|
| |
Drumstick
Spinology as
neuromuscular re-education:
An interview with
Dr. Kurt Kuhn- Chiropractic Neurologist by Steve Stockmal on the subject
of drumstick spinning and its application as a therapeutic aid for ADD/ADHD and
other learning disabilities.
See
below for the answers to these questions:
What is ADD and ADHD, and what does it have to do with a drumstick?
How did you discover the Drumstick Spinology book & DVD?
So how does spinning a stick help?
How will the new DVD make it easier to work with kids?
What is it about Spinology that’s different?
How about results / progress?
How much repetition is good, and is there such thing as too much?
Does it still do anything to keep repeating anyway?
We found that my right side was weaker, what should I be doing?
What about the left and right side thing? How does that work?
Steve:
Thanks for being here and taking the time to shed
some light on your discovery. What
is ADD and ADHD, and what does it have to do with a drumstick?
Dr. Kuhn: Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD) and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity
Disorder (ADHD) are names that psychiatrists and psychologists have come up
with to describe a set of symptoms. They use what is called a DSM4 which is
basically a catalog of symptoms that make up mental or behavioral type
illnesses, something in that category related to how people think.
Now, the problem with diagnosing anything based on a symptom, is that
it’s not going to be accurate very often. In fact according to John
Hopkins, medical diagnosis based on symptoms is only going to right about
40% of the time on the first try. So it’s a pretty poor way of
diagnosing.
And so for our goal, what we’re going to do is we want to look at the physiology
of the 12 different levels of the nervous system. Starting with the end
organ which is going to be in our case the drumstick, the muscle spindles
and the
joint mechanoreceptors,
and they’re coming from the fingertips, and then we’re going to
see that those come to the nerve, and they are going to come up to the plexus in the shoulder and
the brachial plexus, and then it’s going to come into the spinal nerve
root, and then up the [spinal] cord, through the medulla, the pons, the
cerebellum, the
mesencephalon,
crossing over to the other side at the
mesencephalon
up the internal capsule through the thalamus and sub-thalamus,
and then up to the cortex. And when that whole “coming
up” process happens, every chain is critical. If we have a breakdown
anywhere along the line then the cortex, which is the end, isn’t going to
get that information summated.
Now, most boys that have ADD, and this will be an ‘80/20
rule so there are exceptions, they’re going to find that they’re
not getting the right information on the left pathway and that doesn’t
drive the right
dorsolateral
prefrontal lobe to have what it
needs. And so literally on an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Image) you will see that that frontal lobe
has got less brain volume on the right side. On a PET scan or a SPEC scan
you will see that there is less metabolism going on there when they’re
trying to concentrate. And those are indicators that those areas aren’t
firing as well. Now what is traditionally done with some of the medications is that they use amphetamine, like basically speed, on these
kids. So they get a brain that’s not firing very well, in fact it may be
so feeble that it’s got leaky cell membranes and it starts firing on it’s
own- that’s what causes that hyper activity type thing- and so they use
speed to accelerate it even more. Now that stops the loss of brain mass, but you’re speeding up the whole thing so you are maintaining that imbalance.
What the Spinology does, or anything that’s going to put the proper input, and
it can be visual stimulus, which of course watching it (the spinning stick) creates,
it can be auditory stimulus like if you are spinning to music that can
provide it, and the
proprioceptive
input-
that feeling of gravity, the joint mechanoreceptors,
the muscle spindles and all those- all those things fire up and they come
up that pathway and they exercise that cortex, it drives it to development
just like exercising a muscle.
So, if you think of the brain as a muscle, you know if you don’t use it you lose it these kids developmentally
didn’t develop it, and so there’s that imbalance. And because of that
imbalance it tends to pull the other lobe down and so people tend to be
operating at less than their best.
And that goes into that adult issue. We are seeing that maybe 40% of adults
may have this also and may have been putting up with this and working
around it, they never grew out of it, they never had it diagnosed but they
have these same sort of learning disorders or difficulties, and it may
affect their relationships, it may affect their job, and some of these things
we think ‘oh, I’m getting older’, ‘I don’t remember this’ or ‘I
have difficulty doing that’…well, yeah, but it’s because we’ve got
a neurological imbalance.
And it can affect other things. It can affect pain suppression, they can have
high blood pressures relatively to one side versus the other, and a variety
of other things.
Steve: How did you discover the Drumstick Spinology
book & DVD?
Dr. Kuhn: Well, I was taking lessons with my kids, and at that time I
was ahead of them, and I was looking for something else. I asked my drum
instructor and he told me about you, so I got Spinology and I started
learning the first two or three spins. And as I was doing that I realized
that it was really good neuromuscular re-education. But anyway you want to
challenge the nervous system by doing these sort of things, and it’s a coordination drill in that sense. And I’m
thinking that would be pretty good and that would fire it [the nerve] and
so I thought, you know I’ve got some patients, some kids that aren’t
doing there homework. You do things in the office with them but you want them
to do things at home also and kids are tough to influence that way. And so some of the games seem kind of boring to them after a while and
it’s not very challenging and so I thought, well I’m just going try
this. And I tried it on one kid, and then I tried it on a couple of others, and
I found out that since every kid wanted to be a rock star, and that drumming
is cool, and spinning is even cooler, they would go home and work on the
spin as homework.
Steve: So how does spinning a stick help?
Dr. Kuhn:
It
works the same way exercise works for muscles. If you have a weak muscle
you build it back up by building up its metabolism and its ability to do
work. The same thing is true of the nervous system. The nerves’ job
isn't to contract like muscles, instead they transmit messages. So by
causing them to transmit messages it builds the metabolism and the ability of the nervous system to do its work.
It
helps map the brain, which will speed up the process of learning, plus the
fact that you have such a wide
variety of spins to learn, they can keep challenging their
pathways
and growing new brain mass and that’s a great thing.
Additionally it helps by developing
the ability to plan, predict and execute. In essence it teaches, through the motor
system, the ability to learn. Pretty cool, all from spinning a drum stick.
And again, the main reason that it works
is that the kids do it. They do their homework because its cool, its fun,
what kid doesn’t want to be a rock star or a drummer? So that’s the
most effective thing. You get the
consistency and that builds up the
pathways even more.
Steve:
How will the new DVD make it easier to work with kids?
Dr. Kuhn: Tons, tons. We’re talking about making 8 to 10 minute
practice routines that patients can take home the DVD and practice specific
things. The original DVD is made for drummers, where for people that are beginners
or even non-drummers it’s just too darn fast, and it would be too
overwhelming for a person with learning disorders. It really does two things,
first it allows a supervised training session at a slow enough pace, that
builds up, and shows how you build up to each spin. More brain is better as
long as there is enough fuel to supply it and if we go beyond that fuel supply
then we could actually be causing the same thing as an
infarct
[not enough
blood supply to an area]
or
like a transient ischemic attack. Tissues, in other words, may
be stressed or could die because they don’t get enough fuel. Plus as they
master one skill, then it’s not valuable for them to be doing that
anymore, we can go to number two, and three. So it helps work them though
stuff so it’s always interesting, always new, and we set up so that kids
accelerate through the program as fast as they are capable. If one spin is
easier for that person well then they spend two days on that spin, the next
one they spend a week. It’s all good, but at the end of however long
it takes for them to get that down, they’ve got that and then we can go
to the next one so that the brain continues to be challenged and develop new
pathways.
Steve: What is it about Spinology that’s
different?
Dr. Kuhn: Well, what’s different is that number one it’s something
that people can do all the time; it’s something, number two, that they
will do, because it’s fun and it’s cool, so kids will be more likely to
keep doing it;
and number three it uses a lot of receptors because you’re not just using one
set, you’re using all 5.
Since you are using your arms and wrists, your coordination, plus there are so
many different spins that as soon as they master one, which they would then
no longer be exercising the skill so much, they can move to the next one.
As soon as they master it slow they can speed it up, as there is a lot of development
they can do and that creates a lot of mapping in the brain. Difficult makes
more challenging, makes more growth. The fact that they can do it regular helps
the most. You can do it while you’re watching TV, lying in bed, sitting
on the floor, sitting at the computer reading or waiting for something to download, or just about anywhere.
Steve : How about results / progress?
Dr. Kuhn: OK, now I haven’t done a double blinded study with people
doing Spinology versus nothing, so what you’re going to hear about is
doing Spinology as a home therapy. In three months time a child that had
the ADD, OCD, and turrets syndrome had a year and a half improvement in his vocabulary and reading
skills as tested by Sylvan Learning Center doing the California Achievement
Test and three years improvement in his mathematic skills, and about a 28%
improvement in his behaviors, in terms of ticks and acted out a variety of
things. His self image has gone way up, and his mom feels great.
In another case I have a little girl that her mom is a teacher and she had difficulty
in math and for the first time ever, and she’s 11 years old, she tested
at her grade level in math. What was fascinating for her, when it was
discovered what the problem was, was like see
mom, I have been trying and
that’s a big deal. When kids get mom and dad back on their side and they understand
that this is a physical problem, this isn’t “I’m not a good kid, I’m not
trying hard enough” type problem.
I’ve got another kid that his mom doesn’t want to give him the pills because she
does he loses all effect, he’s a zombie then. His doctors think that’s the right
amount but he’ll have a friend over and he won’t even want to play and
that’s just not normal for a child to be that way.
So what’s cool is that it gives people an option to build and fix the problem, as
opposed to covering it up artificially with a stimulant. So, like I said the success
numbers are pretty good because I don’t know of anything else that
does that good, but what’s most amazing is the self-image in the children.
Steve: How much repetition is good, and is
there such thing as too much?
Dr. Kuhn: A little bit regular is a better than a whole bunch at once.
The only time your going to do too much is when you’ve gone the metabolic
capacity of that brain. If you think of it like if you were going for a
run…if your are
going to train for a marathon you wouldn’t go out the first day and run the whole
26 miles. You know, the first time you might run to the end of the driveway,
and then walk a little bit, and then run a little more. It has to be the
same thing with the brain. The key is that you want to stay within the metabolic
limits of that person and probably the easiest way to do it on your own is
to have a heart rate monitor that you can pick up from most fitness stores
now. Wear the heart rate monitor and set it so that when you see it jumping up about 6 beats or something like that, then it’s time to give it a
rest for a while, and come back later and do some more. As long as you’re
within that metabolic limit, you’re probably within the aerobic capacity
of how the body is adapting.
Steve: Once a spin is learned well does it
still do anything to keep repeating it?
Dr. Kuhn: Absolutely! It will build in that skill better, but building
the skill better isn’t the same as building more brain mass. It’s the
difference between learning how to play a new song, and playing that one
song over and over
again will make you really good at playing that song, but it doesn’t teach you any
of the skills to sight read more music, or even to create your own music. Whereas
if you play a variety of different styles, and songs pretty soon you
have heard enough different things you start taking pieces from here and there
and you start putting together your own. This is the same sort of thing, if
you’re only doing one thing you will only build up one section of the brain,
where we have a whole section we have to build so that’s why we want to do a
lot of different skills, but also why we’d want to use visual, we’d want to use
some auditory input, why we’d want to work the joints and stuff, why we
want to do more than one thing. The interactive metronome, or something else that
challenges the system.
Steve: We found that my right side was
weaker, what should I be doing?
Dr. Kuhn: Spin your stick with the left hand; listen to classical music
with the headphones or speaker panned toward the left (doesn’t have to be completely,
just more to the left than the right); same with the TV, turn
your body slightly to the right so that it’s coming into view from the left eye
and ear; flashing lights from the left are good, basically anything that stimulates
that left side so that you activate the right brain. Just as much left as
you can, and as long as that’s within your metabolism and limits…life is good.
Steve:
What about the left and right brain? How does that work?
Dr. Kuhn: It’s basically that everything on the left side of the body accumulates
in the right brain, and vice versa.
The
term that the neuro scientists use is
summation
meaning “all of it adding up”, and
that add up means that there are a few negative numbers along the way,
there are some things that are supposed to be inhibiting and some things
that are
facilitating which is adding or subtracting. But it’s how it all adds up in
the top that matters.
Steve: Any last thoughts?
Dr. Kuhn: I will continue doing more and more research on this matter, and
will keep you posted on my results.
|
