Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast

Inflammation, The Brain, And How Neurotherapy Calms It

• Dr. Heather Putney • Episode 22

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0:00 | 12:24

How Does Neurotherapy Help With Inflammation?

Brain fog isn’t just a feeling; it’s a measurable shift in how the brain organizes and processes information. We dig into the science and the practice of calming neuroinflammation—how red light therapy reduces inflammatory activity in targeted regions, why improving cerebral blood flow brings vital resources where healing happens, and how PEMF applied over the gut taps the gut-brain axis to settle the nervous system. Along the way, we break down EEG patterns that signal trouble, from weakened alpha power to slower theta peaks and compensatory beta surges that can feel like restless, anxious thinking.

What makes this conversation different is the data. We walk through a compelling case where a child with ADHD and autism completed a gluten-free scan, then ate treats at school, and rescanned 48 hours later. The change? A slower theta peak, reduced alpha power, and less synchrony—plus a drop in accuracy and a slower reaction time on a go/no-go task. Nothing else changed. That tight window turned a vague hunch about diet into clear evidence that inflammation can derail cognitive performance fast. It’s the kind of insight that helps families and high performers make confident choices rather than guessing.

We also connect the dots across common conditions: post-concussion recovery, long COVID brain fog, and chemo-related cognitive changes. Despite different origins, many share inflammatory signatures and respond to a layered approach—regional red light, blood flow optimization, and gut-brain interventions. By reading the brain’s rhythms and adapting protocols in real time, we help clients rebuild a solid alpha foundation, reduce excess slowing, and smooth out hyperarousal so focus, mood, and energy can stabilize.

Curious whether inflammation is hijacking your focus or slowing your thoughts? Tune in to learn how targeted, measurable interventions can help you think clearer and feel steadier. If the episode resonates, subscribe, share it with someone who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find science-backed strategies that speed healing.

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

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast with your host, Dr. Heather Putney, 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.

Meet The Hosts

How Neurotherapy Targets Inflammation

SPEAKER_02

Inflammation does not just affect the body, it can quietly disrupt the brain in ways most people never realize. Welcome everyone. I'm Julie Schwenzer, co-host and producer in the studio with Dr. Heather Putney, the founder and executive director of transformative neurotherapy. Dr. Heather, it's always great to be with you. Nice to be with you too. So, Dr. Heather, how does neurotherapy help with inflammation?

Gut-Brain Axis And PEMF Coils

Conditions Linked To Neuroinflammation

SPEAKER_01

Well, we have several um ways where it can improve inflammation. Um when we see neuroinflammation, we see a couple of different patterns. Um, and um LED red light therapy is one of the things that we do, and one of its known mechanisms of act of action is to actually help reduce inflammation. So where we put the LED light like red light therapy, it helps specifically kind of help reduce the inflammation in the areas that we target. So that's one of the ways that we treat it. Another way is that it can help bring more uh blood, you know, our stimulation can help bring more um blood flow to the area, which brings more resources, which can also help uh address the inflammation. Uh, another thing that we're able to do that's pretty specific to inflammation is that we can actually work with that gut-brain access. So we see inflammation with uh a lot of different cases. It's it's actually quite nonspecific to a lot of the conditions that we treat on the mental health realm. Uh it it we actually see it in in many different situations. Um, but one of the things that we could do is we actually have a frequency um that helps fight inflammation. It's kind of called inflammation reduction, and we actually will treat the gut. So maybe we'll be doing some work on the brain, but we'll also put these coils, um, which I have right here, which uh which is the pulse electromagnetic field. So it just basically sends like a pulse and a frequency um, you know, into the area like over the gut. And so we're working with the brain gut access, which is actually really crucial because um some of these different conditions tend to have um inflammatory issues as well. So we see inflammation in um with some of these issues maybe in sensitivities. We see this in autism. Uh so we can see increased you know inflammation, but also like GI sensitivities and things like that. Um, other things that we see are conditions that we see that come in if someone um had a traumatic brain injury, maybe experiencing issues from that. We see a lot of um neuroinflammation uh post-concussion or brain injury that we work with. Um also you'll you can see um inflammation, it'll come look, it'll look like brain fog. So um long COVID, you may see that with clients with long COVID where it looks like brain fog post-chemo. People will talk about um a lot of excess brain fog, and we can see um excess inflammation also with clients recovering from chemotherapy. So um, like I said, as we see see these things, we will uh we will attack the inflammation kind of in pretty pretty similar way, is just depending on you know where we're seeing it. Um so that's and that's how we track it.

SPEAKER_02

And when somebody comes in too, you mentioned like the brain fog and and you know other issues is what about like focus and and mood and energy are those common complaints by your clients that come to see you?

Brain Scan Signatures Of Inflammation

Case Study Setup: Gluten Sensitivity

The Donut Day Experiment

Scan Changes: Alpha, Theta, Beta

ERP Results And Performance Drop

Takeaways And Closing CTA

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, all of those things when you've got inflammatory processes going on, um, you know, can can definitely be impacted. So what happens is is the way we you know, the way we see this is actually in the brain scan. So we tend to see a couple of different uh there's a couple of different features that you might see. Sometimes it's excess flowing where the inflammation is is causing the brain to less of a strong alpha, which is what we want to, which is like the kind of the base frequency you want to you want to see at rest. Um maybe there's less of that. There's more of the theta slowing, so the brain isn't running as fast as it could. Um and on the flip side, um it you may see the brain running too fast. So that uh so you got excess um beta. And so the so the brain is just kind of like in hyper arousal. And so you can see either signature or a little bit of both. I actually have a pretty interesting case example of that um brain gut access uh inflammatory process. We were working with um a nine-year-old uh kid with ADHD autism, um, and uh they were having some, we we thought from some of the brain scans that there could also be an inflammatory process going on. So we had done some treatment, and um it seemed to be when the when the kid would um overindulge in gluten, they would uh they would have a regression and symptoms. So we worked with the parents and they did uh a gluten-free trial for an entire treatment um for an entire treatment session. So it was a little bit about a month, month and a half of of no gluten, and we scanned the kid's brain. And um then what happened is the kid went to um the uh oh the their school was going to have this like special donut day treat. And the kid was really upset that they weren't gonna be able to participate and and so forth. And so we actually had previous scans with the kid um, you know, that had been eating gluten. We had this scan of, you know, what the brain looked like without gluten. So we decided like, why don't we just go ahead and let her let her try it? You know, there'll be no treatment between now and then, so you know, this is her scan today. Let her go eat the donuts tomorrow. We'll bring her in at the exact same time, you know, two days from now, and we'll just do a rescan. So there was no treatment in between. We're talking about, you know, 48 hours difference. And so we see what shift the um the brain had to a kid that this is very clearly um gluten sensitive. So I'm gonna kind of zoom in and see if I can um point to to some of the examples. So, like I said, this is just you know, a couple of days different from scan one to scan two. No treatment was done between the two. Um, but what happened is this is this is the no gluten. Um and um this right here is the alpha peak that we that we'd like to see. The client still had some you know excess theta that would like excess slowing that we were working on, which is also an ADHD feature, you know, but um we had some alpha and some beta here as well, and um in our alpha pattern. So what we see is um this is this is what she looked like before um eating gluten. And then what happened is, and I don't know how well you can see this on the screen, number one, you can kind of see how like these lines are kind of a little bit more clustered together. That's kind of an indicator of a little bit more synchrony in the brain, a little bit more uh, you know, more um coherent. And then if you look at this, um, and I'll you know, kind of zoom in a little bit more, it's it's a little bit more widespread, it's less organized, you know. So if you can kind of compare the two, you can see that right off the bat. The other thing is is that that theta pre frequency, so the slow, the slow peak actually slowed down half a hertz. So the slow peak got worse, which is not what we like to see. Um and then the alpha power, so the actual energy in the head uh in her head actually decreased. So um so the amount of you know, alpha that we saw here, you can see this is her alpha peak. It kind of just it just like kind of shifts away. You know, you can see that there's less of that, and we see um excess um beta. So when I said that like some of the profiles are we see some slowing as well as some fast wave. So that's what we're seeing, kind of a mix with this inflammatory process for this kid who is clearly gluten sensitive because that's the only thing that changed. So this helped the kid and the parents see that, you know, for them there the gluten really, really did make a difference. This is another another example of it, you know, the the no gluten with the gluten, uh just a different different can different condition, but you can kind of see um like the theta peak shifted, you know, slowed down, um, as well as the power of the alpha peak decreased from 4.8 to 3.4. So that's actually a decent reduction in power, which is kind of energy in the head. So, and also we have we have the kids do a um an ERP, which is basically a uh this is this is a visual task where they see either a go uh a go sign or a no-stop sign. And they click when they see the go and they ignore it when they see the no. So it's a go-no go um task. And so uh the kid, you know, three days before performed the exact same task um uh um with 97.8% accuracy, and her and her reaction time was 868 milliseconds from the time that she saw the signal that till she processed that she was supposed to respond and how accurate she was, as well as like her variability in response. So this is what you know, this is what we saw. Three days later, it went her average response time went from 868 milliseconds to 1,013 milliseconds. Uh reduction in in her accuracy from 97.8% to 93.8%. And as you can see, the standard deviation bar actually also increased. So basically her functional performance. So this is, you know, she's going to, you know, her performance in school, her ability to detect things, to respond, she is slower and less accurate when she's dealing with the inflammation in her brain. So um, so this is, you know, a good example of we can kind of click out of this now, but this is a good example of a case study of, you know, a client experiencing, you know, some, you know, food sensitivities, you know, that's creating inflammation in the system and how that's impacting their brain and their brain functioning.

SPEAKER_02

So Dr. Heather, we want to thank you again for breaking everything down so clearly. Obviously, you deal with inflammation a lot with your clients and the impact on the brain. It's nice to hear how much you're helping people. Thank you. And we'll see you next time on the Transformative Neurotherapy Podcast.

SPEAKER_00

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're ready to optimize brain health, sharpen your focus, and age like a fine wine, 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.