Welcome Back!

Now that the Holidays are over and the month of January is past, we can get on with important issues for 2008.  I still have not gotten used to writing 2008, but that is a different topic all together.

Starting off the new year right, means that we should start with the basics.  In the case of body function, this means neurology.  We, as humans, are nothing more than a 'big, light up grid' of nerve signals.  Every function we perform, or think about performing, is controlled by this grid.  

When injury or illness occurs within the body, the grid is affected and it does not perform properly.  That means every body function is now 'out of sync', even if the imbalance is slight.  This is how we begin to slowly decline and age.

Chiropractic care maintains the structure and function of the frame (body) and the grid (brain and nervous system).  This is why people who maintain their bodies with Chiropractic, live longer and better.  I have written on longevity and Chiropractic in the past and it still holds true.  

Even though your insurer may say you have "8 visits a year, and that's it.", your body could care less about time frames.  The grid  either works properly or it doesn't!  When the system begins to fail, maintenance is needed or the grid begins to rewire a bit (plasticity) and change on its own.  For that reason, not all change within the nervous system is good!

Most people live in their body for 80, 90 or even 100 years, but few people ever understand how their body really works.  I hope that this Issue of ENews is of benefit in helping each of you learn a little bit more about YOU!   

Enjoy the Newsletter!

Dr. Frisch

Let's Talk a While

One of the greatest accomplishments that we ever achieve is learning how to talk.  I'll bet none of us remembers the exact moment that we 'got it' and formed our first word that made sense!  If this feat is so remarkable, then why can't we remember when and how we did it?

I can remember learning to write, brush my teeth and even the exact moment that I figured out how to tie my shoes!  Think I'm kidding?  I'm not!  I was sitting on the floor, against the old pine, kitchen cupboard with my legs crossed.  My older brother showed me over and over how to make the knot on my blue and white canvas and rubber-toed tennis shoes, until I knew how to do it every time!  Not bad, huh?  Now if I could just remember where I placed my car keys.

I had previously written about how we develop meaning via vibrational wave forms traveling from our ear drum to our brain (Sept 2004 ENews).  During this process, a vibrational sound moves from the ear to the superior olives, onto the inferior colliculi and medial geniculate nuclei and, finally, the vibrational signal is converted to meaning in the auditory cortex, just behind your temples.  The 'meaning' must have a reaction in some form.  A reaction to vibrational frequencies may be physical or mental.  We may interpret one sound to be fearful and run, while another sound calms us and we want to move closer.  

How we react to a sound can be based on experience or pre-programmed genetics.  Human evolution has pre-programmed us for both pleasure and pain.  This programming is learned at a level separate from conscious thought.  It is almost as though we absorb the ability to respond to our environment.  We can know without really understanding why!

Responding verbally to a stimulus is a learned response.  Sure, we can make noises that inflect surprise or fear, but a word that makes sense and indicates that we understood a comment or situation is a different feat all together.  Coping with an infant, learning to make sounds of meaning, can be an arduous and stressful time.  The child knows what adult sounds are like, but he or she can't yet do it. It takes time, repetition, and physical ability to make noises 'the right way'.  

A physical impairment within a child's brain may slow the transmission of a signal to the auditory cortex, inhibit the processing of the signal, or even block the physical or vocal response.  This would cover the spectrum between deafness and being mute.  Neither means that a child is retarded or stupid, but rather, suffers with a neurological impairment of signal in or signal out!  Either way, the repetition of language-learning behavior is mandatory.  This is how people learn to read lips.  When a physical action is coupled with an emotional response, he or she learns to have an emotional, stimulating reaction that becomes reproducible.  They learn to talk without hearing and understand the meaning of the expressions!

"Meaning is acquired without active training.  Expression of any meaning (language) is developed through a learned, repetitive reaction."

Science Talks

The brain is a complex organ, but science continues to make inroads into real and predictable brain function.  It is not just enough to know that the brain does 'everything'.  It is equally important to understand how the brain receives, processes and then reacts to the world around us.

The difficulty of researching the brain is due to the speed of processing that it uses.  Technology, although good, has been slow and methodical in how it studies organ function.  The brain doesn't have time to dawdle; it handles multiple processes at the same time and rarely fails.  Tracking this has been an uphill battle for science.

Brain mapping¹ has been applied in the last couple of years using a novel approach.  Functional MRI has been coupled with EEG of the brain to speed up the rate of tracking for electrical brain activity from hundreds of milliseconds to tens of milliseconds.  This speed difference is akin to a Model-T racing a Porsche.

Tracing brain function in this manner has revealed a consistent and predictable routing of information flow by frequency bands within the brain.²  This new technology will be used to study brain function further and aid in determining how brain disease progress, and hopefully, how to neurologically interrupt the disease itself.

Technology that is proven effective and gains wide use, usually becomes more affordable.  When Brain mapping becomes more commonplace, I do suspect that chronic pain patterns will be traced in the brain as well.  How fascinating would it be to actually watch and trace the neurological stimulation created by a chiropractic adjustment using the Activator instrument.  We might be able to determine who would best benefit from what type of care!  

"Science continues to valid Chiropractic and the future should shine brightly!"

1. Momjian, S., Seghier, M., Seeck, M., Michel, C.M., (2003). Mapping of the neuronal networks of human cortical brain function. Adv Tech Stand Neurosurg. 28: 91-142.

2. Babiloni, F., Cincotti, F., et. al. (2005) Estimation of the cortical functional connectivity with the multimodal integration of high-resolution EEG and fMRI data by directed transfer function.

Shake, Rattle and Remodel

I have written previously on the topic of neurological plasticity and how the body's nervous system changes over the course of a lifetime.  These changes can be subtle or quite dramatic and we each have more control over our quality of life than previously thought.  This statement is beginning to be well supported in both the medical and scientific communities.  It will likely take many years, however, for the mainstream media to understand plasticity and then figure out how to talk and write about it.  If you are reading this article, you are already years ahead of your friends and peers in understanding how the human body really works!

Those of you who know me, know that I like to keep difficult explanations simple so that everyone can understand it.  I feel that if you can't find a way to be understood by the people you are talking to, why bother talking at all?  They won't understand you and you will both walk away frustrated.  

The neurological patterns that I talked about in the first two articles  will follow a similar pathway every time, but when a signal gets to the end nuclei, to be understood, the information has to be related to something that an individual has already learned in his or her life...Understanding is based on previously-learned meaning.

Here is an example

To understand how your nervous system works (Too hard to consider..tune out now...but don't!) is not that difficult.  Most people, when learning something new, want to make a mountain out of a mole hill. (You've already learned what they both are.) When thinking about your nervous system you should simply think about a map of Minnesota. (You know what that looks like.) The map of Minnesota has many towns and cities, which are all connected by squiggly lines called roads. (You know towns and you know roads.) Your nervous system has towns as well.  The towns of your nervous system are called neurons.  There are big neurons and there are smaller neurons, but they all do basically the same thing...they receive and send information.  Neurons are connected by roads called nerves. ( There are different types of roads and there are different types of nerves, which carry different types of traffic.)  Information travels along these nerves like gossip in a small town. You know how that works; before you can get home, a relative heard about your antics three towns away.  Something's going to happen as a result....guaranteed!  

"This is exactly how your nerves work and how signals are sent around your body...by the billions!"

When a road 'wears out' or washes out', all traffic to town from that direction stops.  It is a real pain in the butt trying to figure out new routes to get to work, how to get the kids to school, and how to avoid other traffic already on the road.  This is PLASTICITY!  We are forced to adapt   

When an individual suffers from an injury or a disease, nerve signals may not be able to travel to the proper town (neuron).  The nerves have nowhere to send their information and because of this, nothing happens.  This is what happens with paralysis, stroke and even something as common as a herniated disc.  Impairment results from a road (nerve) being washed out and not being able to send information, or worse, the town (neuron) blew up.  In that case, the nerve may send signals properly, but there is no place for the signal to go, and again, nothing happens.  

Now, here comes the magic!  Your brain, with physical, neurological stimulation (Think Chiropractic!) and mental stimulation, begins to adapt to the loss and finds new, acceptable ways for information to travel within the brain and body.  New neurons may be used, or even created, to handle the information signals.  All injuries will stabilize in their recovery, some good and some poorly.  Physical recovery can be maximized by using chiropractic care, as well as other neurological measures.

This is Plasticity!

Eileen's Corner

"Here's one for the Big Game!"

Guacamole

 
3-4 ripe avocados
 
3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice (1 lemon)
 
3 or more dashes hot pepper sauce
 
1/2 cup small-diced onion
 
1 large garlic clove, minced
 
1 teaspoon kosher salt
 
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
 
1 medium tomato, seeded, and small-diced

 
Cut the avocadoes in 1/2, remove the pits, and scoop the flesh out of their shells and into a large bowl. 

Immediately add the lemon juice, hot pepper sauce, onion, garlic, salt and pepper and toss well.  

Using a sharp knife slice through the avocados in the bowl until they are finely diced.  

Add the tomatoes.  Mix well and taste for salt and pepper.  Serve with your favorite chips.

Guacamole is always best when served fresh!

Enjoy!

Eileen

The Genetic Brain

Our finger prints are not the only thing unique to each of us. New and exciting research continues to delve into the phenomenon of genetic imprinting within the brain of each of us.  That's right!  Science is now investigating how some genetic material in our brain is turned off, while other genetic material become dominant, all because of one parent or the other!  Here's how it works.

When we are born, we have autosomal genes in duplicate (2 alleles), one inherited from the father and one from the mother.¹  Most genes in our body have equal expression for both alleles, but with some genes, called 'imprinted genes', only one of the alleles is expressed, while the other allele is silenced.  This means that the behavior or action of that gene will take on only the characteristic of one parent.  This is the likely reason why one child looks and acts much more like one parent, than the other.

Science is not yet sure what all of the ramifications of the 'rouge' genes are. Mental illness may truly have a genetic component due to imprinted genes, but then again, the imprinted genes may simply affect the behavior of an individual and lead to mental illness later in life.  Diseases are another investigation topic for researchers. They are now beginning to look at neurologically-related disease as a possible expression of imprinted genes later in life.²  This could include Alzheimer's Disease and other dementias, as well as MS.  In other words, we may be at risk, from birth, to develop a neurological disease.  Wow.  So much for staying healthy by living a clean life!

Neurological diseases are not the only processes suspected by imprinted gene function. Our hormonal chain (neuroendocrine) may actually be regulated by imprinted genes.³  This would mean that 'glandular' organs like the thyroid, pituitary, prostate and even the breast may have an imprinted code for failure, which results in disease.  All of this hardship, simply because one 1/2 of a gene decided to be boss!

Looking at this from a chiropractic viewpoint, I have always been curious why some people are prone to back and neck injury and why some patients have a poorer recovery than others, especially with the same type of injury.  It's not just, "They are out of shape." or "They only need to lose 50 lbs."  There is more to structural and neurological recovery than that!  I would suggest that some people are genetically imprinted for joint failure, which leads to a stabilizing arthritis.  These people will likely need more stabilizing care during their lifetime than others. 

Chiropractic will definitely help this category of people become and remain stable, but I think that continued gene therapy research is needed to determine who will suffer from structural failure and when that may occur and how best to intervene!

Have a great Month,

Dr. Frisch

1. Davies, W., Isles, A.R., Wilkinson, L.S.  (2005) Imprinted gene expression in the brain. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Revue. May;29(3): 421-430.

2. Davies, W. Isles, A.R., Hunby, T., Wilkinson, L.S. (2007) What are imprinted genes doing in the brain? Epigenetics. December 5;2(4)

3. Davies, W., Lynn, P.M., Relkovic, D., Wilkinson, L.S. (2007) Imprinted genes and neuroendocrine function. Frontal Neuroendocrinology. December 10.