Not knowing what an appointment involves is its own small stress, and a nervous system braced for the unknown is not the one you want to be recording. So here is the whole thing, start to finish.
Before the appointment
Preparation is simple and mostly concerns your hair. Clean, dry hair with no product — no oil, no gel, no dry shampoo. Product sits between the sensors and your scalp and degrades the recording.
Beyond that: keep caffeine roughly normal rather than unusually high or skipped entirely, since both change the picture. Take prescribed medication exactly as you normally would, and mention what you take so it can be read in context. Never stop or alter medication for a recording — if you are wondering whether to, ask your doctor, not us.
Try to arrive reasonably rested. A severely sleep-deprived recording tells us about last night more than about you.
Arriving at your home
Because sessions happen where you live, there is no journey and no waiting room. The equipment comes to you and sets up in a corner of a room you already feel comfortable in.
What is needed is modest: somewhere comfortable to sit, a power socket, and a reasonably quiet space for the recording itself. Not silence — a normal home is fine — but ideally not the room where a football match is on.
Setting up
The longest part, and the least eventful. Head measurements ensure the cap sits in the right position, since where sensors sit determines what they read. The cap goes on and conductive gel is applied at each sensor site to make good contact with the scalp.
The gel is cool and slightly odd for a moment. It is water-soluble and washes out with ordinary shampoo. Signal quality is checked sensor by sensor before anything is recorded, and this checking is worth the patience — a recording made on poor contacts is not worth analysing.
The recording itself
About twenty minutes, usually split into segments.
Eyes closed first, sitting still and relaxed, letting your mind do whatever it does. Then eyes open, resting your gaze somewhere neutral. Sometimes a simple task such as reading or listening, to see how activity shifts under mild demand.
Your only job is to sit still. Jaw clenching, frowning and fidgeting all show up in the recording as muscle noise, so you will be reminded to keep your jaw loose. If you need to move or swallow, say so — a brief pause is much better than a contaminated segment.
After the recording
The cap comes off, the gel washes out, and the practical part is done. The recording then goes through cleaning and analysis: segments with too much muscle or movement artefact are removed, and the remaining clean data is processed and compared against a normative database.
This takes time, so you do not receive a report on the day. When it is ready you get a written report and a conversation walking through what it shows in plain language — not a PDF of colour maps with no explanation.
What the conversation covers
What the maps describe, how those patterns relate to what you have told us about your life, and what the options are — which may include neurofeedback, may include other suggestions, and may reasonably include neither.
It will not include a diagnosis, because a QEEG does not produce one and this is not a medical service. If something in the recording suggests you should speak to a doctor, you will be told plainly to do that.
Questions worth asking
Ask what the findings mean in the context of your own daily life, rather than in the abstract. Ask what would be trained and why, if training is suggested. Ask what would count as progress, and when you would review whether it is working. Ask what happens if it is not.
A good answer to that last question is a clear one.
A note on language. McWellness offers wellness and educational services, not medical care. Nothing here diagnoses, treats or cures any condition, and none of it replaces advice from your doctor. If something you read raises a concern about your health, please speak to a qualified medical professional.
