Brain Wellness - the Podcast, Plymouth, MI (2025)

07/22/2025

I couldn’t miss posting about World Brain Day!

This day is to highlight the importance of brain health. This year’s theme is brain health for all ages.

We each only have one brain and we haven’t figured out how to do brain transplants yet, so we need to take care of our brains!

How do we do that?
1. Get enough sleep!
2. Eat real, whole foods, avoid processed “foods”
3. Drink plenty of water
4. Stay active physically, mentally, and socially
5. Rest your brain when it’s injured
6. Limit alcohol and avoid other mood altering drugs (I get there may be benefits of ma*****na, but long term it’s still not good for your brain!)
7. Seek help when needed, for both physical and mental illness

I didn’t appreciate my brain enough until it was injured - don’t wait for something drastic to make you take care of your brain

07/22/2025

Early in our healthcare careers, we learn the terms subjective and objective.

Subjective experiences are what our patients report to us, what they feel. Objective means things can be observed and quantified. As healthcare providers, we are always looking for the objective data that helps us know for certain when somebody reports something that it is true.

In the world of brain injury, however, patients don’t always report things that they feel, or perhaps they don’t even realize that things are occurring. Vision is a great example of this. People may experience blurring or fuzziness of their vision, but they don’t recognize it as being double.

When I went in for my first neuro-optometry visit after my brain injury, all I could tell the neuro-optometrist was that I couldn’t clearly see one object, and I couldn’t clearly see two objects. This was because the objects were so close to each other that it just looked blurry and fuzzy. I didn’t realize I had diplopia. I couldn’t tell that I was seeing double until he put all the funky lenses in front of my eyes that made it objective for him. At that point, my subjective experience changed. I was now aware I had double vision.

This is a conversation I have with my patients on a regular basis now. I go through my history questions which include vision screening. And despite them telling me they don’t have double vision, I still screen for it on assessment. More times than not, I identify that they do, indeed, have visual difficulties that need to be addressed.

Sometimes brain injury patients don’t remember to tell us about their symptoms, and sometimes they don’t even realize they have them.

07/18/2025

It’s new podcast episode day! Episode 143 is now available!

This week I’m joined by Diana Driscoll, OD, as we discuss POTS (postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome). She shares how she was diagnosed after a severe viral illness, and how she discovered that it was not just a vagal nerve issue, but how it was related to neurotransmitter function. through her research and treatment, she was able to reverse her diagnosis, something that many believe to be impossible.

Tune in to hear the full interview now!

Find the episode on your favorite platform at https://bio.link/brainwellnessnp

POTS Care

07/17/2025

This week I’m joined by Diana Driscoll, an optometrist who found herself with POTS after a severe viral illness. She shares how she learned that POTS isn’t just a vagus nerve problem, and how she identified it can actually be related to neurotransmitters. This led to many more discoveries about POTS. Tune in Friday for the full interview! POTS Care

07/16/2025

When kids fall down and get injured, we usually think they’re essentially made of rubber and are resilient, so once they bounce back, we assume they’re “fine”.

There’s plenty of research now that says otherwise. While kids may recover physically from a brain injury, the timing of their injury can have a major impact on their cognitive development. Brain injuries during pivotal moments in development can cause delays and errors in learning that can come back to haunt them later.

When a child has an injury very early in life and later in life develops learning difficulties, ADHD, or behavioral issues, we often don’t connect those two things. We tend to mistakenly assume they are two completely unconnected phenomena, and as such have a misguided approach to treatment.

Yes, kids are resilient, but their brains are still fragile during phases of rapid growth, which can result in long term cognitive and mental health difficulties.

Treatments are available, and we only get one brain to work with. It’s time we care for them appropriately.

07/11/2025

It’s a beautiful day for a new podcast episode! Episode 142 is now available!

This week I’m joined by Heidi Hill, AuD, an audiologist with a passion for brain injury care. She describes some of the common auditory findings after brain injury, including tinnitus, hidden hearing loss and auditory processing disorder. She also discusses a newer technology that can objectively measure auditory processing - great for those of us who love data! So much great information!

Tune in to hear the full interview now!

Find the episode on your favorite platform at https://bio.link/brainwellnessnp

Hearing Health Clinic

07/09/2025

This week I’m joined by Audiologist, Dr. Heidi Hill, to talk about things like auditory processing disorder that can occur after a head injury. Here she describes the importance of that processing. Tune in Friday for the full interview! Hearing Health Clinic

07/08/2025

Here’s another myth I debunk all day…

Historically we have used the terms mild, moderate, and severe to categorize brain injury. “Mild” injuries do not have loss of consciousness. “Moderate” have loss of consciousness for up to 24 hours. “Severe” have loss of consciousness greater than 24 hours and/or skull fracture/head bleed.

These labels do not address anything beyond the time of injury. Mild TBIs (mTBIs) make up somewhere between 75-90% of all TBIs, and we now know that approximately 30% of these go on to have persistent post concussive symptoms (PPCS). mTBI can lead to permanent cognitive disabilities.

It is not a one-time event. TBI has been added to the CDC’s list of chronic diseases because of the long term nature of symptoms. And concussion is a mild TBI.

We need to drop our outdated beliefs that concussion/mild TBI do not cause lasting symptoms. We know better, so it’s time we do better.

07/04/2025

Happy 4th of July! It’s a beautiful day for a new podcast episode! Episode 141 is now available!

This week I’m joined by Mark Faulkner, founder of ConCret Creatine, to discuss the importance of creatine in the body. It has long been understood to be beneficial for athletes, but he shares their research on how creatine can help in brain injury recovery, and he gives a sneak peek into upcoming research on prevention of head injuries!

Tune in to hear the full interview now!

Find the episode on your favorite platform at https://bio.link/brainwellnessnp

CON-CRĒT Creatine

07/02/2025

This week I’m joined by Mark Faulkner, an important figure in the world of athletics for years doing research on drug testing and healthy alternatives for optimizing health of professional athletes. He has branched out into the wellness space, now involved in research for brain health related to creatine supplementation. The results will astound you! Tune in Friday for the full interview! CON-CRĒT Creatine

07/01/2025

This is a myth I debunk all day every day in clinic.

So many people still don’t understand this! You do NOT have to hit your head OR lose consciousness in order to have a concussion (also known as a traumatic brain injury).

Only about 10% of individuals experiencing a TBI lose consciousness - the grand majority remain conscious. And probably about half hit their head. The rest come from inertia as with whiplash or hard hits to the torso that cause your brain to jostle inside your skull, or from blast injuries in the military or law enforcement.

The statistics we know with concussion probably aren’t even correct because most people don’t get evaluated if they don’t lose consciousness or don’t remember hitting their head. There are likely many more concussions than we even realize in research!

Most of my current clinic patients aren’t acute injuries - most have had symptoms for several months before I see them, and many have been affected for more than a year. They didn’t get addressed early, often because it wasn’t even called a TBI initially because of the myth above. And to clear up a related myth, if you DID hit your head hard enough to cause facial or jaw fractures, a skull fracture, or head bleed, you also sustained a traumatic brain injury - you don’t get out of that without one!

💫

06/27/2025

It’s a great day for a new podcast episode! Episode 140 is now available!

This week I’m joined by Nicole St. John with the Hennepin Healthcare TBI program to talk about the role of OT In vision therapy. She shares how she got interested in being an OT, how vision therapy specifically called out to her, why it’s often not at the forefront of brain injury recovery, and some of the main ways OT vision therapy is beneficial. What a great conversation!

Tune in to hear the full interview now!

Find the episode on your favorite platform at https://bio.link/brainwellnessnp

Brain Wellness - the Podcast

07/22/2025

07/22/2025

07/18/2025

07/17/2025

07/16/2025

07/11/2025

07/09/2025

07/08/2025

07/04/2025

07/02/2025

07/01/2025

06/27/2025

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category