Customer Reviews

Healing Young Brains: The Neurofeedback Solution

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a neurofeedback therapist, I'm buying this book to share with clients who want to read of other's experiences with neurofeedback. Wanted to add to the review that this treatment is quite effective, non-invasive, and safe and I'm constantly amazed at how our brains can learn and change for the better. It's a new world opening to us and I applaud the authors for making it accessible to readers with a variety of behavioral concerns.

I found this book to be full of useful information on different brain dysfunctions and how neurofeedback can help. It is written in a way that I could understand how the treatment works and the theory of what is wrong in the brain to begin with. I especially liked how fair the information was. No where did the authors discredit traditional or conventional medicine and were open with the limitations of this treatment (no "snake oil" salesman here). So many times when someone is bringing forth information that is not "main stream", they try to make main stream look bad or have a "my way or the highway" philosophy. These authors give emotion free reasons why neurofeedback is not in use by the majorities of physicians and even show where conventional medicine can work and when the two can give better results than either one by itself.
When dealing with children's health, I feel every means needs to be investigated, and this book makes logical sense and I am excitied to explore its possibilities.

It's great to find that there are drug-free, non-addictive, non-invasive remedies that work for our children.
This book covers a wide variety of childhood problems and medical problems in an easy to understand way.
This book gives greater hope for attaining & maintaining better physical and mental health for our children.

It is rare today to find any family untouched by such brain disorders as ADHD and autism. And with the problems related to these conditions constantly in the media, I thought I had learned everything a parent would ever need to know about the various diagnoses and treatments available.

But until I began reading Healing Young Brains, I had never heard of neurofeedback as a way to treat these problems in children.

Neurofeedback is a means of brainwave feedback therapy that trains the brain to overcome abnormal brainwave activity, and to maintain optimum brainwave activity permanently.

In Healing Young Brains, Drs Hill and Castro discuss many of the disorders that plague our children... from bi-polar disorder to Tourette's syndrome ... and how they've found neurofeedback is an effective way to treat, and often completely eliminate the symptoms of, these disorders.

While I have no experience with neurofeedback myself, Hill and Castro produce here a compelling argument that neurofeedback should be considered a frontline treatment for many of these childhood problems. While promoting their premise, the book is quite evenhanded in its treatments as well. Healing Young Brains is not a polemic against prescribing drugs when they prove useful. Nor does it ignore using diet and nutrition to temper the symptoms of brain disorders.

With its many anecdotes, Healing Young Brains is not an intimidating medical book, but rather an accessible and important book that every parent with an ADHD or ASD-diagnosed child should read.

Very helpful. Provides a clear understanding of how the functioning of young brains can so easily be impaired. But more importantly, how the damage can be corrected without the use of drugs.

The title of this book, "HEALING Young Brains" says it all. It is not about treating symptoms but truly addressing the root of the problem. Rather than learning to simply manage your child's condition, your child can completely overcome it. My child has gone from ADD with behavioral problems in school, as well as at home, to a child who exhibits no symptoms of ADD, excels in school, and is doing so much better at home. I am truly grateful to Dr. Castro and Dr. Hill for getting this information out there. This book contains a wealth of information on how to truly help your child.

A child's brain is constantly changing, so how safe is it to treat childhood disorders with medication? Is your child trapped in the cycle of taking prescription drugs for the side effects of other drugs? Are you searching for an alternative?

Healing Young Brains: The Neurofeedback Solution discusses successful treatment with neurofeedback. Doctors Hill and Castro provide a wealth of information about this method, and address its effects on disorders ranging from autism to headaches. They cite specific cases as examples, and provide illustrations of the checklists used to assess the progress of the neurofeedback sessions.

As an adult with OCD and ADD, I am always concerned about my son either inheriting the same traits, or simply picking up my quirks from being around me on a daily basis. Consequently, I found the chapter on temperature training to be particularly interesting. Apparently, children have an easier time adjusting their body temperature than adults do, when learning how to respond to stress.

While many chapters refer to "trainers" and neurofeedback machines to monitor electrical activity in the brain, as well as other responses from the body, the science behind the method did not strike me as some radical new approach. Rather, to a certain extent, biofeedback treatments are akin to the meditative qualities of natural healing found throughout history.

For additional reading: Getting Rid of Ritalin: How Neurofeedback Can Successfully Treat Attention Deficit Disorder Without Drugs

if you are a parent of an autistic kid, skip this review. just doing something proactive is helpful in so many ways. more power to ya.

if you want to know about neurofeedback and there is not a deep emotional issue at stake, read on.




neurofeedback is a promising treatment. probably not strictly for learning disabilities, including autism, but brains in general. nonetheless, we don't need more people insisting on what is healthy for us or not, when no one actually knows. this book relies heavily on "folk wisdom". authors of these books often champion "alternative medicine" or rally against the experts. which i think is a good thing. often they have a very good idea, but amidst these soap box tangents, that can be ignored.

The author reiterates his conclusions ad nauseam, but never seems to present much hard evidence of what he so strongly believes. for instance, he recommends homeopathy highly and claims the traditional medical establishment wants to keep it from us. the real criticism about things like homeopathy is not that it can't be true, it's we need to find some hard evidence BEFORE telling folks it's a miracle cure. the establishment is just very stingy with thee medicine it will vouch for. whereas folk wizards are prone to shout "wonder cure" before they have more than anecdotal stories, that might indicate a good thing. and even then the logic isn't always dead on.


for instance. this book mentions that more kids are diagnosed with autism these days. he says in their view, academia believes this is because we have much better diagnostic tests now. the autistic kids have always been there. however, this author believes it is because autism is actually on the rise (due to toxins and electronics, among other things). his interpretation of the statistics may well be correct, but at this point, the other explanation is still far more likely. neither are at all proven. academia doesn't dictate that their explanation is fact, but that given the lack of evidence, the most likely explanation is what they will assume.

the author brings up case stories of parents frustrated for years with autistic children, who try drastic dietary changes, and eventually report things beginning to improve. humans ordinarily see some improvement in a discouraging task when they put lots of effort into trying something proactive. and he certainly knows this! but chooses to ignore it in order to "prove" his point. furthermore, in nearly every case, the parent never reports that the problem has been eliminated, but that it's always starting to get better. if it perpetually feels like that, it's likely just an illusion.

he does acknowledge that the link between EMFs (electromagnetic frequencies, like from cell phones) and autism is not proven, but goes on to ask, why put our own children at risk. this sounds sensible, but just isn't. he obviously doesn't know much about electricity or assumes that we don't. he doesn't suggest we unplug our refrigerators, but thinks hard wired phones are a safe alternative to wireless ones. but why stop at EMFs? every possible thing anyone imagines might just be bad for us. if we try to protect against it all, our kids would end up living in plastic bubbles - accept that not having contact with ordinary things and people would also lead to maladjustment.


the book is a good read, but the enormous trend it is part of is self-inhibiting. neurofeedback deserves more rigorous scientific analysis and testing. Unfortunately, it may get a bad rap with academia for being associated with bad logic and unfounded medicine. Academia may simply brush it aside like so many other "remedies". they surely see a lot of reactionary parents desperate for a "solution", those who can make a buck off their ignorance and miss the underlying principals, before the science behind neurofeedback is systematically ironed out. Neurofeedback is hardly perfected at this point and we need their help to do it. Just as they need ours to incorporate it into culture. We also might ask our autistic children to figure out the tip at restaurants for us. Everyone has their strengths. Don't write anyone off.