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
Rewiring the Brain: Dr. Joe Dituri on Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy & Veteran TBI Recovery
What if healing from traumatic brain injury (TBI) didn’t rely solely on medication?
In this eye-opening episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, Bruce sits down with Dr. Joe Dituri—retired U.S. Navy officer, renowned researcher, and leader in the field of hyperbaric medicine—to explore the groundbreaking science behind Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy (HBOT) and its potential to revolutionize TBI treatment, especially for veterans and athletes.
Dr. Dituri shares his personal journey of surviving and recovering from a brain injury, and how HBOT helped him find hope and healing where traditional medicine fell short. Together, they unpack the largest HBOT study ever conducted, revealing promising results that challenge the status quo of pharmaceutical-based approaches. From the role of neuroplasticity to the economic impact of untreated TBIs, this conversation is a powerful call to action for better treatment access, increased research funding, and legislative advocacy.
🎧 Whether you're a veteran, caregiver, policymaker, or mental health advocate, this episode is packed with life-changing insights that can help shift how we view brain trauma—and how we treat it.
👉 Don’t forget to follow, share, like, and subscribe on your favorite platform to help more people discover the truth about brain injuries and recovery.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
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Chapters
00:00 Introduction to Repetitive Brain Trauma
02:57 Dr. Joe Dituri's Journey and Expertise
05:48 Healing Through Hyperbaric Medicine
09:00 Challenges in Mental Health Treatment for Veterans
11:58 The Need for Research and Funding
14:46 The Economics of Treatment Options
17:56 The Future of Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy
20:52 Understanding the Mechanisms of Healing
24:06 The Role of Pharmaceuticals in Treatment
27:12 Conclusion and Call to Action
28:16 The Largest HBOT Study: Goals and Methodology
30:21 Funding and Support for HBOT Research
32:13 Defining Success in TBI Treatment
34:40 Challenges in Scaling HBOT Treatment
37:00 The Need for Alternative Therapies
39:21 Addressing Mental Health and Trauma
41:11 The Impact of TBI on Incarceration Rates
43:43 Future of HBOT and Legislative Support
45:13 Connecting with Dr. Dituri and Resources
https://www.mpfact.com/headsmart-app/
Follow Dr. Dituri on LinkedIn and on social media today!
LinkedIn: Joseph (DrDeepsea) Dituri, Ph.D.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-dituri-ph-d-5099789/
Instagram: drdeepsea
https://www.instagram.com/drdeepsea/?hl=en
X: @drdeepsea
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 to another episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation. Our podcast is focused on the issue of repetitive brain trauma in the forms of repetitive blast exposure and repetitive head impacts, and what these impacts are doing to our population of athletes and children and our veterans and warriors. And we go out there and we find the leading experts and people that have dealt with these challenges and researchers, doctors and authors and bring them on the podcast so that you can be informed. Why doctors and authors? And bring them on the podcast so that you can be informed. Why? Because this is the largest preventable cause of mental illness in our warrior and child populations and this is not taught in medical institutions and you have to be empowered with the knowledge to take care of yourself and your children or, as a veteran, to go seek treatment.
Speaker 1:Today we've got an amazing guest man. We love this guy. We've been so fortunate to work with him before Dr Joe Dettori doing so much for our veterans. Actually, commander Joe Dettori excuse me is a retired US Navy officer, deep-sea diver and biomedical engineer. He has 20 years of active service where he specializes in hyperbaric system saturation diving and submarine rescue, which makes him borderline psychotic if you live in a can for all that time Serving in roles from Special Operations Officer to Chief Engineer for Undersea Systems.
Speaker 1:After his military career, he earned a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, focusing on life support systems and hyperbaric medicine. Dr Dottori is a professor at the University of South Florida, a very big partner with the Mack Parkman Foundation, a published author and a consultant on undersea medicine, and I do believe he holds a Guinness World Record. Let's talk about that. Passionate about exploration, he continues to push the boundaries of human endurance and has a lifelong dreaming of becoming a civilian astronaut. You're in the fine state of Florida over here, so hopefully we'll get you in front of Elon to make that happen to you 1,000%.
Speaker 2:If you've got an insight to Elon please let me know.
Speaker 1:Oh God, After I get talked about kids and veterans, you're going to be number two. I've got to get this guy to make a great astronaut. Boss man, Get over there, man, Joe. Welcome to the show man. How you been, buddy, Thank you, I am well, we are so good, it's criminal.
Speaker 2:I can't even complain, you know. So I'm doing great thanks, how are you guys?
Speaker 1:Ah, dude, we got it rocking. So we're going to have the second conference this September. So that's going to. We got the town hall. In a couple weeks you're going to be on the panel there looking forward to that. That's going to be great. We're going to be running seminars. So, nah, we're jamming, just got back. We'll talk a little bit about Congress. We now have legislation covering hyperbaric oxygen in front of Congress right now and here in the state. So we're doing everything we can as a small foundation, you know, punching above our weight and, just, you know, like that little chihuahua right, don't stop tearing them big talks up, you know, all weekend. So I mean a lot of folks, you know, tell us how you got into hyperbaric, because I really want to dive into this study that you're doing right now. And why do you feel like you talk about the cutting edge and exploration of treatments? Why do you feel, and why is hyperbaric oxygen, or any modality that's not conventional, so critical to our veteran population, so critical to our veteran population?
Speaker 2:So the interesting part is I retired from the Navy and I'm sitting at Admiral McRaven's house drinking a beer and we're just he's like, what are you going to be when you grow up, aquanaut? And I'm like I don't know. He's like, hey, do me a favor, would you mind sitting on the preservation of the Forsen family? So I said, yeah, I'd do that for you as a favor. I got a favor from Guido.
Speaker 1:Balducci Sure.
Speaker 2:I'll do that. So I go in, I do this, I sit on that thing for like six, seven months and I go back to him and I says hey boss, this is they're not doing it right, all they're doing is talking. We got to move the needle. And he goes, he looks me dead in the eye and goes permission, granted, aquanaut, fix it. And I went shoot, now I have to go do it. So I went back, I got a phd in biomedical engineering and I started fixing brains with the only thing that I knew that increased cerebral blood flow, which was hyperbaric medicine.
Speaker 2:I'm like I've seen it work. It works for other thing. It works for problem wounds. This is a problem wound that's not healing in the head. It's an open wound, a closed wound, it's a different wound, whatever. So I'm thinking maybe this is going to work. So I'm running down the road with scissors, right, and the good Lord says look, you got to make a right, you got to do it differently. And I says no, no, no, I got it. And he says I said make a right, I got it. So he throws a 6,000 pound SUV at my 47 Chevy, t-bones me.
Speaker 2:I get a, you know, a eight millimeter hemorrhagic stroke in the prefrontal cortex on the left side. Now I have a really bad traumatic brain injury and I'm in the hospital for a week two days in the ICU, five days in the regular hospital. They finally discharged me and I'm like I know how to fix brains. I'm going to go in the hyperbaric chamber, and it just wasn't enough. That alone wasn't enough. So I had to figure out a way to heal myself, so that I could get these studies, these things, these scientific reach in, find the science behind it and then combine it with other stuff and get people healed. I think the good Lord just wanted me to do that. So I said yes, sir, I'm on board.
Speaker 1:Man, I'll tell you, when you don't listen to the Lord, he's going to make you listen. I've got so many stories of, and it's just like you, arrogant, mortal. How do you dare you? I said turn right. I said turn right, and guess what? You're turning right, not right now, but you will turn right, right. Ah, dude man. Yeah and so and so you know how did your healing go? I mean, you went, obviously. You're now, you're in the self-medicating, you know mode it went absolutely horribly.
Speaker 2:For the first month I fell into a very deep depression and then, when I got despondent, when I got to the point of suicide, when I got to the point when I was going to take my own life, I said, okay, I got about a month and a half before I'm going to take my own life, but I'm Catholic, so I have to do everything. Because when I'm standing at the pearly gates, I got to get there and tell them look, I tried everything. So I did everything at once. You know, red light therapy, beamer mat therapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, structural energetic therapy, physical therapy, neurofeedback therapy, ice baths, saunas and all of a sudden, man, I came back. And when I say back, my traumatic brain injury was the best thing that ever happened to me, because I can heal. I healed myself and I have been healing others.
Speaker 2:I took a professional football player. I put him side by side in the same exact therapy I had with a green beret who lost his entire platoon in Afghanistan and freaking. These two guys after one month got dramatically better, so much so that their wives came to me and says I, first of all, I want to marry you. Second of all, what did you do with my husband and I'm like, well, he's fixed. And they're like I can't believe you cured him. He was, he was done, he was gone. So we're trying, we're doing everything, so, but the lesson is what do you do? We have a closed head injury. You can't pop the top open and look. If you're not going to pop the top open and look, the imaging sucks like the Knicks. So we got to do something different. We got to do everything Red light, beaver mat, everything same time.
Speaker 1:So when you did all that, did you do any psychedelics at all? Did you run down that road with the NFL players or yourself?
Speaker 2:No, I did not do that with any of the NFL players. On a personal level I have worked with organizations that have legally done psychedelics with me and we legally administered them in a proper setting and I believe that to be transformative if it is done in the proper setting Right. I do not condone people going out and doing it without medical supervision and just going on a trip in the woods and a walk alone. It's just not the way to do it. But if done in a proper medical setting I have seen great, great effect of it.
Speaker 1:That's awesome and because you know, the reason I asked that is, I won't get into a little bit is that you know, when you have a closed wound, right, you talk, you can't pop the top right. And with you know, one of the issues that we're struggling with right now in our veteran population is mental illness. Well, when it comes down to repetitive blast exposure, repetitive brain trauma or a massive car crash, right there you have brain damage and then, obviously, like you struggled with depression, suicidal ideation, right, you know, you go to a psychologist. What are they going to do? Right, they're going to fill you up a bag full of medications, they're going to give you therapy, and none of that's going to help you with your problem, which is a damaged brain. So, all these modalities that you're talking about biofeed, you know, photobiomodulation, vagus, nerve simulation, hot clod plug therapy, you know, stellate ganglion blocks, everything, including psychedel, psychedelics none of them are covered by insurance plans tricare, va and and that's part of the challenge but the, you know, the issue is we're, we're, how.
Speaker 1:You know, the, the effectiveness, um, how come we're still not? You know, we're still not when it comes to hbot or any of these things. How, how come, how come, you know, everybody's like, oh, it's still not properly researched, you're still not there. Yet when I compare men and women soldiers that have been to a psychologist and my daughter's a nurse practitioner, she has a 25% chance of any drug you know taking effect and those drugs are going to kill them. Yet people leave your program, people leave these psychedelic programs, people leave all these other programs. We have an 80 to 90 percent, you know, population survey saying this has improved me. This has helped me more than anything. Why is this not available? Or where does HBOT research have to go for it to become accepted now, so that these veterans can get coverage?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's a great question and what I'm going to do is I'm going to answer your question with a question who does drug company trials? Drug companies, right, drug companies? What is the drug company for hyperbaric medicine? Oh, there is not Right. So nobody can afford to pay for the trials.
Speaker 2:A drug company can go here's a red pill, here's a blue pill, you take this, one's a placebo, one's the real pill, and they can do it to thousands of people and get these up checks in the way that they do research and be like, yeah, we got a positive. Whatever, we do not have a large enough N. Every hyperbaric study that's ever been done was in the. You know, a hundred was a crazy high number. Most are in the twenties and thirties, which is not stand, not passing the professional test of the drug company model of research, right.
Speaker 2:But what we have to do is step back and go. What do these people really need? We need to get them off the drug company model and get them thinking about treating themselves differently. Look, you don't every time your physical shoulder that you hurt in that same traumatic brain injury, car accident, it goes, oh. Through the vagus nerve, it goes, oh, reminder, you have a traumatic brain injury. Oh yeah, you have it. So if you don't heal it, you're going to keep reminding yourself of it. At the same time, you got to do all these things and hopefully you can get them to be better and pass and, you know, get somebody better. But remember, your TBI is not my TBI, is not his TBI. It's like everyone's different Right.
Speaker 1:And that's why you got to throw the kitchen sink at it. But my point the kitchen sink and my point, joe is that, look you know, when we still have not impacted the suicide rate in veterans, right, when we still got hundreds of thousands of Americans struggling with metal illness that have not ever been accessed for contact sports exposure or they left the military and they've been exposed to TBI, mtbi, and all that in yards, why do we have to wait on all these stupid trials? Wait on all these stupid trials. And we have all these studies and every one of them that I've read has indicated a you know that that they have provided a positive impact on the brains of veterans. Right, we've got to get out.
Speaker 1:What we're pushing for in our legislation right now is, like you said it before, we've got to move the needle. All this talk about biomarkers and and and crap we have studied, you know, concussions and TBIs to death all right, we know they're a problem, all right. So when are we going to do something about it? Because right now we're not, and it's people like you that are fighting the system to get the funds necessary to conduct these studies that could change the paradigm that nobody's focused on for all these, because everybody was doing this. I am so sick of researchers asking for money to restudy stuff that's been studied over and, over and over again, because nobody shares their data. Everybody's fighting for research dollars. They all drive big cars, right? I'm just done with that.
Speaker 2:Think about it. Think about it. I have no incentive because I'm not getting paid for capitalizing on other research. Incentive because I'm not getting paid for capitalizing on other research. All I got to do is say that your research wasn't good enough because you had one person in your study paid for it. So that throws the whole study out. Or your statistical significance was this close, but not that close. It's just like my job is the capital one. No guy Now listen.
Speaker 2:Science wins over bullshit. Every time right, and that's what we need. We need a hard science approach. That's why, at the University of South Florida, we are doing that study with 420 veterans 420 veterans. That's because it's funded by the state of Florida. The Florida legislature came up the dollars and said University of South Florida, go fix this problem, tell me whether or not it works. And that's what we intend to do at the University of South Florida. So we are working it. It's just a matter of time. Like we got three and a half more years left on this study, so we're not going to get the results out today. They won't be out tomorrow, but we have to wait, right? So, but the science wins over.
Speaker 2:Bs is the thing that we're working with that's and, by the way, your health insurance covering it. Health insurance has absolutely nothing to do with your health. I'm sorry, I know I'm shocking you, but health insurance doesn't care. They are a for-profit company. They have a board of directors. They will not lose money. So, in the end, if hyperbarics cost $1 billion across the spectrum of their cupboard and broken arms cost $1 billion, one of a couple of things is going to happen Either we're going to start treating hyperbarics and stop treating broken arms, or we're going to start treating hyperbarics and everybody's policy is going to go up by $1 billion, maybe $1 billion and $1, so they actually make money on the deal. They make money. It's a for-profit corporation with a zero-sum game. They don't care about your health.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that's. And you, you, yeah, it's, you're right. You're right to the point, as always. I mean there's, there's just, no, no, it's, it's good. I mean, people need to hear this man and they already know it. They deal with it.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to and that's the other thing is if, if we could take a TBI person right and say, anybody right. You look at when we talk about repetitive brain trauma on this show, but but the gaps in repetitive brain trauma from education and awareness to diagnosis, treatments, insurance coverage, bailing codes are the same for most TBI patients. When it comes to this, if you're a TBI patient, you've got a physical injury and you're being fed a bunch of drugs, you're being sent to therapy for the rest of your life, yet your injury keeps sitting around and getting worse. Yet you know all these things that could help you not only are not available, but what would be the cost of, say, 40 HBOT treatments that can get you to a whole nother level of compassion and together versus the lifetime of drugs that these pharmaceutical companies want you on?
Speaker 2:Yeah, even even at the highest point of hyperbaric treatment, the biggest dollar value that I've seen in a little while, it'd be $10,000 to do that treatment. $10,000. But nothing. It's pale in comparison, it's a drop in the bucket, because I have veterans that come to me hooked on 11 medications. Oh, you didn't sleep well last night, let me give you a little pep me out, yes, sir. Oh, you got a little pain, let me help you out night. Let me give you a little pep me out. Oh, you got a little pain, let me help you out. Oh, you got that midday low, let me help you out. Oh, you can't sleep, no problem, let me drug you up.
Speaker 1:Oh we got you, so yeah, well, I'll get you the next morning.
Speaker 2:Let me wake you back up. I'm like so I kick them off, all 11 drugs, and it's me and a whole bunch of providers, right?
Speaker 2:MDs, phds. We all sit around and we group around the patient. Who the hell does that? Nobody, right? I come to the patient. The patient doesn't come to each individual doctor. All of us sit around in a group and we go okay, how does this interact with that? What are we going to do if we do that? If we do that, that'll open this up and this. So we're doing all these things together and the doctors are around the patient and they are taken off of every drug that they were ever on.
Speaker 2:I still got guys that come back to me Green Berets, navy SEALs, you know these military guys that come to me, these police officers that we've cured, these football players and they go dude, you saved my life and oh, by the way, I'm going to parade my daughter in to see you because you saved her life too. Because what happens to the father when the father takes his life? The girl does what she's got. Daddy issues the rest of her life. She's miserable because she thinks it's partially her fault. These people are bringing their kids in here. It's the most wonderful thing I've ever had in my whole life it's, yeah, I mean, and it's and it's so it.
Speaker 1:I mean the universe on this whole medical thing is upside down. I mean it's crazy what we're, what we're coming across and, and hbot, I mean, is you know it's? It can be so effective and, um, do you think there's going to be an hbot standard? Like you know, we look at, you know we went to, so we went to another company here in florida. They're out in the villages. They got an h HBOT machine right and they're like, ah, the Tury's not doing it right. I'm like, why do you say that? Like well, we do it this way. I'm like, well, I don't care. Right, the thing is to me, oxygen is oxygen. I don't care if you get in a tent, if you get in a mask or if you're in. Is that going to be? Part of the problem is agreeing to a precise protocol for this a number of treatments, a percentage of O2 or water.
Speaker 2:This is the problem. So what you're seeking, the words that you're seeking in drug language are minimum effective dose Right, I'm looking for the minimum effective dose. However, comma, old school says we start like this. New school says we do like this Right. So we got to change the way we think about research and research done in general and go with perfect is the enemy of good enough. There is no funding for these drug company level trials. We're not going to get 50,000 participants in hyperbaric oxygen and you know 25 of them being in a placebo, 25,000 of them being in a placebo. It's never going to happen, right? So we need to change the way that we're doing this and focus differently. A little bit of oxygen is good. A lot of oxygen might be worse. It might be better.
Speaker 1:I think you've got the whole problem of everybody's brain being different. Like you said, every injury on every brain is not a broken arm. Okay. When you fracture everybody's bone right here, you're pretty much going to set most of them the right way, the same way. Right here. You've got different angles, rotational force You've got, you know, sharing you know all that stuff, right, and so, yeah, I mean it's, it's and that's where it needs to be dialed in, based on the patient. But let's talk.
Speaker 2:I mean this is when we talk about practicing medicine, these doctors.
Speaker 2:What a concept, practice medicine? Let me give you a very profound statement. Listen, if you've seen one traumatic brain injury, you have seen one freaking traumatic brain injury and that's it. You try and lump these MFers together and all these people are going well, it's the same as that guy. No, it is not. It is absolutely not. This guy got it from a blast injury. This guy got it from a car accident. This guy got it from repetitive hits to the head. He was a boxer, he was a football player. It's totally different.
Speaker 1:Are you seeing the effectiveness of HBOT? Like you just described about six or seven different ways to get a brain injury, and so that's. The beautiful thing about HBOT is that it is oxygen. It is in the blood, I guess. So there is. You actually don't have you know some of the differences, the variances and injuries that you? I mean they're all injuries and they all could be healed, so it's pretty amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we see some healing in the hyperbaric oxygen. But let me just tell you something Hyperbaric oxygen doesn't heal anything and everybody goes. You said a bad word. No, hyperbaric oxygen helps your body heal itself. That's all it does. It has certain mechanism of action, like toxin inhibition. That is a known mechanism of action, peer reviewed published literature. Same thing with hyperoxygenation increases cerebral blood flow, reduces edema, reduces reduction of inflammatory markers All those things are known. Reduction of neuroinflammation, increase transcriptase you know, reverse transcriptase. So we have all these known MOAs. We just have to apply them and then, once we put somebody in hyperbaric oxygen naturopathic cure it stimulates your body's processes to go ahead and heal itself. That's it, that's all it does. No drug, no hook, no connection, no comebacks right? That that's the thing. I'm not on a model where you have to come back every fucking six weeks and look at me ar bro.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know oh, I want you to return and pay me more money. Oh, you're not done with therapy yet who tells me whether or not I'm done with therapy? The freaking therapist that I'm paying? I can't, I'm like I'm just a phd. I I can't. I'm like I'm just a PhD. I can't, I can't.
Speaker 1:Well, I know in the business world that recurring revenue models are the best In our medical field. That's what they're looking at is recurring revenue. Everybody's going to a ski resort. Here's your ski pass Pay for the whole year, right? Or you're going to pay 300 bucks a day. Everybody wants that recurrent revenue and it's a shame, it's a tragedy that that's where we're at in terms of how we look at the way the medical industry works.
Speaker 1:I mean, look at the savings $10,000 a treatment versus how many pills do you take in a lifetime? What do they charge for these pills? 150 bucks, some crazy amount of money, right? You're talking about reducing costs to the nation, you know, to the taxpayer, by, I mean, 2.8 million TBIs a year, and that's the only ones we know about, right, you know? And I mean gosh you're talking about, you know, just to know. I mean I'm gonna have to calculate that one day, day, just to kind of come up with a number, because that's what politicians listen to. They're like oh my God, we're going to put money back in our products. Yeah, this stuff pays for itself. And the machines how much does an HBOT machine cost right now?
Speaker 2:$100,000, $125,000, something like that. We have to do it right. You have to do it correctly. We just had an explosion at a hyperbaric facility that was doing it incorrectly up in Michigan, so but so everybody's now scared. Everybody's like oh, those crazy hyperbolic machines.
Speaker 2:Okay, first of all, it's hyperbarics but, no, and you know, when you see this kind of stuff, you go okay. Well, every single incident that's happened in a hyperbaric chamber since 1985 can be attributed down to the technician being poorly trained and letting things happen that shouldn't have happened, and that's it. And I mean I happen to train these physicians, these physicians and practitioners to operate these chambers and I go listen, here's the way to do it, the right way, and if you forget, hey man, that's on you. Sorry, we told you.
Speaker 1:No, I mean, it's well. I mean, if you also look at the number of people that have taken their lives because they've been on psychiatric care that didn't work, when all they had well, not all, but they had a brain injury that wasn't addressed, I mean I'm sure that the numbers are very, very inversed when you look at those populations there and you know actions happen, but it's about the efficacy of the treatment.
Speaker 2:I mean, look at it like this I teach physiology and if you break it down to the human physiology, right, I don't know what's causing you, let's say, to not sleep. I don't know what's causing you to not sleep, but I guarantee you it is not a deficiency of Ambien or Ambien CR or Lunesta or Valium. So you're going to give me Valium or Lunesta or Ambien for my sleeping problem, to make me sleep, but I'm not deficient in that. My body's not deficient. I may be deficient in melatonin Okay, let's talk through that, let's talk through magnesium, let's talk through some of these real things that you're actually deficient in but you don't have a deficiency in lunesta.
Speaker 1:I can guarantee you why you've given me that drug right, my kid is in the 82nd airborne and he told me one day that he finally slept like a dog and I was like what are you taking? He gave? He gave me this, it's a, this pill. I went and I called up my daughter. I go, honey, what's this place? She goes dad, that's a Benzo. I'm like what. So I called him. I said would you get that pill? He said wow, you know, one of the other soldiers gave it to us. I want that TMC. They're giving out off topic here. But it's crazy, man, what we're doing to our children and anybody, because you go to any doctor's office. I go to a lot of ayahuasca retreats. I talk to these veterans, right, and they've got bags of drugs, joe, I mean like five-gallon cans and they'll go back and they'll say, look, I want to get off them.
Speaker 1:They say, well, no, maybe you need a little bit more. And every time they go back they find another reason to give them another pill. It's a tragedy. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about, you know, when HBOT like so, so you have a TBI. Okay, is there a? You know a lot of the things that you said that HBOT reduces. You know inflammation, you know toxins. All these things are obviously very, very good for the brain and are some of the key components of the degradation of the brain from long-term exposure to blast or injuries. Now should somebody just run? If they have a TBI, should they rush to you and go find you? Is there a time to wait between an injury and actually starting an HBOT protocol? Or, you know, it's just for those that are uninformed.
Speaker 2:At the University of South Florida. Our study requires that you be one year post-blast at the very least. So you know, we don't want you to be fresh off of a head injury today, right, or tomorrow, or within the first 72 hours. So we said, oh, what do we need? Let's give it a year, we'll call that a number, right, and then it can be as much as you know, 70 years ago I don't care, because, well, that's 60, 65 years ago, something like that because you could be 70 something years old and be in the study. So you have to have gotten your traumatic brain injury while you were in the military and you got to be older. So, uh, that being said, if you have a mild to moderate traumatic brain injury, sign up on the QR code that we're going to give to you guys. Just click that QR code and people will just go and do you know, we'll, uh, we'll induct you into the study if you will will Thanks.
Speaker 1:man, that's, that's amazing. So tell us about this study. I mean it's. It's the largest HBOT study I think that's been ever been performed in the history of hyperbaric medicine.
Speaker 2:Our N is 420, which means that there are 420 soldiers, sailors, marines, airmen, even Space Force guys and Coast Guard. I don't care, everybody right, take them all.
Speaker 1:I'm an equal opportunity hater.
Speaker 2:I'm a Navy guy, so I hate y'all, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:We're going to take these people in and we are doing a double blind, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial. This thing is like it's the gold standard. We're taking blood, urine, saliva, feces. We're doing diffuse tentra imaging. We're doing QEEGs. Are you doing TTI? Yep, ah, wow, good, mri with DTI, absolutely right. So we're doing everything and we're having our stuff evaluated by the experts in that thing. Like our blood goes to Duke, to the Duke lab, right. Our imaging goes to the best place in the world, which happens to be in Australia, right, for traumatic brain injury. So, and you see me, I'm not the only person.
Speaker 2:There are 38 researchers on this project MDs, phds, neurosurgeons, you know, imaging specialists, psychologists, psychiatrists. You know we got it all right. There is nobody left, no stone left unturned. And you know we're trying to get the best science we can out of this. So we can either look, put the nail in the coffin of hyperbarics and say, ixnay, on the oop, it's day, right, it doesn't work, or say we're pretty damn sure it works. So here's what we're getting, you know, and it's an adaptive trial. Like we have trial specialists that came in to help us with this. That's why, look, you want to go fast, go alone. You want to go far? Go with the group baby. We went with the group.
Speaker 1:That's awesome, man. How did you get the state to buy in on?
Speaker 2:that me. It was Dr Harry Van Lovren, who's my boss, and he said hey, listen, can you give us money? What can you do with this money? If I gave it to you? Here's the thing. And he was like shoot, they gave us the money. Now we got to. Oh wow, now we got to really do something.
Speaker 2:This man is a neurosurgeon. He's the head of the department of neurosurgery. He does not do anything poorly, right, he does it at a thousand percent. So it's like, okay, well, now I got to hire the right people. We got to pull the people on board. We got to. So he grabs me and goes what do we need? And I'm like you need two of these, six of those, a couple of those naked lady tees, this hat, right? So we did it all. We got all these people and then, you know, psychologists said hire this guy. And then psychiatrists said hire this girl. And we put everybody in the same room. We said what do you think? And then we brought veterans in and we said okay, you are our veteran survey panel. What would you like us to do? How would you like us to do it? And we're bringing in a medical anthropology study so that we can look at.
Speaker 2:What are the reasons why you didn't want to get into the study? What are the reasons why you did want to be in the study? Why is HBOT working? Why is HBOT not working? Who comes, who doesn't come? It's an important demographic, right? Because if you go take a pill or come 40 times over the next two months which are most people gonna do I'm gonna take that damn pill, right, because I'm in the generation. Fix it now, do it now, right, this second, give me the pill. I'm good. But meanwhile you don't know that non-steroidal anti-inflammatory use consistent buildup is harmful to your gut, so don't do that. You should be doing the naturopathic healing, but it's harder, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:That hard right over the easy wrong. So what are you looking for in the study? I mean, you're looking for a total cure or improvement overall, or what are you hoping to get out?
Speaker 2:of the study. This is the problem. So it is very hard to figure out what a cure for traumatic brain injury is, and the FDA does not have a metric for it. So what we are doing is we are taking all of the physical measurements, all of the objective quality evidence like blood, urine, saliva, cortisol samples you know, qeegs, the DTIs and those things can show us things and then we're pairing it with the psychologic tests. But nobody has ever taken the pairing of these things and pulled them together to one and go look, psychological and psychosocial tests got better, increased the. We decreased HSCRP and interleukin-6 and had all these increases in correlation and decreases in phase lag. Ah, so that's maybe going to be the definition of a cured traumatic brain injury. Maybe we're working on it. We have no idea at this point, but we're researchers and we're doing it the right way, because science wins, guys.
Speaker 1:No, and that's the way it's going to be done. I mean, it's got to be done. And I'll tell you, those pictures are super like DTI scans and QEGs. That's like evidence, right, that look we've got. And not to mention the lab values right, the labs come back, they're all improved. And you combine that with you know the psychological issues, everybody can just say I'm feeling better, whatever is a possibility.
Speaker 2:But when you put those both together, you're going to have a very powerful explanation because you're right and I hear this all the time yeah, it's going to be amazing, Like right now there is no study that puts together the correlation of increased cerebral blood flow through diffuse tensor imaging, because you can witness increased angiogenesis, you can increase the production of blood or the promotion of blood to ischemic areas. You can do that. There is no correlation to that and a cured traumatic brain injury in any literature. So you can't just say, yeah, increased cerebral blood flow equals cured traumatic brain injury.
Speaker 1:Can't. Yeah, I mean, I think that you know all the things that are out there. They need to go through this type of study so that we can make them available Now, if they become available, joe, how do we scale this right? I mean say, hey, you come up with the study and it's like man, hbot is the bomb. You know, if you've been, you know, you know this is this is. You know, this is this is now going to be a protocol. Right, this is going to be recommended. You know, whatever is going to be part of a protocol, how do we scale this and make this available? I mean, is there any limiting factors in big machines?
Speaker 2:Who the drug companies were. In my opinion, the drug companies for hyperbaric medicine are the hyperbaric chamber manufacturers. They're the ones that really stand to make a ton of money off this, because even I had a center and when I treated people it cost me $183 to treat a person one time and I would sell the treatments for to military guys. I'd sell it to them for 200 bucks, right. I mean, you know, look, $3,000 a month rent. You got to pay the tech, you got to pay the oxygen. You know $2,000 for oxygen, and, and, and then you got to buy the chamber for 125,000 bucks 000.
Speaker 1:You made 17 bucks a treatment so who's making the money?
Speaker 2:the drug company? Is the chamber people? Those people need to start funding research, is my opinion. Those people need to start funding the cure of our veterans, is my opinion, because they're making money off of it. But I don't know is answer. It's not easy. It costs a lot of money. The barrier to effective entry on this is you have to pay a lot of money. We're looking at. I spent like $300,000 setting up my center and then I basically had to keep paying the bill every month for the rent and the oxygen. You know, my nut was crazy, so I had to fill those chambers with paying people. Somebody's got to pay, otherwise it's never going to happen. And I'm I'm pro military man. I'm like I, if the military guy came in, I'm like, screw it, we're going to treat you anyway. I don't care if we're going to pay.
Speaker 1:No, I'll pay, Doesn't matter. Nah, it's, and that happens with a lot of modalities out there, and bless you for doing that. I mean, it's just something that it's the least they can do. No, and that's the whole thing. Is these kids, man, I can call them kids, I'm an old guy. They signed a dotted line, man, they didn't commit any crimes. They went and fought for their country.
Speaker 1:Now they're hurting and nothing's available and that's why I get so asked up about this. It's like, look, you know, you know we got, we have to do this study. But we've known, and you've known for a long time HBOT is effective. Hbot has a positive impact on these soldiers, man, and when they're sticking guns in their mouths and blowing their brains out, I don't care about FDA, I don't care about, I care about anything that can help these kids and you're not going to die from HBOT. You're not going to die from anything out there, unless you lie and say I took my SSRIs and I went on an ayahuasca trip and you know.
Speaker 1:But all these modalities, the psychedelics, the electric, the electronic therapies that are out there, you know to include HBOT, cold plunge, all this stuff. You're not going to die from them. So why can't you try them? And if you've been hurt in the services country, why can't you get covered? And I just think that what you're doing right now is you're absolutely pushing the boundaries of getting at least one of these modalities to that gold standard. And then I want to see what the pushback is going to be after that, because that's when it's going to get stupid man, honest to God and don't personalize this.
Speaker 2:But the old white guy club is never going to let it happen right. The medical machine is never going to let it happen right. Perfect case in point I do ice baths. I like ice baths, they make me feel better. There's a 13% increase in brown adipose tissue as well, and there's cold shock proteins and you get your breathing down and, and, and, and, and. There's so many ands that go with it. But one time some guy with a heart condition went in there and he had a heart attack and he didn't have somebody wait. So ice baths can kill you.
Speaker 2:And I'm like whoa, that is not what that means the little kid got blown up in the chamber in Michigan.
Speaker 1:Therefore hyperbaric oxygen could kill you and you shouldn't be doing it. That guy died in a parachute accident. Oh my God, don't jump out of planes, no more.
Speaker 2:I mean I'm tongue in cheeking this, but it's really no more. I mean I'm tongue in cheeking this, but it's really. It's so hurtful to me that we will not just embrace therapies that don't hurt, that might help. That's what we need to be doing. Don't hurt might help.
Speaker 1:Don't hurt might help, right, dude, if we went back and looked at almost any suicide in this country, that where somebody's been on you know, drug care, black box, black box warnings oh my God you could turn that with. I mean that those are. I mean we lose the equivalent of 20 years of war every year in veteran suicides Just veterans, you know crazy.
Speaker 2:Isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:That doesn't we think that we're solving the problem.
Speaker 2:The football players? It doesn't count. Oh my God. You know the core accidents, the MBAs.
Speaker 1:We just did a study that I just found this out. Last week they did a study of the inmate populations here in Florida. 83% of our inmates right now have a history of at least 4.3 TBIs and repetitive brain trauma, a lot of them from football. 43% of kids in juvenile detention right now from the age of 16 to 18, same thing 4.3 TBIs or RBI. We can address recidivism, incarceration. I mean these guys and women that suffered from domestic abuse and violence.
Speaker 1:None of them are being assessed for the impact of their lives on their brains and the mental conditions that could have caused them to commit these crimes. And where the crimes aren't absolutely horrendous, can we at least get them treatment to approve their ability to function as civilians and get back out? And HBOT could absolutely you put an HBOT chamber in a jail cell and have these people go there, go to therapy. Find God they can leave those jail cells as better human beings with a better chance of and their brains are getting better right, because we have no idea how many folks are sitting in jail right now because they're mentally ill, because of contact sports or we have. I think the last count was like. I think there's like 180,000 incarcerated veterans in this country. None of them have ever been evaluated for the impact of service or training on their brains, bro and it's a pandemic.
Speaker 1:It's a pandemic.
Speaker 2:It is crazy. During the time when COVID came up, we were trying to use hyperbaric chambers to treat COVID during COVID. Oh, how'd that go? It went poorly right. Not standard of care, that's what the hospital told me and I was like what standard of care for a brand new thing? I don't understand. But, that being said, we were thinking of ways to get an airplane which can hold a little bit of pressure. Right. Get an airplane and have people with masks on that were breathing oxygen in the airplane like hundreds of people at a time. That's what we need to start doing Thinking about how to scale to hundreds of people at a time, out of the box, out of the box, thinking this is the and that's what needs to happen, and it doesn't have to be at this.
Speaker 2:Crazy. High pressures, high pressures of oxygen Perfect is the enemy of good enough. We're just trying to get you to the point where we can do a little bit of healing and see how it goes, get your body to start to heal itself, and that's what all these guys claim. Is that? Wow, I started feeling better about two weeks into it and then I started going back to the gym, which has its own positive side effects. And then I started drinking more water, which has its own positive side effects. Then I started talking to people more, which has its own positive side effects. People don't get it. It's not one thing, it's everything all at once. Sorry.
Speaker 1:Sorry, no, love it, man, love it. That's what our folks need to hear, because it is everything and you should be able to. You know, we want to give that veteran a Chinese food menu of all these options and then map out all those things. Like you know, I was suffering from premature ventricular contractions till my sister, a nurse, said you only drink Diet Coke and beer. Why don't you try drinking some water? Bam, no more PVC. I'm like, yeah, I felt better too, still drinking to this day. But no, I mean to your point, joe. This is the passion that's going to drive this and hopefully, with the new administration, we get a little bit more traction than we've had, or a lot more traction, and we're up on the hill and two pieces of legislation up there, both of including HBOT as a modality to be considered, to be funded, to be covered and to get this out there because this stuff saves money, it works and all we need is trials. Unfortunately, what we need are these gold standard trials that you know how to put together, Unfortunately.
Speaker 2:But University of South Florida is working on that right. Love those guys.
Speaker 2:But University of South Florida is working on that right, love those guys. It's so interesting because RFK Trump and Ms Shanahan all have a copy of my new book, the Art and Science of Hyperbaric Medicine. Nice Right, I sent it to them. I'm like, yeah, I produced this book, I published this book. I'm going to buy my own copy and send it to these people so that they have the real information, the factual, you know, uh, the stuff that's in the literature and the research. It's a little, probably high, but I figure if they have questions about uh hyperbarics.
Speaker 2:They can maybe consult the book or call right, like, I'm into it, I'll, I'll, I'll do anything to help this project and to help our veterans. That's, that's my goal for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we were into it too, man and I and I I think there's some other people that are trying to get H-Bot at the special forces groups and the Navy SEAL teams and and dude any guy, just go in there and pick it up, jump in there, man, and hang out for a bit. Right, Can't hurt, you know, it's just that 100% yeah.
Speaker 2:As long as you don't take your lucky cigarette lighter in with you, you'll be okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just don't be that stupid, don't be that guy. Just tell us how people find you. I want to close this out with you talking about Joe Duterte. Right, Where's Dr Joe Duterte at? How do people find you? How do they find your book? Do you have a podcast? What Guinness World Record?
Speaker 2:do you hold the longest amount of time spent in a diving? The longest dive in the world, basically, was 100 days of living underwater at pressure, right, like there's been other people that live in submarines. But that's not at pressure, that's a totally different thing. I stayed underwater at pressure, did the longest dive in the world. So because it's at the same pressure at which we treat traumatic brain injury here on the surface. I did that for that reason, so that people could go oh, all of his psychological, psychosocial scores got better. Look, his HSCRP went down, interleukin-6 went down. Oh, these are the mechanism of action of hyperbaric medicine. So it's not just oh, I went to go chase a world record. Who cares? Right, and trust you when I tell you this is not about me. You want to get in touch with Dr Deepsea. Just Google that guy and you'll figure that guy out.
Speaker 2:You know I'm kind of sort of all over the place, but if you're interested in helping veterans, put your heart, your time and your money behind a nonprofit like the Mack Parkman Foundation, like the other foundations that are out there doing good for traumatic brain injury. Don't worry about me. I am blessed and I'm terrific. Come look at what we're doing, but worry about those nonprofits and the people that are taking care of our veterans. Think about thanking your Florida legislature for doing this for the university of South Florida, that kind of stuff. Thank the people that are actually putting their money where their mouth is. Those are the people that need to be lauded for their decisions and appreciated for their, their, their steadfast nature Right.
Speaker 1:Amen, amen. And how do they sign up for the study, joe, if they know somebody who's struggling or somebody that's had a TBI? If you are a military?
Speaker 2:veteran with a mild to moderate traumatic brain injury. Click that, click that link, that QR code that I sent you guys click, have them send that and just scan it and it'll take them right to the website and tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick and all they got to do is fill it in and somebody will be in contact. Now we're a little bit stuffed up, right, so it's going to be a little bit we're behind, but that's okay, we're getting, we're getting through these people, so we can't have too many. And even if we have too many, we'll go back to the legislature and say, hey, we got more than we need more people, you got any extra money?
Speaker 1:Yeah, We'll get some extra machines. Cool beans, All right. Well, Joe, thank you so much for your time today. Amazing, bright podcast man. You're an animal man. We love having you on the show. You take care of yourself, boss, man. God bless you for what you're doing for our veterans.
Speaker 2:Can't wait to see you. We'll see you soon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's going to be great To all you out there. Remember we have an open town hall on March 28th featuring Dr Joe Duterte. We're going to be talking about repetitive blast exposure, its impacts on veterans' brains, how to get treatment. We're going to have Dr or Mr Michael Hartford, who used to be one of the lead directors for the VA, to talk to you about how to prep for a VA coverage and go to them and claim these injuries that you might not even know that you might have had.
Speaker 1:And remember, we've got our book out there. It's for free, but turn it up right side up Broken Brains. Get out there, get a copy of the book, send it to everybody. You know you can download it off our website for free. We don't want to make any money off it. Go get it. And our second international summit, our repetitive brain trial, will be held in Tampa this year in September 3rd and 4th. Get those dates on the calendar. But again, dr Joe Dettori, all of our fans out there, thank you so much out there and we'll talk to you next time on Broken Branch. Thank you.