Can Caffeine Give You Permanent Dizziness?

Can Caffeine Give You Permanent Dizziness?

by | Jul 25, 2022

Look, everybody is so different. My instinct is to say no, but, I mean, maybe it’s possible for somebody out there. I think the better thing to do here would be to pause and ask your body, “Body, is caffeine serving me? How much caffeine is healthy for me?” For some people, having a cup of coffee a day is absolutely no problem, and for somebody else, they might have a severe reaction to caffeine where the body genuinely overreacts, and perhaps dizziness is one of the side effects of caffeine.

So, I think the question is not about caffeine, it’s about you and your body and learning to listen to the information your body’s giving you, because the symptoms you experience are your body’s way of saying, “Hey, listen to me. Something doesn’t feel right. I’m feeling dizzy, I’m feeling off.” So then we have to troubleshoot, and this is basis of the Rock Steady path. This is the Rock Steady process.

How can I pause? How can I take note? How can I be kind and listen to the information my body’s giving me rather than shame my body or ignore my symptoms and try and get rid of them? How can I use those dizzy symptoms as valuable information to figure out how I return to balance and how I really become that new normal and that better version of myself? These are all important questions to ask, to begin healing with neuroplasticity.

Does Exercise Rewire Your Brain?

Does Exercise Rewire Your Brain?

by | Jul 25, 2022

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.

Does Exercise Increase Neuroplasticity?

Does Exercise Increase Neuroplasticity?

by | Jul 25, 2022

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.

What is Visual Snow Syndrome & Can it Be Reversed?

What is Visual Snow Syndrome & Can it Be Reversed?

by | Jul 25, 2022

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.

 

What is Neural Circuit Dizziness?

What is Neural Circuit Dizziness?

by | May 31, 2022

Dizziness is a sensation where we feel unexpected internal movement or we feel not quite right— what we sense and feel doesn’t match the situation we are in.

Dizziness comes from neural signals or nerve cells talking to each other. Those neural signals will be starting and ending somewhere between the inner ears (in the vestibular balance system) and the brain.

Those inner ear neural messages will be creating circuits, networks, and pathways to communicate with our eyes to stabilize our vision, and our spinal cord for posture. Our balance spinal reflexes respond appropriate to the situation, whether we are sitting, standing, or walking, these very fast refelxes keep us feeling steady and stable. The brain is integrating and coordinating all of these neural messages and neural circuits.

When there’s dizziness, something’s out of whack. It doesn’t feel quite right. There is an imbalance in the system somewhere. So, neural circuit dizziness refers to neural pathways that really need reestablishing, re-organsing, re-centering, or re-steadying.

I recommend a self-study process such as the ROCK STEADY program to help rebuild new normal  balance pathways if there is a neural circuit dizziness that’s chronic and not resolving. If you’re not sure where you’re at, neural circuit dizziness can resolve in seconds, or it can resolve in minutes. We can expect dizziness to be resolved naturally within six weeks. So, if it’s ongoing in a chronic condition, chronic dizziness, that neural circuitry is getting locked in the dizziness signal pattern.

The ROCK STEADY program has tools to help reverse any dizzy neural circuits and to reestablish new normalized balance pathways so that the dizziness signal is weakened. We override the dizzy signals with normal balance pathways using neuroplasticity and changing how those nerve cells communicate so that we can feel normal again.

 

Is There Such a Thing As a Neuroplasticity Therapist?

Is There Such a Thing As a Neuroplasticity Therapist?

by | May 31, 2022

Yes, a neuroplasticity therapist is someone who understands how your neural networks are talking to each other — communicating with each other — and how to guide someone through feeling their way and embodying their way through neural circuit changes. It would be someone who has a vast amount of experience in embodying a therapy — embodying a process. It’s not something that would be learned through books or through theoretics. A neuroplasticity therapist will be someone who actually works in the body, in their own body and in their client’s body, to help navigate, “How can I take this neural experience and perhaps massage it over to that neural experience?” which will be highly individualized for each person. So the therapist will be very experienced in targeting how to shape our home practice and how to develop a home program with someone.

My ROCK STEADY program is designed to help you become your own neuroplasticity therapist, where you ask questions and you answer your own questions using your body as a guide. It is ideal that we all become our own neuroplasticity therapist. However, sometimes it’s nice to have a professional to hold our hand and guide us, or to use a program with comprehensive guidance to help build that awareness and those skills.