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Neuroplasticity Training: A Missing Piece to Chronic Illness

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on August 1, 2021

Written by Dr. Michael Ruscio, DC on August 1, 2021 — Reviewed by Dr. Hannah Hamlin

Neuroplasticity Training Can Be Used for Brain Trauma and Chronic Illness. 

• What Is Neuroplasticity?|
• Regions of the Brain|
• How Can Neuroplasticity Help?|
• Neuroplasticity and Chronic Illness|
• Everyday Neuroplasticity Exercises|
• Neuroplasticity for Healing|
• Recommended Products|

Neuroplasticity training may be a missing piece in chronic pain, chronic illness, anxiety, trauma, and even food reactivity that has not improved with diet and gut healing. It can also help to improve cognitive function. So how does it work?

The brain has the amazing ability to rewire itself so that we can learn new skills, function better, decrease chronic pain, and even regain functioning after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. This ability is referred to as neuroplasticity. In this article we will discover how to harness the power of neuroplasticity to improve our cognitive abilities, mental, and physical health.

What Is Neuroplasticity?

Simply defined, neuroplasticity is the brain’s ability to rewire itself. The brain makes structural, functional, and connective changes based on internal and external stimulus, thus changing the way we mentally and physically function [1]. 

A neuroplastic change can be helpful, neutral, or harmful. When it is helpful, it might make us better at something (like a chosen sport), and when harmful, it might result in a trauma response or phantom limb pain after an injury. Neuroplasticity training is when we do things to help the brain rewire itself. It is a form of training because it must be done repeatedly over time, because the brain learns and rewires through repetition. 

There are two primary ways that the brain changes:

• Neurons: Neurons are cells in the brain that take in information from our environment as well as send motor signals to the rest of the body. There are three types of plasticity of the neurons [1]:
  • Neuronal regeneration (when neurons are regrown or repaired)
  • Collateral sprouting (when the axons of healthy neurons (brain cells) grow into nearby damaged nervous tissue.)
  • Neurogenesis (when the brain makes new neurons in adulthood.) 

When we are babies, we have plenty of neural connections (synapses). As we interact with our environment, our brains keep the synaptic connections we use a lot and prune off the synapses we do not use. This is why it may be harder for adults to learn a musical instrument. As a child, those synaptic connections were pruned away. However, thanks to neurogenesis (the brain’s ability to make new neurons in adulthood,) we still can learn to play music as an adult [1].

• Functional reorganization: This occurs when a functional part of the brain takes over the functions lost by another part of the brain, often due to damage to part of the brain.

The human brain has a few different ways that the neurons can rewire and help us function better in our everyday life.

What is Neuroplasticity Training?

There are many different types of neuroplasticity training that may be used to achieve different goals. 

Occupational therapy is one form of neuroplasticity training often used to train a different part of the brain to take over functions (such as using utensils) that were lost due to brain damage from stroke. 

Brain training games aim to rewire the brain to help increase cognition. Learning a new instrument or a new sport can improve visual input and processing, increase cognition, response time, and spatial awareness. Meditation can even train the brain to decrease pain signals in chronic illness [2].    

Many neuroplasticity training programs aimed at healing involve specifically targeted mind-body modalities including meditation or mindfulness training, breathwork, visualization, cognitive behavioral therapy, and emotional restructuring therapy.

The Regions of the Brain

Before we try neuroplasticity training, it is helpful to know that different parts of the brain control different parts of our physical and mental health. When choosing what kind of neurological training programs you want to try, you want to know what brain region and/or function you’re targeting.

Neuroplasticity training generally targets the limbic system, a set of brain structures including the amygdala and the hippocampus [3], which together are responsible for emotion, behavior, and memory [4].

Here is a simplified chart of some of the regions of the brain and how they affect our daily functioning.

How Can Neuroplasticity Training Help?

There are many ways that neuroplasticity training can help us with everyday life functioning or with more serious issues such as stroke, chronic pain, cognitive decline, anxiety, and depression. Let’s look at the neuroscience supporting the benefits of neuroplasticity training:

• Increases learning ability. Synaptic plasticity is important in the processes of learning and memory. It allows us to learn new skills [8], which helps support synaptic plasticity. 
• May improve cognitive function. Even though older adults with cognitive decline, such as mild cognitive impairment found in early stage Alzheimer’s disease, may have less ability to create new neural pathways, there are ways to activate neuroplastic reorganization to help improve cognitive function [9].
• May help to treat psychosis. While the research is still preliminary, neuroplasticity-based cognitive training (NBCT) has shown promise in treating major psychotic disorders [10].
• May help to improve brain function after traumatic brain injury or stroke. Cognitive rehabilitation therapy, such as training to improve executive function, cortical plasticity, language and memory, has shown a moderate ability to improve memory after traumatic brain injury and stroke [11].
• May decrease pain, fatigue, and anxiety. Amygdala-focused neurofeedback has been shown to decrease chronic pain, fatigue, and anxiety in fibromyalgia patients [12, 13].

Neuroplasticity Training for Chronic Illness and Pain

One of the areas of neuroplasticity training I have found particularly helpful for my patients is in treating chronic illness. 

For some people, diet, supplements, gut healing, and treatment for gut bacteria have not helped resolve their symptoms. In these cases, neuroplasticity training is often the missing piece of the puzzle.  

In this type of neuroplasticity training, we are really looking at training the limbic system (which includes the amygdala) to improve health outcomes. We focus on the limbic system because past physical and emotional trauma, including, chronic health issues may trigger limbic system imbalances.

How does this happen? Our brain is always trying to keep us safe by assessing our environment for threat. When the limbic system (in particular the amygdala) perceives a threat, it will trigger a defensive response. This is the fight, flight, or freeze response which often shows up as physical pain or emotional response. 

Every time an event triggers a fear response, the brain remembers that. The limbic system is wired, through neuroplasticity, to have a threat response any time a similar event happens, whether it is threatening or not [14]. 

For example, let’s say you have been dealing with chronic health issues of bloating, joint pain, brain fog, fatigue, and stomach pain for a few years. You tried many different treatments to resolve these issues, and they did not get better. 

Eventually you start a low-inflammatory diet, heal your gut, and you do start to feel better. You have energy, no stomach pain, and your brain fog is gone. But then you try to introduce a new food and you bloat a little. This bloating is often normal in digestion, but since bloating in the past has been a sign of threat to your body, the limbic system may have an overactive response and send additional signals of pain to your stomach and joints [15]. You may also experience anxiety and fear. 

Retraining the limbic system to respond less defensively to these past triggers can therefore be an important part in healing chronic illness.   

This does not mean your symptoms or pain are “all in your head.” It means that the brain is very good at doing its main job — keeping you safe. Just like it took repeated experience for the brain to have an immediate threat response to anything in the past that caused stomach pain and brain fog, it will take time for it to rewire to know you are safe now.

Neuroplasticity training for the limbic system may help to reprogram overactive limbic system responses and overstimulation of the nervous system and bring your systems back into balance. Let’s look at some of the research: 

• A 2020 pilot randomized controlled trial with 41 fibromyalgia patients found that eight months of mindfulness plus amygdala and insula retraining (MAIR) led to not only less functional impairment, anxiety, and depression, but also significantly less pain catastrophizing and psychological rigidity — even three months after the study was over [13].
• Amygdala retraining techniques (ART) for chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) led to improvements in daily functioning by as much as 80-100% [16].
• In fibromyalgia patients, body awareness interventions including mindfulness meditation, massage, tai chi, craniosacral therapy, breathing/posture techniques, guided imagery, relaxation programs, yoga, and hypnotherapy had positive effects on fibromyalgia impact, pain, anxiety, depression, and quality of life [2]. These exercises all target calming the limbic system.

I recently spoke with Dr. Ashok Gupta about how he has been using the Gupta Program Brain Retraining™ limbic retraining system to help people improve chronic illness when other methods have failed, and he helped to shed some more light on how and why this type of neuroplasticity or amygdala training can be so effective. This type of brain training has certainly been helpful and powerful for my patients in the clinic when introduced at the right time.

Everyday Neuroplasticity Training Exercises

In more severe cases, such as with stroke or brain injury, it is best to work with a doctor to find what type of neuroplasticity exercises will target specific areas of the brain.

However, there are many things that we can do every day (which makes the repetition needed to rewire the brain easier) to increase neuroplasticity, make new neural connections, and improve wellness. 

Learning New Things Can Strengthen Neural Networks

Learning new things strengthens existing neural connections and forms new neural connections between the different brain areas [1]. It also helps improve cognitive skills and support both short-term memory and long-term memory. Learning complex new things uses different brain functions all at once, increasing activation and connectivity between neurons. 

Ways to Learn New Things

• Physical exercise: Learning a new physical activity that includes hand-eye coordination, change in direction, and aerobic exercise creates new pathways between different brain regions [1]. It also increases brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) which is important in supporting neuroplasticity [17].
• Creativity: Take up a new creative hobby, such as learning a new instrument. 
• Brain games: Apps like BrainHQ, CogniFit, or Cogmed Working Memory Training can offer great brain exercises that may help improve cognitive skills.

Calming the Limbic System

Using neuroplasticity to decrease the threat response in the brain and calming the limbic system may help you heal from chronic illness and decrease anxiety and other psychological and physical pain.

Ways to Calm the Limbic System

• Gupta Program Brain Retraining™: A comprehensive program, available online, focusing on the mind-body connection and neural pathways that can help to resolve chronic illness.
• Mindfulness: Can include any type of meditation or mindful exercise (tai chi). Mindfulness not only helps increase grey matter in the brain. It increases brain volume and reduces the brain shrinkage that can happen with aging [18, 19].
• Breathwork: There are many types of breathwork, but it is important to start with one that does not trigger a fear response for you. For many people, holding their breath or breathwork that involves fast breathing triggers fear. A simple practice is making the exhales longer than the inhales. Start by breathing in for three counts and out for four, and repeat 10 times.
• The Apollo Neuro is a wearable device that senses when we are experiencing stress and uses touch therapy, through gentle vibration, to calm our nervous system and retrain it over time to manage stress better.

Neuroplasticity for Healing

Decades ago, neuroscientists used to believe that the brain never changed. Now we know that is not true. Harnessing brain plasticity can dramatically improve our quality of life, and there are many ways to incorporate neuroplasticity into our everyday lives. 

It is important to remember that all healing starts with good overall health, with an anti-inflammatory diet, gut healing, good sleep, and exercise. We always want to start with that stable foundation and then add in techniques such as neuroplasticity training. 

However, if you are someone who has chronic mental and/or physical illness and you have already tried a low-inflammatory diet, healed your gut, and treated any gut imbalances but you are still struggling, neuroplasticity might be the missing piece to your wellness.

If you are struggling with your health and would like a more personalized treatment plan and to talk about neuroplasticity, reach out to our clinic.