What is NCR®?
NCR® is one of the latest and most profound naturopathic medicine techniques available in the world today. NCR® has been developed by Dean Howell ND to help patients overcome various pain patterns and dysfunctions of the nervous system that emanate from poor or less than optimum skeletal structure.
NCR® is a cumulative and incremental therapy that routinely unlocks and unwinds connective tissue tension patterns and injuries from traumas in the body via the cranium allowing it to move towards its optimal design which will make you look, feel and function at your best.
For optimum results it’s recommended to have a series of 4 consecutive sessions delivered on 4 consecutive days which is referred to as “NCR® series”. Treatment involves: cranial and posture assessment; fully clothed, individually tailored body work using various techniques, external cranial work, proprioceptive assessment, specilised body positioning, endonasal balloon inflation.
The best way to view NCR®'s role is on a continuum from pain and dysfunction through to optimum health and wellness. Regardless of whether you initially seek NCR® therapy for healing from a specific injury or pain or to optimise your structure and function, the physical, emotional and mental benefits of NCR® therapy are astonishingly profound.
NCR® is really a groundbreaking approach to physical medicine and fills a void where other therapies have failed to deliver. It really highlights how important structural health is to overall health and wellness.
How does it work?
NCR® is a manipulation process used to unwind the body into its original and optimal design. It utilizes careful analysis of the body’s proprioception (patterns of balance) to determine the precise areas of the skull needing to be unlocked. This unlocking allows the connective tissues (including the meningeal system) to release their residual tensions and move the bony structures incrementally back towards the body’s original design.
How does NCR change the shape of my skull?
The human skull is made up of 28 interlocking bones. There are 22 cranial bones and 6 bones in the inner ears. The skull is divided into two sections, the cranial vault which houses the brain and the cranio-facial bones which house and support the eyes, nose and teeth in the jaws. Despite what is written in old anatomy textbooks, the joints (the sutures) between the bones in an adult head are not fused. They are in fact expansion / contraction joints and allow micromotion to accommodate changes in intracranial pressure. This allows the fluid that bathes the brain, the cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) to flow freely and to dissipate any forces that may be applied externally to the head. This phenomenon was first observed by an osteopath, William Sutherland D.O at the turn of the 20th century. It was proven beyond any doubt by an anatomy researcher named Viola Fryman D.O in 1962 when she recorded the movements of the skull bones during chewing, breathing and swallowing using sensors placed on the head. The sutures are analogous to the structures that architects and engineers build into skyscrapers and suspension bridges to allow sway. The Empire state building in New York actually sways several feet in high winds to prevent it collapsing!
The Sphenoid bone – cornerstone bone of the human skull.
The central bone of the skull is called the sphenoid. This bone is a butterfly shaped bone that sits directly behind the nose and extends out to both sides of the head. This bone is considered to be the cornerstone of the human skull because it articulates with 19 of the 22 bones. The only 3 bones it doesn't connect directly to are the lower jaw (the mandible) and the 2 nasal bones. Because of its position within the cranial complex it is very difficult to access. The greater wings can be felt with the fingers close to the temple regions but the main body can only be engaged by entering the top of the throat or nasopharynx through the nasal passageways. The sphenoid bone is incredibly intricate with many tunnels and holes (foramina) that allow nerves, blood and lymph vessels to pass through. It also has a small depression called the sella tursica which is where the pituitary gland of the brain sits.
By manipulating the sphenoid bone any sutural lesions and tension patterns in the connective tissues within the skull can be released. Bone is living tissue with a blood supply which allows the cranial bones to slowly and incrementally change position and shape. The only way to accurately manipulate the sphenoid is by using an endonasal balloon which is inserted deflated into the top of the throat through one of 6 nasal passageways and briefly inflated allowing it to momentarily engage the sphenoid bone.
How can NCR optimise your brain function?
The flow of blood and the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) is crucial to optimum brain function. The flow of the blood is responsible for distributing certain chemicals called neurotransmitters to different parts of the brain. These neurotransmitters are what carry information between our brain cells or neurons. Any physicist or engineer will explain to you that fluid flow dynamics are determined by the shape of the vessel. The vessel is the skull and the fluid is blood and CSF. If the skull is misshapen then that area of the brain will be pinched and the fluid flow dynamics will be less than ideal. This may result in an excess of blood and neurotransmitters in one area and a deficiency in another. This can have significant ramifications to how a person thinks and feels. Conventional medicine treats depression as a deficiency of the neurotransmitter serotonin and routinely prescribing anti-depressant medications such as Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRI) to increase levels of the “feel good” chemical, serotonin in the brain. However, if the brain is producing sufficient serotonin already but it isn't being distributed evenly because of poor fluid flow as a result of a less than optimum skull shape then you might end up with more of an imbalance as more serotonin may reach already saturated areas of the brain and less may reach the deficient areas. This may produce severe side effects. The primary problem here isn't a deficiency but one of distribution. Through NCR®, the shape of the vessel, the skull can be improved and the fluid flow dynamics - the blood flow optimised so that the neurotransmitters are distributed evenly. NCR® is therefore an obvious treatment choice for people suffering from so-called "psychiatric" conditions or people looking to optimise their brain function.
Philosophy
NCR® is a naturopathic treatment. The naturopathic treatment philosophy is that the body has an innate knowledge and ability to heal itself and a desire to be in homeostatic balance. It also pledges to treat the underlying cause of the dysfunction, not just suppress the symptoms.
The human body has emotional, biochemical and structural components. Optimum health depends on all these facets working synergistically and harmoniously. When one or more of the body's systems is out of balance then "dis - ease" is experienced.
Conventional medicine focuses primarily on biochemical imbalances and routinely prescribed pharmaceutical drugs in an attempt to suppress symptoms with limited success and often with many intolerable side effects. There are also many talk-based therapies that improve a person's emotional health. These therapies may have varying rates of success. Conventional medicine rarely considers the structural aspect of health unless there are very obvious issues such as broken bones and the need for rehabilitative physical therapies. There is a huge void in this area of modern medicine.
Naturopathic treatment modalities often include correction of nutritional deficiencies through dietary changes or whole food supplements, removal of pathogenic microbes such as yeasts, bacteria and fungi, removal of heavy metals, pesticides, herbicides and other chemicals that interfere with normal cellular function and correction of structural dysfunctions that impair correct nervous system function. The last modality is were NCR® is highly effective.
Let’s consider the following scenario: A young woman is involved in a car accident and hits her head. She experiences mild concussion and develops chronic headaches and pain behind her right eye. She visits her GP who examines her and sends her away with a prescription for pain killers and advises her to have some time off work and take her medications. The symptoms persist for several weeks with no improvement and she returns to her GP and requests a referral to the hospital for a scan. The scan shows no obvious cause for her pain and after consulting with several professionals is left feeling very frustrated and depressed. She is then referred to a psychiatrist to talk about her emotions and encouraged to take anti-depressants to help manage her new life circumstances. She is left feeling very despondent and let down by the conventional medical system, frustrated that no one is listening to her or has any answers for her. What was not considered by the medical establishment was that this patient had an obvious trauma to her head which destabilised her cranial bones and pushed her into a pain pattern. No amount of symptom suppression with drugs or talking about her problems will ever address the underlying primary cause of her symptoms. This is where NCR® would be an ideal therapy to improve the patient's underlying structural problems and restore their previous good health.
This scenario is analogous to a car. If you have a bump that puts a dent in your car then no amount of changing the oil or water or putting petrol in the tank or thinking positive thoughts will remove the dent. It has to be physically removed. Humans throughout their lives may have had many “bumps” to the head and may need physical therapy to restore their bodies to “factory default”. This is what NCR® routinely does.
History
There is evidence from as far back as the ancient Egyptians that humans have been studying the skull and how the bones interlock and move but it wasn't until the end of the 19th century that an osteopath named William Sutherland DO first theorized about cranial bone motion and how it relates to human health. He observed that the cranial bones exhibited subtle movement at the joints between them during chewing, swallowing and breathing. He referred to this motion as "primary respiration". This theory became widely accepted in osteopathic and chiropractic schools but unfortunately has been slow to be accepted by conventional medical and dental schools despite overwhelming evidence in support of it.
It was then observed that the sphenoid bone is the central bone of the skull and appears to act as a cornerstone to the entire structure and that if perhaps manipulating that bone all the other bones could be placed into a more optimum and stable alignment.
J Stober ND, an American naturopathic doctor first used endonasal balloons and named his technique Bilateral Nasal Specific.
A young doctor named Dean Howell ND from Seattle, Washington became first a patient of Dr Stober's to correct his chronic nasal stuffiness and collapsed cheekbone after a water-skiing accident and then later his student. Dr Howell learnt BNS and practiced it for many years with success but believed that it could be improved to produce more consistent and reliable results. Dr Howell utilised proprioceptive testing to ascertain the stability or instability patterns within the body, external cranial work, specific body positioning prior to the inflation of the endonasal balloon in order to achieve maximum results with the application of minimum force.