Case Study
in Neural Therapy
Anne Hill, ND
Background and Medical History
Rebecca, a 51-year-old patient, was referred from a local fascial counterstrain practitioner who understands how important neural therapy can be as an adjunctive treatment to their work with pain management. Rebecca’s provider had run into a wall with getting the tissue around her scar to mobilize enough to help with her constant head pain.
Rebecca had had a middle fossa craniotomy performed 10 years before she visited with me. What led her to the craniotomy was that she had fallen in the bathroom and hit the side of her head on the toilet. She had had severe head pain ever since that point in time. Additionally, she had a significant history of head injuries with eight auto accidents and two diagnosed concussions. She had also had facial reconstructive surgery around her nose and sinus area after being bitten by a dog on her face twenty-five years prior.
The craniotomy was performed because her physicians had found a semi-circular canal dehiscence, which is a tiny hole from the inner ear that opens up to the brain. All other medication trials and treatments had been exhausted with no relief of her pain until she was finally diagnosed with this condition and offered surgery.
This is an interesting condition. It is found more frequently in females and is something that is more commonly found in patients who have had lots of head injury history. Many of the symptoms are a sense of fullness in the ear canal, tinnitus, balance issues, and dizziness, as well as brain fog and autophony, which is where you can hear your own voice from inside your head in a loud and distorted way.
Symptoms and Treatment Plan
The surgery did help with some of these initial symptoms, but the scar left her with some remaining symptoms as well as new ones. “When I use my eyes on the computer or to read for close-up work for an extended period (2-3 hours), I have numbness, strain, pain, tightness,” she described. The tightness began at her right eyebrow and below her right eye. She also mentioned that the tightness continued to run laterally over her ear to the back of the neck and sometimes down into her shoulder. She also had near-constant headaches that got worse throughout the day as she used her eyes or chewed. The pain contributed to her ongoing sense of fatigue and brain fog.
The craniotomy scar was a long one. Rebecca had 15 stitches beginning at the middle of the opening of her right ear extending circularly up to the very top of her head. Her jaw muscle was also cut during this surgery, which contributed to a lot of the discomfort, especially with any jaw movement.
Along with the chronic headaches and feeling of tightness and tension, she also had a sensation of numbness from the scar line that extended beyond and across the tissue immediately surrounding the scar. At this point, she was on disability from her chronic pain and she couldn’t drive because of her physical condition. She also suffered from extreme anxiety while driving due to her history of multiple car accidents.
I treated Rebecca’s craniotomy scar by injecting it superficially along the scar line with about 8 cc of 1% procaine. I also injected superficially along her sternocleidomastoid, as this helps to open up the anterior lymphatic drainage from the head, sinuses, and down the neck to the thoracic duct. She had been experiencing years of inflammation in that area so I wanted to make sure that her body had a way to clear some of the inflammatory compounds.
Chronic physical and emotional pain
Results and Reflection
During our interview on Point of Medicine podcast episode, we sat down with Dr. Michael Gurevich, a psychiatrist whose integrative, systems-based approach to pain and mood disorders has made him a sought-after teacher and practitioner. What followed was a deeply thoughtful discussion about chronic pain, neural therapy, and the art of patient connection—rooted in decades of clinical wisdom.
The Psychiatrist Who Treats Pain
It’s not every day you meet a psychiatrist who confidently treats fibromyalgia, pelvic floor dysfunction, and post-surgical nerve entrapments. Dr. Gurevich has built his career doing just that—often seeing patients who’ve exhausted conventional pathways with little relief. Through the lens of neural therapy, he reframes pain not as a signal of damage, but as a manifestation of dysfunction within the autonomic nervous system.
By applying local anesthetics (primarily procaine) to interference fields—old scars, trauma sites, or areas of fascial tension—he aims to “reset” these disrupted patterns. His results speak volumes, and his patients often describe their outcomes not just as physical relief, but emotional release.
"Chronic pain is often frozen energy."
That line stopped us mid-conversation. For Dr. Gurevich, the relationship between physical pain, stored trauma, and nervous system imbalance is inseparable. This philosophy informs his layered approach: neural therapy, emotional processing, trauma dialogue, and yes—even medications, when appropriate.
He emphasizes the importance of knowing when to reach for which tool. Meds aren’t always the enemy, and energy-based injections aren’t always the solution. It’s the sequencing—and the patient’s story—that matters most.
Learning to Feel in Medicine
One of the most powerful parts of our conversation centered around the skill of clinical intuition. Dr. Gurevich challenged listeners to not just palpate mechanically, but to sense what's happening beneath the surface. “Can you feel the tissue? Can you feel the freeze?” he asked.
He trains his hands to notice subtle resistance—not just anatomical, but energetic. This isn't just poetic thinking; it’s a clinical skill set that many of us overlook in favor of labs and imaging.
Redefining Success in Pain Care
We also explored the common frustration of treatment failures. Dr. Gurevich reframes those moments as invitations to dig deeper—into the patient's history, into overlooked interference fields, into unspoken emotional wounds. He doesn’t just ask what’s wrong, but why hasn’t this resolved yet?
The humility in his work is refreshing. He reminds us that complex pain isn't solved by a single modality. It's untangled—over time, in partnership with the patient.
Rediscovering the Body’s Healing Code
What if some of our most persistent symptoms weren’t just “random” or “chronic,” but reflections of deep-seated lesions in our body’s regulatory systems—places we’ve been hurt, physically or emotionally, that never fully healed? This is the heart of Dr. Richard Nahas’ work in neural therapy, and what he shared with us in a rich and paradigm-shifting conversation on The Point of Medicine Podcast.
Dr. Nahas, MD, integrative physician and current president of the North American Academy of Neural Therapy, brings a global and deeply curious perspective to healing. After practicing emergency medicine during Toronto’s SARS outbreak, he left conventional medicine to backpack the world, spending time with indigenous healers and Eastern medicine practitioners. What he discovered was a unifying concept across cultures: that the body holds on to trauma—wounds that may close, but never fully resolve, creating interference fields that disrupt the body’s ability to regulate and repair.
In modern neural therapy, these interference fields are seen as dysfunctional circuits in the autonomic nervous system—places where the stress response remains chronically activated. Using injections of procaine, dextrose, and other agents, along with palpation and subtle assessment techniques, Dr. Nahas treats these sites to "turn off" the loop and give the body space to heal.
But what sets Dr. Nahas apart is his elegant synthesis of disciplines: from acupuncture meridians to fascial chains, from hands-on osteopathic work to wearable technology and shear wave ultrasound. He sees the body as an integrated map of electrical, chemical, and structural relationships. His palpation method—using light touch to sense cutaneous tension—is a powerful tool that can be taught and used to localize dysfunction with speed and precision.
One of the most inspiring parts of our conversation was Dr. Nahas’ vision for the future of medicine. He sees neural therapy not as an isolated technique, but as a foundational approach—one that clears the noise and restores the body's capacity to respond to other interventions. And with emerging technologies like wearable sensors, pulse waveform analysis, and elastography, he hopes to bring objective validation to the phenomena neural therapists have observed for decades.
As medicine becomes more fragmented, Dr. Nahas reminds us of the power of integration—of bridging the gap between ancient and modern, between science and intuition, and most importantly, between patient and healer. His work calls us to see interference fields not just as physical scars, but as invitations—entry points to a deeper healing that honors the body’s innate intelligence.
This is a conversation that will stay with us—and one that we hope sparks something in you, too.
Ozone, Procaine & Precision: Injecting New Life Into Regenerative Medicine
In a field where more often feels like better—more injections, more solutions, more interventions—Dr. David Vinyes offers a refreshingly different perspective: do less, but do it better.
On our recent episode of The Point of Medicine Podcast, we sat down with Dr. Vinyes, a physician known internationally for his expertise in neural therapy, mesotherapy, and autonomic regulation. With a clinical style that blends European tradition with sharp anatomical insight, he spoke candidly about how targeted, intentional treatment can produce profound change.
Much of the conversation centered on the autonomic nervous system and how injections—done well—can help reset it. Rather than relying on high volumes or repeated needling, Dr. Vinyes emphasizes the diagnostic and therapeutic value of understanding where interference lies. By addressing those precise points—whether through ganglion injections, segmental therapy, or a single neural field reset—he’s able to achieve what many consider “multi-needle” results with minimal invasiveness.
He also highlighted the enduring role of procaine in this work. Though often overlooked in favor of newer anesthetics, procaine remains his preferred agent—not only for its safety profile but for its effect on the nervous system. Used thoughtfully, it becomes more than a numbing agent; it becomes a tool for communication between the body and the brain.
For clinicians who inject, his message was clear: refine your physical exam, pay attention to the tissue, and trust the body’s response. In many cases, the information we need is right there under our hands—we just have to slow down enough to listen.
As the conversation wrapped up, what lingered wasn’t a protocol or product, but a philosophy:
Simplicity is not the same as superficial. When we treat with clarity, the body often needs very little to start healing.
This episode offers both technical pearls and deeper questions for clinicians looking to reconnect with the art of their work. It’s a reminder that with the right training and the right mindset, a single well-placed injection can sometimes do more than ten scattered ones ever could.
Results and Reflection
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When Rebecca returned 2 weeks later she said she had not had any head pain since the initial injections, and in addition, she could feel movement of the skin surrounding her skull and on her face. We re-treated her scar at this follow-up appointment just to make sure that we were able to release everything, and at this time I also treated a large scar on her left forehead area. This was from when she had another head trauma as a child where she described accidentally running into a wall.
I did not see Rebecca again for a year. When she did come back, it was for help with another injury to her hand. She said that the head scar treatment had changed her life. She was no longer in chronic head pain, and her daily function and activities had increased enough that she could go camping and hiking at national parks in an RV with her husband.
It is incredible to me that though the medicine of neural therapy grew up in alignment with modern anesthesia, this injection technique has become a lost art in the hands of allopathic medicine. I believe much of this is linked to an indifference to the importance of the fascia and the body's connective tissue. Somewhere along the line, the organs, bones, brain, and genes became the focus points of medicine, seen as holding the main keys to our health. But now, I believe, the time of our container is at hand. The vehicle that carries around our organs, bones, brain, and genes is stepping into the limelight. With newly discovered science around connective tissue, we are giving greater scrutiny to how this system moves information and uses the autonomic nervous system and the immune system to communicate important information to every area of the body. Adhesions and scar tissue block this communication, lead to microbial imbalance, drive lymphatic congestion, and directly contribute to chronic inflammation. All modern medical knowledge now points to inflammation as being the main contributor to every modern ailment from which we suffer, from heart disease to dementia, cancer to diabetes. We have no other known tools to treat scars and adhesions other than neural injection therapy. It’s such a simple technique. More physicians could help with a lot of the chronic pain patients that we see walk into our offices every day.