#59 Dr. Michael Bagnell - Neurologist Unlocks Human Brain and Reveals Tips to Improve Mental Health

Dr. Michael Bagnell is a Functional Neurologist and Chiropractic Physician who specializes in brain-based healthcare. In this episode, Dr. Bagnell breaks down the intricacies of the "default mode network" and how the body can be rehabilitated by retraining the brain. Dr. Bagnell explains how memory and trauma inform one another. Shawn & Dr. Bagnell discuss the root of conditions like ADHD, PTSD, and anxiety. He also touches on a surprising new field of research that involves a Dolphin's unique ability to "echolocate" different issues in humans. If you want to optimize your brain health, this episode is for you. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://shopify.com/shawn https://meetfabric.com/shawn https://ziprecruiter.com/srs https://bubsnaturals.com - USE CODE "SHAWN" https://learshawn.com - CALL 800-741-0551 Information contained within Lear Capital’s website is for general educational purposes and is not investment, tax, or legal advice. Past performance may not be indicative of future results. Consult with your tax attorney or financial professional before making an investment decision. Dr. Michael Bagnell Links: Practice - https://www.bagnellbraincenter.com Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/bagnell_brain_center Please leave us a review on Apple & Spotify Podcasts. Vigilance Elite/Shawn Ryan Links: Website | Patreon | TikTok | Instagram Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 0:03Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

• 0:04Speaker 00

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 0:10Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 0:14Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 0:16Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped moving? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 0:20Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:24Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not admitted without parent.

• 0:31Speaker 04

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• 0:55Shawn Ryan?

  How many of you have gone to the doctor and you get a physical? Or you know something's wrong and nobody seems to be able to figure it out? Nobody seems to have the time to figure it out? Or you go to the doctor and you get your blood work? And this is what you get? Good to go? But let me tell you this, you might not be good to go. Doctors are getting lazy. And so, I want to tell you guys about functional medicine. So functional medicine are doctors who actually care about your health and they're gonna go the extra mile to make sure you're healthy

• 1:36Shawn Ryan?

  and educate you on what you should be doing to leave, lead, excuse me, a healthier lifestyle. So I brought on a functional neurologist. Super informative episode. The doc is a, just a remarkable human being. It was an awesome interview. He goes over all kinds of stuff in the brain, the anatomy of the brain, things that will help you prevent Alzheimer's, dementia, lots of brain health stuff, super informative episode. And, um...

• 2:14Shawn Ryan?

  He cares. He's a functional neurologist. He even, he came into the studio and actually mapped my brain. Talks about my TBI. It's fascinating stuff. I hope you all enjoy it. Ladies and gentlemen, if you like this show, please leave us a review on Spotify and on Apple Podcasts, Patreon. Love you all. Thank you. Actually, the doc, Doc Bagnell, is a patron. He's a patron and that's how I found him. So, thank you, Doc, for the support.

• 2:54Shawn Ryan?

  And anyways, without further ado, please welcome functional neurologist, Dr. Michael Bagnell, to the Sean Ryan Show. Cheers. One last thing. One last thing before the show starts. Everybody wants to know how to keep your mind sharp, right? So, the first thing the doc says, the best thing to do, if you don't get to this part, is get moving. Move your body, which is what I just got done doing. Doing a nice workout. So, you want to stay sharp? Get off your ass and get in the gym. Alright, enjoy the show.

• 3:42Shawn Ryan?

  Dr. Michael Bagnell, welcome to the Sean Ryan Show.

• 3:46Speaker 06

  Super honored to be here. Still looking forward to it.

• 3:49Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, thank you. We've been talking for a while. I'm just super excited to have you in the chair and I have a ton of questions for you. But first, everybody starts with a gift. You got any ideas?

• 4:01Speaker 06

  I think Vigilance Elite Pretzels.

• 4:09Shawn Ryan?

  We're gonna have to send you back home.

• 4:11Speaker 06

  Wow, these are, yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to it. And, nobody ever comes with a gift for you, so my wife and I decided, talking with your wife, we have a gift for you.

• 4:20Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I love presents.

• 4:24Speaker 06

  So.

• 4:25Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I got a feeling I know what this is.

• 4:27Speaker 06

  Hold on.

• 4:30Shawn Ryan?

  Is this from Triple, yep. Oh my gosh.

• 4:34Speaker 06

  So that, we appreciate you.

• 4:36Shawn Ryan?

  These are amazing.

• 4:38Speaker 06

  Those are for you, bro.

• 4:39Shawn Ryan?

  And I will be digging into these on the first break. Thank you.

• 4:43Speaker 06

  Yes, thank you. Excited.

• 4:46Shawn Ryan?

  Triple Crown Bakery in Franklin. If those of you that don't know, it's definitely worth the trip.

• 4:53Speaker 06

  We're setting the bar for all the future guests. They must stop by and bring you that.

• 4:58Shawn Ryan?

  So we got a lot to talk about. And, my first question is, short-term memory loss. When you forget what you're saying mid-sentence, this happens to me all the time. Happens when I'm talking to my wife, it happens when I'm on camera. It actually went away for a couple of months after I did my psychedelic treatment. And now it's back. What is that?

• 5:27Speaker 06

  Well, it's difficult to say what it is, but we can talk about why it might start coming up. And so, you know, and these are just, this is just an idea. Because whenever I'm talking with somebody about a particular symptom that they have, a condition, something they're suffering with that they'd want to improve, like this, where we're losing focus, it would seem, on what the subject we're talking about. So, we have to start thinking about just regions of the brain, networks of the brain. So, we know that speech and memory, we know where those areas kind of lie in the brain, in the landscape. Speech for men is mostly on the left. The ability to understand what you're saying and me for to interpret it, and then speak back is mostly left-brain with men.

• 6:10Speaker 06

  Women tend to be bilateral, so they recover better from strokes, their speech if so. But, and memory is in another area, a little bit lower in the temporal lobes, which we'll show you in this model in just a minute. But, we're having kind of a disconnect in the ability to maintain the thought. The working memory, which is what we're talking about here, it's not long term, it's short term. It's like, right now, right now, right now. And being able to keep that short term memory in the forefront. So I'm thinking, when I hear that, I'm thinking, okay, what's happening in the frontal lobe? The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex will be, I'll use language that's, you know, more scientific, just because it's in my wheelhouse all the time. But I'll kind of try to, to break that down a little bit.

• 6:55Speaker 06

  So the frontal lobe, it's your executive function. It's like, what's happening right now? Making decisions and organizing your thoughts. Maybe you're thinking even about the next question you want to ask me. It's all happening in that frontal. Okay. But maintaining what I just said, or what you just said, is also happening between the frontal, the temporal lobes, and so networks come together. So when we think about it, we think, I first think, what's going on in this person's brain that might be now projecting this, this effect? So I look at it more globally, rather than thinking, uh, let's just work on their speech or just their memory. I want to see globally what's going on. So I have to take a step back from really every symptom.

• 7:38Speaker 06

  Even if I have five people with the same symptom, three men and two women, I still have to take a step back and look at their brain as a whole, to understand what might be the causes, what might be contributing, what might be the therapies for them afterwards, if we can do something, right? Cause that's something we talked a lot about it. People go and they get assessments, high-tech scans, and then they just don't know what to do with that data to help themselves. It's like, it confirms you have a problem. Good, that is helpful. It lowers anxiety. Yes, I have this problem. But what am I going to do with that? Mm-hmm. Or can I do something with that? So my answer is, to what is that? We wouldn't know until we started to get in there and start to work with some of the

• 8:23Speaker 06

  structures and see can we alter that, but I would first put my pin in working memory in the frontal lobe.

• 8:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:32Speaker 06

  I'd like to say, okay, let's see what's going on that frontal lobe. And with that in mind, we just did a brain map on you. So we did an EEG or a QEEG, right? We I mentioned a EKG for the heart. An EEG is done for the brain, but we did a QEEG. It's a version of that where we can look at a brain map.

• 8:52Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 8:53Speaker 06

  And we got some results from that, which would tell me, oh, okay. This might be something that's going on in your brain that might be contributing to that issue that you're talking about.

• 9:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, what what are some a few specific things that could be triggering that? Like, could it be a traumatic brain injury? Could it be?

• 9:13Speaker 06

  Absolutely.

• 9:13Shawn Ryan?

  TB or PTSD?

• 9:15Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 9:16Shawn Ryan?

  It could be.

• 9:17Speaker 06

  Both together, yeah. So anytime we have a mild and there's there's more than 50 definitions of concussion. So this is a very and they just came out of the conference, the consensus conference earlier this year in Amsterdam to and they do this every few years to try to understand what's the current data, what's the current understanding? So when people think they have a concussion, generally a person thinks it's more mild compared to a MTBI, a minor traumatic brain injury. That seems more oof. And anyone who's in the military who served, you know, has heard enough rounds going off, had enough things that that could have created multiple concussive forces to the brain and

• 10:01Speaker 06

  then changed the electrical activity, the chemical activity in the brain that could contribute to those. So absolutely.

• 10:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, could it also be from ADHD, ADD, maybe just having too much going on at one time?

• 10:17Speaker 06

  Yeah, for sure. I mean, We were talking about this the other night, that a lot of times people have these subsequent conditions. I have, a person would say, I have ADD or I have ADHD, or my child. And then they have a concussion, and they had ADHD before that. Or they had anxiety, and they had a concussion or a brain injury after. So, you can have different things that can occur, but you have these underlying conditions.

• 10:43Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 10:44Speaker 06

  So I guess I could say, like, if I'm training for the military, but I previously had a knee injury, and I had a back injury when I was a kid, now I'm training, and now I flare up some of these things, and now I have a bigger problem with my knee and my back, and now it's my shoulder, because I brought to the party already an imbalance. Or something that wasn't strong when I brought, and neurologically, that happens to a lot of us. We have a trauma as a kid, we have some sports, we have some injuries, we, we get really ill at one point, we have the inflammation from things, we have a poor diet, and we bring all that stuff to the party of whether it's a brain injury, or whether it's PTSD and exposure to something that's really traumatic, and now our brain is working on top of all that other stuff in the background.

• 11:27Speaker 06

  So, yes, I mean, the different conditions or symptoms that people have are really a picture of what's happening in their brain.

• 11:36Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Well, Doc, we've got a lot to talk about. We're gonna talk about anxiety, memory, Alzheimer's, dementia, TBI, effects of social media, psychedelics, marijuana, we've got a lot of stuff to cover, but while we're on the memory topic, I've, I've always been curious, I've heard rumors that every, every memory that you, everything that you've experienced since birth is in your brain. You just are unable to actually access all those different memories. And some things we remember, some things we don't remember, where, where is all this stored? It's not like I can... Cut your brain open and find some memories on there.

• 12:21Speaker 06

  Right, right. Yeah, there isn't that that aspect of it, right? So, you know, here's a brain model. Well, actually, I'll just keep it together. So here's the model. Here's the front of the brain. Here's the back of the brain, the side view from the right. And we see, of course, this is all colorized, but it helps us understand things with the colors. And these are brain regions, and they all have different kinds of cells. Okay, so that's probably as deep as we'll go into that. But here's that frontal lobe up here. All this is actually the frontal lobe, the green all the way forward. Actually, the red all the way forward is the frontal lobe. This is the motor strip. So when you have a thought about something and you want to do something, I want to raise my arm up, this red area is going to start firing up a program. Thinking about it like a computer program, plug it in, here we go. And it's going to move that arm.

• 13:06Speaker 06

  So if I'm going to move my right arm, then the left side of my brain on this motor cortex is going to say, send it to that right arm and those muscles. So I'll say this right out of the gate, because I mentioned another myth that's been debunked. But I'll I lay this on top of Dr. Andrew Huberman out of Stanford, that there is no muscle memory.

• 13:24Shawn Ryan?

  There is no muscle memory.

• 13:26Speaker 06

  No. We use the adage, we say, oh, you know, muscle memory. And I'm not here to correct everyone, but since Dr. Huberman corrected everyone also, I'm just going to ride on his coattails, because it's really the brain. That's the memory that sets up the program, you know, the motor program to do something. So it's like riding a bike, right? We always heard that. It's muscle memory. Muscles have no memory. But the brain has a memory program for riding a bike. Even if you haven't done it for 50 years. And it will kick those muscles into gear, so to speak, activate them so that it starts. And the balance mechanism is like, hey, remember this? And starts running that old program again, so you can then carry out that function.

• 14:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:09Speaker 06

  That's kind of a neat one, though.

• 14:10Shawn Ryan?

  That is interesting.

• 14:11Speaker 06

  Because we all think that, right? Muscle memory. And whether you say that or not, it's not here nor there. It's just it's interesting to know. It's your brain. That's the memory for what you need to do again.

• 14:21Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 14:23Speaker 06

  So, front of the brain, you're gonna have some of that working memory up here, motor actions. It's really your, I love the way one of the neuroscientists talks about the frontal brain is your simulator. It simulates everything. It's evaluating everything constantly. What am I gonna do? If he does this, what should I do? So, how important is that in military service? I mean, it's important in every human function. If I say this, what are they gonna say? It's like a chess player. Here, that frontal lobe. And then we move back here into the parietal lobe. Here's, this blue strip is your sensation. Everything you feel in your body. You feel your left hand on your thigh there. That's lighting up in the right side of your brain saying, I have some pressure on that thigh.

• 15:08Speaker 06

  So, everything we feel is in that blue strip. So, feeling and motor are right together, right? Because if I feel something on my leg that's kind of pinching me, I'm gonna move my leg quickly, reactively. And so, they have to be synchronized together. Okay. And we move back in the brain, we have vision back here. But on the side here is the temporal lobe. That's where the memory, the primary memory, let's say mechanisms are involved in that area, which is kind of neat. So, if we take this apart a little bit, which I really love this stuff. Alright, so we're looking on the inside here, right? And this round piece here is your emotional cortex, your limbic area. They used to say when someone goes limbic, right? They get really emotional. This limbic area.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  So, this is what's really involved, the brain stem in this limbic area with PTSD. Really? Yeah. Okay. So, this is, this is what's called by Sanjay Gupta from CNN, I was just mentioning to you about that, he's their medical person. He was saying this part of, this real estate is the expensive real estate in the brain. We think, oh, it's gotta be the frontal lobe. It's gotta be something really unique. This, brain stem, is really the expensive real estate. This is what keeps us alive. Okay. This is where most of your neurochemistry is made. Serotonin, like when people have depression and they're on an SSRI, made in the brain stem. Acetylcholine for memory, given to people with early Alzheimer's, made in the brain stem.

• 16:35Speaker 06

  GABA to relax the brain, or calm the person down, made in the brain stem. So dopamine to get you to do things and to drive and to focus your vigilance from dopamine made in the brainstem. When we have a loss of that, now we're in Parkinson's. So all this stuff is made here chemically. And so this is a really unique piece, which we'll talk more about. But this area and your limbic area here, frontal lobe, all involved in PTSD.

• 17:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Memory, though.

• 17:07Speaker 06

  Memory.

• 17:08Shawn Ryan?

  Where is memory stored?

• 17:09Speaker 06

  So memory is primarily stored in this temporal lobe out in here. The hippocampus, so it's got fancy names, but that's where that processing of memory is, occurs. And a lot of things link to it. I'll give you an example. So smell is linked to memory very much. Smell is more through the front of the brain, through the nose and certain nerves. But it links to that. Vision is of course linked to memory. So vision and what you're seeing is, is really recognized in the back of the brain. But then it links to memory. So I walk into our house and I smell apple pie. Wow, man, that reminds me of my grandmother's kitchen. In just a moment, I have a memory that's brought back up into my consciousness through smell.

• 17:52Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 17:53Speaker 06

  Or through sound, right? You hear something boom, boom, boom. And all of a sudden, a memory of something comes back in. So a lot of different parts of the brain network to the temporal lobe. And you think about it, temporal, timing, right? Temporal, it's temporal and it's, it's way of collecting data. And so to go back to what you said, so I'm remembering my working memory. Going back to, do we remember everything throughout all, every aspect of our lives? I don't know. I don't know if, if they're ever able to cert, with certainty, say that we do. But we probably do.

• 18:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 18:31Speaker 06

  We probably do.

• 18:31Shawn Ryan?

  Why, what is stopping people from accessing certain memories?

• 18:37Speaker 06

  Well, we know that there's pruning that occurs at an early age, like with your son. As their brain is developing, they have more neural connections, but they prune them back. So pruning, just like you prune a bush, it gets rid of things that are not absolutely necessary for now, for function. So we might, it might be storing them. I don't know. But we know that there's pruning that takes place. It, you, you have a lot of neural connections, but it prunes them and it makes some of them stronger. And that's what we need. We need some connections to be very strong and others not that strong. So maybe that's part of it. Is when it prunes, does it store them? I don't know. Perhaps.

• 19:18Shawn Ryan?

  What about with trauma? So I'm gonna give you an example. And, and I'm asking, you know, for, for women that have been, for a lot of the guys that have been on the show, you know, have seen and experienced a lot of trauma. People ever worse experience a lot of trauma. And I've talked to a lot of operators who've come out of the psychedelic treatment and have accessed memories that they, they have no recollection of until they do that. I'll give you another example. One of my friends, uh, who's a SEAL, watched his mother be, when he was, when he was a little guy. And had totally 100% blocked that out of his memory

• 20:02Shawn Ryan?

  until he did his psychedelic experience and that all came back. What, another example would be, a long time ago, I was, I was doing this anti-piracy stuff. I run into a old sniper partner of mine, who I didn't even remember was a sniper partner of mine. I knew him very well. We were friends. We've hung out a lot. He started talking about this mission we were on and together had pictures, everything. I had zero recollection of that operation. None. But it obviously happened and I, I was too embarrassed. To to tell him that I don't remember any of this.

• 20:47Speaker 06

  Well, sometimes, I mean, and you know, we're touching a lot of topics in that in that statement. Sometimes there can be a retrograde amnesia from a brain trauma. So you might lose something and now it may be everything. But you know, previously retrograde going backward.

• 21:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:04Speaker 06

  So it could be something like that, like somewhere following that mission with a head impact. Maybe you lost some some of that memory that was stored there, right? Um, it also could be the suppression of memory by my own system to protect me. Right? So I mean, I talk about this with my wife all the time. There's certain we'll watch a movie that's heartrending and the father's really strong character. And talking with the kids in a way and I'm like, you know what? I don't want to watch this anymore. Cause I can feel some of that memory stuff coming up in me that I'm like, nope, not going to go there.

• 21:39Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 21:40Speaker 06

  So in a way I'm controlling it, but what am I doing? I'm holding down some memories. So I think also we know, and I'm not a mental health counselor. I'm not trained in mental health work. We work with excellent people in psychiatry, psychology, mental health counselors, all types of people in that in that realm. And we know that people can suppress for their own well being. Their mind can suppress things for their own well being, so they can continue to go on. And so it's really fascinating to me after you did your psychedelic journey. And had some people on that talked about it. I was so fascinated by it. So I started digging into some of the data. And what we know right now so far is that, well, what's going on in the brain when you do this?

• 22:24Speaker 06

  That could bring back a memory of something or could help someone feel more recovered, more of their emotional state back. There's something called the default mode network. So again, in the brain, we have regions, but we have networks that work together. And the default mode network is a little bit in the back of your brain, a little bit in the front of your brain and to the the sides of the brain. So it's this network of connections. And this network that so you have one in the front of the brain, I'll say that first called the central executive network. It's the front of the brain, all these areas that link together to say, let's carry out this task right now. Then there's the default mode network. It kicks you back when you're like, okay, I'm just relaxing right now.

• 23:09Speaker 06

  I'm not really doing anything in particular. My brain goes into the default mode network. So kind of like, think about like a toggle switch. Central executive, take care of action. Default mode network. Well, in the default mode network is where we have a sense of sitting back and like relaxing, taking things in. Also, it's our sense of self. It's also where we have a hope generated for our future. So there's, think about that. Someone goes to military service, sees extremely traumatic things. Maybe they don't have so much of a hope and a vision for their future because they just seen so much damage and so much carnage and all the, all the things that they see, they

• 23:54Speaker 06

  may end up shutting down this default mode network. And if you don't have a proper balance between the central executive to carry things out and the default mode network, well, we're imbalanced. Like then I can, I can do things and I know some of the guests, I won't refer to them by name, but some of the guests like, I can just do and do and do things. I gotta keep going. I gotta be unadrenal, I gotta keep, right? But I can't just sit back and like, just chill out. I 100% have that issue. So the default mode network is what is acted upon, not solely, but primarily through psychedelics. Really? Yes. And what does it do to it? That's what we don't know.

• 24:36Speaker 06

  It does, we think, because some studies say it creates more activity in it. Some studies say it creates better connectivity in it. Really? So that's the target, I believe. And again, I'm, I don't work with psychedelics. That's not my area of expertise, but just in my, my looking into the literature and trying to understand from, from research-based studies that are actually going on, and they're using it even at Stanford, so out there. So we know that this default mode network, something is going on, which then restores both of the networks and there are other networks. So now you have more of a balance in this person, but what I like to think about is this sense of self. Because you come back, and I mean, I've seen it more in movies than the few people that we worked with is,

• 25:22Speaker 06

  you know, that's what I identify with. I don't identify with going to the farmer's market and doing these seemingly normal things when I've just been in that level of life. So I think the reconnection of that default mode network, and it can be done with other ways rather than just psychedelics, but it's showing very promising, right? I mean, it speaks for itself, what you experienced, so.

• 25:47Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I really want to dive into the psychedelics topic, and I wanted to go into that a little bit later, but let's just do it now.

• 25:54Speaker 06

  We're there.

• 25:56Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'm really curious, I mean, there's been a lot of benefits that I've personally received from psychedelics. A lot of my friends, former operators, have received a lot of, I mean, it's just been positive almost all the way around, but I do know of specific examples where psychedelics didn't, they either did nothing for,

• 26:21Shawn Ryan?

  I'll just call them the patient, or it was actually harmful. And I have not heard, alls I've heard is psychedelics are great. Everybody's doing psychedelics, they're making these massive headway with them, but nobody's talking about the couple of cases, and there's gotta be more, that's just who I know, you know? And one guy has migraines. He now has migraines on a regular basis, never had migraines before. And the other two, I know three people that did not have a good psychedelic experience. Do you know of any negative side effects from this?

• 27:02Speaker 06

  I do not, but I'm not, I'm not that engaged in that network of people doing that. You know, and although ketamine is another one that a lot of people are using for, and having benefits, which is not necessarily psychedelic, but it's another, this, in this, this genre, I would say, where we're starting to try to get changes in people's brain utilizing different. Pharmacologics, traditional medicine, herbal thing, whatever it might be in this area. So, we know that there's benefit to many people. Okay, let's just say that. Because I like to say that. What do we know? We know that people are getting benefits. You're one of them. We know that in many of the people, the benefits are longer term. That's remarkable.

• 27:44Speaker 06

  And even this data, because I've seen people ask you like, is there published research on this? Yes, Stanford has published research. I do not. But go search Stanford. You're gonna have to do a little work on your own, a little legwork. Stanford is publishing data on the use and the controlled use and the processing with the person. So, for me, as just an individual, buying something on your own, going out in your backyard and doing it is not the way to be doing things. Because there's so much going on that we don't know. I think it's much better in a controlled environment. Vital signs are being maintained. You have people looking out for you, totally focused on your well-being.

• 28:25Speaker 06

  I think those are the ways people have to consider, if they're considering, how they're gonna try that. But, so there's many different types, right? There's mushrooms, there's LSD microdosing. And again, I'm not an expert. There's ibogaine, there's all these, ayahuasca. So, I think that what I've talked with somebody in my field about, who's been doing it for more than 40 years, he said, "What we'd like to know is, what happens in the brain specifically by doing a brain map as one way?" Which is what we did, right? A brain map. By doing that pre and post, right? So, there are bigger scanners we talked about, which we can find out what's going on. That would be a way. And I think whatever we can use to understand more of what's going on before and after,

• 29:10Speaker 06

  and taking care of that person carefully during their experience, and helping them process it. So, I'll just, I'll open this up. So, I mean, I grew up in South Florida, and I was a teenager, and I did things. And my son said, "Dad, when you did that, didn't you have like breakthroughs and experiences?" And I said, "No, I didn't." Why not? Because I was just a foolish young kid doing that. So, I didn't have breakthroughs and great visions, and it was just foolishness on my side.

• 29:42Speaker 06

  That's not what I'm recommending. So if someone's gonna do it and they're being cared for by a group like the group that you were working with, I mean, I thought that was brilliant. I think those men and women are really like, okay, let's, let's do the right thing for these people. Let's, I think there's a lot there that we need to, to look into and continue to research, get data on so that we can better help people, even, even identify those before they do it that, hmm, this may not work well for you. This may not be your best option. Because certainly in my mind, it's not like, oh, you're a special operator? You need to do psychedelics. That's not the, I don't think that. I think this may be a great option for you. And so let's get some data and let's build up what we call a phenotype.

• 30:27Speaker 06

  Which types respond best to these types of interventions and which do not? And we can gather that kind of data, especially even now with coming AI, and that's a whole nother topic, but um, understanding who's gonna be the best fit for that therapy, I think would be the next level of how to deliver the psychedelics in a very successful way for people. So they can get the best out of that if they choose it.

• 30:51Shawn Ryan?

  Have you ever heard, the way it was described to me, which is probably completely off after listening to you, is it does interrupt the default mode network, but the way I understood it is the default mode network kind of gets lazy after time and it's just a highway of neurons going back and forth. And what I've heard is the psychedelics will throw a roadblock up and then those neurons have to find new pathways or reopen old pathways, which is, is there any truth to that?

• 31:25Speaker 06

  See, that's a great statement. So I would say, okay, let's look at data. How can we determine if we have new pathways? Well, if you did something uh, like a tractography, like on the front of this kind of National Geographic, this is tractography. Now we can see, are we generating new pathways? Or we could look at a Q E E G like I showed you. And we can say, what was the connectivity before? And what is the connectivity? So I'll, I'll explain this when we talk about your map. Is we can look at how these areas, all those points on the cap, represent different areas of the brain and how they're talking to each other. And so we can have hyper connectivity too much. It'd be like me standing next to you, like yelling in your ear. Your brain can just be screaming away.

• 32:08Speaker 06

  Or it can be hypo connectivity, which is like it's not communicating very well at all between networks. Okay. And so then the question is, what did it do? Is it developing new synapses? I don't know about that. It might be. What is a synapse? Synapses connection, basically, and I'm gonna just make things simple. Connection between two neurons. Okay. They synapse. But there's around 80 billion neurons in your brain. And there's three times to 10 times the amount of synapses. So they connect all over each other. So if we're developing new highways, we're talking neuroplasticity. Okay. Right? So do psychedelics create neuroplasticity?

• 32:52Speaker 06

  I think you probably have people on both sides of the aisle for that. Really? Interesting. Does, do psychedelics benefit many people? Yes. Is it for everyone? Probably not. Let's determine who's gonna benefit the most from it. That's where, that's the camp I land in. Because it's not my expertise, but I'm open. If it can help people. And does it create neuroplasticity? That's for the neuroscientists to determine based on data. Right? You always have to have good intel. Is that the right language? It is. If you have poor intel, it doesn't go well. So if you have poor data, you can make all kinds of assumptions. But my dad would say it another way, which I won't.

• 33:37Speaker 06

  You're talking out of your South End. My dad had some colorful expressions. So, you know, we have to have good data about the brain going in, doing it, coming out. So we can then correlate that and say, what does this mean really? Because we say a lot of things. And I've learned from my wife, words are very important, the way we say things. And I've learned in my years now, and I probably shouldn't have said it that way. So I'm hopefully I'm choosing my words carefully to help people listening is that, you know, there's benefit. You need to look into it. You need to find reputable people. You need to really, you know, cross your Ts and dot your Is and, you know, really go into that like, okay, let me see if this is the right therapy for me. Cause in a big metropolitan

• 34:20Speaker 06

  area like we live in, there's businesses. You know what I mean? So, you know, great, sign you up. Great. Sign you up. And so we just have to be wise in how we're looking at that. But it's definitely has promise for a lot of people.

• 34:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 34:35Speaker 06

  Psychedelics, check.

• 34:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I want to get into the mapping of my brain after the break here, but before, since we're on kind of these non-traditional treatments, I'd like to ask you about marijuana. And the reason I'm asking is because I've used marijuana. It helped a lot with my anxiety. It's helped with sleep. It's helped with my overall mood. I never even considered it until my mid 30s. And first time I did it, both nights sleep, anxiety, very low, if at all. And, um, and it did improve my overall mood. So I've heard that there are negative

• 35:21Shawn Ryan?

  effects to that as well, but I'd just like to get your opinion on what's happening there.

• 35:27Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, it definitely is an area again, that I don't just, I'm not, I don't work in dispensing that. Um, you know, I grew up in South Florida during the age when all that stuff was happening, you know, meaning drugs and influx and all that stuff. Not that I was involved in that, but you know, I grew up in the midst of that. So, you know, that kind of tainted a lot of my experiences back then. So we, again, what do we know? We know that whether it's CBD or whether it's oral consumption, you know, or whether it's smoking, we know that there's benefit. We know there's benefit. What is it doing to the brain? That's where I always land, right? We know that it changes certain brainwave states. We also know that it can decrease motivation in younger men.

• 36:15Speaker 06

  And and the chronic use of it, or the daily use of it. So we might be trying to get to something. So am I for it or against it? I think people have to make that decision. I think there's benefits and you have to see if that's the right mechanism for you to use or right therapeutic to help you. And then be judicious enough where everything is being thrown at us in society. Like, do anything, take anything, is to understand first, what's going on in my brain? And is that the best option for me? I think that's very important. So I'm not so old fashioned that I would say, oh, we can't do any of that. Listen, there's benefits and we're learning each day. Everything is advancing. You know, it's becoming more sophisticated, the raising of it, the growing of it, the processing

• 36:59Speaker 06

  of marijuana and the use of it. Uh, I just like the more judicious use of it and the understanding of what's going on in the person's brain prior to whatever therapeutic they choose. Cause if you don't know, okay, so it benefited you. I sleep better, I have less anxiety. Okay, are your, is your tolerance gonna go up? Are you gonna have to smoke more? Well, how much is that gonna cost you? What else is that gonna do to your brain? What is it gonna do to you long term? Those are the questions that I'm also interested in. We need the short term help for people, just like a medication. But we also need to understand more the long term. And can we get that person's brain to change on its own neuroplastically? That they may not need that.

• 37:40Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 37:41Speaker 06

  Because the brain, we are so early in neuroscience right now. So early, like probably what we're talking about now in, in three to five years will be like, we were doing that? So I think you're gonna see such a radical change in the ability to restore or restorative therapies that are not based on pharmaceuticals, not based on a lot of chemistry, but are based more on other types like transcranial magnetic stimulation, for instance. It's like, what? Which some of the operators and former military people get, where they're getting a high pulsing of magnetic stimulation, which, which actually creates neuroplasticity.

• 38:19Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 38:20Speaker 06

  Yeah. So again, another topic we can chat about.

• 38:25Shawn Ryan?

  Are you aware of any long-term effects from marijuana use?

• 38:30Speaker 06

  I think they're a bit varied depending on the age of the person. But they do change brainwaves positively in the beginning and then negatively as it's long-term.

• 38:38Shawn Ryan?

  Really? What is long-term?

• 38:41Speaker 06

  What is long-term? I don't know. I don't know what their definition of that is, you know, it's...

• 38:46Shawn Ryan?

  They don't say if that's a year, or six months, five years?

• 38:50Speaker 06

  No, I haven't seen data for that. I'm sure it's probably there if you dig into that, like, what do they consider long-term? But then again, what did the person bring to the party? Are they someone dealing with just mild to moderate anxiety? Or is it somebody who has a military history with all of that trauma? Physical brain trauma from injuries, you know, rounds going off, you know, all these high caliber, all that stuff coming together, toxin exposure, and they have anxiety. So those are two different people.

• 39:19Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:19Speaker 06

  So what's going to be chronic here, what's going to be chronic there, what's the dose they're going to need to get relief? What is that dose? That's a very unregulated area. That's part of the problem. It's like trial. Everyone's trying something to see what works. Which brand, which dose, how much, how often?

• 39:37Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 39:38Speaker 06

  So it's not an area that I could probably speak to as well as many.

• 39:42Shawn Ryan?

  All right. Well, let's take a quick break, and when we come back, I want to get into the mapping of my brain and find out if...

• 40:31Speaker 00

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• 40:34Speaker 01

  On October 2nd.

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  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

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  Tom Cruise is.

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  Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 40:48Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped going? You stall, you freeze in there, that's what.

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  With great power comes great deniability.

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  I'm not the first daddy.

• 40:56Speaker 01

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• 41:08Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Doc, we're back from the break. Right before we started this podcast, you've mapped my brain.

• 41:14Speaker 06

  Right.

• 41:15Shawn Ryan?

  So what's going on up there?

• 41:17Speaker 06

  All right, so definitely working at full capacity.

• 41:21Shawn Ryan?

  That's good.

• 41:22Speaker 06

  We're looking at, as a model, the front of the brain here and the back of the brain towards me. And so I'm going to give you kind of a couple of thoughts in general, and then we'll dive down into, I'll explain what I saw in the results.

• 41:35Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:35Speaker 06

  So in general, well, it's important for people to know there's different kinds of brainwaves, and the brain is always oscillating. All the brainwaves. So what are the brainwaves? Delta is the first one. Delta is normal for sleep. So we all have delta brainwaves. It's for sleep. So when we're asleep, our delta waves will be a bit higher than some of the other brainwaves. So it's a slow, slow brainwave, as would be thought. Then you come up a little bit faster, you have theta. Theta is something where you're kind of dozing off, you're kind of drifting down into sleep. It's slowing your brain down, but it's not as slow as delta. Theta is also implicated in people. If you have a lot of theta brainwave in the middle of the day,

• 42:20Speaker 06

  you might have an attention problem. Because your brain's sluggish, it's slow, and it can't stay on things that are changing quickly. Theta can also be controlled by people who meditate. So it might be a good thing that you can bring up your theta. So it's a slow brainwave, so you have delta is very slow. Theta is a little bit faster, then you hit alpha. Alpha is like the gear shifter from slow wave to faster wave. And alpha is related to, at least attributed to, performance. A relaxed state of function where you can do what you need to do, but you're kind of in a good state, like a zen state, or you're in your, you're in the right zone for an athlete.

• 43:03Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, good.

• 43:03Speaker 06

  Right? You're not tense, but you're not completely falling asleep, but you're, you're mentally flexible, you're emotionally flexible. It's your alpha state. And even Tony Robbins, I believe, says that he trains for many hours to be able to stay in an alpha state. Because he's, you know, leading these massive conferences and helping people have breakthroughs and things. So he's got to really be on, on his game.

• 43:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 43:30Speaker 06

  So alpha is very good. We know that alpha decreases as we age. And, and we can see that in people many times because they get less flexible, more rigid, more frustrated with things that maybe when they were younger, like, no, not a big deal. Then you go up from alpha to beta. And beta is a big, big range of brainwaves. They have low beta and high beta. And so high beta is if you have to solve something complex. I mean, you have so much technology here. It's almost like my office. And you need to be a bit of high beta, learning how to operate all this stuff. That's normal. But when you close your eyes to relax, a person shouldn't be in high beta.

• 44:14Speaker 06

  That can be associated with stress, anxiety, things of that nature. So all the brainwaves are normal. It depends on what the context is. So if I'm here talking to you, my brain is high in delta, that's not the proper context for that. Cause it's for sleep. Or I'm trying to fall asleep and my brain has got a lot of high beta going on. I'm not going to fall asleep very well because my brain is racing.

• 44:41Speaker 06

  So all the brainwaves, all the way to beta, and then the highest ones that we record are gamma. Gamma is a very high-frequency processing brainwave, something that helps you have insight, embeds memories very deeply. So gamma, we know, is damaged with head injuries. Okay. And also with people with Alzheimer's. And actually, MIT did some studies years ago on mice, you know, non-human studies. So not everything that's done in an animal model, we know transfers to a human. But where they took a 40 Hz flickering light, and 40 Hz would be at like, part of the gamma brainwave. And they're all in hertz, measured.

• 45:26Speaker 06

  And a 40 Hz flickering light reduced a lot of the placking in the brains of the mice or rats that they used. So they thought, oh, wow. Will a 40 Hz flickering light exposure to people with Alzheimer's and these different types of plaques improve them? So then, of course, many people jumped on that and started selling these lights that you could purchase and put in your desk that have 40 Hz flickering. And I bought one, curious. I put it just behind my computer. I figured I had a headache the first day.

• 45:57Speaker 06

  Because I've had, I've had a number of head traumas. I estimate five to seven concussions, playing football, track and field pole vaulting, several rollover car accidents. So I've had my fair share of head impact. Never diagnosed with a concussion, but I'm noticing now at my age, hmm, I think that's probably related to, like, I sweat more on one side of my body than the other. Really? Yeah, that's related to a brainstem injury. Okay. I mean, how injured am I? I'm not that injured. I'm pretty functional. But I'm noticing that I think these things are related to some of the head impacts I took.

• 46:30Speaker 06

  Being more stressed, little more trouble sleeping. You know, so I, I have little things that I notice. You know, you know yourself. You notice like, hmm, that's not really what I used to be like. So these frequencies, this...

• 46:41Shawn Ryan?

  Alpha, Beta, Gamma.

• 46:44Speaker 06

  Theta and Delta.

• 46:46Shawn Ryan?

  Um, so these, these are just, they're, they're frequencies?

• 46:49Speaker 06

  Yeah, they're electrical activity in your brain.

• 46:52Shawn Ryan?

  How are they damaged? How was a frequency damaged?

• 46:55Speaker 06

  A frequency won't be damaged, but you can have too much of that brainwave or too little of that brainwave.

• 47:01Shawn Ryan?

  How?

• 47:02Speaker 06

  Because of injury, number one, can change, because you think about it, here's an electrical wiring network, electrochemical network, or you could even say electromagnetic, electromagnetic, but electrochemical network, right? Everything's running over the wiring in this brain. And it's electrical frequencies. And you, you smash this brain from one side, or you twist it around. And that trauma can cause shearing of those electrical wires.

• 47:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 47:32Speaker 06

  And the shearing is what causes those wires not to transmit properly. And because it's injured, just like you get inflammation in a knee that was injured, or a shoulder, you can get neuroinflammation at that site of injury, which is going to radically change the, the electrical activity. And there's signatures, meaning we know that certain, or what I mentioned earlier, this, this word called phenotypes, meaning certain brainwave patterns are related to certain conditions. Then you find out, did this person have that condition? They did. Then that's the kind of pattern. So let me be a little more precise. A brain injury, a traumatic brain injury,

• 48:16Speaker 06

  has a signature often that has too much delta, that very slow wave, and too much high beta in two regional areas, like, oh, there, and oh, there. That's very common. So when people come into our center and we do a brain map, and they've had a head trauma, I look for signatures, patterns. Do they have a pattern of having a head injury? And in your case, here's what we see. You have a significant amount of delta wave, that's why I mentioned that, too much.

• 48:50Shawn Ryan?

  Too much.

• 48:51Speaker 06

  Too much delta wave on this side of your brain, the right side of your brain. Into the temporal lobe, which has to do with memory. So it's running very slow, almost like you. Here's the analogy I use. It's like having the brake on.

• 49:06Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 49:07Speaker 06

  Okay. And in your frontal lobe, you have too much high beta, which is like having the gas pedal pressed down. So you got the brake on and you got the gas pedal going. That's not so easy to get that car moving properly, right?

• 49:22Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 49:22Speaker 06

  You might be spinning the tires. I mean, just using that analogy. So that's the overview of what's happening. So it is a signature for a traumatic brain injury.

• 49:33Shawn Ryan?

  It is.

• 49:34Speaker 06

  It is. Too much delta and too much high beta in local regions. What regions? Temporal lobe, frontal lobe. Too much high beta in the frontal lobe contributes to anxiety. No question. No question. Then we go back to what we were saying before. What's going to be the best therapeutic intervention for this person to start to heal, if possible, develop neuroplasticity, if possible, and abate their symptoms? Help them feel better.

• 50:05Speaker 06

  That's the way I think about things. What can we do to improve the function of this person's brain so that they feel better and can carry on with their life in a contributing way? The way with their family, with work, with their health? Yeah, that's what I'm looking at.

• 50:22Shawn Ryan?

  So if that's what's going on with my brain and I went to your treatment center, what would be the next step?

• 50:31Speaker 06

  Well, there's numerous other tests that we would use

• 50:34Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 50:35Speaker 06

  to really dial in more data so that we can very precisely and specifically, as much as we can, target therapies. So let's go back to this. The right side of your brain, too much delta. So many of my therapies, for an example, might be from the left side of your body or from the left, through your left eye to drive more information to the right hemisphere.

• 51:01Speaker 06

  I may even use the vestibular apparatus in your inner ear on this side, which has to do with balance, because it has projections not only to balance, but to the frontal lobe, down to the brainstem, which is actually the expensive real estate. We need to analyze how the brainstem is functioning through special testing. Because what we used to believe in brain injury is that it's up here, right? In a football helmet, where it hits here, or then it goes backward inside the helmet. Now we know that the head moves on a stalk, the brainstem. And that brainstem, when the head moves, it twists. And the torsion of that brainstem is what leads to many of the problems that we have.

• 51:44Speaker 06

  Cardiac issues, respiratory issues, gut issues, blood flow back to the head issues, migraine headaches. So going back to that other person who tried psychedelics, who developed migraines. Maybe the problem was in their default mode network because of the trauma, but maybe he had a problem in the brainstem that now boiled to the top because it needs a different therapy. Oh, good. And that's why we need better assessments on the front end, so that the therapeutic intervention is more specific. I mean, can you get any more specific than being a special operator? No. The training is so precise, not general. So why don't we even think about that?

• 52:28Speaker 06

  Like, that's the way I kind of like to think in my non-military is, be as precise and target this thing so you can get the best outcome in the shortest time. Oh, good. That's the goal. It's not always easy to get there, but that's the goal. And people say, well, you know, we want to have a proper hope when we're looking at people and what they're dealing with and how to help them restore. But there, in a way, there's always a hope. How can you say that? Because we don't know what the brain cannot do.

• 53:03Speaker 06

  So I like to come in, in, in setting the proper expectation with people. Help them understand that there's something maybe that you can do. You're right. And so I say that because it's, it's easy to lose hope. You try a million things, you're suffering so badly. We want to restore hope. There, there are things that can be done and they may be, and it may be multiple different things, but if they're targeted, you're going to get a better outcome.

• 53:32Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Yeah. You know, we kind of talked about this a little bit last night, but you know, one of the reasons I've never gone to get a brain scan or, or anything, I've actually turned them down is because I just always assumed, yep, I have a TBI, probably multiple TBIs. And I've just had friend after friend, you know, from, from, from my prior life telling me that they've got the brain scan and yes, all these things have happened and then they don't know what to do. So they try the hyperbaric chamber, some other things. Does the hyperbaric chamber, does that work for traumatic brain injury?

• 54:14Speaker 06

  Out of Israel, they're finding dramatic results. Using hard chamber, hyperbaric oxygen therapy at certain depths, certain pressures and finding dramatic change. We use a soft chamber. And what I would say is, so there, there are potentially benefits. Just like there's potentially benefits with psychedelics. There's potentially benefits with the use of marijuana that's, you know, properly dosed. So there's potential. What needs to be determined is what's the best fit based on what's going on in your brain? So again, go back to, okay, you entered the office. We're going to do a series of other assessments using your eye tracking because eyes tell

• 54:58Speaker 06

  us dramatic things about the brain, like in the NFL, when they go into the tent, they look at how their eyes are moving. That's one of the standards for understanding if there's a brain injury. So we'll do eye tracking tests. We'll do balance and stability tests. Standing on a foam cushion with your eyes closed and people's balance gets very wobbly. And so we can measure that very carefully because it tells us about areas of the brain. Putting on special goggles to see how you do in the dark. How your eyes move, how your eyes function. Sometimes we'll put those goggles on somebody and they can't see anything and one eye will just completely come in like cross-eyed. So it's telling us, oh, there's neural networks here that are disrupted. We'll do autonomic testing for the brainstem.

• 55:40Speaker 06

  It's a specialized heart evaluation and blood flow so we can know, is your brainstem operating properly? So as we start to separate all that data, we start to get a target. These are all things that you perform? Yes. Okay. And a proper examination. And so I would say that the people that do this kind of work are called, or at least most of them are called functional neurologists. That's what I do. Functional neurology. And so that's what people would need to look for. Someone who works in functional neurology. Why? Because they're working with not only the data of what's going on in the brain from

• 56:22Speaker 06

  various sources, like brain maps and things, but then what therapies can be now placed in order here? Or what we like to say is stacked together. We use a suite of therapies. So we'll have people will call and say, I tried hyperbaric, it didn't help me. I tried vision therapy and it was a little bit helpful. But when you put it all together, it's very different. What is going on with the hyperbaric chamber? Why is that working? Pressure is the magic. Right? Your body can only hold so much oxygen. If you ever put one of these little devices on, a pulse oximeter, you can see, oh, 99. You can't take more than 100% oxygen into your body at atmospheric pressure.

• 57:05Speaker 06

  I mean, you know, regular, what am I trying to say there? I lost my word. Yeah. Just at room air, 21%. You can't put more than 100% in. But under pressure, based on laws of physics, Boyle's law, you can dissolve oxygen into the plasma. So you can go way beyond 100%. Because it's not going on the red blood cells, it's going to all the plasma. Now it can get into areas that it may not have been able to get before. That's why that works. So pressure is the magic. Okay. And I'm gonna say this, I'm gonna quote a friend of mine. Oxygen is the essential nutrient.

• 57:41Speaker 06

  Because people had questions on Patreon. What about what vitamins? And maybe we'll chat about that. It might be helpful. But oxygen is kind of a nutrient. Right? Without oxygen, we're done. It's really the rate limiting nutrient. You can take the best of X, Y, Z, whatever. You might even be enjoying the gummy bears, which would be a good thing to enjoy. But you need oxygen. The brain needs oxygen and needs glucose and it needs activation. Okay. So the oxygen is really key to recovery. Not only the brain, but everything in the body. So, and we know that longer term exposures to hyperbaric oxygen, even at low pressure, like the chamber we use,

• 58:23Speaker 06

  have dramatic benefits on even the cells of our body. Longevity mechanisms start kicking in. So some of these other, we won't go into the nomenclature, but you have different genes that gets, start getting stimulated and those are going to be better for longevity. But you have to have a certain amount of time under pressure. So, hyperbaric is a very beneficial therapy when it's put together in the right order with things. Let me use an analogy, what I mean by order or stacking therapies, just to hit it right now. If you and I go to the gym and we work on bench press and that's all we do. That's not bad. We'll feel it in our chest. But if we did bench press and we did flies and we did two other exercises for chest,

• 59:08Speaker 06

  we're going to feel it a lot more. We stacked together different things. Okay. So by doing, by assessing the whole person in this way, their brain and how their, everything that inputs to the brain, we may use different therapies to, to get more of an uptick in that brain's ability to, to develop plasticity. So if I just did vision therapy with you, could be really good. And then let's say I did two or three other therapies and you're like, wow, doc, I'm, I'm really like fatigue. My brain is fatigued. It was demanding. Now I'm going to put you in the hyperbaric chamber and I'm going to give you such a dose of oxygen, I'm going to help you to recover faster. That's, that's the method that we use often.

• 59:50Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

• 59:53Speaker 06

  So we're going to exercise the brain in a way of saying it. We're going to push it and push it and push it properly within its metabolic capacity. I'm not going to push a person too hard. And that, and that's my expertise is like knowing when. And then get them in the oxygen. Does everyone do hyperbaric? No, but a large percentage do.

• 1:00:14Shawn Ryan?

  I talked with a lot of people with TBIs here. What, what, where will be the first? What, what is the best treatment in your opinion of, of everything that you've heard of? Hyperbaric psychedelics, the light therapy, the magnetic stuff that you were just talking about earlier? Is there something that you've found have, have a lot more positive results?

• 1:00:37Speaker 06

  That is, that is a tough question. And the reason that's a tough question is because it depends on the person and what's going on with them.

• 1:00:45Speaker 06

  That's why that's a tough question to answer.

• 1:00:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:00:47Speaker 06

  Because people will hear that and they'll say, that's what I need to try then. And it may fall flat for them because it wasn't really delivered properly. Or it was delivered properly, but it wasn't really the thing they needed.

• 1:00:59Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:01:01Speaker 06

  So I would say, I like to go back to what do we know? We know that there's benefits to TMS, transcranial magnetic stimulation. We know there's benefits to hyperbaric. We know that psychedelics have benefits for some people and other various and sundry things. Vision therapy, other brain training has benefit, but we have to figure out where you are. So we can suggest the proper thing so you get the best outcome.

• 1:01:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. I'd like to move into anxiety, ADHD and dementia, Alzheimer's. And the reason, these are three things that I think a lot of people have concerns of. And, and so I kind of want to go through each one and talk about what's going on with the brain with these. And are there any natural remedies? Because ever since COVID happens, there's happened, there's been this big push of people looking for natural remedies and not using big pharma anymore. And so I'd like to incorporate some of that, but let's, let's just start with anxiety. What's, what's going on there?

• 1:02:05Speaker 06

  Anxiety.

• 1:02:08Speaker 06

  Well, we talked about that default mode network earlier. And the default mode network is regions of the brain that operate together. And it's like where you step back and you have this hope for your future and a sense of self and kind of being able to pause and relax and step back. So first thing we think about with anxiety is what do the brainwaves look like? Are their brainwaves too much in the high beta? And if they're too much in the high beta, then they're not going to be able to relax. So let's say that's part of, sometimes people with anxiety is very common, very common. Way too much high beta, whether it's in the frontal lobe like we talked about,

• 1:02:48Speaker 06

  whether it's in the emotional cortex of the brain, which is the limbic area, which is right here, way too much high beta in this area. Or that default mode network is disrupted. And so that's not letting their brain relax. Trying to get that back together. So there's not an area that we can't say memory is primarily in that temporal lobe, but we can't say, oh, anxiety is just there. Because different people present differently. Some people, it's emanating from the frontal lobe. Some people, it's emanating in the cingulate, that limbic area inside. Some people, it's emanating because this thing back here, the cerebellum in the back of my brain,

• 1:03:31Speaker 06

  which is for coordination of things, is not firing properly to the front. So that's how complex it is, right? I mean, it's said, "The brain is the body's most complex organ." So there's a certain level, I want to try to help things become like, oh, I get what he's saying. But some of it is complicated. It's not just so easy to say, oh. And that's what unfortunately, I think, we've done a lot in healthcare. Oh, you have anxiety, here you go. And it's a chemistry approach.

• 1:04:11Speaker 06

  So, I mean, modern psychiatry, a lot of them, Dr. Daniel Amen for one, and many others are saying, "We're behind because we're treating everything like it's a chemistry issue." Because that was the thought, that it's always a chemical imbalance. Oh, good. But now we realize, "Oh, maybe it's not necessarily a chemical imbalance. Maybe it's an imbalance in the firing of that brain." Because when neurons fire together electrically, they create chemistry. It's not the other way around. It's not like all of a sudden chemistry just starts being produced. It's like the brain's firing or not firing, and it's producing chemistry or not producing chemistry.

• 1:04:52Speaker 06

  Our approach in the past, meaning healthcare, has been, "Let's use a chemical approach." And why? Why have we used that? I don't know. Is it because of, you know, it's ways to research and funding? I mean, probably, right? We know, big pharma, it's money. There's a lot of money involved. There's people trying to help, there's scientists, there's academics, but there's money, big money involved. So, who's to say? But anxiety can be different areas of the brain that have very high brainwaves that are overactive. And from a brain standpoint, and then we want to look at, "How do we get inhibition? How do we get the brain to start shutting that down? Is it talk therapy, which can help bring out some of the issues maybe that drove the anxiety?

• 1:05:36Speaker 06

  Separation anxiety for people? Dr. Russell Kennedy says that. He says it's a lot of, it's an alarm in your body going off, usually from separation anxiety. So, different schools of thought, and different domains of science, have different reasons as to why there's an anxiety. Oh, good. They would say. So, a psychologist would explain it one way, and a psychiatrist perhaps a little bit differently. Someone who does mind-body medicine might explain it a little differently. But what I'm saying is, okay, we have oftentimes high beta in certain areas of the brain, and the goal is, whatever therapy, how can we bring that under control? And I think it's usually a multi-disciplined approach works best.

• 1:06:21Speaker 06

  Because what's the alternative versus take this? Some of the most

• 1:06:28Speaker 06

  addictive medications we have are benzodiazepines, anti-anxiety meds. I mean, and there's people that say, we really don't want you to take these. But when someone's in a panic state. Okay, we get it. We know there's a need and it's helpful and we're thankful. But can it be misused and abused? Of course it can. So we want to dial it back, figure out what's going on in their brain and see what other kind of solutions. And we have, we have children under 12 with severe anxiety. Can you imagine? Severe, cannot function.

• 1:06:59Speaker 06

  I mean, this is just, this breaks my heart. Yeah, I mean, little children, teenagers. That's what I was mentioning last night. The one thing that gets me more than anything is the young people and they're because of some of these mood disorders like anxiety, just wrecking them. And then what's the cause? Many things, many things. The outward environment, the inward environment, the brain environment. You know, all these contributing factors. It's a, it's a big, it's a big task to try to help people recover. Does that kind of help with anxiety?

• 1:07:29Shawn Ryan?

  It does. Is, is there anything that people can do naturally to lower anxiety?

• 1:07:35Speaker 06

  Yeah. So, I mean, the brain creates many neurotransmitters, neuromodulatory transmitters. The brain creates a lot of chemistry for itself. Serotonin, dopamine, I mentioned those earlier, acetylcholine, that's really involved with memory. But GABA, G A B A, which stands for a certain longer name, people can Google that. GABA is one that your brain makes and GABA is the only one that's the inhibitory. Calms you down. So people have used GABA, which you can buy over the counter. It's just a very simple supplement. And you get some, because it has to go through your gut and be broken down and then through the liver and then be absorbed and then be converted. So it's quite a process.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  But some people find that GABA, using GABA is very helpful for things like anxiety, for things like sleep disruption and muscle stiffness. Why? Because GABA nergic drugs are used for sleep, anxiety and muscle stiffness.

• 1:08:35Speaker 06

  So GABA can be something as a simple trial that someone could use. It's safe, it's non-toxic, it's, you know, it's water soluble. So you're not going to store up all this. And you might see that you might notice a change with that. And you have to, I usually dose it up with my clients to see if they're getting a change. I don't, I, it's not one of those things you need to try for six months. Okay. You're gonna know in a week or it's not for you. That was what I was gonna ask. How long does it need to be in your system before you start to see? You start, and I dose people up. We might start out, for example, and this is not medical advice for people. I might start with 200 milligrams and go to 400 and you don't notice anything. And then 600 and then 800. Cause most of the times you see it in the store, it's 750 milligrams to a thousand.

• 1:09:20Speaker 06

  So, you know, you can start on a lower dose and try it and notice. And when would you take it? If you're having trouble sleeping, you take it in the evening. If you're having anxiety through the day and that's really your suffering point, maybe you're starting it earlier in your day. So it's, it's a simple, non-toxic, relatively safe trial, short-term, seeing, does it help me or not? And if it doesn't, that's not the thing for them. The other thing a lot of people use, and we use it very successfully, is CBD. That helps a lot of people with anxiety. Not everybody, but a lot of people. Okay. And then there's something that I'm, I have no disclosure. I don't sell them. There's something, two little wrist, they look like wristwatches and they're called touch points. Touch points.

• 1:10:02Speaker 06

  Are these the things, the metal bands with the little balls on the end? No, they're from acupuncture. There's some things I think like that. Okay. These vibrate back and forth, back and forth. And you just turn them on, click them on. And you can put them here and you can put them on your ankles. You can clip it on and it, it's been very effective in helping people with anxiety. Why? Because it operates through a sensory mechanism into the brain and it's gonna lower the threshold of that high beta.

• 1:10:32Speaker 06

  I wasn't gonna bring them, but I brought other tech just to see because why? It's a low-cost device that's very helpful for, I mean, just so many people. And you could buy it off the internet. So, and we use that with a lot of the kids. We also use it with adults, but when you have a kid that's on these medications that are very addictive and the parents would rather have an option. And so we tried that and like, wow, those things are the greatest thing. Now they can, and we use the same kind of device many times for people who have attention problems. Because attention problems can have too much of a certain brainwave. And if we can kind of disrupt that elevated brainwave or alter it, we may get them to be able to keep their attention longer.

• 1:11:14Speaker 06

  And then if you can keep your attention longer or you can lower your anxiety, now you can train your brain at that level and strengthen it.

• 1:11:21Speaker 00

  Mr. President, my company formed me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  Tom Cruise is.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up.

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  From the director of Birdman and the Ravenette.

• 1:11:38Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 1:11:42Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:11:45Speaker 03

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a middle without parent.

• 1:11:51Shawn Ryan?

  What are these things called?

• 1:11:53Speaker 06

  Touchpoints.

• 1:11:54Shawn Ryan?

  I'm getting some.

• 1:11:55Speaker 06

  You should, I definitely recommend it. They're not expensive at all and they're worth a try.

• 1:12:00Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:12:01Speaker 06

  You know, they're worth a try.

• 1:12:02Shawn Ryan?

  I'm definitely gonna try those. Let's move into ADHD.

• 1:12:04Speaker 06

  Yep.

• 1:12:05Shawn Ryan?

  So I grew up, I got diagnosed with that, I think, believe in 4th grade. Couldn't stand it, hated taking the meds. Used to throw them out the window on the way to school because I didn't want to be different than anybody else. And now it's, it's, it's becoming, at least it appears to me that it's becoming so common.

• 1:12:26Shawn Ryan?

  I think that more people say they have ADD, ADHD than don't have it now. And, and, and why is that? Why is everybody?

• 1:12:38Shawn Ryan?

  Why can't anybody hold a thought anymore?

• 1:12:40Speaker 06

  Yeah, why?

• 1:12:43Speaker 06

  Why? I think there's probably a lot of reasons. Talking about a younger generation, we're talking about the, you know, the more current, the twenties to thirties.

• 1:12:51Shawn Ryan?

  Sure.

• 1:12:52Speaker 06

  Or eighteen's to thirties. Uh, part of it, I, what I have gathered, reading some books, there's a great book called Dopamine Nation, written by a psychiatrist out of Stanford. Again, I keep referring to Stanford, I didn't go there. I'm not part of their donation fund or whatever they have. But there's some excellent researchers there. So, I, you know, I, I like to understand things from their side who are working in the lab. I'm working with people, they're working in labs, so I get to see that data and say, can we use that? And that's where we, what we call clinical neuroscience. We're taking neuroscience out of there and putting, using it in the clinic right now. Cause it could take 20 years before that data is now being used in a therapy. We're trying to extract it safely, non-invasive therapies, and say, let's try it right now.

• 1:13:37Speaker 06

  Not, it's not trying dangerous things, there's safe things. But we're applying the principles of what they're doing there in the center.

• 1:13:45Shawn Ryan?

  You personally are doing that, or neurology?

• 1:13:47Speaker 06

  Functional neurologists.

• 1:13:48Shawn Ryan?

  Functional, functional neurologists across the country are doing this, or just your?

• 1:13:53Speaker 06

  No, they're across the country, across the, the world. We have a network all over the world that have been trained and, and utilize a lot of these principles. So, going back to that Dopamine Nation, it's a very interesting book. Adderall, in one of the first stories, the guy talks about like, this helped me perform. And that's, I think, one of the things is, help me perform. How can I perform better either in a social situation, in a work situation? Whatever it is, how can I perform better? Right? We all wanna perform better, but these things have become so accessible, this is my opinion now. These medications, drugs have become so accessible that everyone goes to them, all the young people, a lot of young people.

• 1:14:35Speaker 06

  So much so, perhaps you know this, that that's one of the things that they buy from each other. They have a prescription, I'm gonna sell my Adderall prescription to somebody, or my Benzo prescription. So that's, that's where we are.

• 1:14:49Shawn Ryan?

  Well, it's interesting. I mean, truth be told, I'm one of them. You know, I did that. I didn't, I sporadically took Adderall and Ritalin growing up. Then I joined the military, didn't take it at all. Every once in a while for an operation, they would give us some Provisual or some Adderall or something if it was going to be a long night or a couple of days. But I didn't start taking it on a regular basis again until I started business. And it did help. It did help with functionality and it helped me be more productive. It also dramatically increased

• 1:15:28Shawn Ryan?

  my irritability and anxiety. And so I quit taking them and I would take it sporadically. Then I did the psychedelic thing and I didn't, I haven't taken them again since. It's been almost a year now. But, but that's, that's kind of, I'm just telling you this. So, yeah.

• 1:15:46Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's a reality. It's, that's kind of where we are. So we need to have other options, or it would be nice to have other options. Again, going back to what's going on in their brain. So here, it's, it's so, what's so fascinating, what you told me is that when I was in fourth grade, I had diagnosed with this. Then I became an operator and then I was, had concussions. And you see how one thing layers on top of other things? So we know that someone who has ADHD, we know this in the literature, or a woman at a certain point in her cycle, menstrual cycle, or someone with anxiety that has a concussion will have a less better outcome than someone who didn't have that. Because it's more complicated. The brain has already been dealing with something.

• 1:16:27Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:16:28Speaker 06

  Right? It's like what you brought to the party. I didn't bring a, a normal, typical brain. I brought a brain that was dealing with ADHD, which may have been too much activity of high beta, or too much theta activity.

• 1:16:42Speaker 06

  So that's why we have to understand brain mapping and do these cognoscopies every year, doing the least expensive, least invasive approaches to understanding the brain every year, like the old physicals that people used to do back in the day. I do a yearly physical. What about a brain evaluation every year? That's low tech, or not low tech, high tech, but non-invasive, low cost, and someone to interpret it. Then you know where you are. What if you have a rough year and your brain is really going in a certain direction and you can do things more naturally to taper that and bring it back into balance? So that is part of the problem is that the attentional networks of the brain are imbalanced.

• 1:17:25Speaker 06

  It could be too much, it could be too little. That's why one-size-therapy doesn't fit all. It does not. You work a lot with ADHD patients, correct? A lot, a lot of young people. What kind of stuff do you do for them? What do we do for them? Well, one tool we use with them, so we may use neurofeedback, which is after a brain mapping, we may use a type of training where they're getting feedback about how their brain is doing and they have to alter it themselves. So they learn how to self-regulate or auto-regulate. That's one therapy. We look at how their eyes track. Say, well, they didn't have a brain injury, but how the eyes track are, tell us about

• 1:18:09Speaker 06

  how certain areas of the brain are working. So I might use visual tracking exercises to stabilize an area of their brain, just like I would with concussion. I may use something called BrainTap, which is another device. I may use those touchpoints with them. And so sometimes we need to send things home with people often, so that they have a daily dosing of themselves, that I can be partnered with them, whether it's this low-tech, like the touchpoints, I'm gonna have you wearing that every day during homework. So Dr. Andrew Huberman, again, to go back to Stanford, says something interesting. A lot of his colleagues there, researchers, and have children, young people, and they were talking about the use of Adderall for attention.

• 1:18:53Speaker 06

  Nobody's really, I think, a fan of it as a parent. They would rather have another option, but it does work to some degree with these young people. But he was saying, maybe, and I'm paraphrasing weakly, if the person, is it, is it bad for them to be on a medication when they're doing some kind of therapy? And the answer may, may not be so bad. Because if their brain is in a better working order, I may be able to train it better. But if they're all over the map here, I may not even be able to get them to focus on what I need them to do. Okay. There's logic in that. As long as there's a rationale for me, like, tell me the rationale as to why you want to do that. Okay, that, that makes sense. But if there's no rationale, it's just like, you know, throwing a dart at something, that I'm not in favor of.

• 1:19:37Speaker 06

  So, we don't love medication. We know that it's necessary. It does help to some degree. It's got other effects that we don't love. So we want to train the brain. So we want to get the brain understood of that young person or adult. Then we want to develop a strategy, if possible, and start delivering that to them. Whether it's things they do on their own, whether it's supplements, whether it's training an area of your brain that has too much imbalanced brainwave through different therapies, even like visual tracking. I mean, the, the level of therapies and the application of them are things you can't even imagine. So when someone says, "Tell me what, what therapies you do," it's like, I always sit back and say, "Wow. How am I going to explain this?"

• 1:20:20Speaker 06

  Tell me all the gear that you carry as an operator. First of all, I have no idea of any of it. Good analogy. And now you're going to explain it to me? I, I don't even know what you're talking about. I never understand when, when you have people on it and they're saying these different acronyms. I'm like, I had to look up Marsoc. I had to look up all these things. I have like no idea. So that's how complicated some of the therapies, they're, they're, and they're all integrated. But they use the things, here's the best way to say it. Okay, I'll slow myself down. We use things to change the brain that are inputs to the brain. Visual inputs, hearing inputs.

• 1:20:59Speaker 06

  Taste inputs, smell inputs, physical inputs from the body, right? If I do electrical stimulation on this wrist, I know for certain it's gonna end up in the left side of your brain. It's also gonna go through the brainstem. It's gonna activate things and it's gonna bring up acetylcholine in your brain. Your arousal system's gonna come up, excuse me, not... So I can do that with someone who's in a low state of arousal. And I did that with somebody who is in a very deep state of seizure. And we are... And this is in literature, I didn't develop it. They use stimulation on the median nerve. And it's in studies that people can look up on PubMed,

• 1:21:39Speaker 06

  the National Library of Medicine, to bring people out of coma state. So there are some really unique things that can be applied. You just have to have someone who has a background like myself and my colleagues that can say, "What might work here?" And then we test something that's non-invasive and non-threatening to the patient, of course, we'd never do that. Does it have a good outcome? Yes, okay, now we're gonna repeat that. Until we strengthen that neural connection, now we're gonna change it. So we're constantly testing things to see, is that the right thing? And if it is, I'm gonna ride it until that area is stronger.

• 1:22:18Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting.

• 1:22:19Speaker 06

  Right?

• 1:22:21Shawn Ryan?

  As far as natural remedies, you kinda talked about it when we were going over anxiety, but is there anything that somebody that's having focus problems or that has been diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, that they can do naturally?

• 1:22:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, so we haven't really landed in this area about nutrition and that part and lifestyle. But let's just kinda like put a little kind of covering onto that 'cause I think it fits here.

• 1:22:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:22:50Speaker 06

  So natural remedies. I like to ask people, so I'm in this 33 years. We always, I always love the shiny new thing. What's the new supplement? What's the new technology? What's... I love this kinda stuff. So my wife holds me back, the reins, she holds back the reins. You have enough technology, honey. Okay, so with that background, just an homage to my wonderful wife. And I'm thankful for that. I go back to the basics. What should I take? What should I do? Tell me about your sleep. I sleep terrible. Okay, so I need to work on sleep. Good sleep is a cornerstone, a foundation to a healthy brain.

• 1:23:28Speaker 06

  Good. Tell me what your diet's like. It's terrible. Okay. A good diet is foundational to a healthy brain. Tell me about your family life, stress level, things like that. I'm super stressed out with my work. So there's three things there that don't cost them anything that if we could start putting together lifestyle things with that, it would make a big change in their brain. And they may be related to changing the nutritional approach. I'm not saying it's gonna be easy, right? I mean, there's things, like if you put a bag of chips, a bowl of chips here, I can't, I can't stop myself. I mean, I'm into the chips the whole time. So we all have our thing. So I'm not saying it's easy, but we know, listen, I got a problem and I'm gonna have to nail this thing down if I want a better outcome.

• 1:24:14Speaker 06

  Because everyone says, I'm willing to do anything until you touch the thing they don't wanna do. And then like, oh, that's what I gotta do? But that's the important things many times. So we gotta get their diet. If that's a big problem, we gotta get that more balanced out. And it may be steps, short, small steps, incremental steps. Maybe need to remove some things, maybe need to add some things just to have a proper balanced nutritional intake. That's very important.

• 1:24:40Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. So are you, are you saying just a, just a well-balanced diet overall? Or is there anything specific? And so I'll let you answer that, then I get another question.

• 1:24:52Speaker 06

  Well, I think that's even become difficult to answer because now people have, I mean, it's like everybody got to their sides, right? It's like you got the plant-based over here, you got the meat-eating, the carnivores over there. You got, the beauty is that our body can adapt to so many things. And so, we have to determine where are you and what do we need to alter? That's gonna help you. So I'm just gonna use you and I. Let's say that you're plant-based. No, I don't even wanna go into that. That's just too much controversy in that. Let's just say that you eat a lot of dairy. You love cheese, you drink milk. You eat a lot of dairy. You have a lot of digestive problems, just an example. Lot of digestive problems. You know, we wanna help your brain.

• 1:25:37Speaker 06

  I may make a suggestion, I say, Sean, why don't we start to taper back some of the dairy? So that it's not every day and it's not in this... You drink two glasses of milk a day and you eat cheese every day, which you love, which is like locally... And I love cheese, there's nothing wrong with cheese. And you like ice cream in the evening and you make your own ice cream. Okay, those are all good things, but maybe it's a little too much dairy. Maybe. For you, because we're trying to restore brain function. Maybe. And you have gut problems. You see how I kinda put that together? So... Or maybe it's like, man, I love bread. I love... And maybe you have a little bit of a... And you have gut issues and you have brain issues. Maybe there's a bit of gluten, we need to taper it down. So we're reasonable. We're not saying, stop everything. Reasonable.

• 1:26:21Speaker 06

  How do we taper this down? If that might be a contributing factor. Now, we can do testing on those things to see if you have sensitivities and things like that. But it's just as easy to start balancing out your diet. More whole-based foods. Okay. If you're eating meat, cleaner meats. Cleaner meats. You know, things that are less processed, less... All the different aspects, what we know is a problem. Less toxins, less GMO. We wanna reduce many of those things. If a person has... They're trying to clean up their diet because it may be affecting their brain. Sure, that makes sense. It's reasonable. Put better gas in your car, change the oil more frequently. That makes sense. That's so simple. So we wanna clean up, but not everyone understands what cleaning up the diet means.

• 1:27:06Speaker 06

  So we need to cut down on some of the, especially sugars or carbohydrates. Because that really can create problems with the brain, too many carbohydrates, like a lot of things. So, we talked about just general nutrition. That's what I mean when I say cleaning up the nutrition. It's gotta be, again, a little more specific to the person.

• 1:27:25Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. The other, the follow-up question to that is, there's all these supplements. Onnit has one called, I can't remember what, but it's a brain function thing, Ginkgo Biloba. Now, psychedelic medicine is coming more and more to the forefront. All these companies are talking about fungi and the benefits of, of non-psychedelic mushrooms, like lion's mane and all this. Is there, is this real? Are there, are there real benefits to all these fungives?

• 1:27:56Speaker 06

  It's definitely real. Yeah, I was using lion's mane for a while. We use it with some of our clients, we don't use it with everyone. But there are, these things are real. And there's data, and someone might say, my email, you say, "Well, where's the research?" I'm not gonna get the research for you. It's, it's, you have to look for scientific articles. It's all in the National Library of Medicine. That's where I recommend people go. You just Google PubMed. That's the National Library of Medicine, where more than 8,000 articles a day are uploaded, scientific articles. And you can usually find things for and against, whatever you're looking for. But then you gotta be discerning and say, you know, "What's going on here?" And then, then maybe take that and talk to somebody. Everything is about decision-making. That's the brain. What's best for me?

• 1:28:39Speaker 06

  But, as an idea, yes, there's benefits to things like ginkgo, and lion's mane, and fish oils, omegas, and, um, hmm, you just go down the list. Vitamin D. That's not really for the brain. Yes, it is. It does affect the brain if you have low vitamin D levels. It affects every cell in the human body, vitamin D, because it's something that works on nucleus of the cell. So, there's so many, you wanna have those things in balance. Some, some blood work, specialized blood work can tell you where you might be out of balance, looked at by someone who understands that in functional medicine.

• 1:29:18Speaker 06

  Functional medicine and then having and that's where that language is being used in a lot of domains. Functional trainers, functional medicine, functional neurology. Because we're looking at how the operation is rather than and trying to redefine that, right? Trying to redefine that for people. It's not just, how many times do you know people? Yeah, they looked at my blood work said everything's fine. Is it? Because we use different standards. Functional medicine, the international organization uses standards that are a little bit more narrow. So we can see if your body is starting to trend high or low before it gets to a problem and fix that. Through supplementation, adding or removing something or changing, altering. So diet is really crucial to a healthy brain.

• 1:30:04Speaker 06

  There's different approaches to that. It should be specialized to the person based on what they're doing at that point and what they need to alter. And my wife and I work with people on that very much because it's integral. It's what you're doing every day. It's how you're restoring or not restoring.

• 1:30:20Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Are there? Now I'm wondering what I don't know. And so I take, I take a mushroom supplement, I take multivitamin, I take greens. Is there, are there any supplements that maybe haven't hit the mainstream that you think people need to be aware of?

• 1:30:38Speaker 06

  Good question.

• 1:30:41Speaker 06

  Yes, but I hesitate on saying that to people because, you know, I think it's, I think they're too specialized. I don't think everyone needs them. And that's what happens. You say something and everyone jumps on that. And then 70 people are trying it and 70 people are saying, how could you possibly say that?

• 1:31:00Speaker 06

  I'll, I'll mention to you off camera later, like some of the things I do. But some of the things that I do, which I definitely would recommend is the multivitamin, the greens, the omega supplement. Oh, you know, omega threes is really crucial. I take something on and off called corsetin.

• 1:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  Corsetin.

• 1:31:17Speaker 06

  Corsetin, which is a biofluvenoid. It helps my body process things. It's really, it's an antioxidant. Do I take it every day? I don't, I cycle through and I started taking something called N A, N M N. N? M N. It's it stands for something. November, Mike, November. That's what I needed to know, and I didn't know the proper nomenclature, so I didn't want to be a fool and say that. Yes, November, Mike, November. Okay, so it's a precursor to something called N A D. So a lot of people are doing IV vitamins now. I'm sure you've heard about that. Glutathione and N A D and all these things. We do. We do not supply that in our center, but

• 1:32:00Speaker 06

  it's recommended for a lot of people to do those things. High vitamin C doses. Actually, we did that to help our immune systems through the last couple of years. My wife and I had done that intermittently, a handful of times. But this N M N is a precursor to N A D. N A D is made by our body, and it has to do with, it helps with energy production in the body, A T P production. So I recently started adding that as recommended by a Dr. Sinclair out of Harvard to add that to my regime. I'm fifty nine, almost sixty, so I'm trying to manage some of these these things that we know decline as you age, you know, your testosterone declines, your your ability to produce A T P declines, right? Your collagen production declines. So,

• 1:32:43Speaker 06

  yeah, those are, that that's something I've been working on lately. I haven't, I don't notice a lot, and I I coach people, they say, well, I didn't notice a change. Some things you're not going to notice. You just know that I'm just ensuring I'm plugging the holes in my nutrition by doing these things. And that's what we're doing. And other things you will notice, like GABA. You should notice it, or you don't need to stay on it. So some of these things, the omegas, the multivitamin, women should be on multivitamins. We know that. Why? And men, because their telomeres, the end of their DNA, breaks down faster when they're under stress. And they found with multivitamin, University of California, San Francisco, a simple multivitamin started to increase the telomere

• 1:33:25Speaker 06

  capping of these DNA so their strands wouldn't break down so fast. So multivitamin, probably a good idea. Interesting. Probably not one you buy in your local, you know, cheapy, cheapy, cheapy. I never go cheapy, cheapy, and I don't, you don't need the most expensive. As a general rule of thumb, right? You don't need to spend a bazillion dollars on supplements, and don't buy the cheapest, cheapest thing for two dollars off of whatever, because you don't know how they're made all the time. And so just be diligent or vigilant. Okay. That's the right word.

• 1:33:55Shawn Ryan?

  Let's move into dementia and Alzheimer's. What causes that?

• 1:34:02Speaker 06

  So, we used to think, we being at-large people in brain health, that it was plaques that developed. First, actually, years ago, they thought it was aluminum.

• 1:34:12Shawn Ryan?

  It's not aluminum.

• 1:34:14Speaker 06

  Not really.

• 1:34:15Shawn Ryan?

  That's, that's good to know.

• 1:34:16Speaker 06

  But toxins are not good.

• 1:34:18Shawn Ryan?

  Because we tried that other deodorant, and I'm not, I'm not doing it.

• 1:34:23Speaker 06

  Yeah, so it's, it's not aluminum. Does that mean that you should use aluminum chlorohydrate deodorant? I mean, toxins are toxins, so if you can mitigate that, reduce those in your life, in your lifestyle, good, good idea. So, it's not aluminum building up in your brain, number one. Then, it's these different types of plaques and tangles. But rather than going into the pathophysiology, the real details of that, one of the things that is really key to reducing your incidence of developing Alzheimer's, which is more prevalent in women than men, which is really a terrible disorder that you just don't know anything around you eventually, is blood sugar control.

• 1:35:09Speaker 06

  So, Dr. Andrew Bredesen, uh, Andrew, Dr. Bredesen out of UCLA, excuse me, I mentioned him earlier, he wrote a book on reversing Alzheimer's. And there's many different things in there, from stress reduction to diet, to things that help, that you can do as a person. But they are, in an unofficial way, saying in the literature, type 3 diabetes is early Alzheimer's. Meaning, when your blood sugar is out of control for many years, it creates an inflammatory state in the brain.

• 1:35:42Speaker 06

  So, we gotta control our blood sugar.

• 1:35:45Speaker 06

  And when you walk around, I just heard a pediatrician the other day on a certain radio network explaining the level of obesity in children, in young children.

• 1:35:55Speaker 06

  Skyrocketing like twenty percent of the population. And the overweight was over fifty percent. So you have obese and you have overweight, right? Over fifty percent of kids, kids and teenagers. Oh, man. So I mean, we got a big problem with obesity in this country. Uh, from food supplies, types to overeating to X, Y, many things. But it's a problem and that's creating not only body image issues, but all types of internal issues. We, I know years ago, and I'm not going to quote it exactly, but we have, uh, on our top diseases that take people out. We have more self-induced ones.

• 1:36:38Speaker 06

  That's really where we are as a, as a developed nation, right? Heart disease, drug, things that people do in their lifestyle that contributes to them. So we know that, that's not, you know, uh, new. But yeah, we really want to learn to control our blood sugar. So looking at blood work maybe once a year and these particular measures. Your, not only your glucose, but your A1C, which is, you'll see it on commercials all the time now. And recently, my wife and I were watching, we don't watch a lot of TV, but on occasion, you know, the drug commercials are on there, pharmaceuticals. And they were saying how this drug in particular will alter this, which will affect your brain. I'd never heard that before. So it's becoming more apparent and more in the culture,

• 1:37:21Speaker 06

  the issues of the brain and neuroscience, right? Usually people perk up and they're like, oh, the brain, my brain? What, tell me about that. So certain medications which affect your drive for your appetite, also affect things in your brain, which is where your drive comes from for hunger and thirst and libido and satiety and all these things. So we got to control the blood sugar. You want to reduce your chance of Alzheimer's? Control your blood sugar. That is definitely my recommendation. There are other things, but if you don't get that right, I think you really are going to increase your odds that if you have the genetic markers, like women do, that can be tested. Then and you have a higher tendency for that and you have a blood sugar problem. You're you're going in that direction. Okay.

• 1:38:07Speaker 06

  Right. We do know that people who sustain concussions, even one, have a higher incidence of Parkinson's dementia and Alzheimer's. Okay. From brain injury, which creates inflammation, which damages tissue in the brain, which then doesn't make it work as well. So in a in an oversimplified way, that can happen. That's why we need to understand what's going on in the brain and try to develop therapeutic interventions, whether it's natural things, or whether it's pharmaceuticals, or whether it's therapies, or whether it's oxygen, or what have you, to improve the health of that brain. Because I mean, it's my dad had dementia. He had a severe head-on collision in the seventies

• 1:38:51Speaker 06

  down in the Keys and was in ICU for like a week, wasn't supposed to survive, but survived, and had a difficult time after that through life. And I always thought, I didn't know anything growing up, I thought it was because he had a difficult upbringing and it was really harsh and those types of things. But later I realized that was because my dad had a really severe brain injury. That's why. That's why he had the emotional swings. That's why he had early dementia. That's why he had those things. That's why he had the mood swings. That's why there were substances used. Because my dad had a severe brain injury. Oh.

• 1:39:29Speaker 06

  So I got to watch the whole course of that. I lived with him, of course. He was a good guy. He did the best he could. Now I understand better, right? Hindsight is 2020. Now, and then I got to see him pass. You know, going through that, you know, just not. I remember one time I was trying to make him toast. And I was like, Dad, you know what this is? I know, but I can't think of the word. And you know what this is, the bread and the toaster? I just can't think of the word, but you know, that's that was that process of of losing the ability to know what things were. It was rough.

• 1:40:06Shawn Ryan?

  So remember, my my first question in the show was short term memory loss, forgetting what you're saying in the middle of saying it. Is are those signs of early set Alzheimer's by chance?

• 1:40:20Speaker 06

  I would say they're signs of a working memory problem.

• 1:40:24Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:40:25Speaker 06

  But I wouldn't go as to far as say those are early signs of Alzheimer's.

• 1:40:28Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. A lot of people think that doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku or math problems or or or any types of these brain exercises is gonna help reduce their chances of dementia Alzheimer's. Is there any truth to that?

• 1:40:48Speaker 06

  Maybe that much.

• 1:40:49Shawn Ryan?

  That much? Okay.

• 1:40:50Speaker 06

  I mean, someone else might argue the point. This is my opinion, so time out. My opinion is those things can be good. Learning a new language, yes. Whenever you put yourself into an extremely a a brand new environment to learn, like you are not an expert at all. Right? So like I told you, my wife and I learning how about firearms recently. I knew nothing. So I'm putting myself in an in an environment where I know nothing. My brain has got to light up and work to be taught on how to do this. That is excellent for the brain. Like you went into all of this. That was dramatically helpful for you, I would say, in my opinion. Like, this is not my my understanding, my wheelhouse, but you learned it all. I think that was brilliant on your side.

• 1:41:33Speaker 06

  And the more hours you put in in learning, like something brand new, going from novice, you know, down, your brain can really go through changes. So that would be great. The the other more passive therapies, Sudoku, crossword puzzles, things like that, have benefit, have benefit. But you know what has more benefit than those? Exercise.

• 1:41:58Speaker 06

  There's more research that exercise and moving the body improves brain function than all that other stuff stacked together. Wow, really? Yes. Okay. What's the biggest input to the human brain? The body. It's attached. You feel things everywhere, that's input. You sense things, pressure, touch, pain, temperature, all that is input, constantly going into the brain. So if we can activate that, we're going to activate so much more of the brain. So when they put someone who's elderly with maybe early dementia in a chair and they sit there and there's no stimulation, yes, they're going to deteriorate very fast.

• 1:42:39Speaker 06

  But movement can start to activate the brain more than just reading something on a page. So I like movement. It doesn't have to be gym exercise. It's got to be movement and it has all different types of concomitants. It can be yoga movements, those positions affect different. I have a picture in our office on the wall of how different types of exercise affect different brain regions. So exercise would be something I want everyone to be moving safely, especially if they're elderly, safely, being monitored, careful, and then developing what's the best for them that's going to help them. Maybe if they can't move very much because they're older, maybe it's isometrics. Remember those?

• 1:43:24Speaker 06

  Isometrics don't change the joint position, so you're very low likely to get injured, but you stimulate things. And by firing pathways like that, you start to get more activity. So my dad, just as a example, became nonverbal in a bed within a month. And they said, this is his condition, Mr. Bagnell. And my wife and I were like, this is not his condition. This is because of lack of stimulation, over medication, you put him in a bed. So we got some physical therapy going. Would you believe he was sitting up and talking? Wow. Within a week? Are you serious? Tossing a ball, moving his arms, yeah. Like it wasn't clear because he was still having with his dementia, but he was communicating, yes.

• 1:44:09Speaker 06

  Dad, you want, you want me to push your arm? You know, he could communicate before he was like this and they're telling me. So movement activates the brain very dramatically. Now, if someone has anxiety, they don't want to do high intensity intervals. Maybe they want to do yoga. And I'm not a yoga instructor or anything like that, but I pushed back for years against my wife for yoga. Ah, no, it's not my thing. I like weights. I like running and sprinting and higher intensity. But when I did yoga, I realized, oh, that's what I need. Cause it calmed my brain down, slowed me down. And we know that certain types of yoga positions and maintaining them, not only the flexibility and all that stuff, can actually lower the threshold in the amygdala, which has a lot to do with your fear response and stress

• 1:44:52Speaker 06

  response. So like I realized, oh, that's what I really need. But we like to do what we're good at. And maybe we need to recalibrate that and say, maybe I need to do things I'm not so good at. Cause that's gonna help my brain, probably gonna be better for my overall development.

• 1:45:06Shawn Ryan?

  That's fascinating. So also just rewind him real quick. So learning, you know, it doesn't have to be reading Sudoku, crossword puzzles, all that kinda stuff. You could be going out and learning how to shoot. It could be new hobbies, learn how to water ski, learning how to, I don't know, whatever.

• 1:45:29Speaker 06

  If you link movement, and again, I'm gonna quote Dr. Huberman, that movement is the doorway into neuroplasticity. So here's an example of what we do in the office sometimes. We have a timing program on a computer where we put a sensor on the hand or a mat on the floor. And a person may have to clap to this, this timing that they hear. So just a simple cowbell, you know, like the Moore cowbell. And they're listening to it and they have to time that and they have to clap. And I'll get them working through several sets of that, whether it's right hand on the thigh, stepping with the left foot, different combinations that require a little bit of coordination. And then I'll have them go over to a task

• 1:46:09Speaker 06

  that is on the, on an iPad that is cognitive, where they have to think. I'm driving their neuroplasticity with physical movement. It really gets the brain opening up because you're like, whoa, I'm moving my body. I had to think so much more operating that firearm than I have to do sitting at a table doing a crossword. Like I was like, everything was lit up in my brain, right? All my physiology was on the alert. I was, and what happens is you secrete dopamine. And when you secrete dopamine, you're gonna learn. So things have to be somewhat folk, well, to have neuroplasticity, there's several factors that need to be.

• 1:46:52Speaker 06

  You have to have a focused attention that's sustained. Focused attention that's sustained. When you're shooting a firearm, focused attention and sustained, right? So that was great for us. And it has, it should be, it should be an environment that's enjoyable, playful, that stimulates that kind of wow. So focused attention, sustained, a playful or an up kind of environment. You should be having fun. You should be trying to have fun. Yeah, fun. I mean, if you think about it, and when I was reading about this, I was like, what do I have fun at? I don't, I don't think I would use that word, like I have fun. I mean, my dear wife would say she has fun, but it's not a word I think about. I go to the park to run.

• 1:47:37Speaker 06

  Am I having fun? I love the feeling of it. I love the stimulus, but I don't think it's like fun. I'm not like, I mean, it's just not the way I define it. When I work out in my garage, in my gym, is that fun? I mean, I love it, but it's not really fun. When I work in my garden, which is really wonderful to be outside, expanding your visual field, that's very, lowers the threshold of arousal. Is it fun for me? So I have different, you know, way to describe it. But if you can have an enjoyable environment of something you're doing, and you can start by moving your body, you can start stimulating dopamine, and then you can layer on that something cognitive.

• 1:48:20Speaker 06

  Like then I would give you a focus, a focus task. Like Sean, come on over here. Okay, on this computer, I want you to find, like, remember the old maid where you turn things? Isn't that what it's called? You turn over the cards, you have to memory? I might have you do that on an iPad after you did all this movement with your body and you're like, phew, I'm a little bit out of it now. Okay, come on, let's try this now. So I'm layering on top after I've driven dopamine. Now I'm going to have you use that dopamine to focus on something. Oh, wow, this is, you know. So how passive is it? Are you driving dopamine doing it? I mean, grandmothers are not kicking out too much dopamine doing a crossword puzzle. I mean, I'm just saying that like my old image, right? That's not much dopamine. So cognitive tasks are important.

• 1:49:02Speaker 06

  But if you can open the window to neuroplasticity through the body movements and through getting dopamine going. And it has to have a certain time amount. This is the other component to neuroplasticity. Sustain, focus, attention, fun environment for a certain amount of time. How much time? Seven to 22 minutes. When you get to the point of frustration. You ever play a musical instrument? I don't. My son tried to teach me twice. It's an homage to my son Zach, okay? So he tried to teach me twice to play the guitar. One day. I last one, actually, one lesson. But hard on my fingers. But that's when you get frustrated with something. That's when you need to lean in. And that's where plasticity develops.

• 1:49:47Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:49:49Speaker 06

  This is all coming from Dr. Huber, and so I may be quoting the time wrong. But right? You're shooting baskets, you're not making anything, you're gonna stop. But if you say, I'm gonna hang in there, I'm gonna hang, I'm gonna adjust something, I'm gonna keep trying it, I'm gonna keep trying. And you're pushing, and you're pushing a little bit, and you're pushing. That's where you start to push that dopamine out, and you're starting to develop new motor responses, the frontal brain. And new, and more dopamine, so I can get this, I can get this. That's where we, most of us, quit. So we have to press in, we have to lean in. And we can use our physical abilities, if we're younger. To open the door to neuroplasticity, and we can layer on top of that something cognitive. Maybe it's attention, maybe it's focus, maybe it's mood reduction, I'm able to like.

• 1:50:34Speaker 06

  Go from a high state to a lower state really quick. If you can do that, then you start changing your brain.

• 1:50:40Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. So I had a friend, he was a, he was a SEAL. He's actually my best friend, he's also a, was a phenomenal hockey goalie. And he used to do all these, it, it sounds very similar to what you're talking about. It used to be, I don't know what the hell he was doing, but he'd be calling out numbers and shapes and colors, and he'd have to touch them as fast as he can, and. Is it, is, so you can, I always thought you couldn't improve the hand-eye coordination. I thought it was just something you were born with.

• 1:51:11Speaker 06

  No, you can train it.

• 1:51:12Shawn Ryan?

  You can train it.

• 1:51:13Speaker 06

  You can improve it.

• 1:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:51:15Speaker 06

  Yeah. It's usually reaction time. And that's one of the measures or the metrics that we use to determine brain injury. But we can also use it, we say brain injury, brain injury, because there's so many people actually that have. Injurious forces to their brain that they never get diagnosed because they're pretty good, like a child falls off of monkey bars and they hit their head. Well, even our grandson the other day, his sister was chasing a wet floor slip, bam, hit his head on the floor, on tile floor. Did he have a brain injury? He seems fine. He was, you know, low key and everything. He didn't have to go to the hospital, but it's an impact to the brain. That's what we know. And in an impact, especially at a young age, developmentally, it's pruning.

• 1:52:00Speaker 06

  He's a little older than your son. His brain is pruning. Maybe it disrupts a little bit of the networks and maybe we don't know that until he's 14 and now he has attention problems. So this is one of the thoughts. It's like, man, I never really thought about it. The head, the brain is susceptible and we take a lot of things to the head, right? Especially if you play sports. So he was doing things and you can improve hand eye speed, which is reaction time, which is actually, it helps prevent falls in the elderly. Right? Because if you're falling, you get that hand out there faster because usually if your brain is slowing down, you're very slow to react and you're going to hit the

• 1:52:43Speaker 06

  floor. And we know what happens when then you get another head injury, you break something and it's always hard to recover when you're 60 or older.

• 1:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. Well, let's take a quick break. When we come back, I want to get into some of the long-term effects that people are having from COVID.

• 1:52:59Speaker 06

  Sounds good.

• 1:53:42Speaker 07

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• 1:54:18Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Doc, we're back from the break. I want to get into long-term COVID effects. So we've heard all about the brain fog. People are claiming that, you know, this is lasting a lot longer than just when you're actually sick with COVID. Is there any truth to this?

• 1:54:35Speaker 06

  Definitely. There's definitely truth. You know, people are suffering pretty dramatically. On some levels, very dramatically. Like, they're debilitated. They cannot function anymore. And then, you know, there's a continuum of people that have some effects of long COVID, little less. And then people like myself, I don't have any long COVID, fortunately. So I'm going to go back to the model for a minute because why would people be having these longer-term effects of immune things on the brain?

• 1:55:07Speaker 06

  The brain falls apart. So the viral... We know that bacteria and viruses, when we get an infection, it's going to create inflammation. That's part of any process. COVID is a stronger one, of course, right? So it's a stronger viral situation. And we know that there are receptors for some of the proteins from that virus in the brainstem and in other areas of the brain. But there's a high distribution in the brainstem. So it tends to attack it more.

• 1:55:41Speaker 06

  Okay. So there is long COVID. Again, what do we know? We know there is this thing called long COVID. It, we know that it does not matter if you had a mild case or a moderate or severe case. That doesn't dictate necessarily that you're going to have long COVID or not have it. It could have been a mild to moderate case and you could develop long COVID symptoms or continued symptoms like chronic. And it could have been a severe case and you don't have long COVID. So that's not really defining whether you have it or not. It's what do you have now? What symptoms do you have now? And so they're quite varied. Okay. Some people have cognitive symptoms like brain fog.

• 1:56:22Speaker 06

  Some people have cardiac symptoms like tachycardia, racing heart. What, what do you, what do you mean, brain fog? Like they're just sluggish all day or what is, what is that? So there's actually even research to define criteria. What is brain fog? And so it's got a lot of different components for different people. But I was just explaining to someone the other day. Think about when you're, when your attention is high and you're very sharp. Like, okay, that's not brain fog. And what's the opposite of that? Like, I'm sluggish. I can't quite get my thoughts clearly together. When I've gotten sick in the past, especially when I, when I did have COVID a couple of years ago, it was hard to think like that day. I had a fever. I was not well. So you said, well, that's obvious.

• 1:57:07Speaker 06

  Yeah, well, that's it. Imagine if that continues. Okay. Day after day, and you're like, I, I had a cup of coffee. I can't clear my, I can't get sharp. So that, that would be the easy way to define it. Rather than like, here's a list of all the different possibilities of brain fog. But it's that lack of that crisp sharpness of your mind. You're just like blunted. And it's like, like a lot of people say, I need a cup of coffee or two in the morning before I can get started. That's, that's not that they have brain fog, but that's a good example. So when the brain stem gets attacked because they have a higher, a higher number of receptors for that COVID virus, some of the proteins on it, that area is what many times,

• 1:57:49Speaker 06

  not only, but many times drives long COVID symptoms. Because this is that expensive real estate that I talked about. It's controlling everything, right? When we're a baby, this is what we have in here. And this all develops later as the brain develops much larger. I mean, we have it, but it's not fully developed.

• 1:58:08Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 1:58:08Speaker 06

  Right? So it's all going to become wired together and it's going to grow in size from a baby to an adult. But the brainstem is running everything. All of your survival mechanisms, all of that. So the brainstem tends to get attacked. Other areas of the brain are affected and it can create long COVID. What's going on? Neuroinflammation or inflammation from an infection that goes unchecked. Right? Imagine an injury to the knee, like a model I used before. And that inflammation doesn't go down, doesn't go down. Six months, you're like, oh my goodness, this is not going away. Got to get that inflammation down. That's one mechanism. Sometimes it's the inflammation.

• 1:58:50Speaker 06

  Sometimes it's injury to some of the tissues from the inflammation. And that needs rehabilitation, which is what people don't think about. They think about, of course, is there medication I can use to help bring down some of these symptoms? That's a reasonable thought. I even think that. And then what they don't think about, which now I want to, I'm presenting to you this is, you may have to rehabilitate that, just like a knee that was injured. I may need to do, and that's obvious. Of course you need to do rehabilitation on a knee that's repaired. How do you rehabilitate the brainstem? That's what we do in functional neurology. We map out what we need to rehabilitate. Is it the right? Is it the left? Is it the top? Is it the bottom?

• 1:59:35Speaker 06

  Because why? This is running all of your systems, your heart rate, your blood pressure, blood flow throughout your body. It's sending projections up to the, so it's got everything, balance systems and mechanisms. So it's like central to everything. And people with long COVID, often I would say higher than 60%, this is involved in a situation which may respond well, may respond well. I'm not going to be the answer to everything, right? But it may respond well to rehabilitation for them, among other things that they are going to need to do.

• 2:00:09Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:00:10Speaker 06

  And we're going to see millions and millions of cases just because millions and millions of people were affected.

• 2:00:17Shawn Ryan?

  Are there any reports of people who are asymptomatic having long form COVID? Or long COVID, excuse me, it's long COVID, correct?

• 2:00:26Speaker 06

  It wouldn't be asymptomatic there. If you have long COVID, you have symptoms.

• 2:00:30Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:00:31Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:00:32Shawn Ryan?

  Good. How long is this lasting? Is this, is this going on forever until somebody treats it?

• 2:00:38Speaker 06

  It may. That's the problem.

• 2:00:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:41Speaker 06

  It may decrease on its own, it may not. And again, my thought is, my consideration, and there is lots of research pouring in on this, and I have thousands of articles, or maybe a thousand articles already that I've downloaded on this, trying to, you know, plow through those as, as quick as I can, but

• 2:01:00Speaker 06

  if something is injured in the physical body, again, the knee is a good example, we, we realize that rehabilitation, strengthening, stretching, some kind of therapy to rehabilitate is probably necessary. So I'm hopeful that people will say, maybe rehabilitation might be necessary to help me recover. Because it's not a common thought. Right? I, I don't believe it's a common thought, based on my experience in, you know, people all over the country is, if you have a stroke, yes, rehabilitation, people, yeah, of course you need rehabilitation. But if you have a concussion, not everybody understands what kind of rehabilitation. And then if you have an infection that affects your brain,

• 2:01:44Speaker 06

  that I think it's, it's, the bridge isn't there, in my opinion. I don't think it, it bridges it, like, how am I gonna rehabilitate that? That's what we're talking about today, that there are therapies that can rehabilitate the brain stem, or the frontal lobe, or the temporal lobe, which may improve their long COVID symptoms, reduce them. So their brain becomes fat, uh, less foggy, their balance becomes better, their heart rate control becomes better. A lot of them develop something called dysautonomia, which is a really long word. It's the automatic system of the brain stem is dysregulated. Now they can't control things like blood pressure and heart rate, and it's,

• 2:02:25Speaker 06

  it's very debilitating. Like, imagine standing up and your heart rate shoots up through the roof. And those people are struggling. We treat a lot of people with dysautonomia from long COVID as a symptom.

• 2:02:37Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that would, that's horrible.

• 2:02:40Speaker 06

  It's terrible. I mean, I recently seen on Twitter a long, many, many people, just their lives are totally changed because they can't function anymore. And not older people necessarily. So, you know, there's a reality to a lot of these things. We just need to kind of peel back all the other things and say, what's really going on? And how can we help people? How can we help people? That's the key.

• 2:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Let's get, let's move into addiction. So I've struggled with addiction. My wife has struggled with addiction. A lot of my friends have struggled with addiction. I just want to kind of talk to you about addiction. What's, how are, how are we getting addicted to things? Especially things like social media. Like what's going on in the brain there?

• 2:03:24Speaker 06

  Yeah. I mean, big, big part of humanity is that. So let's say this. Let's go back to the model because it just helps give a visual. So this is the side of the brain. It's the left side of the brain. This is the brain stem. Well, right in here in the brain stem, the upper part is an area that makes dopamine. And dopamine drives our desire for things. So if I fire that by

• 2:03:52Shawn Ryan?

  Dopamine is, is desire for things?

• 2:03:55Speaker 06

  Mm hmm.

• 2:03:55Shawn Ryan?

  So in social media context, it would be like a desire to be acknowledged?

• 2:04:03Speaker 06

  Anything.

• 2:04:03Shawn Ryan?

  Likes?

• 2:04:04Speaker 06

  Desire, craving, whatever you want to call it. But dopamine is more basically, it's going to be the motivation. Right? Whatever you attach to that is what's going to connect. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna use an example from Las Vegas. Several years ago, I got asked to speak at a conference out there. Most of the hotels, when you come down to the lobby are casinos. And I didn't notice it the first day, but the next morning when I came down, there was quite a few people there at seven in the morning. And a lot of the slot machines have vertical things that roll, right? Or roll or move vertical, not the tables and things like that.

• 2:04:49Speaker 06

  But I was noticing, I watched it for a few minutes, I was getting a cup of coffee. And I, there's something interesting with that. So our vertical eye movements are controlled from the area that produces dopamine. So vertical eye movements. What else is a vertical eye movements? Your phone. Right? What else? Your computer. But those gambling machines are vertical eye movements that go fast. And then I saw a lot of people smoking. So now you have nicotine firing up the brain more. Coffee, more attention, more firing up. All those things are going to drive dopamine. Vertical eye movements are affected, are controlled by the upper brain stem.

• 2:05:34Speaker 06

  So in a way, you could say, I could drive more dopamine production and attach you to something or get you addicted to something by using a lot of vertical eye movements. And connecting that to something that's emotionally charged. Whether it's whatever, whatever image it is. It's emotionally charged, so you're, you're emotional about it. I'm gonna win. And now you're driving dopamine, the desire, and you have vertical eye movements and all these things fit together and they drive addiction. For sure.

• 2:06:10Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:06:11Speaker 06

  So what's the, what's the answer for us who didn't, were before phones? Whenever we have that dopamine being surged and we attach it to something emotional that we, we want, that's going to connect. And if you, and we know that certain things drive more dopamine. So cocaine would drive a huge surge of dopamine. Amphetamines, huge surge of dopamine.

• 2:06:37Speaker 06

  And so, you know, different things have have been measured. Like one fold increase, five fold increase, hundred fold increase.

• 2:06:46Shawn Ryan?

  Is an adrenaline dump a dopamine dump?

• 2:06:49Speaker 06

  Not necessarily, but they're usually connected.

• 2:06:51Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:06:52Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:06:52Shawn Ryan?

  How so?

• 2:06:53Speaker 06

  Because they're both preparing the body for something, right? But I can have more dopamine secreted without moving my body around the room at all. And I'm gonna move that adrenaline around, I'm gonna probably move my body around. But that that's harder to say that they're separate. I'd say if you have a huge adrenaline push from something, you're probably getting a huge dopamine rush also.

• 2:07:18Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, reason I'm asking is a lot of, I've been told and and I believe it's true that a lot of military guys coming out of the military are, to include myself, are addicted to adrenaline. I know I am addicted to adrenaline.

• 2:07:31Speaker 06

  I would say you're addicted to dopamine.

• 2:07:33Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:07:33Speaker 06

  More than adrenaline. Right, it's dopamine, cuz that's the, it's the desire for it. Like, I need that, I I have to move, I have to go in that direction. We used to call them adrenaline junkies, right? The bungee jumping and all these things. But it's the dopamine, that's the thing that's moving you towards your, your, what you want. It's dopamine first.

• 2:07:57Shawn Ryan?

  So are we subconsciously just going throughout the day, just trying to find things that are gonna release dopamine? Social media?

• 2:08:07Speaker 06

  Actually, that's

• 2:08:07Shawn Ryan?

  Bungee jumping?

• 2:08:08Speaker 06

  That's the thought, is that we, dopamine has been said that dopamine will get you up to move you to something. Serotonin will not, serotonin is, I got it. Dopamine moves you towards something. So I I kind of flippantly say like dopamine is what built mankind.

• 2:08:28Shawn Ryan?

  So is dopamine, sounds like it's the drive.

• 2:08:30Speaker 06

  It's the drive.

• 2:08:31Shawn Ryan?

  So is dopamine coming out when you, when you want something, or when you receive it?

• 2:08:37Speaker 06

  When you start thinking about doing it.

• 2:08:41Speaker 06

  It's what's gonna get you up and get you out.

• 2:08:44Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:08:45Speaker 06

  Going to look for something, whether it's positive or negative. Dopamine is the move, is the chemical that your brain produces that's gonna move you forward into action. Because you want something. You wanna, I wanna water. Dopamine's gonna, you know, it's not gonna be much dopamine to get me up to go get a thing of water. But it might be a lot more dopamine if I'm gonna go after something I really want.

• 2:09:10Shawn Ryan?

  Is dopamine harmful?

• 2:09:13Speaker 06

  It's completely made in our body, but you can push too much dopamine and become addicted. You're addicted to something, but it's actually that dopamine that you really like.

• 2:09:23Shawn Ryan?

  What about serotonin?

• 2:09:25Speaker 06

  So, always in balance, always in balance. And that's, that's where a lot of the treatment has gone to is treating it because you have a chemical imbalance. Right?

• 2:09:37Shawn Ryan?

  Why aren't we addicted to the serotonin release? We're addicted, we're obviously addicted to the, they are connected.

• 2:09:44Speaker 06

  They're connected.

• 2:09:45Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:09:45Speaker 06

  Yeah. Your, your drive to get it and then your satisfaction with getting it. Oh, yeah, that was good. Right? So, they're, they're connected. Yeah.

• 2:09:58Shawn Ryan?

  How long do these last in your brain when they're released?

• 2:10:01Speaker 06

  Uh, different half-lives. I'm not even certain of those anymore, but not a long time. Not a long time.

• 2:10:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay. And then so with addiction, alcohol, cocaine. What else? What else were we talking about? These other addictions, they're, they're all releasing more dopamine. And so that's, that's the real addiction.

• 2:10:22Speaker 06

  Yeah, it is.

• 2:10:23Shawn Ryan?

  What about heroin?

• 2:10:24Speaker 06

  Oh, yeah. All addictions, anything that's driving the dopamine. And, and it's been said that it's, it's the pursuit of that thing that's really the big push of dopamine. The pursuit of it. Once you get it, it's gonna, you know, you're gonna cycle down because you got it. So it's even before you do whatever you do with that drug. If it's a drug or if it's gambling, before you throw the dice, it's getting out to Vegas, it's on the plane, it's in the car, it's getting to the casino. It's, that's where it's all going, going, going, going, going, taking you there. And you throw the dice, you're like, alright. And then it's maybe for the next win and maybe the next win and now it keeps cycling up.

• 2:11:03Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:11:03Speaker 06

  But you can burn that out, those systems, you can overrun them too much and those, because there are cells that are producing dopamine, they can be overworked, overstimulated. And it takes progressively more of whatever that was to bring you satisfaction addiction.

• 2:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, do you, if you don't, that's fine, but do you have any knowledge of why psychedelics is, are having such success in treating addiction?

• 2:11:33Speaker 06

  I don't have any direct understanding, except based on what I know, I'd say the default mode network, going back to that, and the way it changes its function and interacts with other regions of the brain is probably what's behind that.

• 2:11:49Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:11:50Speaker 06

  So again, these networks touch a lot of other areas in the brain. And so I'm talking about the upper brain stem. And so when you change the default mode network, which is this big grouping of neurons and areas, it must have a direct impact on that mechanism.

• 2:12:07Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, back to long COVID. We had a conversation last night at dinner and we talked about what we talked about, but we also, you had also mentioned that if somebody was on the tipping point.

• 2:12:20Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:12:21Shawn Ryan?

  And then COVID hit that.

• 2:12:24Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 2:12:24Shawn Ryan?

  That was the.

• 2:12:25Speaker 06

  I took that from a friend of mine in mental health and he's, he's just a wonderful guy. And he said, you know, if people were teetering with alcoholism or teetering with some problem, OCD, anxiety, they're not really teetering anymore. Now, this is going back, right, you know, in that first year or so. And we saw everything went up, anxiety, OCD, domestic violence, you know, alcoholism, everything went up. So, yeah, it pushed people over the edge that were on the edge of some things. Hopefully some of them have come back, they've been able to dial it down and get help. But some, no, we've seen more cases of OCD in the past three years since COVID than we've seen in the combined 10 years before.

• 2:13:09Speaker 06

  So it's telling, it's telling that it's been quite a stressor on the world and people in general, for whatever reasons. Illness, politics, money, sickness, fear. It's just, it's like, I always think about like a stove, and all of a sudden, the heat got turned up on everything.

• 2:13:27Speaker 06

  And I'm not talking climate change, I'm talking about just the stress level in the world in general, just turned up. So now you're operating at a higher level of stress among everyone. And some people handle it better than others.

• 2:13:39Shawn Ryan?

  Last thing I wanted to cover is, in your outline, you had written, "We are three-part beings, body, soul, and spirit." I wanted, I just wanted to talk to you about that. Can you explain that?

• 2:13:51Speaker 06

  Yeah, it's important. I met a chaplain at one of the hospitals, a local hospitals, some years ago. And he said, you know, and he worked with all, all the physicians, if they were, you know, interested in any type of help. Of course, he worked with the patients. But he said, you know, "If we're only treating the physical part of the person, the body, as a physician, we're missing two-thirds."

• 2:14:15Speaker 06

  I thought that was pretty telling. Because medicine is rolling ahead, you know? And not to anyone's fault, we just know how things are. It's, it moves fast, I call it fast medicine. I'm, I'm for the slow medicine movement, if there's such a thing, like the slow food movement came about out of Italy, from fast food to slow food, farm to table, making your own food, slow it. Medicine maybe needs to go to the same way, because it's just rolls by. You have this, take this, you have this, take that. And just listening to people, getting into what's going on, trying to get to the source. But he said that, that two-thirds of the patient or the person is not being dealt with. I said, "Well, let's talk about that." The, the soul and the spirit, right?

• 2:14:58Speaker 06

  So we have the body, the soul, which is the mind, the emotions, and the will. And that's where a lot of damage occurs, in your mind. And we're talking about the mind, the mind is an emergent property of the brain, right? Out of my brain emerges my mind and my thoughts. And your emotions, right, in the brain. And we actually know that the right prefrontal area of the brain of all human beings is where the conscience is. Really? Yeah. Because if you have an injury there, substantial enough injury, you lose all empathy for people. It's like, gone. And this has been documented in a very old case, actually, a guy who had a very bad injury and how he just changed completely and he was like, flat.

• 2:15:42Speaker 06

  And like, and so you even see this in criminal behavior many times, if they're able to do scans on those people. So you got the mind, you got the emotion, and you got the will. All that stuff is brain-related function. So that's that soul, and that can really get injured. You go to the battlefront, you have a difficult time at home, domestic violence, you know, all these, that's who we are, that's our persona. But then there's this deeper part, this deeper part, which is the spirit. And a lot of people say those are the same. I use more of a Christian view on that, and I haven't always been. I mean, I was early in my life, I was, as I told you, I would, I didn't believe, I didn't believe in anything. I was like, a teenager and I didn't, that wasn't my bag.

• 2:16:26Speaker 06

  And so, understanding the spirit is a deeper part of the human being, and there's so many things that talk about that, from Spirit Airlines to, you know, a broken spirit, and you know, you hear it all the time, they refer to. So those, in a way, need to be cared for.

• 2:16:43Speaker 06

  And that's what he was saying. Okay. And I appreciated that. And I think you really care for the physical body, but you care for the person, their soul, with empathy.

• 2:16:55Speaker 06

  Right? And that's, goes by the wayside, especially if you're busy, like, I just gotta get this done. And then the spirit is a deeper conversation, and every human being, my belief is, that every human being has a spirit, that's been born into us, but most of us don't really know how to operate it.

• 2:17:16Speaker 06

  And if you don't know how to operate something, or you don't know its operations, you may not be able to really function with that very well. And so his perspective and it's my perspective. And you know, it's whoever's open. And if I sense the need, so it's not the first thing that comes out. I'm glad we end on that because you know, if if I've been through what you and many of your colleagues have been through, that would be something I would need someone to help me with, I think. We all need to help each other. It's not like anyone's there. But helping somebody with that, if they don't have that, and of course, some of the people on your show that I've like, okay, I see.

• 2:17:55Speaker 06

  Because if it's the deepest part of you, and I can share something that strengthens it, encourages it, and then that's something that you take up, like I took up or anyone takes up. And I believe that, then that could really be very beneficial for them to move forward.

• 2:18:14Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:15Speaker 06

  Because this is going down. This is eventually going down, and this is going down eventually, but not the spirit. That's going to be sustained. So that's the perspective on that. And I think it's vital. If I don't say it, then you just, you said all this great things, great information, but you dealt with the body, maybe you dealt a little bit with the mind, but you kind of left these other very vital things of humanity. And so I feel like that's so vital.

• 2:18:46Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you. Thank you for sharing that. Well, Doc, do you have anything coming up that you want to talk about?

• 2:18:52Speaker 06

  We didn't talk about the dolphins.

• 2:18:55Shawn Ryan?

  We didn't talk about the dolphins. We need to talk about the dolphins. I can't believe I cannot believe that slipped my mind.

• 2:19:01Speaker 06

  I forgot it too. Okay, so the dolphins, and we're not talking football. We're not talking football. We're talking about an animal assisted therapy program that we developed down in the Florida Keys, working with dolphins. And it's probably one of the ways we connected originally. So we developed land-based and water-based activities with the dolphins to help restore brain function. And I'll tell you, when we talk about the soul, and you get in the water, and you see those dolphins, and you do some of the therapies in the water, it really nourishes your soul. You just feel. I mean, it's my wife and she even more, but you just see them and you feel happy. You can't help it. They look like they have a giant smile and they're 400 pound like puppy dogs.

• 2:19:47Speaker 06

  And they look at you and their eyes and you can tell and they're of course highly intelligent. Their brain is very similar to ours in even larger in some regions. And they use echolocation to communicate. We are visual creatures, right? Human beings. Dogs smell. But bats and dolphins, echolocation is their primary sense. So in the water, they're constantly echolocating on our clients. So we're training, we're measuring everything with our client. We're treating them on dry land. Then we have time in the water with the dolphins and we do again, dry land. Brain training comprising comprising all these suites of therapies. Then more time in the water with the dolphins. And what we get out of that is pretty dramatic changes with some people.

• 2:20:31Speaker 06

  I don't want to say everyone because it sounds again like, oh yeah. But it's really an experience that can be transformative for many people. Because you don't get an opportunity to do that very often. And it, we develop specific in-water exercises with the dolphin behaviors. That you do actually touching the dolphins, hold, you know, in direct contact. While they're echolocating, we had this one client that I shared with you and your wife last night. Who was dealing with seizure disorder. We've had people with PTSD and Asperger's and variety of different conditions. But this woman with seizures, the dolphin would not leave the area of her head when she's laying on her back in the water. Just kept echolocating and the marine mammal specialist who wanted to move the dolphin away. This is part of the therapy that we do.

• 2:21:15Speaker 06

  She said, this dolphin will not move from this woman's head. So what was happening there? I mean, we have recordings from hydrophones. We know there's a lot of echolocating going on. This woman had a pretty transformative experience. It's remarkable. So yeah, that's something that we have on an individual, one by one basis now. So.

• 2:21:35Shawn Ryan?

  That's incredible.

• 2:21:36Speaker 06

  It's really something.

• 2:21:37Shawn Ryan?

  So you, in your mind, are you sure that that dolphin knows, you know, something's going on in that part of the brain?

• 2:21:45Speaker 06

  I'm almost 60. I'm not sure of anything.

• 2:21:49Speaker 06

  Really, I'm not sure. This is what I think. And they've said that before. They've the marine mammal specialists spend countless hours caring for these dolphins like they're their children. So this is not like a show. This is, these are, these people care for these dolphins because people get upset by that. They get bothered sometimes. You know, you're, these dolphins were all rescued dolphins. Some of them former, one of former Navy dolphin. And so these, these dolphins are all cared for like as well as people's children. They love these dolphins, these animals. They take care of them. And they're so intimate with them that they say, we have people that they will stay closer to.

• 2:22:27Speaker 06

  And we find out later that they have had X, Y, and Z conditions when they're doing other work with them because it's not just limited. They're not my dolphins. So dolphins do that. They have a certain connection like a horse, like hippotherapy, animal assisted therapy. Very connected to people or dogs. Of course, we know that how connected they are and you know, they have a soul. So there's some kind of connection. But I'm not certain of anything, but that's what I think is going on and it's dramatic and it's wonderful. And if I could do it all the time, that's what I would do.

• 2:23:01Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how they would know that?

• 2:23:04Speaker 06

  Echolocation. Yeah. I mean, I can tell things by seeing like you. They can tell things internally by echolocating. It goes right through your tissues.

• 2:23:13Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:23:13Speaker 06

  So yeah, that echolocation is such high frequencies that it can, it can determine what's going on. And so they're, I mean, they're extremely sensitive to changes in the environment and things.

• 2:23:25Shawn Ryan?

  Very interesting.

• 2:23:26Speaker 06

  Yeah.

• 2:23:27Shawn Ryan?

  I, I cannot wait to get down to Miami and pay you guys a visit.

• 2:23:32Speaker 06

  Well, we will welcome you with open arms.

• 2:23:35Shawn Ryan?

  I'm really, I'm really excited to come down there and, and pay you guys a visit, but I just want to say thank you so much for coming on. I just learned. I'm gonna have to watch this three or four times to take it all in, but thank you for giving us all the knowledge and, and it's just a real pleasure to interview. Thank you.

• 2:23:55Speaker 06

  My pleasure. Such an honor.

• 2:23:56Shawn Ryan?

  And all your, all your links, everything will be posted down at the bottom of the description. And so for anybody looking to get in touch with Dr. Bagnell. Head down to the description. Everything's there. Thank you very much. Wish you the best of luck. Thank you. Appreciate it.