How OMC Can Help
Optimize Mind Care addresses mental health, starting with the brain. As an experienced neurotherapist, Lara Christian is skilled at finding and resolving the root causes of anxiety, depression, and ADHD, among numerous other behavioral and mental health challenges.
OMC specializes in qEEG brain mapping and neurofeedback; both are the foundation of our neuroscience and faith-based approach to care. Our methods have been perfected during Lara’s 14-year career in the mental health field to offer clients maximum transformation and lasting results. These services include:
QEEG (Brain Mapping)
Neurofeedback (Brainwave Training)
Transcranial Photobiomodulation
Interactive Metronome
Brain Health Coaching
Biblical and Individual Counseling
qEEG (Brain Mapping)
What is qEEG?
Quantitative EEG (qEEG) is a non-invasive, cutting-edge approach that analyzes the brain’s electrical activity to pinpoint the areas that are not functioning optimally and causing or contributing to a patient’s undesired symptoms.
At Optimize Mind Care, we are committed to getting our clients results by addressing problems at their source. To do that, qEEG brain mapping is the starting point at OMC. Driven by research, we believe in looking at the organ we are trying to impact, in this case, the brain. This enables us to make recommendations based on your brainwave data and symptoms versus an educated guess upon your symptoms alone.
How Does qEEG Brain Mapping Work?
During a qEEG brain map appointment, patients wear a cap with 19 electrodes filled with electrode gel, which allows us to read and record brainwave signals produced by 85 billion neurons in the brain. This procedure is painless and non-invasive. It only monitors brainwave activity, so there is no electrical stimulation or shock.
What Can You Learn From A Brain Map?
The information from your qEEG recording is compared to a normative database to determine if there are any areas where your brain is functioning outside the norm. Common abnormalities include an overactive or underactive brain and inefficient communication between brain regions.
Abnormal brain function is at the root of many mood, behavior, attention, sleep, learning, and cognitive issues. A brain map confirms if these abnormalities exist and reveals the connection between a client’s symptoms and the brain regions responsible for those symptoms.
Benefits of Identifying Mental Health Issues with qEEG Brain Mapping
Brain mapping provides far more insight into where the problem is coming from in the brain compared to describing symptoms or answering questions on a form. What may seem like one condition from a questionnaire can often be entirely different when brainwave patterns are analyzed. For example, a verbal questionnaire may suggest an ADHD diagnosis, compared to a brain map prompting an impulsivity or anxiety disorder caused by abnormal connections between neurons.
An inaccurate diagnosis significantly increases the risk of inappropriate or ineffective treatment. Brain mapping provides the essential data to recommend the most appropriate and effective neurofeedback protocols or interventions.
Patients frequently report they are encouraged and relieved by the information the brain map uncovers and believe it shows what is going on compared to tests taken. Most clients state the results describe their struggles remarkably well and explain why previous remedies did not work.
Neurofeedback (BRAINWAVE TRAINING)
What is Neurofeedback Therapy?
Neurofeedback is an enjoyable and interactive 30-minute brain training session where the brain learns to function more optimally. To accomplish this, a patient’s brainwave data is continuously monitored while watching a movie or playing a video game.
When their brainwave activity changes to a pattern that will help resolve their undesired symptom (i.e.: anxiety), the patient advances in their video game or the visual effects of the movie are enhanced (i.e., a larger size of movie on the screen, a clearer picture versus fuzzy one, louder volume). This rewards the brain for establishing a new way of functioning.
Training sessions are repeated weekly to establish optimal patterns to take over so that the old ways contributing to symptoms go away. These brain function changes can result in many changes, including improved thinking, mood, behavior, and cognition. The improvements made in brain training therapy can endure without the continued use of neurofeedback. Clients can see the progress made in their brain map.
Other common names for neurofeedback are EEG biofeedback, brain wave training, and neurotherapy.
What Does Neurofeedback Therapy Address?
Your brainwaves are involved moment-to-moment in everything you do, including how you think, feel, act, and get along with people. The origin of your judgment, creativity, and personality is your brain. So when it is not functioning right, you are significantly more likely to struggle in your everyday life.
Neurofeedback is a promising therapeutic tool that normalizes patients’ abnormal brainwave activity to resolve symptoms and enhance cognitive performance in healthy participants. It can be effective for most brain-based conditions, including ADHD, anxiety, and depression. As well as memory, insomnia, PTSD, TBI, and autism.
Optimize Mind Care optimizes brain function, allowing clients to think, feel, and function better.
The literature, which lacks any negative study of substance, suggests that EEG Biofeedback Therapy should play a major therapeutic role in many difficult areas. In my opinion, if any medication had demonstrated such a wide spectrum of efficacy, it would be universally accepted and widely used. It is a field to be taken seriously by all.
– Frank Duffy, M.D., Neurologist at Harvard Medical School
Transcranial Photobiomodulation
What is Transcranial Photobiomodulation?
Transcranial photobiomodulation (tPBM) is a non-invasive and painless light therapy proven to increase blood flow, reduce inflammation and increase cellular energy within the brain. Clinical research has shown that tPBM can improve memory, mood stability, cognitive function, and movement.
This is accomplished by wearing a helmet with light-emitting diodes (LEDs) that deliver a pulsed wavelength of light through the skull. The light is absorbed by mitochondria within the brain’s neurons. This results in increased ATP production, which triggers a beneficial chain of events within these cellular structures, significantly impacting overall brain health and function.
What Does Transcranial Photobiomodulation Address?
The brain can be impacted by disorders categorized into three main groups: traumatic events, degenerative diseases, and psychiatric disorders. Clinical research shows that the application of this specific pulsed wavelength of light to the brain can be helpful for these various disorders, including Alzheimer’s, Long Covid, Parkinson’s, Autism, Anxiety, Depression, and TBI. Photobiomodulation is also frequently used by healthy individuals to drive optimal performance. Research shows it improves cognitive function, energy, focus, and alertness.
Interactive Metronome
What is Interactive Metronome?
Interactive Metronome (IM) is an enjoyable and interactive evidence-based training tool that guides clients to sync specific hand and foot movements to audio and visual cues. Repeating these exercises improves the brain’s neural timing.
Precise neural timing is essential since it is involved in all functions the brain carries out and is responsible for, including the 100 trillion calculations it makes per second. When the brain’s timing is working right, it improves focus, coordination, planning, and processing speed. When your neural timing is out of sync, it can lead to problems in many of these areas.
What Does Interactive Metronome Address?
IM can help children and adults. It is effective for various conditions, including ADHD, autism, TBI, sensory processing disorders, learning disabilities, expressive and receptive language disorders, and dyslexia.
Research shows IM improves cognition, focus, attention, memory, executive functioning, comprehension, speech, and sensory and motor skills.
Brain Health Coaching
What is Brain Health Coaching?
The history of your brain health and function is not how it always has to be. If you have difficulty focusing, poor sleep quality, memory issues, or automatic negative thoughts, it doesn’t mean you always will. You can start impacting your brain health by applying what you learn in coaching to your everyday life.
Brain health coaching uses a patient’s evaluation, qEEG brain map, and assessments to identify habits linked to mood, memory, and cognitive impairment that negatively impact overall brain health. This information is used to provide clients a personalized plan of evidence-based recommendations that can optimize their brain health.
What does Brain Health Coaching Address?
Brain health coaching helps patients identify and eliminate habits negatively impacting their brain health, mental well-being, and cognitive functioning. Research shows that lifespan is affected roughly 20% by genetics and 80% by lifestyle choices. The takeaway is habits matter, and unhealthy ones can contribute to numerous cognitive and mental health issues. For that reason, our patients are educated and given tools and recommendations for diet, sleep, exercise, and healthy relationships.
Individual Counseling
Optimize Mind Care offers individual counseling to help clients heal, overcome challenges, gain clarity, achieve goals, and find their way to a meaningful, balanced, and peace-filled life in this busy world. The primary approach we use in individual counseling is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). We most frequently work with young adults as well as adults of all ages dealing with:
- Addictions
- Anger
- Anxiety
- Avoidant/Isolating Behaviors
- Codependency
- Depression
- Impulsivity
- Insomnia
- Life Transitions
- Mood Disorders
- Obsessive-Compulsive (OCD)
- Relationship Issues
- Self-Esteem Issues
- Spirituality Issues
- Stress
- Substance Use/Numbing
- Trauma
- Women’s Issues
What Does Individual Counseling Address?
Counseling can be very effective but cannot heal underlying brain dysfunction. People often spend years in therapy without seeing significant results. OMC believes in identifying and resolving the root causes of a client’s symptoms to help achieve lasting change. To do this, we recommend qEEG brain mapping before starting your counseling sessions.
Brain mapping is a non-invasive and painless recording that reveals how the brain areas linked to your symptoms or behaviors are functioning. This data can also confirm the origin of your symptoms. For example, it helps reveal if your anxiety is real anxiety or originates from trauma, insomnia, or mild traumatic brain injury.
Counseling is most successful when looking at the organ we are trying to affect. This way, we can provide the most accurate recommendations to deliver impactful outcomes.
Start by taking the necessary steps toward a more promising and hopeful future!
Initial Consultation & qEEG Brain Map
During this appointment, we take a detailed history and conduct a qEEG to assess your brain activity and function.
Report of Findings Appointment
We explain your qEEG brain map findings at this appointment and summarize our recommendations to provide the best results.
