In this episode of the Heal Nourish Grow podcast, Cheryl McColgan speaks with Guy Odishaw about the challenges faced by children in the school system. They discuss the impact of technology on children’s behavior, the rising incidence of ADHD, and the importance of regulating the brain to improve outcomes.

Guy shares insights into innovative approaches to brain health, including the use of neuromodulation devices that help solve dysregulation in the brain, ultimately aiming to enhance focus and learning in children. Guy discusses the importance of moderating dysregulation in children to improve their learning outcomes. He highlights the positive effects of audio visual entrainment in educational settings, sharing success stories from schools that have implemented this technology.

The conversation also addresses the challenges of sustaining such programs and the need for passionate advocates to drive change. Additionally, Guy explains how families can access this technology for home use and emphasizes the importance of integrating it into daily routines for maximum benefit.

Find Guy at Cerebralfit.com

Takeaways

• The school system is facing overwhelming challenges post-pandemic.


• Teachers are often left without adequate resources to manage classroom behavior.


• The rise in ADHD diagnoses is linked to various factors, including technology.


• Dopamine regulation is crucial for children’s behavior and learning.


• Neuromodulation devices can help regulate brain function effectively.


• Parents and teachers can benefit from brain regulation techniques.


• Simple interventions can lead to significant improvements in children’s focus and learning. Regulating dysregulation can significantly enhance learning outcomes.


• Audio visual entrainment has shown positive results in educational settings.


• Anxiety reduction leads to improved self-esteem and performance in students.


• Integrating technology into daily life can enhance its effectiveness.


• The rental program allows families to try the technology before purchasing.


• Positive changes in schools can lead to a more engaged classroom environment.


• Teachers’ stress levels decrease when students are well-regulated.


• The device can benefit multiple users in a household.

Watch on YouTube

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Episode Transcript

Cheryl McColgan (00:00 .826)
Hi everyone, welcome to the Heal and Nourish Grow podcast. Today I am joined by Guy Otishaw. Easy for me to say, right? It should be easy to say because this is the third time that you’ve been on this show and happy to have you back. Before we get into the topic of the day, Guy, can you just share with everybody, I’ve read your official bio of course, like always, but could you just share a little bit of your background and how you got into this work and what makes you so passionate about helping people in the way that you do?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:30 .23)
Well, it’s great to be back. Thank you. So my background is primarily in integrative medicine and kind of two main tracks for me, my private practice as a practitioner, but then in some ways really my more full-time job, which is building clinics. My biggest clinic was a large integrative medicine clinic with 30 providers kind of across the spectrum of care from allopathic MDs all the way to

energy work of various kinds and everything in between. And then my own private practice has been primarily kind of on the orthopedic side, pain, trauma, working on the body. But then over time, I got interested in bioelectric medicine. And then that led me down the path of bioelectric medicine. And then that led me to brains in particular. And now I spend most of my time working directly on the brain with neuroimaging.

neurofeedback, neurostimulation, neuromodulation. so, so now my private practice and my clinic life are much more similar as I’ve kind of dropped the big integrative clinic and moved to a more focused, you know, kind of brain centric bioelectric medicine specific approach for brain health.

Cheryl McColgan (01:49 .168)
Yeah, love that. the fact that you’ve done so much work with these clinics and have that background, I think makes you really uniquely positioned to have a lot of knowledge across various subjects. And when we chatted before about what we wanted to talk about today, because you are such a wealth of knowledge, but I thought that the topic that you proposed was really good because it has to, almost everybody has a child in their life in some way, whether it’s a niece, a nephew, their own child.

something like that, somebody they know is probably in school in some capacity. And one of the programs that you’ve been working on has been with children specifically. And certainly since the pandemic, there has been a lot of changes in schools, a lot more stress in schools in a lot of ways. And the teachers are fighting a lot of this too. So I’d it if you could just share some of the things just more broadly now in the school system. What are their challenges?

what kinds of things are children experiencing, and then we’ll get into obviously kind of the ways that you deliver the brain health part, how you can actually help them with some of these methods that you have.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (02:57 .304)
Yeah, it’s a favorite topic of mine and program that we’re developing at the clinic. So I’ll, you know, go back. I don’t know. You know, I have a mantra, don’t do the math, right? I’ll go back about 40 years. But when I was first in college, I went in for education and I got, I don’t know, about three years into the program. So far enough where I was doing internships, so was out in the schools.

And I learned very early on that I was not wired to be in the elementary school setting. Like, it was just clear, like, hey, nope, this isn’t gonna go for me, it’s not gonna go well for the children. So I moved on to then post-secondary or secondary and then had a similar realization there that, nope, still, this is not a good match. Eventually…

into adult education and then that’s where I was like, okay, this is my place. I can have a reasoned conversation with my students and that worked for me personally. So what that gives me is an immense respect for the people who can be in the classroom, know, K through 12 really, but we tend to focus a lot on K to eight.

Cheryl McColgan (03:56 .614)
You

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (04:21 .302)
And so I’ve always had that, right? The thing that I couldn’t do, immense respect for the people who do it. But now when I listen to my clients who are teachers and friends and neighbors, but mostly the detailed stories I hear from my clients and what an average teacher puts up with today is so far removed.

from my worst day in the classroom, which today any of the teachers would beg to have that be like their best day isn’t that good. And so again, hard for me to imagine that these folks get up and go back to work every day and do what they do with what they have to deal with in a classroom in terms of behavior and.

And not that any of it is considered acceptable. It’s just the ability to try and manage it. And what are the resources that a teacher can call on, whether that’s parental involvement, administrative involvement. The problem has outscaled the available resources. that’s what we hear over and over and over again from teachers is the overwhelm.

Cheryl McColgan (05:45 .166)
And I mean, I’m sure people can imagine that there’s any number of things from behavior, but the reasons for behavior I think might be a little bit interesting to go into because one of the things that I’ve heard from previous guests and that I have seen data on it myself is that the incidence of ADHD is climbing as is people that are on the autism spectrum. And all of those things kind of come along with behavioral

challenges for sure and sometimes severe enough that it puts them in a Individualized education program kind of situation. So that’s a little different They might be in a classroom with other kids Are there other things outside of those two things that I just mentioned that teachers are experiencing? Is it? That the parents are involved in a different way or the kids are acting a different way or is they’re on their phones all the time What’s what’s the thing that you kind of hear the most that makes it more challenging for them?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (06:41 .974)
Yeah, yeah, I mean it’s it’s so multifactorial with sometimes small but sometimes large shifts across many different points in the average child’s life and and so everything you just said But there’s so many variables within that, you know, so it’s I think it’s too easy

to simply shift towards the parents and just say, all of this lands at you. Or as maybe certainly teachers would say, or anybody in the school system would say, too often it’s the other way. It’s oriented towards the school and to the teacher and saying, this is all on you. And you’re the origin of the problem and you need to be the origin of the solution, figure it out.

And so we tend to have this kind of back and forth teachers pointing to the family and the families pointing to the teacher. And there’s truth in all of that. So, I mean, there’s just so much research we could go through around what seems to be the explanation for th