Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is presented by The Mac Parkman Foundation
The mission of this show and the foundation is To serve as a source of information, resources, and communications to the community of parents, coaches/Athletic trainers, medical staff, and athletes that are affected by sports-related concussions and to raise awareness of the long-term implications of concussive and sub-concussive trauma to our children.
Broken Brains will also explore how Concussive Trauma impacts our Service Members and Veterans.
Join us every week as Bruce interviews leaders and experts in various Medical fields, as well as survivors of Concussive trauma.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
#12 Cutting-Edge Brain Healing with Dr. Bronner Handwerger
Dr. Bronner, a naturopathic doctor, shares his groundbreaking treatments for brain injuries. He discusses his use of regenerative therapies like platelet-rich plasma, stem cells, intranasal therapies, and nutraceuticals. Highlighting non-pharmaceutical options, such as transcranial LED light and the ketogenic diet, Dr. Bronner stresses the importance of early intervention and addressing brain inflammation. He also advocates for accessible TBI centers and a collaborative network of experts to support veterans.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
Support The Mac Parkman Foundation by donating today!
Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Background
02:48 Regenerative Medicine for Brain Injuries
07:58 Addressing the Metabolic Crisis in the Brain
11:52 Exploring Non-Pharmaceutical Treatments
17:33 The Vision for TBI Centers
24:03 Challenges of Implementing Non-Pharmaceutical Brain Treatments
27:07 The Importance of Early Intervention for Brain-Related Mental Illness
38:39 Creating a Network of Experts to Advocate for Non-Pharmaceutical Treatments
46:28 Addressing the Endocrine System in Brain Treatment
50:07 Conclusion and Contact Information
Learn more about Dr. Bronner and his work by clicking the links below!
Website: www.docbron.com
LinkedIn: Bronner Handwerger NMD
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Produced by Security Halt Media
Hey folks, bruce Parkman, again with another episode of Broken Brains. Really appreciate all the comments that we've had so far the positive reviews the way you're pushing this out because it is an important message. The positive reviews the way you're pushing this out because it is an important message. We're talking about bringing together the experts that we can find in the world right now on treatments and diagnosis and people that are suffering from repeated head impacts, repeated blast exposure, and how we are just finding out how these have been impacting the brain and how we've known for a long time but we haven't done enough. So today's guest is Dr Bronner Dr Bronner Handwerker and he's a naturopathic doctor and I really want you to pay attention to what he has to say today, because when we start talking about treatment of the brains, this is where we start getting away from the VA and drugs and so forth.
Speaker 1:But he's treated a lot of professional NFL, major league players and Olympic athletes, as well as military and SOP veterans. But he uses regenerative modalities, including platelet-rich plasma and other state-of-the-art therapies that help and treat patients' injuries, both acute and chronic. When we start talking about the brain, that's where we're having. This is where we need these types of innovative treatments in order to get out of the drug and therapy cycle that we've been in. He's had over 3,000 five-star reviews and 20 years experience, and he helps patients from all over the world by using genetic and functional medicine testing to reveal risk factors long before they ever become apparent. Dr Bronner, I got so many questions for you, man, but you know, the way we talk is like man, how did you get into this, what got you into? You know where were you at and how did you get into all this brain treatment?
Speaker 2:Well, the brain treatment thing, I mean it goes back way back. Actually I was on a flight from London to LA in 1992, and there was a movie on called the Medicine man, which was Sean Connery, and the movie was basically about him going down to the rainforest. He had found a cure from cancer, but of course they were cutting the trees and destroying everything and it was a race to find that before everything was destroyed. And of course he didn't get in time to do that. But I said to myself on that flight, I said that's what I want to do. I already had my degree in biochemistry, so I basically sought out the tops in the fields and I wound up finding with UCLA Mildred Mathias, who was an amazing woman who had done research in the 30s, 20s, 30s and 40s in the Amazon If you can imagine a woman taking steamships down there on Curare, which is what they use for anesthesia. So she signed off on it and I went down to the Panamanian-Costa Rican border and spent about three years with the two indigenous tribes down there, the Bribri and the Kabaikar, and documenting their use of medicinal plants. So that's sort of how the journey began, fasting forward to 1997, coming back stateside to go to medical school to be a naturopathic medical doctor and then out in Connecticut, uh, finding my way over here to California, to sunny San Diego, where I had the privilege to begin my introduction into uh, the NFL, the athletes and special forces, because here in San Diego we have all the teams. So that's where I began my education on the regenerative orthopedic side of things, using PRP, stem cells and ways to heal people's injuries. So at the time it was more of a hey, we've got a rotator cuff injury, we've got some kind of torn muscle, how can we keep you on the field, keep you on your team and get you back in the game or keep you from not deploying and not being with your brothers?
Speaker 2:So that was constantly striving to push the envelope, constantly striving to do research, to see what is new, what is innovative. You know, never just settling on the same old. So it's always this, it's always this striving for not only excellence, but what can we do and employ and what tools can we develop that can be helpful for people in certain situations? So basically, as that time progressed, I would have guys come in with pillows over their heads, mostly NFL players because they were local at the time the San Diego Chargers, and they were getting concussions because they were local at the time, the San Diego Chargers, and they were getting concussions, and you know a couple of the guys. I said, you know, they're in with the pillows, they're like turn down the lights and this is the deal.
Speaker 2:And I said, well, that just doesn't seem right to me, because we know, we know we didn't really know at the time about chronic traumatic encephalopathy, but we certainly knew enough about the brain being basically whipped butter in a container with sharp edges that if we get jarred we're going to have trouble. And so at the time I was like well, let me, let's do a little, let me take some of this PRP, let's create different mixtures of it, let's go up through your nose. In my mind, I thought to myself well, I've got, I can't stick a needle in somebody's brain, but how do I address the brain? And it was woefully inadequate to me the concept of no electronics, no TV, dark lights, tv, dark lights, and let it be. That just seemed like not enough. And I then, you know, I started thinking and I was like well, I've got two nerves that are coming out. I've got the trigeminal and I've got the olfactory nerve that come right out through the cribriform plate. So I said there's the extension of the brain on the outside. So I started creating these mixes of PRP using a little insulin so that the cells would suck it in glutathione, methylcobalamin, graduated to using mesenchymal stem cells, some autologous stem cells, and I basically would instill that using a Teflon catheter, which is really non-invasive, up up on the Criboform plate. And not necessarily to my surprise but to my joy, there were great responses from guys so their recovery time was better Really, literally within 48 hours, of significant pillow-wearing, sound-sensitive, light-sensitive episodes of concussions. To that they're feeling like they're.
Speaker 2:Back Then in 2014,. Uh, there was a journal article that was uh written, where they actually took rats and they radio labeled stem cells and they put it in their nose and they dissected them and they found them in different parts of the brain, based on in two different parts of the brain, based on the trigeminal or the olfactory nerve. So at that moment I knew that what I was observing clinically because in my mind, doing nothing wasn't an option doing something was an option and if I'm doing something that can't hurt somebody, I, the only thing I lose is time and that's it. So I knew at that moment that what I was seeing clinically in these responses wasn't placebo, wasn't hocus pocus, but there was actually a mechanism. So that then led me to really want to implement this as a therapy that people should be aware of all over, because one we had now shown that if I put something in the nose it'll go to the brain. So now, if I put factors that modulate inflammation, that improve cellular metabolism Because when we think about TBI, I think if we go backwards a bit and we think what is TBI?
Speaker 2:It's really a metabolic crisis. It's a metabolic crisis. So you take a blow to your shoulder or to your hamstring, it gets swollen, it gets bruised. Well, the same thing's happening to the brain, whereby there is a whole dysregulation of the fluids that should be inside the cells and outside of the cells. So the concept being, we need to get rid of edema or swelling and we want to increase energy, so those little pumps and everything start working again. So putting energy back is essential. So by using PRP and insulin, just like in a diabetic, gets them to use glucose more efficiently. It's now been shown that intranasal insulin will actually slow cognitive decline if used early enough, because Alzheimer's is being considered type 3 diabetes. It's an inability besides the tau protein in these things, it's an inability of the brain to utilize glucose efficiently, thereby leading to lower metabolic states, just like insulin resistance and diabetes type 2.
Speaker 2:So I saw that study and I go gosh, I'm doing this. So then at that point I had been treating a lot of soft guys, mainly obviously orthopedic. I also was doing a lot of functional endocrinology, because in that world the tempo that they're working at, the tempo that they're working at the circadian rhythm disruptions, leads a lot of them, plus the TBI. So the whole TBI concept really grew out of seeing why is it that I have a 28-year-old operator, a 32-year-old operator, a 35-year-old operator with hormone levels of an 85-year-old man? Something's not right and that is what we understood now was the consequence of the TBI affecting pituitary function. So in looking at all those things I got the word out and to all my close guys I said hey, look, if you, I began educating them, I began telling them hey, if you feel your bell's rung and we're not talking about, because for many years with the VA it was about impacts, it was about a rifle round, it was about losing that hemisphere Right, and so that's not what we were talking.
Speaker 2:We were about talking to a guy who ate a breach on a door. We were talking about an IED going off 30, 40 yards away, that low velocity, low amplitude thump. So I started educating them and being like, listen, I'm going to. I want you guys to have a kit so, if this happens, you could begin to do things for yourself. So I came up also, uh, with a whole evidence-based approach and I actually presented to nsw navy special warfare in 2017, to the force medical officer and some of the physicians, an evidence-based approach to a treatment for these sub-acute tbis.
Speaker 2:Because, in my mind, when this is after we had the incident with Junior Seau, where, unfortunately, we know he had the CTE and led to his demise my goal was to be able to educate them on what to do early on, because, instead of TBI becoming a chronic injury, we can keep it an acute injury and recover from it or at least do something more than that is currently being done. So the concept was any kind of thing anytime anybody gets their bell. One quote unquote. Let's start looking at things we can do. So we had a nutraceutical type of intervention. So we had a nutraceutical type of intervention, which we know, things like vitamin D, sulforaphane, broccoli seed extract, progesterone is very neuroprotective and many studies on being used very rapidly after spinal cord injury, after different nerve injuries.
Speaker 2:So a nutraceutical intervention and then a simple intranasal TBI intervention that could be done by medics right out on the field or in a little field hospital, because the same time it takes to put in a little fluid drip to give them some fluids, a little blood can be taken out and spun and utilized. So all of that grew out of it. And so all of that grew out of it. Chuck Keating, who we lost, but some of his teammates had significant injuries from that event and so I saw them and was able to take care of some of them, and the few that I took care of were actually going to medically retire. They're still working to this day because of this, and in fact one in particular it was a Thursday and he was looking through me with a blank stare and I remember he was there with his wife and I remember joking because I joke with those guys. I say, hey, I'm going to give you a bloody nose. You know nothing like telling a big operator you're going to give him a bloody nose Right yeah.
Speaker 1:Say what?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so I basically said you know, and like telling a big operator, you're going to give him a bloody nose, right, yeah? Say what, yeah? And so I basically said is a, you know? And he didn't even I laid him down. Saturday I get a phone call, a message, like his wife's like crying, and I'm like gosh, I couldn't have heard him. You know what's going on. I call her back and she goes you gave me my husband back and it goes. You gave me my husband back and it was, it was, it was really wonderful. And you know, currently I, um, you know, I have a son who's playing football.
Speaker 2:Um and uh, I actually fought against him playing football, quite a bit actually, and then finally, I had to let it go and say okay, but certainly if he was to get it, if he was to have a concussion. In fact, last year, you know, the protocols are better in terms of them getting guys off the field, but the standard concussion protocol is still no electronics, dark, you know. Dark room, you know the joke with him is okay, okay, it's only a matter of time before you're getting a bloody nose from me. And so, you know, I really came to this whole the.
Speaker 2:You know, naturopathic medicine is interesting because we always want to find the root causes and we want to understand what's happening. So it's a lot of like looking at the physiology and then de-engineering things. What can we do to manipulate that for a better outcome? And so, back in 2017, really, one of my dreams was, and I was to actually present this kind of thought process out there so that we could actually hope, Because, you know, it's one thing playing football and um, but falling off a bicycle, playing ice hockey, Um, I mean really any event.
Speaker 2:So you know, when I'm with the guys at some of their events and you talk about individuals who are active, who did martial arts, who rode motorcycles, who played football, played lacrosse, who played hockey, who played any kind of sports.
Speaker 2:Most people fell off a bicycle. These are impacts that are occurring to the brain and it really needs to be understood. So you know it's one thing in the soft community that it's great that the military's come a good long way with NICO and they'll do the spec scans and they'll say you got holes in your brain. I find that the solutions for the guys tend to be inadequate. I mean, they're given a lot of information I think it's great for it to be documented for their disability ratings but I feel that some of the solutions that are verbalized to the guys can be inadequate. And what happens with that in that particular community is all of these guys have a common similarity that one of their main quality traits is if they're stuck in a corner, they're going to figure a way out. But when you're told by the people who you respect the, the white coats, the, the, the people quote unquote who might you think are smarter than you, Take this drug.
Speaker 1:Talk to this person.
Speaker 2:Take this drug and there's really not, and we'll continue to monitor and da, da, da. Well, that can then create a sense of they don't know how to get themselves out of the corner and it creates a sense of of they don't know what to do, and it could put them into a tailspin. And so that's where I like to try to bring to the table that there's a lot to be done. Luckily, nowadays there's so much more research with plant medicine, with different skill coping techniques, with different things, but I still think that there's room to go. So my vision was why shouldn't there be TBI centers in every city that you have kids playing sports? Why shouldn't there be a place for parents to be able to say, hey, I want my kid to be evaluated and I want to have some of these non-invasive, non-toxic, non-harmful treatments Non-pharmaceutical.
Speaker 1:Non-pharmaceutical treatments Absolutely.
Speaker 2:So that was really where I was looking there, of course, with the Navy my hope was to teach, want to recognize that the entity exists, but they don't really want to address the issue because then it opens up other cans of worms for them. Um, oh yep, and so you know, they're sort of a little limited. They don't want to cross that line. Yeah, we know this occurs, we can document it, but we don't want to get into really treatments and things of that line.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, you saw that article in the New York Times last month about all the suicides that the SEALs are experienced due to repeated, due to their lifestyle, and I think that's what we we got to start dialing back to the point that anybody can have a concussion and in the military you're going to have those subcussive blows that you were talking about. As a child or as an adult you're going to take these subcussive hits. But it's the lifestyles that we have as military and I'm a retired Green Beret Sergeant Major four different combat zones and I've been diagnosed with GAD as a result of significant trauma as a military guy back in my day, and I didn't even fight in these wars, I retired early on. But it's these lifestyles now that we're now understanding is contributing to the brain degradation in ways that have been known to cause mental illness for decades. Yet treatments like yours, modalities like yours, are not available to our troops. It's always been drugs and therapy.
Speaker 1:I don't care if you go to NICO, you go to any of the TBI clinics because, to your point, you can go there. You can get three weeks of the best care possible. You've ever seen what happens when you go home and you're in the middle of Nebraska, right? How do you treat yourself? How do you get photobiomodulation? How do you get hyperbarotoxic? How do you get these treatments that are known?
Speaker 1:Because we're leaving what you're talking about, the whole aspect of brain healing, out of this. It's all about. You know, hey, we know you're mentally ill, for sure, you know you beat your wife, whatever you did, but we're giving you drugs and therapy. Sometimes the drugs are necessary to get you off the cliff edge, whatever, whatever. But we're not trying to get you off the drugs. Therapy only works so far. But if you have a damaged brain from your military occupation or, like my son, from playing football, playing wrestling and snowboarding three subconcussive sports 10 months a year, that I was unaware was impacting his brain, and so the education is part of it. But to your point, sir, the treatments, these non-invasive, non-pharmaceutical treatments that are in by themselves killing our boys and girls and drugging our kids, and, you know, getting off of benzo, you know. You know they bring you lunch. You know it is a horrible experience. So you know, that's why I, you know, you know your approach to brain healing is so important, because it's not out there and it absolutely should be.
Speaker 2:And I think that even more so we know that the younger brain is even more susceptible, because you're really not developed till you're about 23, 25.
Speaker 2:And um, you know. So, like you said, to your point, you know some of the medications, fine, but you know, there there is also the concept of neuroplasticity, where we see some of these plant medicines and things actually being effective, but so we can't, we don't want to throw, you know, we don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. So some medicines, okay, but where is this concept of neuroplasticity? Where is the concept? For example, I use vagal nerve stimulation with transcutaneous vagal nerve stimulation. Right, we know it modulates TBI and inflammation. Of course, hyperbaric, you know, for acute traumas I like the ketogenic diet because it lowers glutamate levels, medium chain triglycerides, yeah, so the ketogenic diet in an acute setting will lower glutamate levels and lead to less agitation and less inflammation. So you know. So I mean really. So this therapy that I put together really is a combination of the hyperbaric oxygen and I'm going to be happy to share with you my presentation that I gave to NSW, because I have it all spelled out with the references, and obviously here it's not the forum to give out references, but hyperbaric oxygen therapy increases stem cells at two atmospheres. So then we have hyperbaric oxygen therapy combined with the intranasal therapies, combined with the nutraceuticals, the vitamin D, the progesterone, even curcumin, which is the turmeric extract, the resveratrol compounds, all those purples right. And then we have the.
Speaker 2:I was using, and still do, transcranial LED lights. So if you've ever seen those pain mats, those red lights at about 600, they're all about 640 nanometers, give or take 100, either way. That has been shown. There's a whole article in the Journal of Neurotrauma on. They did it on NFL guys where they put that on and their social interactions, their sleep, their PTSD symptoms reduced. And because what is the light doing? It's increasing ATP or cellular energy. So we've got the hyperbaric, the intranasal therapies, we've got the nutraceutical therapies, then a little simple transcranial LED and ketogenic diet. Now you start putting together a tool that everyone can do it all, more or less, even with the hyperbaric. I've had people because that's a little bit of a barrier, but even you can get a soft, soft-sided unit that you can rent for a month. You know they deliver them, they put them in, they rent them, so it's not even a deal breaker there. Um, and then, in terms of the LED therapy, I found a device from this company called Thor.
Speaker 1:It's a helmet, so you know, I brought it over to the Navy and I was like you know, they like to spend a lot of money on fancy things. I love my seals, man.
Speaker 2:I love my seals.
Speaker 2:Right, but what happened is for the regular guys. I just have them buy like an $89 paying thing on Amazon and they put that on their head. And so these are things that I think that both for the soft community, for the older people, but the more important thing as everything with chronic illness, the earlier we can intervene, the more life-changing we can be the younger people when it happens, to train the younger soft guys, to train the guys, of course we got to take care of everybody, but to get the younger guys in there that they don't just suck it up and don't tell somebody when they're feeling a little nauseous, when when they have that little background headache, that they actually say something.
Speaker 2:and, by the way, either they're gonna tell nobody don't even tell their why they're gonna tell their medical are they gonna tell so, but that's where us getting the word out so that there's resources out there for them to actually understand that there's things that they can do 100 about this and we'll we'll talk about ayahuasca and ibogaine here in a little bit as plant medicines.
Speaker 1:I've got enough experience with those right now. Um, you know, helping out veterans love to talk about that really excited. But you know, here you are, you've been. Uh, you know, I don't know if you know dr mark out veterans. I'd love to talk about that for a second. But you know, here you are, you've been. You know, I don't know if you know Dr Mark Gordon, he's been on the show. You know you can. Yeah, both of you have this.
Speaker 1:You know holistic non-pharmaceutical approach to brain treatment that you know that really anybody could done right now if they have the right kind of money. So you know, my point is that you know, here you are, you've been, you've brought up logic, you've brought up research, you brought up science, you brought up cause and effects, all addressing neuroinflammation and all the other. You know critical pathways by which the brain gets damaged, response and we need to fix in order to get these guys mentally well right, to get them back with their families, back on the job, back on that. Yet none of these issues, none of these modalities supplementation, dietary approaches, technical modalities, like you know TMS, photobiomodulation, hbot, all that and psychedelics not one of them are approved or covered in any way, shape or form, and we've got hundreds of thousands of veterans out of pocket every year. What is the offense that these approaches are bringing to our medical establishment at the VA and I know that SOCOM's taking this very seriously right now they are leading the charge when it comes to brain health and we're having some really good conversations on this as a foundation.
Speaker 1:But why is it just so hard? Because my point is our suicide rate has not changed in 20 years. So that means our approach to mental health, which is drugs and therapies, has not changed in 20 years. And if something changed to your point, doing something is a hell of a lot better than watching these young men and women flip and die. So to my point, you have something. You have 3,000 positive reviews. You've worked with soft, which means conventional guys will eat it up. Why is this not available right now? What is?
Speaker 2:the pushback. Well, so to, to, to, okay. So after my presentation in 17, all the physicians came up to me and they they responded tremendously, they loved it and basically they said, well, luckily there's somebody like you out in the community to help these people, because Bumad big Navy, it's an impossible machine to try to get this through to. Now I think, as things grow, if we were able to put together some INDs, some kind of little studies where we get guys, because actually one of my goals of doing the whole presentation, I even said to them I'll treat these guys for free.
Speaker 2:I just need the hyperbaric chamber that you have on North Island, because the only people who use it are the pilots who descend to Qwep Right, and I just wanted the guys I'm like I'll treat them for free and I just want them to get the hyperbaric. And so I think that if we were to put together with Dr Gordon and myself, look at some of the universities and, you know, create an IND and say, okay, let's come up with a between Dr Gordon, myself, other people, other practitioners, let's come up with a couple of, a couple of outlines, a couple of of of outlines of what we see. Take some people and let's put them through a protocol. We'll do and see. And do we do neurocognitive testing? We now online, they have wonderful neurocognitive tests that we can do before, during, after. So there's a way to quantify all this. And in regards to cost. So I think that goes to another point.
Speaker 2:When you're talking about a product that is generated from your body, who's making money on this? Who's going to make money on this? Your blood is your blood. So, whether I spin it in a centrifuge, okay, there's a little insulin. You know your mesenchymal stem cells or your bone marrow, hematopoietic stem cells from your bone marrow. Even if they need to go that far, it's your own product. So, in other words, there's no device, there's no drug that's going to make whatever X dollars to be able to subsidize and fund big studies to allow the VA to want to bring it in. That demands it. So the barrier to entry is the fact that the thought process is we're using non-patentable, logical, natural therapies. So therefore, where does the big money come in, with their investment, whether it's big pharma or some research or whoever to actually do this? Now, I don't believe that it has to be such a great barrier, because with some INDs, even with the VA, because I was working with an orthopedic doctor there who was very progressive, I mean there are people there and there are voices. You know we're not talking about anything. So the main thing is we're not talking about anything that can harm anybody. So damn it, we're not going to hurt anybody. You know there's plenty of doctors Dr Gordon, myself who are happy to dedicate time but to be able to show results and therefore maybe make the inroads that need to happen.
Speaker 2:But, to answer your question, as I said, I think that nobody stands to make a lot of money on therapies that really are just out there, your own blood product. I mean a hyperbaric chamber, let's say, but it's not a device that could be sold over and over, or a medicine that could be sold over and over and a lot of the clinical trials. As you know, to get a clinical trial for a medication, I mean it could be a billion dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars. So I think that's been where. Where's the incentive for this? But now that the public is out there, now that the VA is is getting better, but now that the, the, the, the, the, the SOCOM wants to take care of its guys because you know it's great, I always joke and it's not a joke, it's sad I mean, these are our heroes and patriots. That's not, this is not. You know, this is not a way to treat them. And so I think that with the proper communication and networking within the community, it is feasible.
Speaker 2:And locations Dr Gordon's up in LA, I'm here in San Diego, we've got some people on the East Coast. We actually create an IND or we create a study study, a clinical study, where we're going to enroll people who've gone to nico. We have the scans, we have the symptoms. You know, we start even there, because we have all the documentation to establish their injury and then we do the treatments and we do the neurocob testing and we say, hey, hey, are you feeling better? How do you report your own life, how do you report your anger? How do you report your sleep, your dreams, your social interactions, how's your motivation, how's your outlook on life? So we would be able to put that all together and then at least have a package to go and say, hey look, this is something that we should be implementing and at least educating guys to whether you want to do it, whether we find foundations and charities that want to help. But again, a lot of it is not. Uh, it's not, it's not cost prohibitive, it's not cost prohibitive at all.
Speaker 1:That's why, in my mind, I mean've talked to you know, it's not cost brain conferences that have amazing, but unless there's a billing code form they can get covered under insurance. Nobody will invest in taking that you know, amazing technology market. And here to your point this is all off the shelf stuff. Right, this is. You know, this is stuff that you can take off the shelf, and you can. So now it becomes not an education but.
Speaker 1:I will tell you this about any government organization, the one thing they hate is angry moms and congressional investigations and this suicide rate that we have and the amount of mental illness that we are going through right now. That's never been treated in the way you talk about. I mean, you're talking about between you and Dr Gordon and Dr Duterte, who's got this amazing HBOT study out here, and all the doctors we talked to. Man, maybe 5% of the veteran population and mostly soft because they got the money right Gets assessed. Most of the guys that started the fighting in 2001 have never been looked at for brain-related mental illness and are out there suffering, which brings me to another quick point.
Speaker 1:Now we have all these scans that are out there. We have DTI scans, we have functional MRI scans, we've got QEEGs that can look at the brain and say, look, you've got a problem. I mean to you as a doctor, can those scans be used by a veteran to say, look, I've got a history of blast exposure, mtbi exposure, tbi exposure and this is my scan, because with the two of those hand in hand the evidence of exposure and a scan delineating that you have you know you have an abnormal abnormality or you have an impacted brain. We should be able then to you know, go get you know your treatment. Are you using these scans at all that are out there, or do you think they're they're relevant?
Speaker 2:Well, a lot of the yeah, I do. I mean a lot of the guys come from like the operations, like Nyko, they get the spec scanning there. You know, I tell even the younger guys I'm like you know there's still operational. I'm like, listen, you need to go backwards and you need to make sure your medical file has documented all of these incidences Because you know, if you don't, when you're done and you that's going to, it's hard to go back into it. You can always you know there's advocates at the VA you can go and resubmit, but it's better.
Speaker 2:I tell the guys as they're, I'm like, make sure you're documenting this and you're telling them that this happened. Um, and then the scans held established and, and, and and and document it. You know, in my mind, obviously we don't want a guy to get hung up on the scan because now he could sit in a couch in a dark room and be like my brain's all messed up. And, like I said with Dr Gordon you know we've been colleagues for more than 20 years the endocrinology part of this is crucial because when the brain is damaged.
Speaker 2:Now you've got a man whose hormones are damaged. So when you start looking at what happens to a man with testosterone levels that are low, there's a lot of crossover there and so that's where it's part of this whole TBI and in an adult it's making sure that the endocrine system, the adrenal glands, the hypothalamic pituitary abscess is functioning, the hypothalamic pituitary axis is functioning, and when you start combining and fixing the hypothalamic pituitary axis working on the brain, I mean I have not seen anybody not improve, not be better. So let me ask a question.
Speaker 1:This podcast gets out quite a bit. It's going out more. And so if a veteran's listening to this, or a mom of a, of a kid or a, an adult who played a lot of contact sports, maybe through college and then went into a business career because we never know when you know brain damage, related mental illness, when should somebody be concerned enough and how would they, you know, get to a point where they could make the connection right now between hey, I played a lot of football, or I was an engineer and artillery guy, I was a tanker in the army, where you know all this stuff and where they can find you? Right, because that's what we're trying to get the word out that there are, and have been even since my son took his life three and a half years ago, there have been amazing improvements in modalities that can treat the brain, which is the missing link right now. We can drug them and talk them to death. They're still taking their lives and it's because, in my professional opinion and I've researched this for three and a half years now we're not treating that brain. You are, dr Gordon, is the NICO is to a certain point, identifying that you need brain treatment, but then you leave, right, and what do you got after that? Drugs and therapy. It don't work. The model is broke. We have to break the cycle. You're part of breaking that cycle and fixing it.
Speaker 1:And I'm that guy that runs around with my big voice and my mouth and if you knew me as a sergeant major, nobody liked me if they were above me. They hated me because I would uh, now I was on your ass If my men and women were not being taken care of. You were going to hear about. So you know, how do we expand awareness? I mean, you've been doing this for a long time and I'm just coming across you and I've been in this space for a little bit, unfortunately, right.
Speaker 1:So how do we spread this right? How do we get this out there? I mean, because this is what folks and we're not even talking just veterans, we're talking about, like you said car accidents, bike falls, ski crashes. If we treated brain health every time we saw somebody that was going to jail or acting out in the military or after anybody took a fall, and we looked at treating that brain, we could reduce the amount of human suffering on this planet, in this country that consumes 85% of the pharmaceuticals in the world by an enormous amount, and this is the kind of education, awareness and messaging that needs to get out there. What's your recommendation? You've been fighting the battle for a while, you know.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, you know, and I've got to tell you, you know, sometimes it's been, you know it comes to a point where I'm like, look, I can only just take care of what I can take care of, because you, you, you fall upon deaf ears. But I think, as more and more people, someone like yourself, the best defense foundation, you know, that's doing great work with donnie edwards, that I'm part of getting dr gordon, I think, having something like this with a roundtable with the physicians, whether it's a podcast or even an offline strategy session, whether we have Gordon myself, all the other doctors, so you know all of us individually. But maybe we create a scientific board, whether it's under your foundation, a new, if it doesn't matter, but where all the people who are involved now can be communicating with each other and we can strategize. How do we bring this out there? How do we connect? How do I in my own little world, and Dr Gordon, his own little world, and all these people in their own little world? How do we create a network of those worlds that are very similar and overlapping? We're really very similar, yet we're isolated. Yes, sir, we're little islands upon ourselves, right?
Speaker 2:And if we could have somebody, an organization, an entity, a person say let's all get together, let's hop on a Zoom or whatever it is and let's strategize how we can bring this out for more people, how we can potentially do some of these clinical studies where we do case reports, where we take some of your people, how we could possibly direct people who are inquiring to whether it's your foundation or other foundations, whether they're vets or they're high school football players, where it can be like hey, there's a guy in San Diego, there's a guy in Los Angeles, there's a guy in Miami, there's a guy up here in Washington where we could direct you. And as part of that, if we all have come together and said let's do this, we bring them in and they become part of our clinical study. How do they do? We do the treatments, we reevaluate them, we assess them, we get the right questionnaire, so we start documenting the data as a group and then that becomes powerful, because now, in numbers, we're more powerful.
Speaker 2:Whereas Dr Gordon does his thing, I do my thing, everybody's doing their thing, but we're not a unit and I think creating and pulling together a unit and, as you know, teams work better than a singular man. Right, the power is in teamwork and if we can pull and I know Dr Gordon, I know myself, we're all willing to get it dedicate time, especially to the concept of a team that's fighting for the same thing, and that's that's the bottom line is. I know all of the guys who are in my field would would welcome the opportunity to strategize. How can we bring this out? What can we do as scientists and physicians to actually begin really documenting this? So we put together a whole powerhouse of presentations, whether it's to Congress, whether it's to the VA, whether it's to SOCOM, whether it's to the US Department of Education whether it's the local high schools, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what we.
Speaker 2:Where we could put it together and start creating a network.
Speaker 1:We'll start. We're going to start working on that. We've got a concept that we haven't put off right now. We're writing legislation and we have support right now in one of the states to provide funding for veterans to choose from a Chinese menu list of programs like yours, because every brain's different. Now can we all agree on a structured list of things that could be done? Like you know, these three scans leads to this, you know supplementation for endocrinology or this, whatever you know, and pituitary treatments, whatever right. Or do people just go, hey, look, this is what you do for your damaged brain from a technical perspective and go find what works for you, hbot, you know? Can we agree on a structured, you know process? That remains to be seen.
Speaker 1:But once we do do that, or if we just say, look, you know, but our intent is and we definitely want to talk to you about the people you have on the East Coast is by getting. We want to do this as a study. We're not just going to make these treatments available. You're going to fill out an intake form. You're going to agree for one year of treatment. You're going to agree to go ahead and respond, you know, before, after and during treatment, for each treatment, whether it's ketamine, you know ayahuasca, whether it's the TMS, photobiomodulation, hbop, whatever and by taking this evidence to the VA, to Congress, to the government, saying, look, we have so many people raising their hands saying this helped me, we're going to have those outliers that it just didn't work for. Okay, got it, no problem.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to suicides and our veterans, to your point, our heroes, you know anything that can help them, anything that is providing them a way out of that hole that they got into because they served their country, because they didn't, they didn't commit a crime. They joined this military to serve their country and in the performance of doing their job, they were damaged. And we are not covering that check, we are not taking care of them, we are just drugging them and sending them away going. Best of luck, buddy. Oh, you want some more drugs? Go see your local VA clinic.
Speaker 1:What we're talking about here is a potentially scalable because it is outside of an HBOT tank. Right, you can go to GNC and get half the stuff that you and Dr Gordon talk about. Right, we can create, you know, a structured, scalable plan where you buy that Amazon LED thingy, right? Or these treatments. People can open up their own brain health. Veterans can open up their own treatment clinics. You know, pursuing these modalities, we have huge problems, and it's not just the veteran population. It's crazy what's out there, you know.
Speaker 2:And it's not just the veteran population, it's crazy what's out there you know, and what I think is is by somebody putting together a scientific board and having bathroom conversations.
Speaker 1:I'm taking notes.
Speaker 2:I think that the concept of an algorithm although everybody is an individual there are a lot of bases that need, in other words, that algorithm checklist. There's a good amount of it that has to be flowed through before it starts treeing off into. Maybe we go to ketamine or we do plant medicine, but there's a whole homework list that really for everybody, because we're talking about the brain, we're talking about the pituitary, we're talking about the hypothalamic axis.
Speaker 1:So I know if you go to Dr Gordon and you come to me and I are running the same test.
Speaker 2:So in other words, okay. So in other words, there is a whole workup. Initially, that, then because, for example, the ketamine is on, the more a little you know you're struggling with depression, things like that.
Speaker 2:What about if you're on the anxiety side?
Speaker 2:What about it's? You know so. So there we might. We might have a little bit of a there. The algorithm shifts a little bit.
Speaker 2:But to get to that point we have to understand every human being has these biomarkers, methylation markers, genetics that predisposes to various injuries and detoxing different things from their bodies. Those are all things that are. Those are offset. So in other words, from a program point of view, there's a number of things that would occur before further individualization. So we could get there fast. And then we could get there fast, and then I think, having the scientific board, that's where now we start flossing out.
Speaker 2:Okay, so we look for the experts in ketamine. We really we dissect out and we tease out who has it worked for for you, who has it not worked for you? And then now we've got that pathway with the ayahuasca and the ibergame who has it worked for, who does it not work for? And, more importantly, where should somebody be in their recovery before they even attempt to do that? Because my experience with the plant medicines there can be general benefit, but if they're not ready, it fades, it's not as long lasting. But they didn't do the homework up above right. They didn't look at their endocrine system. They didn't work on vagal nerve stimulation. They're going into it because I think a lot of the thought processes and I've noticed this with the guys because this is how America's trained All right, I'm going to do plant medicine and be fixed. I'm going to take this pill and be fixed. No, it's actually an exercise. This is a process. Our whole life is a process.
Speaker 1:We're all growing and developing until we are no longer here. I'm 62 and I'm still growing up, right.
Speaker 2:I mean it's well, you know it's a saying I hate, but it either grows or it dies, and that goes for relationships, businesses.
Speaker 1:Dr Barr I'll unfortunately run out of time here. Real quick, tell folks how they find you, please how they find you and how they get a hold of you if they have any questions or requirements, and we'll definitely be posting any contact information with you when we post this thing.
Speaker 2:Okay, perfect. I mean simply, my webpage is real simple. It's just docbron D-O-C-B-R-O-Ncom. There's a contact page from there. Shoot me an email Say you heard me on the podcast. I'll do my best to come up with resources, the things, and hopefully, sooner rather than later, we'll have a group, a coalition of people where we'll have resources to be able to help people out.
Speaker 1:I cannot thank you enough. What an amazing podcast. This has been absolutely exciting. I'm just like I'm all giggles and goosebumps right now and hard for a Green Beret to admit that, but I cannot thank you enough for what you're doing for our troops, what you've done, you know, for society as a whole, for the. You know the research that you perform and we're going to have you on again if you don't mind, and we'll definitely going to get this out All right, thank you.