By Susan Hemmingway — Herald Health Correspondent
Our
own Mary Jones, OTR/L, LMT, CIMT is featured in the Bradenton Herald
using IM to help her client's migraines after suffering from a stroke.
After
a stroke six years ago, Janet Carter developed relentless migraines.
She couldn't read or concentrate, noise was excruciating, and her work
in the children's ministry at the Journey Assembly of God church in
Bradenton became more difficult. Most people probably couldn't tell any of that. She kept things to herself. Carter
discovered Interactive Metronome, a therapy designed to retrain the
brain in how it engages with timing. In everyday activities,
microseconds and milliseconds matter, although people without brain
injuries aren't aware that their bodies and minds naturally synchronize.
Carter's granddaughter had found success with Interactive Metronome
therapy, which is why Carter decided to try it.
Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2012/04/10/3989026/healthy-living-interactive-metronome.html#storylink=cpy
Read more here: http://www.bradenton.com/2012/04/10/3989026/healthy-living-interactive-metronome.html#storylink=cpy
By: Susan Hemmingway — Herald Health Correspondent
After a stroke six years ago, Janet Carter developed relentless
migraines. She couldn't read or concentrate, noise was excruciating, and
her work in the children's ministry at the Journey Assembly of God
church in Bradenton became more difficult.
Most people probably couldn't tell any of that. She kept things to herself.
Carter is married to Journey Assembly of God pastor Donald Carter.
Together, they have ministered at the church for 16 years. She connects
to the children through puppets and is an expert ventriloquist. Her
motto is "life's a hoot" and she dons a clown costume as another way to
teach children about God. The stroke took away her ability to do all of
that seamlessly.
But it was the migraines that really got to her. She went to
neurologists and chiropractors, had multiple brain scans and took
medication. Nothing seemed to work and the doctors couldn't explain why.
"It was like a knife stabbing through my head. I went to one doctor
after another and was grasping at anything I could get at," said Carter,
who is 61.
Then about a year ago, Carter discovered Interactive Metronome, a
therapy designed to retrain the brain in how it engages with timing. In
everyday activities, microseconds and milliseconds matter, although
people without brain injuries aren't aware that their bodies and minds
naturally synchronize. Carter's granddaughter had found success with
Interactive Metronome therapy, which is why Carter decided to try it.
The therapy is used by occupational and physical therapists for
rehabilitation of stroke and brain injury patients as well as for
Parkinson's disease, poor motor skills, and physical and mental problems
that involve finely tuned timing. It's also used for children who have
learning difficulties and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
Developed in the 1990s, Interactive Metronome therapy is now used in
hospitals, rehabilitation centers, schools and private healthcare
offices. A home-based version recently became available.
Carter worked with Bradenton occupational therapist Mary Jones and began to feel relief from the migraines after 12 sessions.
Years earlier, Carter had been working at a church puppet show when the
stroke hit. Like strokes often do, everything happened quickly.
"I felt funny. My left side went numb and the left side of my face was
droopy. For a second, everything was fuzzy," said Carter.
"When I stayed behind the puppet stage, people knew something was wrong."
Her daughter recognized the signs of stroke immediately and took Carter
to the hospital, where she stayed overnight. A few years later, Carter
had a mini-stroke that was fleeting but increased the damage.
"I couldn't do the children's ministry anymore. You could tell me your
name and I wouldn't know it," she said. "I couldn't handle any noise."
In her earlier career, Carter had operated a daycare center with 130
children, and mastered computers at a county government job. In her life
as a pastor's wife, she loved to teach and traveled overseas to train
students for children's ministries.
The stroke took away her identity because she wasn't that same
competent person, said Carter. Even so, she knew it could have been much
worse.
"To put it into perspective, I could still think, walk and feed myself. I did not have a bad one," she said about the stroke.
When she decided to try Interactive Metronome therapy, she went weekly
or twice weekly for four months. That's a standard treatment time, said
Jones, who wanted to resolve Carter's headaches and improve her speech
fluency and concentration.
Interactive Metronome exercises involve moving the hands or feet in
sequence to repetitive sounds that have a steady rhythm similar to a
musical metronome.
One of the first exercises is to stand in front of a computer, wearing a
headset and a glove with a push-button in the palm. The aim is to clap
at each sound of a loud ding. The computer tracks the timing of the clap
and how precisely it matched the sound.
For someone with a brain deficit, this simple exercise "is very hard on
the brain, extremely hard," said Jones. In the first session, which
lasted all of 20 minutes, Carter left feeling drained and exhausted.
But she stuck with it. Eventually, the exercises helped increase her brain's plasticity and processing speed, said Jones.
Jones was introduced to Interactive Metronome therapy eight years ago
in a training program when she worked in pediatrics at Blake Medical
Center. Initially, she wasn't impressed.
"I thought this was really boring," said Jones. "But when I used it, I was amazed at the results."
Now in private practice, Jones uses Interactive Metronome therapy
extensively. She works with children who have ADHD to help them develop
more impulse control and improve their schoolwork. At Beyond the
Spectrum, a Bradenton school and therapy resource program for autistic
children, Jones uses the program to help autistic children integrate
sensory perception.
The therapy also is used for non-medical reasons to increase mental
efficiency and enhance sports performance, such as in baseball, tennis
and golf, said Jones.
Carter credits Interactive Metronome therapy for the renewal of her
creativity, which the stroke took away. She heads the church's puppet
ministry, which includes drama and dance.
She also is really thankful that the severe migraines have stopped.
To learn more about Interactive Metronome therapy, visit www.interactivemetronome.com.
Susan Hemmingway, Herald health correspondent, can be contacted at shemmingway@hotmail.com.
I
receive many interesting scientific articles on the importance of
timing in the brain for cognitive, academic, and motor skills...so many
it is hard to keep up. There appears to be keen interest by researchers
around the globe re: the timing mechanisms of the brain and how better
or worse timing influences a whole host of abilities in children and
adults. There are many studies exploring the differences between
individuals who participate in musical training or synchronized
metronome tapping and those that do not, in particular how they differ
in academic performance & development. In this recent study at Ben-
Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), researchers concluded that 1st
through 3rd grade students who clapped to songs demonstrated fewer
developmental learning problems and were better integrated socially than
children who did not. They went as far as to say that children at this
age who do not participate in clapping to music may be at increased
risk for learning disabilities. They also demonstrated that children
who are under-performing academically can catch up to their peers
relatively quickly when they engage in clapping to songs on a regular
basis repetitiously. "Within a very short period of time, the children
who until then hadn't taken part in such activities caught up in their
cognitive abilities to those who did…hand-clapping songs should be made
an integral part of education for children aged six to 10, for the
purpose of motor and cognitive training.” This is similar to results
seen with Interactive Metronome (IM) & IM-specific research.
However, IM takes timing to a new level with specific feedback at the
millisecond level. This is where the brain is processing time for
attention, memory, self-regulation and learning. It is common to hear
an IM provider or family member remark that the results of IM training
are relatively quick compared to other interventions, especially in the
areas of speech/language, auditory processing, attention, reading, and
learning. IM training gets at the heart of the problem with timing in
the brain.
Prescription
drugs cause over 100,000 deaths per year and cause another 1.5 million
people to experience side effects so severe they must be hospitalized.
This is in part due to the problem of polypharmacy, or taking several
drugs at once that interact in negative and sometimes unexpected ways.
He
points out that polypharmacy becomes a greater concern as you grow
older. Not only are seniors taking more medications, but the ones they
take aren’t handled by the body as well as when they were young.
Dr.
Duane Graveline, a medical doctor and NASA astronaut, wrote an
eye-opening account of the dangers of one popular statin drug in 
