White Plains Neurologist Receives Prestigious Award for Leading Edge Work
Dr. Barry D. Jordan came to White Plains 18 years ago when he was offered a position at Burke Rehabilitation Hospital. Today, Dr. Jordan serves as assistant medical director and director of neurorehabilitation at Burke and has been selected as one of the Best Doctors for Neurology by New York Magazine. In fact, this is the 16th consecutive year Dr. Jordan has been on the publication’s prestigious Best Doctors list, bringing accolades to the advanced neurological medicine program at Burke as well as to White Plains where Dr. Jordan resides.
Jordan is a board-certified neurologist with specialized interests in sports neurology, Alzheimer’s disease, and traumatic brain injury. He is an associate professor of Clinical Neurology at Weill Medical College of Cornell University and a team physician for USA Boxing. For 13 years, he served as the chief medical officer of the New York State Athletic Commission. He currently serves as a medical advisory physician for NFL Player Benefits and is a member of the NFL Players Association Mackey-White Health and Safety Committee. He also is on the NCAA Concussion Task Force and the Pop Warner Medical Advisory Committee. As a leading expert in traumatic brain injury, he is the author/coauthor of four books on sports neurology and is regularly quoted in the national media.
In the past seven years as the link between traumatic brain injury and dementia later in life has become more widely recognized, especially in professional sports, Dr. Jordan is seeing the fruits of work he initiated 30 years ago begin to pay off for athletes.
“When I was in medical school at Harvard I knew I wanted to study sports neurology,” Jordan told The White Plains Examiner in a recent interview. “But, at the time there was no neurological sports program and the other students laughed at me,” he remembered.
But Jordan pushed and developed the program himself, working with players on the Harvard sports teams and then at a sports clinic that treated football players in California and with mentors who spurred him on.
Back in New York he did a lot of work with boxers, some of them famous – Sugar Ray Leonard, Mike Tyson, George Foreman, Muhammad Ali.
Working with both boxers and NFL athletes, Jordan has completed a fellowship in public health at Cornell University Medical College, a clinical neurology fellowship at the New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, a fellowship in sports neurology at the Hospital for Special Surgery, and a fellowship in behavioral neurology at UCLA Medical Center. He earned an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and a Masters of Public Health from Columbia University.
At Burke Dr. Jordan is involved in three major programs involving brain trauma.
The Retired Athletes Cognitive Evaluation (RACE) Center provides evaluation and treatment for athletes who suffer from long term, chronic neurocognitive effects of participation in contact and collision sports. As Dr. Jordan’s early insights suggested, recent studies have brought forth evidence that Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), Post Concussion Syndrome, and other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease may be associated with repetitive or sub-concussive blows to the head.
Burke’s RACE program diagnoses and treats retired professional and amateur athletes that show signs of impairment later in life.
The number of cases has become so prevalent, especially with football players, that the NFL provides funding for players to receive testing and treatment.
Locally, Dr. Jordan has spoken with high school sports coaches and trainers to make them aware of the signs of concussion so players are removed from the field and allowed time to heal and to receive medical attention if they require it. And while he does not consider a concussion to be “serious brain trauma” Jordan says playing with a concussion will hamper your ability to perform well. “I have heard many players say they lost a game because they did not sit out,” he said.
Alzheimer’s disease is another specialty area of Dr. Jordan’s.
Burke’s Memory Evaluation and Treatment Service provides comprehensive outpatient assessment and treatment of memory disorders. Some types of problems with memory are “normal” as one grows older, Jordan contends, but others can indicate a serious problem.
Currently, Burke is conducting a clinical trial to evaluate whether increasing brain glucose utilization can slow cognitive decline in individuals with Mild Cognitive Impairment or mild Alzheimer’s disease dementia. Dr. Jordan said he is hopeful there will be good news soon.
Thiamine (vitamin B1) is closely linked to glucose metabolism, which is important to maintain memory and cognition. Many thiamine dependent processes are diminished in Alzheimer’s disease, contends Jordan. Reduced glucose utilization is one of the early symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease.
The goal of the trial is to determine if increasing brain thiamine with the new investigational drug benfotiamine will minimize the decline in glucose utilization and slow the cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer’s disease.
Burke is looking for participants to take part in the trials. Study participation will be over a 12-month period and will include follow-up visits at the clinic every three months. There are no costs associated with participation in this study. The trial is funded by the National Institutes of Health and The Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation.
To learn more call 914-597-2476 or visit burke.org.
