Well, yes. Anything we do rewires the brain, but the real question is: is it rewiring it in a way we want it? Because remember, neuroplasticity and rewiring and reshaping and remapping of our brain networks and our body neurological networks can happen in ways we don’t like. We can rewire ourselves to become more anxious or more depressed, or more stuck or to be in more pain.
So exercise can rewire our body and brain for the better or for the worse. I think it’s not about whether or not exercise is rewiring our brains. It’s about things like:
Is this helpful for me?
Is this workable for me?
What is my intention?
What is my emotional state?
And to get really clear physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually on which neural networks we want to build and support, and how you’re going to do that. That is the basis of the Rock Steady program for healing using neuroplasticity and a holistic intentional approach.
I want to say yes and I want to say no. Exercise is all about how we’re doing it and why we’re doing it, and most importantly, what’s the intention behind the exercise. Neuroplasticity is really about novel stimuli, and it has to do with how we’re feeling while we’re doing things. Neuroplasticity is about all of our neural networks, including our emotional networks and our thought and mental pathways. It’s not just physically building a muscle.
So, doing lots of repeating of the same exercise every day with the same mindset and with the same emotional landscape will not create neuroplastic change. You’ll just be waking up doing the same thing you do every day and feeling the same thing you feel every day.
The Rock Steady process guides you to stop and think about “what’s really important to me”. This will be different for every person. “Where am I at physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, and how can I be very intentional and very clear about what I want to feel and how I bring that into whatever choice I’m making and whatever exercise I’m doing?” This includes regular and incidental exercise, such as cleaning the house or dropping the kids off at school.
So, it’ll be much more effective to have intentional living with this incidental movement where you have crafted a rock steady way of life. That would be much more effective from a neuroplasticity point of view than going on exactly the same run or exactly the same bike ride or exactly the same yoga class with the same mindset and nothing changing at that deeper neuroplasticity level. Exercise can actually be an inhibitor if we’re not using it with that rock steady mindset that supports neuroplasticity growth and development.
Visual Snow Syndrome is referring to dots or speckles in your field of vision. They can be white, or black or they can be a transparent kind of snow, so I guess it’s well named. These are speckly dots moving in the visual field. It’s a neurological condition, which means the neural pathways and the neural messages around the brain regions for interpreting visual messages have received error signals, and we don’t know why it’s there. We don’t necessarily have all the medical understanding of this condition, but it’s very common in my clients with vertigo, and especially with those with vestibular migraine symptoms.
I myself have had plenty of the strange spotting in my visual field. It tends to come and go, and of course, it’s worse when I’m stressed and when I’m tired.
If this is something that you feel like you want to reverse and you want to heal with neuroplasticity, follow the Rock Steady process and path to learn how to resolve any nervous system issues and help the brain and the body to reestablish a new normal. You can grow and utilize really healthy neural pathways, moving around the brain, around the eyes, around the ears and the spinal column, because visual blur and visual snow can be a part of vertigo error pathways. So, while no one can predict your future, I think it’s really worth employing neuroplasticity skills to improve whatever visual residual function you have. If you have normal eye function and you have a healthy brain, there’s no reason not to try to completely resolve that visual snow syndrome using the healthy pathways that already exist.
Tinnitus sounds and body sounds could change, and are in fact likely to change, with concussion or any kind of head injury, as well as throughout the healing process. As the body, the brain, the skull, and the structures within are healing (we could think of it as like a really large bruise to the brain), we can expect the occurrence or or changing of tinnitus sounds.
Even as we do heal the concussion, there may be some ongoing tinnitus sounds as the body is reestablishing its own equilibrium and balance.
If you have ongoing tinnitus that bothers you and concerns you following concussion, you can always follow the Rock Steady program and the Rock Steady path of healing with neuroplasticity. There’s no reason for the tinnitus to continue ongoing after the concussion has been resolved, follow the Rock Steady process to resolve and heal that tinnitus if it’s problematic for you.
I have never been asked this question before, and my instinct is to say that the sounds that our bodies makes are related to the overall health of the body. This could go in all directions, including when we’re at a healthy body weight, when we’re very, very thin or anorexic and at a very low body weight, or at an increased body weight moving toward the obesity spectrum.
The sounds that our bodies make are mechanically influenced by the health and state of our body, so I wouldn’t make any big judgments around the sounds you’re experiencing and how that relates to your body size. The questions I’d be more inclined to ask would be:
How can I support my body?
Is my body asking me for some kind of wellbeing or health or lifestyle choice, some kind of alteration to improve my overall health?
Those kind of questions certainly can be helpful to reduce the tinnitus, if not completely heal it all together.
I recommend that you follow the Rock Steady process, and engage with the Rock Steady program to learn about healing tinnitus regardless of your body weight, with a focus on how you relate to the tinnitus and how you can resolve the tinnitus with neuroplasticity.
Pulsatile tinnitus is a sound that is made within the body, so nobody else can hear it, just the person who’s perceiving it. The sound could be in one ear, in both ears, in the head, or even in the body, and pulsatile tinnitus means that it has a pulsing quality to it.
Often that will be directly related to blood flow. So, as your heart’s beating and the capillaries around the inner ears and the neural structures around the inner ears are receiving that pulse of blood flow to and from the ears, some people can actually hear a pulsatile sound that’s mechanically generated in the body, and that’s why it’s called pulsatile tinnitus.
If you’re worried about it, ask your doctor to check it out, and if it’s an ongoing tinnitus that you can’t resolve and you’ve already had medical clearance, try the Rock Steady pathway to heal with neuroplasticity.
