Ep 140: When the Hardware Is Fine: A PT’s Own Fight with PPPD, Dizziness, and a Brain Stuck in Threat

One day after finishing a half Ironman, Karan Singh, PT, DPT, had his first panic attack. A week later, standing in the TSA line at the Austin airport, his vision started jumping and the ground began moving up and down. What followed was five months, seven-plus clinicians, a brain MRI, and roughly a hundred blood tests, all of them negative.

The answer turned out to be persistent postural-perceptual dizziness, a diagnosis only solidified in 2017, and one most clinicians have already seen without recognizing it. The hardware was fine, it’s the software was stuck.

In this episode, we get into:
– What PPPD actually is, and the three criteria that identify it
– Why a brain stuck in threat abandons balance input and over-relies on the eyes
– The three phases of the protocol Karan built for himself with the Neubie
– Why exposure work land faster when you first down-regulate the neurological perception of threat
– The one instruction that matters most: do not let patients avoid the triggers

If you have a patient whose dizziness never resolved and whose scans all came back clean, this episode gives you a name for it and a way in. And if that patient is you, Karan’s own words are the place to start: it is functional, not structural, and it can be retrained.

TRANSCRIPT

 

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (00:01.058)
Hello, Newfit Nation. Welcome back to the Undercurrent Podcast. I’m joined today by my guest and Newfit colleague, Corinne Singh, Doctor of Physical Therapy. Also very timely because we’re celebrating PT month as we’re here in October of 2026. And he he, Corinne, has some very interesting perspective as a clinician and now working in education for us at Newfit, sharing with other

Whether it’s athletic trainers or PTs with professional sports team, a lot of private practice owners and their staff clinicians sharing all sorts of education. So he’s got some cool perspective. And he’s also been through a very interesting personal experience that we’re going to dive into today because it ties together a lot of different themes about neuroscience and the vestibular system and new fit methodology. So I’m really excited for this. Corinne, thanks for joining us.

Karan Singh (00:54.651)
Yeah, thanks for having me. I’m really excited to share my story and kind of give an insight to how the newbie can be used in this new diagnosis that’s commonly misdiagnosed.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (01:05.23)
So you mentioned a diagnosis. That diagnosis to help set the stage for everyone listening is PPPD or Triple P D, which stands for persistent. Let’s see, where is it? Persistent postural perceptual dizziness. Triple P D. And this is something that you had. So just to tell us, just to give us a sense of what it was like, what what was it like at the worst? What was your actual experience like?

Karan Singh (01:35.602)
so this had happened a day after my Iron Man, I had a a big thump in my heart and I went to a panic attack. I stood up and the world became extremely dizzy to me. It was the craziest experience of my life. I’ve never had a panic attack before. Then all of a sudden my days got normal for like a week straight. The next thing I know, I am in the Austin Airport. I’m like living life.

I have a little bowl of sweet cream before I walk into the TSA line. I’m about to hand the officer my ID card, and my vision starts jumping around everywhere. I see the earth go up and down. I feel like I’m about to faint. Out of nowhere, I hold on to my girlfriend. I’m like, I’m about to go down, but my body, I never go down. And I started breaking out into immense sweats on the TSA line, about to take a flight to New York.

And I’m freaking out. And I’ve never been an anxious person in my life. And this is I just became super panic and super anxious. And then all of a sudden it went away. And then I bore the flight. And then for that was four months ago. And then from that day on, I have struggled with a lot of unsteadiness, panic attacks, anxiousness that have just come out of nowhere.

So yeah, that was kind of my worst day and kind of set the stage for my months of rehab.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (03:04.024)
Okay, thank you for sharing that. And let’s let’s back up even further just to help people get a sense of who you are and where you’re coming from. So many people listening to this are themselves clinicians, physical therapists, different types of practitioners. So can you give a sense of your origin story and how you got into PT?

Karan Singh (03:21.817)
Yeah. my the origin story is actually, you know, as every kid grows up, you have some kind of weird career that you want to do. Mine was marine biologist. And then I met I got really close with my uncle, who was in PT school at the time. I was probably in sixth, seventh grade. And I got to know him more and I got to see what he did. He was one of the PTs for the Arizona Cardinals at the time. And he would tell me stories about who he saw, what he did, and what his day-to-day was.

And that blew my mind. So my career paths quickly changed from a marine biologist to wanting to become a physical therapist. so I kinda had my target set for many years, even before high school. getting into college, I during the summers I would go and work for him in New York City where I grew up. I would take the train in four thirty in the morning, go work for him from like five AM to five PM. my uncle is my true

idle. He has the craziest work ethic I’ve ever seen. He wakes up at 3 every day to go treat his patients and goes to bed at 7 PM. And I was like, wow, I kind of want to live that lifestyle. I want to be like my uncle. And yeah, got accepted into physical therapy school Christmas Eve, 2020, I think. And yeah.

I’ve been in PT ever since. I started my career in Austin at a corporate physical therapy practice. Then I realized I want to have more personalized care and give more personalized care. And I started at a cash-based clinic treating Iron Man people, triathletes, high-end athletes like myself. So, and now I work for NewFit. then it’s actually interesting how I got the job in Newfit too.

Our company, our physical therapy practice, actually was interested in getting a newbie. And the sales rep Laura had come in and demoed the newbie. And then that day I had so much pain. I came off a 13-mile run that day. And I was like, There’s no way this helps. And she came in and used the magic glove on my quad. I went from limping to going for a jog that same day. Two weeks later, we bought two newbies. Fast forward a year later.

Karan Singh (05:39.683)
I am now working for NewFit. I now get the opportunity to teach other clinicians and other ATs and other OTs on how to use a newbie and how to maximize the potential. And now we’re here.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (05:53.091)
That’s right, that’s right. And one other piece that I wanna give you a chance to elaborate on is your history with endurance sports. You talked about having done this Iron Man and that was the catalyst for this episode that we’re gonna talk about. Can you give us a little bit of your endurance history here also?

Karan Singh (06:10.949)
Yeah, it’s actually funny. I’ve never act growing up most of my career, I’ve never been an endurance athlete. I played collegiate lacrosse, and that was my extent to athleticism for a while. And then once I left college, I mean I picked up any whatever whatever guy kind of does, it’s like pick up all in golf. And I did that for a while. Met my girlfriend who is a beast runner, Boston qualifier. And I was like, well, if I

can need to keep her or get a chance to keep her, I have to kind of match her lifestyle. So I became a runner and from there I caught the bug and I did my first half marathon, two marathons. And then my brother had moved to Austin. My best friend came here and we were like, let’s just sign up for an Iron Man. a half Iron Man, I should say. And over the course of last year for eight months straight, me, my

brother and my best friend trained for a Half Iron Man, Panama City Beach, Florida, 20 hours a week while also working 40 hours a week in person. the tail end of 2025 and beginning of 2026 was the biggest ch I what at the time I thought the biggest challenge of my life. Balancing work, my girlfriend, and endurance sports. But yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at now.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (07:34.351)
Awesome. So with all of that context laying the foundation, let’s talk about your Triple P D experience. So you already shared a bit of how it happened. It was that that episode immediately after the Iron Man, and then a week later, this visual thing. So talk us through the next stages, then picking up that story after you had that episode at the airport, what happened symptom-wise, and then we start.

Karan Singh (07:43.473)
Mm.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (08:03.852)
getting into the experience you had with the medical system and trying to figure out a diagnosis too, which I know is is a big part of this.

Karan Singh (08:08.561)
Yeah.

Karan Singh (08:11.961)
yeah, and this story is actually really interesting because this is a fairly new diagnosis. So everyone listening here, just like me, if you’re a physical therapist, you probably have gotten this client or patient in your clinic and you were like, I don’t know what’s going on here. And we just treated them as a regular vaccine rehab patient, and they may have never gotten better. So if you’re listening to this, go back to those guys and say, like, they could have had this next time I see this in the clinic.

I may now know how to treat it better. So that’s also why I’m on here too, to help other people. So with triple PD, there’s always an event that starts this. It is either BPPV, vestibular neuritis, any sort of inner ear infection can kick start this off. Or what the research says is there

Could be a massive psychosocial psychological stressor that kicks us off, like a panic attack. And that’s what it was for me. but it was just weird in the time that when I had the panic attack, for about a week straight, I felt completely normal. nothing really crept on, I was just fine. And the what I shared earlier, that the TSA lines where I where everything kicked off.

And ever since then, for about three and a half months later, I had a slew of symptoms. The first thing being very weird dysautonomous symptoms, where I would eat a meal and immediately almost faint, or feel like I was going to faint. It got to the point where

I couldn’t eat a meal without having my girlfriend sit next to me and making sure, like, hey, like, I if I pass out, like, go take me to the ER. I should be okay. But like, but it never happened, which was the weird thing. and that’s what I thought it was at the time. And we’ll talk a little bit in in the later, but it’s like it was never dysautonomia, it was vertig visual vertigo. My body literally couldn’t sit upright, eat, and also process.

Karan Singh (10:21.665)
normal visual objects in the in my room. And I didn’t know that at the time. I just thought I was I had a disc autonomia symptom. So that lasted for a while. My vision issues kind of subsided after the TSA for a while. And then they popped up again once my at the time that I thought dys autonomia subsided. I couldn’t walk the street without my vision, without seeing the earth bounce up and down every step I took.

It felt like I was on a I was walking while there was a real life or real-time earthquake happening. It was the scariest, it was literally the scariest thing I’ve ever gone through in my life. Along with that came with this irrational fear of literally everything that I would do in my life. And it’s the most simplest task. Like a two-year-old could go through this with no issue. It was as simple as taking a shower.

My brain could not comprehend that I was gonna be okay while taking a shower for some reason. Or having dinner with my girlfriend, or walking the street, or even visiting my parents, and so on and so forth. Any social interaction I had, my brain for some reason could not handle it. And that has gone on for the that’s probably the symptom that’s gone on the longest, and I still kind of have now. Once

The visual symptoms had subsided, that’s when my gait started going extremely awry. It got to the point where I thought that I had a cervical myelopathy. My legs just stopped working. Turns out I obviously didn’t have a cervical myelopathy. I didn’t know what I had. the sensation that I felt was with every step I took, no matter where it was in the world.

It felt like the earth was pushing back up into my legs. Felt like I was on a boat the whole time. I really don’t know how to describe it other than anytime I was in a upright or standing position, I just felt like I was on a boat the whole time. And it’s very different than a common excuse me, vestibular diagnosis that’s found is maldebarkman syndrome, is where

Karan Singh (12:42.223)
You kind of like you’re on either on a boat for a prolonged period of time or you’re riding elevators, or you kind of feel that sensation for a little bit for a day or two after. Well, in my case, it was not a day or two after. It’s been five months and I still feel it. And that unsteadiness in my gait, along with the irrational fears, are the two symptoms that have lasted the longest. My visual symptoms have gone down. My dysautonomia symptoms that I thought I had have all gone down.

And that is kind currently what I am dealing with now.

basic yeah.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (13:17.816)
So and then give when so as we’re having this conversation in October of twenty twenty six, when was the Iron Man, just to give people a sense of the timeline?

Karan Singh (13:26.501)
The Iron Man was May ninth of twenty twenty six.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (13:29.014)
Okay. So f five months almost almost exactly call it exactly five months from the time we’re having this conversation. Okay. All right, just to make sure we have the timeline. And then when and we’ll get to how you treated and how how this came to be, but you just mentioned, of course, the visual symptoms have improved. You have these other symptoms lingering, but when would you say that you were sort of through the worst of

Karan Singh (13:37.201)
Correct.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (13:56.951)
So that first phase of symptoms that you’re talking about with the visual especially.

Karan Singh (14:00.825)
that came like pretty quickly. There’s two types of visual symptoms that I had. The up and down, like the earth shaking, is something called oscolipsia. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right, but it’s a common symptom of what vi vestibular neuritis people have is where the earth shakes up and down.

That went away and I don’t know what I did. I just lived my life. But I had another visual symptom where my eyes just get tired and I have problems tracking or I get visual vertigo if someone’s talking to me like this. I knew I was out of the weeds with that, or I’m still dealing with it, is once I realized that number one, every I’m gonna be okay. That’s the number one part. And number two is when I realized.

There’s nothing structurally wrong, and we’ll get into this a little later. whatever is going on can be retrained, and I that’s when I started to implement the newbie into my vestibule my own vestibule rehab that I made up myself because I didn’t really have much guidance. Do we want to talk about how I use a newbie or wait for that for a little bit?

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (15:09.43)
I I do want to talk about that. Let’s let’s go I’m trying to keep this a little a little bit chronological in the hope that everything lands and makes a little just makes a little more sense to everybody. So let’s talk about those early stages. What was your experience like gett I know you did many tests along the way, seeking a diagnosis, trying to figure out what the heck was going on? Obviously at one point you thought it was this myelopathy, it wasn’t. You thought it was other things, it wasn’t. What was what was the experience like?

Karan Singh (15:15.92)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (15:39.198)
Seeking a a diagnosis.

Karan Singh (15:41.558)
it was insane to say the least. And it’s still currently insane because I’m still getting referrals from my doctor to go get random scans done. When I’m like, I am okay. since I have really never gone to see a specialist in my life, I really didn’t know what to do or what I had going on. I I just started with, you know, going to the normal primary care doctor.

And they were like, I have no idea what’s wrong with you. You should probably start taking more vitamin D. Yes, my vitamin D was low. Okay. I started taking more vitamin D. They’re like, you probably should also probably go see a neurologist and a cardiologist. The wait time is, and this is the when I went to the primary care my first doctor was, I think it was like maybe June 10th. Okay. My pro

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (16:30.926)
So approximately approximately one month after the Ironman.

Karan Singh (16:35.185)
Correct. And she was like, Yeah, go see a neurologist. Yeah, the the approximate wait time is in Austin, Nov you’ll you’ll probably have to wait till November. I was like, Cool, well that doesn’t help me at all. So kind of ignored that for a little while. And I and she was like, also go see our cardiologist for your fainting feelings and all that stuff. So I’m gonna go see a cardiologist. Everything’s fine, got an echocardium, got an EKG, got all these blood tests taken, everything was negative. That doctor was like

You’re a healthy young man. You know, keep living your life. in between that and getting more scans in doctors, I had another little panic attack where I was walking one day and couldn’t feel the one side of my body. Just went, it went numb, but I could still stand. I was like, wow, I’m having a stroke. Drove myself to the ER and got like a CT scan done, and I got a CT scan on my head and neck. Negative.

As usual, or what I expected. The ER doc said, You’re fine, you’re gonna live a y long, young, you’re young, you’re gonna live a long, healthy life. Here’s a migraine cocktail. It’s like 10 medications. I don’t need that. I need someone to tell me what is going on. Because I’m not faking these symptoms. I’ve been pretty normal my whole life. He’s like, I there’s nothing I can do for you. Go see a neurologist. Okay.

The and I went to go to the neurologist that he referred me to and the wait time was, and this is still in June. I couldn’t get to see this neurologist till January of 2027. And I was like, I am gonna be completely hopeless here. I don’t know what to do. so I kept pushing up the neurologist appointment. I then went to the GI doctor because I was like, maybe I have C bell, small intestinal bowel, overgrowth, bacterial overgrowth.

Makes a brain fog, I’ve got dizzy, okay, maybe it’s a SIBO. The GI doctor is like, you’re fine, you’re just constipated. Here’s these proton pump inhibitors, take them. see me in a month. I was like, I’m not doing that, and I’m fine. I don’t like that’s not what I have. He’s like, you probably just have acid reflux. So now we’re down to like that’s my fourth or fifth doctor I’ve seen in a month and a half span. And we’ve gotten nowhere. Absolutely nowhere. Then

Karan Singh (18:55.535)
I was like, you what, I’m done with seeing doctors in Austin. I’m gonna go to Houston, where my parents live. And the medical infrastructure there is a little bit better in terms of the fact that there’s more doctors there and it’s easier to get in. And that’s when I finally saw my neurologist. So that was in the middle of July, end of July. And I told this neurologist all my symptoms, and he’s like.

It’s actually really good that you’re you have like some twitching in your body, you have some tingling, means that you’re a healthy person. And I was like, This is the seventh person telling me that I’m the healthiest person, but I don’t feel very healthy. And he was like, Okay, go do brain MRI, go do a MRI of your spot and back. And he was like, It’s only done in Houston. I couldn’t do that at the time.

So I was like, okay, fine. I’m gonna go see an ENT. And the ENT was very nice. She was a great soul. I really liked her, but we still got nowhere. she was like, you also need a brain MRI. Just to make sure you don’t have MS. And then and when she said the word MS, from that point forward, I freaked out. Because I was like, I match every symptom that MS has.

And I she wrote me a referral for a brain MRI. To get a brain MRI in Austin, it’s a month’s wait at the imaging center. If you use the one that she wanted me to go to. For a month straight, I freaked out. I didn’t couldn’t see a doctor, couldn’t do anything because the NT was the last thing I could do. Last person I could see. So for a month straight, I just lived my life thinking that I probably have MRI, MS, waiting for this MRI to get done.

It was insane. got the brain MRI, negative. negative. I like by every single scan and every blood test that I’ve gotten, negative. And I was like, okay, well at least I don’t have MS, so that’s a huge plus. But also just gets me nowhere. final, final straw, then the last doctor I have seen for this was a like

Karan Singh (21:14.213)
Five weeks ago, maybe, was actually my other primary care doctor in Houston. And now a lot of people on this like, why didn’t you just go see him in the first place? He had no availability. And I also just didn’t know what was going on. I made him order a hundred blood tests ranging from every type of cancer, Lyme disease, chronic like there’s like a mast cell activation syndrome, everything. He’s like, he literally looked at me and said,

Well well, we are really reaching here. And I was like, I mean, I don’t know what else to do because no one’s giving me answers. Every single test was negative. He was actually like, Your blood pressure and your blood values are probably the healthiest I’ve seen in the clinic today and probably for the for the week. And when he said that, I was like, I’m lost. So

Right there was when I was like, I’m gonna take my entire rehab into my own hand because I am the best advocate for myself. so yeah, that’s where I began my own vestibular neurological rehab.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (22:20.738)
Okay. So then when you got to Triple P D, did some did someone tell you that or is that something that you have gotten to on your on your own conclusion? I know obviously we have a a good paper describing this that we’ll share in the show notes. And w is that is that the conclusion that you’ve come to?

Karan Singh (22:39.193)
Yeah, I have come to the conclusion that this is what I have ninety-nine percent. there’s literally nothing else out there. I have gone through the classification criteria for this, which is basically if we short short version of is you have non-spinning vertigo for three months or longer.

Okay, non-spinning vertigo just means unsteadiness, which I’ve had, with no issues to your inner ear structure. The second diagnostic criteria is gonna be there had to be some sort of episode that lipped this off, whether it’s BPBV, vesticular neuritis, panic attack, so on and so forth. Okay. Third one is gonna be that there’s nothing else wrong with you, so that’s what this is. All right.

Diagnosis of exclusion is what they call it. And I was like, all right, I probably have it. Started reading more about it. And that’s when life shifted for me. My perspective shifted is when I started reading more and I found that it’s more of a hardware problem versus structural problem. where my brain kind of software problem, yes, than a than a actual like structural my brain, my inner ears messed up problem. And that gave me hope because

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (23:46.424)
A so more of a more of a software problem. Yeah.

Karan Singh (23:58.842)
I was like, wait a second, this this verbiage and this theory and this ideology sounds really familiar to something that I’m very close to, which is newfit and the newbie. And that’s when my rehab had taken off from there.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (24:14.572)
Yes. And reading this paper that you shared with me before we sat down to record today, it is fascinating to read about Triple P D and how it is just as you said, Corinne, it is a case where the hardware is fine. There’s no structural issues with the vestibular system, the vestibular cochlear nerve, any such structures. And yet there is an issue with the vestibular system and associated reflexes and

Course, the vestibular system has direct reflexive projections to the spinal muscles and postural muscles, and so there’s there’s issues there, and it also can affect the autonomic nervous system. So all these things that you’re experiencing. And one of the biggest themes in that paper is, as you said, is how there can be some initial insult, something that creates a cause for concern. And then just like with physical trauma, how we talk about the

nervous system continuing to guard and inhibit and these different compensatory movement patterns lingering even after the injury is healed. That’s why just letting something rest doesn’t always fix, usually doesn’t fix the entire problem. Also why pain lingers, by the the nervous system still perceives load in that area as threatening and still therefore triggers pain even if the injury is healed. It’s still reacting as if there is damage there because you haven’t actually reset or recalibrated that neurological pattern. It’s the same thing happening here where

These patterns around processing vestibular input are still are perceived as threatening. That vestibular input is perceived as threatening. And so it creates this sense of hypervigilance, which leads to elevated autonomic arousal, which is related, of course, to panic attacks. It can be a two-way street where it can kick it off, it can kick it off, but it can also having this can make it more likely to happen again. And it leads to all of these other issues. So yeah, it’s it’s fascinating to see.

parallels here and I think that is a good segue in to now talking about you Corinne what you did with the newbie and the the treatment that you’ve done here and I know having talked with you in the beginning and and checking in along the way it’s been a transformation. So yeah can you please share a little more about what you’ve done along the way?

Karan Singh (26:32.879)
Yeah, and I kinda wanna like real like really speak s I guess yell this rehab out to the from the mountains because if your practice has a direct current machine, does it have the newbie, please start using it for these type of patients. It helps a lot. the biggest thing is when I first realized, okay.

My brain is stuck in a fight or flight mode. I need to learn, I need to figure out how to get it from a fight or flight and down to rest and digest and increased parasympathetic tone.

Since I was dealing with panic attacks, since I was dealing with like anxious thoughts or just like didn’t know what was going on, I for almost three weeks straight did the master reset, which the newbie offers five days in a row. It was insane. Every day, five days in a row, every workday, I would for 25 minutes go and do the master reset. I didn’t do anything else. Cause the time.

I’m gonna talk about my rehab as I learn more and more about this pathology. At the time, I’m like, my brain is just stuck in fight or flight, and that’s all it is. So I’m gonna do master reset five days a week. I did that for about three weeks. And my body started to change. I was much calmer. I was able to go around in public with less anxious thoughts, less panic attacks. my brain.

Became more resilient to everyday stressors. Okay. But that didn’t last. Look, that didn’t take me to the promised land because I still had all this vestibular stuff to work with. So with PPPD, what happens is when your brain gets stuck in this glitch of in a in a heightened state of threaten threatened mode, it stops talking to your

Karan Singh (28:30.137)
Auditory system. It starts stops talking to your somatosensory system. Really stops talking to your spinal cord for that, for that matter. All it does is rely on your visual system to keep you upright, to do all your balance activities, to do literally everything in life. Okay. Your eyes, if you know anything about the anatomy of your eyes, they’re tiny. The muscles are tiny. The nerves are not very strong there. They’re easily fatigable, the muscles there. So imagine trying to live your entire life.

and day-to-day stressors via your eyeballs. It’s not gonna go very well. And they fatigue very fast. Once I started learning about that, is when I started reducing the amount of times I used the master reset.

But instead using the newbie, you know, placing them on my suboccipitals, placing them around my neck, and you know, putting it at 500 hertz and every single day, multiple times throughout the day, putting myself into the positions, into the scenarios that make me dizzy and uncomfortable, I would repeatedly do that with the newbie on to promote parasympathetic tone, but also to

improve or increase neuroplasticity because I learned with whatever’s going on with my brain, the only way out of it is to continue pushing through the uncomfortable scenarios. So you can teach the brain, hey, it’s okay. I’m not gonna die. I’m not gonna fall. I’m not gonna something bad is not gonna happen to me. so through repeated scenarios in which made me dizzy, I eventually started really, really getting better.

and I was like, okay, I can walk the street now more comfortably. I am if we’ve got more public, more comfortable. My gait’s a lot better. I’m not getting as dizzy. But then then I was like, okay, there’s still fine tuning that needs to be done. What was left when my symptoms like the symptoms that were still lingering? Visual vertigo. I can’t sit in front of the laptop without getting dizzy. Okay.

Karan Singh (30:36.325)
When we have these daily huddy huddles when I for Nufit, it’s like twelve different boxes on my screen and my brain would almost explode. I couldn’t sit there. My my eyes couldn’t track all of that. when I was out in public, I would get these massive migraines, headaches, like in the airport. And it’s because my my eyes were tra trap couldn’t track everything.

And couldn’t process that in my brain. So what I started doing then was I used the newbie and I started doing optokinetic training. For those who don’t know what optokinetic training is, is if you look up videos of this, it’s visual stimuli that are is very provocative, whether it’s figure eights on your screen or motion sensitivity as like if you’re driving,

look it up, it’s actually very cool. And I started doing that while the newbie was going on to desensitize my brain. The other thing to help improve my visual tracking is I learned this thing back in the day.

I had this friend who was a professional gamer, and every time before he played Call of Duty, he would go for 14 minutes, do a visual tracking warm-up, sit 60 frames per second, stare at his computer and like stare at a dot that like tracked all over the screen. I was like, I kind of need that. Looked on YouTube, started doing visual tracking exercise at 60 frames per second. All of a sudden, my body feels great. I can go in the airport, no migraines, no headaches.

I can sit in front of this computer. I’m doing this podcast right now. Two months ago, I would have had a panic attack. I would have gone dizzy. I probably would not have been able to do this. And now we’ve been sitting here for 32 minutes and I feel totally fine. so that’s kind of where I’m at. That’s the takes me to the tail end of the rehab where I am just fine tuning my visual system to stop panicking all over the place. and I’m using a lot of the newbie

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (32:35.51)
And one of the themes that I that I like here, interestingly enough, is something that we just talked about in the most recent podcast episode released before this in a slightly different context, but same principle. And that is what you’re doing is essentially a form of exposure therapy. You’re allowing your brain to see the experience that it perceives to be threatening so that it can learn to recalibrate, that it doesn’t need to protect and be so vigilant.

Around that particular experience as much as it had thought it did. And that process, if you keep exposing yourself to something that’s threatening, it could it could go bad. It could go in a in a couple of different directions, right? You could start to recalibrate and calm down, down regulate those protective patterns in a positive way. It also could send you off into bigger problems, right? So you have to be able to.

to walk that line of giving enough stimulus to make a difference without crossing over and doing too much. And this entire process of call it exposure therapy is supported when you use something like the newbie as you did, Corinne, to be able to down-regulate that sympathetic vigilance and perception of threat, create a baseline of greater safety so that when you introduce this input in that environment of greater safety,

You’re less likely to trip that alarm, and you have a greater opportunity for the brain to recalibrate and understand that it’s safe. So doing that even without the newbie is the right strategy. With something like the newbie, it allows you to handle more input and and make the adaptations faster because of that influence on the autonomic nervous system. There. So I like I like the way you combine that.

Perhaps you might have done it otherwise just not as quickly, or perhaps you might not have done it at all. Thankfully we don’t have to f have to run the counterfactual, you know, the opposite scenario to to to figure it out. But that’s amazing progress. And I applaud you for applying these principles that you know from treatment more in the musculoskeletal realm, applying them to this scenario here, because that’s a lot of what creativity is. Ma most of the time.

Karan Singh (34:31.984)
Yeah.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (34:51.382)
It’s not coming up with something new, but it’s connecting existing themes or ideas or concepts in new ways. And so that was a creative approach to take that principle in one domain and apply it in into another.

Karan Singh (35:03.289)
Yeah. And that’s kind of what you have to do with this I don’t even want to call it a disease. I want to call it like a I’m just gonna call it disorder. maybe it’s just like a a glitch. I’m gonna call it a glitch. I have a glitch. just so it sounds a lot better. And that’s kind of what you have to do with this t this glitch because the treatment like the treatment protocol is not very robust considering this was just really solidified as a disorder slash glitch in twenty seventeen.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (35:14.69)
Mm-hmm.

Karan Singh (35:32.038)
The treatment criteria for this is obviously vestibule rehab, right? And that’s where you go through basic VRT, vestibule rehab therapy, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy, which is just what I’ve been doing myself, is exposure therapy. And if you do need it, and some people do because

If they previously have a history of like depression, anxiety, so on and so forth, SSRIs, low dose, I should specify low dose SSRIs are a main say for this disorder slash glitch. some people may not need it. I was one of the per people who decided not to take it. And the way I looked at it is if SSRIs are reducing the hyperactivity of my central nervous system, I can just do the same thing with the newbie.

and that’s kind of the that’s kind of the path that I took. And from there on I created my own receiver rehab protocol, which was just basically doing every single thing that made me dizzy and just repeatedly doing it to the point where I was walking my city block backwards with my eyes closed.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (36:44.802)
Just for fun. Just just to show just to show you could do it.

Karan Singh (36:46.021)
Just just for fun, don’t do that. W Yeah, well it was one of the things that made me dizzy. walking the city block. So I I did I did it four different ways. Eyes closed forward, eyes closed sideways, backwards. I had my girlfriend around to make sure I didn’t wander off the street, of course. but I that’s what this trying to fix this glitch takes is getting creative and knowing that you’re gonna be okay, and just repeatedly doing what

causes the dizziness, so that your brain’s like, Okay, it’s fine, everything’s okay. This is not a threat.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (37:21.72)
So next up is the backwards eyes closed half iron man.

Karan Singh (37:26.735)
Yes, next year it’s coming.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (37:29.07)
All right. So as as we wind down the discussion of this glitch or response or disorder, I kinda like the term response. It’s the way the body responds and it’s a little less threatening. different different topic though. But of course the words that we use are very powerful, so it’s it it does matter. I I’m wondering as as we wrap this up, is there anything more that that you, Corinne, think needs to be said around your experience?

Karan Singh (37:41.189)
Yeah.

Karan Singh (37:47.312)
Mm-hmm.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (37:58.829)
with the response slash glitch or end treatment. And then anything else that you would say to either a patient or a clinician who may be a patient who may be experiencing something like this, clinician who may be treating someone who’s experiencing something like this.

Karan Singh (38:01.881)
Mm.

Karan Singh (38:17.017)
Yeah. And this is tough because looking back at it, I most likely saw this version like a patient of mine, maybe my last few weeks of treating back in my old job, someone probably had this. They fit all the symptoms. I didn’t know how to treat them. I did what I normally would have. And at that time, they started getting a little bit better, but there was something that was not the whole thing wasn’t getting overall better. And I didn’t know what it was. Now now that I

Probably like he probably had triple PD. So now what I would tell a clinician first is listen to their symptoms. You know, create a timeline. When someone’s coming to you with vertigo, anything unsteadiness, it requires an extra level of thinking because there’s so many differential diagnoses that come into play. Some very serious, some not so serious. so I I really encourage clinicians to if they see something like this.

Please listen to their entire chronological timeline of symptoms. and and just encur if you are like, wow, I know what this is. This is triple PD and you’re that clinician, encourage them that everything is gonna be okay. Not everyone’s treatment.

Or now you mean it’s rehab is linear. The whole purpose, the whole like if you read all about this, is that no rehab, no person has rehab this with a straight line of all positive days. It’s some things get better, some things get worse, some things get better, some things get worse. So talking to your client, talking to your patient, like

You are going to get better. Some days will be worse than others, but in the end, you will get better if you stick with the treatment, if you do not avoid the triggers. That is the highlight of what you need to talk to your patients and clients about don’t avoid the triggers. Because if you avoid the triggers, that’s when the maladaptive responses in your brain continue to solidify. The whole goal here is to retrain and

Karan Singh (40:19.129)
Get rid of these maladaptive responses that your brain has come up with. And if you avoid all the triggers, that stays. And that’s what’s going to derail that patient’s rehab. now if you’re the patient and we’re talking to you, I would just be like, and if I they were sitting across from me and I’ve already gone through this, number one is like, I understand what you’re going through. I completely do, maybe not to the extent if they have worsening symptoms.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (40:31.447)
Yes.

Karan Singh (40:48.527)
You’ll make it out in the end. Yeah. You just have to stay strong. do your own research so that you’re so that you yourself know you’re gonna be an okay in the end. This is a functional neurological disorder, not you have MS. You don’t have anything structurally wrong with you. It’s functional, it can be retrained. You just need to train it and not avoid anything.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (41:11.628)
Yes. And it’s a theme that we discuss often on this podcast. And part of why I was so fascinated by this is that your experience and this response slash disorder slash glitch is such a clear example of that principle in action. So I thank you, Corinne, for for coming on to share your experience. We of course will tag you and if people want to follow along on

Instagram, see you on social media, see all these cool places you’re going to train the the universities and the pro teams and everything here. so I have I have one final question before you. Any anything anything else on the triple P D topic before we give you the final question?

Karan Singh (41:56.665)
Yeah, I would say if you do drop my Instagram handle, if you’re if someone if you’re listening to this podcast and you’re like, I know someone who may have this or you yourself may have this, reach out to me. I’m always willing to chat and talk. I wanna spread the word about this response, this glitch disorder, because it is very common and very commonly misdiagnosed.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (42:19.714)
Yes, very good. I appreciate that. Final question for you, Corinne. If there was one message that you could shout from a mountaintop for everyone to hear or put on a billboard for everyone to see, what would your message be?

Karan Singh (42:33.137)
so if something if this disorder glitch response has taught me anything is that my brain’s trying to tell me I need to become a new person. If I want to become a new person, I have to go to places I’ve never been. And that is the the theme and the mantra of my rehab because I’m

doing things that I w probably could have done a million times before, but I’m re I’m thinking through the lens of I’m a newborn baby and I have to re go go through these all over again as if this never has happened. So if I’m gonna become a new person, I have to go through all these places I’ve never been.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (43:06.904)
Right. That’s a good take home message for me, for everyone listening to this. If there’s anything any area of our lives where we’re afraid to take that next step, it’s good to sit with that fear, understand if we know it’s gonna be okay, have the courage to take the next step. And I think that’s a great note on which to close it. So thank you, Corinne, for joining us today. And thank you, Undercurrent Podcast Listener, for tuning into this episode. We will see you next time.

Karan Singh (43:33.339)
See you later. Thank you for having me.

Garrett Salpeter, NeuFit (43:35.638)
heck yeah. Thanks again for for joining us. Bye bye everyone.