the ultimate
b
balancin
in g
ACT Peter Scire Is Changing Lives,
One Brain at a Time,
For Children With Neurological Disorders
[ Written By He ath e r K W B r own ]
F
Few first impressions could rival a is to check your diagnosis at the door,’” said Scire,
10-year-old girl ripping the glove compartment out of
her family van and throwing it directly at Peter Scire.
She followed this act with a fit of biting, clawing, spit-
ting and screaming, but none of it fazed Scire, who
knew her story well. Diagnosed with a severe bi-polar
condition, AD/HD and OCD, Sarah was restrained by
two seat belts every time she sat in the car because she
would hit her mother from behind as she was driving;
Plexiglass was placed over her bedroom window
because she tried to jump out of their two-story house;
and the door on her 4-year-old sister’s room was pad-
locked so that Sarah couldn’t torment her during
the night. By the time Sarah and Scire parted ways,
months later, they were the best of friends. Now, she
is mainstream and pharmacology free. This is how
Sarah’s story ends and Scire’s story begins.
Meeting Dr. Pete
Olive-skinned and athletically built, Scire introduces
himself as “Dr. Pete” and immediately extends a
friendly smile and a gentle handshake. Around him are
two wooden balance beams, a climbing wall, a “Dance,
Dance Revolution” game and a built-in wooden ver-
sion of the monkey bars. It’s not your typical office
scene but then, Scire isn’t your typical doctor.
“The first thing I always tell parents and their kids
18 Po i n t s N o r th | F e br uary 20 0 9
executive director of Brain Balance Achievement Cen-
ters in Atlanta. “When parents enter our program, we
want to know does your child have a left-brain delay
or a right-brain delay. What we really want to measure
is function.”
Scire explained that many young kids diagnosed
with autism, AD/HD, dyslexia, learning disabilities
and other childhood neurological disorders have Func-
tional Disconnection Syndrome (FDS), a term referring
to the fact that the two brain hemispheres are not in
sync. Typically, a child with a brain imbalance has
one hemisphere that is maturing at a faster rate and
processing at a faster speed than the other. As the child
develops, this imbalance becomes more significant and
the two hemispheres can never fully function as one.
That is until now.
As the only one of its kind designed to assess,
document and quantify FDS by extensively testing
the areas of sensory/motor skills, academics and bio-
nutrition, The Brain Balance program has all but
reversed this trend. Scire simply calls it “fixing the
photo courtesy of chris thompson
disconnect.”
“Everything we do is to increase the processing
speed of that delayed hemisphere, so that it can catch
up and synchronize and we do that through exercise.
Let’s say if you walk on a balance beam a certain way
F e br u a r y 2 009 | Po i n t s N o r t h 19
 Peter Scire
or if you do timing and rhythm
exercises a certain way, you can
activate the weak hemisphere,”
Scire said, describing how the
frequency of colors, for instance,
“roy” (red, orange, yellow) will
activate the left hemisphere while
the right side is activated by “biv”
(blues, indigos and violets).
“If I put light stimulation in
the left eye, it will activate the
right hemisphere and vice versa;
if I play specific types of music
in the left ear with certain types
of pitch and timbering because
the right hemisphere is tied into
emotional circuitry, it can acti-
vate the other side; same for
tactile stimulation like brushing
a feather on one arm verses the
other,” he continued.
While there certainly is a
great deal of science involved,
photo courtesy of chris thompson
Scire’s passion is personal when
it comes to recovering children
who, according to the countless
experts and specialists that have
diagnosed them, are labeled and
left looking for answers.
He should know. He was one of these kids.
About a Boy
Bruce Lee once said, “The key to immortality is first
living a life worth living,” and Scire has been well on
his way to living up to this motto since he was 5 years
old. When his mom found him sobbing on his bed one
day and asked what was wrong, he said, “I must be
really special to be adopted and some day, I have to do
something special to thank God for that.”
Mere mention of his dad, Peter, who passed away
seven years ago, and his mom, Jeanette, causes Scire
to pause. Adopted from a Catholic mission in El Sal-
vador, he has an incredible amount of appreciation
for what they’ve done for him. “They had the rights
to me before I was even born. They came down to El
20 Po i nt s N o r th | F e br uary 20 0 9
Salvador when I was just a few weeks old and took
me back to Long Island, N.Y,” he said. “I wouldn’t be
where I am today if it wasn’t for them.”
As a boy, Scire suffered from skin rashes and
chronic breathing issues, both of which severely affected
his development and found him struggling to catch up
academically. His parents and teachers knew he wasn’t
developing along the normal curve but couldn’t pin-
point exactly why. When a young Peter said he was
going to go trick or treating for ‘FECINU,’ instead of
UNICEF, his mom finally got the answer.
Diagnosed with an audio processing disorder and
dyslexia, Scire was told by doctors that he would be
lucky to academically get past middle school and there
was little, if anything, his parents could do to reverse
their son’s condition. Unsatisfied with that response,
his parents consulted with various alternative thera-
pists who helped formulate motor training exercises,
combined with academic tutoring and bio-nutritional
protocols, all of which they used for both he and his
non-biological sister, Aimee, adopted from the same
mission in El Salvador two years later.
“Ironically,” Scire admitted, “the tools my mom
used and the exercises we did [when I was young] are
the three pillars on which Brain Balance is based and
this was in the ’80s when there was no Internet, no
support.”
When asked about those early days, Scire’s mom
relates to afternoons when her little boy would throw
his bags on the floor and scream, “I hate school” and
“I’m stupid because I can’t read.” It was after one such
episode that she sat him on the bed with an easy reader
called “Pete the Parakeet,” covered up all of the words
and slowly revealed one word at a time, one page at
a time. “We did that once, then again and again and
again. He called everyone in the family that night to
tell them he could read. I still have that book here at
our house,” Jeanette said.
Scire went from receiving hours of special educa-
tion classes through the fifth grade to being a student
enrolled in enrichment classes by the end of his sixth
grade year. He continued that success through junior
high and high school, where he was a scholar athlete
all four years.
“I’d have to say that graduating from high school
 Peter Scire

is probably the single greatest accomplishment of my
life,” said 32-year-old Scire. “I know how hard that
was on me and how hard my parents worked to make
that happen.”
To Scire and his family, reading every word of “Pete
the Parakeet” was proof that the doctors were wrong
about him and perhaps more importantly, proof that
other children could hope for similar success one day.
A Life Calling
As a board-eligible chiropractic neurologist, Scire has
changed the lives of more than 150 children ranging in
age from Pre-K to 16 years old. “Chiropractic neurology
is identical to medical [neurology] in [terms of] diag-
nostics, evaluation process and patient in-take but the
main focus is going to be, ‘Can
[we] rehab that person? Can [we]
change the wiring of their brain
through brain-based techniques?’
courtesy of penguin group/perigee hardcover
As part of the comprehensive testing done to
assess each individual child in the Brain Balance pro-
gram, a blood and urine analysis is used to find pos-
sible food allergies and identify the presence of any
toxins in the body. According to Scire, many children
with hemispheric dysfunction don’t have the normal
mechanisms in their immune systems to rid these
chemicals naturally from the body as quickly as a
normal kid could.
“We’ve become so inundated with all of these
toxic chemicals that are in our environment, in our
homes, in our children’s schools, what they ingest
through all of these processed foods, and we can use
the blood/urine assessment to measure this with a
finite amount,” Scire said. In Will’s case, the results
that came back indicated toxic levels of 2-Methyl-
malonate, most likely accumulated from exposure to
Xylene — a clear, colorless liquid used widely in many
products such as paints, glues and pesticides — that
The first Brain Balance centers in the
Atlanta area brought families in droves,
including some who commuted from
Augusta and Knoxville to participate in
the program and one family that moved
out-of-state to Peachtree City while Scire
worked with their severely autistic child
for nine months.
Finding a Balance
Scire, who recently opened another Brain
Balance location in Roswell, beams as
he talks about everything from his life’s
work to being the single father of 7-year-
old Nicholaus and 3-year-old Emma, both
of whom he hopes will one day travel with
him to see the countryside and visit the
mission in El Salvador from which he was
adopted.

And that’s how I got into Brain were making him have severe central nervous system “When I’m not working, I’m hanging
Balance,” Scire said. side effects. out with my kids and if I have any quiet
The success stories alone “He is a different child: mild mannered, polite, time, I like to cycle on the Silver Comet
could keep him talking for appropriate, not tired any more, he has no tics, he Trail,” he said. The notion of having much
hours but the smile on his face is not sweating profusely when he sleeps, and he has quiet time makes him laugh. Even his quiet
says just about as much. “You grown over 1.5 inches in three months,” Carter said. time is booked, or at least filled with reading
don’t know as you work with “Consider the life, or lack of a normal life, that this the stack of books — all brain related —
each family what one thing sweet child would have had we not found Brain Bal- on his nightstand. That’s to be expected
[they] want to experience nor- ance when we did.” from someone working on his Masters in
mally, and when that light It seems improbable even to the families who have neuroscience, beginning his PhD later this
Dr. Melillo, the world-renowned neurolo- bulb goes on in that family, it’s witnessed the turnaround firsthand, but Scire is quick year and talking every Wednesday night on
gist and researcher behind Brain Balance, worth everything I do,” he said to redirect the attention to the science behind Brain 92.5FM The Bear (Senoia, GA) about what
recently released a groundbreaking proudly. Balance and to Dr. Robert J. Melillo, the man who he calls Brain Ecology.
book titled, “Disconnected Kids: The
And that’s a lot if you con- started it all. Prompted to research the topic when his
Groundbreaking Brain Balance Program
sider that in Sarah’s case, her own son started showing signs of developmental delay, In each neurological diagnosis that can dev-
for Children with Autism, AD/HD, Dys-
lexia and Other Neurological Disorders.” parents had come to Scire as a Melillo developed a technique called Hemispheric Inte- astate parents and limit a child’s potential,
It provides a guide to properly address last resort: if he couldn’t help, gration Therapy with an emphasis on applying a non- Scire sees another opportunity to change
the symptoms and causes of certain they would be forced to decide pharmaceutical, non-surgical intervention to children someone’s life. His greatest contribution to
behaviors, an assessment checklist and whether to put their daughter with developmental disorders. our city’s children is the gift of hope and
exercise programs for children.
in a mental institution for the A post-doctoral student where Melillo was on fac- a chance of life-long success. And he’s just
rest of her life. And then there’s ulty, Scire read an advance copy of his new book at the getting started. PN
5-year-old Will, whose mom, Jennifer Carter said, “I time and immediately enrolled in Melillo’s classes. “I F o r M o r e I n f o r m at i o n
hate to say this so as to not jinx us but I venture to think knew the theory that this man was presenting would Brain Balance
that [Will] is virtually cured of all the symptoms that single-handedly change the world’s view of what Centers in Suwanee, Roswell and
led a leading neurologist to diagnose him with Tourettes causes these disorders and how we can recover these Peachtree City
Syndrome, ADD and OCD just four months ago.” children.” www.brainbalancecenters.com

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