Unlocking the Brain: Neuroscience Meets Sports with Dr. Kristen Willeumier

🚨 New ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council podcast episode! 🚨 Tune in for an in-depth conversation with Dr. Kristen Willeumier, neuroscientist, on the impacts of sports on brain health and how chiropractic care plays a key role. Don’t miss out! 🧠🏈

Dr Willeumier Link

Book

Transcript

0:06

Welcome to another edition of the ICA Sports and Fitness Science Council podcast. try to reach out, try to find people in the world of sports and fitness science to bring to you different talkers and presenters, so you have a better grasp of what's going on in the world around you in sports and fitness and chiropractic. And today I am joined by a friend of mine, Dr. Kevin Jackson's friend, Dr. Willeumier, So And she is a neuroscientist, correct? correct. And you have a lot of working with athletes, I understand. I understand that you tell us a little bit about yourself. I won't tell people about you. I'll let you tell people about you. So tell us a little bit about yourself and your background and how you ended up on a Chiropractic Sports and Fitness Science Council I know. First of all, thank you for this wonderful opportunity to join you. And I'm very grateful to Dr. Kevin Jackson as well for connecting us. So a little bit about me. Yes. I'm a PhD neuroscientist. Got an undergraduate from Boston College in psychology, went on to do a master's degree at UCLA in physiological science, where I was actually studying the systems of the body, thinking that I was going to go to medical school. I happened to do a pivot, interestingly, because I was dating somebody who was a team doctor for the New England Patriots. And I sometimes wonder if that was the start of my pivot into sports. I did a second master's degree and a PhD in UCLA in the Department of Neurobiology studying Parkinson's disease, and then did a postdoctoral fellowship over at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in Neurology, continuing my work in Parkinson's disease, but then I made the jump over to the clinical side of medicine and became the director of neuroimaging research for the Amen Clinic. And for those who are not familiar, the Amen Clinics is a very large, nationally recognized outpatient psychiatric center that treats patients with comorbid psychiatric disorders. And I started that position in May of 2009, and upon walking in the doors, Dr. Daniel Amen said, I would like to do a study in NFL players, and I'm going to be talking to a group of players in Las Vegas at a conference. And I'd like for you to come and help me with recruitment. So our initial study was going to be looking at 30 players and just asking the question, does playing football cause long term brain damage? So we go, he gives a presentation at this event. I end up having a waiting list of, I think we set up a hundred players. And so this, what was supposed to be just a study in 30 players, turned out to be a hundred. And what we did was essentially look at, we gave psychiatric assessments, cognitive assessments. We did two forms of neuroimaging, both electrical imaging using quantitative EEG and functional imaging using what's called SPECT scans. So SPECT is a nuclear imaging study that looks at blood flow and activity patterns in the brain. And again, we recruited players from all 32 teams, had over a hundred players. After looking at the first 15 players, we recognized. It's, there was significant damage to the brain, both electrically and functionally. So from the electrical results, we saw changes in frontal lobe function and temporal lobe function, which. makes sense, because you're hitting the ball with the front part of your, you're hitting players at the front part of your head, so that damaged frontal lobes makes sense. And then because of the way the brain sits inside the skull with those bony structures going up into the temporal lobes, we saw the temporal lobes, very damaged, and we saw severe global hypoperfusion throughout the brain. So what we decided to do was because we're a clinical setting and we treat patients, we did an open label trial using a bunch of different methods, whether it was dietary lifestyle changes, nutritional supplements, cognitive training, neurofeedback. hyperbaric option therapy to restore and rehabilitate brain function. And we showed using the neuro imaging that we could clearly improve perfusion to the brain that was lasting. So that I think was really the start of my work with athletes. And, I've worked with thousands, whether it's football players, soccer players, MMA fighters, jockeys. I find I'm a team chiropractor for a hockey I saw that the Blackhawks and I'm from Chicago. So we work with their minor league affiliate, the Ice Yeah, and we have a lot of guys in our team who have been in the NHL. And they had their time and now they're trying to stick around a little bit longer in the AHL and these guys are always asking me, Hey, I know you're at the college a lot, the chiropractic school. If they do any kind of research on brain injuries, I would love to volunteer myself. Wait a minute. Do we need to collaborate? yeah, I'm seeing a lot of these older athletes really seeking this out and there's a high demand for this. So your research sounds really exciting to me to be able to share with others. I know these guys would love that information. So it's pretty what's really fun is I'm currently working. So I have a foundation that's really focused on understanding what's going on in the brain when you play contact and collision based sports. And I use quantitative EEG. to get the brain map, but the neuroimaging, or I should say the neurofeedback technology that is available today that we can use to train brain regions both cortically and subcortically. So now I can work at the level of the amygdala, the thalamus, the habenula and retrain those brain networks to help athletes, not only with restoring and repairing brain function, but also for peak performance, which is what I find a lot of athletes are really looking for nowadays. So there's the restoring and repairing, and there's also I currently play and how do I take my play to the next level? And that. That's the part of the research that I'm doing now that I'm so excited about. I find when it comes to wanting to get the players under chiropractic care, if you get the two veterans that'll do Yeah, monkey see, monkey it's true. one of them does it, they all jump in line. So it's getting that right veteran. And me, the work you're doing, and we'll, you're going to send me email links and I'm going to put these links in this podcast. So Wonderful. talking about today, we're going to have links directly to the, wherever you're watching, listening to this, those will be available. So You're finding this now, you must have come across studying as I like to talk about the fact that you've studied so much about the brain is obviously you came across chiropractic. did. First of all, I have been a fan of chiropractic for 30 years and you and I have discussed, so I was a competitive equestrian. I showed horses at the A level for over 10 years and My trainer son has been on the U. S. Olympic team. So I trained at a very high level and I've had my fair share of injuries participating in the sport. So I've had a chiropractor as part of my sort of health care team. They said for three decades. And as you and I and Dr Jackson know, when anybody's participating in these contact or collision based sports, you're not only taking impact the brain, but it's also having a significant impact on the spinal column, and it takes as little as 4. 5 G's of force to be able to potentially impact the head, neck and spine. And in football, when we're using the accelerometers to measure the G forces. They start at 10 G's and, go higher. But truth be told, any impact to the brain or body is, causing an impact also to the spinal cord. So I feel chiropractic care is essential in restoring and rehabilitating, healthy brain function. So we're partners, like we should be collaborating. And again, now that I'm talking and because I've done research with Dr. Jackson, I'm You know, thinking about maybe how we could do something with the hockey players. Absolutely. And all those people listening to this, links will be here. So I know other people, other sports are listening. Excellent. so doctor, I met Dr. Long here a few years ago, and he told me that you cannot have a head injury without a neck injury. So it's obviously we go hand in hand. You go hand in hand and I'm glad that people are finally starting to recognize this. People are now fully acknowledging when you participate in these sports, the biomechanical forces are having an impact on, shearing and tearing neurons and blood vessels. The brain is very resilient, so a lot of times people don't have symptoms, but even if you're asymptomatic, those changes are happening in the brain, and that's the beauty of having sophisticated neuroimaging technology. We see it, whether it's using diffusion tensor imaging, or the SPECT imaging, or the QEEGs. What I love about the athletes now, they can take this information and can use it to do targeted therapies to the brain. Again, both for rehabilitation and peak performance. so I'm a chiropractor here in Rockford, Illinois. And if I have an athlete that I think has a head injury that needs some help, I know you have a book you've written a little bit about this. And is that a good place for me to go to, to learn more about how to help my athletes know what they should be doing after these injuries? Thank you so much for bringing that up. I published a book with Harper Collins in 2020 called Biohack Your Brain. And the reason why I wrote that book was for the football players, because at that point I'd worked with, hundreds of these professional athletes and I was truly amazed at the restorative capacity of the brain. I wasn't aware that we could really improve blood flow to the brain that was long lasting because in our clinic, we would image the players at six months, 12 months, a year out, two years out, and they were able to hold the these restorative patterns. So I wrote the book really in honor of my players in every chapter has an NFL story as well as a patient story. And the book is really about teaching people how to take care of their brain health, what we do in the clinic. But there they give the foundational tools that everybody can start using now. And then if they need the additional care, that's where they can reach out to me. And or any of my colleagues and we can take a deeper dive and really look at the brain structures. What has changed in the brain and what can we help improve? course, we'll put links to that Oh, thank you so much. see it. Yeah we're coming up here in about our 12 minute mark here and I just to thank you again for joining us and I would like to ask you if there's anything you'd like to have the final word, anything you'd like to tell the chiropractic sports community out there that we should know or focus on or look at. I think collaborating for people like me who use neuroimaging with these contact sports athletes to be able to do collaborative work with you would be extraordinary. And I'm already connected with so many. Sports teams and athletes. So I think I'm just going to put it out there. If you would like to do some type of collaborative project through my foundation, you're welcome to reach out. And I'm also here to answer any questions that If I can be of help to you in your practice, please don't hesitate to reach out. We always tell our patients, you are not stuck with the brain you have. You can change it at any age. I've even seen this with patients in their 80s and 90s. And I know those patients still come and get chiropractic care as well because I've seen the pictures on Dr. Jackson's website. So thank you for the great work that you're doing. Thank you to the chiropractic community. And it's an honor to be connected with you and be a collaborative partner. All right thank you very much and thank you everybody for tuning in. Make sure you like us and subscribe to get more of our guests. And like I said, all of our links we discussed will be on this podcast. Wherever you're listening to this or seeing this or watching this, we'll have all those available to you. And thank you again for joining us. I, Dr, Dr. Willeumier, I really appreciate you. And thanks everybody for tuning in. Thank you so much.