Research, Articles & Case Studies

On September 30th the Upledger Foundation, in conjunction with the Ricky Williams Foundation, completed the 2015 Football Players Concussion Intensive Therapy Program and Research Study.

This year’s program treated seven former professional football players, two of whom were repeats from the 2014 study. The programs have consisted of extensive baseline intake testing, five consecutive days of twice daily CranioSacral Therapy, Visceral Manipulation and Neural Manipulation Therapy. At week’s end, a re-taking of the same tests concluded the program. Besides positive documented quantitative changes shown in the tests, all of the former players reported experiencing significant life-changing value, benefits and insight through receiving treatment, and participating in the dialogues of shared experiences. The personal testimonies below reflect some of what the participants experienced, and their desire to inform those institutions and organizations who are actively seeking to study the issues, and help improve the quality of life OF ANYONE suffering from brain injury, post traumatic stress, and other accumulated traumas.

Introduction: Research in body based complementary ther­apies such as Craniosacral Therapy (CST) is often focused on physical outcome measures. This study therefore investigated patients' experiences of CST to reveal additional outcome domains for further clinical trials. 

The glymphatic pathway expedites clearance of waste, including soluble amyloid(A) from the brain. Transport through this pathway is controlled bythe brain’s arousal level because, during sleep or anesthesia,the brain’sinterstitial space volume expands (compared with wakefulness), resulting in faster waste removal. Humans, as well as animals, exhibit different body postures during sleep, which may also affect waste removal. Therefore, not only the level of consciousness, but also body posture, might affect CSF–interstitial fluid (ISF) exchange efficiency. We used dynamic-contrast-enhanced MRI and kinetic modeling to quantify CSF-ISF exchange rates in anesthetized rodents’ brains in supine, prone, or lateral positions. To validate the MRI data and to assess specifically the influence of body posture on clearance of A, we used fluorescence microscopy and radioactive tracers, respectively. The analysis showed that glymphatic transport was most efficient in the lateral position compared with the supine or prone positions. In the prone position, in which the rat’s head was inthe most upright position (mimicking posture duringthe awake state),transport was characterized by “retention” ofthetracer, slower clearance, and more CSF efflux along larger caliber cervical vessels. The optical imaging and radiotracer studies confirmed that glymphatic transport and A clearance were superior in the lateral and supine positions. We propose that the most popular sleep posture (lateral) has evolved to optimize waste removal during sleep and that posture must be considered in diagnostic imaging procedures developed in the future to assess CSF-ISF transport in humans.