In its just-released November issue, the Traverse City Business News (TCBN) shared a story on Dr. Ramona Pleva — a native and resident of Cedar and chiropractor in Traverse City — who wants to change the way that people think about chiropractic care in the region by offering tech-driven wellness services that aren’t available anywhere else within hundreds of miles.

In addition to pain management, there has also been research suggesting that chiropractic care can alleviate symptoms of some types of mental illness. Pleva is hoping to explore that idea with patients locally by offering a pair of new treatments at her practice, Northern Lights Chiropractic.

Pleva is quick to note that her new treatments will still exist and function in the domain of chiropractic care. They are not an attempt on her part to expand her services into mental health.

However, she does see potential to help patients who are struggling with more than just back or neck pain.

“As a chiropractor, my scope of practice focuses on the brain and the nervous system,” Pleva said. “I have to make that clarification, because I’m sure there’s somebody out there that would really not appreciate [the idea of a chiropractor] ‘getting into mental health.’

“But when the brain is out of balance, we can address some of those imbalances with the new technologies that we’re offering in our office.”

So, what are the new technologies? One is called the WAVi, a multifaceted tool for practitioners to measure brain performance. Northern Lights is the only clinic in northern Michigan with the tech.

“This is brain scanning technology,” Pleva said of WAVi. “What it does is it helps to measure the electrical activity in the brain. [It tells you] whether the brain is functioning well, in a balanced manner; and if [the brain] is not balanced, why is that?”

WAVi can reveal a variety of electrical activity in the brain, Pleva says.

“So, people can come in with a variety of diagnoses, and what we look at is, where is the imbalance? And what do we see on the scan that can help them understand what’s going on?” she says. “Somebody might be suffering with PTSD, or they might have anxiety and depression, and the electrical activity in the brain can shift when people are struggling with these types of imbalances.”

In the context of chiropractic care, Pleva sees WAVi primarily as an assessment tool – one that can offer a pathway for treatment or even show whether that treatment pathway is having the intended effect. The WAVi device – a helmet with 20 electrodes on it – will allow Pleva to take in-office brain scans of patients in as little as 30 minutes.

If somebody comes in and they’re not balanced, we can do some treatments, and then do a post-scan to see what the improvements actually are,” Pleva explains.

One application would be for school sports.

“If you had an athlete who was participating in a sport that has a higher potential for, say, concussions – so, looking at football, soccer, rugby, hockey, things like that – perhaps we would do a brain scan at the beginning of the season,” she says. “Then, should they have a concussive or traumatic event, you can do a follow-up scan to see how they’re functioning compared to the baseline that we did initially. And then before they return to play, we could do another scan to say, ‘Yep, you’re back to firing on all cylinders,’ or ‘No, you might need a little more time to recover.’”

The second new technology making its way to northern Michigan is an innovation called the Clarity Chair, which uses sensory therapy to harness the brain’s neuroplasticity. The goal of the treatment, according to the developers of the Clarity Chair, is to improve the interaction between the brain and the sensory system.

And based on implementation of the technology so far, it’s working. The developers tout results such as parents who have watched their child speak for the first time, older adults with Alzheimer’s who have regained their ability to recognize their grandchildren, and kids with attention or learning disorders who have been able improve their focus and performance in school.

Read more about how the new brain tech works the current issue of the TCBN.

Pleva is part of November’s TCBN, featuring a cover story that celebrates those locals who, despite 18 months of obstacles, have made a massive difference. Check out the TCBN’s list of Hometown Heroes who go above and beyond, often behind the scenes.