FUNctional Neurology & Gait

Applied Functional Neurology  – Applied Functional Neurology will provide the attendee with knowledge that embraces current neurology and physics theories including String Theory, Entanglement Theory, and the laws of gravity. These two courses will replace the idea that pressure on the spinal cord is the cause of neurological disease. They will make use of language consistent with current medical knowledge and concepts that allow you to understand current research in neurology. This will enable you to discuss the concept of chiropractic in terms other than popping bones with your clients, and your colleagues. We will begin from the beginning and review terminology and mechanisms with which you should already be familiar. Students will be equipped with the knowledge of the nervous system necessary to address challenges of both musculoskeletal and neurological dysfunction in their animal patients. Applied Functional Neurology for the veterinarian engages the student in exploring the nervous system from development to action within the environment. The goal of this lecture is to bring the living nervous system to a level of understanding for the student in everyday life of the animals with which we work. Upon finishing this lecture, the student will be able to visualize the animal using its nervous system in real time and begin to develop a plan of action to enable normal function to be restored. This lecture covers the muscle spindle cell, environmental sensory input, neural tracts and motor output. Applied Functional Neurology: The Saga is a course in which we explore the autonomic system in depth. Through it we help the student view the nervous system not as two or three entities that give one another a call every now and then, but as a integrated system of checks and balances. Importantly, the levels of stimulation vary in our animal patients dependent upon not just their environments but how their environment impacts them as an individual within their breed and species. When students finish this course they will be able to identify both the physical aspects of the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems and the balances and the imbalances of the parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems and be equipped to address these in a meaningful way to help bring their patients back into better balance. Dr. Amy Hayek is the instructor. Neurology of Pain explores the actual with the perceived levels of pain in our animal patients. What we assign as pain may not be exactly pain in our animal patients and may in fact be other behavior activities unrelated to pain. We will look at the neurologic origins of pain and the means by which we can measure pain in our animal patients. At the completion of this course, attendees will be able to identify means by which to judge pain levels in their animal patients and plan an order in which to address those levels of pain. Neuromuscular Rehabilitation is a course that brings it all together. In this course attendees will be reminded of what they know and how they will see it in the real world. Animals with damaged tissue have difficulty retaining information and moving through the world in a bilateral fashion. This causes increased cortical stress responses, de-creasing metabolic rates, increasing systemic acidity. Attempts to gain motor function through exercise only perpetuate the disorder. Rehabilitation of the animal is more effective if we use the brain and spinal cord to help return the message to damaged tissues. In this lecture, professionals will learn how to identify and use many of the neural tracts with the motor cortex to improve function and healing by incorporating several different stimulatory methods. At the end of this course attendees will be able to apply different rehabilitative modalities to their animal patients to achieve greater response to the chiropractic adjustment. Gait Analysis parts 1 through 6 are individual courses taught by Dr. Ormston that progressively take the student from seeing the biomechanics as a complex system of motion to seeing the individual elements of gait that make it possible to be able to access animals in motion. Dr. O explains that being able to identify the organization of biomechanics of movement in animals are important for the animal chiropractor to be able to diagnose and successfully treat the patient. Since normal movement of the animal is what we strive for as veterinarians, understanding step by step the process of identifying what we see in normal animal movement and what constitutes abnormal animal movement is essential. Evaluating the animal moving is far more important than examining the animal at rest in this discipline. Gait analysis allows the veterinarian to begin to understand the means by which gravity interacts with various species, various disciplines of athletics, and different jobs of animal patients. This allows the doctor to become more effective at communicating with clients about their animals. Measuring Gait 1, 2 and 3 are individual courses taught by Dr. Ormston that identify and describe the importance of posture and how it relates to the brain’s ability to respond to gravity. These courses go on to identify the difference between subjective and objective gait analysis and how they can be beneficial and detrimental to diagnosis of the movement issues which translate into changes in the neurological system. This course gives the student a clear system by which to access patients. Receptors, Part 1 and 2 are courses that discuss the types of neuro receptors, since turning on these receptors is our primary job as animal chiropractors. Recognizing which receptors need to be switched on and which need to be turned off is not only a delicate procedure, but the only procedure worth doing. This course explores the ways in which the environment drives the learning and behavioral responses of our animal patients via the receptors with which it interacts. The student should realize by the end of this lecture that changes to the animal’s environment can retrain and heal the nervous system. Receptors 1 introduces the student to ways in which the animal’s receptors are stimulated and how the receptors function, including muscle spindle cells, Pacinian corpusles, and the like. Receptors 2 classifies the receptors based on several criteria including type of information, location and neurotransmitter used. The student will complete these two courses with a better understanding of the environmental effects on the nervous system of the animals we serve. Cutaneous Innervation is a course that illustrates the innervation of the skin of the horse and the dog. It outlines the individual nervous pathways from the spinal column to the areas of the skin affected by each spinal segment. This course drives home the need to retain this information for clinical practice and identifies several scenarios in which the information can help the student recognize cutaneous issues as segmental dysfunction and de-afferentation in the animal patient. Students will complete this course with a new appreciation for the skin as an organ system and its indications that aid in identifying the issues in their animal patients.