Transcript of Episode 181: How Neurofeedback Can Help You
With Dr. Daniel Pompa, Meredith Dykstra and Dr. Nelson Bulmash
>> Check out the take-home TCD clear units for yourself HERE. Are you a practitioner interested in learning more about TCD clear units? Go HERE.
Meredith:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m your host, Meredith Dykstra, and this is Episode 181. We have our resident cellular healing specialist, Dr. Dan Pompa, on the line. Today we welcome a very special guest with a whole new topic to Cellular Healing TV, and his name is Dr. Nelson Bulmash. Today we are going to be diving into the world of neurofeedback, a really cool topic, really exciting. I’m very interested. I know, Dr. Pompa, you’re excited too.
Dr. Nelson, before we get started here, let me tell our audience a little bit about you. Dr. Nelson D. Bulmash graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor’s in Biology and minors in both chemistry and psychology. He then completed his Doctorate of Chiropractic from Life Chiropractic College, serving as class president during most of his matriculation. Since graduating, he has spent over 25 years building a clinical practice specializing in chiropractic and clinical nutrition, while simultaneously completing two Diplomates in Clinical Nutrition, a national certification as a naturopath and as a clinical nutritionist, and multiple advanced certifications in nutrition. Wow! Dr. Bulmash has established himself as an expert in health and fitness with an emphasis on strength coaching. He has coached several American team powerlifters at the national and international level, helping them to win gold, silver, and bronze medals, often setting new American and world records. He’s provided chiropractic and nutritional care for athletes in the NFL, NBA, MLB, tennis, golf, martial arts, rugby, soccer, rowing, gymnastics, equestrian, cheerleading, volleyball, track and field, and powerlifting communities.
Dr. Bulmash is pioneering new protocols with the TCD Clear unit, an advanced technology based on neurofeedback. This system uses specific pulsed light and sound to help retrain the brain for ideal function. He has developed a series of complex nonlinear range of motion patterns to be coupled with the TCD Clear unit protocols to help eliminate stuck neurological patterns in the central and peripheral nervous system. Freeing these patterns allows a person to recover more completely from injuries, traumas, or imbalances in the brain. Dr. Bulmash is a published writer and speaker currently residing in Alpharetta, Georgia where he is the founder and CEO of Health Matters. He’s available for consulting, speaking, and teaching upon request. Welcome, Dr. Bulmash, to Cellular Healing TV.
Dr. Bulmash:
Thank you, Meredith.
Meredith:
Quite an impressive resume and we’re so excited for this topic.
Dr. Bulmash:
Happy to be here. Great to be with both of you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Thank you Nelson, Dr. Nelson, for being here. Yeah. The first time I met you I said, man, this guy’s just built for pushing and pulling things. I said that to you, right?
Dr. Bulmash:
Yes. You sure did.
Dr. Pompa:
You said that’s exactly what I do and my whole family as well is you all hold all these records, world records, I mean, squatting, pulling, pushing. You name it. I said, gosh, you guys are just built for that. I said opposite of my family, right? We’re more sleek. You guys are just built for power, man. Anyways, so when I heard that resume, that resume didn’t surprise me at all.
Dr. Bulmash:
I got you, very, very good.
Dr. Pompa:
Today’s show, I think our viewers and listeners are going to absolutely love it. There’s so much to get out of this show. This is new territory. You have put together, I’m going to show the unit here, a lot of this, and the protocols that we’ve been using really focused on our expertise. That’s cellular detox and cellular healing, but this feedback here isn’t new. You devised how we’re putting it together with what we’re doing. That’s new. Tell our listeners and viewers what is neurofeedback, and then let’s get really into what does that matter to them? How is it going to benefit them?
Dr. Bulmash:
Absolutely. It’s funny, Dan. When I was in chiropractic school, neurology was a whole different animal. There was so much speculation about how the brain worked back then. I remember listening to my professors, and so much of the lectures went like this. We think that this part of the brain does this, and if it does, it’s likely that it interacts or relates to this part of the brain in the following way. It was so obfuscated. There was such a lack of clarity 30, 35 years ago that I didn’t take the interest in it that I do today.
It’s funny. Sometimes you go kicking and screaming. Sometimes you walk down the path voluntarily. I ended up going kicking and screaming. Meaning I realized that the better the brain works, the better, generally speaking, a person’s life is. What got me really into the neurofeedback system is years ago I had cancer, and I was dealing concurrently with an autoimmune problem. I went from this guy who could rep 500 pounds in a bench; put a thousand pounds on my back, to somebody who got insanely ill almost overnight.
I went out to Las Vegas. I was defending my diplomate work, and all of a sudden, I came down with a very, very brutal form of colitis. The next thing I knew I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis, Hashimoto’s. Six months later, I was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, so my life was turned upside down like a tornado, so to speak. I spent the next years figuring out how to really get my body going from being somebody who was an elite athlete, somebody who pound for pound as a drug-free, non-equipped athlete was among the strongest there was in this country to somebody who had difficulty walking up stairs, somebody who had difficulty working. I mean, for me to finish day-to-day work took everything out of me. Of course, it was a long time to recover, so what I did is I spent the rest of my life and career as I do today figuring out how to make my brain work better because one of the parts of the body, as you know, that’s really impacted when you get ill or when you have a trauma is the brain.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Dr. Bulmash:
Exactly. What I did was I found the neurofeedback system, and realized that it had some really, really important features. Number one, it allows us to map out the human brain, and by doing so, we get a really good idea as to how effectively or ineffectively the lobes of the brain are firing. Now, that’s very, very important. If parts of the brain aren’t firing properly, your brain isn’t working okay, and so as a result, the consequences are that life can be very difficult. Whether you have mood dysfunction or dysregulation, or you can’t handle things metabolically; you can’t handle things from a motor perspective, your world goes sideways very, very quickly.
The neurofeedback system to which you refer does some interesting things. The most important initially is it allows us to map out how well or ineffectively your brain is working. Number two, we can come up now with protocols that actually help make the brain work effectively or appropriately again, which is huge. As an example, if you’re somebody whose left frontal cortex isn’t working properly, you’re not going to process information well. You’re going to have a tendency towards depression, OCD, anxiety, and this kind of thing, and I never got into the work that I do to help people get through depression. It just wasn’t on my radar.
Suddenly, simple things, like people would walk out of the room after a 30-minute session and say this is really strange. I don’t feel depressed any more. I thought, well, that’s interesting because I didn’t use it originally for that. I used it to help people particularly with performance. The second thing it does is it allows us in real time to actually see what kind of brainwave activity is occurring in a person and how it compares from the left to the right hemisphere, also very, very important. If we have one side of the brain working well but not the other side, there are clearly going to be problems in the functioning of the individual’s brain and, therefore, in their life.
Thirdly, we use the neurofeedback system as a form of operant conditioning, in this case, specifically known as biofeedback. What we do is very easy. We sit a person down in front of a computer, and we play a movie that they like, as long as it’s not something violent. Something that’s easy on the nervous system. Not traumatizing. The person gets to watch a movie. Now, here’s what happens. If you’re brain begins to drift, then the movie disappears. No sound. No visual. Of course, that’s frustrating to the individual, so it teaches the brain how to focus and retain its focus so the person gets rewarded by being able to see the movie that they want to watch.
Really, what it does is it allows us to use something called a neural entrainment. A neural entrainment is where we expose the brain concurrently to specific pulsating light and sound tones, and this trains the brain to form optimized brainwave patterns, which in turn translates to helping us think, function, and feel in an ideal manner. You have people that have difficulty with anything from OCD, to depression, to anxiety who suddenly, after several sessions, come out of the room and say wow. I have a lot more energy. I’m sleeping better. I’m interacting more appropriately with people, and I feel more successful, more effective in my life.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I was just going to – I just realized my son is using this, and he didn’t recharge it. Darn it. I’m going to kill him. Anyway, I wanted to show this unit.
Dr. Bulmash:
Yes.
Dr. Pompa:
Now, I wish I could show it. If I could find my cord to plug it in here, I will show you. These things flash, okay? These lights are flashing. Then I put the headphones on, and it’s also hitting specific frequencies with certain sounds. Explain to the folks listening to why these glasses with certain colors, certain flashing, and in listening to this, how that can change your brain.
Dr. Bulmash:
Absolutely, really, really good question. Thank you for asking that. That’s the million dollar question. In essence, we’re born with this beautiful, beautiful ability to alter the architectural connectivity of the brain. It’s called neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity allows us through learning and experiences or from recovering from trauma or diseases like a concussion, like a brain tumor, to repair itself. This is a phenomenal ability.
What we do with the flashing lights is we specifically reprogram or retrain, reformat the brain to maximize its synaptic firing. Now, the glasses are really important because what we know, Dr. Pompa, about the glasses is the color is very important. For example, if somebody comes in and they’re having terrible problems with anxiety, I’m going to use either blue or green glasses.
Dr. Pompa:
Right. I have blue. I have green. I have red.
Dr. Bulmash:
Perfect. Perfect. The blue is the most cooling color for the nervous system. It’s very calming. If I put somebody on specific programs for a lengthy period of time, 45 minutes to an hour, it’s so calming for some people who have really severe anxiety issues or depression. It can actually calm them so much that it has a sedative effect on the nervous system, so it really drives a parasympathetic state in the nervous system. This is also very, very good for people with extreme adrenal fatigue issues, right, somebody that’s been through a posttraumatic stress issue, a divorce, death of a family member. Very, very commonly used for people who are firemen, police officers, or vets. They suffer tremendously from posttraumatic stress disorders, and nobody really knows how to take care of them.
I’m almost embarrassed. When I started using this technology, it made me so effective I appeared to be a far greater expert than I ever really was, and it really wasn’t my expertise. It was the power of the unit. These units are so effective, both the TCD Clear unit and the neurofeedback system, because the power of entrainment, retraining the brain with specific frequencies of sound and light and specific colors, allows us to reformat the brain so that instead of producing, for example, high amplitude alpha waves in the left frontal lobe that can lead to depression, anxiety, and so forth, we can balance out those brainwaves, and so suddenly, that disappears. Now, their problems don’t disappear. For example, if they’re getting a divorce, they’re still going to go—have to go through the process and the trauma of getting a divorce or the healing of a loved one passing. However, what it does is it optimizes the brain so that the brain has a higher critical threshold of adaptation to stress, so now something that seemed insurmountable to recover from is suddenly—the individual is suddenly able to heal.
Green glasses, for example, are very healing. They’re very calming like blue. Not quite as calming as blue but still very calming. What I love about the green glasses is they’re remarkable for facilitating healing. They’re really, really effective if somebody’s injured, if somebody’s been highly stressed to help calm the nervous system. In addition to calming—and it does something that the blue really doesn’t do, and that is it gently activates and stimulates you. You’re left where the blue leaves you feeling very calm. A lot of people come out of the room saying, well, I feel very chilled. The green leaves you feeling energized.
The blue used to be my favorite color. Now I’m leaning more towards green. You can take these people and calm them; yet leave them with access to greater day after reserve capacity by increasing they’re energetic dynamic.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. No. I love the green, actually, myself. That’s my favorite. Then when you go into this—and you can see here folks the TCD Clear unit, and I probably have enough battery without running out to show them that there’s different programs. This one’s called [Rejuv]. I’m running out of battery here even to see that. Sleep, there’s Sleep 1, Sleep 2, Sleep 3, Healing, Recovery, Calm.
Talk about these different programs, Dynamic, Attention. Talk about some of these different programs. We even have them to match our detox, by the way. When someone’s in a preparatory phase, we have what would best match that, the body phase. Then when they get to the brain phase, we have one that you can run the brain phase because we want that stimulation. Explain how that works.
Dr. Bulmash:
Excellent question again. I want to shift gears now. We’ve been talking about the neurofeedback system. I want to switch to the TCD Clear, so I don’t leave people hanging.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Sorry. I’m just giving them something to understand how -inaudible- brain.
Dr. Bulmash:
Oh, no. No. You don’t owe any apologies. I just want to make sure that in my speaking that I’m clear. The protocols that we use for the TCD unit are actually based on the neurofeedback system. We have any and all those protocols taken from the neurofeedback system and put in a very, very easy format to use. We call that your TCD system, the TCD unit.
Here’s what’s neat about this. Number one, it’s like—do you remember when Windows came out, and all of a sudden, you didn’t have to program all these backspace, backslash, colon, this and that? This is for this technology the same as when Windows came out, and you could click on an icon. Meaning it’s made so that you don’t have to be a neurologist. You can simply look at the chart. I’m cheating here. I have the chart in front of me because I thought maybe you would ask some specific questions. You have a variety of basic programs that allow us to take a person through your program and make it even better by improving their specific brain function based, in this case, on their symptoms.
Rejuv is just that. It’s a program that helps give you a bump, a boost so that you can function better. The Sleep programs are designed as the—Rejuv is so you can take a quick nap, a 15, 20-minute nap. The Sleep 2, a little bit longer, two to four hours, and then the Sleep 3 is a program that helps calm people. It’s just so wonderful to do before people go to sleep because it helps drive theta and delta waves, specifically delta. What we know about delta wave production is that the more prominence you have of delta waves the more you check out of the external or even the internal world, and you shut down so the body can really repair itself. Each of these different—I won’t go through all of them, but if you’ll permit me, I’ll go through a few of them that are really critical. The Rejuv through Sleep 3 are important for those people that are having trouble being rested, being calm.
The Chiro Adjust is very, very good for chiropractors. It allows people to get greater impact from their adjustments for people who are subluxated, as we use the term in chiropractic, but don’t have a lot of pain with it, okay? It improves the dynamics, the range of motion, nerve flow, and so forth. Now, what’s really profound and many, many chiropractors are having a field day with this is the Chiro Adjust program. What it does is it changes the alpha wave patterns in the brain. Alpha waves are critical for setting the idle of the brain so that you’re prepared to function properly, whether it be from a motor perspective or from an intellectual perspective. This is one of the greatest gifts that I’ve ever been given to help me chiropractically because it sets a proper brain idle speed, so the brain can learn anew how to hold a corrected subluxation pattern. Meaning how to really respond effectively from the adjustment, or the neuro work, or whatever the person is doing. I don’t know if you have people who do acupuncture, but the same is true for that. It resets the brain, Dr. Pompa, so that you can—the brain and the nervous system can learn in an optimized state.
A couple more here, the—excuse me. I apologize. I think I had it backwards. I think I said—did I say Chiro Adjust a moment ago for the pain? Let me clear that if I did. The Chiro Adjust is for no pain adjusting. Meaning the person doesn’t have pain.
Dr. Pompa:
No. No. You said that correctly.
Dr. Bulmash:
Did I say that correctly?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Dr. Bulmash:
Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Thank you. All right, now, my two personal favorite programs, SMR Zone, which is a 20-minute program, really helps do anything from decrease pain to eliminate brain fog, allows enhanced motor function. This is one of the things I use for athletes who are getting ready to go out and compete at a high level. It’s so incredible when I use it on somebody who hasn’t necessarily used it before and then suddenly uses it.
All of a sudden, you get a basketball player, a skier, a tennis player, and their reflexes are sharper. They’re faster. They’re coordination is better. They come back, and they say to me what just happened? Clearly, I was not myself. I just performed at the highest rate I’ve ever played at. I was faster, more coordinated, better balanced, better agility, better skills. It works the sensory motor cortex, so that sensory motor strip is the interface between the brain and your body’s ability to do anything from a motor perspective.
Dr. Pompa:
Basically, again, it’s retraining the brain in a pattern. Now that you’ve gave them an example, re-explain how it does it one more time.
Dr. Bulmash:
I’m sorry. You blanked out for me there, Dr. Pompa.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. I’m saying now that you gave them that example, re-explain for them again how these flashing lights, certain sounds can retrain the brain, repattern the brain.
Dr. Bulmash:
Okay. These flashing lights specifically target specific parts of the brain and nerve pathways while inhibiting others. Specific colors target specific pathways. Specific frequencies target specific parts of the brain and specific pathways from firing or being inhibited. In this case, it increases proper firing of the sensory motor strip. It dramatically increases one’s ability to function physically in particular.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. No, exactly. That’s why that I wanted to explain that this is real. You have this thalamus that sits in your brain that takes in all this information and creates all these pathways. We’ve spoken on this show, and we’ve interviewed experts about similar things; how the brain can wire, right? Therefore, these pathways are set up for better or for worse. This is basically rewiring new highways in, right?
Dr. Bulmash:
Yes, exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s just a faster way to do it, folks. That’s the cool thing. Then I think, like you said, this unit is taking what you—what our docs do in their office to something that makes it a little—even a take home, however many of our docs use this in their office too. However, you have a way of mapping the brain, and then, like you said, your biofeedback machine does what this does to the next degree. Making people watch screens, etc. What is the brain mapping, and how do you see it? Can you see it before and after, after you do these things on the brain mapping?
Dr. Bulmash:
Absolutely. This is what’s so exciting. This is where the rubber meets the road. With the neurofeedback system, we do a mapping before somebody ever gets started, so we have a baseline of how effectively or ineffectively their brain is firing. -inaudible- is 20 sessions, 30 sessions later, we remap the brain, and in doing so, we get to actually see how the brain is favorably altering its firing patterns, key word favorably, optimally.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Yeah. No. It’s so cool. I mean, the results speak for themselves, I mean, really. I mean, this is new technology for us and our doctors, but again, this isn’t new technology. It’s just being made simpler, honestly, much more simple.
Dr. Bulmash:
It is, exactly.
Dr. Pompa:
Meredith, I know you have some questions, especially someone looking on that says, gosh, I have never seen this technology in my life.
Meredith:
Right, always. You know I always have questions, Dr. Pompa. Just to back up a little bit, neurofeedback in general is when we’re looking at the brain, when we’re finding these irregular brain patterns, and then we’re seeking to target those and retrain the brain for favorable results, right?
Dr. Bulmash:
Exactly. It’s doing so through two means, real quickly, Meredith. To reiterate, two means with a neurofeedback system. One is through biofeedback, which is a form of operant conditioning and through neural entrainment. The TCD unit uses specifically neural entrainment. Just for sake of clarification. Yeah.
Meredith:
Right. Awesome. That’s so amazing about the TCD Clear unit too is that it’s this take-home unit. We can do it at home, and do these sessions all the time. I have some questions about that. First of all, I’m wondering about some specific conditions that are really, really helped and benefited by the TC Clear unit neurofeedback, and who would be the best candidates for it.
Dr. Bulmash:
It’s interesting you ask me that because one of the projects I’m going to be doing next is to determine and create an algorithm for, if a person presents this way, what -inaudible-. You can have people who are helped through recovery from illness, from trauma. You can have people who simply want to sleep better. You can have people who do protocols like the Calm program, the SMR Zone, or the Dynamic to just optimize general brain function. Even if somebody isn’t injured, even if somebody isn’t having brain problems per se, meaning they haven’t had a stroke, a concussion, they aren’t depressed, you still can—there you go with the glasses. You can still optimize the…
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah. Just so they can see it. I found my cord. That’s why I disappeared there for a minute, so there you go. There’s the green that seemed to benefit me the most, for sure. Like you, I love the green. I don’t have the earphones on right now, so I can hear you all. Right now, in the earphones, I would be hearing specific sounds, and you can see those are blinking at specific frequencies. I put it on the SMR Zone right there.
When I walk down the street with these, people think I’m nuts. No. I don’t walk down the street. I usually just do my daily activities though. I can still see through them, and I can still work here. I can still do other things, which actually seems to help, actually, just by getting other stimuli. Is that true?
Dr. Bulmash:
Yes. Yeah. That’s what I was saying, Dr. Pompa. What’s neat about is sometimes—rarely, but sometimes I get a person in who will say to me, look, Dr. Nelson, I’m not depressed. I don’t have rage problems. I don’t have OCD. I’m not injured. Why would I use this?
The answer is still the same. I call it perfecting perfection. It’s no different than going to a gym and weightlifting to train the biceps, or the deltoids, or the shoulders. It’s a way that we keep our brain sharp. It’s a way that we exercise our brain, and in doing so, we optimize its ability to help us think, function, feel, and heal.
Dr. Pompa:
I don’t have the earphones on. Am I still getting good stimuli just with the visual?
Dr. Bulmash:
My humble opinion is and there are a lot of doctors who will agree with me on this that the most important—if you can do sound and light together, of course you do so. If you can do just light, do so. If you can do just sound, do so, but the most important is the visual. The visual impacts more of the brain than anything else, and so by using sound and light, you’re probably using 80 to 90% of the brain.
Dr. Pompa:
Got it. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Bulmash:
The light specifically, I believe, is the most powerful, most impactful part of the treatment.
Meredith:
Okay. Dr. Bulmash, can you continue a little bit more with some of the specific conditions that can be helped by this?
Dr. Bulmash:
Absolutely. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to cheat a little bit so I’m very thorough here, if that’s okay, Meredith? I’m going to go right down the program set. How much time do I have on this just so I know what to really highlight?
Meredith:
We have about 20 minutes, so whatever fits into that.
Dr. Bulmash:
Okay, good. That’s all I need to know, fabulous. Okay. For example, the Sleep 2 and Sleep 3 are for different types of insomnia. If you have somebody who’s been through tremendous trauma or used a lot of stimulants and their brain is so racing that they just can’t calm it down, those two are fantastic for just creating a calmness that allows somebody to get that specific deep sleep that allows them to repair, very, very important, okay?
Calm is a program that helps people with anxiety and general stress regulation. In other words, let’s just say you’re having a day—I had something happen to a very close friend of mine the other day that was very, very, very, very stressful. It left me feeling out of sorts, and so I would use either the Calm to immediately calm the brain and nervous system, or you can use the SMR Zone, which is the—some people call it “the church of 14 hertz.” It is a program that runs a specific frequency, 12 to 15 hertz. It’s that I feel good program.
Dr. Pompa:
The one I’m doing right now.
Dr. Bulmash:
Yeah. That’s exactly right. That is my favorite program. That is it, if I only had access to that program. That’s one that if a—if somebody’s out in the field and they don’t know what to choose, choose either SMR Zone or Dynamic. I’ll talk about Dynamic next because Dynamic can help with anything from giving the brain exercises to make it work better. It declutters the brain. If you’re somebody that has anxiety, if you depression, if you have OCD, if you have rage problems, it’s a very, very, very powerful program.
What it does is it sweeps from 6 hertz to 40 hertz. It’s like cleaning house for the brain. It’s says, all right, check it out. I’m going to reformat every brainwave production pattern in all the lobes and the hemispheres of the brain. It’s like going into your garage and saying I don’t need that. I don’t need that. I don’t need that. I’m going to clean it all out, and when you’re done, the garage is clean. The Dynamic leaves your brain clean. It leaves it recalibrated, reformatted.
All right, let’s take a moment and go into some of the higher frequency programs. We have, for example, the Attention program. The Attention program is very, very good for people who have depression, mood swings, ADD kinds of things. Memory, same thing, slightly different programs but they help with brain fog, brain training and, of course, memory retention. Then we get into some of the others that are much more specific, Alzheimer’s. For example, there’s a program that really was brought to light recently by MIT of all places. They found that white light at 40 hertz, gamma frequencies actually causes something that nobody really knew or could prove it could be done, which is neurogenesis. This allows us incredibly powerful tools. A lot of the neurologists love the white lights because of that neurogenesis effect.
Think about this. With the neurofeedback system, you can enhance neurogenesis through the white lights, 40 hertz white lights exposure. You can also train it with biofeedback, which is a specific type of operant conditioning, and through entrainment. They can see three powerful vehicles. If you have somebody who has Alzheimer’s, if you have somebody who’s had a concussion, somebody who’s had a stroke, this can accelerate the neurogenic effect that helps repair the brain. Did that help, Meredith?
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Meredith:
It did. It did. Now, how often are you suggesting that people do certain programs, and would they be doing the same program in sequence, or would they be variating the programs?
Dr. Bulmash:
Boy, you two really pick some great questions. I’m so pleased. Not only do I like you a great deal, but you’re making me look good by answering—asking me the exact questions that need to be addressed. What happens with the brain is—for example, even though I love the SMR Zone and the Dynamic programs, eventually you want to change it up. Like when we were little kids where we would say, mom, I’m bored. I don’t want to do that anymore, whatever it was. Even if you liked playing baseball, even if you liked riding your bike, even if you liked playing with your friends, you got to change it up, and so it’s very important to alter the color of the glasses periodically and to alter the frequencies that the brain’s exposed to or the brain like a child says I’m bored. I don’t want to do this anymore. Meaning you’ll hit a point at which you’re no longer going to help benefit the optimization of the brain. By altering the glass color, by altering the programs, you stop the child, if you will, from getting bored, and the same is true of the brain.
Meredith:
Now, is that weekly variation, monthly variation? Could you just be a little more specific?
Dr. Bulmash:
Yeah, absolutely. It depends, Meredith, on what’s going on with the person’s brain. For example, if a person—here’s what I like to do. I like to start at a very low exposure of the brain to these technologies. Every once in a while, you get somebody who’s super sensitive. In Ayurvedic medicine, they’re called Vatas. A Vata constitution is somebody who’s really sensitive.
I remember when I used to do janitorial work. I would alter the temperature because some of the people in the facility that I worked at would say, Nelson, it’s entirely too hot in here. I would literally change the thermostat one degree. My friend would say, let’s see, it’s 1 o’clock. Watch happens about 1:30. You knew who all the Vatas were in the building because they would say this is ridiculous. You’re freezing me out. We’d wink at each other because it would go from 73 to 72, and that was the threshold of discomfort.
Initially, I start people with two to five minutes, either blue or green glasses, and from that point on, if they handle it okay, what I do is I increase the time of exposure. I love to do programs initially. Most people who come in are stressed, so Calm is a great program. SMR Zone is a wonderful program, and Dynamic are great initials programs. Now, I love kinesiology. I love testing people. What I do is I will muscle test the hemispheres and then the lobe to the brain to see whether or not they’re improving or not improving.
For example, if I want to test the parietals, I’ll contact the parietal lobe, for example, on the right, and I’ll test it. If it tests at a ten, I know that I am getting as much out of a particular protocol as I can. Now, at some point, it’ll deflect down. I might get an eight or nine. That’s my indicator personally that the person needs to change something: intensity of light, intensity of sound, color of glasses, protocols. Now, there are other things that you can do. For example, one of the things I’m going to develop is I’m going to develop a simple symptom survey where if somebody says, Dr. Nelson, I’m having trouble doing simple calculations in my head. I’m having trouble with handling logic puzzles. Then we need to train the left parietal lobe, so we need to put on specific protocols that somehow improve the parietal lobe function of the brain.
Now, with neurofeedback, we can use specific electrodes, and put them directly on the parietals. What we do with the TCD Clear unit is we just do protocols that help enhance your intellectual skills, so in this case, it would be SMR Zone. It could be Body Aware. It could be Chiro Adjust. It could be Alert. It could be Attention. It could be Focus. It could be Memory.
Meredith:
I’m just curious. From my personal experience, I’ve played around with the unit a little bit. I can’t say that I’ve used it consistently enough to really see results over the long-term. I did do the chronic insomnia setting, for example, and I was out that night. Another area, I did the Calm, and I did feel a little bit more calm. It wasn’t dramatic so just curious about quickness of results and how soon people can expect to see them. Would it be after one session sometimes? Would it take 20 sessions? I know that’s maybe challenging to answer, but are there some ranges you could observe?
Dr. Bulmash:
No. No. That’s very appropriate. I’ll get back to that and the end of your question, which was how often you actually do it, which is it depends on the individual. When I start out, Meredith, I always start out very slowly because you just don’t know without working with a person how they’re going to respond. I like to go up then to the second or third visit to 20 minutes, and if they handle that okay, then 30 minutes.
Now, for people that are really in trouble, for example, if you have a—I’ll give you a great example. A friend of mine, about 20 years, and I went in to say hi to her. I said, “You okay?” She said, “No. Not really. Not really.” I said, “You want to talk?” She blurted out, “My daughter’s fiancée was one of the Marines on the plane that crashed in Mississippi.” I said, “Oh, my goodness. I’m incredibly sorry.”
We discussed that, and I said, in a case like that, what is appropriate if you’re going to do the Focus Unit is you could do Calm for an extended period of time. You could do it for an hour. As long as you keep the light intensity low, around four or five, and the sound intensity approximately double, unless they’re hard of hearing, in which case you can make it so it’s comfortable for them to hear, you can repeat it every four hours. Meredith, it really depends on the state of the individual. If somebody has severe adrenal issues, they’re simply not going to be able to handle a lot of exposure to the sound and light, but if somebody is really ill, cancer, severe adrenal issues, they’ve been tremendously traumatized—the vets coming out of the Middle East, for example, you got to be really careful how you stimulate them with the sound and lights because I’ve had some get very reactive. My approach is to be conservative and to stimulate very gently.
Once a person demonstrates that they can handle more stimulation, then we can do it more often. You can actually do these focus sessions multiple times a day. You just have to make sure that you keep the intensity -inaudible- low and give them—if you’re going to do an hour long program, it’s probably wise to take at least three or four hours in between. You don’t always have the luxury to do that. In a case where somebody gets killed in a tragic accident, I’ve had people that have stayed on the unit. They might take two hours in between. They keep the intensity of the sound and light low.
I usually go blue glasses, unless it makes them feel more blue. In a rare number of cases, probably less than one or two percent, you have to be careful because sometimes blue light can make people feel blue, if you will, meaning more melancholy. If that’s the case, then we put them on green, and we keep them on green. Nothing more stimulating that. Red glasses, for example, tend to be actually emotionally provocative. Unless you’re a psychologist who wants to really elicit some deep emotional responses, you don’t go there. You start people gradiently with the colors that are less stimulating, more calming, more healing, and then lead up to the more stimulating colors.
You have to take each individual one at a time. If somebody’s going through a tremendous traumatic episode, you can use it frequently. You just have to make sure—if people say to you, doc, I’m so out of it. I can’t even look at them anymore. Then they pushed the brain a little too hard. No damage will be done per se, but what’ll happen is they may need several hours for the brain to catch up from the workout you ran it through. Does that -inaudible-?
Dr. Pompa:
You can see that I’m actually able to adjust the intensity. I don’t know if you can see. It’s barely blinking. Now watch. It’s not as lit, if you will. It’s bright, intensity. He was saying how you can adjust the intensity. Now you can see the intensity I turned up on the unit, and then, look, you can see I’m turning it down.
The same is true for volume. You can see it’s still blinking. You probably can’t see that, or it’s still lit, I should say. Then there’s the intensity up. When he’s saying that start with a lower intensity, that’s what he means, and you can work up to a much greater intensity. The sound and the light are both adjustable.
Dr. Bulmash:
Right. I want to clarify, if I may, a couple things. You, of course, never want the sound to be so high that it gives somebody a headache. The sound isn’t as critical though as the visual stimulation. Once again, I’ve done a lot of this kind of work, so I have found that less is more with regard to visual stimulation. Most people who come into my office tend to be more stressed than less stressed.
I’m a huge fan. When I muscle test people for intensity, what I do is I test them before they put the glasses on, muscle test them. Find out how strong they are, and then I have them put on a—I start at either blue or green. I make sure, first of all, at low intensity, that they can even handle that color. Sometimes, surprisingly, you put a pair of glasses on somebody, you muscle test them, and their brain does not want that color. Where you really get that is when you start using the more stimulating colors like the yellow, the orange, and the red. It doesn’t happen so much with the blue and green.
Then what you do next is you actually—kinesiologically, you lock your hand, if you will. Put your hand on one hemisphere. I don’t know if you can see this or not. In doing so, then we’re actually testing—let me get rid of this here so I can see what I can see for you here. Then what we do is we muscle test. I like to have my hand here, and then test the individual so that they can hold for ten consecutive muscle tests. That’s how I lock in the color glasses. That’s how I lock in the intensity visually and auditorily.
From that perspective, it’s very difficult, unless somebody has extenuating circumstances. For example, with epileptics, I only use sound. I do not use flashing lights ever with somebody that has epilepsy because we know that flashing lights can trigger an episode. That’s a reason not to use the light, but they can use the sound. It’s a contraindication to stimulate somebody with flashing lights if they’ve got some kind of an epileptic issue.
Meredith:
I was going to ask are there other contraindications other than the epilepsy with the flashing lights?
Dr. Bulmash:
There aren’t many, but for example, if a person has trouble with migraines or even severe headaches, once again, you have to be really, really careful, primarily, how you stimulate them visually, very, very important to keep the visual stimulation as low as possible. Here’s what’s really neat. Less is more. If you stimulate a person less with sound and light, they can do longer sessions, which means they can train their brain more effectively. If I ask you, Meredith—if I say, okay, Meredith, we’re going to do a workout. I’m going to have you sprint to the next major intersection a half a mile up and back. Number one, you can look at me and go I can’t. That’s a mile. I can’t sprint for a mile.
No, you can’t. You could sprint for 50 yards, but you couldn’t sprint per se for a mile. What if I said, okay, Meredith, I’m going to give you an hour to walk up to the intersection and back? You’d say, okay, I can do that, right? In other words, you can do better often with less. You don’t get greater effects by increasing the stimulation, particularly of the light. As long as the brain can see it, it’s going to react. It’s going to respond to it, and you’re going to train the brain.
I’d like to take another—take this in a slightly different direction, if that’s okay. If, for example, I’m helping somebody recuperate—and you have to be careful here. For people, for lay people, meaning people at home or even practitioners that don’t have a lot of experience with neurofeedback system or the TCD Clear, I usually tell them, look, this is really complicated. Wait for them to get a clearing from their physician or wait at least 60 to 90 days before you really start doing work with sound and light. Now, there are some people in this country that are so brilliant. They can do it within a week or two afterwards. They have very, very specific means of checking the person so you don’t exceed metabolic brain function, and therefore, throw them sideways.
The key here to keep you out of trouble is, if you can, at least if you’re not going to check kinesiologically, use a low intensity stimulation of light and sound, and stick to the green and blue initially, very, very, very, very rare that you’re going to have any problems. Of course, the less intensity, the more frequently you can train and the longer you can train, and therefore, you actually see results much faster.
Dr. Pompa:
I know that people watching this—if you’re a patient of one of our doctors watching this, a True Cellular Detox doc, one of our plan docs, check to see if they have it. They can get them for you. You have to get them through a practitioner. If you’re not, then maybe Meredith can direct you if you call the Revelation Health site for us.
Hey, doc, here’s a question I have. What about some activities when you have these on? Does it increase the effectiveness if I’m doing certain activities to stimulate different parts of the brain?
Dr. Bulmash:
Did my wife give you the questions? You’re asking the most perfect questions. I feel like somebody took the questions that I wanted to make sure that I got out and gave them to you two, really, really good question. You got to be careful, of course. I tend not to recommend that people do too many activities with the glasses, Dr. Pompa. You don’t want to be that guy that, well, you said I could go out and ride my bike wearing the glasses, and then you crash and get a concussion. However, that being said, you can certainly ride a stationary bike, for example, and not have any trouble with getting disoriented and crashing. I love exercising on a stationary bike, a rowing machine, and maybe an elliptical if a person doesn’t have balance issues.
Once again, the key: low sound stimulation, low light stimulation, and also remember, not only—by the way, I read a really fantastic article about five days ago that specifically indicated how specific forms of exercise improved the dynamics of specific -inaudible-. To be able to couple them, to answer your question, like to go on a stationary bike and do the Dynamic or the SMR zone, really, really effective for accelerating the improvement of the brain function. Then one last thing about that is you can do—you can get adjusted with the glasses on. We also know there are studies that literally prove the efficacy of improving prefrontal cortex activity through chiropractic, so exercise, chiropractic and neurofeedback or the TCD Clear units all help optimize brainwave function. If you do them separately or together, you’re going to improve even more the optimization of the brain.
Meredith:
So cool. I know we’re about at the end of the hour so just a few more things. If you’re watching this, very curious, if you’re a practitioner who’s watching, you can go tcdclear.com for more information on getting a unit. If you’re just a patient or in the public out there who is very curious to get your hands and experience the TCD Clear unit as well, talk to your practitioner. Send them to tcdclear.com. Share this episode with them, so they can get educated and learn more about how to access the unit. This is so cool. Neurofeedback is amazing, and it fits so beautifully, Dr. Pompa, into the multi-therapeutic approach as well for supporting emotional detox and even physical detox. It fits in so beautifully.
As we’re ending now with our episode, we wanted to rewind a little bit. Dr. Bulmash, if you could give our viewers and listeners three key points about neurofeedback and the TCD Clear unit and why it matters. Why they need to possibly investigate its use and how it could help them.
Dr. Bulmash:
Thank you, absolutely. One of the biggest problems in baby boomers is we’re all finding that our brains simply aren’t working as well. Dr. Pompa really does brilliant, brilliant work on how to detoxify the body, the brain so that the brain can function better. However, as I’m sure he would attest, you have to combine a multitude of different activities, techniques to really optimize the function of the human brain and body. I’m big on your spiritual connection to God. I’m big on detoxifying, and I’m big on proper supplementation. I’m big on neurofeedback, exercise, eating really, really well, so make sure that you—number one, that you use it because everybody has problems. We haven’t had one person, even the brightest people in our practices who don’t need some form of optimization of some part of their brain, number one.
Number two, don’t overstimulate. What happens when you overstimulate through neurofeedback or using the TCD Clear systems with light and sound that’s too intense—I had world-class runner in here when I first got it. I didn’t know what I was doing. I thought, well, he’s a really strong guy. He runs ultramarathons. I mean, he’s run 100, 150 miles. I’m going to crank the sound up to its highest point, and I’m going to crank the light up to 20. By the time I walked into the room after ten minutes, he was shaking his head going, ooh, I can’t do this anymore. He’s never done it again because it was too much, right?
Number three, quality of life is so important to all of us. The better your brain works, the better you think, function, feel, and heal. Who doesn’t need that to be optimized?
Meredith:
Amen.
Dr. Pompa:
I agree. The key to getting well—we always say in detox we work to get to the brain phase, and it’s multiple brain phases. When this is poisoned, everything—you won’t heal from anything. Whether it’s a gut issue, whatever it is, you’re not going to heal. This is a direct connection right in there. You put these things together, the detox, hence True Cellular Detox Clear, right, we -inaudible- magic. I’ll tell you what; this repatterning the brain, healing the brain is how you heal your body. Thank you, doc, a great, just wealth of knowledge here. Really, we’re so excited to be a part of this research and what’s going on.
Dr. Bulmash:
Thank you so much for the opportunity to share my knowledge with you and to experience working with both of you. I really enjoyed it. I would do it again in a second. Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Meredith:
Awesome. Thank you so much, Dr. Pompa. Thank you, Dr. Bulmash, for your wealth of knowledge on neurofeedback and the TCD Clear unit. Like I said, if you want to check it out, go to tcdclear.com, and thanks, everybody, for watching. We’ll see you next time. Bye-bye.
Dr. Bulmash:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
See ya, guys.
