Tucked away in Victoria Court off State Street in downtown Santa Barbara, there is a soothing oasis created for the sole purpose of easing your body from its daily tensions and, hopefully, infrequent ailments.
As soon as you walk through the doors of Imagine X Functional Neurology at 1221 State St., Suite 11, you are greeted with a smile and calmed by the esthetically pleasing architecture, modern furniture and clean simple look of the patient waiting area.
Imagine X co-founder Adam Harcourt is a fourth-generation chiropractor and the first in his family to become a board-certified functional neurologist.
Harcourt studied pre-med at the University of Pittsburgh, received his doctorate at Life Chiropractic College West in Hayward and post-graduate work at the Carrick Institute in Cape Canaveral, Fla.
He is also a professor of clinical neurology at the Carrick Institute for Graduate Studies, and regularly speaks on different functional neurology topics at medical seminars around the country.
Functional neurology, considered by some to be a relatively new field of study, is on the cutting edge of modern health care and medical research applications.
Unlike traditional medicine, which shines in emergency situations and surgical procedures, functional neurology assists patients who are experiencing symptoms but have no discernable ailments that show up on diagnostic exams.
With what disorders or ailments can functional neurology help?
Quite a lot, but some of the treatments Imagine X is best known for and has had the most success with are migraines/headaches, concussions, dizziness/vertigo, and other more serious ailments, such as chronic pain, nerve damage, multiple sclerosis and traumatic brain injuries.
Harcourt chose to specialize in functional neurology because “the way we were treating most diseases like back pain, headaches or diabetes … just doesn’t make sense.”
“We are treating symptoms of a disease without actually figuring out why that disease is there to begin with,” he said.
Another advantage of taking a functional, rather than a traditional, approach to treatment is that it “allows you to look at each person for what they are and not for their diagnosis,” Harcourt explained.
Symptoms such as migraines, headaches or dizziness/vertigo can’t be definitively diagnosed by traditional medical equipment. That is why Harcourt makes it his job to do the “puzzle solving” and figure out “what is going wrong that is forcing your body to act differently than how it would normally.”
“When we find things that are deficient or aren’t working right, we give a therapy and then we have the ability to immediately test afterward to see if it made a positive or negative change,” Harcourt said.
“It simply makes a lot more sense to me to approach it in that fashion.”
The passion Harcourt has for helping people is clearly evident when he describes some of the breakthroughs and life-changing moments when patients who had been suffering from chronic migraines or headaches for years, are treated, healed and pain-free for the first time ever.
Since Imagine X Functional Neurology first opened its doors almost two years ago, the practice has been heavily involved with the nonprofit Jodi House, which works with victims of traumatic brain injury.
“Most people don’t realize that when you have a traumatic brain injury one of the main things you lose is your social circle,” Harcourt said. “You just don’t have the ability to do the things you’d normally would do.”
Harcourt has been volunteering at the Brain Injury Support Center at Jodi House every other week for more than two years, and was recently ask to join the Board of Directors.
Imagine X is also hosting a community Ugly Christmas Sweater Party at 7 p.m. Dec. 4 as a benefit for Jodi House. All benefits and proceeds from the raffle and silent auction will go directly to Jodi House.
“Our main mission is to get the word out to the people who have no hope, and let them know that there is something you can do for you headaches, or dizziness or concussions,” Harcourt said.
Click here for more information about Imagine X Functional Neurology, or call 805.962.1988.
