Neurofeedback: The Brain Training Tech Helping Kids Walk, Calm Anxiety & Rewire Habits

What if the fastest path to healing starts in the brain?

In Episode 1 of a 3-part series, we sit down with Dr. Josh Hersh (Transformative Medicine, Utah) to explore the intersection of brain science, functional medicine, and the future of healthcare — starting with a technology many people have heard of…but few can explain: neurofeedback.

Dr. Hersh shares his origin story (why he left the “nothing’s wrong with you” conventional dead end), how he trained at Bastyr University, and why he believes neurofeedback may be one of the most powerful tools in modern integrative medicine.

You’ll hear a jaw-dropping case study of a 3-year-old with cerebral palsy-like symptoms who began opening his hand, giving high-fives, and taking steps after only a handful of sessions — plus a breakdown of what neurofeedback is, how it works (EEG + operant conditioning), and why brain balance + coherence matter.

In this episode:
* Dr. Hersh’s “why” — from personal GI collapse to transformative medicine
* What neurofeedback actually is (EEG brainwaves + training loops)
* “Operant conditioning” explained (Pavlov, but for brain patterns)
* The brain’s goal: balance + coherence
* A real patient story that will stick with you
* Why performance communities (NASA/NFL) are paying attention
* Why Dr. Hersh says: If I could pick one tool… it might be neurofeedback

Listen to the full episode here or watch it on YouTube here! https://youtu.be/a9egzf7ocM0

📌 Disclaimer: Educational content only. Not medical advice.

Visit UltraBotanica.com to learn more about us and how you can get a free sample of our products.

Transcript

0:00:00 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): After the third treatment, can't open fully and give his head a high five. And after the fifth treatment, he's taking steps the first time. He's now walking and running and reached out to him a little while ago. His mom sent me a picture of him climbing up a slide. So it changed his life.

0:00:27 - (Josh Bellieu): Hey, everyone. Welcome to Ultra Life today. We've got an interesting one for you today. Who are you?

0:00:35 - (Adam Payne): I think I'm Adam Payne.

0:00:36 - (Josh Bellieu): This guy's the CEO and founder of Ultra Botanica. The technology that literally, it's one of our favorite words, his clinic. And we're about to introduce Dr. Joshua Hearst. It's called transformative medicine. I like that because it's a word that you and I've been using for about 11 years.

0:00:51 - (Adam Payne): It's. Yep.

0:00:53 - (Josh Bellieu): So anyway, what does NASA and NFL players and people just like you and me have to do with this interesting idea of training your brain and therefore being able to even alter your habits the way you think and become a high performing individual. Losing addictions, creating health, physical health. It's a really cool thing. Today we've got Dr. Joshua Hurst. Hersh, like Hershey H E R S H out there in Utah.

0:01:26 - (Josh Bellieu): We met you, Dr. Hersh, out at the A M P Oncology extravaganza with hundreds of other doctors. It was really cool. I met you, hung out with you a while and I said, you guys need to get each other, to get each other talking because my eyes were glazing over when you guys started talking. But it was fun. You and I have kind of become friends since then. Neurofeedback. I called you, Joshua and said, or reached out by text and I said, what do you want to talk about? And when you said neurofeedback, I'm like, I think I don't know what that is.

0:01:59 - (Josh Bellieu): So it was pretty exciting. But we're going to kick off a three part conversation today. It's going to be the intersection of brain science, functional medicine, naturopathy, future of healthcare. I think we're joined by Dr. Joshua Hirsch, founder of transformative medicine there in Utah. I think it's cool you like a lot of integrative people, functional people. You probably questioned the conventional system of medicine. You probably had your reasons for doing that.

0:02:27 - (Josh Bellieu): I would certainly love it if you'd give us a little background on you. And in this first episode we'll explore how you kind of got into being unconventional. I hate that I have to say it that way.

0:02:38 - (Adam Payne): You can be conventionally unconventional.

0:02:39 - (Josh Bellieu): There you go. I love it. And then the philosophy behind your clinic, transformative medicine. You know, we love these Genesis origin stories here. So let us kind of know a little about you, the philosophy of you and your clinic, and then let's move into this cool subject of neurofeedback. Hey, welcome.

0:02:58 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah, thank you. And thanks for having me here. It's really a pleasure to be with both you and Adam today. So, a little bit about me. So I, you know, back in second grade, I was always interested in medicine. I wrote an essay on mononucleosis and. And thought about being a doctor through grade school, middle school, high school. And when I was about 18, 19 years old, I started having these really terrible digestive issues where I had tons of diarrhea, gas, bloating, pain, a lot of heartburn.

0:03:35 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): I was in bed some of the days, had very little energy. And I went to doctor after doctor, went to, saw a gastroenterologist. He did an endoscopy, colonoscopy, found nothing wrong with me and said, well, we can't find anything wrong with you. So you think you're just making this up? I think it's all in your head. And that sent me down the path. What else is there? Yeah, yeah. And found an herbalist, Dr. John.

0:04:04 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): John Christopher. And he recommended cleansing herbs and eating real food. And I got tremendously better. And I said, if I can just combine that with the best of science, that's what I want to do. And so that sent me down the path, learning more, becoming an herbalist. And herbalism is the most practiced medicine in the world. So it's more conventional, I guess, to be an herbalist than anything else in the world.

0:04:35 - (Josh Bellieu): At least outside of the usa, Right? Yep.

0:04:38 - (Adam Payne): I guess if you're not an herbalist, then you're a synthetologist. I don't know, an artificialist.

0:04:45 - (Josh Bellieu): There you go, artificialist. I'm sorry, that's not appropriate. Yeah. So, Evelyn, fast forward now, you actually started your own clinic. Maybe your background. I'm assuming you went to medical school or something like that.

0:04:59 - (Adam Payne): Oh, you went to Bastyr? Not just any medicine.

0:05:02 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah, so. Yeah. Yeah.

0:05:03 - (Josh Bellieu): So it's one of the most preeminent naturopathic colleges in the world. Yeah, yeah.

0:05:08 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Some people call it.

0:05:09 - (Adam Payne): Why Bastia?

0:05:11 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): So, best year is science based Naturopathic medicine. Some people call it the Oxford of Naturopathic Medicine or the Harvard Oxford of Naturopathic Medicine. I don't know if it quite reaches those standards, but it's definitely a school for overachievers. And I've always been kind of an overachiever. So it was great to learn everything you learn in medical school. The cadaver lab, dissection, anatomy, physiology, pharmacology, pulmonology, etc.

0:05:40 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): But then, plus, we learned things like high velocity manipulation or osteopathic manipulation, which is very similar to chiropractic. We learned a lot about herbology, homeopathy, and the list goes on and on and on. So it just. It was a lot of work.

0:06:02 - (Adam Payne): That's amazing.

0:06:04 - (Josh Bellieu): So. Because Adam and I always ask. Go ahead.

0:06:10 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Oh, no, that's fine. You were gonna say.

0:06:12 - (Josh Bellieu): Okay. Yeah. Well, it's interesting to me because Adam and I always ask doctors their origin story, and it sounds to me like you were being drawn toward helping individuals with their health from a young age. But you're kind of different in that you were the one. Usually we interview somebody and it's like their mom, their dad, their grandpa, their grandma, their wife, their husband sick, and they realized their conventional medical toolbox was not going to work. I mean, they instantly had this defining moment.

0:06:41 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Right.

0:06:41 - (Adam Payne): This is like Dr. Schottenstein, Mel. I mean, she also. I don't know if you know Dr. Schottenstein at all. I mean, she had essentially mitochondrial disorder. She was not creating energy, and she used natural medicine to essentially help to propel her way down the road of healing and wellness. It sounds like this seed of gastrointestinal issues that was not being addressable by conventional medicine became the seed for all of your naturopathic approaches.

0:07:15 - (Adam Payne): But there must. Why medicine, though? I mean, is it that you always wanted to be. This became out of your, I guess, your interest in medicine from an early age?

0:07:30 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah, I think a lot of it has to do with my mother. So my mother taught me how to read when I was three years old. And I love books and I love learning. I've loved the brain, especially. It's fascinating. The human body is fascinating. And, yeah, absolutely nothing brings me greater joy than seeing people improve their health. You know, besides God and family, there's. There's nothing better than seeing people improve and recover from their illness and.

0:08:01 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah. Being able. Being able to enjoy life again. Amazing.

0:08:06 - (Josh Bellieu): So would it be right of me saying that neurofeedback actually has this tie into the nervous system, and is that something that's. You're seeing that as something that's foundational to physical healing? Why don't you give us a little idea of how you dived into the neurofeedback space and how that actually correlates with what you do to bring health to someone.

0:08:32 - (Adam Payne): Yeah, before you get into that, because I think that's a great question. Is this neurofeedback tie into what you're doing in transformative medicine? Is this something that you've started with? Is this something that kind of you've picked up mid practice or is this an a late to the party arrival at your clinic?

0:08:55 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): It's something that I've been doing for about five years now. I've been. Yeah. And so you know a little bit about my practice. So, you know, I see patients with autoimmune conditions, cancer, diabetes, neurological conditions like Parkinson's, Mississippi, mental health issues, anxiety, depression, addictions, et cetera, Alzheimer's, and always looking for the best tools along with, you know, the foundations of health, diet, exercise, sleep, and combining the best of both modern medicine and ancient wisdom from a plethora of different, you know, whether it be like Chinese medicine or Ayurvedic medicine or. Yeah, a lot of different traditions and combine that together to create individual treatment plans for the patient.

0:09:50 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): So we're always looking for the best tools and to do that. And it was about five years ago we saw that actually at an AAMP conference. I heard about it before from other practitioners and heard it can be instrumental in changing people's patterns like neurological patterns like anxiety and depression and so forth. And really, yeah, we picked it up and started using it and after being trained and started seeing some phenomenal results with it. So I've often said if I can only pick one treatment, it would be neurofeedback because if you change the brain, really you can change the body.

0:10:29 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, yeah, it's true, it's true. You know, Bruce Lipton and these different guys that are out there teaching people meditation and they get up and walk out of wheelchairs and things after a three day weekend because they're learning how to train their brain in a very condensed weekend, you know, three or four day period of time.

0:10:48 - (Adam Payne): There's so many, it's amazing, there's so many things to unpack there. I mean there's, you know, we're close friends with Joe Tippins, the founder of, I guess you call the Joe Tippins Protocol. And one of the, one of the themes that ran through his life even when he was facing cancer was he just determined he was going to have a positive attitude toward, through all of it. And he had an underlying belief even when the doctor under whose care he was getting for his cancer sent him home with a hospice prescription, he still had this underlying belief that somehow he was going to get Better that everything was going to be good.

0:11:33 - (Adam Payne): And I think there's a defining characteristic of that. I come out of a lab not too long ago, about 15 years ago, we were doing deep work in immunology, especially in rheumatology and other autoimmune diseases. And there's a paper that came out in Japan where they measured cytokines in people that were happy and then people that were depressed. And the difference was stark. And these were both communities of people that were dealing with arthritis or an autoimmune disease.

0:12:16 - (Adam Payne): And the people that were happy had a much better cytokine profile in terms of the profile of activated cytokines that were essentially signaling to the immune system in the body. And so to ignore this is a long preamble. To ignore the brain body interface is to essentially not to. I think it's. You're ignoring one of the most important factors of medicine. So it's very interesting to me, Dr. Hirsch, that you're saying, yeah, if I had one thing I could use, it would be this, because you have the strongest likelihood of actually having a long lasting change in the person.

0:12:59 - (Adam Payne): So are there different options that you have as a physician for using a neurofeedback approach? And which one did you finally decide on using?

0:13:11 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, and please describe, because our viewers right now are just like on the edge of the cliff going, tell me what neurofeedback is.

0:13:18 - (Adam Payne): So just as an aside, because I know Josh was. I know one of the reasons why Josh got excited about neurofeedback. My stepdad back in the 60s actually invented biofeedback. So he was part of a lab and he had a PhD in neuropsychology. And they found out that they could measure the surface skin resistance as a surrogate for the activation of the, of the limbic brain, essentially, so that the more, the more tense you are, the more you actually.

0:13:58 - (Adam Payne): The more your pores actually become hydrated. And then that actually reduces the surface, increases the surface conductivity of electricity. So if you have an electrode on two, two different parts of the body, you can actually create a tone that's a surrogate for how stressed you are. And what they found was that you could use that tone to train yourself how to relax. Because if you don't have an objective measure to go by, your body has nothing to react to.

0:14:33 - (Adam Payne): But when you suddenly hear this tone and then you start to think about ways, how can I reduce that tone? The body is able to respond to this biofeedback loop. It hears the tone, it figures out that if it takes a certain kind of relaxation stance, that the tone goes down. And thus biofeedback was born back in the 60s. And this is different, right, because you're actually, my understanding is you're looking at brain waves, which is.

0:15:06 - (Adam Payne): It's exciting to me. I don't know if it's, I think, a little bit scary to me, but exciting to me that are we actually able to use some sort of biofeedback mechanism in order to affect our brain waves?

0:15:25 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah. So neurofeedback is a type of biofeedback, but it looks at the brain waves, like you mentioned, using an eeg. So EEG is a surface level collection of what's happening in the brain. So all the delta waves, theta waves, alpha waves, et cetera, gamma waves. And it uses that information to then help to retrain the brain. And the retraining is done through operant conditioning. So if you're familiar with Pavlov's dogs, um, he rang a bell, fed the dogs, rang a bell, fed the dogs, rang a bell, fed the dogs, and eventually just rang the bell and the dog started salivating. Their brains knew what was coming next.

0:16:14 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): And it's using that same principle, but then to help the brain prune neural pathways and create new neural pathways that it wouldn't otherwise be able to do, or it speeds up the process quite a bit. So a good example of this, I had a three year old boy who was brought to me by his mom. He was born at 26 weeks, so super early. He had a grade four brain bleed at birth, which is the most severe brain bleed, the category of brain bleeds.

0:16:47 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): He was in NICU for six months before he could come home. A bright little kid repeating anything he said to him. Good vocabulary for a three year old. But he had all the signs and symptoms of cerebral palsy. Spastic paralysis, entire left side of his body. So there's flaccid paralysis where you have no muscle control and there's spastic where it's stuck in contraction. And that was happening entire left side of his body. So he couldn't walk, couldn't crawl, couldn't use his hand very well, very painful, occasionally get one or two fingers out of his hand on his left side.

0:17:20 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): But that was the best he could do. And his, his mom was determined to find a way to help him walk because Sherry had another kid and she had another one on the way and she's like, I can't do this, I can't carry both kids around. So she had seen Lots of neurologists. Neurologist said you never walk. Saw a functional neurologist in Texas who recommended hyperbaric oxygen therapy, and that's how he found our clinic. And he was doing that climbing with his mom, but wasn't seeing a whole lot of improvement.

0:17:49 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): And we had just gotten the neurofeedback unit, and so I wonder if it helped the boy. So I hopped on PubMed Google Scholar and I found some really interesting research from Dr. Ayers. And she had treated over 200 kids with cerebral palsy and seen some really impressive results. So I explained this to the mom that there was some research. It was kind of limited. We didn't know if it'd work for him, but we decided to give it a try.

0:18:19 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): And we started with an assessment to see where in the brain there's imbalances. And then I programmed it to increase sensory input in certain areas of the brain, which then increases motor output. And on the first training of neurofeedback, he opened his hand for the first time and he grabbed his mother's hand.

0:18:37 - (Josh Bellieu): Whoa.

0:18:39 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah. After the third treatment.

0:18:45 - (Adam Payne): Are you able to. Are you able to target specific areas of the brain or how. How are you doing? How are you getting?

0:18:53 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Right, so. So, yeah. So just to finish the story, he, he. After the third treatment, can't open. Folding gives at a high five. And after the fifth treatment, he's taking seps the first time. He's now walking and running and reached out to him a little while ago, he was. His mom sent me a picture of him climbing up a slide. So it. It changed his life.

0:19:20 - (Josh Bellieu): I was gonna say, how do you go home at night? Because it's probably hard to pull you out of the clouds when you see something like that. Joshua, that is so cool. I was hoping you. This is a perfect way for us to segue into this next section here because, you know, we are blown away by what you just shared with us. You know, we've. We've talked about your personal journey, a little bit of your philosophy of transformative medicine, a Bastyr graduate, which is one of the most comprehensive educations that one can have that's science based, and then literally studies all these amazing philosophies.

0:20:00 - (Josh Bellieu): You know, we're going to dive even further into neurofeedback here, maybe hit a little more science, a little more history. It's interesting. Forbes magazine, you sent me a link to Forbes magazine, and Forbes magazine had made some very bold statements about the future of science in the brain just based on this neurofeedback thing that you're doing right there in Utah. Hey, if you ever want to reach out to Joshua, I'm guessing, Joshua, you're like a lot of other doctors that even do remote consultations and things like that. My gosh, it'd be worth it to take a vacation out to Utah and bring your kid out there to see you if they're having struggles. That's amazing.

0:20:43 - (Josh Bellieu): Tell me if I've got this right to get, to get in touch with you. It's transformative-medicine.com. is that it?

0:20:52 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): Yeah, that's correct. And we do have patients that travel to see us. I've had patients in the, all across the United States and some from Europe occasionally to come see us. Yeah, but I mean, I do free 15 minute consultations too. So if you're, you know, if you have a specific question you want to, we can, we can set up a time to talk. So. Yeah, but answer your question, Dr. Joshua Hirsch.

0:21:18 - (Josh Bellieu): Yeah, Yep, yep.

0:21:20 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): But Adam, to answer your question, to specifically target an area, so we use a, an algorithm called estheretta neurofeedback spin was developed back in the 70s, but Sretta is a, is a kind of a new, newer thing relatively. And we can pinpoint where in the brain, those brain, the surface level, EEG waves are coming from. And then we use things like T square protocols and other protocols depending on the patient to help bring the brain into balance.

0:21:52 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): So the brain is all about balance and appropriate behavior. So when you're sleeping, you should have lots of delta waves, you should be sleeping deeply. And when you're awake, you should have the right amount of alpha waves so you can focus but not be hyper focused or changing your focus from second to second, like ADD in adhd. And so with neurofeedback, we can see what's happening in the brain and then we can target specific regions of interest, specific broadminarias which are focused on, they're involved in specific functions of the brain and we can help to balance them out so that they function better and that the entire brain can work in unison together.

0:22:34 - (Dr. Josh Hersh): They call that coherence. So that's the point of neurofeedback.

0:22:41 - (Josh Bellieu): Very interesting.

0:22:43 - (Adam Payne): I'm excited to be able to dig into more of this.

0:22:46 - (Josh Bellieu): Like Pavlov's dogs. I'm wiping my chin right now. Getting ready for the next meal with Joshua Herse here in episode two. Hey, listen, you know, episode one, we, we learned about Joshua's personal journey. Transformative medicine, his clinic out there in Utah, transformative-medicine.com Dr. Joshua Hirsch, we're going to move back into a little bit of the, of the technology you left us hanging because now Adam and I both are going to want to ask, do you actually have a roadmap where you can target a specific area of the brain, recognizing there's going to be a somewhat predictable outcome in the actual body of that individual? I can't wait for this.

0:23:29 - (Josh Bellieu): You know, it's, it's interesting that Forbes article said that Feed Neurofeedback is like a powerful non drug approach to mental health and cognitive performance and even changing your body and changing your habits. We're going to move, we're going to move right into episode two and another conversation with Joshua Herx in just a moment. Hey, if you love what we're doing on Ultra Life today, like, subscribe Share Josh Belew, Adam Payne here. We'll see you in a minute.