Transform Your Mind: A Chiropractor’s 5 SIMPLE LEVELS Of HEALING!
Russell awakens to the world of chiropractic science with Dr. Jerome Poupel, a seasoned chiropractor to top sports stars and even race-winning horses, and Dr. Heidi Haavik, neurophysiologist and author, exploring how chiropractic care can transform your mental state and accelerate healing. Watch the FULL INTERVIEW: https://www.youtube.com/@AwakeningWithRussell Join us at ‘Community 2024' https://www.russellbrand.com/community/For a bit more from us join our Stay Free Community here: https://russellbrand.locals.com/NEW MERCH! https://stuff.russellbrand.com/
Joining me now are Dr. Heidi Horvick and Jerome Poupel to talk about a recent study that shows the neurological impact of certain aspects of chiropractic, their impact on pain, sleep, psychology and wellness more broadly.
Thanks for joining us today Heidi.
Oh it's an absolute pleasure.
What was unique about this study and can you tell us particularly how you say it out please?
Right.
Well, what was unique about this study, it was a randomized clinical trial, specifically looking at brain function.
Also, because we have found in the past that we can change prefrontal cortex processing when we're adjusting spines with chiropractic care.
But what's unique is, well, what kind of functions is that impacting?
How's it changing our health?
That we hadn't looked at before.
And it was a four-week clinical trial.
So a lot of the research that we've done in the past 20 years has been pre and post one adjustment session.
So again it was really new and novel that we were looking at four weeks of chiropractic care.
We had two groups that had a control group that didn't experience the treatment.
In this case from Jerome who is accompanying us today.
Why was it important for this to take place over a period of time and what was the significance of having a control group and what number were you working with?
So, we wanted to have people that are randomized into a control group or an active group, because that's when you can find out what's actually changing.
Sorry about my dog.
We love him.
That's when you find out what's really changing with the chiropractic care.
So, for example, if you were just following one group that got the chiropractic care from Jerome, well, was it just a coincidence?
How do you know it was actually the care that was provided?
So, if you have the control group, then you know that the changes that take place in the chiropractic group only, that they're the real change, it's because of what he's
doing.
Right? So we had about 50, no? How many people were there?
About 32 and 32.
Yeah, so it's about 60 total, randomised into one group or the other.
So one's randomised into the control group, which is really like a waiting group.
So they wait, you know, because he's only one person, so it could take some time
before you can come in and get to see him.
Whereas really, they were our control group.
So they were just having, we tested them before and afterwards, but they didn't know that that was actually what we wanted from them, was the nothing, the period of nothing.
They were being tested on nothingness.
So you could compare nothing to the impact of Jerome.
I suppose it's necessary to get some clinical data on chiropractic more broadly as it's regarded, generally speaking, with some scepticism, am I right in saying, by the medical establishment and even some cynicism and derision.
What were you able to provide with this study, albeit a limited one, that enables you to confront that scepticism?
I think a lot of the enlightened people these days are well aware of how well chiropractic care can work, but the fact that it works the way it does, like the fact that a lot of people are aware that we can change and help people with back pain, neck pain and headaches, that's quite well documented in the literature.
No one's arguing with that.
And actually it's fantastic when you think of the problems with opioid drugs, right?
So there's a huge benefit to go and see the chiropractor first.
But the fact that most people don't know how it works or the fact that we're actually changing the person's brain so the person's brain is better able to perceive what's going on in the body and the world around it and therefore can control the whole system better.
So what you're contesting is that chiropractic is not just mechanical or skeletal but neurological.
Yes, yes and I think fundamentally so and I think that's why it takes a bit of time as well.
So we found in quite a few of our studies and quite a few of other people's studies as well that the effects of chiropractic care, they kind of keep on going.
So you have maybe just six weeks of chiropractic care in your study and then you follow them over time and they're just getting better and better.
So you've changed something fundamental in their operating system, which is the brain, right?
And that's when it gets exciting.
You've talked about chiropractic now in a general way.
Why in particular did you want to do this study with Jerome?
Because I love getting to the best.
I think if you're going to do the study, which is so expensive to do, you kind of want your best people to provide the care.
But it's hard to get someone that's, you know, that's willing to do that, right?
Because in a lot of studies ideally you provide the care for free and that's a lot of time out of practice, so that's basically donating a hell of a lot of your time and money.
I'd like to ask you, Germaine, why is it that you agreed to participate in this study, mate?
Well, I actually had the vision of this study 7 years ago, so I had this... I thought about this 7 years ago more or less while I was doing racehorses in Ireland and one day I saw a video of Heidi, a film that you did on your research, and I loved what I saw.
So then you gave me the inspiration to try to meet you.
And then from there, I thought, well, when I'm ready, I'd like to do a research of all the work I've done all those years, which is called NeuroProcare work.
And all the amazing people I learned from, all the scientists and doctors and healers and naturopaths and chiropractors and kinesiologists, all those people that I learned from.
And I spent a long time putting it together.
And I thought, if one day I were to teach it, or maybe, you know, all the results I've discovered over the years with people, I thought it would be great to research it with someone that I think is amazing and would also be able to open the door to a new reality, a new reality show.
So it was a vision and then after all those years we finally, after COVID, it could happen two years before that but we had an issue with that and maybe it was going to be in New Zealand, maybe it's going to be in Henley and it turned out to be in Henley-on-Thames which is perfect and we did it last year and I'm so happy that Finally, we're getting some data step by step and it's finalized.
So it was a vision with the right person and it came at the right place at the right time and it was a new experience for me to do research and to prepare and to take care of people.
And obviously, it had to be me.
I had to do what I do.
I had to use my clinical tools.
And obviously, you know, there's a lot of equipment and technology involved and time and effort.
So it was a challenge, but I was exhausted.
A lot of the work you do, Jerome, if I could say, seems pretty crazy.
Even when you're having the practice, you know, like Jerome puts vials on you, gives kinesiological tests to you, makes you put on different colored sunglasses for things.
Even the fact that Jerome in his first answer said that he treats racehorses is not like a normal thing to hear, as well as elite athletes and racing drivers.
Jerome, can you tell me a little bit about what you mean when you say that you treat different levels, the physical plane, the mental plane?
What are you talking about, Jerome?
This doesn't sound like normal, verifiable medicine where you can just say, you know, for example, take this tablet, it will have this impact, or have this injection, it will have that impact.
Well, I think that, first of all, there are different levels of healing.
And people have to understand there are, let's say, five levels of healing.
And the five levels of healing are this concept where everybody has some truth, from medicine, auto-molecular biology, from chemistry, from herbal remedy, from supplements.
This is the level one.
Or this is surgery, or chiropractic adjustment on the physical level.
And the level one is the physical body.
And we need to respect that temple.
But the physical body is orchestrated by what we call the energy body, where it's all Tibetan and Chinese thinking of this, which is we bring the East and the West together, which is always a good thing.
But basically there's a lot of, you know, when you do MRI scan or PET scan, you're actually into the atoms and molecules, you're tapping into ECG, EEG.
is electromagnetic frequency and it's nothing to do with the physical world.
And when you do many tests in medicine, you use tools on a physical level to analyze people on level 2, I mean on the energy body.
And the energy body is where there is a software that regulates the physical body.
And that software has an electromagnetic switch board on the body and switch and points.
And many chiropractors and naturopaths in the 70s discovered those switches.
And those switches are linked to the heart, the liver, the bone marrow, the spleen, and all those organs have a switchboard and a correlation to the spine.
Even though it's not spinal vertebrae as the physical reality, it's more like an electrical switch.
and people have to look at it in a more of a soft software.
And what happens there is that from infections to trauma to stress,
the vagus nerve and the other nerves are affected.
And sometimes it's only 2%, it could be 20%.
Above 40% of fault function, you could start having pathological changes in the blood,
or in the normal blood test or the x-ray or test that we do in the physical reality.
So there's a 40% gray area where people are not right and the body is not healing properly or functioning properly and people don't know something is not really working well but it's hard for the doctor sometimes to find out what's wrong with them because it doesn't show up on the blood test.
So, and then the level 3, which is the mental body, is where homeopathy or psychoneurobiology or different healing methods, where you're trying to remove post-traumatic stress, trauma of the biography of the people where they have a conflictual emotional shock.
And it's not just stress, so they have events in their life that have created a distortion in their Photon, biophoton, which is a science from Dr. Albert Fritz Pops, which was an amazing scientist, a German scientist in the 80s.
And there's low frequency of biophotons coming off your DNA, emitting light coming out of you.
And that light has to be coherent and polarized in the laws of physics.
And that light, which we talk about in spirituality or consciousness, has an effect as well on your physical body.
So this mental field, which is this mental field, is expressed through special light photons emission.
And if you have a distortion of that light, there is a pathological change that will occur within you.
It could be many years to come, but it could hit different organs.
And sometimes the thyroid gland could be dysfunctional because there's a trauma of inhibition or feeling choked many years ago.
But because there was a conflict, let's say it was someone that inhibits you but someone that you loved and so there are conflicts and no resolution to it and you're taken by surprise.
And those conflicts create a shockwave into that light emission and those organs affecting the autonomic nervous system in level 2 and physiologically the spine, the body, maybe the blood test, the TSH, the T3, T4 hormones will show up in the blood test or not, this is the interreaction between the mental field and the physical body and the level 2.
Now Heidi, just listening to Jerome there, what Jerome talks about is beyond Erudition and esotericism.
It sometimes borders on the ineffable.
In fact, if I'd not been personally treated by Jerome, and just to share somewhat more prosaically
the reason that I work with Jerome and the reason I love Jerome,
the beginning of the, there are now many, but the first reason was when Jerome treated my wife,
my wife had a problem with her vertebrae, there was a spinal problem,
and we went to a private hospital, she was gonna have keyhole surgery
to correct the vertebrae, we had the MRI, we saw the vertebrae, we had the surgery,
booked in, I'm friends with, we have a mutual friend, Danny Harrison,
he said, I'll go see my friend Jerome, so we go and see Jerome, and Jerome said,
oh, it's no bother, I treat you for six days for free.
If it works, it works.
If it doesn't work, you have the surgery.
No problem.
And then for the next six days, we went.
By about the second or third day, my wife was all right.
Now, at the point where we were obviously considering the surgery, Laura, my wife, wasn't able to carry our children.
She was in bed.
By the fifth day, she was fine.
She never had a problem ever again since.
She didn't have the surgery.
Now the reason I tell this very sort of you know sort of in some ways ordinary but also impressive story about Jerome's healing capacity is like while Jerome is talking he's talking about endocrinal medicine, neurology, he's talking about photons, he's talking about sort of a component of DNA being light.
These are sort of quite complex, rarefied, reified ideas even.
So can you now Heidi tell me how you can place some empirical Well, I think that's partly my role, right?
To come in from the scientific perspective and explain some of the things that Jerome's able to do.
Because I've also seen what he's able to do and I've heard stories of what he's able to do.
And that's why I knew that he was a really good chiropractor, to go in and see what can be done, what's possible.
and then start breaking down, well, how is he managing to do this?
And so I'm a neuroscientist, I'm a brain scientist, I've published many studies, and so what we
have found before studying Jerome is that we do, when we're adjusting the spine, we
are actually changing the way the brain is perceiving what's going on in the body and
the world around you.
So we know that because we've done lots of little studies pre and post on the same day.
Like, for example, your spine impacts how your brain interprets sound and visual information.
We've done studies on that.
And when you adjust someone, it improves it.
Sorry to interrupt you, Heidi.
The spine impacts how you receive sensory data.
Not how you receive it, but how your brain interprets it.
It's not sensory, it's neurological.
Yeah, because what's really fascinating in the last 20 years in neuroscience, in the research field, what we're understanding is what's most important is what the brain believes to be real.
So what your brain believes is real, He's tapping into how the brain is perceiving what's going on, and if the brain is aware of what's going on, the brain heals itself.
Because we even know things like your memories and your past experiences, your future expectations
will actually change how your brain interprets what's happening right in front of you.
It's really interesting and I think that's potentially what he's doing.
He's tapping into how the brain is perceiving what's going on and if the brain is aware
of what's going on, the brain heals itself.
We also know that, you know, from science.
I suppose for all of us, anyone who cuts their finger, the finger gets better, no one told
it to, it's an automatic process.
This idea of perception, can you show me, like when we did that thing before, you showed those perception things and stuff like that, you know?
Looking at these two circles, right?
Very obvious that the pink one's much larger than the purple one.
But it's actually not the case.
Because our brains don't just see shapes as shapes.
They see shapes compared to the shapes around them.
So you see that pink circle is larger than the purple one.
Do you guys at home, are you seeing them as different sizes?
Are you saying that the pink one's bigger than the purple one?
Let me know in the chat, let me know in the comments.
Whereas in fact... In fact, you take away the surrounding circles, and I can even bring them beside each other and actually pop a line above and below.
They are identical.
So, and there's another one.
I really like the checker square illusion by Alderson.
Again, looking at square A and B, A is definitely darker than B, right?
Yeah.
But it's not the case.
B is light grey, A is dark grey.
No.
I challenge you!
No.
Take away the surrounding information.
Square A and B are identical.
You can now still see A as being above B when it's in a two-dimensional space.
But not darker, right?
No, so reality is taking place, reality is interpretive rather than objective.
Yeah, your brain interprets those, the same exact shade of grey, but it's telling you that A is darker than B because B is in the shadow of the green cylinder.
Amazing.
How do you apply these illusory and sensory techniques to the interpretation of the work of Jerome?
So, what I think Jerome is doing, because of all the last 20 years of studies, we know that the spine impacts how the brain perceives, right?
We know that.
And so, now what I wanted to know when Jerome provides care for four weeks is, because we knew we changed the prefrontal cortex, the prefrontal cortex has got some quite amazing different things that it does.
It's like the conductor of the brain.
So, it's picking up on everything that's going on, it's the seat of
your intelligence, but it's also involved in your sleep, it helps turn on your
parasympathetic nervous system, which is that healing, digesting, resting
part of your nervous system, it's involved with your autonomic nervous
system, your neuroendocrine system, so your hormones, so we knew we'd change that part but I didn't know which of
these functions are we changing. Mental health, all of mental health
is connected to the prefrontal cortex. May I ask Heidi, do we know from an
evolutionary perspective at what point in human evolution these
parts of the brain evolve or come online.
Yeah, no, it's the last thing in evolution, yeah.
Because the brainstem is the first and then the limbic system is the second, which is that fight-flight amygdala, and then the prefrontal cortex is the last evolutionary part.
But when in evolution, I don't know.
In the Middle Ages?
No, I'm kidding.
Can you talk us through some of what this means and then we'll just focus on what you learned from your studies with Jerome that you're happy to share?
Well why I got so excited about it when we first discovered this, we were in a little hospital in Denmark actually with my team, my research team at the New Zealand College of Chiropractic and the postdoc that was there.
So we weren't touching that data because you know you've got to make sure it gets validated by other people.
So this was a postdoc, Dina Lalick.
She was doing all the analysis.
She goes, you're changing the prefrontal cortex.
So when, when that was me adjusting the patients at the time, I got really excited because we used to think in the old days with chiropractic care that you're relieving pressure or squashed nerve roots.
We know that that's not the case.
Now, all of a sudden, we've got an explanation because that prefrontal cortex is partly responsible.
It's just right behind your forehead.
It's partly responsible for how we feel pain.
You know, that's one thing that everybody knows.
Chiropractic care helps with pain, right?
And so, it might not be that you're fixing anything physically, other than changing the communication between the spine and the brain, and all of a sudden the brain's deciding to turn down those feelings of pain.
Or it's decided, hey, there's no problem, I can actually turn it off.
And that's where you can have those adjustments and all of a sudden it's all gone.
Right?
Maybe like what your wife had, you know, it's just gone.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, how can you do that?
If you've actually got an inflammatory process that's causing the pain neurons to fire off, you can't magically turn it off.
Well, you can.
if you can get through to the brain.
And this is one of the key parts of that brain.
That part of the brain too, the prefrontal cortex, is also involved in every movement you make all day, every
day.
Yeah.
And that's another thing, you know, Jerome takes care of a lot of sports people
because that precise control and movement and reactions are so important.
But this is also the seat of your intelligence.
So this is literally your executive functions, your ability to think rationally, to pay attention, to just, you know, ignore all the things that are distracting and just focusing on what you need to focus in on.
That's also the prefrontal cortex.
It's also emotional control, which is really, really interesting.
So all of mental health It's usually linked to a dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex because it normally controls your emotions, controls the limbic system.
And I keep flapping, there's a psychologist that's done a video about that.
So, for example, if there's a lack of dopamine or a lack of serotonin, there is a relationship between the prefrontal cortexes and these endocrinal responses?
If you've got the dysfunction, yeah.
The best way to think about the prefrontal cortex is that it's inhibitory.
So it normally, it's like your adult you that comes in and just inhibits your
child you that wants to throw temper tantrums. Right? So kids haven't actually
developed their prefrontal cortex. Yeah. So they're running around with temper
tantrums. All the emotional outbursts. And stress, interestingly enough, turns off
the prefrontal cortex. So you've seen people in shock or have they've
experienced something really traumatic?
Yes.
Your prefrontal cortex goes offline and you go straight into your emotional limbic lobe.
Sometimes I wonder if the culture is trying to shut down the prefrontal cortex and keep us in a state of continual desire and fear.
Yeah, because fear turns it off.
I wondered.
Yeah.
So can you show us then some of the things that were impressive about this, the data that you gained from Jerome that you are happy to share?
So with Jerome, We did a randomized control trial.
There we go.
We had 32 and 35 people randomly allocated into the different groups.
It was here in the UK in Henley.
Convenient sampling.
People between 18 and 60 years.
What we did do is we recorded whole head EEG.
So we've got a cap all over their head and we're recording their EEG.
And when we do that, we can also calculate where in the brain the change is taking place.
We can record the brain waves, the frequencies that It's how the brain talks to itself and within itself and we also measure, we can also record what's called functional connectivity.
So you can actually start to see what parts of the brain are talking to each other and what we're then looking at is what happens to the people that Jerome took care of minus the control group and then pre versus post.
So and that's what we ended up with looking at what changed and what changed when Jerome does his thing compared to the controls because that's what I'm interested in right?
What is it that he's doing?
We want to measure the effects of Jerome.
You can all speculate what the effects of Jerome is.
Many of us are deeply concerned.
But what does science say?
We also gave everybody Fitbits, because with the Fitbits you can actually measure their movement that they're doing every day, their heart rate, the heart rate variability.
We can also measure their sleep phases.
So what was really, really interesting, there was quite a few findings that we got from the study with Jerome.
First and foremost, the group that got Jerome's care, they felt better, they had less fatigue, which is interesting because we haven't found that before, not that I've seen in the literature anyway, and they increased their sleep in the light sleep and the rapid eye movement sleep, which was really fascinating.
And then, most interesting to me is the brain changes.
They also had significantly less depression.
And I thought that was very interesting.
There was a trend to an improvement in anxiety as well.
And that's not something that's been studied very much with chiropractic.
How are you measuring that they're less anxious?
Questionnaires.
So they're telling us themselves.
Compared to the control.
Yeah.
And they're answering questionnaires.
In the past month, how have you felt?
You know, and they ask many questions and you fill them in.
And that's what showed up that he had, they were physically feeling better, they've improved quality of life, they were less fatigued, they were significantly less depressed, and there was a trend to an improvement in anxiety as well.
So we know that they felt better, right?
That's kind of cool.
And of course, they had less pain.
Shouldn't forget that one, even though that's, you know, well documented.
But then, then what's fascinating is he had a, there was a decrease, a significant decrease in the theta band.
And you know how the brain has different frequencies, different brain waves?
Some are very slow.
Theta, Gamma, Delta.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
See?
Brilliant.
And the Delta is the deep sleep, but the Theta is like the light relaxation.
And that was a significantly decrease.
So I'm suspecting that that means that they were more, they were feeling better afterwards, especially if there's a reduction in stress and anxiety.
So that shift, they're almost like their brain is more alert than it was before the adjustments.
That was just pre and post.
But these aren't usually easy things to shift, which is why I got excited about it.
But, you know, we also had some Almost changes in several of the other ones which also blew my mind away because again These aren't things that normally change and especially the gamma one that one that one fascinates me Because one thing you often do see and I know Jerome can speak to this is People change in their decision-making afterwards which makes sense with the prefrontal cortex, which that's part of your thinking problem-solving brain But this would even indicate if he's increasing gamma
So maybe they are becoming so self-aware that they're able to make, you know, better choices.
But again, this is what we need to look into further.
I'm hypothesizing here.
Yes, yes, because the function of gamma is not something that's absolutely verifiable, is it?
Yes, it is, but like, I mean, you know, I wouldn't expect to get changes in gamma, because gamma is when you go, you're right intensely involved in something, like when you're in your flow, Oh cool, I like it there.
I live for that!
I know you do, but these guys were just sitting there being recorded.
And they had more gamma.
I'm like, well, hang on a minute.
How has that happened?
So I've been looking into this, which is fascinating.
So then we had the changes in sleep, which is really, really cool.
Because again, if Jerome is able to tap into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is what we're suspecting is happening, then they should be able to relax more.
So they should get into more light sleep.
And the REM sleep is really, really interesting, because that's usually the body is dealing with something, it's changing.
And I suspect that Jerome's got these people into a state where they are
changing things quite dramatically.
But the most exciting things were the changes within the brain.
So the communication between different parts of the brain.
This particular study shows that in the precuneus and the lateral orbital frontal cortex, I
know big words, but between these two particular parts of the brain, it's usually quite heightened
in people that have depression because it's that self-judgment part of the brain where
you're ruminating on, oh my God, I was so terrible today.
I did this so bad.
And that ruminating on self, it's heightened.
And Jerome, after the first adjustment, has changed that.
that in the opposite direction. He's decreased the connection. Decreased the
functional connectivity. Between these two. There's an observably less networked
connections between these two sites within the brain. Yeah and that can
explain why these people have got that significant decrease in their depression
symptoms afterwards. What I reckon is happening is that Jerome is able to
remove obstructions and impediments to whatever the sources that undergirds
material processes.
There is that which is observable, medically and technologically, but this amounts to symptomatic data and that Jerome is interacting with sort of deeper phenomena.
Does that chime, Jerome, with what you feel that you're doing with your work, that you're interacting with deep systems?
You know, I think that I'm just trying to open a system and release the defense mechanism of the body, the defense physiology with my clinical skills.
And the outcome is beyond me.
So you know more about the outcome than for me.
I'm looking at how I open that defense mechanism that is in the body through the five levels of healing.
And I think that I'm only focused on that.
So to answer your question, I don't know.
I just know that if you do that, there's a multiple capacity of healing and regeneration and transformation because it's a common understanding that if you unlock the defense system, there's going to be a greater good outcome.
You're tapping into some really cool areas of the brain, and I think that's really neat.
Because you can actually explain, based on the areas of the brain that he's changing, why he could be possibly getting the results.
And that's new, Russell.
We haven't known before.
It's an interesting area for future study.
Jerome, does it make any difference to you whether you're a tree, a human being, or a horse?
Does it make any difference?
Yes, first of all I would be scared of the horse.
I'm not so scared of people.
Just because obviously the horse are big animals and you have to know how to...
handle them or be next to them but they are very lovely and they're very caring horses anyway but what i'm saying is yes it's a whole different ball game uh but it's the same whether it's a dog or a horse or human being or a baby that cannot speak you can actually test things and have information on the subconscious aspect of that being and so there is a common being Interaction with light emission and nervous system conduction.
I think we are on this planet with this emanation of light.
And this light theory of biology is the key factor.
It's going to be an interesting thing to learn more about Jerome as we continue these conversations.
Dr. Heidi, thank you very much for joining us.
Good luck with your study and publication and future clinical trials that I'm sure you'll undertake.
Jerome, thanks for joining us today.
Thank you.
Thanks very much.
If you want a copy of Reality Check, you can go to www.drheidi.net forward slash ebook to learn more about her work.
