Prep & Preliminary Outcomes

Phase 2 does two powerful things at once. It builds and tests the entire operational apparatus of the full national trial, and it runs the first direct, side-by-side comparison between structural care and brain-focused care. Twenty participants take part — ten receiving craniocervical correction and ten receiving brain-focused care, meaning hyperbaric oxygen therapy paired with photobiomodulation (light therapy). Every one of them moves through the complete diagnostic battery: advanced MRI, single-photon emission CT (SPECT), quantitative EEG (qEEG), and cone beam CT (CBCT).

Phase 2 widens enrollment beyond the pilot — veterans, special operators, and athletes — and its twenty participants become the first twenty of the 400-participant randomized trial completed in Phase 3.

This is the phase that transforms a promising approach into a fully operational research program. Its preparation is deliberately front-loaded, so that when Phase 2 ends the data can be published immediately and the full trial can begin enrolling participants without a single day of setup delay. The dedicated treatment and imaging equipment purchased here does not disappear when the study ends — it becomes permanent capacity to care for veterans, operators, and athletes for years to come.