colleagues and and everything in our in our clinics is that we're taking that gray area and Making that applicable to the masses So you don't necessarily have to have had a recent concussion or a patient with autism. I mean, the, the subset of population you could reach is, is honestly infinite. I mean, we've seen people, and I've been fortunate to see people over the years from Olympic athletes. Uh, you named the professional champion. you know, he had this celebrity world preparing for movie roles all the way down to even just, uh, you know, fortune 500 CEOs or average Joe in business who just realizes that There's little finite things that's making their day to day off. And that could cost the company millions of dollars, or that could cost them their contract year and their [00:06:00] final year of play all the way down to this could be a major, driving point from them to go from maybe in a wheelchair to having their own control of their activities, daily living. So there's, there's no, avenue that can't reach to, and it's really just taking those little fine tunings.
And once you understand the neurology and how to apply it. whatever patients in front of you could start clean slate and just kind of direct care as you need be, um, and pulling from a lot of other professions. And that's kind of what makes it unique is that it really is that combination between T. O.
T. Athletic training, classic neurology. It's taking all these avenues and just You know, like a Venn diagram placing the overlap and just pulling the tools that you need.
Joey: So good. I've been thinking more lately about this whole idea of kind of like psychological drag or just drag in life. Meaning, you know, you imagine if you're trying to run fast. You can run fast. you know, in a lot of scenarios, except if you have like an injury or maybe you're running and you have a [00:07:00] parachute on your back and you're trying to run really fast, but you're not really getting anywhere to, to me, it almost seems like in life when we, when there's all this like untreated trauma on the emotional end, or maybe some physiological, you know, problems that we're just overlooking or ignoring.
Um, it creates that drag in our life. So we want to run fast. We want to get up the mountain. We want to, you know, do all these things. And yet we have all these problems that are holding us back. And so I think it's, uh, I'm so glad we're having this conversation because I think healing can't just be one sided too.
It needs to be multidimensional. And that's what I hear that you guys do in your profession, which is amazing. So I know, I'm sure you have so much to say to that. I wanted to, and we'll dive deeper into all of this, but I wanted to just kind of start with the definition, like what is functional neurology and why did you in particular get into it?
Dr. Paul: And so functional neurology Is that application between taking the classic neurology and it's really applying that without drugs and surgery So you're applying neurology by looking at the five to six senses you have, you know Not the sixth sense [00:08:00] like the like one of the very good movies with hailey joel But you're looking at the sixth sense we'll call it the vestibular system, right?
So you're just taking You Your visual system, your hearing, your sensation to touch, smell, right? You're, you're taking these systems and you're understanding how they really enter the brain what the outputs are of them from there. So you're looking at the bedside and you're looking at, you know, one of the things that we utilize the most of is eye movement. Because if you're talking about, the eyes are the window to the soul, you know, the window to the brain. So you're going to get majority of your information that's going to keep you alive. Okay. off your visual information. from there you can utilize, and we're not looking at you, what you'd have from an optometrist or an ophthalmologist, but rather we're looking at those fine motor movements.
What are the fine tunings that make this eye movement in particular intricate. And then every little defect or deficiency in there. Tells us that an area of the brain is not working so well. So you're just taking the [00:09:00] senses and you're taking those classical bedside examinations from, okay, touch my finger, touch your nose. And you're not just saying, okay, yes, they check those boxes, but we're looking at a little bit more fine tune to say, well, did they touch it with the fingertip? Was there a little bit of a tremor? Was it smooth? Did they miss? Was one area a little bit faster or slower? Because every one of those little deficiencies or inadequacies is going to tell you a lot about what's going on in the brain. And then you're just taking those areas and understanding where in the brain it's working well and which areas aren't, now how does that apply to that individual's needs? Are they the hockey player that's trying to get ready for the game? Or are they, you know, Joe the accountant who's having difficulty because all of a sudden he's realizing that he's carrying numbers over in the wrong way? And you can find any little flaw in these areas of the pathways and apply to it as much as, you know, they're, they're so far off that they're trying to get back to work with their life, or they're already that super high functional athlete is trying to do it in [00:10:00] performance enhancement and actually kind of we talked about before, which is, which is funny because it's similar enough, is, you know, I've always described it as like, imagine you're you know, you're gonna run a 40 yard dash and you just be running, you know, your time is whatever, five seconds. Now take the same thing and take those, you know, goggles from the D. A. R. E. program and put them on. You know, you're going every which way, you're off in traffic, you're falling, stumbling. It's the same area. If your brain, because the three main jobs is to take the world in, process it, and respond to it. If there's deficiencies in any one of those, then anything you do It's just a consequence of an area of the brain not working so well. Some of those could be heart arrhythmias, they could be increased or decreased hormone production, issues, any and everything, reading problems. I mean, there is no deficiency. That you can't look at, at least by analyzing the brain and getting a pretty darn good jumpstart to what's going on.
Joey: Fascinating. Uh, I'm so excited to learn more and to get into kind of the nitty gritty practicals of the [00:11:00] day to day and how you'd treat someone. We'll, we'll get to that. Um, but I am curious, you know, when, yeah, I, I'm, I'm excited to, um, to get into all that, but I, I wanted to ask about the, um, difference between maybe traditional neurology, which I think a lot of people will think of when they hear, you know, the word neurology. So how does maybe your training and your experience differ from a traditional neurologist?
Dr. Paul: Yeah, so, and I know one thing, Jack, was where did my background come from? So, if you look at traditional neurology, majority of traditional neurology, and it's certainly not knocked on the system, but majority of traditional neurology is understanding and looking at things through certain imaging, it could be CT, MRI, and trying to find those certain flaws.
But you have to realize in majority of traditional neurology, their job is to make sure that you are going to be alive. As long as you are without traumas and everything is going to be fine from that application, that is pretty darn efficient and sufficient for that time. Functional neurology is really dealing in the finite and getting you back to [00:12:00] your highest health state. And my background from there came similar enough, but honestly by somewhat of a mistake, um, I was in school. I went to college, interestingly, to bowl and golf, but I went there. So my background is, uh, biology and analytical chemistry. Um, and then from there, I was fortunate enough to work on some of the early beginnings of the human genome project and some, some mice studies with different strains with. Um, autism and some of the original BTBR strains and, you know, this one has, uh, some, some corpus callosum difficulties um, and lesions. So I was fortunate to come out of that world, um, and in the beginnings of the human genome project, everyone felt that if we could get an understanding of certain allele structures, and we can get an idea of the code. And we could program out and figure out what areas of this is making a particular protein abnormality that's causing someone to have Parkinson's or if we find the [00:13:00] autism gene, you know, we're going to really be able to turn the world and very early on. They realized that it doesn't work so easily that way.
And it's, it's gonna be much more difficult to get that. And we also realized on, I was fortunate to have some very good guidance in the beginning. And one of the professors had said if you right now you have no financial obligations, you have no reason to be here. You're a junior in college. I think some of the answers are going to be in neurology. There's a course coming up. It was a neuro function. Uh, a uh, neurophysiology of pain. If you like that course, I think maybe neurology would be for you and head the route of med school. So. did it took that course. My background was not whatsoever in, uh, neurology or anatomy. Uh, a nurse, dad's a mortician.
So I was around health from every avenues. And that's kind of where I did majority of my schoolwork and studying was just sitting in a doctor's office. And so I saw it from the big picture, but I'd never been around neurologist or town didn't have one. So to me, that was an un, uh, sort of an unrouted area.
So. All [00:14:00] I did was just take that course and realize this makes a whole lot of sense to me. Uh, applied and was getting ready to go for, uh, you know, an MD PhD. And about a month before school was working at a golf course where I did for about 10 years, mowing fairways and, you know, everything. And, it took a little break in like the early, early days of YouTube back.
And it was just like, you know, cats playing on the piano. And I went on there and found a video that we had watched, um, in school, uh, About this, uh, about this little girl, she was on Oprah, and she had, uh, Aledinia. just thought, well, let me rewatch was really interesting. Let me see if I can just, you know, spend my time reading a little bit here while I'm waiting. I came across a video of Dr. Kerrig when he was doing his, uh, Connie Chung interview and realized, um, you know, whatever whatever he's doing, don't have anything about his background, but whatever he's doing, this is the route I want to go found out, um, he was, uh, a chiropractor and then I thought that's what I need to do.
And about an hour later, I emailed the [00:15:00] school and said, I'm not coming and. a few months off and waited for the next course to come through and went the route to be a chiropractor as a base and then went and took courses for the Kerrigan Institute and realized later on Dr. Kerrig was so much more.
He was, you know, never to step over that. He was the founding father of functional neurology and created everything from the ground up and just an absolute. brilliant mind that gave us all a tremendous foundation to build upon. and I was fortunate later on to go, um, work for him and Dr. Antonucci at Plasticity and have a great background that the first patients I saw, and really the only cases I saw were ones that. Um, had been, you know, 10, 12 different places and, you know, I've been to you name the clinic and didn't get the results they wanted. So it made some of the work a little bit more difficult, but in a way, it gave a lot of avenues that we realized there's so many areas over here that these patients are going through very common diagnoses, or at least different types of diagnostic procedures. But they're missing a [00:16:00] very large picture that's giving a lot of our answers. So we're able to just super specialize into that. And that was I was very fortunate that my first job, um, right out of school, actually, while I was in school, was just being around, you know, some of the most brilliant minds in neurology and allowed me to publish a lot of papers and research.
But that gave me a very, uh, quick education into the application of neurology from the textbook that you don't see. So. That's where my background came out of. It was, it was really more than from genetics, right to neurology and, and then just really seeing the overlap from the cellular level. So, also kind of also demonstrates that there, there is no avenue that you, you can't go into.
Joey: Wow. What a story. And. I'm so grateful for people like you and the doctors you, you know, you studied with, and I saw that you've done a ton of research on this as well. Like you've published so many papers, things like that too. So it's just so fascinating. And, um, what a privilege to, to just be at the forefront of this kind of new, uh, field of [00:17:00] study and, and the way in which you're helping people.
So my goodness, I'm honored to talk with you. I, uh, I wanted to. Maybe paint a little bit of a clearer picture on top of what you've already explained about kind of what parts of the body, function neurology focuses on. You already mentioned the senses and the sixth sense, like you said. Um, take us a little bit deeper there.
Dr. Paul: Yeah, so if you could imagine, we talked about it a little bit, there's, there's no limitations to neurology, but imagine a situation where, let's say an individual is going through, oh, they're about to do some public speaking and, you know, you're about to give that speech or, or, you know, you're about to hit that golf ball, whatever it might be.
And then the heart rate starts going. Nothing in your environment is necessarily abnormal. You could be around people that you're completely comfortable with, but just an interpretation of settings around you allowed for different little intricacies in that autonomic nervous system that now the heart rate's going.
You start to, you know, pupil [00:18:00] sweat. And then performance can lack. Some people will develop certain stutters. Some people will, you know, the golf swing change, all these little intricacies that could occur are motor responses because of a poor interpretation of an environment. Or you can look at also the emotional system, how it plays a role.
Because one of the ways that we look at it is if you can imagine the emotional system being treated just like a motor pathway, no different than if I were to reach out and shake your hand and you would say, okay, well, I'd want to reach my hand out and extend it, you know, grasp and then release and pull back.
You would just look at that and realize the systems that were involved in the frontal lobe and some of the areas in the back part of our brain or cell realm to navigate that and make sure it was nice and smooth and rhythmic. Well, that same type of process is occurring. But in this case, the motor pathway is a limbic response, happiness, sadness.
fear, anxiety. It's, although a little bit different, very, [00:19:00] very similar in terms of its application. So you can have people who, you know, they're getting these different arrhythmias or You look at people who have, um, POTS is a great example, you know, postural orthostatic tachycardic syndrome, where their heart rate increases or decreases based upon perception of gravity.
So now you can see the little intricacies where the vestibular system, the areas in your inner ear, how they have a direct influence to postural responses. Because if you were to be laying down, you would imagine that would be a relaxed state and your heart rate would respond as such. But if you were going to sit up and be involved in an activity, you can imagine you'd want to have a blood pressure and heart rate and rhythm that would match that.
Well, if these areas brainstem, are not responding to the environment appropriately, then any output you could have is going to have these aberrancies. And that's why we can look at almost everything, regardless if a person has Parkinson's, concussion, [00:20:00] had, uh, trauma in the past. And we've, you know, um, prior to, to me becoming a functional neurologist long before, and actually then recent, I've been fortunate, um, some of my other current jobs working with, uh, the Navy SEALs and, uh, Uh, the rangers and and a few other components of the military where we can look at these people and not only are they utilizing functional neurology.
for their return to play or their return to battle, but they're also looking at it as how can we get them after they retire after their discharge, how can we get them back into being those, you know, functional members of society because, you know, we hear unfortunate the trauma and the horror stories of, you know, our vets, they go out and represent and serve our country so well, but then they come back and we have these emotional distresses that we can put them in the correct environment.
everything could be and comfort and they're back home. Yet we still have these aberrancies in response. And we realized some of it's not just the environment, but we have to be able to access these [00:21:00] deeper, older parts of our brain that are survival driven. So again, you can realize that there's, there's no, um, areas that you can't serve, but because of that, if we're just looking at those little intricacies, you could see that you can have someone that, That looks like a cardiovascular problem or it mimics, um, changes in, um, you know, you know, we, we've seen changes in, um, pregnancy rates.
We've seen people with changes of different, uh, hormone outputs, increased testosterone or estrogen levels. That are, and certainly not in all cases, but they are, some of them, uh, brain driven responses, and you address these areas of the brain, and the successes are right there, and then when you have, which we're fortunate in, um, in our clinic in Ohio to combine where we say, if we take functional neurology with functional medicine and trauma therapy, and you combine this triad, I mean, you have an incredible response where now you're addressing everything from not only the neurologic, but the [00:22:00] metabolic and a direct input in the, in the limbic system, and I mean, it's just home run time and time again.
Joey: So good. No, I love the holistic approach, and I think so many people would agree that, I hope one day it's everyone would agree, that uh, You know, so much of our medical system is just so like segmented and siloed and we don't look at the human body, the human person like through this holistic lens and that's what I hear you saying, which is like so, so good.
And it's so wise to it makes sense that you're the work that you're doing would be so effective. Because it's not just looking at, you know, an individual symptom and being like, well, it must be this because of this and this, but it's like really saying, well, what else is going on? And, you know, how, yeah.
So I just love the holistic approach.
Dr. Paul: Zach, could you look at, I mean, an example you hear talk about, like in the orthopedic world and PT and OT where they talk like the kinetic change, someone has a knee issue. but it could be coming from the hip or the low back or the ankle. It's really a theory, just neurology's kinetic chain application.
It is those avenues because we could see it time and time again where, uh, you know, I'm a big sports fan and I've [00:23:00] set a game a couple of weeks ago. Won't say which team, but probably easy to find. Um, watched one of my, uh, big MVPs drop down with a knee injury. And was that a knee problem or was that from different areas of the ankle?
You know, big football fan. I'm fortunate to work with some of the leagues and teams, but, um, you know, I've watched some of the players that are on my beloved team, which if you look around close, some of you will find out where they have some soft tissue injuries, and they've been dealing with these for their whole career, and you look and realize, is it a soft tissue issue, which it could be, or if we addressed all these areas in the gym, and we're still having these soft tissue complaints, is it a neurologic response that we Aren't getting the information to the muscles in time and then the output is delayed, you know, no different than we talked about those derogatory before, you know, what if an individual feels as though they're tilted this position and if you were to walk around like this all day, he would certainly have contraction of muscles over here because you'd be trying to pull yourself up all day long.
So if you were going around [00:24:00] because you had a perceived, um, portion of gravity where you felt like you were leaning to the right, as an example. Okay. All of a sudden, you're going to have not only shortened muscles on that right side and elongated ones on the left, but you'd also have a lot of reflexogenic responses all day long trying to pull you left, even though you are up and down, you're perceiving it opposite.
So every response you make would be different, at which point now we're having these, holes and these tears of hamstrings and everything left and right in the league because we're looking at things sometimes solely from a soft tissue response. But if we put someone on these balance plates and we looked at centers of pressure and we combine that with our analysis of eye movements, we can get a better perception as to where does this person feel like they are in space.
and where space is around them, now we can get a better application as to what they should be responding to. And now some of the injury prevention can look a whole lot different. And it's not just, again, in the sports world, that's in everyday life. If you [00:25:00] perceive, um, a new relationship as being, um, you know, tarnished for whatever reason, because it resembles someone you knew before, that's not giving a fresh, clean slate to this new person.
But if we can allow these areas of the brain to have a better interpretation of what's the current environment and be allowed to interpret your settings in a much different way. Some of these responses of PTSD or trauma responses from adoption and everything like that, you know, we can solve these a lot quicker or at least help them along where Um, we're still using traditional therapy responses, but because we're addressing the areas of the brain in conjunction with that or prior to now, these traditional therapies of the talk therapy or the the nutritional therapies and functional medicine because the brain is actually healthy and these tissues are able to respond appropriately.
Now, the successes from those other avenues that the patient tried before that it couldn't quite stick. [00:26:00] Now they're having the success that they didn't have before all because you just addressed the areas of the brain that were really of Concern that weren't looked at because you know, it is taught in school.
Unfortunately, very compartmentalized. Okay. This is the knee This is the temporal this well, how do they work together? Don't worry about that. You just you just prefer them out to somebody else the knee guy will look at that Well, am I ever gonna talk to the knee guy? No, in fact, the patient's not gonna see the knee guy for a year so By the time they go there, they've got other issues.
And you know, now we're lost in the system. But if we're looking at it from a whole, that holistic, and we're looking at it from that connected approach now, now you're addressing things from the source right away. And we're not worried about the knee. We're looking at what the source is and the knee's gonna take care of itself unless there is a knee issue as well.
And now we're dealing with that in the end versus just starting there and hoping and praying we get to the right area. The guesswork's gone. You're making the, uh, you know, invisible visible.
Joey: So good. You made me think of [00:27:00] a switch the U. S. Navy made somewhat recently. I remember hearing that on some of their smaller boats, they would have all these specialists.
on the boats who were just very focused on like one area, like the engineering or, you know, whatever other areas, I don't know, the Navy. and what they, the switch that they made is they made uh, the teams on these boats more generalists. Where they were able to do different things and they weren't maybe so honed in or siloed or compartmentalized, like you said, in one area.
And it's been like a game changer apparently for them. And so some of what I hear you saying is like, certainly you like have such an expertise in this, but in a way, in the right way, you're like more of a generalist. You're looking at the whole system, you're looking at it, um, without, you know, just focusing on one system, not knowing anything about the rest, which is, it makes so much sense to me.
And, uh, You know, it's awesome to hear that you've worked with special operators and with, you know, pro athletes. Cause I just think it speaks to the credibility and how effective this is. Cause what I've seen too, especially in like the medical world or the performance world, the, the best [00:28:00] and most cutting edge things often start there before they get to the general population, because those are the people who like, they want to be at their very best, whether it's Olympians or pro athletes or, you know, people performing at a high level.
And so it's cool to see how it's going to be spread. far and wide, but that you're starting with that group. That's a really good sign for everyone listening. If you want to know something about this, um, so much there. I, uh, I did have a question for you. I was listening to Jordan Peterson the other day, and he was talking about Gottman, uh, Dr.
John Gottman's research. And he was talking about how, you know, Gottman would bring couples to anyone who's not aware that Gottman has studied marriage and especially, Conflict within marriage for over 30 years now and supposedly they can predict with like 94 percent accuracy whether a couple is going to get divorced or not just by observing how they handle conflict and We've gone into this a bit in other episodes, but one of the things that Peterson made me Want to ask you was that they when they're looking at [00:29:00] neurobiological level They're seeing that they're in, in these, um, couples that were conflict is handled poorly, where they follow like the four horsemen of the apocalypse, um, their bodies literally reacting as if there's a predator present, it's what he said.
Could you break that down for us? I'm so fascinated by that.
Dr. Paul: Yeah, without, uh, without naming too many of my exes, well, we can go through that, but it's interesting because you look at some of those areas with, um, with his research, and then there's even some of his other colleagues and people he learned from or looked at it were type A personalities, or this is an alpha versus a beta, maybe, maybe we do need always the pack leader, and thus the next person in the relationship has to, by default, be that, that next personality type or type B, and it's not necessary that way, but And if you could look at it from a few different ways, you know, if you can imagine, and it's not like this in all, in all cases, and it is very individualized, but one of the things that occurs in this was, if you're trying to, if one of the things you're trying to do, and no matter what, and one of the ways that I just do it, it's just easier for [00:30:00] me if I, if I look at it, because, you know, neurology is, is certainly complicated and there's, you know, You know, dozens of books over there about it, but, you know, in the end it is complicated.
There's a lot of, you know, tiny intricate names of these nuclei and it's Latin. This guy's French over here. You know, there's a lot of those areas and you're trying to figure out that compartmentalized system, but if you just imagine and you take almost that, um, like Uh, you're on the island approached by yourself or you're in the middle of the woods and you think, okay, if I was to survive this, what would be the adaptations I would make?
How would I evolve to whatever the surroundings are around me? But if a person in the area, in certain areas of their brain, in some of these back areas of the brain, these higher areas in the brainstem, that give you a good sense of where you are in the world and where the world is around you. And it combines a lot of things.
memories, both short and long term, uh, you know, facial recognition, you know, your posture and balance. Cause again, if you're, you know, if you're like, I, I trust you, but let's say I interpret you as a super [00:31:00] strong individual. I don't mind maybe walking too close to the cliff because he'll save me. But if I'm with someone who's super tiny and I think, man, if I, if I jump here, he can't grab me, you know, all of a sudden your interpretation of the same person, but now exposed in a much different sense.
Maybe it's not so good. Maybe you move to an area where you think, you know, my partner here, they this is good We're compatible Until all of a sudden something brings into the home and now you're having the argument who sleeps closer to the door frame, right? Who's who gets who gets the other side of the bed?
It's, it's, it's just taking the environment and allowing these little intricate changes. But if these areas in the brain are either causing anxiety, where you only analyze the negatives of the situations, then sometimes you only view your partner in, can they only help me in the negatives? But from the other way too, if you only analyze things in the positive sense, You're kind of dumbfounded when things don't go a certain way.
And it's that way in these relationships and these analytics where if these areas of the brain are not working well, that are [00:32:00] giving you a good timestamp to the current present and being able to remove that and say, look, that that unfortunate thing that happened to me 10 years ago, it's always going to be with me.
Cause that is a survival component that you carry over, but that wasn't this person. They still get the clean slate and then we're going to use those things. Cause if we see the comparisons, you know, those red flags, Then we have those conversations. But if everything is automatically, everybody with brown hair is the devil, then those types of things are not going to really carry over going forward.
That's going to give you the success in life. But if you're looking at them, because we can look at these areas of the brain through, through a vast number of uh, diagnostic criteria and everything, You know, now we can get a better picture as to what's going on in this person's brain. What are the responses?
Cause we're not just looking at it from those areas of the brain. But also downstream, we're looking at, we're measuring the autonomics. We're looking at, you know, the blood pressure and heart rate bilaterally. We're putting them in different posture, but we're, we're exposing them to different [00:33:00] environments.
We're not, we don't expose them to 500 people to understand how they respond, but we need to at least tax the system to figure out if we know what's going on in this person's brain, and then they're telling us because they're in front of us now and giving us this idea of how it's affecting them in the, in a negative way.
We can really design a direct game plan for them unique to everything else customized for them that gives them a very, very, um, high success probability that we can solve these things or at least give them much better tools and direction that their life is successful.
Joey: Love that. And I love the customized approach.
That was something I don't think I realized coming into this interview, um, how customized it is. And that makes a lot of sense how it's hard to maybe give, you know, perfect general answers. But once you understand the specifics of someone's situation, you're able to really dig into that and say, this is what you need to do, which I'm really excited to go deeper into that.
Um, if I'm understanding that, right.
Dr. Paul: I can give you an example of that. [00:34:00] There was a, there was a really good, uh, papers done, uh, probably a handful of years ago. My question goes 10 years ago at this point. where it analyzed a group of students who were just having reading difficulties. You know, they were, all they, all they knew was that this individual, they just took 30 kids in a classroom, they said, all right, all we know is these individuals are reading X amount of levels below their grade level.
So then they took a couple of different customized approaches into how they did it. They put one category in where they looked at And they applied no differences in their training. And they said, all right, if we look at eye movement analytics and these saccades, if we're looking at them saying. Or if they're going to jump from word to word to word, if their ocular motor approaches are inaccurate, then they're reading the same line twice.
They're skipping lines. So now they're reading comprehension scores, of course, are going to be poor, because they're not even getting the whole story. So when you're asking, you know, where did Spot run? You're going, who's Spot? You know, if you're looking at it from that way, if you can't read accurately, And [00:35:00] that's going to tank your reading comprehension scores.
So those individuals were given certain eye movement criteria, just generalized ones, and put over here. The other ones who were having the reading comprehension issues, they did other types of classic maneuvers that were more customized to them, and they were put in their category. In the end of the 30, everyone jumped at least three to four grade levels, and all they did was do this for 10 minutes a day for two weeks.
But it's taking that customized approach and realizing the kids sit next to you, they're Maybe their exercises aren't going to work for you. You're both struggling in reading, but for vast different reasons, it's all customizable. Once you understand what that person needs, I mean, sky's the limit.
Joey: So good.
And I love that approach because it's so, like you said, individualized, personalized, customized. Like that's, I think what people need. I think that's like one size fits all. We've seen for so many reasons, just doesn't. Doesn't work well. So, man, I'm loving this. I'm curious if there's any typical neurological, um, dysfunctions that are associated with emotional trauma.
And I know, [00:36:00] you know, we're talking to an audience, obviously, who comes from, you know, broken families, traumatic family situations, whether it's high dysfunction, like I mentioned, or divorce. So I'm curious if there's any kind of typical telltale signs, symptoms that come up neurologically for someone coming from that background.
Dr. Paul: That's a great question. That's where, although it's customizable and similar, there are some patterns that certainly follow. Now there's certainly types that, you know, this one's going to be the anomaly, but a lot of times, and what's interesting is, and I've been fortunate to do a lot of, recent studies with this and see a lot of, recent patients on this in the last few years where patients who have gone through traumas and not just relationship traumas, have very similar mimicking of areas of the brain that aren't working and responding so well as those who were from, uh, who were adopted and a lot of them adopted from, from other countries who either had, um, you know, unfortunate past histories that they may or may not know.
they're in, you know, phenomenal loving families currently, but have [00:37:00] similar areas. And one of the areas that we're noticing a lot of times is not only these back areas of the brain in this posterior parietal cortex, it's, you know, giving these responses or should give these responses into, you know, time space relationship.
I mean, this is where Einstein was very good and, you know, seeing those extra dimensions that you can't see through the naked eye because it gives you an interpretation of self versus world. Well, that would definitely be skewed if, again, you're analyzing a situation with yourself, a relationship, a newly adopted parent that is, you know, you're perceiving as a way from before because your subconscious wasn't working so well.
And some of the others are these almost perseverations or these wind ups in these areas of the frontal lobe. Uh, in the areas of executive function, uh, mainly up front is when the problem is area 11, it's the orbital frontal area. And that's like your gatekeeper to the emotional limbic system. So that would be, you're about to have a emotional response, happiness, sadness, and [00:38:00] it's going to pass through this orbital frontal area as well, uh, to give some of these action commands to these much deeper areas in the brain.
Well, if those areas are overworking or working a little bit slower than they need to, uh, then the response is skewed. And what's interesting is we've seen a lot of patients that, especially from adoptive families that still have their primitive reflexes, which should be attenuated, you know, by two, two and a half, depending on, um, the type of, of the type of relapse.
Some of them are gone by six months. Some of them last two, two and a half years, possibly. We have some patients that I've seen that, you know, 13, 14 years old. that still have these pre motor reflexes because these areas of the brain in the front haven't developed because of these areas of perception that these areas of the frontal lobe are working well, but these areas are super deficient.
All of a sudden you address these and you say, well, of course they can't make an appropriate decision and they have these very odd behaviors or they act immature in these other areas. Then it's because areas in the brain haven't [00:39:00] developed well. And so, like I said, a lot of it's that area that gives you that current time space relationship.
Where am I? Where's the world around me? As you can imagine, that's going to be very critical if you're going to analyze an environment. And these other areas are also heavily involved with not only emotions, but emotional memories is the key one. And those areas, uh, quite often are deficient or lagging behind in the development.
And we could address those, uh, you know, noninvasively, uh, pretty successfully.
Joey: So fascinating. Uh, one of the things in the research that I've seen is that the biggest area of life that's impacted when your parents get divorced in particular is your own future relationships, especially your future marriage.
And I'm curious kind of how you, I have my way of interpreting that as like a lay person and someone who's been through, you know, been through that. I'm curious how you might interpret that, um, neurologically. In addition to what you've already said, why is it such a struggle? Why is it such a struggle for, you know, like one of the ways I articulated it in college was, it was [00:40:00] like, man, it feels like my relationships, my dating relationships in particular are just like so much more difficult, so much harder than my friends, from what I'm hearing, my friends.
Say who come from maybe healthy intact families. And so yeah, it was always baffling to me and marriage and you know, a lot of ways you know has been a challenge and you know, we've worked through things for sure and are in a better spot, but But I we've seen that trend and I think that's why so often you know, it's just cycle that repeats itself like we talked about Before recording is that, you know, we end up coming from these broken families and we don't really know how to build healthy relationships and we build unhealthy relationships, which leads to broken marriages and broken families and this whole thing.
So I'm just curious, like, from your vantage point, um, people have heard me talk about it, but I'm curious from your vantage point, like, why, why do we end up repeating that? And what's going on like below the surface that we don't maybe talk about?
Dr. Paul: Yeah, if you can imagine that, and that's point two. And also some of what we talked about, Cameron, if you look at, you know, the, the rates now, especially of, of divorce, and you look at [00:41:00] the, difficulties in relationships and, and certainly social media doesn't help in their perceptions of they feel, uh, you know, an appropriate relationship is, and, you know, the, the higher numbers of even open relationships, which is, it's, it's, it's a whole nother box of whatever's, but if, if you look at as that becomes normalized, You have to look at some of the other areas too of one that's a massive subset of population.
That's that's definitely going to be needing care But in that interpretation of it, you know, you're at most times not always but you know There is a you know a product of your environment But if you can imagine if you at a young age or whatever age you had relationship difficulties You have to make sense of it because again you have to be able to survive The next avenue, you're still a living organism that has to adapt.
You don't know if it was because of a trauma or you, you stepped on a landmine. The reality is a negative behavior occurred. And thus you have to make sure that you can analyze those things differently. Well, now I know what a landmine looks like versus now. I know what a bad relationship looks like and what signs to [00:42:00] look for.
So these areas have to adapt to it. But if you look at it from there's what we consider plasticity versus negative plasticity, you know, for those who aren't either heard of the terms aren't quite sure, you know, plasticity is that ability of the brain to make, you know, microscopic connections. between other areas of the brain.
You know, when they talk about like muscle memory, the muscles don't remember anything. It's these areas of the brain and the motor cortex that are able to produce much more hardwired pathways to make that type of movement more efficient. Well, there's plasticity, good thing, but you could have negative plasticity where you have, you know, a wind up where all of a sudden you, you see something, all of a sudden you develop a stutter, or you, you know, you see water on the right and all you think of is, well, don't block it right.
And you start pulling them left all the time in golf, you know, whatever those movements are, you have ad adapted avoidant behaviors. So if you're not able to fully address. what the reasons are why you Don't quite have something because maybe [00:43:00] you were exposed to Your parents doing something that you didn't know or all of a sudden you just think are all relationships going to end in divorce I thought my parents loved each other, you know, whatever those things could be if You aren't, not only necessarily, you're going to make sense of it, maybe even you feel like you made sense of it, but these areas in the subconscious, you know, are waving their fingers saying, no, you didn't.
You have these avoidant behaviors and because of that, now you develop these negative plasticity and now your whole world and adaptation is a consequence of just something that happened in the past that may or may not have even directly affected you, but now it has. So, that's some of the things that occur.
But again, when you look at it and being able to make sense of it through combination of, you know, trauma therapy, functional neurology, there's even been great research coming out in the last few years from, you know, Harvard and some of my colleagues up in Canada with psilocybin mushrooms and looking at those areas in psychedelics and being able to hit these Areas in the limbic [00:44:00] system and frontal lobe, you know, all these different avenues that could be addressed You can have an ability to look deeper within and make sense of those things because otherwise you do develop the avoidant behaviors And yeah, your successes and the relationships are probably going to be diminished because of it.
Joey: So good Let me I want to make sure I understand this and i'll just kind of give you a little bit of a readback And what i'm hearing is that We kind of subconsciously and even like neurobiologically pick up patterns in life, patterns of behavior, ways of treating people. So if like our parents are, you know, like one of the things I observed growing up and my parents would be the first one to tell you this is they just didn't handle conflict very well.
And so, you know, they would argue, things would get loud and then one or both of them would just kind of walk away and nothing was really resolved. And so for me going into relationships, I felt like, my goodness, I really have no idea what I'm doing when it comes to conflict. It feels really scary. It's a lot, like you said, easier to just kind of avoid that and tiptoe around and not talk about maybe hard things.
And so, on a brain level, it sounds like that's just kind of what my brain learned to [00:45:00] do. And that it truly can be rewired, but like you're saying, we need to first kind of go to that place of, okay, this is what I learned. And then this is kind of how I'm dealing with it now. And this is what maybe I want to be doing in the future differently.
and, That muscle memory, like you mentioned, just like with swinging a bat or a golf club or hockey stick, like we can train our brains even in relationships to do things differently too, which I think is super hopeful because what I've seen a lot with this audience too, because me being one of them is, we, I think it feel really hopeless.
We can feel really helpless. We can feel, uh, fall into kind of the whole victim mentality thing of being like, well, I'm kind of screwed. Came from a really messed up family, broken family, never really saw a healthy relationship. I have this maybe slew of unhealthy relationships that I fell into. I don't know if I'm capable of even building a good marriage of, you know, and all that.
And so I think it could lead to this dark space. So this is just very hopeful even.
Dr. Paul: Yeah, no, it's incredibly, you know, you have it not only from personal experience where you go, oh, no, this one didn't work out. All hope is gone. No, it's not. No, it's not. It's not at all. In fact, you probably are going to gain a whole lot [00:46:00] more from it if you have an ability to look at why that one didn't work out.
Now you have an entire, you know, new line of questioning or adaptation to apply to it. I'll be the first that, you know, it didn't always work. I was necessarily, um, for myself and some of my friends and family around me. But now when you can look at it from a different approach and it, you know, maybe as an instant, but if you have those resources around you and not necessarily solely just a functional neurologist, but those friends and family around you that you could bounce the ideas off of.
If you're given a better blueprint as to what to ask and realize that, okay, given this environment, what can I do next? Now you have a much better chance of success than, than not addressing those things. And instantaneously. Um, just bottling it up and go, Oh, that's, that's it for me. It's, it's not, it's not
Joey: beautiful.
I love it. So, so inspiring. And I want to get a little bit more, um, kind of nitty gritty in terms of what, if someone were to come to see you, like imagine someone's listening right now and they want to make an appointment with you and they were to come and see you, like, what would that look like? What [00:47:00] would the first appointment look like?
If they were to tell you like, yeah, You know, even like, especially with this audience, I come from a broken family. These are my struggles. I have emotional problems like anxiety, depression, loneliness. I, you know, maybe have behavior, uh, bad habits in my life. Um, I have, you know, relationship struggles like we were talking about.
Um, yeah. What would the first appointment look like? How would you assess them? I'm curious, kind of the whole nine years.
Dr. Paul: No, that's a, that's a great one because, you know, when you hear functional neurology go, yeah, well, what is it? What do I do? What are you actually doing here? This guy talked about PTOT, balance this, this person's falling off a cliff.
You know, with functional neurology and what the first appointments look like generally, um, I'll do a screening first and, and have a conversation with the person just to make sure I understand what's going on. I don't need a full detailed history and that stuff. I want to first understand is functional neurology going to work for this person?
Because there might be a population where it's, necessarily not and not always the case, but if they are under maybe certain medications that they have to come off of or they're [00:48:00] hospitalized currently in those things, or, you know, we've, I mean, we've been fortunate that we've seen people in comas and locked in syndrome.
So you are not limited by what those are. But we just want to make sure that is this going to work for you? And to be honest with you, the majority of the patients that it works for are ones that it's open for. If you're coming in and you really have no, uh, want or desire to improve, one of the things that makes functional neurology, somewhat limited is the fact that it's also limited by your ability to, you know, get to appointments and work together on those things.
And there's home exercises, but not as complicated. But that first appointment after the screening, we say, okay, Yeah, this is a case I could help. This is something this is working. We could work with these areas. Your first appointment is combination of almost an interview a history of what's going on a lot of question answer back and forth, followed by it's a pretty detailed physical exam.
I mean, it's usually our couple minutes longer or more. I mean, we've had some two hour exams, three hour exams. We've [00:49:00] had some that are, you know, half hour. And what we'll do is we're going to analyze those senses. We're going to look at a few different pieces of technology. We're going to do some bedside exams.
We're going to do the classic finger, nose, finger. We're going to shine the light in the eyes and look at pupil responses, but we're also going to do posturography and balance testing. We're going to look at, um, analysis of eye movements from tracking targets, pursuits, jumping from target to target saccades, um, optic kinetics, vestibular reflexes in all different planes.
Because again, we're looking at for the intricacies. You're telling me maybe you're having relationship difficulties or you're having trouble with balance or back pain or, um, you're having trouble playing your sport or you have a tremor, you know, we're just looking to figure out, okay, where's the breakdown that's causing this output that you don't, that we don't need so much.
And we're looking at those senses specific to you. We might have these general platforms that we're looking at the eye movements, the balance tends to testing the pinwheel sensation. We're looking at [00:50:00] the autonomics. You know, we're, we're looking and listening to the heart rate and different various positions, and we're doing a pretty detailed examination.
Like I said, it's going to take, you know, sometimes an hour to two hours quite often, but that's going to allow us a big picture is to figure out what areas in the brain are working well and which areas need addressing. And what does that have to do with what you're here for? Then we create that customized plan specific for you.
And, um, the way I work and research is, has demonstrated to be the most efficient and, um, also due to some of the schedules that we all have. Um, the way we generally worked with is an intensive model, which means to say, generally, you're going to see me three times a day or three to five days and your first appointment is going to take, you know, that maybe a couple hours, a little bit more into the analytics and figure out what's going on with you.
And then right when you come back in, we're starting that treatment plan. And that's again, that combination of whatever you need. It could be a, catered version of vestibular vision [00:51:00] therapy. Uh, some, some of the balance training, some of the movements and the fine tuning. I mean, some of it is you, I've had PT before.
Oh, teens you have, and we're using that as the blanket terminology, but we're applying it specific to you for what these reasons are. in combination with many other areas. So you're having that next appointment, you know, generally that's, we'll say an hour, a couple more hours off. And then you're coming back that third time and we're just repeating those treatments then for the next few days and making those micro changes based off what we see.
Cause each before and after each exam or our appointment, rather we're looking at, okay, where are we at? Where do we need to make those adaptations? Because if we're doing something, if, if I, you know, move a patient's head and vestibular rehab, I should be able to retest. Some of these areas in the eye movements or the balance and I should be able to see a micro change and if we're seeing Those changes already Instantly, we know we're on the right thing.
If not, then we need to change that exercise right away So before you even leave that first appointment, we have a pretty clear I'd understanding [00:52:00] of where at least we need to start with your exercise. It's not guesswork. It's not oh, you have a concussion Well, this is what we do for concussion. I mean, I've no idea we're gonna do it yet I have no idea what you have.
I have no idea what we're going to do, but we're going to figure out now specific for you. And that's, that's how each appointment works. So generally you're with, me for, you know, three to four hours a day for at least three to five days. Yeah, we've been fortunate with them. We do that pre and post measurements, um, you know, that at about 90 to 95 percent of cases were at or exceeded, um, whatever the goals were for the week.
That's one thing we also do is keep a lot of stats on, um, from sleep performance, which is, which is one that's always been a residual that I've only ever had a handful that have come in for sleep abnormalities. But generally sleep is affected because these areas of the brain not working so, so well. Um, but we're, we're tracking sleep.
We're tracking the heart rate and rhythm. We're looking at sometimes for some people their blood work pre and post. We're looking at all these intricacies and um, now we're able to make some, [00:53:00] some pretty substantial gains in, in a small, small window.
Joey: Yeah, that's incredible. Within three to five days, and I imagine you're kind of like setting the body and the brain up on a path to continue healing itself to, so it doesn't just stop past the, you know, the three to five days and someone comes back for more, but you're really trying to Um, from what I understand, keep the body going forward.
Is that right?
Dr. Paul: A hundred percent. I mean, for no, no reason. Then, uh, when you first told me your name, I still remember it. You know, that was a pathway. I didn't know that was a, that was a stimuli. I didn't know. And all of a sudden, well, now I know this person's name and I can remember that going forward.
It's that same concept. We're just applying it to, well, this person had a tremor. We want to make a little bit smoother. This person has some balance issues. We're trying to improve just by increasing and changing the stimuli in the brain. You're making instantaneous adaptations. But we want the adaptations to be, you know, in the direction where it's more symmetric and more appropriate versus, you know, that negative plasticity and, and they hold, and we still give you exercises to do at home for X [00:54:00] amount of period of time.
Again, that's all, that's all part of the whole, whole process and cater to you. But now, because of that, we're having a plan specific for you, and we know it's going to stick and hold, and in those cases where you have a degenerative condition or a neurodegenerative condition, you know, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, well, if we know the trajectory is going to be downward, if every so often we can recommend you come in for a boost, if you plateau in a condition that the trajectory is downward, that's an improvement the way I'm looking at it.
But for all these other cases, if you're down here We can give you these boosts up and you're not going to come back down because, you know, uh, uh, these other conditions are not, um, you know, necessarily neurodegenerative. They can be, if they're not addressed though. So by addressing them and getting you back on the right path, I mean, we're, we're stopping the probability or minimizing it that we can have a lot more of these other things down the road.
Like we look at, you know, multiple head injuries have a sevenfold increase of causing Parkinson's or Alzheimer's, you know, [00:55:00] but if that's non treated for treating those, you know, we're, we're much more minimizing the risk of that. And that's, that's what we're trying to do is not only help you for now, you know, But how can we continue to success, set you up for success down the road?
Because in plenty of times, you know, we can exceed your goals and now it's okay. Well, what else do you want to work on? We got that. So what else do we need if we need to come back down the road? Cause now you want to, you know, have a new performance goal and we're all for it. But otherwise, you know, what else can we do for you?
Because you're not just limited by, and we want to keep your balance. We want to get your eye movements there. What are some other things that's carrying over your daily living? Or your, your relationship issues or and the other thing is to how else we working in conjunction with your providers back home.
Who else do we need to work within this? If that's the case, you know, we definitely come manage with, you know, I said in our, in our clinic, functional medicine and trauma therapy. But if we need to do additional things. You know, we're always open and always for it. And that's again, it's creating that catered plan for that person
Joey: makes so much sense.
And I love that approach, like [00:56:00] how you can have those touch points in the future if you need them or want to improve or prevent a bad condition from getting worse. Um, but you're not necessarily signing up for life. I had a friend recently tell me that he was having some back problems and, uh, he wanted to go to a chiropractor, but he was like, eh, I don't know.
He kind of felt like he was going to be signing up for like a life of adjustments, like a lifetime of adjustments. But he went to a chiropractor who was, sounds like really competent and the chiropractor was like, no, we'll do two adjustments and you should be good to go. Um, so I love that approach instead of like, you know, They needed to pop a pill for the rest of your life or something like that, which not putting people down who have a condition that needs that.
But, um, but I love this approach better and no, so good. And on that note, I'm just curious if you have any success stories of patients you've worked with who maybe were in this one condition and then they were to work with you and then they're able to improve and be in this better spot in life.
Dr. Paul: And so I've been quite fortunate to work with a lot of different, uh, I said from athletes to Average bank, but I'll, [00:57:00] lemme think.
I, I would say the best one, I'll give a, it was a week that was pretty impactful, uh, uh, for me. And, and I was working in a, in a, clinic and, and, and then I start. In Florida where, um, I generally see two to three patients a week, which is kind of how you do it when you average out, you know, how many patients you're working with.
If you're doing an intensive thing, I mean, you're out with your an hour a day, you know, three patients automatically is, you know, 10 hours, not just your own time, which, which not opposed to work in the long days, but you know, for the patient now someone's coming at 7am and not leaving until four. Right.
So we limit to make sure that it's, it's also comfortable for patients, but in one particular week, I had an individual who was, uh, um, Uh, I'll just say ejected from a car after being hit by a train was found in a, in a tree pretty, pretty far away. And, uh, he was a younger, younger kid, an athlete and, and he was in a wheelchair, had no, couldn't, couldn't walk.
Maybe you would never know talking to him that there were any, abnormalities. So the fact that he was, he's in a wheelchair, had no, uh, vestibular postural tone. [00:58:00] So that was one. I had another patient who was, uh, uh, a fortune 500 CEO. perfectly healthy, perfectly functional, but at a fear that he was going to lose his job because of, you know, if the next kid coming up can do everything in 12 hours and can make faster decisions, the board's going to love him, especially if he's going to do it for a little bit cheaper rate.
And all of a sudden he's worried about, you know, working 18 hour days and burn it out and, you know, his health's tanking. Because he's inefficient in some of his decision making, and you know, we're looking at it from, you check the boxes, you know, no person really in the medical community would, I mean, you're, you could, I mean, you could Google this person, find him in seconds, you go, what, there can't be anything wrong with this person, he's, you know, one of the richest in the world, and there's no reason why there should be abnormalities, what's he here for, and then, on the other end, we had, uh, another person who was, a professional athlete, Um, but out of fear of retirement because they were concerned that in this last year, if they didn't have their performance goals the way they needed to be because [00:59:00] of some recent head injuries, um, that they weren't going to play again.
And unfortunately, we're going through some mental health issues because of that. Um, and also some of their head injuries, we know, unfortunately, can cause a lot of these, mental performance issues. And now they have not only the PTSD, but massive increases of anxiety. So you have three completely different patients that all went through the very same program of what are we here for?
What are your goals? And, um, you know, the, the, the fortune 500 CEO, he, he reached his performance goals and was able to drop his workload. And this is an individual who was drinking four pots of coffee a day. Down to one and, you know, working 18 hours a day back down to 12 to 14 hours, more efficient, you know, stock prices, you know, stockholder value all looks good.
The next individual, the, hockey player, you know, not only was able to get a great contract year. some of the suicidal ideations completely dropped. His relationship was improving because there was a fear of divorce in that one. And also we have now a person who, you know, went on to [01:00:00] have a very successful and probably, no, definitely an all star career, but probably even a Hall of Fame career.
And then this other individual who was, you know, hit by a train. Um, not only was he out of the wheelchair, but he walked out of the clinic on Friday. So, now you have, um, three completely different cases that are all being treated by functional neurology just by being able to look at the brain and analyze and realize if these areas are deficient.
Three completely different systems. Although actually you could argue that, you know, their motor systems or their emotional systems were all taxed, but their treatments look nothing alike. But the approach in the beginning was very similar. It was just start with a clean slate and apply it as need be.
And that was. to be fair, it's kind of a typical week of just, it's, it's those types of success stories I've been fortunate to have, um, because the foundation, um, you know, my colleagues laid out and, and did a lot of groundwork and improvements in diagnostics and everything. And, you know, very fortunate to be not only at the cutting edge, but really on the receiving end of it, that, you know, I wasn't, uh, I was only [01:01:00] involved in the creation of a couple pieces of technology in my career.
But I've been able to, uh, to really stand on the, on the shoulders with a lot of them that have laid a great foundation and education and just fortunately taught me how to apply it in a way that allowed for a lot of this. So kind of also shows that once again, it's clean slate, everything's catered to you, whatever you need, it's, you're, you're, you're not alone, number one.
but you're, you're very unique, but you're not unique to the sense that you can't be helped. You're probably seen it before. And these areas of the brain exist, and if you know how to look at it and understand it. Okay, pretty comfortable environment to where you can use the technologies or everything.
It's so basic pretty quickly.
Joey: Wow. Incredible. Super inspiring stories. Amazing results. And I want to ask you a million and one questions, but a couple of final questions before we close down here for the initial assessment. Like if someone was thinking about doing this therapy tomorrow, I'm just curious on the cost side, you don't have to give maybe your specific cost, but generally if they were to go to a [01:02:00] functional neurologist anywhere in the United States, for example, what would the ballpark cost be for something like that?
And does insurance typically cover it?
Dr. Paul: That's where it gets complicated, but not in the United, in other countries. You know, sometimes we're dealing with some of the socialized medicine, you know, there it could be covered, but the wait times could be long. So it was interesting enough, we, I saw, still to this day, I've probably seen more patients or very similar from other countries than the United States, just because they were generally looking for that holistic approach, but weren't able to access it because of their own government limitations.
In the United States, We can get access to it, but payment gets a little bit limited. Insurance will cover some of these things. A lot of times though, it's, you know, it's very dependent upon the why and everything. So a lot of the diagnostics are not covered by general insurances. They will, but they pay a small portion of them.
And then a lot of the other clinics, especially when you're doing intensives, you know, the way insurance billing works, you can only bill for one type of those services per day. And then you're usually limited by how many [01:03:00] times per week. So with all that being said. A lot of the functional neurologists, uh, and even, that's why a lot of the functional medicine docs in those areas are cash driven and it, and I promise you it's not solely for lucrative value, um, to be, to be candid and transparent, it's just because of the fact that you can give a lot, more to a patient, by charging those, By charging certain rates than you could buy insurance and actually we've done a cost analysis of it where we've looked at You know, what's the average person with concussion?
Because that's a higher population of patients. What does the average concussion cost? um a person and uh You know, we were able to see about 250 260k between your years of lost wages job performance, things of that nature. Um, so when we're looking at paying fractions of that for three to five days with the success rates we know we'll be able to have and somewhat of it, it's, it's almost no brainer, at least when you look at that way, [01:04:00] but it is, it is still a cost.
Um, you know, fluctuate and they're, they're dependent upon, you know, each individual one, but I, I would, I would say probably your, your average intensive treatment, I would say would probably range from. Three to 10, 000 for a week. If I was to be, if I was to put a number on it and just be fair, but I, but everything is, is dependent upon, um, where you go, what the locations are and availability and everything.
But I mean, when you compare it to what the average cost of or some of the other areas and your insurance premium is going up, it's actually is a much cheaper, just that, um, majority of them are, are generally cash based for that.
Joey: Yeah, no, it makes so much sense. And no, the investment side of it as well. I think a lot of people only sometimes will only think of.
Um, what they're giving up, but man, you get so much out of it. Yeah. Like you said, when you do the analysis of like me being able to make more money and being able to just live like a better life, that investment, especially. Looking at the way we use our money now, it's like, well I spend this on that car, [01:05:00] that thing.
And it's like, is that really making your life better? Adding a lot of value to life? And for honest it's not. And so things like this I think are compared to that are are wise investment. So that makes sense. And are you able to do like an initial assessment with someone without committing to the intensive or is it kind of a all or nothing?
Model. Oh,
Dr. Paul: no, absolutely. The way and we were just like this. We talked about before creating a catered program to them based upon their condition. What we see on exam. We still base it upon their schedule as well. Now, generally, I travel and have a few different jobs between the U. S. and Canada. So, so around.
So I have worked, but I also work in an intensive environment just because of the fact that, it's general, it's created a better success rate for patients for that population. however, If we're going through an analysis and, you know, again, everything's very transparent. If we do an exam, whereas I don't think we're going to be able to help you, this would be more appropriate.
Or I know we originally talked about setting aside five days, but maybe two or three would [01:06:00] be more beneficial. Then we're very transparent with that. That's, that's what it is. Or if we're at day three and we think, look, truthfully, we can knock this out of the ballpark two more days. And we have those conversations.
So you're not, um, automatically contracted into just once in just because you picked up the phone and talk to me or anybody or the functional neurologist. They have to see that you're automatically locked into those treatment plans. Everything is very individualized, um, and catered. So it's, it's working by the schedule.
And in the cases where. You know, you do have a schedule where you can't do an intensive model. There's always ways to work around it. Things just might take a couple more weeks or months, but it can always be worked and catered to you.
Joey: No, it's really helpful. Thanks for going through all that. And for anyone who isn't aware of this, I have friends who work in the medical world and work at clinics and things and um, dealing with insurance is like a job in itself.
And so this movement towards like cash payments is really wise in a lot of senses and actually can lead to a higher quality of care. Um, because you're not [01:07:00] dealing with these insurance companies and fitting into this box of like, well, that's not a diagnostic that's like in this, you know, 50 year old manual or whatever it is.
So anyway, it's, uh, it's exciting to see kind of where Um, this field is heading and I'm really interested to learn more and maybe I'll need to do some treatments myself, which is awesome. So I did want to ask you, um, if there are any like maybe common myths or misperceptions, misconceptions of this field, of functional neurology.
Dr. Paul: I think some of them in the beginning, I would say the began something to say it's an instant cure all I'm going to be done in two days because he said he got that person on the wheelchair. That's that's not every single case, although to be fair, it's a good majority, but that's not every case and you should never go home thinking I know this is going to be a guaranteed home run 100%.
Nothing is ever that when if anyone gives you a guarantee, you know, you should you should run pretty quick. But one of the other things that you should look at, I think, which is a misconception of functional neurology is that. You know, I think a lot of them will look at, especially from [01:08:00] the, the medical community and some of the original papers that came out, uh, you know, trying to, uh, bash it as a placebo or things of this nature, you know, uh, one of my, founding, uh, member, Dr.
Carrick said on, uh, Connie Chung, you know, if, uh, if this is placebo, then we're doing a pretty good job at it, but if, uh, if you're looking at it from that sense, Um, you know, one of the things that sometimes are the misconceptions are that, you know, I've been to PT or I've been to OT before and it hasn't worked.
So what's different about your vestibular technique versus this and that? And it's, again, it's not a comparison of one versus the other, but in the sense it's the application of it. When you're catering a program to you specifically, and not just your condition, you're catering or your limitations of insurance, then you have as many, options as you want, whatever you can create.
And we're not short on technology. We're not short on, [01:09:00] um, space and ability to, to do those things. So we can create an environment for you. I mean, we've taken Athletes onto their field of sport and designed therapies around there where, okay, we're maybe we're trying to do these types of eye movements from this direction, left to right.
Okay, well, you don't sit in a desk all day. So we need to create an environment for you. Okay, we're going on the ice. We're going to the football field. We're going to hit baseballs and so on. You know, you can create it for you. So because of that, again, when you're not bound by the limitations of different insurances, environment, or technology, then, then everything for you is different.
So just because you've been to one technique before, you tried talk therapy and it didn't work, you are not alone. You are not bound. You're not stuck. It's not over. I promise you there's plenty more stones to uncover and a whole lot more resources available.
Joey: That's tough. If someone wanted to work with you, how would they get in touch with you or maybe another functional neurologist in their area if you don't serve that [01:10:00] area?
Dr. Paul: Yeah, of course. So, um, for myself, I'm always open. You deal with me. I'm kind of the one man show for that one work for a few different companies in neurology and neurotechnology. And as I mentioned before, even a psilocybin mushroom company up in Canada. But if you want to get ahold of me directly. Um, always open.
You can just email me Dr, uh, Dr. Link, L I N K 1 8 at gmail. com. You know, that's me. Anytime you have a consult or you have any questions about navigating the system or finding a, you know, provider near you, always open for that. Uh, there's two other great resources. I'm sure they won't mind if I share this.
Uh, A-A-C-N-B, American College of A CNB, the American chiropractic neurology board.org and A CFN. Um, those are, there's two different ways to, um, sort of become a functional neurologist. There's the diplomat and the Fellowship Avenue, um, and both of those options will give you a list of doctor locators near you in not only the United States, but.
Um, other countries as well. So you'll be able to [01:11:00] find a functional neurologist near you. there's also the last one, you know, no, um, you know, no financial connection is also that the Kerrigan Institute website is a tremendous source, um, and resource for you to be able to look up and not only learn a little bit more about functional neurology, but not just, and patients.
But also if you're a provider, want to get a little bit more information on courses or what I can do and how can you learn a little bit more about I've movements, you know, they're incredible, but honestly, I mean, 24 seven, if you ever want to reach out to me, emails, uh, some of the easier ways, and I always open to have a conversation about, you know, would you, Um, be an appropriate patient of mine.
can I help you find a neurologist near you? It'd be more than, uh, helpful to be an advocate for that because, I think one of the things is, you know, service back to humankind is, again, as Dr. Kerrig always said, so I think we should always live by that. So if anything is, never stuck or you have a question, need a resource, Always happy to be there.
Joey: Really appreciate it. Uh, Dr. Paul, you're the man. It's been great learning from you and I'm excited to see where your practices, your careers, all the companies you're [01:12:00] involved with goes. And, um, I know there's really amazing things ahead. So I'm glad that you're able to come on and speak to the, our audience and we're better for it.
So thank you so much. I wanted to. Give you the final word. I'm just curious what, uh, final advice or encouragement you give to everyone listening, especially, you know, young people who come from broken families and are maybe feeling broken and stuck in life, what's, what's your final advice?
Dr. Paul: Final advice and I could speak, uh, you know, truthfully on this one is you're not alone, you know, quite a lot of times that you feel as though you're stuck and you know, you're in the, you know, woe is me, it's, it can't, it's always going to be this way.
It's never going to change. Um, you realize a lot of times that the people around you that you thought either didn't care so much or maybe didn't quite know. A lot of times they're great resources, but maybe you can't always find that professional. Maybe you reached out to, um, you know, a therapist, originally a physician didn't work well.
That doesn't mean that it's always that way. And it doesn't always necessarily mean that I'm the right fit for you. I mean, if you don't like to hear things in a, [01:13:00] you know, Canadian accent, I'm probably not the person for you. But if you reach out and you realize that there's a lot of people that are resources, a lot of times they're closer to you than you realize, and they also went through similar things that they don't even share.
And they found resources that they clip close to the vest that once you really get to talking, you realize you have a lot more in common than you realize. And you're going to be able to see those resources come to fruition pretty quickly. So I promise you're not only are you not alone, um, but there's also a lot more hope available rather quickly.
then you realize, you know, from. Uh, not only functional neurology, trauma therapy, functional medicine, and any of the classic avenues, um, honestly, this podcast, you know, looking back, you have, you know, a tremendous resource here that if you look at the divorce rates, the rates of, you know, failed jobs, and, you know, the marriages, the changes in economy, you know, there's, there's a lot of struggles out there.
There's a lot of resources available to you right now. Take full [01:14:00] advantage of them and, um, you know, never be afraid to reach out. that's how I would end it after a truthful thank you for for allowing me to come on. Um, and also more so thank you for all you do in creating this and, you know, starting what was what you thought was going to be sort of one environment and realizing you the outreach that you have as a great example, you're reaching a tremendous vast audience that you thought was going to be this one subset population.
Now you're out doing that. So, you know, thank you for all you do and bringing this together as this resource.
Joey: If you come from a divorced or broken family, or maybe you know someone who does, we offer more resources than just this podcast. Those resources include things like a book, free video courses, speaking engagements, a free assessment, online community, and so much more.
And all of our resources are designed to help you heal from the trauma you've experienced in your family and build virtue so you can break that cycle and build a better life. Life. And so if you want to view all the resources [01:15:00] that we offer for yourself, or maybe someone that, you know, you can just go to restored ministry.
com slash resources, or just click on the link in the show notes.
That wraps up this episode. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents divorce or broken family, feel free to share this podcast with them. Feel free to even just take 30 seconds now to message them. I promise you, they will be so grateful that you did. In closing, always remember you are not alone.
We're here to help you feel whole again and break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in your own life. And keep in mind the words of C. S. Lewis who said, You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.
