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.
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Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Chris & Marcia Lessard: Healing TBI, PTSD, and Trauma Through Holistic Brain Therapy
In this powerful episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, retired U.S. Army Green Beret Chris Lessard and his wife, former police officer Marcia Lessard, open up about their deeply personal battles with traumatic brain injury (TBI), PTSD, and the mental health crisis affecting veterans and first responders. Chris shares the harsh reality of living with invisible wounds from combat, while Marcia explains how her background in law enforcement led her to explore functional medicine and holistic healing.
Together, they founded a clinic offering cutting-edge treatments like Magnetic e-Resonance Therapy (MERT), aiming to treat the root causes of brain dysfunction—not just the symptoms. This episode dives deep into the importance of personalized brain health solutions, trauma-informed care, and the promise of alternative therapies in the fight against PTSD and TBI.
🎧 If you're a veteran, first responder, or someone who cares about brain health—this episode is for you.
💡 Don’t forget to follow, like, share, and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts to support brain health awareness and help us reach more warriors in need.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
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Save the date for our international event focused on protecting young athletes and
honoring our veterans through real solutions to brain trauma.
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Join us for the 1st Annual Lazzaro Legacy Classic Golf Tournament — a day of community, competition, and impact. Every dollar raised helps fund skills training, mentorship, and athletic opportunities for underprivileged high school athletes striving to reach the next level.
Saturday, June 28th, 1:30 PM – 9:00 PM EDT
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Hey folks, welcome to another episode of Broken Brains with your host, bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation, where we look at the issue of repetitive brain trauma from repetitive head impacts in contact sports to repetitive blast exposure in our veteran population and what these conditions are doing to the brains of our children, our veterans and our athletes, and the causes and how they are causing what could be called the largest epidemic of mental illness that's preventable in this country. It's called the largest epidemic of mental illness that's preventable in this country. So we reach out to researchers and doctors and lawyers and holistic practitioners and all kinds of folks out there to give you the 360 degree view of this issue. Why? Because this is not taught in any nursing, medical or psychological course and you need to be informed to make those correct decisions for yourself, those you love to include, our children. Today, another set of amazing guests. We love having twofers on this show man Chris Lessard and Marcia Lessard. I said it right Lessard or Lessard.
Speaker 2:You sure did. You're actually one of the few people that actually it's usually Lessard when we hear I usually look at hey. Police Academy movies think that, but not many people know the Police Academy movies anymore.
Speaker 1:All right, I got it. All right, we'll give it one for the Boston Education Center. So Chris Lessard is a retired Army Green Beret instructor and project manager. He's the owner of the Brain Treatment Center in Ashburn, where they specialize in functional health and MERT, a non-invasive treatment for depression, ptsd and TBI. Chris plays a key role in overseeing various aspects of the clinic and ensuring that cutting-edge therapies are accessible to veterans and the broader community. Chris is a student at Liberty University, currently pursuing a master's in clinical mental health counseling and, drawing from his personal experiences with TBI and PTSD, he plans to specialize in trauma therapy for special operations, veterans, first responders and their families. His goal is to provide tailored, compassionate care to those affected by the unique challenges of trauma, and he is a husband and father of four living in the Northern Virginia area, with Marsha Lessard right here.
Speaker 1:The wife of Chris Lessard and, you know, at Green Beret and a mother of four currently resides in the Washington DC area. Her career journey has been diverse, beginning in law enforcement and transitioning to roles in education, investigations and the nonprofit sector. It was through this journey that she discovered her true passion investigations and the nonprofit sector. It was through this journey that she discovered her true passion holistic health and counseling. A graduate of John Hopkins University, with both undergraduate and graduate degrees in ethical management, marsha has recently completed a naturopathic program and is now pursuing her MSW. We need to talk about that, because I don't even know what that is. She plans to specialize in trauma and PTSD care for special operations, veterans, first responders and their families.
Speaker 1:In addition to being a certified yoga teacher and I am married to one and I practice yoga religiously as an old man Marsha is a practitioner of the listening program, an auditory and integration therapy modality, and QRI, primitive reflex integration. I want to know more about that. She is driven by her belief in holistic healing and the conviction that we are created according to God's divine design. Her approach integrates biological, physiological, psychological and social perspectives to promote true healing and mental well-being, and probably without the use of pharmaceutical drugs that are kicking the ass out of our veteran population. Chris Marcia, welcome to the show man. What an amazing journey you both have been on. So how did you find each other?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh IRCA. I bought him on the internet. He was the best $33.99 I ever spent. I bought him on the internet was the best $33.99 I ever spent. I bought him on the internet. We met on matchcom $33.99.
Speaker 1:That's a hell of a deal for a good husband nowadays. Man, she was a little bit more expensive.
Speaker 2:I think the men actually pay more on that site. I think I spent $30. Of course we do man, especially for the premium edition, right wow dude, of course we do, man, especially for the premium edition, right, exactly that word premium.
Speaker 1:Dude, sounds like those algorithms are really hitting it hard that day, man. Good on you, congratulations. So where'd you go on your first date?
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, chris actually drove eight hours for our first date. He was at Drill up in Massachusetts and we had started talking and I was doing match because I was a cop at the time and I didn't want people to know that I was a cop because men can act a little weird about that. And um, we met, we talked for like I don't know a week or two straight and he drove eight hours down for her first date and we went to DC. Um, that was like my old stomping grounds that's where I grew up and he asked me to be his girlfriend that night. I think he's probably the first guy ever who was like will you be my girlfriend? It was the sweetest thing ever.
Speaker 2:I was hooked. I sounded just like that too.
Speaker 1:That's good we all do on that first date so you're driving us, so you're from the Boston area?
Speaker 2:Chris, I am, and I was actually going to ask, cause I noticed that that Patriot scar from the back. Are you, are you from the area or oh yeah, man, I'm a, I'm old.
Speaker 1:What do you call it?
Speaker 2:Mashable from back in the day, man, I'm right there with you. Yep, I actually grew up in Watertown, Massachusetts area, but yeah, I was up there drill out at Springfield at the time and I was coming back and drove eight hours. Um, probably left a little earlier than I should have, but you know, I wanted to meet the. Uh, the future, uh, future misses and uh, yeah, it's been magic ever since.
Speaker 1:That's awesome man. So, um, when so? Were you in the active army or were you in the reserves?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was active army for a while, started off in the infantry down at Polk in the 509th and then went to selection. There you go, geronimo, and then went to third group and was there for—.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait, wait, wait. Geronimo, like first of the 501st in the 101st.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so they still—they call the 509 geronimo, like that's their thing back in 1982 when I was in the 101st.
Speaker 1:It was first of the 501st, but uh, you know, I don't know that I'll change yeah all right, I'm sorry, man, I was flashing back pretty hard it happens. No, dude, I don't hear that anymore, man. But yeah, go, yeah, go ahead, man, so, uh, so you went to selection.
Speaker 2:Yeah, went to selection, went to third group for a few years, um, you know, probably should have stayed in, but at the time I was like, you know, I want to see what else is in there in life. Left there for and like within two or three months I was like, screw this, I at least want to be, you know, know part of it still somehow. And then, uh, that's when I joined 20th group up in springfield, um, and then spent the next few years, you know, bouncing back from 20th and 19th group, just based off of where we're moving up and down the east coast pretty much okay, what was your mosh?
Speaker 2:uh. So I was 18 echo, then I went fox and then I was uh acting zulu for a few years okay, so I thought I was gonna put my money on 18 delta man medic, since you know, no do I look like a delta.
Speaker 1:You guys are weird. You look smart, man. I don't know. Man, we all know that. You know echoes and deltas. You know all bravos and charlies are guys that flunk the delta and echo course. Right, I mean, we all know this.
Speaker 2:Right, I mean yeah, well, of course you know. It's funny though, because I would you know, being an 11 bravo prior to being 18 series, I thought I was a shoe-in for 18 bravo and that's what I put in for. And they said, no, you're, you're gonna work, radios dude all right.
Speaker 1:Well, really did they give you the int to?
Speaker 2:oh, that's right, you guys don't do morse code anymore no, so I was the first class where they stopped doing morse code. Really, what year was that? Uh, that was oh three. I want to say early oh three, oh wow, okay, yeah, all right, so yeah you're.
Speaker 1:You're in there a long well, quite a while ago, man, that's uh, yeah, yeah it's been.
Speaker 2:It's been a while, it's it's. We were having that conversation a few nights ago and I was like man, it's been over 20 or about 20 years now since I went to dive school and I'm like that ain't cool man.
Speaker 1:I was the first class in that new pool back in 1987, bro.
Speaker 3:Nice.
Speaker 1:I just was down there with my wife in Key West. I go hey, honey, you want to go see the pool? She goes, what pool? I go the pool where I almost died. The pool. He goes what pool.
Speaker 3:I go the pool where I almost died.
Speaker 1:So we drive out to the end of that key and the gate was open, bro. So we drive in and we got to the building. I'm like well, shit, ain't nobody here. So I knock on the door. The door's open, so we're working. So you know how we built all those posters at the end of our class, the doc took our pictures and we're all on there, I and we're all on there. I was like hey, let's go find my class poster. Of course, you know, 30 years ago, we're halfway through that building. Somebody goes, can we help you?
Speaker 1:I was like I guess we weren't supposed to be in there, so I, but that pool was still there. Dude, Craziness man.
Speaker 3:We got married down there. Like we got married down there, chris was like when we were planning our wedding, chris was like wouldn't it be so amazing if, like the two most important parts of, like my career and my life kind of happened in the same location? And I was like, yes, and then he. Then he left, he like deployed or went on training or something. He's like you plan it, babe. And I called down the girls like I'll give you 50 percent off your wedding. And I was like, oh, she likes me, she thinks I'm cool. We showed up. It was like naked bikers everywhere.
Speaker 2:I was like what have we? Done it was like a few days before bike week started, so the body paint was a flow in.
Speaker 3:You know people were just and she's like crying because this is her wedding and I'm having a great time coming down.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're like, I love you, honey.
Speaker 3:He ran away on purpose and then like 30 to 40 people still showed up at this wedding. So we have this like beautiful big wedding under a tent at like zero Duval Street. We could see, you know, the school off in the distance and stuff like that. And then like three of our pictures. There's like half naked bikers like popping up on the pier sticking their beer bottles in our pictures.
Speaker 1:Dude, that is amazing man. Well man, chris, thank you so much for your service. Man, that's awesome.
Speaker 3:And Marcia, so you were a police officer. I was, I was a police officer.
Speaker 3:When Chris and I first met and when we were talking about time the other day, I was like wait, when did you go to dive school? And I realized it was like right around the time that I started the police academy. So I started on my 21st birthday. I was a designated driver. The night before I took all my girlfriends to Baltimore and then showed up at the police academy the next day ready to go, and I would have reached natural retirement this year. But I was medically retired a few years into it after a pretty significant incident and I had to have some surgery and had some things fixed and whatnot. And now here we are.
Speaker 3:But I always say like the timing was so perfect because I was I don't know. I was just so ready for I was doing this master's at Hopkins, I was super trained and I wanted to do SWAT, but my big goal was to be a federal agent and I had no interest in getting married. I was already a single mom, I didn't want any more kids. And then, boom, I got hurt and it was such an identity conflict because I had developed all of my personality around my profession. You know, I was working at a municipality within Prince George's County, which is like a really high speed area. You know, we were doing our thing. I was having a lot of fun, I was learning a lot and I was very active in community oriented policing and working with the kids in the area.
Speaker 3:I really wanted to get into drugs and my goal was to be in the DEA. And then I got hurt and everything shifted and I never really like there was a lot of PTSD involved and I didn't think like how am I going to recover? But in retrospect it was so perfect because I met this amazing guy, you know, and I had no, no thought in my head that I'm ever going to get married or do any of that. But I was vulnerable enough in that moment praise God that I was like, yeah, I'll get into a relationship with you, I'll date you. You're a strong, handsome army guy.
Speaker 1:It's all God's plan. I mean it might not look like it at the time, but it is all part of God's plan.
Speaker 3:It is, and I'm grateful for every minute of it. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, I tell you, I mean just talking to you both and then reading it here, it sounds like not only do you have a common denominator of love, sounds like you both got a common denominator of PTSD and TBI. So I mean, you know, and that might have led you down this path. So, chris, let's start with you. Man, tell us about. You know what your experience has been with these. You know two issues that you know have impacted a significant amount of our brothers out there in the special operations community, and sisters too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, here we go right. So, yeah, it was a long, long battle. You know, before I met Marsha, you know there was issues with you know traumatic brain injury that I wasn't aware of, that we just kind of, you know, all went about our business. I was actually and it's not even a cool story, like you know, I wasn't a hero or anything like that. You know it was an ATV rollover where I rolled down a mountain. Where I rolled down a mountain, I don't remember hitting the ground, but I remember coming to and looking down at the sky and then, like the ground was like the ceiling is kind of weird, and then eventually things kind of worked back to normal. And then you add in all you know flashbangs going off and you know combatives training and jumps. You know I was never a PLF guy. I was always foot butt head or just foot head. You know, um, yeah, that that that whole PLF thing is BS, I think.
Speaker 2:So just all that stuff, um, you know I started really really drinking and I and I get you know, a lot of people do start drinking a lot Um, painkillers was another big thing Um, and just a lot of stuff that I really started self-medicating, but I was still in denial of it. Um, I wasn't realizing that it was an issue because you know, even childhood stuff that I grew up in I didn't have the best of childhoods, um single family or a single, you know, parent home, um, pretty much raised in the projects, um, through my aunt and you know all that stuff. So went through and was just really good at compartmentalizing stuff, which I think we're all doing. You know we all are good at that. That's why they choose us down this path is we can really take an event, say, okay, this happened, I'm going to put this over here and I'm going to continue mission Um, and that's great, it's like a superpower until it's not right and it just all catches up. So, as time went on, things kind of really moved into a breaking point. You know I was at the point where I didn't understand what was happening. I was at the point I was making horrible decisions. I was, you know, suicidal. I hate saying that, but it is what it is. You know there was just a lot of issues.
Speaker 2:I finally got scanned for TBI. I think that was in 2015 at the VA. They confirmed. They said hey, buddy, yeah, you know, tag, you're it. So I went all right, did some normal treatments. I went to a prep down in Tampa in 2017. I think it was. It was that three week program. I was there for almost 10 weeks, um, the you know, and for what it is, it's an actually it's a really good program.
Speaker 2:Va did their thing for a while, um, but I was on the you know the medication cocktail. I was on a lot of different medications, um, and although I, you know, I changed all of my, my behaviors that I wasn't thrilled with, um, depression started kind of easing off, stuff like that. I wasn't suicidal, but I was really a shell of a person. I wasn't really living life. I put on 30 pounds and I was just kind of going through the motions and that was a problem.
Speaker 2:And Marsha, you know, bless her heart. She has always been into the, you know, organic eating, the microbiomes, all the stuff, the holistic health. So we started, you know, kind of working that we went to a doctor for more functional hormonal tests and stuff, got my test done through him and he found like I was extremely high in mercury, lyme disease, I had high levels of lead, my vitamin D was way off, my testosterone, although in the quote unquote normal range was like 300 or something like that. I was, I don't know, 36, 37. Yeah, exactly that's, that's nowhere near. And so we, you know, we started doing, uh, more of that. I did cleation therapy, more glutathione, more healthy eating, um, and things started to get better and I thought, okay, this is as good as it's going to get outstanding. Um, and then we found MERT Now Marsha will go into it about our son. So our son is, I guess, was at this point, which is incredible, but he is the autism spectrum.
Speaker 3:So I can jump in and kind of because we did a little bit in reverse order, but like I'll tell you Luke's story real quick and then we'll come right back to Chris because it's just so impactful. I mean, I went to Hopkins for ethical management but I was very like proud of that degree and everything that came along with it and I was probably one of the most mainstream medical people that you could ever meet. And that was not a medical degree, but I was just on board with all of it. And Luke, chris, for a while we were stationed. He was stationed down in Tampa. He was a warrior care rep, he was on ADAS orders and when we got there it was like a switch flipped. Like overnight Luke went from walking, talking, happy, healthy, kiddo, two-year-old to just gone. His words were gone, his motor function was gone and he regressed into pretty severe nonverbal autism.
Speaker 3:Now, like in Florida, each state is so different People don't realize it, but access to care and different things is very different in each state. So in Florida, every day of the week they're like you want sensory therapy, you want OT therapy, speech therapy, this and that. So we signed up for all the therapies. Tricare covered all of it. It was great, and so we were making some progress, but not big progress. And that's where Chris and I actually really got into CrossFit at that time. It's like a gateway drug to so many other things. So that got us really into like microbiome and eating clean and organic and doing all this stuff. And I had done some personal training before but that like it was like a whole new world about, like interdependent systems instead of independent systems. So we got the diet really clean, we got the biome really good and at some point we thought, okay, we'll move to New England when these orders are up instead of renewing them because there's got to be even more resources up there. And it was like the worst mistake ever. We were living in rural New Hampshire and there was nothing that took Tricare driving like two hours each way for very poor speech therapy.
Speaker 3:At this point we had gotten Lukey a service dog because if he got sensory overwhelmed he was bolting and we had had another baby since then. They were only like 18 months apart and I was bolting after this kid with this baby on my chest apart and I was bolting after this kid with this baby on my chest. So Task Force Agri Foundation actually when they were first, you know, up and coming, reached out and said hey, there is this therapy going on in California. We are treating guys who are retired with it. It's working amazingly well for PTSD and TBI Off-label, they're treating autism. We'd love to send Chris if he wants it, but they weren't treating anybody who was still in at that time. But can we send you out there? Just figure out if it's something that's gonna help.
Speaker 3:So right around that time we had gotten a diagnosis of severe nonverbal autism from top pediatric neurologists up in Dartmouth. I'm like, okay, put me on a plane, because the only therapy options that they offered were ABA plane, because the only therapy options that they offered were ABA and ABA was new. But the ABA center up there wanted us to place him in ABA, which is an autism therapy. It's more like a behavioral training therapy for 40 hours a week and it was non-parental involvement. I was like you're absolutely insane if you think I'm dropping my nonverbal kiddo off and giving him a full time job. So I jumped right on the plane we go out to California.
Speaker 3:Newport Beach is the only place in the world that they were doing this MERT therapy at the time and the process starts with an EEG. So they come to me and they say this EEG is not diagnostic. It's the same EEG that we do here in our clinic. It's not diagnostic, but we do see patterns and his pattern is that as somebody with severe, you know autism, and I was like, yeah, I know I sit with him, I know it is every day. So another part of that program and we do that here in our clinic as well is 30 minutes of morning sunlight before 11 am every day. It resets the circadian rhythms. It creates a natural cortisol spike about midday which triggers the brain to create, you know, all your sleepy chemicals and hormones, naturally right around bedtime.
Speaker 3:So every morning I'm at the beach with him, I'm running with him and the baby in the double jogging stroller and you know that's like I'm out there alone in a studio apartment. Chris is holding the fort home, back home with our older daughter. And one morning I gave him the iPad because I was like I just need two miles of peace and quiet. I'm just going to run, you guys are going to play on this pad, get your sunlight. I'm now quiet.
Speaker 3:So I go to pull him out of the stroller and I pull the iPad away from him. He's fussing, he's fussing, fussing. He hasn't said a word to me, not an authentic word, in two years. And I say to him buddy, come on, no-transcript. Older guy came up and like, put his hand on his shoulder and he was like Chris, if these are the things you're experiencing, you need to go get your head scanned. And Chris was like no, I'm fine. These are normal in our community and in retrospect, knowing what I know now doing this clinical mental health degree in the functional medicine coming from my own, you know, retired law enforcement PTSD bubble, there were some significant things. But Chris and I were both kids that were raised with if you're familiar with it a really high ACEs score. The higher your ACEs score, you know the more traumatized you were as a child.
Speaker 1:What's an?
Speaker 3:I'm sorry to interject what's what's an ACEs score? I've never heard of that. So an ACEs assessment is something you're going to get when you sit down for any type of therapeutic intervention like counseling or something like that, and the higher your ACEs score is, the more likely you are to be a green beret.
Speaker 3:No, I'm just kidding, but, but yeah maybe because, like you, can compartmentalize really well, but people with high ACEs scores have been through a lot of trauma as children and so I think we're all kind of drawn to each other, you know, in a certain way, because we have similar experiences.
Speaker 3:But with that, I think when the stuff with the TBI started coming out and the stuff with the PTSD coming out because we had both had such background in childhood trauma we were just like this is normal, this is okay. You think it's normal until you realize that this isn't what normal is. I'm sure we were both in relationships before where that were very chaotic and like lots of crazy stuff happening and that felt normal to us until we realized like even just being with each other, we were in a really healthy spot. When we got together it was different than it had ever been in any other relationship before for both of us. So you know, he goes back to manchester, new hampshire. He got to, he gets his head scanned and he's got this massive tbi and we did go the normal va route for a long time so nobody had found this, this.
Speaker 1:Uh, when you got, what kind of scan was it, chris? Was it an m? Mri or a functional MRI?
Speaker 2:So they did the MRI, they did the whole cat scan, but they also did like the three hours of testing and hey, move these object with the one hand into there and you know things of that nature, um, and then you know the whole screen and thing, Um, but it was, it was a long process. It took, I think, you know, over a span of three days probably. You know an hour each day and then three hours in the one middle day. So it was, it was a decent effort. Um, and this was after prep. No, this was two years before, two years prior. Oh, okay.
Speaker 3:So, even after that, I think, just learning that he had a TBI from a wife perspective that he was a great compartmentalizer because when he was home with us he was super dad. He was super dad, he was super husband and all this, all these things. But he was still, you know, he was working in government contracting, he was doing the Green Beret National Guard thing. So we average, honestly, we added it up at one point, we think, about the first 10 years of our marriage he was gone for like nine to 10 months out of the year between the contracting and the special operations, guard stuff. So like when we were together it was great, he was on point about everything. But it was in that different travel and those different things where I think things were really falling apart and he was like just shifting into those different roles. But those compartments really started to come down.
Speaker 2:And then we realized that and I'm not saying this is the end I'll be- I'll talk about that later, but I think that's when you know the demons really mess with you, right? I think that's that was my issue is when I lost my support system and I didn't know how to function properly, and that depression, all of a sudden it just would kick in almost immediately and, you know, self-medicate. I just got to distract myself from all of this stuff and that was my biggest issue, you know, and so you know, looking back at it now it's like you know. And then the other thing is, when you do that, it's like you already have the depression. You don't know what's going on, you're depressed. But now you do that, it's like you already have the depression. You don't know what's going on, you're depressed, but now you're making decisions that are making you more depressed, because now you're living with even more regret.
Speaker 1:Were you being treated with pharmaceuticals at this time as well.
Speaker 2:I was so in I can't remember what year it was. Yeah, oh, nine, oh, 10 something year it was yeah, oh nine, oh ten something. Um, I went because I knew something was off and I went to a doctor, but I didn't want to be fully open because I didn't know this dude, I didn't trust them, I didn't want to lose anything, so I would only give them a little bit, so they would give me medications.
Speaker 3:Come to find out that medication with my stuff actually made things probably a lot worse, and we find that even now, like in practice, that a lot of guys if you go into a clinician and you say I have anxiety and I go in and I say I have anxiety, if they're a standard clinician they're just going to write you a script.
Speaker 3:But if they really break it down, that your anxiety is going to look different than mine, it's going to feel different than mine and it could be two different things. It could be I have anxiety because I have PTSD. It could be you have anxiety because you have TBI. And really often what we're hearing from a lot of the benevolent organizations and people that we're seeing is that if they have TBI, they go in, they say, well, I'm just kind of down and I'm depressed, and they don't talk about all the other dark stuff that's going on. The doctor doesn't cue in on it and they give them an SSRI. And the SSRIs are causing a lot of different things to happen in these guys, including periods of psychosis, which is exactly what my husband had.
Speaker 1:And they got a black box warning that is not divulged. And they finally got some legislation passed that says look, this stuff that I'm going to give you has a black box warning for psychosis, suicidal ideation, whatever Right. And you know, and and we? The other thing I'll say is, while you know, while they were giving you those, you know those drugs, they're not doing anything for damage to your brain from all that repetitive blast exposure, all that repetitive head impacts, which which now we know could have been the whole cause of all these issues. So they're medicating the hell out of you, but and they're giving you some therapy from people that have been in the military, but then and they're giving you a bag of drugs, but they're not doing anything about this. And so wow.
Speaker 3:There's so many components with that. So right now, um, I'm doing a fellowship in neuropsych, right? Wow, methylation is really an enzyme in your body that tells your cells how to behave, how to detox, express your genetics. Then you're exposed to a toxin. You're going to hold on to that, which is going to cause a domino effect of other symptoms, especially after a brain injury, because the methylation needs to detox your brain. But then we look at metabolic health, if you have chronic immune activation. You guys are traveling all over the world, you're being exposed to different things. You're being given things to prevent things from exposure to different things.
Speaker 1:You have chronic hey, try this shot.
Speaker 2:You have a chronic immune activation, which can cause poor metabolic function.
Speaker 3:Three nights of bad sleep causes poor metabolic function. On top of that, I don't think that you guys are eating the healthiest when you're in the military. I just don't believe it. What? But our story really? Our story really, yeah.
Speaker 3:So Mert moved the mountain for both my son and my husband. So he did almost a decade on all the pharmaceuticals, was a shell of his former self, and I remember just sitting down with him and being like we need to do something else because I can't live like this anymore. Like I miss you, like I, you know you were this go getter. He had all of these goals in the military and he always crushed every single one of them. And then it was like one year where the PTSD and the TBI got so bad and they were like you're 18 and a half years in, we're going to retire you, and that's really where I feel like the wind got taken out of his sails and he just fell into the medications.
Speaker 3:And then our son hit middle school age and he's talking. He's like you know, he's pretty normal kid, but he didn't have that social, emotional component. So I was like tell this story. Like this girl was flirting with him one day and I was standing across the hallway and I was kind of listening to it and she was like, oh, you're homeschooled. And she was like do you ever want to come to school? And like, hang out with me, go to regular school. And he looked at her. He was like my mom has done my homeschool in two hours. Why would I go to school with you?
Speaker 1:Like he didn't get it.
Speaker 3:So I was like we need to get him some more MERT, so like somebody is going to want to marry this rude kid one day, some damaged woman will take this rudeness. So these MERT clinics started opening across the country. They started licensing and opening them and we had talked about opening one before. But we just like, how would we ever do that, you know? And we, one of the MERT clinics open in Denver. Another special operations guy, retired steel, owns it and he was like, hey, come out, we'll see what we can do. Chris, if you have depression, we can bring you in under TRICARE, as long as you meet all the standard of that, and we'll work out a deal. We'll treat Luke too. And then that's when Chris got out there and you wanted to kind of take it from there, babe.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So when they reached out to us I kind of was like, yeah, I'll go check the block. I don't know what it's going to do for me, but I know what it does for Luke and any help we can get for him. That's one more brick in the wall. So we go out there and I'm doing it. In about four or five weeks goes by and I really don't notice much difference. But whatever, I'm there, I'm trying to hold a good attitude. And it was about week five or six that I was in rush hour traffic outside of Denver and I was sitting in traffic and I realized I wasn't getting. I wasn't gripping the steering wheel, I wasn't white knuckling and raging out. I was like, all right, that's interesting, knuckling and raging out. I was like, all right, that's interesting. Then I also noticed that I was actually falling asleep and sleeping through the night and I was always that guy that was NyQuil with Tylenol PM and melatonin, grind it all up, take a shot and still not be able to sleep.
Speaker 2:I was like interesting I started reaming when I, my goodness, I don't remember the last time I had a dream prior to that, and so I called up Marsha and I was like hey, um, if you're all right, I'm going to start to come off some of these meds. Slowly. See what happens. Now rewind to 2017, when I was in prep. I came off some of the meds while I was there and it was a disaster. I was calling her up at 12, one in the morning saying hey, you need to go in the basement and look, I bet there's snakes down there. Hey, you need to move the fish tank. It's going to start a fight Like just, and she is like what is going on?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was like who are you?
Speaker 2:It was really weird.
Speaker 1:Chris is one of the most level-headed people I've ever met.
Speaker 3:It was really weird.
Speaker 2:So I told her. I said, hey, if you don't mind, because it was only Luke and I out there by ourselves and I said, hey, I'm going to try to come off these. See what happens. I started coming off of them more, and more and more and then there were no side effects, no-transcript. You know, while we were out there they, um, we were talking to a couple of the reps and they said you know, we're talking to us about a clinic and I was on the phone and they mentioned something about, you know, being with Luke and Liam and it, like it really hit me. And then, I swear, I heard a voice saying you have to do it and so the rest of the call. I'm like it really hit me. And then, I swear, I heard a voice saying you have to do it and so the rest of the call. I'm like I'm just hearing that in my head. I'm not really hearing the rest of the call at all. I'm just kind of like, okay, okay, okay.
Speaker 2:We hung up and she called me out. She was like well, what do you think? I was like we just have to do it. And we're not. We just have to do it and we're not business people at all. I mean, we're doing a great job. Now it's been over a year, but we just took a leap of faith and that's really what it was. We just got that nudge because, you know, we just saw what it did for Luke, we saw what it did for some of the veterans when we were out there at Newport. I experienced what I felt and so we just had to start down this path and MERT isn't, you know, not solely what we focus on and Marshall will get more into that but we knew we had to do something to just try to bring people back. Give back, yeah.
Speaker 1:God bless you.
Speaker 3:It's about like service for us, because so many people did so much to hold us up during that time and now that we're in a position where we can do that for others like that's what it's about. So we, most of the clinics, are just MERT, and MERT does amazing things. Like I'm evangelical about it. It gave me my son back and it gave me the best version of my husband back. I mean, I would have been with him even that. I was with him even at his worst version and I would have stayed through all of it if that's the way that it continued. But since he's done MERT, he's fully present in our relationship again. I feel like I don't have to walk on eggshells if we're changing courses or anything like that. It's just like I have a partner in this again. I have the partner that I had in the beginning and our relationship is better than it's ever been. But when they said, do you guys want to open your clinic? And it's like a license agreement I was like we can do whatever we want. So we brought in a doctor who's retired special operations. We brought in a pediatric specialist who's over 30 years in pediatrics and we're getting everybody certified and fully up to speed on what is being called functional health. But really it's like what you're saying, like the old style health, like what is actually going on with this person. What is the root cause? Not what the flow chart says to give for medication, but why? Is it a heavy metal? Is it a metabolic? Is it a methylation? Is it you got whacked in the head? Now your endocrine functions off and your testosterone is tanked out and, by the way, like if you're on HRT, it affects other things. So how can we get that back naturally? So we're running very niche labs and we've been able to do a lot of this in the way. So we also do RTMS, which is like the umbrella version of of MERT therapy. You know, any stimulation is good stimulation. So we partner that with functional health and we see even better results because we're really getting to the root causes of what else is affecting this person's interdependent system while they're having this stuff. So, like, if you have a mineral imbalance, you are going to feel very bipolar, and if you go into a doctor's office and you tell them I'm feeling very bipolar, they're going to give you a mood stabilizer. If you come to us, we're going to look at that mineral imbalance and try to regulate some of that stuff. And our docs are great. If pharmaceuticals are necessary, they're going to give them to them, but we're going to look at the whole person and really see. We also have a nurse on staff now that's doing ketamine therapy IV infusion ketamine, which is great Like it allows for more neuroplasticity and for people who are really good at compartmentalizing it allows those walls to come down in a way that they can handle it properly. We're adding hyperbaric oxygen therapy next month.
Speaker 3:We also do a program that I'm super proud of. It's called the SPIN program, the Somatic Program for Integrative Neurobalancing, and we worked with this amazing occupational therapist and it's a three dayday-a-week OT program, all billable to TRICARE. So we do everything that we can under TRICARE and VACCN. It's a three-day-a-week program where we work on getting both sides of the brain to talk to each other. We do primitive reflex integration with cold lasers. When you're really stressed your primitive reflex system goes out of whack. You know the baby does the moro response that can come out of whack in adults and we test the reflex system and with these lasers two to three sessions those reflexes are back integrated typically, whereas if you worked in just standard OT with exercises. It could take up to six months and another part of that program.
Speaker 3:We're also doing auditory integration therapy.
Speaker 3:So you listen to specially recorded music.
Speaker 3:Then it hits at bands. When you listen to music on the radio, you hear it at about 430 hertz. The way this is recorded on different bands it activates and strengthens different parts of the brain and then we teach people how to breathe. I know, as a former cop I'm a shallow breather and it's like a thing when our vagal system, our vagal nerve, gets all out of funky, like we're shallow breathers. So we teach people again through a lot of different biofeedback systems how to deeply breathe and exhale. So we got to think of it like we're, you know, because we are excreting toxins from the body, we got to get that full expansion of breath. So those are some of the programs we're running now and then at the end of the year I'll be on staff doing mental health counseling. Chris will be on it next year. We talked at Bragg, I don't know, a few months ago, and the Lord just shifted something in his heart and he was like Marcia, I want to be a counselor with you and I was like, let's do it, let's do this.
Speaker 1:I mean we need, I mean okay, so let's go back to we covered a lot of ground here.
Speaker 3:Does MERT stand for M-E-R-T? It's Magnetic E-Resonance Therapy, so it's Magnetic EEG Guided Resonance Therapy. So we start with an EEG. We map the brain, which I think is so important for military type people who need the map, because we can show you what ideal looks like and we can show you where we're at and we can show you how we're going to kind of work to try to get there.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then under that umbrella there's a bunch of functional modalities that you're using to address issues that can help brain. Now, what I love hearing about this is that you know, the problem that we have with most of the modalities is it doesn't impact the brain. Right, and from a physiological, a challenging perspective, create a neuroplasticity, new neuronal growth, synaptic growth, whatever we got to do to recover and you talked about hemispheric, you know communications which are broke down under a lot of this, so I think this is from a repetitive head impact perspective. I mean, this is amazing, and so I guess one of my questions would be if a veteran comes to you, right, and what are you using to look at their brain from a?
Speaker 1:You know you got this DD-214. And, by the way, I can give you the SOCOM GBEV calculation. I broke it down into an Excel spreadsheet that veterans can go ahead and, just, you know, calculate themselves up, which will be, you know other tools they can take to the VA when they're claiming for disability and stuff like that. But so when a veteran comes to you, you know DD-214, tanker artillery, special operations guide, breacher, right, are you doing any types of brain scans to go ahead and image the brain to validate that there is damage DTI, fmri, anything like that.
Speaker 3:We are doing the EEG, so it's a QEEG.
Speaker 1:The QEEG. Okay, yeah, that's another one. Yep, yep, absolutely there are distinct patterns.
Speaker 3:It's not a diagnostic tool but there are distinct patterns. With children on the autism spectrum we often see really high delta wave and almost no alpha wave. So, functionally, when I'm looking at that I'm like wow, their brain is operating like they're asleep while they're awake, so they're not getting that wave of fluid to wash away the oxidative stress while they're sleeping at night, so they're not getting the rest of a regenerative sleep and they also probably feel like they're in a lucid dream. With brainwave patterns that way, with TDI we often see competing alpha waves instead of one synchronous alpha wave back middle in front of the brain. And then with PTSD we see hyper reactivity in theta and in beta, which seems to be very hallmark of that.
Speaker 1:What are you seeing for? I mean, I guess from a repetitive impact perspective it would be just brain damage. I don't know. What are you? Are you attributing that? Are you calling that TDI? You know, from the same impact.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we are, and I mean I think there's some other factors in with that too that as we delve into this, everybody's talking about operator syndrome, but we also need to look at the medical terminology for that, and we're talking a lot about this in the neuropsych fellowship that I'm doing. And that is cell the same, the cell danger response. You know syndrome, so these cells sense danger, so they're, all you know, falling in on each other with you know, all the different dysfunctions that we see in the cell Danger response is very identical to what we see with operator syndrome. Say what the question was.
Speaker 1:I guess no, no, no, that's great. I mean, it's just, you know, diagnosing that operator syndrome. I'm still kind of digging into that, you know, as a you know. I mean, I think operator syndrome is just as you said, a whole bunch of you know different problems coming together in one messed up human being so that's what. I wanted to say, because there's a new not a new thing on this.
Speaker 3:But there's components to this that need to be recognized and addressed in this space. So there's a fabulous researcher. He's a MD psychiatrist, his name's Dr Bransfield, he's an older gentleman. He does this phenomenal lecture on vector-borne illness and how that affects the brain right, and so he looks at places where vector-borne illnesses are at the highest rate and he specifically pulls up this chart on Afghanistan and how there's 25 prevalent. Like everybody who goes there is pretty much going to get bitten and exposed to these 25.
Speaker 3:And in the US we call it Lyme disease, but Lyme is like a catch-all for all these different vector-borne illnesses. And so what he did was he went through and he started testing people who had zero empathy, rage cycles all the hallmarks of what we see with PTSD and TBI and they had high levels of vector borne illness. He started treating vector borne illness. They started developing empathy again, a lot of their rage went away and things like that.
Speaker 3:But these vector borne illnesses can cross the blood brain barrier and have effect on the neurology. Vector borne illnesses can cross the blood braid barrier and have effect on the neurology. So you partner these blast exposures with vector borne illness and you have like pardon, it's like a shit storm right, like you have all these different things, and that's why we have like we're doing the MERT and we're doing the HBOT and we're doing the stellaganglion blocks and we're doing the ketamine, but something still feels off. That's where we need to bring the functional testing in to like look at what is happening on a cellular level and what viruses or bacteria or parasites are impacting that as well.
Speaker 1:How are you validating those? So I want to talk about your tests. So we work with another that we're aware of another program, dr Mark Gordon. He has some very innovative tests. Of course they're not covered by insurance because he's testing men for estrogen, because that's an indicator of this right and and and he's not. You know, we're working with him on just building awareness because, you know, optimizing brain health we feel before, before you can start, hbot ketamine just just makes the impact of those modalities much, much better. So talk to us about the tests, very interested in what kind of tests you're doing. And then are you able to get insurance coverage for those tests?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so one of my favorite labs I can't believe I'm in a place in my life where I'm like my favorite lab is by a company called Genova, and Genova does some of the most niche cellular function panels that you can imagine and just so happens they're in network with Tricare now. So anybody who comes through that's Tricare, we can get them RTMS if they qualify for the depression parts of that, and then we typically do go ahead and put them in. So we're looking at organic acids, we're looking at heavy metal exposure, we're looking at metabolics, we're looking at methylation.
Speaker 3:If you're interested in methylation, it's one of those things that you know. It's like one of the two pillars of health, but you're really not sure what it is and it's convoluted. So I just wrote a book on it so I can hand it out. We keep it in heavy stock here. You can go on Amazon. It's called A Quick Guide to Methylation. Really breaks it down. But it is one of those pillars of health that we have to get really get synced up. There's a methylation mutation called COMPT and it's actually called the warrior mutation and I would bet that most of you special ops guys have this warrior mutation because you don't feel alive, unless things feel extreme and it affects the way your dopamine breaks down and how your testosterone, different things with your hormones and things like that. And if you, if the comp t mutation gets too out of whack and you're not balancing that with the proper nutrients, it can exacerbate all of these other symptoms what if you get that, uh, that, uh, mother effer gene?
Speaker 1:I mean, does that?
Speaker 3:MTHFR is a part of the methylation cycle yes, and 70% of the population has it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I got that gene deficiency so I got to take folic acid or something like that.
Speaker 3:But you know, like if you went to the doctor with a lot of the symptoms that MTHFR causes, they're going to say, oh, here's this script and that script and that script, when, if you really distill it down, you need a methylated B vitamin blend and you need to olympiate folic acid, and then you're good.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, yeah, but we're using Genova.
Speaker 3:We're using Alates and our doc is great about getting some of the things we need to look at covered through LabCorp. But we try for every veteran that walks in the door. We integrate functional health labs with MERT. And I missed another thing On Wednesdays we do myofascial release. So if you haven't read Dude.
Speaker 1:I just came back. I don't know if you know Sue Heisman, the inventor of MELT, the myofascial, the whole thing. I just came back from a week-long retreat. My wife's one of the few Level 5 instructors for melt in the country, nice, and she's got a new vibrator thing. It's amazing. Instead of rollers and balls, this puppy man, I mean it jams you. If you need an introduction, look up the melt method. It's a myofascial release and the only reason I get excited is that this is one of the few things in my life that's not magic that it really works. I haven't been to a chiropractor in eight years. You know like right now I'm fixing a knee problem with rollers and stuff. I mean, people are so unaware of the benefits of that from an anatomical and a physiological response measure. I mean, man, that is amazing. That's good stuff.
Speaker 3:When you think of fascia, like they said, the science was settled a few years ago and it's inert tissue, it does nothing. But fascia encases everything in your body and it's not inert tissue, it's smart tissue. It like sends the energy signals through your body and now they find that it's rich and like blank stem cells. They can use it to regrow areas that are damaged and things like that. But it also wraps tight, so like a sheet on a bed, if you have damage somewhere it's going to pull in one area and yank in another and we have a lot of chronic pain with trauma, a lot of chronic pain cells. If you haven't read or listened to the Body Keeps Score, I highly recommend it because pain and trauma are closely linked and that trauma settles in the body and it settles in the fascia. So typically around week three we see a trauma reemergence in MERT and so we start them right off the bat. If they're tricurrent, they come in, or if they're an adult and they come in, we try to get them with our occupational therapist so we can bill directly to insurance every Wednesday to start the myofascial release. Because when we say trauma reemergence, somebody thinks, oh, you're sitting in a corner crying. That's not what it is. It could be chronic pain in the body. It could be how that trauma because we all experience trauma differently, we store it differently and we walk through it differently.
Speaker 3:For me, when we opened this clinic, I finally did MERT I left law enforcement on an injury and a PTSD diagnosis and I would say, because I had a special operations husband and because I had a special needs child, it was very easy to self-isolate. I didn't really need to go out a lot because I had these little kids at home and I had a bubble with like three friends. I did work a lot in nonprofit and doing different things like that, but I obviously my PTSD was different than Chris's. Like you know, I would walk into a restaurant and I'd always be watching everybody's hands and I knew that the most normal looking person could just pop off in the you know like something could go wrong and in that situation they're crazy. He's like this big, strong guy. He's like looking for the immediate threat and I'm like everybody's, against the wall.
Speaker 1:Looking at the door.
Speaker 3:Everybody's an immediate threat and I always joke when I tell this story like as a law enforcement officer in a really fast paced like violent area is the same area I grew up in. Literally nobody ever called me to be like. It's my birthday, would you like a cupcake? They all would call for their worst possible moment. They'd want you to end it how they wanted ended expedient, and they hated you the whole time for being there. So there's, you know, a lot that comes with that in terms of psychological conditioning.
Speaker 3:So I did MERT when we first opened cause, I wanted to be authentic and be able to tell people how it felt for me and I had that trauma reemergence at week three and I kept thinking like. I kept thinking like nothing's going to help me, like I feel. My PTSD made me feel like there were no highs and lows, that I was kind of in the middle. So I never felt really happy and I never felt really sad, but I always kind of wavered in there and then I was always in service. I have, you know, we have quite a few children and I have this husband that was having all these things, but we were finally in a place in life where I could try the MERT and try to see what it would do. And it was amazing because now I feel beyond that, like I feel highs and I can feel lows, and I feel fully engaged with my family again.
Speaker 1:Wow. So how do you plan? Can you get HBOT and ketamine covered under TRICARE VA as well, or is that still out of pocket? I know that's a challenge for a lot of vets. Yeah, still a gangly in blocks too. Man, Nobody's covering that except Task Force. Dagger will help. The Donovan and Banks Foundation will pay for still SGBs for veterans too.
Speaker 3:Yeah, task Force Agri will help with the ketamine here and HBOT is cash pay. But you know we can super bill and if you have one of the conditions under it you can likely get reimbursed. We don't have it yet where it's on its way.
Speaker 1:No, no, super billing is great and you know, with ketamine too, you know I've looked at the business model for a while. The medicine costs nothing, right. It's all about the overhead, right. And if you need anybody to dial in man, I'm on my eighth company. So if you need any help with the business side of that, let me know.
Speaker 1:I talk to people all the time. I don't want any money but I'm very interested in something like this scaling, because you have, you know, 80% of it covered by insurance and we constantly talk to veterans like I know, people that have mortgaged their homes, you know, to treat this right, to treat their brain, because ketamine, hbod, stellate, ganglion blocks, brain supplementation programs are all the tests right, that's you know that's. You know $15,000 that they're out of pocket because they can't get it back. Then all the psychedelics which we're seeing, you know huge improvements with veterans out there. Psilocybin, ayahuasca they haven't done all of it. You know to walk that walk Plus. I needed it, man, I had my own.
Speaker 1:You know TBI related crap, but you know that's just another. You're touching ketamine, so you're looking at this out-of-the-box approach to brain health that looks at you know a lot of it. I mean, who's looking at heavy metals for crying out loud. I mean, that's amazing Methylation. This is the first time I'm hearing anybody and I know this space very well that's looking at these other issues that could be impacting our veterans. Besides, you know, you know he'll just be the healing the brain outside, you know, at their expense or the typical. You know, hey, here's a bag of drugs man, go, go, go, go wreck your marriage.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly All, by the grace of God. Right Like that. We've been able to bring together all these things that we had to like piece together for ourselves. We're just trying to create something where, if we can't be the resource for it here, we can like look at a resource something somewhere else. I want to bring up something else that nobody else is talking about. So many of you guys are on the CPAP machines, right, and they say you have to be on the CPAP machine.
Speaker 3:You'll be on the CPAP machine for the rest of your life, prove your sleep quality. We have a dentist here that we refer to that does a device called the ALF device and you know there's a whole book on Pattinger's cats and they fed these cats like basically standard American diet for two generations and within two generations they developed breathing disorders and they became infertile. So this guy in Northern Virginia and you can get these other places they designed this device. It's called the ALF device and it naturally expands the upper airway which causes the bottom jaw to come forward. So it does two things it can help you prevent having to be on a CPAP and it also tones the vagal response. So if you're constantly in fight or flight you just start to feel kind of numb and you don't know you're in fight or flight anymore, it's just your normal. But when you tone that vagal response you see all these people jumping in and out of cold plunges. They're probably Comp T mutated. But also it's helping to tone that vagal response Right.
Speaker 3:So when they put the ALF device in my mouth when I left law enforcement I had to have all of this cut back and reset and I had a breakthrough here and they did some nice work on my face and they redid my airway. So when they did the CT of my face for this ALF device, my airway was great but my PTSD was still kind of rocky. So for two days I felt like I was having an out-of-body experience. It didn't hurt, but I couldn't focus on anything else except for what was happening in my mouth. It felt really weird.
Speaker 3:So I was at this neuropsych conference and one of the psychiatric nurse practitioners was like, did you just get an ALF device put in? And I was like, yes, she goes. Well, you must have had low vagal tone because you're not going to have it anymore. And she was right. It was like magic. You know, after that my vagal tone, and I always say, like I never wanted to get rid of the hypervigilance, Like I like it. Well, I want to know what's going on, but I did want to get rid of the cortisol with it and between MERT and this ALF device, that's gone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's, that's interesting, because I tell you they put me on that CPAP. Then they said I had, you know, blood pressure problems. This is what all you know. So they gave me some blood pressure pills. They didn't tell you, it messes with Mr Happy. And then you figure that out and I was like that's it, I'm running five miles a day. So I chucked those things away and I started running and I got off that. But you know, nobody should be on a CPAP if they can get off it.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean. Those things are horrible. What's important, though, is that you're getting rich oxygen to the brain at night while you're sleeping, and doing something like an orthodontic appliance, like an ALF device or something similar, opens that airway enough so that you're getting enough oxygen to the brain at night so the brain can do the repairing cycle that it needs and wants to do while you're sleeping.
Speaker 1:And that's an implant.
Speaker 3:It's not an implant, it's a wire device and it's actually really comfortable. If you don't have PTSD it's probably comfortable right from the get-go. But it like wraps around your back and around your front and it actually repositions the way your tongue sits in your mouth so that you're like I'm very like wide across here and I always had good teeth before. But it expands that upper airway, allows the jaw to come forward and expands the airway back here so that you can get that oxygen rich environment without a CPAP. While you're sleeping at night we see Dr Bronson Bronson Family Dentistry. It's him and his dad are the dentists there. They're very holistic dentists.
Speaker 1:Lovely and you Do, you wear it at night.
Speaker 3:It never comes out All the time. Oh, so they put it. They pop it in and out every six weeks, clean it, adjust it, expand it a little bit more, but it's not uncomfortable, like dentures, like braces, yeah. Yeah, but it doesn't hurt like braces, it doesn't cost like braces.
Speaker 1:Can you get a tricare cover if you've got a diagnosis? Well, I don't know if Tricare does dental, but they might. No, tricare doesn't do dental, yeah, man, I mean, well, they'll they if it's because it's not really a dental problem, it's a, it's a CPAP, right, and I've got five chins problem. You know, I mean, I don't know, I just uh, that might be a different way to put another thing on it. But look, um, this, this is amazing. Here's what I would like you to do, because, number one, I want to know more about this, I want to really dig into this, because you know we're, and I would love to invite you to our summit on repetitive brain trauma in September.
Speaker 1:The third and fourth Love to have you come down and maybe do a presentation. I think we have a 20-minute slide open on this. We have one day devoted to diagnosis and treatment, as we spend half the day on vets, half the day on kids and athletes. The next day is we are looking for innovation in the brain treatment space, because you know it's so dire. So we'd like to extend that invitation, but let's wait for Chris to come back on, because he keeps popping it out. I don't know where he's at right now. Sorry, let's wait for Chris to come back on, cause he keeps popping it out.
Speaker 3:I don't know where he's at right now. He's sorry.
Speaker 1:Let's wait for him to come back in, and then I would love you guys to talk about yourselves right now. What do you got going on next? Where can people find you? All right, if they have questions about everything you got going on. I mean, what's Marsha and Chris got you know planned for the next year so that you know brag about yourself?
Speaker 3:How can they find you on social media, linkedin, all that stuff that we all got to do and your clinic's in Virginia, or is it going to be in New Hampshire? Well, we are in Northern Virginia now. We've been here since 2016. So the clinic is in Northern Virginia. We're in Ashburn. So over the next year we're looking at opening a second location in Alexandria, doing a lot of the things that we're doing here.
Speaker 3:So right outside of Washington DC, 15 minutes to every base and Pentagon there really try to like get into that community and help these guys out. I'm finishing my MSW, which would make me a clinical social worker. I'm doing a fellowship in pediatric neuropsych. I plan on going right into my PhD in neuroscience and behavior. I'll be here doing it all. During the time I'll be seeing really specifically special operations, families and first responders. We're doing a lot of work on the back end, trying to get grants so that first responders can get covered by some of these therapy modalities as well.
Speaker 3:You know there's a whole. I have a brother who's a fireman, who he really, like my husband and my son, are my why, but he's right there behind them. You know there's a whole level of toxin exposure that happens there and repetitive editry. We all shoot Chris and I shoot Chris shoots competition. He's still a trainer. You know he's doing these competitions but he shoots in enclosed ranges. Now there's a whole bunch coming out about, you know, the low impact, high volume, right, and so we're working on different things to help try to mitigate that. Chris is writing a book on his experience with TBI and PTSD and his recovery through that. If he if his bandwidth wasn't so bad today, he probably would have talked more about that journey through that.
Speaker 1:Um, we'll just have to have you back on, man. I mean, this has been an amazing conversation and um you know number one, no, which Chris was here.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you both, uh, for your dedication to each other. Okay, um, god has challenged you, you know, with a, you know with a remarkable set of circumstances, and I'm sure you've heard the term post-traumatic growth, right, ptsd, post-traumatic whatever. I don't believe in that. You know trauma stuff, right, and you guys have taken, you know, a PTSD, a post-traumatic syndrome moment, and turned it into growth, into service for others, which is, you know, the Lord's highest calling, and those that serve others have a purpose, a good purpose, and I want to bless you both on that journey and let you know that we're there for you. This is, these are the kinds of stories that I just, oh God, I love to hear because of what it means to our veterans and what it means to you, too, right, that both of you have been through you know, you know, tbi, ptsd, found a way back, not to mention, you know, you know, healed your child, yeah, into you know, a solution that, honestly, I think the military probably should look at adopting, because everything you're talking about, even ketamine, is available, right, we're not talking some of the other psychedelics, and even, you know, mdma and psilocybin are not far behind on being approved. I don't believe. I think they're coming. Ayahuasca and Ibogaine is still a bit out there, but there are absolutely use cases for those. Yeah, they're a little bit deeper into the chain there, but anyways, may the Lord bless you both.
Speaker 1:This is an amazing story. I want to get this out and thank you both for your journey and your dedication to our service members, first responders and anything the Mack Parkman Foundation can do to put the word out. Let us know and we'll go ahead. And, absolutely as a matter of fact, we're having a massive fundraiser at the Army-Navy game in Baltimore for veterans' mental health. Would love to invite you to come in. We're having Fuel the Band as our opening act. Yeah, it's going to be crazy, dude, it's going to be absolutely insane, and we'd love to have Chris and you there.
Speaker 3:Oh my gosh, we'd love that. That'd be so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, and guess what? I'm going to turn you on to the lead singer, who needs to talk to you, okay.
Speaker 1:We're working with him right now. But this is how the Lord works, man, so, and? But this is how the Lord works, man. So look, take care of each other. Keep that. Get that clinic going, get that second one. I want to know all about it. I could probably help you. Maybe you know, I don't know. You know, look out for some investment money. You know there's people out there in the space the Fox grants just opened up. You know there's a pretty good. I can send you the link to that. You're definitely, definitely in the space for that. And then our job is to any any of the material you need to focus and help on repetitive brain trauma. Please let us know, cause that's our focus is, you know, identifying those veterans suffering from that, getting them diagnosed, validated, send them to the VA for disability but, more importantly, get them treatment that works, get them off those drugs.
Speaker 3:So thank you so much. Well, we're Brain Treatment Center Ashburn. We're so happy to be here. Thank you for this opportunity. We appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Oh, a pleasure. Well, thank you so much, chris. I'm yelling at you because you're out there somewhere. Marcia, thank you so much To our audience. Another great show man. What a great story To all of you.
Speaker 1:Make sure you get on the website. Download the book the only book for parents. Had to write it in my grief. Get it, it's free. Become aware, become informed. Download our app on the Google and Apple store HeadSmart, the best concussion app on the market right now. And don't forget our summit on repetitive brain trauma, september 3rd and 4th in Tampa. The US SOCOM commander is going to open for us. Frank Larkin is speaking. We've got an amazing lineup of speakers on repetitive blast exposure, repetitive head impacts and how to treat and diagnose it. Okay, remember to like us. Pass it around on social media. We're out there on X Facebook. Get us as much exposure as you can. It helps all of us on this. And remember, you got one melon and your kids only have one melon. Take care of it. We'll see you soon. God bless you all and we'll see you next time on Broken Brains with Bruce Parker. Take care you, thank you.