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
The Future of PTSD & Brain Trauma Recovery: TMS, Ketamine & Breakthrough Treatments
In this powerful episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, we dive deep into the hidden dangers of repetitive brain trauma and the groundbreaking treatments reshaping mental health recovery.
Bruce sits down with Sam Peterson, a retired EOD technician, mental health advocate, and founder of Mind Spa, to explore revolutionary approaches to PTSD and brain injury healing. From Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) and deep TMS to experiential ketamine therapy, Sam shares firsthand insights into the cutting-edge treatments transforming lives—especially for veterans struggling with PTSD, depression, and neuroinflammation.
💡 What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
✔️ How repetitive head trauma affects mental health and brain function
✔️ Why mainstream mental health treatments often fail veterans and athletes
✔️ The science behind TMS, deep TMS, and ketamine therapy for PTSD and depression
✔️ How Sam Peterson’s Mind Spa and the Invictus Project are breaking barriers in brain health treatment
✔️ Why integrating alternative therapies with lifestyle changes is key to recovery
🚀 Join the Movement for Better Mental Health!
🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube!
📢 Like, share, and subscribe to support mental health awareness and help us bring these critical conversations to more people.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
Support The Mac Parkman Foundation by donating today!
https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=CR24MY2GDUCZL
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Repetitive Brain Trauma
02:35 Meet Dr. Pam Arnell: A Lifelong Commitment to Service
06:45 Transitioning to Focus on Veterans and First Responders
08:08 Understanding 22-0 and Its Mission
10:52 The Persistent Suicide Rate Among Veterans
15:39 Challenges with Traditional Therapy Models
21:07 Innovative Approaches: RTM and Emotional Management
27:09 The Effectiveness of 22-0's Protocols
33:30 Barriers to VA Recognition and Funding
37:54 How to Access 22-0's Services
Get the Head Smart App Today! Click the link below to download it now!
https://www.mpfact.com/headsmart-app/
Connect with Sam today!
LinkedIn: Sam Peterson
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-peterson-mba/
Join Blue Fusion and Horse Soldier Bourbon for the inaugural Special Operations Army vs. Navy Tailgate Event
Celebrate with us and support veteran wellness. Your participation helps fund The Mac Parkman Foundation's Veteran Program and Team American Freedom.
Your sponsorship ensures vital education, screening, and treatment for veteran mental health, aiming to reduce the tragedy of veteran suicide.
Enjoy food, beverages, and live music by Razor’s Edge, one of the top-perform
Produced by Security Halt Media
Hey folks, welcome back to another episode of Broken Brains with yours truly Bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation, where we look at the issue of repetitive brain trauma, rbt from repetitive head impacts from contact sports or repetitive blast exposure for our military veterans, and what these impacts are doing to the brains of our kids, athletes and veterans, and the resulting preventable cause of mental illness. The largest one in this country that has our veterans dying by suicide, suffering from mental illness, being incarcerated. Same thing with our kids and our veterans. And this show we reach out to the leading researchers, scientists, parents, patients, advocates, journalists to talk about these issues so that you are informed, as these issues are not educated in this country, they're unknown in this country, yet their impact is profound. So please stay tuned for another exciting show, and with us today is Sam Peterson.
Speaker 1:Sam Peterson is an exciting guest. Why? Because I have partaken in many of the modalities that he professes to use and is a sponsor of. He's a passionate entrepreneur and mental health advocate, but, more importantly, he's retired EOD and I think that he's already been through a lot of the challenges that I and many special operation veterans have been through from you know, repetitive blast exposure and just the impacts of our military job, but he's dedicated to making a difference in the lives of veterans and first responders and I really want to dig into and the Patriot Power Up program again, where Sam and his team has successfully treated hundreds of individuals, utilizing highly effective methods to address PTI, depression, anxiety and PTSD. And we're going to talk about these because I'll guarantee they're not covered by the VA or TRICARE insurance yet. And these are the modalities that are having significant impacts and if there are some, that's great, but they're not being recognized enough and they're not mainstream and we've got to fix this.
Speaker 1:In addition to his work with MindSpar and Patriot Power Up, he's founded the Invictus Project. This nonprofit provides vital financial assistance for veterans seeking mental health treatment. Why? Because anything that works with the brain nowadays is primarily not covered by insurance or VA. So hats off to you. And he's a former Army EOD technician and, after facing his own mental health challenges, he became committed to developing programs that can truly help those in search. He believes in the power of community and support to create lasting change and he is absolutely dedicated to improving the mental health of our heroes and veterans. Sam, what a great bio man. This is awesome man. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thanks for having me, Bruce, today. It's an honor and I love your shirt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude.
Speaker 2:Support that little brain.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean every Fourth of July it's funny we have this parade here on Anna Maria Island. It's seven miles long and it's the longest water gun fight in the country. So literally from start to finish, we got pools, we got all these squirt guns, we got all our kids on there and it's all in the name of my son who lost his life to this tragic you know this tragic. You know you know tragic issue of repetitive bad impacts. But we have a seven and a half mile gun water fight so we make new t-shirts every year. So my sister, who's the executive director of our foundation, made this. But thanks for noticing man.
Speaker 2:I mean, you know it's. It's a great thing what you're doing on this podcast, just drawing more awareness to the not only the the issues of post-traumatic stress disorder, traumatic brain injuries, depression, anxiety, all those things, but the fact that, like, we can actually do something about it, and that that's something that gets lost a lot of times in the rhetoric that we keep getting fed, especially when it comes to brain injuries. I can't tell you how many times I've had patients come into our clinic or into our program and they've talked to a neurologist and he's like well, yep, you're screwed. Um, you're going to get dementia in about 10 years.
Speaker 1:Um, uh, hug your kids and hug your, hug your kids and get a life insurance policy, buddy, cause you're not going to be around very long.
Speaker 1:You don't even have a reserve parachute, you're just screwed man, you know. And why is? And why is that? I mean, dude, these, these, the, the the issue of repetitive, repetitive head impacts, repetitive blast exposure, has been diagnosed. It's been studied so much, yet the knowledge is not out there. And beyond that, the knowledge might be there, but the, the, the knowledge that you can do something about it that can have a positive impact and almost get these guys back to where they were, is not there, man. It's a tragedy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it is, and it's just the rhetoric is not true. And this is partially because of the way that kind of pharmaceutical science is is conducted. It's always trying to isolate a variable, and you know so these treatment protocols that are, they're not sorry. Let me rephrase that when we're looking at treatments that can affect the brain, science right now is using this monoamine approach. We're testing one variable at a time, one variable at a time. But here's the problem your brain is the most complex organism that we know of on this planet. It is its own pharmaceutical company. It is constantly reacting to stimuli and changing in real time. So it's not just that we can't take this monoimmune approach, it's that a multimodal approach is required to heal this thing and to get it back to the place that it was at prior to the injury.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, you know that. I mean Farmer believes that drugs are a lifestyle. Bro. I talked to veterans. I was at an ayahuasca retreat just two weeks ago. There were veterans there. All of them had 15 to 17 different pills prescribed by the VA and then when they went back and said I don't like this, they're like, well, why don't we just up it some more? That was their automatic response is hey, you just need more Zoloft or more whatever. I mean, they got boxes and bags of pills that they know they don't want, they don't need, and they're coming to these modalities like we're getting ready to talk about, to find their way home. But pharma has is got between all this evidence-based crap and and everything's got to be a pill, everything be treated with a pill in this world right now, and that is just not the case. I mean, and you're, and you're proven no, not at all.
Speaker 2:I mean, at the end of the day, like you cannot medicate your way out of a traumatic brain injury and trying to take, and you also can't talk your way out of a traumatic brain injury and trying to take and you also can't talk your way out of a traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 2:I have thank you again, like and I have gone to, I've gone toe-to-toe with, with psychiatrists from yale, researchers at the va, and everyone is doing a really good job of patting themselves on the back and not a really good job of looking at the neurobiology of the issue. Because the underlying issue, especially when we're talking about TBI, is this is a hypoxic brain injury and furthermore, it is an inflammatory issue in the brain. And until you address that inflammatory issue in the brain, you are wasting that patient's time, and that is even worse. The knock-on effect of that is even worse, because that brain is going through this inflammatory cascade, this what's called a secondary chemical injury from TBI, and it's causing long-lasting damage that eventually leads to dementia.
Speaker 1:And they're saying we want more time, like the VA just started these trials they just reported it's going to be 10 to 15 years, they say, before they can prescribe the psilocybin or MDA, which are all known to impact the brain from a neuroplasticity, neuronal growth perspective, and get that going. But you're absolutely right, we don't have time and we know that these modalities are helping people every day. I will guarantee you that once we start talking about MindSpot and what you do, that the majority of your people that come out of those treatments feel better, that they have hope, that they feel like they're on a positive road for the first time in a long time in a long time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the, the average, uh, the average symptom reduction one of our programs, if someone engages in all of our therapeutic modalities is 14 to 17 days. So we very, very often see people who come in with a very high acuity. You know they're, they're knocking on the door, suicide. You know they're having post-concussive migraines, brain fog, uh, short-term memory loss issues, controlling mood, super severe and by the time we get to day 10, all of a sudden they're like whoa, hey, can I feel this way all the time?
Speaker 1:Wow, well, they don't even have. When they showed up, they didn't even think they could even feel. Halfway better again. So let's talk about your journey. Army EOD All right. Halfway better again. So let's talk about your journey. Nate Army EOD All right. So let's talk about your career a little bit and how you know what was your experience that drove you into this space.
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, the you know something that not a lot of people talk about was like when I got recruited into EOD. First of all, they didn't tell me how hard the school would be the hardest academic school in the Department of Defense and they also didn't tell me how high the suicide rate is. Army, or EOD as a whole, has one of the highest suicide rates of any job in the entire military, and it's because of our constant exposure to traumatic blast events. And it's just like an NFL player with CTE You're just getting that bam, bam bam.
Speaker 1:It's those little guys.
Speaker 2:It's not, it's not always the one that knocks you out, puts you on your ass. It's that constant wham, wham, wham. And then sometimes you get those bigger ones where you know, you know, like one of, uh, one of our, uh, our big shots, like we were dealing with a bunch of homemade explosives in Kandahar and I was probably like 55 meters away from about 300 pounds of explosives and it was just, it was either that or leave it there, and we had to get rid of it so that, uh, so that someone's uh up armored humvee didn't get blown into smithereens down the street.
Speaker 2:So I was like, all right, cool, lay down and back it up I'll tell you a quick story about when we were in Peru.
Speaker 1:Once you know, you never want to take stuff back from a mission, right?
Speaker 1:So this commander of this, concern he wanted this tree gone in the middle of his, his, his quartel. So our, our, our, our, charlie right, our, our explosion guy, he packed everything that we had. I need that, man, grenades, you know's all our c4, everything, man, it was under that tree, we dug, he had the soldiers dig, we got it there. Well, he never did any calculations and when he, when he launched that puppy, that stuff not only went up, he blew out every window in the military base. All of our eardrums were all like when shit was raining down for like minutes. Man, I mean he launched that puppy. But that's what I wanted to say.
Speaker 1:Like dude, we don't take nothing home and when we find stuff that can be used against us, it's his job as an EOD guy to take care of that, get rid of that ordinance. And they have absolutely one of the most dangerous jobs that we have in the military Cause. When they go up on a bomb they don't know what condition is in. If it's to go up, they can't tell you. You know, I mean, explain a little bit about you, know what you do as an eod tech man, because it's yes yeah, so sign up for this it's so much fun it's it's one of the best jobs it's one of the best jobs in the military.
Speaker 2:It really is and honestly, like counter id was so fun because it is.
Speaker 2:It is spy versus spy, it's you against the bomb maker and it is so cool to have someone who is just actively trying to kill you like and to roll up on a device to not only render it safe but then, after you take, you are. So our big thing is. It's not just about blowing shit up, which I do love, I do love it quite a bit. It does, uh, it is. It is about interdicting the, the train of the creation of an explosive device that's used to hurt our brothers and sisters, you know that are over there with us, and to take evidence, process that evidence, find out who the hell it is, and then go knock on that guy's door and, you know, give him the good news, and that process is is one of the most fun and rewarding things ever, because you're taking you, you are taking a very, very dangerous chess piece off the enemy's board and it is so much fun uh, you're, you know you just gotta get over the whole dying thing, you know yeah, we were in the intel side as a contractor.
Speaker 1:I actually put together the weapons intelligence teams and launched these two teams of spec ops guys and dogs and drones, but we were using Intel and our only focus, bro, was the bomb maker. You can't replace them. When those guys are gone, the network collapses because those are the smartest dudes and you guys are on the other side of that fight. So how many years you do EOD and what happened when you got back?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was in it for about six and a half years, was an EOD team leader, uh, deployed with conventional forces and special forces doing all kinds of different operations from you know doing um, doing uh interdiction operations on like the Taliban's uh infrastructure. So we, you know partner with the dea, go in and blow up heroin presses in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2:That was super fun uh but uh, you know, I got back and you know, and honestly, man, like, compared to some of the stuff that the other guys that were around me like I didn't nothing bad happened to me compared to what happened to them at all, but that like hyper vigilance, um, and then just that constant being on really took a toll. Uh, when I got back it developed a panic disorder, um, had some you know bad personal shit happen at the same time and it just it all added up and you know it got so bad that I was having a panic stack every day. Those suck dude, no dude, yeah I mean it's fun dude, two, three hours, literally.
Speaker 2:Like one time I was. I was walking through walmart in colorado springs and I just bought a tv because I built a house, so bought a tv for the new house, and this guy just like gave me the stink eye for some reason at Walmart and it like like grab my gun, boom, had to like rush, like rush home, close all the blinds and just sit in my dark bedroom for like three hours. And that went on and on and on and on, for you know, going on five, six months, I was finally like all right, like 45 is looking pretty tasty right now. I don't want to do this anymore. Um, and you know it was, it was literally my phone going off my pocket that kept me from offing myself. And you know it was one of my friends. He invited me over to, uh, to his place. Um, it was. It was.
Speaker 2:This was on Christmas Eve 2014. To his place this was on Christmas Eve 2014. Invites me over to his place. This was before I had ever partaken in any psychedelics or got into this at all. Really, I had ever stuck my toes in mental health at all. He goes hey, man, you're fucked up. And I can tell. Take what's on that counter and he takes out this little baggie and pour some pure MDMA on the counter. You know, I was like man, everybody who does drugs is putting holes in their brain. Well, I was like, well, I'm about to put a big hole in my brain anyway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so might as well Poor guy yeah, might as well.
Speaker 2:And so I did. I took it and it was the most transformative experience I've probably ever had Certainly, you know, the first of many. But it was like someone took my soul, just wrenched it out of my body, just washed that fucker in bleach and stuck it back in. I got to feel joy for one of the first times in my life, I realized, and it just shifted my perspective in such a radical way that I was like okay, all right, I want to live now. At least this feeling is possible. So I've been stuck in this deep dark hole. I can can see the light now and now I can start to walk towards it. Um, good for you and absolutely game-changing. I didn't really realize the impact that it had until about five months. Five months later, six months later, um, one of my mentors uh, I was in the motor pool with him, just smoking and joking, having a great time oh, so you're still in the army yeah, I was still in the army this time listen bruce.
Speaker 1:I like to take risks hey, you're talking to a guy that was part of the cocaine explosion in the 80s and seven special forces group. So yeah, I've been there.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh yeah I did a train up with a seventh group um I've got a I've got some, uh some some insights yeah, back in the 80s, before they invented the 10 panel drug test, yeah well, they wouldn't watch it, that's for sure. No, go ahead, yeah so um, so yeah, five, you know six months later I'm in.
Speaker 2:I'm in the motor pool talking to Neil having a good old time. We're about to go to the field and I said bye to him. On Friday, on Monday morning, memorial Day, we roll out to go do a field problem and we get a call. Neil had walked down to his backyard and blew his head off, with his three-year-old son in the house, and it just floored me. No, you would never know that he was suffering.
Speaker 2:You know we, we all know those guys we served with. You know the senior, those senior ncos who are like crusty but they're nice to everybody. It's like they're like the robin williams of the of the unit and and it was just like that, it was just like someone ripped my leg off, just the, the jerk of that. That event. It really floored me and it really made me just look at the whole system and go, you know what Fuck this? Like we can do better.
Speaker 2:Like the cause I had been through, you know, the army's, the army's mental system, and it was garbage. It was just medication, medication, medication, talk therapy, medication, medication. And I was like I really feel and I didn't know anything at the time, I had researched all this I really felt then like deep down, that if Neil had had the experience that I had had on Christmas Eve, he would still be alive. And it just became this driving force that, no matter what, I'm going to do this for other people, because we lose way too many amazing individuals to suicide and it is so, so preventable.
Speaker 1:It is and that's what I think what you're doing right now is absolutely, you know, key to this because you know, on the advocacy side, that's what our foundation does. We're like look, we can. This is the largest preventable cause of suicide in this country repetitive brain trauma, sports and military. And if we got to, we got to we have to fight wars, there's no doubt, and we can train better, better.
Speaker 1:save it all for game day, and game day Just let it happen. When we come back and we're harmed, we've got to get treatments that work and for you know, the reason our suicide rate hasn't moved and billions of dollars have been spent on this problem is because they will not get off the common approach, which is drugs, like you just said, drugs and goddang top therapy and I don't know where the chain that we're pushing hard for the change, but you're actually delivering it, man. So that is so what? So what got you from, you know, army guy, mda experience, now entrepreneur, you know, into the psychedelic field helping these veterans? How did you get there?
Speaker 2:that's a, that's an amazing transition dude, just read a lot of pub med. And as soon as I I started, dude, seriously, I was like you know what I was like man. At first I was like, okay, I'm going to go to medical school, like I'm going to become a doctor, and you know, do all this, I'm going to use the GI bill to pay for all this. And then I realized, you know, second, the knowledge that I need is not in the traditional establishment. The only way that these doctors even know about this stuff is literally by reading PubMed. I was like, cool, I can do that. And so I started the Invictus project, started this nonprofit to start paying for guys to get more effective treatments.
Speaker 2:So found out about ketamine. All right, cool, that's, that's great. But ketamine seems to have a pretty. You know, this is me thinking at the time.
Speaker 2:You know, ketamine, it's got some pretty transitory effects. Like after you know, eight to 10 weeks, people are starting to get symptoms come back. All right, that's cool. What's the next thing? Okay, hyperbaric oxygen therapy. All right, this has a lot of promise. But the more I read, the more we found, the more I found that there was again that transitory effect. After about six months you get like three steps forward and then, you know, one step back because of the that knock on inflammation in the brain. So you know, I met, I met a doctor in Aspen and started helping him develop an intranasal stem cell protocol and you know, that's something that we're still working on today but like we've used it on, I've used it, we used it on my dad and a bunch of other veterans and saw pretty amazing results. And then that's what led in to creating MindSpot, to create an outpatient psychiatry clinic where we can bring all these things in and create a protocol that can actually heal and rewire the brain in a pretty short period of time.
Speaker 1:So talk about this to our audience. We say heal and rewire. What specifically are you talking about? So I understand that you can do this. You can actually heal the brain, you and rewire what specifically you talking about. So you understand that you can do this. You can actually heal the brain, you can rewire absolutely, but it ain't with drugs and talk therapy.
Speaker 2:So yeah, talk, talk to our audience about it. Now the talk therapy is a component of this. So everything that we do in mental health, aside from trauma healing a traumatic brain injury like ptsd, depression, anxiety is rewiring the brain. Everybody just has different tools. I personally, I like to use power tools. Um, so let's just walk through like I'll walk through a little bit of our protocol, cause I'll kind of answer this question simultaneously.
Speaker 2:So one of the first things we do start with is ketamine infusion therapy. So one of the things that ketamine does is that it downregulates inflammation in the brain and it upregulates neuroplasticity. It upregulates brain-derived neurotrophic factors, a hormone that causes your brain cells to branch out and create new connections. Now why are those two things important? So there are two primary things that PTSD, depression, anxiety and traumatic brain injuries have in common. One, they affect neural connectivity, so they affect your brain's ability to talk to itself. And two, they cause a ton of inflammation in the brain, and that's one of the reasons that inflammation piece and that connectivity piece. Those are two of the primary reasons that people become treatment resistant. Because what we need to understand and this is really where I think that the mainstream has just completely missed the boat is that these things are highly inflammatory to the brain.
Speaker 2:What happens to your brain when it gets inflamed? It shunts off blood flow. So you know, the blood vessels in your brain are very, very small, like. They're so small that like a single red blood cell can pass through at a time, and it doesn't take a whole lot of inflammation before, all of a sudden, you're trying to suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Now, when you're sucking a golf ball through a garden hose and your cells can't get oxygen that's being carried by that red blood cell, they have to switch over from creating energy in a very energy efficient manner.
Speaker 2:It's called cellular respiration. They switch over from cellular respiration think like breathing to anaerobic glycolysis. This is how cancer cells make energy. It's a fermentation process that puts off a lot of waste that waste is. Then it creates a knock-on inflammatory effect. So you can see over time you know we're talking about people who are suffering from this for 10, 20 years Over time that inflammation builds up, shunts off blood flow and just creates this downward spiral. And we see that. We see the effects of that in our populations. So the entirety of the protocol, once we really like figured out the mechanism. The entirety of everything we do is centered around reducing inflammation and then upregulating the brain's ability to rewire itself and create new connections.
Speaker 1:That makes absolute sense because we know that. You know number one. You know, especially if you're dealing with men and women that are still in the job that neuroinflammation is going to continue because the brain is going to continue to get jolted, it's going to continue to get injured and it's going to release you know more of these. You know you got all kinds of you know neurotransmitters. You've got you know chemical cascades, you've got all these things that the brain releases to protect itself, that in turn, over time, start to become toxic to the brain in addition to what you just explained, and start degrading the actual brain structures demyelination, dysmyelination, synaptic death. You know and this damage is and I want to you know, talk about this a little bit too is that neuroinflammation creates damage and that damage is absolutely known through research and science to be associated with mental illness. Yet nobody in this country is being trained from a psychiatric or medical perspective to associate or diagnose mental illness in association with RBE or TBI or RHI. And that is the disconnect that we're trying to fix here is to take the knowledge that you just explained and start giving this out to the professional medical community when you see a mental illness, if you don't assess for TBI, rha or RBE, then you're just doing nothing for that kid's brain or that adult's brain because you're just giving them medicine, you're giving them drugs and it's not helping them at all. So that's, that's, uh. And so you, you, you figured all this out.
Speaker 1:You got the, so you have ketamine. What's your protocol?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, so sorry, I went on a little diatribe there about neuroinflammation.
Speaker 1:I love those rabbit holes, bro man, it's all good.
Speaker 2:It's an important rabbit hole. So yeah, just you know. Quick synopsis Neuroinflammation is a huge problem. You just touched on microglial priming that's something I talk to Dr Mark Gordon a lot about and just these knock-on issues that are really it's a problem with energy creation. So how we combat that? So we start with this ketamine infusion therapy that down-regulates inflammation, up-regulates brain-derived neurotropic factors, so it allows us to rewire the brain more effectively. Then, coming into hyperbaric oxygen therapy, so putting someone down at about 1.5 atmospheres absolute for 40 to 60 treatments. That again it forces inflammation down in the brain. It increases your cells ability to create energy because you're providing more oxygen. The the last piece in cellular respiration, the last ingredient, is oxygen. Without it, again we have to switch over to that anaerobic glycolysis to make energy. Also, healing like actual cellular healing is an incredibly energy intensive process and that's why the hBOT is so important. But the HBOT alone won't do it. We have to add in these other things to help supercharge this process.
Speaker 2:The other piece transcranial magnetic stimulation. For anybody not familiar with TMS, tms is an MRI coil that's placed on the head. We can place it in a number of different positions but for like the treatment of depression. It's placed over the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. That magnetic, that MRI coil creates a magnetic field under the surface of the scalp and that magnetic field basically tricks your neurons into wiring more cohesively in a network where we are treating. So why is that important?
Speaker 2:If we were to look at the brain of, let's say, someone who's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, what you would see if you could do a cross-section just look at how it's firing you would see an underactive prefrontal cortex, so an underactive executive functioning center, and an overactive amygdala, so that amygdala is hijacking your lived experience all the time, causing all of the effects that we see from PTSD.
Speaker 2:So with that coil we're treating these areas and upregulating the density of neurons in an area. Imagine your prefrontal cortex and your amygdala are at a concert. They're like at Coachella and they've got different. They're at different stages. If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, the stage of your prefrontal cortex is just sitting there with a little megaphone while the amygdala gets a whole sound system. So what we're doing is reinforcing the megaphone and turning it into like a full stage setup in the prefrontal cortex so it can shout down the amygdala and tell it to shut the hell up, cause that's what our executive functioning centers do in the brain. Among other things, they tell the rest of our brain to shut the hell up.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that makes sense, because we do know that, again, mental illness is heavily associated with a damaged prefrontal cortex and along with psychological, behavioral and cognitive disorders, which should be used in terms of diagnosing people to get them to you so they can get fixed. So I mean yeah, and then all right. So, and now I noticed on your website you have what's called deep transcranial magnetic simulation. Let me ask you a quick question before you go there. Tms has been available in almost every doctor shop in Europe for like the last, I don't know, 20 years. You can just get it everywhere here in America. Every time somebody comes up with a cool TMS thing, some rich group of investors from somewhere comes down and buys these puppies and puts them out of business, right? So like TMS, even though it's like so widely accepted in Europe, it's hardly available here, and I think it's because it treats.
Speaker 2:That's not true, bruce. That's not true Bruce.
Speaker 1:I'm not finding it out. I'm not finding it in too many centers here in America.
Speaker 2:It is in every single major city. It is FDA approved for the treatment of depression. So you can. And that's, I think, where there's a little bit of confusion. Like you, you do have to kind of play the game with TMS, uh, cause it's approved for major depressive disorder, but the insurance companies want you to fail between two to three antidepressant meds before you can access TMS. Now there's a bunch of protocols that TMS is getting studied, so they just they just increased the, the age. The age gaps are now like kids down to 15 years old can get TMS. There are ongoing studies with PTSD. There's ongoing studies with regional pain syndrome.
Speaker 2:Like this technology is insane, uh, what we can do with it. It's just taking some time to catch up. And there are also, you know, newer technologies like embp or mert uh, that are eeg guided tms. So instead of like repetitive tms hitting someone with like 10 hertz repetitively for depression, uh, we're able to take an EEG of the brain and create a personalized pulse protocol for each individual's brain. So that's what's coming down the pipe, it, it? It may seem like it's a little bit out of reach, but as far as like accessibility, I guarantee if I put in your zip code, I could find at least two psychiatric offices that uh uh provide tms within 10 miles.
Speaker 1:That's my point, the only where, the only place you find tms right now we're in my experience I've been doing this a little while it's in like brain health centers like yours. I mean it's available, don't worry, but you got to go look for it. We're in europe. It's like in every doctor's office like you can. Okay, it's like it's. It's like you could go in any doctor's office Like you can. It's like it's. It's like you can go in any doctor's office or a medical building and there's TMS.
Speaker 1:And and and my point is giving the efficacy and the known value of the protocol, it should be more widely available and, to your point, more widely covered by insurance, because TMS you still, you still got to play the game where it's not accepted and that's. You know that's creating a lot of pain for our veterans that are, you know, paying out of pocket and doing all that kind of crazy stuff. But you know to hear your passion about that protocol, I mean, obviously, I mean it's been effective. But what's the difference between TMS and deep TMS? Is it a different machine?
Speaker 2:or something like that. Yeah, so it's a different coil. There's only one company that does deep TMS, that's Brainsway. They have an H coil. Basically, the coil is designed instead of in a figure of eight, which has a limited amount of depth that it can create the depth of that magnetic field. The H coil is overlappedpped, so it creates a deeper, uh, a deeper coil like basically in layman's terms uh, you get more cubic, uh, cubic millimeters of stimulation, so you get more neurons that are in the stimulation box. We, we stimulate a broader area and that allows for um faster results.
Speaker 1:Okay. So let's talk about longevity of treatment. Okay, now we know, if you go to the VA, you know they just like you said right, you're done. Rest of your life. Here's a bag of drugs here, go talk to this person and that's your life. That's it, you're done right? So with patients that have come to you right, suicidal drug, addicted, whatever what kind of success rates are you having? Or is there a certain number of treatments or sessions, months, where you think they're not healed but they're able to go on with their life much better than they were before?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, the best data we have is out of our Patriot Power Up program, which is a part of VA Community Care, by the way. So we're the only program that is within the VA Community Care network that provides TMS, ketamine and hyperbaric and is fully covered. Okay, so let's go back to that. So that's fully covered.
Speaker 1:It's ketamine and hyperbaric and is fully covered. Okay, so let's go back to that. So that's fully covered.
Speaker 2:It's fully covered. It's a part of the VA Community Care Network. It's an inpatient program up in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
Speaker 1:Okay, so is there any chance that that can be expanded, or is there any studies going on to expand that provision, because I mean that should be in all 50 states.
Speaker 2:Oh dude, it should be in all 50 states. I mean I'm looking to get some meetings with Doug Collins. As soon as that confirmation comes through, I will help you all.
Speaker 1:I can, man. I mean that is amazing that you've got some VA coverage going on, because that's precedence, bro, and that's what we need for the rest of the community. But keep going, man. My back Sorry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, no, you're good. But what we're seeing as far as longevity goes is, if you combine these treatments and combine them with, you know, proper nutrition, getting someone you know back in the gym, making sure that they're, they are instantiating healthy habits. You put that in with culturally competent talk therapy, that really provides the roadmap for all this. And we're seeing, a year out, none of these guys are qualifying for the diagnosis anymore. They go from acute boom down to damn near zero and they stay that way. And that's that just speaks to one, the power of using these treatments in conjunction with one another, but also to the fact that in the program, like, we're teaching these guys healthy habits, and that's really really important for everyone to understand. You know, these treatments are awesome, they are super effective, especially when used in conjunction, but if you don't create healthy life habits, you are going to end up in the same hole that you started in.
Speaker 1:Integration. Yep, that's a great point. What about now? You mentioned Mark Gordon's name, right? I just got off the phone with him about an hour ago, Hello.
Speaker 2:Mark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mark's got. You know his supplementation program is absolutely stellar and we do believe that I mean he should be actually the first step before we start. You know, balance that brain first, so these modalities would be more efficient, you know, and nodding your head, so you know well how do you interact with other, not only like programs, mark Gordon. But what about what's your feeling on other psychedelic programs? You know ayahuasca, ibogaine, psychedelics. You know you're obviously already doing ketamine, which is really it's more of a chemical, but you're obviously in the psychedelic class it's experience.
Speaker 2:Ketamine is actually naturally occurring. They just found a bacterium that makes it.
Speaker 1:So ah, really.
Speaker 2:Just check it out. I'm all about that.
Speaker 1:I mean that puts it right in the psychedelic camp. When I talk to it, does it does?
Speaker 2:I'm going to start with Mark's protocol. Like, first, I love Mark. He's one of the one of the people in the world that just makes me feel like I'm an idiot whenever I talk to him, because he's so damn smart. He is super smart. Yeah, his protocol is awesome and is a great way to rebalance the brain and downregulate inflammation. I would love to put it at the front end of our protocol because I do agree, rebalancing the brain's hormone production is the first step in healing and that's a huge, a huge deal. Um. So, love Mark, love what he does. I'm always looking to integrate, um his best practices in with what we do as well. Uh, they, they are like this you know, there's there's no reason in my mind to to separate the two. They need to be brought closer together as part of it, an overarching protocol. Because, uh, last time I talked to him, uh, he was talking about about 77 percent um 77 success rate and I was like, cool, where's that last 33?
Speaker 1:let's go right even at 77, man, that's a lot better than what we're seeing from most anything else. Yeah, that the VA will prescribe.
Speaker 2:Sorry, oh yeah. I mean just the efficacy of SSRIs on their very, very best day. For your first SSRI is 33%. As soon as you knock down to the second SSRI, that, uh, that number goes down to about 25%. By the time you get to four or three, 16,. By the time you're at your fourth antidepressant it's about 6% chance of having any clinical effect. That was the star D study, largest study on antidepressants ever done, and it turns out now that they've looked back at it they padded those numbers, so they're lower than that, um, lower than that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's the. That's the recommended approach by rba, so that's that's. Yeah, right there that's gonna change.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's so. So does like just take those clinical practice the va clinical practice guidelines for the treatment of depression, anxiety and ptsd, and we just burn those they're. They're not worth the paper they're written on they all.
Speaker 1:Given our suicide rate, it's not. Now for your program what kind of success rate do you have? And just from a positive experience perspective, like you know who's coming out what are you seeing with the veterans and the other patients that you're seeing in your spa right now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean we're seeing upwards of 90% success. You know it's hard to it's hard to quantify super well, we're not you know we're, we're in the, in the business of providing this care.
Speaker 2:We're not doing the level, the level of rigor of clinical research. Um, that you would see, uh, you know, in like a double blind, placebo, controlled study, and I do need to say that out front because there there is a lot of variance. People do have to engage with the process. The more you engage with the process, you engage with more of the treatment protocol, the results are better.
Speaker 1:Well, that's my point is that, even though there's no double-blind studies on this stuff, there's two issues here. Number one we're losing 22 veterans a day to suicide Probably more when you look at other reasons to die alcoholism, whatever, right. Number two you know you don't need double blind studies here because these things aren't going to kill you. All right Now. It's not like you built. You built a new chemotherapy medicine or a new drug or whatever that needs to be studied for its impact on the body. You're not going to die from ketamine. You take too much or you just go to sleep. It's an anesthesia, right, you're not going to. You can't overdose on tms in a medical clinic. I mean, you can probably wear the hat for 24 days and and probably hurt yourself and you're not going to die from talk therapy. You're going to get bored, all right. So you're talking about three modalities that you're not going to talk about, with a 90 at least rate of positive improvement for veterans life who are dying at 22 a day. I don't give a shit about no blind stuff. Okay, I'm saying that what you're doing right now is helping veterans. That's evidence. If you take those 90 out of a hundred guys they say, hey, this should help me and everything I got from the VA or Tricare didn't. Okay, and I am a better person, I am off drugs and my, my wife, loves me and I'm talking to my kids. That's evidence, okay.
Speaker 1:And we are at a point right now where we have to say enough on veterans' mental illness, whether it's caused by RBE or the psychological trauma of war. We're done. We're done. And these are just roadblocks for and you can go down your conspiracy rat hole about, well, big Pharma doesn't want this and the FDA is part of Big Pharma. And you can go down your conspiracy rat hole about, well, big farmer doesn't want this and the FDA is part of big farmer and the VA's sold the big farmer.
Speaker 1:I mean, all I know is my kid calls me up from Fort Bragg and they're giving out benzos and sleeping aids to kids, and there's only two things that you can die from when you withdraw alcohol and benzo. Why the hell are we giving benzos out at? You know, at Fort Bragg? And he's just heard it from his guys and it's like this is absolutely insane. And so I'm talking to a young man who's been through hell, turned his life around, is giving back to others and yet the protocols that not only that helped him, but it's helping others can't get, we can't get this level of coverage that it should happen. So where are you at right now? Are you? Have you approached the va? Do you super bill, do you? Uh, what are you doing, um? Or veterans, just coming to your amazing foundation to get coverage for the cost?
Speaker 2:so actually like it, it's been much less the foundation and much more um. Just, we've created some access points, um, so we have a tricare program. Um, I am still waiting to see, because tricare switched over um from health net to tri west. Oh yeah, so they, their reimbursement for tms is very high, uh, and it's, it's high enough and they will approve enough sessions that I can afford to give the other stuff away for free. So nice, um, yeah, as long as the reimbursement rates stay the same, and we should find out that in the next couple of weeks. So we our program, you know, last year was super successful. Anybody who gets approved for transcranial magnetic stimulation through TRICARE, we'll give them the HBOT and the ketamine for free, because we're making enough to cover it. I, I care about results, um, you know, as long as we're keeping the lights on uh and and making enough to be sustainable.
Speaker 1:That's, that's what matters to me do you have a hard or soft show? Hbot? Sorry to interrupt uh, right.
Speaker 2:So right now we got a couple of of soft ones, but I'm in the process of getting a hard chamber that goes up to 2.0.
Speaker 1:I've got a friend to talk to. He can probably get you a discount. He's in the advocacy space. I'll put you in touch, oh yeah, please do you know.
Speaker 2:Hey, I love it. Hey, I'm an entrepreneur, I love a good discount. No dude, bootstrapping's tough man an entrepreneur, I love a good discount. Oh, dude, bootstrapping stuff man, I've done it.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what, bruce, I'll never do it again. No, it's. It's hard, man, when you give so much to help others. Um well, okay, so tms, you get coverage on. That's great yeah, tms.
Speaker 2:And then, yeah, we, like I said, we give the other stuff away. Um, you know it's we're we're working on a way to bill insurance for ketamine. Um, I've got that. That conversation is happening tomorrow, so yeah, yeah. It's. We'll talk about that offline, but yeah, man, it's really just my whole focus in this space is access to care, access to more effective care. I should say like because we do have the solutions for this stuff. This is like it's not that hard Like. This is cellular biology, it's not rocket science, If you treat the underlying cause of these injuries.
Speaker 2:People get better, and they get better really, really fast and they stay better.
Speaker 1:I mean that should be the end of the show, right there, right, I mean, because that is the truth and we keep dealing with this. We talk to people like yourself all the time that are producing these modalities that are getting these veterans back, and we have, you know, so many of them are just stuck and they're spiraling because they don't know, they have no hope. They're either told hey, you, you're just gonna die with this. Nfl players same boat, right. So nfl players do not want to talk about this, they just think they're gonna die. They don't know you can be healed, you can be improved and you can get back. And, and it's an amazing service that you're doing, sam I, I can't thank you enough, man. I mean, oh thanks, bruce, this is awesome. And my daughter lives in denver, so I got another one in colorado springs. I retired on 10th there.
Speaker 2:So I will definitely. I supported 10th group. I supported 10th group, you know, out of Fort Carson. So I was at 71st, like right behind you guys.
Speaker 1:Okay yeah, I was the B210 Sergeant Major back in like 99 to 2000. Way, way back before you were born.
Speaker 2:Yeah, back before my time.
Speaker 1:No doubt, dude, but no man, I cannot thank you for what you're doing, man. So tell us how people find you. How do they find Sam Invictus MedSpa? I mean, how do they get a hold of you and then find the resources they need to educate themselves and come see you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, honestly, linkedin is the best place to find me. Sam j peterson um, it's sam j peterson mba. On linkedin, um, and then mindspot denvercom um, that's, that's my clinic here in denver. Uh, if you're interested in the patriot power up program, wwwpatriotpowerupcom and all these websites have have contact forms, uh, that go to either myself or one of our teammates.
Speaker 1:So if you reach out, we'll take care of you At least point you in the right direction and personally, if it wasn't for Ketamine, I don't think I could have found my way back, because that and still ate ganglion blocks are my first things. I tried trying to get out of my hole back in the day. So you're definitely on to something, sam and um. I definitely. We definitely want to do everything we can to support um and so definitely we're in touch. Now you know we've got a conference uh on on repetitive brain trauma coming up in September. Feel free to ask if you want to present. I'm doing a town hall for veterans, that we're doing monthly town halls on veterans for doing two things educate them on rbe and then educate them how to deal with da and get the coverage uh and disability that they deserve. Uh. One quick question on billing codes um for tms, are you what? What billing codes? Are you going under the tbi billing codes, the rb, the new rbe billing codes or uh, what uh for diagnosis?
Speaker 2:uh, so for for tms, like we use, we use the cpt codes for major depressive disorder to bill. Okay, um, that's that's kind of our gateway into into treating uh the nice thing I mean not the nice thing, but uh, the fortunate thing is that with traumatic brain injuries, uh, the most common comorbidity is depression. So that's that's our primary, our primary way into the system. Good for you.
Speaker 1:All right, and just so you know, I'm sure you notice that I think it was the CDC just labeled TBIs as a chronic ailment, so that should help us as well. That just came out here recently. So you know, but, man, my hat's off to you for fighting this space, bro. I mean we need so many more Sam Petersons out there. A remarkable journey. I mean just listening to you talk about brain health. I mean you've educated yourself. I mean to the point where it's amazing. It's amazing to hear you talk, and I just love seeing veterans not only succeed but give back. And you're doing both, man. So my hat's off to you. We're going to have you back on the show. When I'm in Denver, I'm definitely calling you up for a craft beer or something. Man, I'll find you.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, man. Come by the clinic we're down in the Denver Tech Center. I always do.
Speaker 1:I'm always ready for another ketamine treatment. Man.
Speaker 2:I'll come in with my checkbook, we'll take care of it and I'll look forward to raising money for you too. Absolutely, man, well, we'll, uh, we're. We are rolling out and this is the first time we're talking about this publicly um, we are rolling out a new experiential uh ketamine service. So we're going to be using uh vibroacoustics in conjunction with ketamine so we have a sound table, uh, where we can curate the ketamine experience and help you get farther with it and create that really, really meaningful experience. Another thing that we do with our ketamine experience is that nobody else does. I haven't seen anybody do this yet. So when someone comes out of that disassociative state, we capture kind of what that experience was like just from their words, capture kind of what that experience was like just from their words, and then we put that into an AI art generator and then create customized AI art to commemorate that experience, that experience for them. We print it out and give it to them so they have something.
Speaker 1:That is crazy man. Again, you know, leading from the front man you're doing, you're doing a great job, sam.
Speaker 2:Can't thank you enough.
Speaker 1:God bless you and your journey and thank you so much for what you're doing for our veterans. I really can't thank you enough. This has been an amazing show. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, bruce, appreciate you man.
Speaker 1:All right, and for everybody out there man, again, another amazing show. Stay tuned, don't forget, we have the HeadSmart app on Google and Apple to help you understand the issue of subcussive trauma, for you parents that don't know what it is, and to better monitor your kid when you think they have a concussion, because you actually know and they don't. Or the book that we have for free Youth Contact Spokes and Broken Brains. Go to our website, download it. We'll be having a town hall for veterans and we'll be announcing our dates this week for the second annual conference, international conference on repetitive brain trauma. These things have never happened in the world. We had the last one last year. We're going to really pump it up in Tampa. Thank you so much for listening. We're looking forward to seeing you again on another episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mac Parkman Foundation. Really appreciate you. God bless you all. Thank you you.