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It probably seems odd to see a section in a
book on drum stick spinning written by a doctor, who spends his days chasing down lesions in the brain.
Imagine then how it was for Steve Stockmal who got an e-mail from me telling him how his book Drumstick
Spinology™ was the best thing since sliced bread for kids with ADD/ADHD and other learning disorders.
For those of you who have an interest, I’ll
cover the science in just a moment.
First I’d like to tell you about a little girl who was a patient
of mine. She could light
up a room with her smile, no kidding its a thousand watt smile.
The problem was that she couldn’t keep up with school and
that was a problem. She had
difficulty with math.
Even
though she came from a good home, even though her mother was a teacher, and even though she spent the time and worked hard.
She had never tested at her own grade level in math.
Her problem was on the opposite side of the
brain compared to a young man who was also a patient of mine. He was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity
disorder. He also was
diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder and a few other things that can make it hard on
an adolescent in high school.
While the symptoms were unique, the origin of
the problem in both cases was brain.
The brain is like a muscle, you use it or you lose it.
In both cases developmentally these kids skipped a step in their brain’s development.
Although it was not the same part of the brain affected, it
happened for the same reason. It happened
because the brain didn’t get the input it needed from the
environment to cause the normal health, growth and development. What’s that got to do with Drumstick Spinology™? Simple
it was one of the therapies we used to rehabilitate these kids towards their potential.
How well did it work? Excellent,
for the first time that little girl tested at her grade level in math.
And that young man will be listed in Who’s
Who in American High Schools; I believe they both can look forward to a whole new way of life.
Why does drumstick spinning work so well with
these kids? The science
aside, because they do it! Of all the home care that I have prescribed, this is the one that
gets done. You see
it’s important to have these kids constantly input their system in a way that exercises the
weak neurological pathways. And after all, what kid doesn’t like being a rock and roll star?
This is why you can look forward to more
variations of spin material because Drstix™
(alias Steve Stockmal) is working to give kids a chance to have a level playing field in school. That helps the kids and it also helps the drum
community, because for you drummers that means chunked down information that is easy to digest on new and upcoming DVD’s
and books. It also means
applying neurology to your drumming so that you strengthen your brain and
improve you drum skills in the most neurologically efficient way. That
translates to faster more accurate playing.
I like what this does for the brain and drumming so much, I’m using it myself.
Credit
must go to whom it is due. There
are two people that are pioneers in this field and they are instrumental in the teaching of this information to the health
professions. The two are Dr. Ted Carrick and Dr. Robert Melillo. They may be contacted via the Carrick
Institute for Graduate
Studies, via contact information at the end of this section.
If
you are looking for a specialist in your area, I’ve also listed
the information for how to contact the American Chiropractic Neurology Board in that
section also. They have a complete listing of board certified chiropractic
neurologists world wide.
For you physicians and other science heads, here’s an
over simplification of an explanation, think of it as the Reader’s Digest version of how stick spinning helps kids.
Every cell in the nervous system requires two things for its survival: fuel and activation.
Fuel for the nervous system is oxygen and sugars. Activation is input from other nerves.
No fuel and the brain dies, we call that a stroke.
No activation and the same thing can happen much slower and we use less familiar terms like “transneural degeneration, retrograde chromatolysis or hypo metabolism.” These terms simply mean that when it comes to the nervous
system, if you don’t use it you lose it.
In many ways the nervous system is like a muscle.
If you don’t use a muscle it becomes weaker and
eventually will atrophy.
Nerves fire all or nothing just like
MIDI
. They are either
“note on” or “note off,"
1 or 0 after they become depolarized. Depolarization
is the name for the chemical
and electrical events that occur when a
nerve to fires. Depolarization happens
either from “temporal or spatial
summation.”
“Temporal summation” is when enough individual impulses
from a single source,
which are individually too small to cause the nerve to fire, stack up on top of each
other within a
given time frame, and thus “summating” or adding up to become enough electrical charge to
cause the nerve to
hit it’s threshold and fire.
“Spatial summation” is when a nerve receives enough input from
multiple different
sources that create enough to add up, thus creating depolarization that causes the
nerve to
fire. These two methods (temporal and spatial summation) are what cause the nerve to fire to the muscles in your fingers when you spin a drumstick.
The nervous system sends messages to structures from 1 to 2
to 3… and so on. We doctors just use
impressive names attached to the 1’s, 2’s
and 3’s (kind of like musicians who use fancy names to describe keys and scales). What matters is that all of
these steps are necessary. No 1, then no 2 or 3 and so on.
There is a pathway, really more of a chain that
runs from your fingers to the very top of your brain. These are the 12 longitudinal levels that we pass through along the
way. When you spin a
drum stick, your hands, or rather the muscles of the fingers themselves are the end
organ in this chain of events (1).
After your fingertips are receptors where the nervous system actually begins to
recognize the spin (2). They bring input in from the muscles doing the drumstick spinning and pass them along
to the nerves (3), which transfer the information into a nerve plexus (4). The information enters the
posterior spinal root (5), then goes up the
spinal cord (6), and passes up through the medulla (7), then the pons (8),
cerebellum (9), mesencephalon (10), internal capsule (11) and finally up to the cortex (12) which is
that wrinkly layer of gray matter of the brain. Easy. Right?
So back in our chain of 1 to 2 to 3…12, 1 fires only when it gets
enough input from its environment. The input can be anything that you can feel through your five
senses (sight, sound, touch, smell and taste), gravity or even chemical events (food, medication, drugs, and even
thoughts). In this case
it is what you feel as you spin a drumstick that is the source of activation, that input
which comes from the joint mechano-receptors
and the muscle spindles to cause the nerve to fire.
Hang on; we are almost there!
If there is a problem with any of these
longitudinal levels then the probability is that the brain will
not get the activation it needs to survive at a healthy level.
In other words with less input coming in, that will reduce
the frequency of firing to the brain and that can cause it to function
at a less than optimal way. To
you drummers that means you won’t be playing anywhere near your rhythmical
potential, but to a child whose system is operating at a deficit, that lack of input may mean they can’t
process information normally and will have a loss of executive function. By
that I mean the ability to think and process normally.
The type of specialist who handles learning disorders
and/or can evaluate your nervous system best for a drummer trying to optimize his playing is a chiropractic
neurologist. A chiropractic neurologist is a specialist within the chiropractic profession who is especially skilled at
observing for soft signs that are often the only way to diagnose these learning and behavioral conditions.
They are also eminently qualified to help you drummers to achieve at your optimum neurological capability.
The chiropractic neurologist examines the individual and
discovers any weakness in the nervous system. If any is found, then a plan is developed to rehabilitate the weak
pathways and restore as much function as is possible in the individual.
The results can be amazing.
Happy spinning!
Kurt W.
Kuhn
,
D.C.
, M.S.M., D.A.C.N.B.
1125
W. Fourth Street
Waterloo
,
IA
50702
,
USA
Telephone: 319-236-1000
Fax: 319-234-7822
kurtkuhn@mchsi.com
For
more information on chiropractic neurology & behavior/learning disorders contact:
Frederick
R. Carrick,
DC, PhD, D.A.C.N.B. or Robert J. Melillo
D.C., D.A.B.C.N
Carrick Institute for Graduate Studies
203-8941 Lake Drive
Cape Canaveral
,
Florida
,
USA
Phone: 321-868-6464, Fax: 321-868-6468, www.carrickinstitute.org
For
finding a chiropractic neurologist in your area contact the:
American Chiropractic
Neurology Board
2803 Williams Drive, Suite 105
Georgetown
,
Texas
78628
USA
Telephone: (512) 863-2225
Fax (512) 863-2233
www.acnb.org
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