Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast

Dr. Heather Putney Discusses Safe Neurotherapy For Every Brain

• Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 6

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Is It Safe? Is It Safe For Kids?

What if brain stimulation could be as gentle as it is effective? We pull back the curtain on three core neuromodulation tools—light therapy, PEMF, and low-intensity electrical stimulation—and lay out exactly how we keep them safe for kids, adults, and even high performers who just want a cleaner cognitive edge.

We start with photobiomodulation, the targeted use of specific wavelengths to support mitochondrial function, blood flow, and neuroplasticity. You’ll hear how we choose frequencies and pulsing to match goals like easing post-COVID brain fog or lifting mood, and why the most common side effect is simply warmth on the skin. From there, we move to PEMF, using tuned magnetic coils to influence the gut–brain axis and calm systemic inflammation. The origin story—engineering a newborn-safe approach after hypoxia—explains why PEMF remains gentle, often unfelt, and surprisingly versatile for both brain and body.

The biggest question we get is about electrical stimulation. We unpack the science and the safeguards: a meta-analysis of 158 studies and more than 4,000 people found no serious adverse effects within limits of up to 4 mA and 40 minutes. Our clinic stays even more conservative, titrating from 0.001 to 2.5 mA while monitoring comfort and outcomes. You’ll learn how this compares to consumer TENS units, why dose and placement matter, and what families report—better focus, steadier emotions, and deeper sleep. We also touch on peak performance protocols that feel like a clean cup of coffee without the crash.

If you’re curious about ADHD support without ramping up meds, looking to reduce neuroinflammation, or aiming for sharper, calmer days, this conversation gives you the clarity and confidence to take a next step. Subscribe, share this with someone who needs a hopeful option, and leave a review to tell us what you want us to explore next.

To learn more about Transformative Neurotherapy visit:
https://www.TransformativeNeurotherapy.org
Transformative Neurotherapy
570 Lincoln Ave.
Bellevue, PA 15202
412-204-7397

SPEAKER_02:

Welcome to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with your host, Dr. Heather Butney, founder and executive director of Transformative Neurotherapy. This is the place where healing happens faster. Because let's face it, your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual until now. Here we take a holistic approach to brain health, bringing together science, mind-body harmony, and the tools you need to optimize your well-being. Whether you're a high performer, executive, athlete, longevity hacker, or just someone tired of your brain working against you, Dr. Putney is here to help you unlock your full potential. From brain fog to chronic stress, we're covering it all. So you can finally experience brain health, mind harmony, and total well-being. Ready to get on stuck? Let's get started.

SPEAKER_00:

When it comes to brain-based therapies, safety isn't just a checkbox, it's the foundation. Let's talk about what makes transformative neurotherapy safe for all ages. Welcome everyone. I am Millie M. co-host and producer here in the studio with Dr. Heather Putney, founder and executive director of transformative neurotherapy. Dr. Putney, how's it going?

SPEAKER_01:

It's going great.

SPEAKER_00:

Awesome. I know this is a question you get all the time. So let's just dive in. Is neurotherapy safe? And we'll talk about adult, but we'll also talk about the safety with kids. Talk to us about that.

SPEAKER_01:

Yes, actually, this is one of the most important questions because why would you want to engage in something, put yourself or your child through something that's not safe? So it's one of the main questions, and it's something that I'm so excited to be talking about because it absolutely is safe. And so we're going to kind of go through a couple studies and also clarify when we're talking about what neurotherapy is, like what's what is safe and so forth. So we use three different types of neurotherapy or neuromodulation in the clinic. Okay. And so neuromodulation just means like we are actually giving an input into the brain. And that's a little different than neurofeedback where there's no there's no input, there's just like biofeedback from the body. This we are actually adding something to the system. We're stimulating the system in some way. And there's three different ways we do this. People, all the rage right now, people talk a lot about photobiomodulation, LED light therapy, stuff like that, right? This is not one that we get that people are too concerned, but it is a form of neurotherapy and neuromodulation that we use. And we have different frequencies and different intensities, certain wavelengths that have been researched to help improve with cognitive decline, with brain fog, like post-COVID, with depression, anxiety, and so forth. And so we use those frequencies and we can also pulse them at certain intensities as well. So we can just actually target certain parts of the brain where we would like to, you know, place that light therapy. So, you know, like I said, most people aren't too worried about the safety of light therapy. It's out there in so many different things. Um, and the most and the the only adverse effect that can be is that sometimes these can get a little warm. The feeling of light on your head can be a little warm. And some people are more sensitive to that than others. So that is, you know, form number one, which is light therapy. Um the second one is pulse electromagnetic field, the EMF. And we hear about EMF all the time in society, right? We are impacted by EMF. We usually hear about it in a negative way, and that is because there are it depends on the frequency of the EMF. And there are certain frequencies that are actually harmful to our body, but there's also frequencies that we can create that are in resonance with our body or can help our body. So we use these pretty cool little coils, it's a magnetic coil in here to send very gentle specific frequencies that are in alignment with our body, and we can use it on the brain, and we can use it in the body. So we've got some really cool frequencies we use. One of them that I love to use uh on I use on the body a lot of the times is inflammation reduction. So what we'll see is we know a lot about that that gut brain access, right? And how inflammation in the gut can also create uh uh neuroinflammation. So sometimes when we're doing treatment on the brain, we'll actually put a couple of these coils on the gut and run an inflammation reduction protocol. And so it can reduce inflammation in the whole system. It also can can reproduce any of the frequencies that we've talked about in uh different podcasts that your brain creates or maybe is lacking. So we can kind of put that on there. And the cool thing about this is you don't feel it, you don't notice it. Um, it is super gentle. This is actually the beginning of neuromodulation, and necessity is the mother of invention. And so the developer for this actually had a newborn that was born with hypoxia or like a blue baby. He had he had lack of oxygen to the brain and it caused damage. And so he was not okay. He was already in the field of like neurofeedback and stuff, and he wasn't okay with the idea of his son, you know, being cognitively delayed and that he couldn't do anything about it. So he started researching what we can do that's gentle and safe for a newborn that can help stimulate his brain. So that's that's where this came up with Postilector Menanga field it. So this is actually gentle and safe enough to use even on newborns to try to help stimulate the brain and try to help, you know, kind of boost the development and increase oxygen and blood flow to the area, which I said is what he was trying to counteract. So this is actually the first of the neuromodulation fields, and then we've kind of like it's continued to advance from there. So, like I said, super safe that you can use on the body and on the brain, depending on the needs. But the one that people are the most concerned about when it when they're talking about safety is electrical stimulation, you know, where we use like the electrodes, we put a little bit of paste and we stick it on the certain parts of the brain that we want to balance, right? So that's the thing that that concerns everybody. Like, okay, we're putting electricity in the brain, right? So it it sounds really crazy, but it's not all that weird. I'm gonna ask you to share a screen here in a second. Let me get to the image. Let's just let's go ahead and click to this to the screen really fast. So we hear about TENS units all the time, you know, and and they're selled over the counter and so forth, and it's using you know, physical therapy offices, or people can just buy it off of Amazon. And what a TENS unit is, it's just electrical stimulation that you put on these pads at different parts of your body to increase to increase blood flow, which would reduce inflammation and so forth, and help the body heal. So what's interesting about this is that the intensity can range anywhere from zero to 80 milliamps or up to 100 milliamps. So, you know, that's pretty that's that's actually pretty powerful. And it's meant to be used, you know, on the body, like you can see. Now we're gonna go back and exit out for a second to what what we do. Now you can kind of click it back on. Um, so we use instead of using it on the body, we're using it on the brain. And so there's been a lot of studies done around the safety of of this and safety of repetitive sessions for um, you know, on the brain and what and how safe is it? So this is a meta-analysis, which means it's an analysis of over 158, well, of 158 studies, with a total of over 4,000 people having received treatment. And they're looking at, you know, transcranial direct current stimulation and you know, what has happened here, you know, you know, what how safe is it? So no adverse side effects were noticed, you know. So we're talking 4,000 people, you know, and by that means nobody was irrevocably harmed. And the only side effects that were noticed was maybe some redness or, you know, some skin, you know, some skin irritability, you know. So, and then it said no, you know, no significant side effects. And they set the parameters for, you know, so if the parameters were of four milliamps and no less than this is kind of being blocked by the thing, and no less than no more than 40 minutes, okay, a simulation in a session. So, and that's what we max out at. So, and so that's what these studies show is that a maximum of four milliamps, go back to the tens unit, and that ranged up to you know 80 or 100 milliamps. So we're talking we scale it way back down. So that's what was shown in the study. What we do is we can actually take the simulation so small if someone's really sensitive, we can go 0.001 milliamps up to 2.5 milliamps, which is where we max it out. So we start super low, usually at 0.1, unless someone's like super sensitive, and then we'll back it down. So, but you know, we start really slow and low, and then slowly kind of gradually increase the stimulation to increase the power that they're receiving. It's a bit like giving a larger dose of Tylenol, you know. You start with like a baby pill, and then you know, you can kind of go up from there if you need and you can tolerate more. So, like I said, we can go from 0.001 milliamps up to 2.5 milliamps max. And these studies show no adverse side effects at four milliamps with no more than 40 minute, 40-minute sessions, you know. So we stay like way in that range of safety.

SPEAKER_00:

So were there any children in that study, or are there different protocols and safety precautions as it relates to children?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, well, there's 158 studies included in that melaneta analysis. So women, children, even like some pregnant populations and so forth were also were also observed. And then let's see. So they they also looked at studies with kind of looking at my data over here, some other vulnerable populations like children, elderly pregnant women, those with implants or epilepsy, and they so showed no elevated risks when following those protocol limits with those groups. But they're not as um beefy. There's not as many studies on those vulnerable groups as there as there are, but the studies that did show that showed no elevated risk in those, you know, in those vulnerable groups, although they always, you know, recommend a little bit of caution. We use this regularly with children. We have a lot of children that come into the office with ADHD, sensory struggles, autism, and so forth. And so we use it quite a bit and quite successfully with children as well as adults.

SPEAKER_00:

What feedback do you get from those parents as far as their children's experience and and how they see those changes?

SPEAKER_01:

Um we get, I mean, we get great feedback because sometimes uh parents do not want to use medications or they don't want to use as much medications, or the medications just simply aren't working. So, you know, we can work with kids on medications or parents that don't want to go the medication route. And they've seen improvements, everything from improvement in grade, their reading, their executive functioning struggles, their ability to stay con just to focus and stay concentrating at school, their emotional regulation can improve a lot with they're less flooded, a lot, you know, their brain is actually processing better, they get a little less overwhelmed and less flooded, so they so they function better.

SPEAKER_00:

Sounds good. And I know this might not be connected, but this is just a curious question that I had when you were showing your different um tools there. Are there people who come to you who may not have a problem or an issue, but they want their brain to function optimally, almost like I'm I'm okay, but I want to be super, if that makes any sense. Yeah, you're talking about like our peak performance groups or high stress executives, right?

SPEAKER_01:

They want to be functioning maximally. So, you know, giving a little perk, you know, perk up in the brain. Like I file out of um stimulation on my brain, like in that little gamma hertz. Like it's almost like a coffee. It's almost like giving myself a little bit of coffee where I'm just kind of like, okay, like alerting the brain at the end of the day. And you walk out and you feel a little bit more alert. You know, the other thing is that people tend to, after treatment, one of the biggest side effects is people tend to sleep better. And they'll notice, you know, that they sleep better at night post-treatments. So that happens frequently.

SPEAKER_00:

Love that. Thank you so much for breaking down all of these safety measures. I'm sure that's how you um calm anybody who has any hesitation about uh neurotherapy completely safe, and you're in great hands with Dr. Putney. We appreciate your insight, and we'll see you next time.

SPEAKER_02:

You've been listening to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with Dr. Heather Putney. Remember, your brain isn't supposed to hold you back, it's supposed to power you forward. So stop letting it crash your party and start letting it do its job. If you are ready to optimize brain health, sharpen your focus, and age like a fine wife, schedule your free consultation today at Transformative Neurotherapy.org. Or call us at 412 204 7397. Because here, healing happens faster. See you next time.