Transcripts
Well, Dr. Bagnell, welcome to The Accrescent Podcast.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:I'm happy to be here. I've listened to some of your podcasts. I'm excited actually to spend some time with you and converse. So thank you for having me.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I know. Well, we were already like off to the races before we hit record. So we had to hit record ASAP before we missed any juicy content. I always like to start, as you know, if you've heard some of my episodes, with just a little bit of an origin story so the audience can get to know you on a more personal level of how did you get here? How did you get so focused on neurology specifically? Tell us a little bit of that path to start, and then we'll get more into the weeds.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:I’ll keep it like this is the second time today. So I'm going to say it's times two. A patient asked me that today. So I I started out in in high school, I had the sense that I think I want to be a doctor in in my senior year of high school because I love science and I I really loved athletics and I was very involved in sports, but I wanted to be in like some kind of physician working with athletes. So as I started on my journey to medical school, I had met someone going to chiropractic university at the same time. We were in the undergrad programs.
And I thought, this is kind of interesting. This is different, but I'm not so sure. And I So anyway, we became fast friends, roommates later, many years later in chiropractic university, but I ended up jumping track, so to speak. And I went into this physical medicine world of chiropractic. And I went there and I fell in love with it. And even more so, what I fell in love with was the neurology. Now, someone might say, Isn't it just bones and the spine and joints and extremities? And I would say, No, those are
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Those are levers in a way to affect the neurology. So I kept pursuing more. I love that we used to have actual dissection. And that class just blew me away in two ways. One, that, you know, the the actual dissection of the brain and all of the nervous system, the entire system, the whole body. I was so intrigued and I was I was caught up. The second thing was I smelled for one year from all of that formaldehyde because you're in the lab every week.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:yeah. man.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:But that's aside, that's kind of a little funny aside. But then when I graduated, I I got into they had a postgraduate neurology program for doctors. So I got into that. And as it as life would be, I got married and had children and needed to just start working. But I always tracked and followed with the understanding there's more going on here than what we're actually doing. And practice was beautiful in physical medicine, a lot of applied kinesiology. I was always looking for
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:How can I do this better for people? What can we do that's a little delivering a little bit more for them? And then many years later, my wife said, you know, our kids are grown. If you want to get back into it, now it's neuroscience. I thought, hmm, I think it's time. So I got into a fellowship program, a three-year program on brain injury rehabilitation. And that kind of tied the bow. I did clinical rotations in Atlanta and Dallas, and I started to see I
One thing I would tell you, it was it was so fascinating, and I'll wrap it with this: that I saw case after case after case, they would people would come in on a Monday and they would be leaving on Saturday. They were there in these places for a week. And I would think to myself, watching every single examination with the lead physician, no way, no way. This person, no way. Nothing, no, it's not possible. And by the end of the week, I would say eight or nine times, strangely out of ten, I would say, Are you kidding me? This person had improvements. Are you kidding me?
They got out of that wheelchair? Are you kidding me that that young person with that concussion or migraine headache sufferer after 40 years is better? How can that be? So when I, you know, you learn the didactic things, you learn all the the data. When you see it in practice happening, you say, This is possible. This is possible for people. And and that's what really drives me. The sidetrack to that is my dad had a very severe car accident in the 70s, and he had.
Brain injury and he did survive. And he was pretty functional. I mean, he's able to walk and talk and carry on, but it led into other things because of the brain injury, early dementia, substance use to modulate things. So I'm I've I've experienced that brain injury living with someone. I've experienced people getting better, and it always just kind of come together like that's what I want to do for the end of my career. Is I want to bring people after 35 years in healthcare into
The the place where they wanted to be, back to the place. Right. So that's the functional neurology or clinical neuroscience journey that I've been on.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:It's so exciting. And I should say I have a personal investment in this topic because I've had an absurd amount of head injuries across my lifetime. I got hit in the head by a shovel when I was like two years old. I got pushed into a brick fireplace. I've had four concussions from soccer. So lots and lots and lots of head injuries that I I really do feel I am still recovering from. My my most recent one was like two and a half years ago.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Mm. Yeah. You know.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:And that one really messed me up. So I'm very invested in this because I do feel that conventional neurology really let me down. With that said, and we were talking about this off-air before we started recording, there's so many places we can go because in your clinic, your team, you're looking at so many amazing different things ADHD, autism, concussions, migraines. I don't I don't know if Alzheimer's or dementia was on there. I can't remember.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yes, we we do have Parkinson's and Alzheimer's early cognitive decline, yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And this is so there's so many threads I want to pull on. And I'm gonna ask you to help guide us a little bit here so that we're pulling on threads that lead to a really, I think, nuanced deep conversation. But you know that I work so much with chronic illness, and sometimes that's more severe things like ALS, MS, and real nervous system disorders. You know, sometimes it's there's Lyme and there's mold, and but what I feel like is
Cognitive or neurological symptoms are often a part of the case, kind of regardless of what the bigger diagnosis is. You know, so many mold patients that dealing with the neuroinflammation that might be expressing differently for all of these different people. And I think you have such a nuanced approach to some of these different symptoms that I'm excited to get into.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Good, yes. I love some of the language that you're using. My wife and I use my wife works with lot of our clients on a similar platform, I would say, that you do, although you're much further along in that. And is in the mindset piece. The mindset, because when people have conditions, chronic conditions with their brain or with their body, the mindset is very important to the recovery process, as you well know. So
That can be the limiting factor, actually. We can work with all the hardware, software things, but if that mindset is in a place where it's not flexible, it's not open, it's it's it's stuck in ruminating over something from previous, it's very hard to bring a fuller level of healing to the person. Because we think about a person of three parts: body, soul, and spirit, right? So there's
And I heard a chaplain say this to me years ago that I worked with in the hospital. He said, Mike, we work with all kinds of faiths, in all doctors, all kinds of faiths, even some without. Why? Because if they're only dealing with the body and not the soul, the spirit of the patient, it's only one third of the care. And I thought that was a unique perspective. So it's important to consider, and maybe someone's not the person to help on all three, but hopefully they could be. That would be a real complete physician in my in my estimation.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. So I think I might ask this kind of there's so many starting points or entry points for this conversation. We could talk about maybe symptoms clients are coming to you with. That is the starting point. We could talk about neuroinflammation as a starting point. What do you what do you feel like is a good maybe entry point for this conversation? Because some of what I want to get into is
What w if a patient came with those same things to conventional medicine, what might their testing and care look like? And then how is what you're doing going far beyond that?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So I think this is a good place. When we when we think about the brain and the nervous system, right? We think about it. I think about the beginning, the embryologic development, and how the neurology is the first thing that is forming. The first thing, the primitive streak, right? When that egg and and sperm come together, the primitive streak is the first thing formed, which becomes our nervous system. Well, we move ahead a little bit more. Now we have a baby. Now we have neurologic primitive reflexes.
Which are reflexes that are growing and and integrating the neurology of the person so that their eyes can move and track properly, so that their balance system is is stable, right? We see little babies and toddlers and they're all over the place, but eventually they can run in the Olympics, right? So the neurologic maturation process is very key. Because w and why? Why is that key? Because if we're not having the proper progression of that, then we
We're gonna have some deficit later. We compensate beautifully though. And when I say that, when I say a deficit, someone might say, well, we're gonna see that with a problem with somebody. And I say, not necessarily, unless you know how to look, because we are highly functional people, cognitively, emotionally, you know, emotional intelligence, physically. I mean, I've treated Olympic athletes and pro athletes. And so you can have abilities, but if you know how to evaluate someone.
And these neurology tests were actually part of the early neurology assessments. And they were part of, and they still are part of the OT learning process. So OTs know how to check primitive reflexes. So when people have brain injuries, concussions, when people have migraines sometimes or chronic migraines, when people have
neuroinflammatory disorders like long COVID, neuro Lyme, mold, mast cell, when they have things that affect and attack their neurology, PANS and PANDAS, I forgot about that one. Let's not forget that. When things beat up the person's neurology, guess what triggers first? The weak structures. Right? It's like a stress test. So the weaker neurologic integrations from earlier can in some cases show you, there's the problem.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:I'll give you one particular interesting one. And we talked migraines, right? So one of the questions I ask all patients, especially those with migraines, have you ever had an emotion sickness? my goodness, I'm so sick with all the time, always. Of course, it could also be no, but it's more common that yes, busy environments, I don't like that, especially when I'm coming out of a migraine or getting to one. Or the second question, do you startle easily? my goodness. And
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Why do I say that like that? Because these are very common. Yeah, I actually startle quite easily. I even jump from the smallest thing. So these may be two indicators in their in their expression that, and they have migraines in their background, that their primitive reflex brainstem, that's where these things go through, structures are not integrated well.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:This goes back to your previous podcast when I was listening about sleep, which I thought was brilliant, by the way. It was excellent that you brought her on. That the brain stem is where the neurologic integration occurs when we're little through there, up into the cortex. And actually, I have a beautiful diagram here, or not diagram, model. So brain from the side, if I was looking this way, cerebellum back here, brain stem here. Everything inside the skull, right? So the brain stem is what's controlling.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Ha ha
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So many of our functions. And the brainstem is a very strong physical target area when people have migraines. So we need to analyze what's going on in the function of the brain stem. You say, well, what's what does it control, Doc? I don't even know. Right? The brain stem controls automatic functions called autonomic, autonomic functions. Right. And so these are going to be like my eye movements. I'm looking here on the screen, I'm looking here, I'm looking eye movement control.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:brainstem heart rate control brainstem right when people have anxiety panic heart rate control brain stem blood pressure and heart rate brainstem swallowing response brain stem so pupil response brain stem and in the brain stem where these things are integrating when you're a child and you and excuse me your vestibular system the the signals coming in from the inner ear for balance coordination but they affect memory cognition
tone of muscles, gut function. Okay, so one thing affects many things. That's the difference with the brain. It's not what I heard a doctor explain it this way, a neuroscientist. Neuroscience is not Cartesian. What did what did he mean? It's not A to B to C to D. It's not that way. It's very much like on a quantum where things you have two things coming into one structure and it goes out to 14. So you have a much more complicated network of consideration.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So you have to have a good, a good broad depth, you know, of from genetics to cellular to physiology when it comes to the brain, to networks and nodes and and regions. So let me sum that up. The brainstem is a really important area. It is developing and integrating brain function when we're a child. And when we have those problems where there's inflammatory changes, injuries, et cetera, et cetera.
Now the primitive reflexes can a little bit re-emerge. So now we go, okay. So we know that number one, those structures will show up because they can be weakly integrated later if you have a problem. So I would say this to many clients, we've said it on our podcast, but I'll say it once I have a relationship with them. I'll say, it's like, what did you bring to the party? Right? Yes, I'm here for a migraine.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:yeah, but I suffered with anxiety when I was in my teens. I played soccer in high school. I had a concussion. yeah, I also, well, when I was a kid, I have a lot had a lot of ear infections. So we're getting this history of things that may or may not have contributed to a change in their brain state. yes, I had a very traumatic you know, time in college, maybe with some events in life. So all of those things can affect the neurologic way of functioning.
Right. It is. Our brain is who we are, like Dr. Amen says. That's who you are, is your brain. What you choose, who you marry, it all comes out of how this brain is working. So it's important for us to think about like the whole progression, because sometimes we think it's just this symptom now. But you and I know things could have been leading up to this for a long time.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. Right. Well, and I just I can speaking from my experience, I had I think after my fourth concussion, I went to a neurologist. And I mean he basically said, Look, you really need to stop playing soccer. You can't keep getting head injuries. And I said, Great, like what can I do to recover from this concussion faster? And he said, Nothing. He said, There's nothing you can do, you just have to wait. And that was devastating to me.
And I I'm in the integrative medicine world. So of course I saw some different things, but I I still feel like I'm struggling. And I'm at I'm at a place now where it's like, I don't mean this to sound callous, but I feel dumb sometimes. I feel like my the my ability to understand things that are being said to me, my focus, my short-term memory. And it's improved a lot. There was a time where it was really so bad that I could look at my brother.
And know that he's my brother and not know what his name was. So I'm not there anymore. And I my focus is actually pretty good, but there's still some of these lingering things, which again is why I'm so invested in this conversation. But what I'm curious about is most patients who come to see you, do they already have some kind of diagnosis? Or are they coming to you with just like this collection of symptoms that no one has been able to diagnose? Because I also kind of see both.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's significant.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, I would say it's fifty fifty. Yeah, that's a good point. Some people come and say they don't know what I have. I have this, this, this, this. And people think it's this, people think it's that, people think it's this. And so we have to take a step back. And is is diagnosis important? Is a diagnostic phrase it can be helpful, right? It can be helpful. And it could lead to some good interventions. It could give us a sense of certainty. And it can also be a problem. It can also be a problem.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So I'm not here to say we shouldn't diagnose, but it can be a problem. Some people get so attached to the diagnosis, that's where their mind gets kind of recalcitrant and they're not, it's their identity. So it's important to be a discerning physician and try to help clients, patients with that diagnosis. But yes, we get about 50-50. Some come with a diagnosis, some are wanting to know what is going on.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, yeah. 'Cause I see both. I you know, some clients it's I I have MS or I have mast cell activation. Others it's I have this chronic dizziness that no one can explain and no one can figure out or
whatever it might be, this light sensitivity or et cetera, et cetera, that no one can seem to figure out. So what I think I want to start with is just a really quick touch on conventional neurology. If someone were to go to a conventional neurologist with, you know, chronic headaches, dizziness, maybe some of these more common symptoms, what does a test, what does testing look like? And then what does quote unquote treatment look like? And then we'll do a little contrast to how yours looks.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's a good that's a good point. Now, I'm not a medical neurologist, but I have almost all my patients have been to them and I've been to them with with my father previously. So I have some experience in what a general examination is gonna look like, you know, right? And we're this is you know it's not fair completely because I'm sure there are some that are brilliant and they take take the time. Take the time. This is key. I like the phrase slow medicine. We don't do fast food, we don't do fast medicine.
Slow medicine, slow it down. So it might look like this. You you have your appointment, which might take you three or four months to get. Number one, that's where a lot of people are, unfortunately. But anyway, they get in there and it's it, you know, they get their vitals taken, maybe by a a nurse practitioner who's usually very, very helpful. And then the neurologist comes in, here's your symptoms. It's typically pharmaceutical or imaging. We're sending you out for an MRI, get more information, right? That's
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's pretty standard. And I would say the visit is probably no more than fifteen minutes with the doctor or you know, it's it's usually very short. So because they're kind of like a quarterback. I used to play football to college anyway, so I use that analogy a lot, but they're kind of like the quarterback. What do I mean by that? They're like, I'm figuring things out and then I'm sending you off to another who I think will be able to help you. No, here's here's a antidepressant, I want you to go to mental health. Here is you know, a pain thing for you and I want you to go to
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:to physical therapy, what or dizziness, right? You mentioned dizziness or headache. I want you to go to a vestibular therapist or something like this, or ENT. So they're kind of passing it off often. Now I'm sure that's not fair for all neurologists, but that has been my my general experience, so speak from that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And then treatment options. Is this mainly pharmaceutical? Is the what do these options look like? I mean, I know for me with with concussion recovery, there were no treatment options. It was just don't look at computer screens, and like rest as much as you can. That was all they gave me.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's been my experience.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, that's that's a that's a very old I know it wasn't that long ago because I know that you were young, but that's a very old kind of consideration. That has been, you know, completely overwritten by the newest Amsterdam concussion guidelines and things. So that person maybe wasn't up on the on the most current management post concussion. But typically it's pharmaceutical. Yeah, I would say that that's been my experience. Patients come in with
one, two, three different meds to try to stabilize, mitigate, stop symptoms, you know, but not really right. Migraines. I mean, we see the commercials all the time. It's all about medication to to knock that down. And I think it's grown and now you have different people working in functional medicine, which are helping a bit more. And so that's good. But that's that's the traditional view. I think in most medicine it's it's a lot of medication used to and different, different dosages, different meds.
off label things to try to help and and it does provide relief in some cases, of course. We're not opposed to medication use or surgery, but it's more a little more judicious, a little more thought, thoughtful doctoring or medicine, in my in my opinion. And I practice what I call brain-based healthcare. So the brain is always in consideration. It's always in play for me, no matter what you present with. And then I can rule it out. If it's not part of it, okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:This is not part of the situation. Your brain is wonderful. Let's move you into getting this area under control.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm. Tell me if this is an oversimplification. Is are all of these different collections of symptoms coming down to n chronic neuroinflammation and we're trying to figure out what is causing neuroinflammation, or it goes beyond just neuroinflammation?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, it does. It goes beyond neuroinflammation. Neuroinflammation could have begun the beginning piece, right? Like you had a physical injury, then you have an inflammatory process going on there. Someone else got you know tick-borne illness. They have an inflammatory process. Theirs is probably going to go a lot longer than yours or mine with concussion, but yet that inflammatory process came after. Now what are you dealing with, right? So you probably don't have necessarily this active
inflammation going on where structures might have been injured in your brain, and then they rerouted pathways and things, yet you might be compensating. Right? But yet someone with mast cell, mold, neuro Lyme, and go on and on, food inflammatory processes going on, they may have a chronic inflammation level and their body composition may be providing an inflammatory environment for things to continue accelerating the damage.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm. So when someone comes into your office with chronic headaches or and or migraines, what is the starting point for you? And I saw on your website you have some really cool looking testing that I know nothing about. So I'd love to hear about some of the specific testing you're doing. But when they come in, what does that process look like for you?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So we want to know everything about your brain, not just structure, right? I may I use the model before, not just structure like an MRI. We want to know how is it functioning? And so we're gonna use several different ways to analyze your brain. One of the ways is we're gonna for functional, we're gonna watch how your eyes track in very specialized goggles that we use. I probably should start putting these goggles here so I could show because they're brilliant. They're actually the company that produces these goggles, they're the
The tech is so advanced. The goggles are used on the International Space Station for evaluating astronauts' eye movements because they get space sickness when they travel. And so we analyze eye movements back and forth, up and down, and different stimuli so we can know what's going on in those areas of the brain that controls those particular movements. So, number one, we analyze the brain through the sensory system of the eyes and the movements very detailed. I can tell you,
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's your left cerebellum that's not working properly, or that's your right frontal lobe, or that's the right side of the brainstem in the mid-range of the pons. So we can know that because we studied these things, and what where the control levers are. Okay. Then we're going to analyze your vestibular system, how it projects into the brain stem. And you mentioned chronic dizziness. Now, dizziness has got a lot of ways of presenting, right? Some people say vertigo, unsteadiness, dizziness.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Lots of language around that. But we have a a very advanced another piece of technology because you have to have some types of these technologies to really get the best data, right? The best data. And so we can we can evaluate somebody in this chair that will move in particular directions, very easy, very slow, exactly where breakdowns occur. So when you talk about chronic dizziness, I say the best way to understand.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:What's going on from those projections into your brain is through this type of multi-axis rotational chair. Brilliant data. Again, so today I had a client there. I I know exactly where the asymmetry is and her way her vestibular brain function is. And I can actually program the chair to move so it breaks the asymmetry. It went from 32% asymmetry to 1% in one session. I mean.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:wow. So the chair is a testing modality, but also a treatment. Yeah. Okay.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:And rehab. Yes. It's we have to design every program based on the values. You know, it's like it's like looking at somebody benching, bench pressing, and they go up really far with one arm but not the other one. Okay, there's a weakness on that side. We need to address that somehow. So we can understand weaknesses in the brain function through the eyes or through the vestibular testing. Then we'll do a brain map, a QEEG, just like in the hospital, analyze it based on normative databases and determine.
Do you have high power, low power, which brain wave? I know you did a marvelous podcast with Cereset, and I have a colleague who uses that up in the Dakotas. Brilliant therapy. So we're analyzing what's going on in the brain waves, what's going on in the brain networks, default mode network. I know you have interest in psychedelics. That's where the psychedelics work in the default mode network. So, you know, we can analyze the QEEG, the eye movements, the vestibular testing.
And then in some people, more autonomic testing. Put put some cardiac monitors on them and we check them at different positions of laying down and slightly 45 degrees. And we see how does the brain and cardiovascular system respond. So when we get this data, of course, we may do some online testing with focus, attention, concentration, and we do some outcome assessments from mental health because we are always trying to measure and get baselines for everything so that we can know, is this a person we think we can help?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Number one. And if so, where can we take them from where they are? Right? so this is and migraines are really unique. And we talk about dizziness. There's a s a somewhat of a connection. The brainstem is often involved in both, and the vestibular system is often involved in both. So we are seeing more and more success in treatment of people that have had chronic intractable migraines.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right, right.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:By bringing some of this therapy to bear with them, documenting where the imbalance is, and then actually repairing that marvelously. It's really quite exciting.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Are there common themes you're seeing when you have patients come in with migraines or headaches? And if they're two completely different things, tell me because we can talk about them differently. but are there common things you're seeing like, I've never had a migraine patient who didn't have a traumatic brain injury or who didn't have, I don't know, mold exposure. I'm making random things up.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah. No, they don't have to have a head injury, as you know. There's some some genetic components to it. There's chemistry components to it, potentially metabolic, I guess I would say. but when we think about the analysis of the brain, we almost always see problems with a certain type of eye movement with migraines. You might see that in other people, this this particular eye movement. But the people with migraines, I would say ninety-nine percent of them, well, maybe a little less, ninety-two percent.
have this abnormality in this particular eye movement. So if they come to me and they say, I have migraines and I see that eye movement, that's the one. It's it's like a confirming, conf confirmation diagnosis. Yes, that's the same structure. We know it's involved with this person. May not be the whole solution, but if we can get that structure working right, they're gonna have a mitigation of their headache responses.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. So once you have some of that, those diagnostics, what do treatment protocols look like for you? Is this all-encompassing? Is this diet changes, supplements, in person? What does it start to look like once you have all that information?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, so we have two types of clients. We have clients that come from around the country and from even outside the country at times, especially Central and South America. We've had a couple from Europe over the years. We come in and we'll have a week to two week what we call immersives, where we do a lot of work on the front end by telemedicine, getting labs done and getting org because we we need to look at every aspect, right? So we we're gonna turn over all the stones that could be part of the problem.
of this mystery, we want to solve the mystery for them the best we can. So we begin by, you know, online work with them, understanding where they are, history, consultation, lab work. Then when they come into our our town, our town, South Florida, they'll be here for typically two weeks when they come from these these distant places. And they're seen every single day for two weeks. The weekend they have off recovery. So it's an immersive program where they're treated multiple times a day. We utilize
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Wow.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:many different therapies and so maybe I can I'll list that for you in a minute.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Yeah. And then when they're in person, it could be maybe just a little bit of a slower approach where, you know, they're coming in multiple times a week.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yes. Right. Right. If it's an in town client, they live within, you know, fifty miles of here. We have people that actually will drive in an hour, hour and a half, and they'll do a double session, double session, so they'll see me. Some people will do hyperbaric oxygen therapy in our center, because we have that as a recovery process. It's beautiful. When you exercise the brain in the right way that it needs, then you immerse someone in hyperbaric oxygen, then you bring them back out. You can train them right away again. It's like a recovery process.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Some people will not do that. They may do neurofeedback in the middle session there or audiovisual entrainment. We use a lot of light therapy, photobiomodulation, transcranially. We also use PEMF. It's been one of the the groundbreaking things I've seen when you talk about neuroinflammation and inflammatory issues in the microbiome. The PEMF process machine has been brilliant in helping people.
I'm really impressed with that. So we we use that as well. So we have these middle, low activation therapies, and then we have very specific brain training therapies, you know, bookending that.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. So tell me a little bit more of what it looks like. And again, coming from a personal, I I still really struggle with chronic headaches beyond all the cognitive things. It's, you know, the the memory issues sometimes, light sensitivity sometimes. Sometimes there's an issue where literally like I have to be careful how much I nod my head up and down when I'm talking to someone because that will start to give me this weird headache.
Or this like really intense pain where it feels like I can barely keep my eyes open. But then these like kind of chronic low-grade headaches that are just always there. And so where does that start for you? Let's say you do all that diagnostic testing, you see some of these different things. What might be some of the treatments you're doing? Or we could get really specific, like when we see this in the diagnostics, here's what we're doing treatment-wise.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:end what I would say is just even some of the things you're mentioning, right? When I move my head up and down a little too much, I start to feel off. So we're immediately thinking there's something that's not integrating right with your vestibular system. Commonly injured during a concussion, because the head is moving quickly. And so that that system, we might even think of it like a gyroscope, right? In there gets damage and now it's sending signals aberrantly, like a client I mentioned earlier who is very asymmetric, who has dizziness actually. So
When your your symptoms are telling me these are the sensory systems to look to. Vestibular, manage and understand your integration. Number two, what's going on with your eye tracking? Because your eyes and your headache and brain fog, these things are linked together. So, you know, I definitely want to refer you to somebody where you are for at least for the evaluation. I think it would be that's what I I'd love to tell people that the two hours, the one thing I'm absolutely gonna give to you in two hours.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:I know, I'm tempted to fly to Florida.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:You're going to know more about your brain, I hope and pray, than anyone has ever told you. And that's my examination. It's two hours. It's not five minutes, ten minutes. It's two hours face to face with me going through testing and understanding and looking at different things. So it's very comprehensive, right? And that and that's what we feel it needs. It needs that. People need that. So what does it look like? If we saw, let's say we saw, I already mentioned the vestibular, right? We said, okay, Leigh Ann might have this imbalance. So we're going to.
program and here's the imbalance. So we're gonna program this to give her this therapy every day, five days in a row, and we're gonna keep checking it every day. Like when do you measure it? Every day. Every single day. Because we want to see and the brain is so plastic that it can change rapidly, rapidly. And so we want to measure. Did we change it? Do we change it? Do we change it? So we're remeasuring quickly. And we can do that in our it's kind of like concierge medicine. I'm with the patient the whole time.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So that's number one. We want to reintegrate your vestibular system so that you would say, you know what? I don't seem to have that problem. Now I don't know how your neck is, but sometimes people have neck tightness that's kind of chronic for them as well when they have that kind of vestibular issue. So we're there's gonna be a little bit of a need of physical medicine in there because what are the inputs to our brain? Visual system, vestibular, and everything in my body, somatosensory. And as you know, working with people that work with you.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:messed up. Yeah. Yeah, it's real messed up.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:All of those systems, if they're pretty clean in their data and information going into the brain, the brain's going to be able to integrate and process better. Right? So then we're going to look at your visual tracking. That's going to be important. And we're going understand: does she need eye movement therapy? Are they more to one side because it's the left hemisphere? Is it more vertical she needs? And we design exactly the eye movements which you might do in the goggles or you might do on an iPad if I train you to do them when you go home.
The goal is to improve as much as we can when we're in town and then understand at the end diagnostics where someone is, give them tools when they leave to maintain the constant progression towards as much improvement as possible. Right? So eye tracking on an iPad, brainwave therapy with something called a a BrainTap headset, some different types of therapies we might recommend.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Love BrainTap. We've had him on the podcast.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, Patrick's a good friend of mine, yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:that's awesome. You know why this is so fascinating to me, Dr. Bagnell, is I'm very used to in you know a lot of the clients that are in kind of our medical center, it's it's mold, it's lime. And so I'm very used to, okay, we're doing a lot of detox protocols. We've got to help remove the toxicity that's there, and then of course replenish the nutrients that aren't. And so it's a lot of supplementation. It might be things like IVs, EBOO.
sauna, coffee enemas. And so this is so fascinating to me because it's almost a whole new subset of treatments that I'm I'm sure on some level might involve some supplements. And we we use a lot of PEMF, we use photobiomodulation, but like the eye tracking, the the chair that helps reset the vestibular system, that is so fascinating to me because it is kind of like, and maybe this is the issue I've been finding is supplements aren't working. I detox
regularly as just part of a normal lifestyle, like none of those are really making a difference anymore.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Leigh Ann, if you told me, if you said, hey, doc, and I said, I want to, I want to gain more muscle and lose fat, and you said, Doc, drink this protein shake. I said, Well, Leigh Ann, don't I have to work out? Don't I have to stimulate? No, no, just drink this protein shake. Of course that would be silly. We know that that's not. You have to actually fire the muscular system to cause it to uptake more and to build. The same principle with the nervous system. So we do, people do well.
With you know functional medicine. And we do. There's supplements here. We're doing detox with people. You have to do these things, absolutely. So what is the what is the strengthening side? When I tell people we want to rehab the brain, and they go, Yeah, yeah, like when you have a stroke, I say, No, not like that. How do you rehab anxiety? What? How do you rehabilitate migraine structures in the brain? How do you do that? How do you rehab the brainstem, eye movements, vestibular?
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Training activities that move in. Now, there are vestibular therapists, PTs, and people that are trained. And that is a version. And then there's another level of specificity, right? So people can do detox on their own. They can come to your center and they get a much more refined detox. There's differences, right? So we know that you have to do the metabolic side when it's absolutely important. The sleep side is crucial, according to your previous podcast. And
We talk about sleep all the time. So I love that. And then you have to be able to rehabilitate brainstem structures by firing neurons in a particular way that causes them to become plastic. Things that fire together, wire together. So in your situation, I might say this: you probably haven't done enough firing into areas that had injury to strengthen those connections again. You're working around them, you're cleaning up the environment. The environment is very healthy and conducive.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Now it needs an actual, you know, understanding of where and then firing into those systems to bring them back online better.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Yeah. That's just so fascinating for me because it's like, yeah, you can't out-supplement a vestibular issue is what I'm hearing. Or, you know, a brainstem issue.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:It can't. It can't out-supplement. You just got to know what we're dealing with. That's the thing, right? Because we know like vitamin D and studies have shown people with chronic dizziness is very helpful to them in stabilizing immune function. So yes, but I agree with you. You can't out-supplement something that's not a supplement problem. It's just not. And you might even mask it. You might even mask it.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right, right. so let's talk. I know we have we're winding down here and I would be remiss if I didn't bring this up because this is now my space, is I'm working so much on the emotional side and things like chronic stress, past trauma, anxiety, depression, and I'm always so clear with clients. In this office with me, we are looking at emotional, spiritual contributors to whatever you might be experiencing.
Trauma is their past trauma, generational birth trauma, chronic stress that you're stuck in. And I'm always very clear to make sure I tell them I'm a piece of the puzzle. Your brain might be a part of why you are stuck in anxiety or why you have these big depressive dips. And so that's very important. I often say, like, I'm the software piece, but if your hardware is hijacked, we are only ever gonna be able to make so much progress, which is why I love something like Cereset as well.
So but I would love to hear from you how can issues with our neurology actually be causing or contributing to symptoms like depression, anxiety, et cetera? Where it's like, gosh, if you're experiencing those things, yes, do maybe some emotional trauma work with someone, but also you might want to get your neurology looked at.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Absolutely, because the the longer we've been dealing with something, the more our brain in a way has found a workaround, right? A compensatory way of functioning. If if I deal whatever it might be, ADHD, I'm gonna compensate in my life to deal with my ADHD so I can be successful and functional. So and those may not always be the best compensations. That's the issue. So when we're analyzing, I'll we'll talk about depression here.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Adapted to it.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:So when I do a QEEG and I see the left frontal lobe has very low power in it, or the midline, the limbic center, the cingulate, has low connectivity. One of my questions would be Do you do you feel like low? Does you feel flat in your mood if they haven't complained of depression? Do you feel like you might be melancholy or depressed? You know, a variety of languaging. actually, you know, I do feel like that a lot, doc. How do you know that? Because the
The brain map and power metrics can show us indicators. We don't diagnose from brain maps, but we have indicators. Now, here's another one. Right along the midline, the limbic center, the singulate. If I see screaming high beta waves, do you two with anxiety, rumination, insomnia? Absolutely. How do you know? Okay, so you have two different clients, one with anxiety and rumination, maybe even OCD, in that ruminating kind of pathway there.
And they have this kind of brainwave and the other one. So I might utilize as they're going through the other therapy resolution processes face to face, which I love. This is the best thing, right? With people and working through that and helping them to change the way the thinking process is by giving them new patterns of thought. But what if we did some photobiomodulation on that left frontal cortex? Hey, they're doing it with TMS, right? They're doing it with TMS. But what if we did photobiomodulation over the left frontal cortex? And we have done it.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Right. Yes.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:And it is very successful. Or what if we did something to bring down this high beta? We use things like touch points and we use Eslaretta neural feedback. Some listeners might be familiar with that. So it gets really deep into the brain and changing the firing patterns alongside the therapeutic approaches they have outside. So we want to alter the hardware if it's showing up aberrant, abnormal, to the point where it can strengthen itself, right? And so now it can be a more
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:permanent or maybe we could say maybe a deeper healing for them.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And how does that ripple out? Like when, you know, there's issues in that limbic system, what is maybe the biological cascade that happens that keeps them in an anxious state? Is it like when the limbic system's hijacked, now w it's giving a chronic signal to pump out cortisol or adrenaline? What is some of that cascade?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:You said it right there. I mean, that would be part of the cascade, right? So if their HPA axis, right, the hypothalamus, pituitary adrenal system is going, their sympathetic nervous system is on all the time. They're not really shifting down too much. And you know, for for many of the people who understand the neurology, it's not on off with the sympathetic, parasympathetic. That's actually not a a true depiction. So they're both on all the time and they're just shifting what's more dominant. Like I I have delta brainwaves in my brain now and theta, but
They're not in a high amount because I'm not asleep. So just for clarity. So when they get when their brains get somewhat hijacked or stuck, it's they're they're having some neurologic patterning that's going on, we can say it that way, where we need to be able to break that pattern or slow down the pattern. Now, pattern breaking is hard. Pattern breaking is hard. So when we want to stop too much activity, sometimes we have to bring up low activity.
It's easier to bring up low activity than to stop something that's just firing off like that. and it it becomes a little bit more of you have to be a detective to understand how to do that in in terms of my work. Like, how am I gonna get here for this patient? So when their brain is going too fast, their limbic system gets hijacked, it does start the cortisol going, cortisol then is gonna feed back. You have a lot of receptors in your temporal lobes.
Now you're going to start to have memory reduction processes. You're going to have overwork and blood sugar issues because of the temporal lobes, how they interact with the blood sugar. Now your cortisol is involved. I mean, your cortisol is already involved. Your melatonin levels are going to drop. You're going to have all these various and sundry things because of their feedback and feed forward. But where are they, where is it all coming from? The hypothalamus, the brain.
The brain is the getting the information through the bloodstream and then, we better turn down that. we better turn that up in terms of the physiology. And then you get heart rate changes, blood pressure changes, gut microbiome changes. So this is goes back to what you were saying is that you got to deal with all these issues like you do with detox and mold. You have to deal with those things. It does help when you change the physiology to start to unlock a little bit of that hijacked nervous system.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Well, yeah. And you know, I've been talking with integrative practitioners for two plus years now, how they're having patients come in who are so incredibly sensitive. They can't take supplements, they can't do some of these modalities. And what they're finding is when that's the case, we have to start with the nervous system. We have to start with just calming things down to build a little bit of capacity and tolerance so that we can even do some of these treatments to whatever detox the mold, detox the lime, et cetera.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:That's right. Yeah. Nervous system regulation. It's it's key. My wife and I talk about that all the time. Yeah. If you if you can't get a nervous system regulated, you're gonna have limited success with other things. Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And as we've said so many times, and I promise I'll land this plane in a second, it's all interconnected. I I would imagine it's rarely one factor where you're like, this is the only thing causing these symptoms, and we solve this and we're good to go. But it does make me wonder, is there a common theme with what the like initial catalyst was? Is it often
some kind of physical injury? Is it often like an emotional trauma that got started? I know as we're saying like it becomes a whole storm of all these different things, but are you seeing any pattern with that original thing that kind of like caused some imbalances?
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Think I would have to say it's a it's an interesting question because you have three primary areas, I think. You have physical injury, right, that can affect the brain. You have the the emotional traumas that we experience, whether they're I'll use someone else's if it's a big-T trauma or small-T trauma, but multiple, multiple, multiple. This can affect the the electrical system very much and and the chemistry system. And then you have the inflammatory process, might be more from like an immune. Of course, you could throw into that hormones as well.
But immune immune is a big pattern. But when I step back from those and I and I think and I reflect for just a moment on the history after history that I take with people, a common pattern that I have noted is head impacts. If I go and I speak to doctors around the country, I have that privilege up from time to time. And if I ask the doctors, how many of you think you might have had a concussion in your life, whether diagnosed or not? Half the hands.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Okay.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:You know, 500 people out of a thousand. Like a lot. If I ask that kind of question to a a lay audience, one, two, three, very few. So there's a difference in understanding, like, well, you know, I I was fine, but people have head impacts. And it just our brain is so beautifully dynamic that it can overcome many of these things by compensation. And I'm not saying that everybody that has hit their head
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Mm-hmm.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Has, you know, but everyone who's hit their head has had a concussive force which which plays a role, right? It plays a role potentially. So it's beautiful. There's a doctor out of UCLA, so out on your side, that says maybe every year we should have a cognoscopy, really, like some kind of way of analyzing our brain, right? Dr. Bredesen out of UCLA. So you know.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:thank you. Yes.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:I like that. Like, what could you do that's non-invasive and you could have a good understanding of what your brain is doing? You could get an EEG, a QEEG with someone who does that, whether it's a mental health person who does it, a psychologist who does it. I have a friend, a psychiatrist, they have it in their office, and we do that. Do a QEEG yearly. Now you're having a map of your brain to have an idea. This is where I am right now in terms of power and in terms of signaling inside that brain. This is beautiful. And this is a low-cost, non-invasive procedure.
It's like get the old throwback, you know, getting a physical. How how valuable is that now? Not so valuable. You gotta go to a functional medicine person to know what it means.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. I don't even get me started. The yearly, the yearly checkups that we're supposed to have just make me cringe. And I am like, I our yearly checkups, I think, should be so much more comprehensive. And to your point, it's how amazing would that be to have some kind of brain baseline that you're doing on a yearly basis because to your point, something may have happened that because it wasn't a code-red massive emergency, you didn't clock as a significant event.
But you're doing these baselines regularly. And so you go, huh, weird. I went in for my brain baseline this year, and whoa, was I off? Okay, what happened this year? you know, now that I think about it, I did, you know, bump my head here, or actually, this was probably the most stressful year I've had in 10 years. Okay, wow, that's really affecting me. But I think the deeper point we're making here is it's it is all interconnected. It might start with you get a hit to the head.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:No, exactly.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Exactly.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:And then five years later you get exposed to mold and then six years after that you have a relative who dies and it's deeply traumatic. And then all of a sudden what feels like an overnight, holy shit, what happened? My brain is going crazy too, it was actually a 10-year, 10-year thing.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yes, right.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:And that that's that language, and I don't mean to be facetious, but what did you bring to the party? Right? I just came in with this, but I had that that many years ago, and then I got really sick, and then I had a stress, then I had a loss and the okay, those those are the things that may be important. They may be. It's not like everything is a right. We're very resilient. Our brain is magnificently resilient in our body, and we're just making notes because no one ever even asks. And I'm trying to, are there things that correlate here?
Is there a way that I can undo this for the person, right? Metabolically or neurologically and give them back their life. This is what I love. When I started out by telling you, Leigh Ann, when I saw in the brain center, I didn't think this person was going to have any change in a week. And over and over, you know what I saw at the end of the week? It's possible. That's what I say. It's possible. So for some strange reason, maybe I'm just very fortunate by the grace, that when people come to me, I have the thought.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Why can't they get better? Why can't they get bet? Maybe that's what happened to me in those couple of weeks. And and then I have to figure it out the best I can. And not everyone gets a hundred percent. But my my initial thought is, why can't they get better? Let's see what they can do. We don't know fully their capacity. So
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. The the last thing I'll say is it just gets me so excited because if we can catch some neurological dysfunction super early, and then you repair it when it's new, it's not gonna become a bigger issue. But also what we're seeing, and I interviewed Dr. Aimie Apigian, who wrote her brand new book, The Biology of Trauma. And it was so fascinating because sh cause what she talks about is this bi-directional force, meaning
My biology, how how the state of my biology is, could determine if something becomes emotionally traumatic for me, the resources I have, and vice versa. If I have a pre-existing emotional trauma, it's gonna affect the way I respond to something like mold, etc. And so, of course, the answer is the sooner we can support any of these, the better, right? If I hadn't had the intense childhood trauma that I did.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yes.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:percent agree.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:My mold exposure might not have, you know, plus my concussions, like mold exposure might not have affected me so intensely. It's still an issue. It's still something that would need to be addressed. But also vice versa. If the concussions I had had maybe been treated differently, maybe the mold wouldn't have affected me because my I would have had way more resources available.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. That that you know, that's a principle. We know that even in brain injury, that a person who has ADHD who has a concussion is typically going to have a harder time recovering than someone who didn't have ADHD. And anxiety, the same thing. If you had anxiety, you're you're and a concussion. And if you're a female in a certain po point in your cycle and you have a concussion, it tends to be a little tougher for the recovery, a little longer than if you weren't in that that part of your cycle. So this is the same principle, right? Now we're just bringing in
a bigger picture, which I love, the mental, emotional, psychological self, which is part of the three, right? Physical, mental, physical, body, soul, and spirit, excuse me. So I love that you all are doing that because we're really looking, you're really looking to fuller healing for people. And that's what we need today.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah. And it works in the reverse too, right? If the physiology is online, it can actually change if a stressful event like how stressful certain events are. So it just gets me so excited of it's not just in my work, do you have the mental, emotional, spiritual resources to deal with what comes your way, but do you just have the biological resources? You could have the most like
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, the resilience in your body. Yeah.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:You could have the most emotional spiritual resilience, but if the brain system and the brainstem and the vestibular is off, you know, these you can be pushed into a stress or a trauma response quite, quite quickly. So
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, it's true. Yeah, you probably won't be as resilient as you think if those systems are asymmetrically working or compensated. I had a mom so last last point here before I go, we had a young boy we're working with, a wonderful young guy who had diagnosed of ADHD, maybe around twelve, twelve yeah, twelve years old. And we were evaluating his vestibular system and his mom, who's very fit and healthy, the chair is moving ever so slowly, honestly, moving like this slowly. And she says, I'm feeling dizzy looking at the chair. I said, I think maybe you have a problem.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Okay. So sometimes it's so subtle we don't realize it. But yeah, so people can get well. You're doing a fantastic job. Thank you for having us on. I so much appreciate it.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Yeah, it's been amazing. Where can the audience find you? And then what does the process look like to get established as a client or a patient, just so they can hear that from you. And then of course we'll put your website in the show notes so they can find you guys.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:Yeah, it's Bagnell Brain Center. It's always here. Bagnell Brain Center on all our socials and on our website. And the best place to start is with a call. We have a a discovery call, and that is complimentary. And we do that with our center director, who happens to be my wife, brilliant lady, well trained, probably the most empathetic, compassionate HSP, if you know I'm sure you know, highly sensitive person. She's amazing with people. And she really likes to see where is this person? What are their needs? What have they done before?
And are we a good fit for them? So the discovery call is a great way to begin the process of of ex exploration and seeing if the things we do might be a good fit for someone who's in need. And yeah, all that thing, all that's available on our socials, at Bagnell Brain Center and our website.
Leigh Ann Lindsey (:Amazing. Dr. Bagnell, thank you so much.
Dr. Michael Bagnell (:thank you. I loved it. Appreciate it.
