Recovering from a brain injury is rarely about one treatment, one therapy, or one diagnosis. In this episode of MyPOTSPodcast, Dr. Joseph Schneider shares lessons from his own recovery journey and explains the comprehensive approach to brain rehabilitation used at Hope Brain Center. Drawing on his personal experience as a brain injury and stroke survivor, he explores the roles of functional neurology, functional medicine, nutrition, movement, neuroplasticity, advanced rehabilitation technologies, faith, and daily lifestyle in rebuilding neurological function and improving quality of life.
Podcast Episode
Dr. Joseph Schneider knows brain injury from both sides of the treatment room.
He’s a chiropractor and functional neurologist who has spent decades working with complicated neurological patients.
But he’s also been the patient.
In this deeply personal episode, Dr. Schneider describes brain injury as surviving a storm.
There is the initial event.
Then there is the challenge of remaining calm while everything around you seems to be changing.
And finally, there is recovery.
For many patients, that last stage can be the hardest.
Brain injury can affect physical strength, cognition, memory, emotions, digestion, pain, balance, energy, and the ability to perform activities that were once effortless.
For Dr. Schneider, those experiences became part of the reason he dedicated himself to helping other neurological patients.
Faith, Purpose and the Brain Injury Journey
Dr. Schneider speaks openly about another important part of his personal recovery: his Christian faith.
He credits the grace of God and Jesus Christ with carrying him through an extraordinarily difficult period and believes his survival gave him a renewed purpose—to use his experience to help people struggling with brain injuries.
That faith is deeply personal to Dr. Schneider, but it also illustrates something broader about neurological recovery.
Recovery isn’t only about what happens during a treatment session.
Patients bring their beliefs, families, motivations, fears, relationships, goals, and sense of purpose into the recovery process.
For Dr. Schneider, faith became one of the foundations that helped him continue moving forward.
Why Brain Injury Shouldn’t Be Treated in Pieces
One of Dr. Schneider’s strongest messages in this episode is that the nervous system should not be divided into disconnected pieces.
A patient may arrive saying:
“I have migraines.”
“I have POTS.”
“I have digestive problems.”
“I have an infection.”
“I have brain fog.”
Each symptom matters.
But Dr. Schneider argues that clinicians also need to ask whether those seemingly separate problems may be connected through dysfunction within the nervous system.
At Hope Brain Center, that means looking broadly at systems involving the:
- Brain
- Subcortical regions
- Brainstem
- Autonomic nervous system
- Spine
- Vestibular system
- Metabolic environment
Rather than concentrating solely on the diagnostic label, the objective is to understand how the patient’s neurological systems are functioning together.
Functional Neurology Meets Functional Medicine
This is where Dr. Schneider believes functional neurology and functional medicine can complement one another.
Functional medicine may investigate factors such as nutrition, metabolism, inflammation, digestion, and other physiological influences.
Functional neurology looks closely at how neurological systems are functioning and communicating.
For a complicated brain injury patient, those worlds can overlap.
A nervous system needs adequate metabolic resources.
The brain requires oxygen, nutrients, appropriate circulation, sleep, movement, and stimulation.
At the same time, simply improving nutrition doesn’t necessarily address every neurological deficit.
Dr. Schneider’s philosophy is therefore not either/or.
It is about putting the pieces together.
The Role of Inflammation in Brain Recovery
Inflammation is a major theme throughout the episode.
Dr. Schneider discusses reducing inflammatory burden through both clinical therapies and nutrition.
His personal nutritional approach after his neurological injury placed considerable emphasis on ketosis.
Ketosis occurs when carbohydrate availability is sufficiently restricted that the body increases its production and utilization of ketone bodies.
Dr. Schneider discusses this in connection with autophagy, the body’s cellular recycling and cleanup processes.
His goal was to create a metabolic environment that he believed would better support his recovery while reducing inflammatory burden.
Why Dr. Schneider Chose a Mediterranean Ketogenic Diet
At Hope Brain Center, Dr. Schneider says the preferred approach is a Mediterranean-style ketogenic diet.
Rather than thinking of keto as simply eating unlimited meat, he emphasizes the balance between:
- Higher healthy-fat intake
- Moderate protein
- Very low carbohydrate intake
- Whole-food ingredients
- Attention to fat quality
He specifically cautions against assuming that a ketogenic diet should automatically be extremely high in protein.
Instead, much of his discussion centers on the types of dietary fats being consumed.
Omega-3, Omega-6 and Food Quality
Dr. Schneider also discusses the relationship between dietary fats and inflammation.
He encourages patients to pay attention to the balance between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids and to reduce reliance on heavily processed foods.
Foods and oils he discusses include:
- Pasture-raised and grass-fed meats
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Walnut oil
- Macadamia nut oil
- MCT oil
The larger principle is straightforward:
Food is part of the environment in which the brain is attempting to recover.
Nutrition shouldn’t be viewed as an isolated cure for brain injury, but it may be one component of a broader rehabilitation strategy.
Dr. Schneider’s Personal MRI Experience
One of the most striking stories in the episode concerns Dr. Schneider’s own follow-up MRI after his stroke.
He describes undergoing another MRI approximately three months later after incorporating a ketogenic nutritional strategy into his recovery.
According to Dr. Schneider, an abnormal area he describes as a “scab” was no longer visible on the later imaging, surprising his neurologist.
For him, the experience strengthened his belief in the importance of metabolism and nutrition during neurological recovery.
However, it is important to understand this appropriately.
This is Dr. Schneider’s personal recovery experience and should not be interpreted as evidence that a ketogenic diet will produce the same MRI changes in another person.
Brain injuries vary substantially, and major dietary changes—particularly ketogenic diets—should be considered in the context of an individual’s medical history and clinical needs.
The Brain Needs Movement
Nutrition was only one part of Dr. Schneider’s recovery.
Another was movement.
He remembers a period when he couldn’t perform a sit-up.
Today, he describes being able to perform incline sit-ups.
That progress didn’t happen overnight.
Exercise and movement became part of rebuilding his life.
During his recovery, Dr. Schneider incorporated activities such as:
- Walking
- Biking
- Swimming
- Crawling
- Progressive strengthening
Why does movement matter?
Because movement provides enormous amounts of sensory information to the nervous system.
It also supports circulation, physical conditioning, coordination, balance, and the repeated neurological input involved in learning and adaptation.
Neuroplasticity: Giving the Brain a Reason to Change
A central concept behind neurological rehabilitation is neuroplasticity.
Neuroplasticity refers to the nervous system’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience and stimulation.
Recovery therefore isn’t necessarily passive.
The nervous system needs appropriate input.
Movement provides input.
Eye exercises provide input.
Balance exercises provide input.
Cognitive challenges provide input.
Sensory stimulation provides input.
But the appropriate stimulus depends on the individual patient.
More stimulation isn’t automatically better.
The objective is to determine what a patient’s nervous system needs and provide an appropriate amount of targeted stimulation while monitoring the response.
Advanced Technology Is a Tool—Not the Treatment Plan
Hope Brain Center uses a wide range of technologies in neurological rehabilitation.
Dr. Schneider discusses tools and approaches including:
- Neurofeedback
- Rotational stimulation
- Goggle-based visual and vestibular therapies
- LED-based therapies
- Laser technologies
- Hydrogen and oxygen approaches
- Virtual reality
- Cognitive sequencing
- Neurosensory integration
- Interactive metronome
- Whole-body vibration
- Eye exercises
- Stimpod nerve stimulation
It’s an impressive list.
But Dr. Schneider makes an important distinction:
The technology isn’t the system.
A clinic can own sophisticated equipment without knowing how to combine it appropriately for a particular nervous system.
Technology provides clinicians with additional ways to assess or stimulate neurological function.
Clinical judgment determines when—and whether—it belongs in an individual patient’s rehabilitation program.
Why Experience Still Matters
No two brain injuries are identical.
Two patients may share the same diagnosis yet experience completely different combinations of:
- Dizziness
- Cognitive impairment
- Headaches
- Pain
- Balance problems
- Weakness
- Digestive problems
- Autonomic symptoms
- Sleep disturbances
- Fatigue
- Emotional changes
This is why Dr. Schneider places such importance on clinical experience.
Experienced clinicians learn to recognize patterns while still respecting the differences between individual patients.
The objective isn’t to put every brain injury patient through the same sequence of machines.
It’s to determine which systems need attention and build the rehabilitation strategy accordingly.
Brain Rehabilitation Doesn’t End When You Leave the Clinic
One of the most valuable points in this episode comes toward the end.
What happens in the clinic has to translate into daily life.
A patient ultimately needs to use the brain outside the treatment room.
That can mean:
- Exercising
- Walking outdoors
- Solving problems
- Working
- Interacting with family
- Engaging socially
- Using cognitive skills
- Spending time outside
- Getting appropriate sunlight
- Reducing excessive screen time
- Gradually returning to meaningful activities
The goal isn’t simply to perform better during a neurological exercise.
It’s to improve function in the real world.
Recovery Requires Commitment
Dr. Schneider doesn’t describe his own recovery as easy.
In fact, he says the opposite.
He continues to experience pain and weakness.
But every morning he makes a conscious decision to get out of bed and continue working on his health.
That gives this episode an important message for people living with neurological injury:
Recovery doesn’t necessarily mean waiting until you feel perfect before living again.
Sometimes it means repeatedly doing the things that support your quality of life while recognizing your current limitations.
For Dr. Schneider, that philosophy has become both personal and professional.
The Eight Domains of Nervous System Optimization
For patients who want to understand more about Dr. Schneider’s approach, he also discusses his book:
The Eight Domains of Nervous System Optimization
The book expands on his belief that neurological recovery should be approached through multiple interconnected domains rather than through a single therapy.
That philosophy mirrors what he discusses throughout this episode.
There isn’t necessarily one exercise, supplement, machine, medication, diet, or therapy that addresses every aspect of a complicated neurological condition.
The challenge is understanding how the pieces fit together.
Real Stories. Real Science. Real Hope.
This episode of MyPOTSPodcast is ultimately about more than brain injury.
It’s about what happens when a doctor becomes the patient.
Dr. Schneider’s personal experience changed how he thinks about neurological rehabilitation.
It taught him how physically and emotionally difficult brain injury can be.
It strengthened his faith.
It reinforced his belief in movement, nutrition, functional medicine and functional neurology.
And it convinced him that sophisticated technology only becomes valuable when it’s part of a comprehensive system designed around the individual patient.
Most importantly, it gave him a perspective that continues to shape Hope Brain Center today:
Never stop looking for ways to improve neurological function and quality of life.
Ready to Take the Next Step?
If you or someone you love is struggling with brain injury, concussion, stroke recovery, dizziness, balance problems, POTS, dysautonomia, cognitive changes, weakness, or other persistent neurological symptoms, Hope Brain Center offers comprehensive neurological evaluation and individualized rehabilitation.
Dr. Joseph Schneider and the Hope Brain Center team look beyond a single diagnosis to investigate how the brain, brainstem, autonomic nervous system, vestibular system, spine, and metabolic environment may be contributing to the patient’s symptoms.
Start With a Discovery Call
📞 Call Hope Brain Center: (610) 652-4732
📅 Book Online:
https://hopebraincenter.com/book/
Hope Brain Center
6 Dickinson Dr, Suite 310, Building 300
Chadds Ford, PA 19317
Brain health changes lives. Your next step starts with a conversation.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is brain injury rehabilitation?
Brain injury rehabilitation is a broad term for therapies and strategies intended to help people regain function or adapt following an injury to the brain. The appropriate program depends on the type and severity of injury and the patient’s individual deficits.
What is functional neurology?
Functional neurology focuses on evaluating how neurological systems are functioning and interacting. Clinicians may examine areas such as eye movements, balance, coordination, vestibular function, autonomic regulation, sensory processing, and other aspects of neurological performance.
What is neuroplasticity?
Neuroplasticity is the nervous system’s ability to adapt and reorganize in response to experience, learning, injury, and repeated stimulation. It is an important concept in many forms of neurological rehabilitation.
Why is exercise important after brain injury?
Appropriately prescribed movement can support physical conditioning while providing sensory and motor input to the nervous system. The type and intensity of exercise should be appropriate for the patient’s condition and tolerance.
Can nutrition support brain injury recovery?
Nutrition can influence metabolic health and the physiological environment in which the brain functions. Nutritional strategies may therefore form part of a broader recovery program, but diet should not be considered a stand-alone cure for brain injury.
Does Dr. Schneider recommend a ketogenic diet?
In this episode, Dr. Schneider discusses his personal experience with ketosis and says Hope Brain Center often favors a Mediterranean-style ketogenic approach. A ketogenic diet isn’t appropriate for everyone, and significant dietary changes should be individualized.
Can a ketogenic diet heal brain damage?
The episode includes Dr. Schneider’s personal experience with improved follow-up imaging after his stroke, but this should not be interpreted as proof that ketogenic diets reverse brain damage. Research continues into ketogenic metabolism and neurological health.
What technologies does Hope Brain Center use?
Dr. Schneider discusses several technologies and therapeutic approaches, including neurofeedback, vestibular stimulation, virtual reality, neurosensory integration, interactive metronome, eye exercises, whole-body vibration, light- and laser-based technologies, and nerve stimulation. Treatment selection depends on the individual patient.
Why does Hope Brain Center combine functional neurology and functional medicine?
Dr. Schneider’s philosophy is that neurological function doesn’t exist independently of metabolism, nutrition, inflammation, movement, sleep, and other physiological systems. Combining perspectives allows clinicians to evaluate a broader clinical picture.
Does brain injury recovery stop after formal rehabilitation?
Not necessarily. Dr. Schneider emphasizes translating rehabilitation into everyday life through appropriate movement, cognitive activity, social interaction, outdoor activity, and other lifestyle practices.
Where can I find Dr. Schneider’s book?
The book is called The Eight Domains of Nervous System Optimization. Dr. Schneider recommends searching for his name and the book title on Amazon.
Transcript
Dr. Joseph Schneider (00:00): Good morning. Good afternoon. No, it’s still morning. It’s on Sunday. And I decided to do a podcast on brain injury and some of the backstory that I came from to get to the place I am in the center. I have. I mean, I think I have one of the best centers in the world. Or not. Maybe the best center in the world. A little arrogant, but when you’ve been through the storm, A storm is an experience that’s educational in many, many different ways. When you go through the storm, try to figure out how to stay calm during the storm and then after the storm, how to recover. Now, the recovery part of it puts you in a place that’s really hard. It’s hard physically, emotionally, mentally, cognitively. It’s harder than memory.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (01:39): You start experiencing sensations and pain that you were never used to, You get paralysis. Get digestive issues. Oh, my goodness gracious. Digestive issues. Horrible digestive issues. When your brain’s been injured and it’s not functioning right, your immune system is not where it should be, it suffers. Your endocrine system suffers. So. Being through the storm and getting myself out of the storm only happened for me, the number one thing was through the grace of God. So our Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on me, and I believe he sent me back for this purpose, to help people for whose love and his grace and the power of our Lord Jesus Christ to have an impact on people’s lives with brain injuries.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (03:14): Now, there’s a lot of experts out there, and everybody’s going to tell you a different portion of it, but I don’t portion it. In our office, we don’t portion it. It’s really all or none. You have to commit to all to really reap the benefits. So you hear a lot from experts on functional medicine. It seems all the rage. Functional medicine. Functional medicine. Functional medicine. You hear a lot of diagnostics that are happening. Diagnosis. I got migraines, I got pots. I got digestive issues. I have infection, I have this, I have that. And you can actually line them up over and over and over again. And when you line them up, you do the proper diagnosis.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (04:26): You see, there’s all parts, part of a whole, a dysfunctional nervous system, starting with the brain, the subcortex, the brain stem, and then the spine, the wonderful spine. So I’m a chiropractor and functional neurologist and also a functional medicine doc extraordinaire. And I was braced with this to help people that have brain injury. Now I’m exercising. That’s something I could do very well. A few years ago I couldn’t do a sit up. Now I do incline sit up. So the process of living your life through brain injury or as a result of brain injury can always get better with the proper comprehensive care. Now, Ketosis ketones on a ketogenic diet help clear out my brain because I had a scab in my brain and I had to have autophagy.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (06:05): How autophagy works is a ketoga ketogenic diet will actually. I turn on my time. Ketogenic diet will actually enhance the cleanup process and also reduce inflammation. We want to reduce inflammation. You can reduce inflammation physiologically with different therapies and you can reduce inflammation using functional nutrition. Ketogenesis is the most important part of it. That’s the start. So we recommend in our office the Mediterranean ketogenic diet. We feel that’s the best way to do keto diets. Now there’s other things, carnivore diet and so forth, but the keto diet is really special because you’re eating a lot of fat, moderate protein and very low carbohydrates. But fat is very important in the ketogenic diet. Most people, when they go on a ketogenic diet, eat a lot of protein, too much.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (07:45): Now protein can be converted into sugar in the liver, so you gotta watch out about too much protein. And you have to really look at fats. Now fat’s a component of inflammation. So with fat as a component of inflammation, then we really need to kind of look at the kind of fats we get from our foods. Now most of the processed foods in the United States are pro inflammatory. There’s too much Omega 6 and Omega 3s are not in proper ratios. You want it 2 to 1 or less Omega 6, Omega 3, that will reduce inflammation in the body. If you have too much omega 6s, then your inflammation is going to go way up. It’s going to go way up.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (09:01): So you have to look at the kind of food you have meats that are pasture raised, grass fed, grass finished, have the lowest omega 6 ratio to omega 3. Those foods are nutritious as far as vitamin minerals. They do have polyphenols in them and they also have a great fat ratio to reduce inflammation. Things like extra virgin olive oil, walnut oil, macadamia nut oils, they all have a great ratio, Omega 6. And MTT oil, which produces more ketones in your body. There’s also exogenous ketone formulations that can help you have a better ketosis and to stay in ketosis for a longer period of time. So three months after my stroke, I re MRI my brain being on a ketogenic diet about 9% of the time and I had no scap. It was gone.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (10:41): My neurologist looked at the scan and said, where’s your scap? These aren’t your MRIs. That’s how powerful ketosis was. But I just didn’t do ketogenic diet. Diets are important, but your body is meant to move, so exercise is important. Walking, biking, swimming, crawling. I crawled on football fields. They were all part of it. So there is a functional medicine approach that you can take. These are all proven research methods to change your brain. And at a time where we have epidemic portions of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism, adhd, learning disorders, neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, cognitive decline. In an age where we have an epidemic Lyme, epidemic Covid, Covid vaccines, pathogens, strep mononucleosis, you have brain insult from pathogens. And the things that we do to treat those pathogens can hurt your brain.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (12:34): I’m not saying don’t do those things, I’m saying that they hurt your brain. So at some point you stop chasing the pathogen and you start reducing the inflammation in your brain. You start improving brain function where it’s been lost. Now I have new technology. That’s great. Everyone’s coming up with new technology, but it’s not about the technology, it’s about the system. The system that we use where we put together the technology for your total benefit. Like neurofeedback spriter, rotating chair with goggles where we use the gyro stick, the arc LED bed, zirconia laser, hydrogen, oxygen, virtual reality cognitive sequencing using neurosensory integration interactive metronome. An old but great therapy. Whole body vibration, that’s harmonic, not mechanical, but harmonic. Like standing on a head of a speaker, play music out of it.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (14:02): It sounds really good. Eye exercise Stimpod, which regenerates nerve pathways using galvanic and pulse radio frequency. This is all I told you to be. Anything as hard is worth doing gets you a different place, that’s for sure. So also you need to be going to a functional neurologist, functional medicine practitioner who’s got 30 or more years of practice in our office with Dr. Clauset, Adam Clauset. We now have 80 years of education, experience and clinical competence because every case is different and it needs that experience to get the job done.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (15:17): So it’s our system, it’s the practitioners that we use that are going to Bring everything together so that when you finish in our office, then you convert it to daily life, which includes exercise, including using your cognitive brain to figure things out at your place of work, figuring out how your family is going to be playing, what they’re going to be doing, playing. Get off the computers, get outside, enjoy the sunlight, enjoy the beach. That’s what it’s all about. And if you really need a center that looks at you comprehensively, not only in the functional medicine world, but in the functional neurologic world, and puts all those pieces together to kickstart your brain into where it should be, then click on the link above. I’m Dr. Joe Schneider, and I’m a brain injury patient.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (16:26): And I live it every day. I live in pain, I live with weakness. And every morning I decide I’m getting out of bed and I’m going to do it all over again because that’s the only way I’m going to be better. And that’s the only way that my quality of life is going to be at its optimum. So go on Amazon, look up Dr. Joseph Schneider. I have a book, it’s simple. The eight domains of nervous System Optimization. It’s a good read. So order my book on Amazon, get a copy, and understand that there’s eight different ways that you have to pay attention to on your road to recovery.
Dr. Joseph Schneider (17:26): And if you need us to be part of that transformation for you, click on the link above, call for a consult, get into our office so that Dr. Classic Myself can take our experience and get you to a new level. Thank you. Have a great day.
