The Crackin' Backs Podcast

The Wheel of misfortune, where mental health meets neuroscience. – Dr. Michael Bagnell

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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In this episode of the Crackin Backs Podcast, we explore the intersection of mental health and neuroscience with Dr. Michael Bagnell, a seasoned Functional Neurologist and Chiropractic Physician. With over 30 years of clinical experience, Dr. Bagnell specializes in brain-based healthcare, focusing on conditions such as anxiety, depression, and ADHD.

We discuss how functional neurology addresses neurological imbalances contributing to mental health disorders. Dr. Bagnell explains the roles of brainwave patterns, neuroplasticity, and neural network connectivity in emotional regulation and cognitive function. He also shares insights on the benefits and drawbacks of psychedelic substances like LSD, MDMA, psilocybin mushrooms, and ketamine in mental health treatment.

Dr. Bagnell emphasizes the importance of personalized treatment plans informed by neurological assessments, including brain mapping. He advocates for combining functional neurology interventions—such as vestibular therapy, eye movement therapy, and neurofeedback—with traditional approaches like psychotherapy and medication to enhance patient outcomes.

For more information on Dr. Bagnell's work, visit the Bagnell Brain Center's website.

Bagnell Brain Center

Additionally, explore "The Neuro Collective Podcast," co-hosted by Dr. Bagnell and May Bagnell, which delves into functional neurology, mindset coaching, and functional medicine.

The Neuro Collective Podcast

Join us for an enlightening conversation that bridges the gap between neuroscience and mental health, offering new perspectives on achieving emotional well-being.

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Welcome to the cracking bags podcast, where today we explore the cutting edge intersection of mental health and neuroscience. We're uncovering how functional neurology can transform the way we understand and treat disorders like anxiety, depression and ADHD from brainwave patterns to neuroplasticity and even the debated use of psychedelics like LSD and ketamine, we're breaking down the facts, the myths and what the future holds for mental wellness. Stay tuned insights that challenge conversation thinking and the better brain health we are welcoming. Dr Big Mike Bagnell, diplomat of functional neurology, once again to go over a very special area of expertise and skill. Welcome. Dr, Mike,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

thank you for having me. Always fun to be with you two gentlemen,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

wow, you lose that. You use that term very loosely, don't you know? Okay, use it 100%

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

I appreciate you guys the work that you've been doing and other podcasts I've listened to that you all have done. I mean, you guys get you get the distinction,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Gentlemen, thanks. Well, we are going to jump into what tends to be somewhat of a crisis, and that is mental health. It's been like that, and it's only reached fever pitch since, since the pandemic. So I want to know, more than anything, what does Functional Neurology mean, and also, how can it contribute to mental health disorders like anxiety, depression and ADHD?

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Okay, well, let's start out, what is functional neurology. I mean, people get confused about that. Are is it neurology? Is it functional neurology? What's the difference? So in looking at that most, let's just kind of give a general thought about neurology. You go to a neurologist. You might have pain, you might have headaches, you might have some other different conditions, cognitive decline. And so the neurologist, kind of looks at the person, may do some exam testing, send them out for MRI, try to determine what's going on in their brain and their nervous system and how it's affecting their body, very general, right? When we talk about functional neurology, we also want to know what's going on in the brain, how it's affecting the body, maybe it's affecting the mental health as well, which is what we're going to talk about and focus on. But we're going to try to determine ways to create functional improvement, meaning the way the brain is operating, not just looking at the structure of the brain. So looking at an MRI, a CAT scan, we may be looking at the structure of the brain and the structure of the brain many times, in the majority of people that might have a concussion, might have some cognitive decline, might have anxiety or depression, the structure of the brain may look quite normal, within a normal range. Yet, if you were to put it through functional tests, that brain may not work well. To put it in another way, it's like looking at a beautiful car and then driving the car, you look at a beautiful car, let's just say, a Tesla. Wow, that's a gorgeous car. I love the color. I love it's amazing. You get in and it doesn't start. The function is not there. So we're not just looking at the structure of the brain. We're taking it through different operations. You know, an operating system in your brain. How is it working when we're asking it to focus, when we're asking it to provide attention, when we're asking it to calm down, when we're asking it to go into arousal. How does it work? And so the difference between functional neurology and neurology is that a functional neurologist all around the world and in the US will work to evaluate what's going on the function, and then create strategies or rehabilitative approaches to improve the function, to create neuroplasticity. Mike,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

dr, Mike, I want to just for our listeners, some of our lay listeners, I want to compare what you just said to the most elementary analogy, and that would be, you know, the the hip joint, the knee joint, the shoulder joint, or probably the more sophisticated joints in the body, whereas the brain is obviously the control panel to everything. And so there when, when maybe a patient comes to Dr Terry and I with a shoulder injury, we have to determine what specific muscle, tendon, cartilage, joint, whatever it is that's not operating properly or injured, whereas you have dove into the most sophisticated area of the body, which is the brain, to determine what area of the brain needs training, not drugs, not surgery, or maybe, you know, as a last resort, but you train those areas of the brain to function or strengthen or or correct it, I should say, yeah.

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

So the question again, I mean, I'm following you, so give a different analogy to that you may. Mean, yeah, yeah. So when you're looking at, you know, something in the physical medicine space, chiropractic space, right? We're looking at joint mobility, biomechanics, muscles, tendons, ligaments and neurology, all how it's woven together for movement and function. Well, in the brain, we're looking at lobes of the brain, frontal lobe, occipital lobe, temporal lobes. We're looking at the parietal lobe, cerebellum. Back here, we're looking at how those areas function and how they interact. So we have lobes of the brain pretty well known by people, hemispheres right and left, hemisphere right and left. Think about two computers network together, and then the lobes. And then we have networks. So we have different areas that work together, not just the frontal lobe, but the frontal lobe and the parietal area and the temporal so we have the default mode network, the central executive network, and we have hubs. So we have so many different types of ways to kind of parse this out, to understand, are we working with one side of the brain or the other? Like with a stroke, someone would be familiar with that a stroke on the left side would affect more the right side of the body. Are we looking at more one area, the frontal lobe? Maybe they had a concussion and now they're not able to think very clearly, their cognitive or their executive function? Are we looking at more of a network like maybe someone's dealing with post traumatic stress disorder and now there's a network that's disrupted. Are we looking at cellular areas where we lost blood flow? So this thing can go from a larger scale down to a very refined area, even cellularly, if we're talking metabolics of the brain or genomics. And so we will go through those tests based on the presentation of a person, how deep we need to go or how wide. So we'll look at all of those ways to areas, hubs, regions, networks, and determine we have ways to evaluate them functionally.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So you know, you know, it's not unusual for someone who has Parkinson's or pots or Alzheimer's to come to your office, or hypoxia that that went to the brain, or an effect on on the those meant those disorders, but taking something that may be more common, like a mental health or anxiety or depression, how would you how would you take care of something

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

like that? Yeah, isn't that that's like, Well, how do you do with how do you deal with that? How do you create rehab for anxiety? What I mean, it's like when we say stroke, or we're talking about rehabbing a shoulder, most people, okay, I have a general idea about how that's going to work. But when you say, Yeah, we have OCD, we have schizophrenia, we have anxiety, depression, someone on the autism, autism scale or spectrum, right? How do you do rehabilitation for the brain? Well, first you analyze and you find out what areas are strong, what areas are not so strong. And then you determine, how can I either increase the strength in that area, neuroplasticity, or how can I inhibit too much function? For instance, OCD, someone has racing thoughts. They're they're not able to kind of calm their brain down. So we want to learn about what areas of the brain are going to help them to inhibit that rapid overproduction of thoughts. How can we do that? Or if it's, it's a behavior, perhaps. So I'm going to step back for just a moment, and when we think about mental health and how it's now, as you said, it's just exploded in terms of the the vastness of people dealing with things where they might have felt something here or there. I mean, anxiety is a part of human life, right? It's just a part of human life. But let's have a scale, right? So everyone functions in here. From time to time, you have some anxiety, and you're here, you're feeling low, melancholy, blue, you're here, you know. But it's when we go to these higher or lower levels where now it's not abating, it's not going away, and I'm struggling to keep it together. And so psychiatry, as we know in the past, and I'm speaking generally, not to offend psychiatrists, but generally, even Dr Amon said this, who's one of the most well known psychiatrists in the world. It's one of the professions that has not utilized Technology to study the organ for which they're treating until he started with his spec scans. And so they've expanded now where we do brain maps and things to really analyze the structure the most body's most complex organ, the brain, to know where in the brain are there imbalances that could be giving rise to depression or anxiety. So for instance, I can tell you just a few interesting areas that are researched, the left hemisphere, if it has low power, and we can measure that in a brain map that's correlated with Depression period the right hemisphere, the whole right hemisphere, when there's connectivity problems attentional will there be attention problems? And you may be on the spectrum when, because the right hemisphere is the primary hemisphere involved with attention in the human physiology. Energy. And then you go down to the cingulate, right in the middle the limbic lobe. Remember this right down the middle, people would go limbic. They get super emotional. That's where your anxiety is probably going to emanate from. And then you go down, if someone has OCD, we know exactly where that begins, in the basal ganglia. And if they have schizophrenia, we know what part of the brain is involved with that every neurologist knows that you're talking about the subthalamic nucleus, so we start realizing that these areas are involved, but that's what they would stop. Oh yes, they have schizophrenia. We know there's subthalamic nucleus is involved, but here's medication. Now, I'm not saying you don't need meds to help stabilize someone with schizophrenia, and I've treated a handful of people, and we know that you can get in there and start to work on that structure when they're more level to help them start functioning better. We didn't mention bipolar, but that's another one we've seen. So we're we're looking at the structure, the function of the brain, and we know where some of these conditions emanate from, and then individually and specifically with each person, what do we have to do to improve the function which may give them some of their life back, some relief back, and may be able to reduce their medication? And so this is the hope that people can have with functional neurology as an approach to mental health imbalances and conditions that can bring them into more function and a greater sense of peace in their life. Let's

Dr. Spencer Baron:

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taste the difference.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, we love stories. We all love stories. Mike, you have told me so many stories over the past, about about patient, about cases. I was just sharing one with a patient maybe three days ago that you told me about. And I hope you remember, because this was a one of those cases that was, it emanated from something so unusual. And it was the mom had brought in her son. I believe that was a very passionate Miami Dolphin fan, or what was, I think it was, it might be any you remember he, he was, he got so emotional and compelled to be screaming at the top of his lungs. And then, and then, go ahead and

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

continue the story. And then he had a, a mild stroke, a TIA.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

And how old was he? Yeah, he

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

was only in his, I think, late 30s, early 40s, yeah, yeah. Very young guy wouldn't expect it, and he was at home watching the game. Wasn't that he was in the stadium, and he's at home, and he just got so riled up. But see, this is where another very important component, brothers, is that, you know, people will come in with a particular condition, of course, just like to you, right? And as in your profession, as in mind, which are crossover professions? You know, they might say, Hey, I have this problem. And when you start going through the history, you go, Oh, that happened to you, that might have affected that, oh and that happened which might have affected that, oh and that. So when it comes to the brain, someone comes in, they say, let's just use the anxiety example. And we find out, Oh yes, when I was a child, I suffered some very severe emotional stress. Oh well, where does stress really affect a person? Yes, their whole body, but their, their brain, their their mental function, and so, oh yeah. And later, I played, you know, some sports, and I may have had a concussion, okay, now we have that. Oh yeah. And in college, I was dealing with attentional problems terribly. And I, you know, I did some, I was drinking a bit. So all these different things affect their brain, potentially, we know they do. How much they affect them. We don't know. And so I say it like this, in a not being facetious, but what do you bring to the party? Right? Someone comes to me with this condition. But as I go through the history, I can find sometimes 2345, things that their brain may have had to adapt to, right compensate, and now they have this one straw that broke the camel's back, and the brain says that's it. I can't continue to compensate at this level, and now I need help. So this is a really. Interesting thing, and you see it exactly the same in the chiropractic profession. I only just slept funny, and you realize, no, your pelvis has been torqued like this. You've had disc degeneration, you have muscles that are deconditioned. You have an ankle that's fixated. You got a lot of things going on. You just slept. That was the straw. That's the last piece. So we need to uncouple all these things, especially when it comes to the brain, and work with a way of getting into function. I'll tell you one other story after any other question you have regarding that.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

No, no, I just think it's a perfect time to mention how some for those who are listening, that have patience or are patients that they they go, they come in with an injured low back, and they go, but I've been dead lifting all my life. I mean, why? All of a sudden I go, well, it wasn't the first cigarette that caused cancer. Was it? You know, so perfect. So that's just elaborating on what you said, but go

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

ahead and tell your story. Yeah. So we had someone come in. We treat patients, as you said, of wide variety of adults in pediatrics, and a gentleman came in with long COVID symptoms, shortness of breath, brain fog, a very high performing financial person and working here in Miami, remotely in New York and so forth. And so he's dealing with this for quite a while. He was very active as a runner prior to getting COVID. And so he was dealing with the shortness of breath, heart rate issues, brain fog, cognitive issues. So as we start dissecting things and going through, I have a consideration this person I'm talking to, I think, is on the spectrum. He's also dealing with anxiety and depression. So there was the mental health component, which is so common that these things are meshed together, right? How do you separate me from my mind? Right? When I injured my low back severely last year, do you think that affected my mental state? Of course, it did. Do athletes have to deal with their mental state when they're injured very severely? And of course they do. So it's hard. You can't separate these things. They just may not be as big of a problem for someone, but they're always connected because of the way we're built. So I share with him in just a couple of visits that I have him do an outcome assessment. We do many assessments online, so our anxiety depression, we use indexes that the mental health community uses. They do them online. I can send them to them by email so I can track how they're doing while I'm doing my care in the office. And they're blinded, so they don't get to see what their first response, second, third, and I can see if they're trending in the right direction, improving, or if they're not improving, they're still trending upward. So I mentioned that to him. He takes the test I share with him, the results about the autism quotient test, and he says, You know, I've thought I've had that for years. I and so I was the kind of the gatekeeper to say, hey, consider this for yourself. Because in considering that, that I had him do a PTSD index scored quite high. So because of his condition, his distinction. We call it Autism Spectrum distinction, not disorder, because people with that kind of brain see things that no one else sees. And if they can be healthy, right Elon Musk, right Temple Grandin, and you go down the list, the guy who developed the computer, there was a beautiful movie done about him. So these people, you know, Turing, Alan, Turing, these people who are on the spectrum see things and solutions to things in the world that no one else sees. Our goal is to help them be more at rest and peace in the area they're struggling with. Maybe it's emotional, social function and so so we share that with them now. Now we're dealing with, are we dealing with long COVID and breath problem, breathing problems, heart rate issues, or are we actually dealing with the bigger canvas I'm on the spectrum. I've always thought that then he starts talking to his mom, yes, you were always kind of alone as a child. Yes, there was that event that was quite traumatic for you. So now we help him get with a counselor for adults, for autism or Asperger's, really, because he's so high functioning, the guy's so brilliant. Also goes through some EMDR training for his brain, so they people can look into that. For PTSD, he starts to improve on that. Guess what happens as we're treating him? All of his symptoms go away, all of his brain fog, all of his anxiety, all of his depression. He's like, I don't even believe this, because we opened a window into his brain function. But what was he getting from some top level healthcare centers here in South Florida. I won't mention their name, but we're all aware of them. He was getting medication for depression, medication for anxiety, medication to help with his dysautonomia. That's what he was getting when he was going for breath work, based on one of these doctors who the that's a good that's a good approach, right? We want the proper breathing, but you got to get to the root of things, the background and the background, for most people, there's things in their brain going on that need to be untangled. You. Dr Mike,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

how do you feel about measuring?

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Oh, measure, measure, measure, yeah. Well, the yeah, that's, that's an inside joke with us, so I'm glad that you're part of that. But you know, there's some, there's some really wonderful physicians over the years that have said it's very important to measure, measure, measure, take data, get good quality data, and really pay attention to your history with people. They will tell you in between what's going on. My wife helps me with that. We actually I will mention here, and I'm so happy to be on your podcast. We began a podcast my wife and I called the neuro collective podcast, because you guys were an inspiration to us. So we began that to break down some of the very things we're talking about in bite sized pieces. For people, it's on Spotify and Apple. So I'm gonna self promote that. Sorry, but yeah, we love to do that. And yeah, neuro collective, so we like to make things simple, like Dr Spencer is saying, how do we make it simpler? But we need to measure things, right? So I measure, what is the level of your anxiety, what is the level of your depression, what is the level of your sleep index, right? People have sleep imbalances. This is one of the number one contributors to mental health dysfunction. So we measure these things, because I like to see as we're working with them, that's not left so subjectively, like, maybe I got better, maybe I didn't know you have a significant improvement. You went from severe to mild in four weeks with no drugs. That's a big thing. So we like to measure as much as we can for people, especially when it comes to the mental health side of things, which, many times there's no measurement, right? There's no measurement.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Could you briefly describe what neuroplasticity is for some of the lay people listening?

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Neuro plasticity? Well, it's related to the brain and neurons, and they start to fire and connect together and get stronger. Think about, you know, building muscle tissue, you have to, you have to put some demands on the muscles. Dr Barron, Terry, you both. We all know this, you know. And so when you fire the muscle, the muscle has to break down, and then it starts to connect and build greater muscle spindle, or tissue. So similar, if we fire the right neurons that may be weak, they're gonna, they're gonna connect more, and the more connections that we have in an area that was weaker, neuroplasticity, the plasticity side is the plastic response, the growing together response of synapses. So things that fire together wire together. So when we fire them, they wire together. That's not mine. That's That's quite an old statement, but it still holds true. And, you know, kind of the way we kind of fire together. So we wire together, we

Dr. Spencer Baron:

wire together, you know, it so when you when you find a condition or something that, and that kind of is segue right to what you do with areas of the brain that your regular neurologist doesn't do, and that is retrain an area, because your brain, like a muscle, requires remapping and retraining and right so on. I think that is priceless, a priceless understanding, yeah, because this world has become very medication oriented.

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Oh, yeah, even more so. I mean, I've been on a little bit of a high horse about that, or a soapbox, if you will, because of the things we've been seeing lately. It's really burdening me. And you know, like this is out of control with the the overuse, misuse and abuse. So we don't have to even say too much to say, do medications help people in certain conditions. 100% we all say yes, we agree. But can we all agree that there's overuse, misuse and abuse of pharmaceutical drugs that are being prescribed too quickly and too frequently? Yes, we can also say that, and there is enough data to substantiate that, so we really want to look for ways that help people to rely on less medication, to work more maybe with their their diet and nutrigenomics and their genetics to work with metabolic function in their body. We always go back to what we call the big rocks when my wife and I are coaching our clients, and she's kind of the coaching side of the brain health, and so she's the software side, and I'm the hardware side. And so when we're working with our clients, so when we're talking we always talk about the big rocks. Remember the old example, you have the glass, you have big rocks, small rocks, sand and water. If you don't get the big rocks in, you can't get everything in. So the big rocks are the things that everyone needs to do that really don't cost you anything. So everyone wants to take this special, unique supplement. Dr Barron, I know about that. I want to do this. I want to work with a special therapist or trainer. But are you sleeping? Are you moving? Are you eating? Well, if the answer is not so good, not so good and not so good, that's what we got to start with, while we're mapping your brain and working on neuropathy. Plasticity. We got to get those things in line, because those will sustain you longer. Is what we tell people. You're only going to be with me for a short time, but you're going to be sleeping and eating and movement, exercise. If we get those things into your lifestyle, lifestyle medicine, that's going to sustain a healthy brain function.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I'd love this, the big rock metaphor. It's so true. This is strictly an opinion question, and that. And why do you think there are more prescriptions for medications now than ever before,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

more people are suffering. Number one, I think, you know, we have a larger world population. There's a lot more there's a lot of things going on, as people know So, and there's more accessibility, I think, to medications. And there's money involved, you know, let's not be naive. There's money involved, and people are suffering, and so they're looking for solutions. And I think they don't. A lot of the people we've met, they don't really want to take meds, but they're kind of like, stuck, like, I just didn't know what else to do. That's such a common statement, right? Even, even, you know, the years that we've been in chiropractic, I didn't know what else to do. So I was trying this and this and this. So it's until they're kind of have the leading or they listen to a podcast like yours, where they go, Oh, this is kind of interesting. I never heard of this before, and it kind of sparks something different, because the already always listening is the commercials you see for drugs, whether it's on YouTube, whether it's on Tiktok, whether it's on television, it's all just constantly in front of people as a solution to their problem, whatever it is, weight, mental health, the symptoms caused from the drugs you're taking for mental health. You know, it's just, it's really somewhat outrageous. But so what do we live in?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, true story. Would somebody come to you? Obviously, they would go to the psychologist or therapist first. But would have you ever had someone come to you and and just clearly mention that they're depressed and they feel like something went on in their brain? And would you be able to to help?

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Yeah, we have had that. Matter of fact, I remember one gal in particular, maybe in her late 40s, maybe 50, and said that at one point she was a high powered executive, married a mom of two, you know? And she said, I remember her explaining to me that she felt like something popped in her head, almost like you would think a blood vessel, right? But she didn't. But she said at that point when she was extremely angry about some issue, and something, I think, she said snapped, is what she said. I felt like I snapped when that happened, and from that time on, and she came to us a little while after that, maybe a year or two, she said, My brain has never been the same. You know, it's hard to say what it was. She did have cardiovascular or cerebrovascular studies done to rule out anything. She didn't have stroke symptoms, but she was cognitively, she wasn't as sharp as she was after that. So yeah, we're always able to do an analysis of somebody right of their brain, as we mentioned, the whole brain, through brain mapping, through eye tracking studies, balance measures, as I mentioned, the the indexes we would do. We can measure cognitive function on different types of tasks, and we can measure those against a normative database. So there's our measure, measure, measure, and when we put all that data on the table in front of me, I say, Okay, what am I looking at here? What's going on and what are they presenting with? And can we develop a strategy, an approach, through functional neurology, to create strength in their brain, neuroplasticity that lasts, right? Everyone wants to know, will this last and the lifestyle changes that we could help them enter into that will give them the longest term benefit for brain optimization. You know, how your brain goes is how your life goes, for sure, nice.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

You know, I got the question you, you mentioned a lot about medications, both you were talking about that when I'm sitting back listening and I want to inject something, because a hot topic right now is mushrooms, a sea asylum and all that. And they're talking about that using the fix your brain for PTSD and all that. And it's on a natural side. How do you see? I mean, I know people looking for that, that quick fix. What's your thoughts on that wave coming?

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Yeah, that's a very good question. I've done a little bit of study on that kind of diving into some of that. I have some clients that have gotten amazing results, like life changing, and I've had clients that have gotten no change, that were sustained and negative responses. So I've had kind of the whole range. I will say that I think psychedelics have benefit period. I think they have benefit. Is it for everyone? No. Should it be coupled? Because the best results in research show the coupling, whether it's mushrooms or psilocybin, whether it's microdose. D whether it's you know, the DMT, five, Mao, whether it's you know, some of the stronger things, Ayahuasca, these types of activities should be connected with counseling. So this is from the best people working in psychedelic research, not just take it on your own, have an experience, because there's not a not the proper processing of what you just experienced, and when you have the proper processing, and your physiology is being monitored by someone. Now, you're doing it in the safest environment. Now, a little caveat, you know, it's a business, right? It's a business, and it's becoming more in vogue, so people are starting to do more things on their own. And there are certain clinics that are opening up saying, Here, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this. And some of those clinics may you know, we just have to be careful. We have to get a good referral. Talk to people who've done it, what was their response? And so you get a really quality kind of tracking with that. The most promising, actually, strangely enough, is MDMA. MDMA, which was Street, street known as ecstasy, has some of the most promising effects. Now, I am not recommending people to go and get this off the street. This is, this could be, could take your life, right? So, it's not legalized yet. It's going through trials in Europe and so but the way it affects a serotonergic and dopaminergic system is remarkable. So some people with PTSD can benefit from different types of psychedelics, some people, some people with depression can benefit from some types of psychedelics coupled with therapy under supervision, and the other things, psilocybin and so forth. The significant point I would make is the processing of the experience is very important. The safety and quality of what you're getting, that's very important. And so someone asked me, you know, well, maybe I won't go into that. That's a little bit more detail, but I think that there is benefit. I think there's a lot more to be done in those areas. I wouldn't shut someone down from that, but I'd also want them to have some kind of analysis on their brain prior to and then post, meaning like a brain map, and Q, E, G, you know, if you have the analysis, you know what's going on with your brain, and then you know how it affected you afterwards, if you don't do any analysis before and after, you're dealing with the symptoms that you have which are important, that's a that's one of the tiers, right? If we think about a three legged stool, your symptoms, how you're feeling, what your experience is, then your brain map and or something of that nature. So you have assessments of those, those areas, not just how your person feels, because that's not telling us what's going on in your brain. What do I mean by that? Someone has depression? What does medication affect in their brain? I mean, I'm asking this rhetorically, right? What is meta if it goes through the whole brain, but where's the problem? We don't know. They just have depression. What if I tell you it's not in the frontal lobe on the left What if I tell you it's their temporal lobes that are creating the depressive symptomology? Oh, what if I tell you it is the left frontal lobe. What if I tell you it's actually their brainstem that's not producing a proper chemistry, serotonin, dopamine, and so it's brain stem mediated depression. You see, this is the difference between functional neurology and psychiatry. We're just giving you a drug. We don't know what it where it's coming from, but you can have a good idea where these things are emanating from. When you do brain analysis, that's functional, isn't that amazing?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

There you go, measuring and measuring, yeah, and I got a follow up on that,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

what? And I think I know the answer, but I want, I want this for the people you've got. We just had, we just had an election, and one of the the candidate wants to fix our food system, put out there that he wants to, and this is Kennedy, wants to open up more research in the areas of psychedelics and all that, to help with brain people and blow out some of these old thought processes, old laws that date back the 60s and 70s and and opened up some doors. Well, you also got the evil side of the business. What you just talked about, where people are going to oh, now this door is open. I'm just going to start making money. What's some rules when this, if this happens in the next year? What's some guidelines that you would recommend of how people find the right facility look for, ask the right questions if they want to go down this path, and what to look for.

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

You know, I really don't have a great answer for that, but just using my own Intuit intuition about it, I would say that I would start with friends that maybe have tried some of these things, and then, what was your experience? What was the clinic like? How did they How did they take care? Care of you, right? You know, you're asked, because it's a friend, you can ask them all these questions. They say, Well, I, you know, I didn't like that clinic. I felt like I was in and out of there, and they didn't, okay, I'm not, I'm not going to that clinic. So it's just like we would, kind of, I think that's a the best start for now is that we're going through trusted referral sources, and then we have to still do our own research. How do I like it there? Do I feel like after the consultation? Do I feel like it also fits with my my condition? But again, people might be jumping ahead because they're suffering, right? Because they're suffering, they're jumping ahead of let me get my brain analyzed. So maybe they want to ask, do you guys do a brain map of before and after kind of testing here, you know, on my brain, so that I might know the changes that might take place inside there. That would be a great question to ask, and it might even prompt some of these places say, Yeah, we need to integrate that, because we want to know what's going on. You know,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you also, there's also ketamine. Ketamine was getting this popularity too, you know, for depression. And then there's also somebody that was that had done research on MDM, MDMA, the ecstasy, yeah, and tried to push it through as a rehabilitation type of approach. And they got kind of knocked down by the FDA. Is it not yet? There needs to be more trials. So, yeah, so ketamine, any any conversation about that? Because there's ketamine clinics now,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

yeah, right. So that's, that's my point is, right. Okay, there's something here, right? There's efficacy, and then all of a sudden you see an explosion of ketamine clinic. So it's the new answer. Everyone who's doing ketamine, you know, pump the brakes. Isn't that what they say? Slow down. Figure out what's going on your brain. Like, look at the gentleman that I mentioned to you before, Asperger's, anxiety, depression. I would say, in my opinion, if he would have done gone to a ketamine clinic, he would have been so much worse off, yeah, because his brain would not have been able to handle that. Now that's my opinion. Someone in the ketamine field might say, you can't say that, because we work with people on the spectrum. And I say, yes, you're correct. You have more experience than I do, I said, but until you know the full aspect of what's going on inside between their two years, you better be cautious and judicious about what you're telling them they should be doing, especially when it comes to psychedelics. So that's my feeling. And I have actually spoken with people that I mentor under that have been in Neurofeedback and brain research for 40 plus years before Neurofeedback was much at all 40 years. And they said, I asked them, What do you think about these things? Right? Because we know that there's benefits. When you look in the research, there's benefits. But they said, We would like to know what happens before and what happens after, by having more measurements, more data. And I know Stanford is actually doing some things like this. Stanford University is actually doing some work in that this realm, so that would be a great resource to kind of dig in there and see what they're coming up with. But that's what that was their concern is people don't know what they're doing. They may feel better, but they're not really sure what they're doing to the dysregulation or reregulation of networks. And just because I say, Hey, I feel much better, which is huge blessing we want to know, because we don't want things to be a longer term problem, because now they have to go back again, or they have to go back again. And now we're we're changing some of the neural networking conditions without really having the proper Blueprint we need. The Blueprint

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I want to go back to depression and attention deficit. You had mentioned something to me a while back about, you know, this, the simple aspect of kids going on, or even adults that go on Instagram or Tiktok and and, you know, you also mentioned about eye movement patterns dictating, you know, part of your examination and findings. So do you remember what you were telling me about the actual movement of of the screen and how the eyes go up, and what that actually does

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

absolutely, yeah. I mean, it's such a unique thing. In fact, it really came full circle when you and I were in Las Vegas, and we were teaching on a weekend, and as we stay in the hotel, and you come downstairs, we walk through and everyone, every you know, lobby, I guess you would call it, has a casino. And there were people at 7am sitting at the the, you know, the slot machines right now, they don't even put the money in. They just hit the car. They have their card plugged in, like they're plugged into this like a robot. But I was watching and the rollers were going, you know, rolling upward. So here's the thing about eye movements. I The eyes are the window to the soul and the brain. 100% agree. So. Horizontal eye movements are activated lower in the brainstem. Vertical eye movements, up and down, like in that slot machine, are activated higher up in the brainstem. And when someone older, young is on their phone and they're scrolling, they're getting vertical eye movement stimulation. Now what is the significance vertical eye movements, and the control comes from an area that can that drives dopamine. So if you're doing that for hour after hour, and and I mean hour after hour, right? Some of these kids hour after hour, they're driving dopaminergic, dopamine responses which create addictive behaviors, period, horizontal eye movements, which are activated lower activate serotonergic area. So that's where the serotonin is produced. Yes, it's produced in the gut, but it's produced in the brainstem. It's closer to getting into the central nervous system, and dopamine is produced up there. So too many vertical eye movements create too much dopamine, and that too much dopamine can connect to addictive behaviors. And you see that when you try to pull the phone away from some young person, they freak out, even little children, little children. So people can say, well, there's not a lot of research. Yeah, I agree with you. There's not a lot of research done on gaming and the brain. There's some, but when you talk about the brain and eye movements, there is a plethora of research that tells us exactly what it does to your brain. So convergence is controlled in the upper brain stem, vertical eye movements controlled in the upper brainstem. So you got a two for one that's driving dopamine. And when I asked some of the young people that come to us that we treat for ADD or ADHD, and they're, you know, they have a phone, maybe they're 1213, 1517, I say, let's look at your screen time. And they always look at me like I know. They know where it is. So we look at their screen time. And I'm not kidding you, if I were to, if I were to say, I think they'd probably average around eight hours a day. I think I would probably be, you know, cutting it short, yeah, eight hours a day. Have you

Dr. Terry Weyman:

noticed that Apple's the only phone that does that, but your Google and your other phones don't have a screen time measurement. Oh,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

how about that? So, yeah, so I'll try to get them. Go ahead, bro, yeah, if you,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

if you have a Samsung or a Google phone, it doesn't have a screen time measurement. Apple does. Yeah, screen time as I go, it's way more than you think it is. Yeah,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

it is, it is we usually underestimate, but, you know, that's the thing. So I try to get them on my side. I say, okay, so listen, we're gonna, we're gonna give you a reward. We're gonna cut this down by, let's say, an hour, two hours a week, and you show me, and we got a reward for you. So if they like Starbucks, or if I don't like I don't give them too much Starbucks, maybe they like, you know, something. And I'll purchase that, or ask their parents, hey, what do they like? And I'll reward them. And I'll I'm going to do the reverse reward. Instead of giving them likes to keep them in the app, I'm going to reward them with something a little more tangible. So they kind of drop that screen time down, because you can't fix the brain when you continue to bomb the brain, right? If a brain, I mean, if a low back has been injured from dead lifting, and they're not going to stop deadlifting. Come on. You gotta, you gotta break the cycle of the lifestyle so you can get the brain to become plastic in a different direction. Oh, my goodness.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I guess that's why I fall asleep when I try to read, because I'm doing vertical or horizontal. Excuse me, eye movements. Could be Sarah definitely manages,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

definitely calms my brain down. That's why it's better to read at night than get on your screen and watch things. It's just, you know, it's going to be an easy fix, but these are the things that many of us know, but we just kind of default to the lowest common denominator, you know.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

So we you gave a perfect, shining example of eye movement patterns, how it can affect emotion. What about vestibular systems? You know, you know, the multitude of things that can go on with that whole apparatus.

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Vestibular system, the inner it's inside that inner ear area. It's involved many people know with balance. As you all know, it's also works with controlling eye movement. So I can move my head, but my eyes can stay right on the target of the camera. So it's it's linked into that. It's also linked into spinal muscles. It's the fastest firing system to help keep you upright, right? So it's all these posterior muscles. So every time a chiropractor works in so much posterior aspect of our work on the back posterior, then we're really firing into the nervous system pool that affects the vestibular system. So it's just brilliant, and especially when we do cervical adjustments and things. It's amazing how how a simple adjustment can be more profound than most people think for their. Whole brain. And you and I know that all three of us know that very well, but people don't know that so well. So getting adjustments one of the best actual things for the brain when they're, of course, applied appropriately judiciously with the right direction. You know, all the things that we know are important rather than something that's just General. General things are not as good as specificity, right? We know that. So, yeah, since

Dr. Spencer Baron:

you brought it up, any comment about the endorphin response and a adjustment, a whatever spinal I mean, manual,

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

I think we've known that for a long time. I haven't read any further recent research about that, but we know that. You know spinal adjustments, spinal manipulations, different language do improve endorphin release in the system. So it's, you know, gives people that sense of, like, well being, that sense of relief, that sense of, oh, you know, just, I mean, how many? How many 1000s of people have the three of us seen 1000s that have said that after an adjustment, like, Wow. I mean that just, I used to have one lady send her husband in. This is where we're primarily practicing chiropractic healthcare and and she'd say, I send him to you, because when he comes home, he's nicer. I said, Yeah, I get it. And he was a good guy, but I guess, you know, just got a little wound up. And after he came on, he's like, chill. So yes, it's, it's a, you know, these things for the brain are, we're always trying to optimize brain health and physical medicine. That component, you know, going upstream to the brain is important, back to the vestibular, because you asked that, and I kind of lost my train of thought, sorry. So the vestibular system isn't engaged with memory. It's engaged with emotional states. It's engaged with muscle tone. It's engaged with the gut function as well, so and cognition. So a lot of people with anxiety, oftentimes have a vestibular imbalance. So if you're dealing with chronic anxiety, might be something to be evaluated. We've seen that. We also know that when we're working with the vestibular integration, there's a particular kind of problem that people have, some people that is very debilitating to them, emotionally, psychologically. So how many times have we seen people with a head tilt? Too many to too numerous to count a head tilt left or right? The head tilt, you know, we go in and we're thinking mechanically, which is correct. We're thinking muscularly, which is correct. But we also need to add to our thought process the vestibular apparatus, because a vestibular system is one that gives us our reference for gravity. Our gravity. Think about the vestibular system is fully formed in utero. What else is fully formed in utero before we're born, fully formed. So that's tells you something, right? And we know that there was some research done on frog models, not the same as a human, where they severed the vestibular nerve on one side and all the frogs developed a scoliotic deviation in their spinal development. How about that? So we got to realize that this is the central reference in here for gravity, and as that goes So, if I'm carrying my head like this all the time, I have a different reference to gravity, the gravitational, you know, downward 9.6 meters per second, whatever it is. So I have a different frame of reference, which now changes the whole neurology just a bit, just a bit. So I'll tell you something a little aside related to this. When you have an opportunity to look at really mug shots of people who have done heinous things, terrible things, many times, not always, you'll see an eye that's vertical compared to the other one, yeah, if not a head tilt a vertical eye. So a head tilt or a vertical eye are potential indicators of a vestibular imbalance related to a part of the vestibular system that drives right into the dopamine centers. So does everyone that have a head tilt or a vertical eye deviation called a hypertropia, have some emotional No, they don't. But when you do have your suffering, emotionally, depression, anxiety, OCD, and you have a head tilt and you have a vertical eye deviation, we call that a skew deviation. There's a likelihood, or a probability, that the vestibule system is not integrating Well, which could be a core piece to give that person relief through Functional Neurology and improving it. Mind blowing, right? That's right.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Actually, you just brought up something that I haven't thought about in 38 years. One of my roommates realized, when he was getting adjusted, that he had somewhat of a head tilt. And he realized, because he was partially deaf in one ear, and he was always doing this, he was to listen better. Wow, yeah. And since I'm going deaf. I'm starting to

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

do that too well, since we're talking about an ear and I have to wrap here, because I have to get to to see a client today, think about Van Gogh right now. Van Gogh, Van Gogh, so he cut his ear off. Amazing artist. We saw his, some of his work in the south of France this summer. My wife and I had an opportunity to go, and we were right there where he painted Starry Night. And if you look at his pictures, there's like these waviness to the pictures, right? You may have noticed those, whether it's the sunflowers, whether it's Starry Night, whether it's the yellow tavern house or whatever it's called. So he has these waviness to it. So it's considered that he had this otolith imbalance in his vestibular system that caused to not only to paint things in a distorted way, but also to have a severe emotional mental disorder. And there is actually a wonderful book on famous artists and their, you know, psychological conditions. It's quite interesting. Quite interesting. So isn't that fascinating? And we stood right there on the bridge. There's a plaque there where he painted Starry Night. We got to kind of enjoy that, get the feeling of it. Walk go by, you know, and see all these wonderful things. It was a marvelous trip. But it caused me to realize that there's a lot of help for people with mental issues, concerns, struggles, suffering through Functional Neurology and the, as you said, the many different layers of understanding what's going on your brain, then which direction, which door do I go through? Is it? Is it, you know, through psychedelics, is it through mental health counseling, EMDR, functional neurology? But you got to understand the playing field so you can play the right game and get the right result. You're

Dr. Spencer Baron:

absolutely right. You know, we have at least another half a dozen questions. So I'm going to make this a bold statement that we're going to do part two without great But Dr, Mike Bagnell, thank you so much for your insight. It even as a as a close personal friend, I'm always fascinated by your stories, but I'm glad we could share them with our audience, thank you.

Dr. Michael Bagnell:

Good things. Enjoy Thanks guys, and been

Dr. Terry Weyman:

fantastic. We're gonna pump out your show. I think everybody should watch it. And yeah, that's what people do. We support each other. So thank you so much for your time. Thanks brother. Appreciate it. Take care.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast, we hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram at cracking backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.