 A bienvenido to Hispanic Hawaii, I am your host, Richard Concepcion. Today's program is going to be about brain training with Dr. Melba Stens. She is a licensed psychology and a brain trainer. Also, she is the CEO and the owner of Biofeedback Therapy Hawaii Clinic. She takes your time to help others who need help with PTSD, ADHD, stress, TBI, and teach and train to keep your brain in a good condition. Just like if we train or about it to be in a good physical condition, we should also train our brain. So welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Alright, so let's start the show by asking you what inspired you to become a psychologist and it's such a difficult subject that is the brain. I think the brain is so interesting, so intriguing, and we still don't know it all, don't understand it completely. My father is a physician and my mother is a physician, so I've always been in the medical field. In the military, I was a research psychologist. I retired two years ago, a lieutenant colonel, and my background, my licensing in Hawaii, and my degrees are more work psychologists or big performance, so I help people train their brains so it works better and the behavior is better and they're happier. Alright, tell me a little bit about the nail you created, Biofeedback Therapy Hawaii. Thank you. So I used to call it by the waves, by the brain waves or ocean waves, but I understood that some people were looking more for something specific, so I changed the name to Biofeedback Therapy Hawaii because I don't only put my clients to systems to capture the biofeedback or the biological feedback information from the brain or the body, I also talk to them and give some counseling, confidential counseling, military and others, and to unsubcoaching. So Biofeedback just means giving feedback from the psychophysiology. Oh that's perfect. So you mentioned that you retired from the military lieutenant colonel. You was born in Puerto Rico. Yes. You stay here in Hawaii to provide service to the community. Tell me a little bit about your military background and what you do for the community here in Hawaii. So I started as an enlisted ortho-tech because I wanted, when I was in Puerto Rico, I just wanted to move on and move on, so then later on I finished my bachelor, my master's, while I was in the military, and then when it was good enough for the military system, I transferred to what I would do my PhD to research psychology. I've been helping a lot of people, even when I was deployed to Iraq, I went to Afghanistan, I was stationed in Korea, Panama. It's all about helping the pain, the psychological pain that we have by retraining, reframing. I like doing work also with Dr. Sinbardo about keeping people in the present and the future more than in the past time perspective. So tell me a little bit about how the whole program work. So it's a person in health, they call you, they contact you, then they come in and they go through a different program that is neurofeedback, biofeedback, and brain stimulation. Can you talk to me about those different areas? So yes, they can contact me via email, text, phone, or my website, biofeedbacktherapyhawai.com and we set up an appointment. Most people come to my office in Kailua over the weekend or in the evenings. I'm also starting to see some clients in ADHD center in Honolulu and then with another clinical psychologist just to help those people that need to use their medical plan. I don't take medical plan at this time, but it's very affordable. And anyway, so I first have an intake. I talk to them about their needs, their wants, their main goal. I also do a QEG or quantitative electroencephalogram, which is a brain map, to see what their signature wave, for example, is the slow or fast and what part of the brain. If they have fast waves in the frontal lobe or they have slow waves in the frontal lobe, that's going to affect their behavior, their thinking and their work environment, their life environment, their sleep. So we talk about all that and then during this session, sessions tend to be one hour, I tend to train them via either electrodes in their brain per se that they see their brain waves and they start doing things like playing chess or a video game or something to modify their brain waves or they can either or I modify as needed. They can have some sensors in their skin to capture, for example, hardware variabilities, skin conductance, skin resistance, different things that tells me and tells them that they're being stressed or not and how to work on that. I also have brain stimulation, which is just some sensors here in the cranial area and or music or life that just help with the mood and the brain waves again. Because my goal, I tend to see them once a week for an hour because my goal is that it transfers, just transfers some training. They can actually do this at home. I don't want it to depend on me or my equipment. It's not so always in the clinic. They can do outside the clinic, at work, at home. And I give them links that they can find from different places that can retrain their brain etc. So after like 10 sessions, typically I do another test, another brain test and then we'll see the results and then we talk about if they want to continue more sessions or if they feel comfortable enough they reach most of their goals of what they wanted the main goal and they want to just come like once a month for a booster session or etc. So I had the opportunity to come into your office and able to do the neurofeedback, the biofeedback and the brain stimulation. Now, can you tell me what is the benefit about these three different stages that a patient get when they come in and go through other different stages? I think it's mostly be self-conscious, create consciousness about how they feel. Many times when I was in the military I was doing clinical research protocols for PTSD, stress management, TBI, traumatic brain injury, etc. And a lot of soldiers will tell me I'm not stressed and then I will use the blood pressure machine and it will be way out. Exactly, so we'll practice different techniques like diaphragmatic breathing or different things and then later on we'll test them again and the blood pressure will go down so we'll associate. That's like the situation when I came in and I'll tell you I was not sleeping and we was doing the neurofeedback and you say you're sleepy and but I was denied, I was sleeping but I was really sleeping. That's the beauty of this, I love technology because it gives you the right feedback. I can tell you, oh you're stressed out, you can tell me you're stressed out, we can hypothesize about it. However if I put some system that you can actually see it and gives you feedback about it then it makes you feel more conscientious of what's going on in your life. For example if you're playing a game and I'm asking you to, we agree that we want to be on beta waves or attention in the frontal lobe and all of a sudden the game is like a spaceship stops working, you can tell me oh the software is not working, I'll be like no, no, no, you need to focus more. You know focus on the task. Exactly. So when we was at the office you mentioned about ADHD and on a child and you was talking about it and I thought what is the correlation between these two? Many people do not know, ADHD has a generic predisposition meaning it's in our DNA. So I feel sad but on at the same time when many parents come to my office to my clinic and they bring their kids and they basically say help me or fix them and I have to politely tell them you know there's a high probability that you have some of these symptoms too and then we start talking about it and many times the clients, my clients, it becomes the child and later on it's half the session because sometimes I have one hour for both, half session the child because after 30 minutes they don't want to do anything else, it's enough for them a lot of intensity and then the parents and then I believe it improves their family dynamic because they're both like kind of understand each other, the parent identify oh I didn't know I had these symptoms too because the psychiatric association, American Psychiatric Association did not come with this diagnosis until around 2013-2014. Yes so a lot of people that have ADHD, like myself, we didn't know we just thought we were clumsy, we thought we only heard a lot of negative things about us and we didn't know it's a neurochemical disorder just like diabetes so many times we have to use medication to help us control our thoughts so the rate is fast but we can slow down and actually prevent saying or doing something that could be high-risk or not needed at that time. We tend to be ADHD very smart however it's not a disorder, the gentleman, the psychiatrist that came up with that name or suggested that name, it made a disorder, it's not really a disorder, it's just like selective listening, like your spouse might just listen to something, it's selective attention, like we can know a lot about something and about other things, we don't care. You can take me to a trivia show and I'll lose because I don't care about a lot of things but the things that I know, I know it to the to the hundredth level. So the benefit, what is the benefit coming to you Clayton first going to a regular doctor and give you some medication? I think it's all good because I work with good neurologists like Dr. Liao, I work with good psychologists, I have a system okay however so I'm not I'm not gonna preach about this is better than this I think is everything's complementary. Matter of fact I have some clients that sometimes I'm the one suggesting you know maybe they should go to your primary doctor or a neurologist or someone that will give you something to for your child to relax and be able to learn could be temporary so this helps the neurochemistry medication does the same thing so the only difference because between medication and what I'm doing is just that it gives you puts like a mirror in your face okay so when you're getting upset just like with the medication a lot of people just wanted to fix something or to numb something with this you're actually seeing at the same time and you become more conscientious about it so it's a complementary system. Now let me ask you a little bit about Yuda, Yuda is over 90 years old now and he's showing sign or memory loss and Alzheimer's can we use this program can we use this program for the same thing to help and test and maybe train the brain to be able to get any good shape? Yes the efficacy of neurofeedback by a feedback has been very high for a long time for ADHD but it hasn't been it wasn't being used as much for other categories of groups you're talking about working with focus that's focusing is part of cognitive health and it's part of pre Alzheimer's etc my father has tried this too and the good thing about it is that it gives you feedback to stay focused the more you practice it's like the brain is like a muscle the more you practice focusing and concentration and memory the more you're gonna prevent this type of detrimental or progressive diseases however it won't cure it it won't prevent it completely but it will help exercise your brain. Oh wow so you give them tasks they had to do a home they had to do a work any place for the daily life so how does it work you just after you do the the the map of the brain and you identify the issues and then you start assigning different activities so they can do at the clinic when they come in once a week and they also can do it at home as they going back to the regular life right so yes so since I'm not a clinical psychologist I'm an organizational psychologist which is about school work and pick performance I'm very holistic and therefore to me it's all about balance I don't want the client to believe that I am that I that I think that the tools is the only good thing no okay I don't have to have tools I just I talked with the clients about how they are feeling at home are they sleeping what and know how many hours they sleep but do they wake up rested are they eating healthy are they drinking a lot of water for example are they having hobby do they work the school and I correlate all that with their main goal which you could be getting a new job or graduating or whatever and so their homework is to be conscientious of that right they can keep a journal or not but we will discuss it before every session and the whole is always after the session so oh wow that's a great program so we are going to take a quick break and we're going to return and we're going to continue talking about brain training with Dr. Melva Stance thank you Aloha and welcome back to Hispanic Hawaii we here talking about brain training with Dr. Melva Stance so we're having a good time talking about all the different things that we do and I know you're a very busy person so tell me a little bit about all this stuff that you do beside concentrating helping those who are stressed who have PTSD TVI and sadness oh well a after almost 30 years in the military I retired Southern Colonel 2014 I'm doing a lot of work on stress PTSD TVI I realized that I I was not ready to completely retire I tried but I couldn't so the energy line was still there yeah because ADHD and I'm trying to do a call in Hawaii for I'd also have ADHD or any ADHD symptom please call me because I'm trying to make groups and support groups for that because we have like Greg Gregory Mason said we have superpowers we have a lot of great stuff so I do brain test or electroencephalograms at Castle Medical Center and was just local hospital I also teach HPU to the military campus program about psychology bio psychology military psychology organization for psychology I also teach for UH Community College per Harvard to the the trainees for the submarine and I teach them psychology at work and I have my my clinic I'm also lately a few weeks ago I started with the ADHD Center in Honolulu so I'm seeing patients over there so I like staying busy but at the same time I've published on work family conflict so I try my best to stay with the family enjoy with the family my pets my house and the beautiful Hawaii well that's so nice to do also you participate it for the boxing championship match and you you was there watching and you volunteer your time to help those boxers and tell me a little bit about those people they they are doing a sport and sometimes they get hit in the head and they really don't take it seriously very sad very sad my father as a physiatrist he took care of I mean one of his clients was Pele the soccer player yes and everything has to be with traumatic brain injury people do not we're getting to know understand people don't understand completely is how important it is an impact to the brain even if it's a closed heat or open they start bleeding etc a concussion a concussion a mile a more traumatic brain anything that hits your brain is gonna be a problem when you see teenagers hitting their locker with that's bad that's bad you can have headaches later on you can have maybe a minor stroke and then you're in the floor I do a lot of I see a lot of patients at the ICU in a castle and it's because something happened they ended up in the floor so boxers they're always having hits in the head and I mean Muhammad Ali is such a brain such a beautiful person but ended up having problems with the the brocade area and the Wernicke area and the brain that has to produce the information the brocade area and it's sad because it affects his life so also like I said soccer players everything that every sport we sport that has some involvement we hit in the air in the military a lot of soldiers didn't want to wear the helmets or didn't want to hear the the audio and that affects your you know with tinnitus and a lot of problems happen so we have to cover up I know how I seem to you know the helmet the motorcycle but I'm saying every time you can word word because it's about your head so you were we groups individual retiree military and you do consulting in English and it's oh yes I'm pulling bilingual because I'm Puerto Rican and my father Peru Peruvian and he lives with us and I want to help also in Hawaii I want to help the Hispanic population so please contact me I don't know where you are I'm in Kailua so let me ask you one more question here reference about a DHD how can you identify when a child a DHD is there any way to identify them easy for me that I know what it is and I see it on my father full blown and I can sense it right away but with a map with a brain map or in subphalogram what I see is the signature mostly theta waves and high beta meaning super fast like 20 to 30 Hertz a second and then it goes to a 4 to 8 Hertz because it's like doing doing doing the brain super fast it's like a mother change and then it's I'm exhausted part of the mood swing as well yes some people said that bipolar whatever but yes the the brain has so much going on I mean we're talking about Einstein will Smith a Michael Phelps yes who'd be go over some many people are Jesus Timberlake that he sings Justin Kennedy yes John F. Kennedy Pression of United States can you believe that some presidents have ADHD some are medicated some are not some are treated some are under diagnosed but anyway ADHD is a beautiful thing and my mission is to try to support that as a beautiful thing just if schools don't understand ADHD kids that I'm telling you see them in the front and moms stop giving them anything that excites them after five o'clock have them in some type of healthy and safe sport to get the energy out let them do what they want because those are the future genius the engineers we have a lot of great stuff in the ADHD community so it's so lucky we were talking before it's a correlation so sometimes the parents that you would tell me the parents bring the kids and say hey my child have a problem they don't realize that that maybe it came genetic right yes yeah so nurture and nature okay the nature will be the genetic predisposition the DNA the message that we have in our blood in our genes and nurture is the home environment so if the parents all the time hyper-focusing that's one of the skills of ADHD hyper-focusing five six hours and they don't go to bathroom they don't eat they don't anything just concentrating one thing yes and then the child does it and the father is like the parent is like hey you need to stop doing that you're giving them a mix message because you're doing it but you're not in your child do it so once we have more knowledge about hey it's a family thing it's neurochemical we might need some medication we might know we might need some brain training feedback or we might have to do take other tools to help us then I've seen so many families improving and being happier because of that so then you take into the clinic as a family that's when you do group you do group session so you can do the bottom of the dad you can do all together the spouse so for a lot of spouse you can ask my husband they suffer a lot because they don't know they don't know that you have like like like five monitors open because you have five boxes five projects open and they don't know sometimes how to connect the dots for you it makes sense but for them it's like what so it's a retraining the spouse is re-explaining the path the the spouse what's going on the children the mom the school the worker like when I go to castle I like working when I'm doing my my analysis I like being in the corner not being interrupted because I get distracted so I put all my energy my brain power into into that so my typical bosses they love me because every time they ask me for produce I'm like right there exactly so let's talk about PTSD just a little bit about PTSD you know ex-soldiers and we was deployed many many many times and we return home how the whole symptom of PTSD work it is so difficult to understand yeah I'm not gonna deny it is that I have symptoms of PTSD and I've been treated I think it's very important to know that that's another investment in this invincible one I was thinking in Spanish another invincible invisible wound meaning that people cannot see it but it hurts us at many levels and actually a lot of people that have ADHD which is part of what I'm putting on my new website a lot of people that have ADHD they can have PTSD symptoms because they've been bullied okay and they've been told this little you're a mess up you can do that because ADHD is considered also a learning disability true because we learn at the beginning when I learned something I look retarded it but like once I learned is get out of my way get on my way because I know what you know and what they know and you know what I'm saying so so a lot of ADHD or they they end up having PTSD symptoms because it's traumatic the whole life they've been treating them like bad and then once they realize everything then they have to forgive forget move on but it's very painful well so is anybody want to get in contact with you to what way they can get in contact the only signature about PTSD that I failed to mention is anger frustration and that's what the society medication or training or tools can help ameliorate that they can contact me at a AOA 347 for 6 to 6 they can text me AOA 347 for 6 to 6 I'll go to my website website yeah my old ways website was by the way is how I dot com but I'm changing it to biofeedback therapy how I dot com with the help of Ben and Patrick all right well we want to say I want to say thank you so much to come into his spanish Hawaii help us to understand how our brain work and what we need to do to keep our brain in a good shape and then we want to say thank you so much any final thoughts please AVS deers adults contact me and if you have some PTSD military and you want to keep it confidential contact me I'm here to help you thank you all right don't forget we're here in spanish Hawaii with Dr. Melba stands she is a licensed psychology and a brain trainer and if you need to get in contact with her you can call 808 347 for 6 to 6 and we're going to return with his spanish Hawaii for the next show and those who miss the show don't forget you can go to thinktechhawai.com and we want to say thank you and if you want to get in contact with me you can call me 808-256-3802 or you can send me a tweet at RichardConception on Twitter.com thank you so much gracias and aloha