At Lancaster Brain & Spine, we aim to improve your health and lifestyle longterm by exploring alternative approaches and methods. This is what we call functional neurology.
Functional neurology is a field of healthcare that specializes in the evaluation and treatment of neurological conditions or diseases without the use of pharmaceuticals or surgery.
Because we want to get you back to living your life as soon as humanly possible. So who can we help and how does this approach work? Let’s start here.
Who Can Benefit From Functional Neurology
The short answer? Anyone with a neurological condition, disorder or injury. Especially if you want to…
- Improve your focus
- Stand or walk better
- Have less pain
- Think more clearly
- Reduce dizziness
- Improve at sports
Functional neurology has been proven to be helpful in each of these instances, as well as many others. For example, if you’re struggling with a lack of inhibition, or maybe you’ve noticed a decrease in your ability to control speech or other functions, functional neurology may be the help you’re looking for.
What Does Our Evaluation Process Look Like?
At Lancaster Brain & Spine, we start every patient’s journey with a comprehensive evaluation process. We use both conventional neurological and orthopedic evaluations, as well as state-of-the-art technologies, to identify and understand your issues. This combination of methods provides the best diagnostic tools available to pinpoint dysfunction in the brain and nervous system.
During the diagnostic exercises, we take into account all aspects of your individual situation. In addition to asking about localized pain or specific symptoms associated with your condition, we also inquire about things like:
- Are you sleeping enough, and is it good quality sleep?
- What does your exercise routine look like?
- What are you eating, and how often?
- How does your gut feel day-to-day? Does it change?
- Do you smoke or drink regularly?
By taking a comprehensive, holistic look at your lifestyle, this helps us understand the pain and concerns you’re currently experiencing, but also any potential factors that may be exacerbating those symptoms.
Let’s See Functional Neurology In Action
For example, if you’re not sleeping well, we need to focus on that, because the nervous system repairs and remodels while you sleep. This means that if you’re not getting enough shut-eye, your body isn’t getting the chance to heal itself. When patients have sleep issues, it’s often harder for their nervous systems to repair properly, which can lead to more serious health problems.
We also often see people with sensitivities or allergies to food with inflamed stomach tissues, which can actually lead to neurological inflammation and problems in the brain. These can then cause or worsen other symptoms, such as fatigue or headaches.
So as you can see, there are many factors that can affect how successful your treatment is — whether you drink alcohol or not, what kind of medication you’re taking or not taking, if your blood pressure is too high or too low, the list goes on. When we take each of these elements into account, our team gets a clearer picture of what might be “off” in your body and are able to provide you with a treatment plan to help.
That’s why our patients’ first appointment length varies person-to person, as we spend as long as necessary getting to the root cause of their issues. In our experience, initial diagnostics can take between 30 minutes and 2 hours, before we even get to treatment.
Our Personalized Treatment Plans
Once our team of experts has made a diagnosis, we work with you to develop a custom tailored treatment plan. These consist of various methods to treat your specific circumstances. For example, we use a variety of stimulation therapies, eye exercises, brain based therapies and somatosensory stimulation to help patients in a wide range of areas.
Our integrated approach to rehabilitation based on current scientific research and evidence is designed to promote neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout experiences. This process is essentially the strengthening or wiring of neurological pathways within the brain — and it’s extremely important in the treatment of neurological disorders.
We’ve seen time and time again that firing off neurological pathways with the right exercise at the right intensity and frequency can increase the number of connections and synapses between neurons and ultimately strengthen existing connections. And this is the reason why we provide weeklong intensives to treat neurological problems.
Can Functional Neurology Help You?
We understand that functional neurology may be an entirely new approach for you, and that you may have never experienced it before. That’s why we offer a complimentary consultation with one of our highly skilled professionals to see if this is something that would be beneficial for you. If you’re interested in an alternative approach to your health, book your free consultation here.