WELLNESS WEDNESDAY

Hey folks, Sally Riggs here, Psychologist, fellow long hauler and your long COVID coach, and welcome to another Wellness Wednesday.

Today I wanted to talk about another topic that is very much discussed in the long COVID community and how it intersects with polyvagal theory. And that is brain retraining, which is sometimes also referred to as neuro plasticity. And, as with everything in long COVID, somewhat of a little bit controversial topic. And I think it's something that a lot of people with long COVID are aware of as being offered for the chronic illness community as a way of recovering essentially.

The two big programs that are talked about a lot are the Gupta Program, and the Dynamic Neural Retraining System or DNRs. There's also the Lightning Program, which is a little bit more expensive, and also a little bit more controversial. There may be a few other programs and more peripheral ones. But these are the big ones that I wanted to touch on. And really talk about how polyvagal theory is similar, different, interrelated, all of the good stuff. So first of all, to talk a little bit about my experience with these programs. Obviously, as a psychologist, I'm very familiar with the concept of neuroplasticity, our brains are enormously plastic. And even when certain areas of them are damaged, they can form new neural pathways that allow us to do things again that we thought were permanently lost to us. And the neuroplasticity of the brain never really ceases to amaze us. In the scientific world, people who have lost the ability to do certain things and can then have regeneration through new neural pathways that maybe are in other parts of the brain that we thought weren't able to do those things. So really, neuroplasticity as a concept is definitely something that is very valid and happens and is very hopeful for all of those of us with long COVID. For a number of reasons. Obviously, we know that long COVID affects the brain when we're thinking specifically about brain damage. But it also relates to all the other symptoms that we might experience. And I'm gonna talk a bit more about that in a moment. So definitely the concept of neuroplasticity is very important and very much legitimate. And when it comes to brain retraining, I'm gonna say a little bit more about where I get stuck with that. So I did personally purchase and take any hoppers DNRs dynamic neural retraining system have to think carefully when I get those letters right, but DNRs is what it's very commonly referred to as. I took it gosh 2021, probably around this time. Now, that program has subsequently been revamped, and it is now available as the 2.0 version. I have not repurchased it, and I have not taken the 2.0 version. So some of what I might be saying you might be thinking, Oh, but that's not relevant anymore. Just to give you that kind of caveat. And the other program, I was involved in the so called randomized controlled study for long COVID And I was in the placebo arm. So I took a lot of questionnaires, but then afterwards, I was permitted to have access to the full program. In all honesty, I haven't really used it very much, but I will explain why. So both programs, and I think many of the brain retraining programs, including lightening process, are thinking about the parts of the brain that are responsible for fear and the stress response, supposedly the limbic system. Now joy ways of having long COVID I am not a brain scientist. And I may get some of these words backwards or the wrong way around. But my rudimentary understanding of the brain, if I'm remembering it correctly, the amygdala is a big part of the limbic system, and definitely does do a lot of things to do with fear and the stress response. And obviously, another word for the stress response is sympathetic activation. So when we're talking about polyvagal theory, and we're talking about brain retraining, we are talking about the same processes that our autonomic nervous system. Now technically, autonomic nervous system is not the brain, central nervous system is the brain, autonomic nervous system stops at the brainstem, and is everything from there down. When I say everything, obviously, not everything, everything vagus nerve related down into the gut, and possibly a little bit further than that. So that's something to be mindful of first up. Now, my experience of DNRs, lots of lovely psychoeducation, about mind body stuff. And when I say mind-body, and you've heard me say this before, I don't mean mind, mind, I don't mean that the mind is responsible for everything. I mean, the interaction, the very powerful interaction between the physiological processes in our body, and our thinking, and how it's a two way process. The body influences our thinking, and our thinking influences the body. So lots of lovely research that she talks about, in terms of pain in terms of other chronic symptoms, that these aren't necessarily just driven by logically, that there is a huge mind component. And that that's very important. And that was enormously helpful to me to be reminded of, I kind of sort of knew it. But in the context of being very sick, we often forget these things. And so being reminded of the power of our mind, and how crucial that is in our recovery, very, very important. When it gets into more of the treatment component of the DNRs. This is where I put on my skeptical face. And I imagine it's still the same, it does involve you printing out pieces of paper, putting them on the floor, stepping backwards and forwards, waving your arms about doing a little dance, and you see my skepticism. If we're wanting to override our limbic system, or stress response, doing a little dance and stepping backwards and forwards is not really going to work. And I'm gonna say a little bit more as to why in a moment. Now, if you have done the DRS and found it to be helpful to you, please ignore what I'm saying. Obviously, many, many, many people buy these programs and find them to be enormously helpful. And please don't think I'm diminishing that because I'm definitely not. If you're on the fence, and it is a bit of an investment. This is some information for you to consider. And think about knowing yourself knowing why you are in your recovery, etcetera. And especially from a polyvagal perspective, in terms of the Gupta program that includes elements of again, I think there's a little bit of psychoed in there, maybe a teeny bit less, lots of meditation, lots of mindfulness, lots of acceptance based strategies. And, again, under the understanding that what we're trying to do is calm down the sympathetic activation, and allow the body to go more into its natural healing state. And that is wonderful.

Personally, when I was at the point of thinking about these programs, and you have heard me talk a lot about this before, meditation was not accessible to me in terms of polyvagal intervention. Meditation is a wonderful polyvagal intervention. In my experience, and obviously the degree of severity of long COVID varies, but my long COVID was so severe, my nervous system was so far gone into shutdown, that meditation A. I couldn't really access it and B. If it had the potential, and I found the same with yoga and cranial sacral, massage and Reiki, to actually activate me too much into sympathetic activation, but because I didn't have the resources and the energy to get fully back up into parasympathetic, I then had a huge crash afterwards. And many, many, many people talk about that, that when they tried to do these practices, either they are just not getting them anywhere, or they have a huge crash afterwards, or both. The other piece about gutter in terms of acceptance based strategies. And again, you may have heard me talk about this before, if we're thinking about the three levels of the polyvagal ladder, acceptance, gratitude, self compassion, all of those things are only available to us at the top of the ladder when we're in parasympathetic. So if I'm in sympathetic, or if I'm in shutdown, I can't access that it's not available to me. So trying to use it as a strategy to move up the ladder is not going to work. And I think many, many, many people misunderstand that. Many, many people, psychologists, other mental health professionals try to utilize this with our clients to help them move up the ladder. And it doesn't work. And it doesn't work because we don't have access to that until we're at the top. So it's kind of putting the chicken in the egg the wrong way round.