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.
Produced by Security Halt Media
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman
Dr. Robert Baric on Concussions, TBI, and Holistic Brain Health for Veterans and Athletes
🎧 In this eye-opening episode of Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman, we sit down with Dr. Robert Baric, a leading expert in concussion care and brain wellness, to uncover the hidden crisis of repetitive brain trauma affecting veterans, athletes, and everyday people.
Dr. Baric breaks down:
- 🧠 The long-term effects of untreated concussions and subconcussive impacts
- 🩺 Why early intervention is critical to prevent permanent brain dysfunction
- 🥦 The shocking link between gut health and cognitive recovery
- ⚠️ Why TBI (Traumatic Brain Injury) is often ignored outside of sports arenas
- 🧘 How neurofeedback, nutrition, and holistic care are changing the game in brain injury treatment
This isn’t just about sports. It’s about how millions are living with undiagnosed or untreated brain trauma—and what we can do to change that narrative.
If you're a veteran, parent, coach, or mental health advocate, this episode delivers crucial insights and actionable resources for protecting the brain and improving lives.
📲 LIKE, SHARE, and SUBSCRIBE on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts to join the movement for smarter brain health.
Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman is sponsored by The Mac Parkman Foundation
Support The Mac Parkman Foundation by donating today!
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https://www.mpfact.com/headsmart-app/
Follow Dr. Baric today!
Website: https://myconcussiondr.com/
Produced by Security Halt Media
Hey folks, welcome to another edition of Broken Brains with your host, bruce Parkman, sponsored by the Mack Parkman Foundation, the national voice for repetitive brain trauma in the United States of America, focusing on the issues of repetitive head impacts and repetitive blast exposure and what it's doing to the brains of our athletes and our veterans, and how we're going to address the critical epidemic of mental illness that's coming from that. On this show here we reach out to the most amazing guests researchers, scientists, athletes, parents, coaches, victims of these issues because right now, the phenomenon of sub-incussive trauma and its impact on brains is poorly understood. As a matter of fact, it's not taught in any of our doctor, nursing or psychiatric programs out there, and we're trying to address that. And that's what makes this podcast so important, because it's here you're going to get the information that you need to make informed decisions to protect the ones you love. And when you can see mental illness from veterans or athletes or people that you may know, you know that you might be able to help them with the knowledge that you're gaining on this show Today, another incredible guest.
Speaker 1:So proud to have this guy on our show. I met him at an amazing event, the Sports Philanthropic Network event hosted by Roy Kessel in Chicago about a month ago Now. We had amazing conversations, amazing product, amazing background Saw on it. He came on the show. So Dr Robert Barrett isa, dedicated advocate for health and wellness with over 25 years of experience in the field. His professional journey has been marked by a commitment to addressing the root causes of health challenges rather than simply alleviating symptoms Very big problem with our medical community today. In 2016, he introduced neurofeedback therapy to Wes Carey, marking a significant development in holistic healthcare. This innovative approach, brought to life through MyBrainDR, reflects his dedication to remaining at the forefront of healthcare advancements into proving patient well-being.
Speaker 1:Dr Baric holds certifications in acupuncture, nutrition, pediatric chiropractic care, as well as various therapeutic techniques. His expertise spans diverse chiropractic methods and therapies, all integral components of our holistic concussion care approach. However, his motivation is the driving force behind his work. Today, dr Barak regularly encounters individuals whose lives have been deeply impacted by concussions, understanding his significant physical, emotional and cognitive toll these injuries can exact. This awareness fuels his commitment to proactive and comprehensive concussion care, beginning with his contribution to the board of the Brain Injury Association of North Carolina, and his underlying philosophy is straightforward by addressing concussion concerns at the earliest stages, even when they appear minor. That is what holds the potential to reduce both short-term and long-term effects. Dr Berg's central focus is not only on treating concussions, but guiding individuals towards a path of recovery and overall well-being All issues that we try to address and promote on this website, and that's why it's so exciting to have you on the show, dr Berg. You know what a great thing that the Lord put us together at that conference, man. It was a great time.
Speaker 2:We had a good time and Roy did an amazing conference and great to see great people there and meet you, and so definitely it's a springboard to awareness that this has been your trumpet after your personal story that you shared. And you know it's pandemic because if you have a brain, you know it takes a cumulative blows and it's not just the big ones, as we all know.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir, and I sat in on your presentation to the community at large while we were there and I was overwhelmed by your knowledge, your background and impressed by what you're bringing to the fight. So what got you into? I mean, obviously your background is very well-rounded. You focused on a lot of areas of holistic healing, but why now this focus on concussions? What's made you pivot towards this particular area of?
Speaker 2:emphasis. So in the neurofeedback world, I would tell me about your anxiety, tell me about your depression, tell me about your attention, tell me about your suicidal thoughts, tell me about and oh, it started five years ago, and, OK, it started five years ago. Well, what started before that? So in my histories with hundreds of thousands of people, I would start proactively saying well, tell me about your head injuries before that, 10 years before. And they'd say, oh, I didn't have any, but there was an auto accident, or there was a, or there was a, or there was a, or there was a whatever. And, bruce, you and I are on the a hundred percent.
Speaker 2:It is not the one head injury. Maybe that's the one that pushes us over, but it's the repetitive, it's the football practice, it's the heading, the soccer balls, it's the, it's the end, and and and again. There's a great book body keeps the score, but it's when you fall off. You know, you hit your head when you're eight months old, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then and then. But we get to that breaking point, right, we get to that breaking point. And now we get these, these symptoms that oftentimes are so you know separated from. I have a headache and I can't see. And you know, in that talk TBI is totally wrong and everybody says TBI is a traumatic brain injury and it's not. Tbi is a traumatic body injury. So the letters are correct. But the heart issues and the GI issues and the mental anxiety, depression, the head issues, the joint issues, the testosterone issues, the bone issues, the GI microbiome issues, those are all coming post head injuries.
Speaker 2:And until I can be a master carpenter and repair somebody's house after a fire but say I got to the point where I said, heck, if I just gave everybody a fire extinguisher, I want to put myself out of business. I want you to deal with it while it's in your kitchen and not because you lost your roof. But what happens in my house analogy? Okay, you have a fire, heaven forbid. You get out the fire, people come, they put the fire out, but what happens?
Speaker 2:Most of the time you move out, you can't move out of your body. So you have to live with this house, with this mold, with this leaks, with this all this stuff the rest of your life gets called your body, your brain. So that was my big push, both personally with my children, that I saw head injuries affecting them and others, to how do we not only educate the world and understand TBI as a traumatic body injury, so then we're able to address those separate systems that are failing, but also how do we create a fire extinguisher that it's the next TBI that might put you over the edge. So work five years, four and a half years on getting a formulation. So it's your fire extinguisher for your brain. Is it in?
Speaker 1:the sports field.
Speaker 2:Is it in the pre-event? Is it Yep?
Speaker 1:No, no, I mean, but let's go back, because you're an educated professional and you said I saw how these sports impacts were affecting my children. This is one of the key areas that we try. I mean, obviously, I couldn't see it. Okay, my son was suffering. You know I couldn't see it. Okay, my son was suffering. You know, I missed the apathy. I missed, you know, some of the lack of energy that he used to have. You know, I attributed that to him being 17-year-old, getting ready to join the Army, becoming an adult, wanting to spend more time alone. I completely overlooked this. What was it that you saw? That you know and this is for the parents that listen to this podcast that you said wait a minute, there's a little bit more here than just, you know, a concussion, or you know, or you know they might've been sick, or attributing a certain symptom to something else other than sports. What was it that you saw?
Speaker 2:Well, again, we see the secondary symptom, we see the anxiety, we see what happened to the grades in school, what happened to the ability to focus and, yes, there's a lot of hormones that go through the youth. But you know, you ask three questions. You try to get to the right answer. I mean, in modern healthcare people don't have the right questions, it's whack-a-mole. You have a symptom, here's of this, here's of that, here's of this. No one's trying to get to. You know where's the hole in the roof? What's the cause?
Speaker 1:And that's the. I think that's one of them. So yeah, I mean, I saw it personally.
Speaker 2:No, go ahead, sir. My bad, I mean. Currently I have three of my kids taken concussion 911 right now. One of them had a, you know, a simple in a closet. Something small fell on them, but it's their 18th head bump. And the other two were riding an all-terrain vehicle and it rolled over. And they're not being stupid, it's just the trail kind of disintegrated under the vehicle. It rolled over. So I've got three kids on this. They're like dad, I can't function without this. I mean, I miss it for a day and I'm a zombie. So you got to deal with the little fires.
Speaker 2:So then the brain doesn't get all gooped up, the glymphatics fail, et cetera, et cetera. So why I got into this? I got into this because I'm one person right and people fly in. Last year we had people from six continents that were patients. I can't take care of them and, sadly, what's the standard thing? Bruce? We think you had a concussion. You go to your doctor and he does a few things with your eyes, which is crappy. He's not even using the best technology and they're not even using the best Amsterdam working documents, which is the gold standard. But nobody knows about it. But it's been out for three years now, and so okay, well, go home and stay in the dark. That doesn't work.
Speaker 1:So, on the talk about those, what'd you say was the gold standard? What's that I mean? I missed that.
Speaker 2:So the Amsterdam. So basically what the smart people in the world have done is in this field. So you have different groups of people. You have the scientists, the researchers, and they're super important but they're not clinicians. And so you have the researchers and scientists have all come together and some clinicians, and in the Amsterdam working documents they come out and they do working papers on the best treatment for acute concussion, and the prior to that was the Berlin version and then Amsterdam's the latest and I think there's another one coming up this summer.
Speaker 2:I'm not exactly sure. I haven't kept up on that, but they have. You have to look at, you know, these indicators and these are the best treatments for an acute concussion, and nobody follows them, I mean. But I guess from the provider side they don't realize that if you're not following the latest guidelines you're liable. You are liable for. Well, that's what I learned 18 years ago. Great Technology's moved on. You're not even using it, but you are giving somebody a good go back out on that field. But it's called the Amsterdam Working Documents. I can send you a link on that after the podcast and it's a technical, wonky article but it gives people guidelines that the experts aren't even following the quote. The quote experts, the people that you take your most precious thing to that, your child. What happened, doctor? They hit their head. Can you tell me what's going on? Going on, I don't know. I mean that they don't have a bleed in their head, great, now what? Right?
Speaker 1:yeah no, and I think this, what you're addressing right now, doc, is the reason that both of us are in business right now is because the knowledge is out there but it's not being. Either it's not but, to your point, it's not being used, or people don't even know it exists, or the knowledge you know, like the. My problem with the research and scientific community is that they're they're very smart people, like you say, and they make very, very they make groundbreaking discoveries, but then they stay in their little research box, like we did with CTE, and we looked at football players and looked at adults and we never thought about what, what is this? What's the same contact sports doing to the developing brain of a child? And so those researchers and scientists are.
Speaker 1:I mean, if we could take some of the discoveries that were just coming out now that are in these papers. They're not marketing people right, or they're not incentivized, either through their research grants, to promote the knowledge and work with other people. But, as you know, there's a lot of silo and ego in this space, but the only people that are getting hurt are the children and the veterans and the athletes, where this, this, these, this, these discoveries don't uh, you know, don't make it out. So I mean, but you know, at the same time, talk about the you know, so you're obviously you've you've developed a product and talk about the you know, so you're obviously you've developed a product. What was the path to identifying the need, the gap for this product? And then what does your product offer those that are having issues or that are simply participating in sports or activities, like horseback riding, that have a significant amount of exposure to both subconcussive and possibly concussive trauma?
Speaker 2:So, bruce, there's a point I want to add in here. It's super critical. Only 11 to 14% of all head injuries occur on the sporting field. So 85,. Is it military? Is it an auto accident? Is it in your garage? Is it in your swimming pool? Is it in your bathroom? That's where 85 plus percent of all head injuries come from. So, yes, it's the Sunday football season. Oh my gosh, you should not be back in the game. We see that Five, 10 million people watch it. But when you're in your kitchen and you stand up and you hit into a door, and again it's not your head bump, it's your denied head bump. That's been added. So here's what happens Again.
Speaker 2:I think my secret sauce is I have the ability to think like a scientist and a researcher, but then I have the opposite side of a clinician and investigator. There's three things that fail in a head bump. Number one is is your brain weighs 1% of your body, consumes 25% of your calories. That goes to heck. Your brain metabolically goes to crap. Number two in your, in our body we have a system of detoxification called the lymphatics, and in the brain there's glial cells with a G. So they just put a G in front of lymphatics, it's now the glymphatics, and that's your toxic waste hauler of the brain. The blood takes the nice stuff away. The glymphatics take the crap away. They take the harsh chemicals away. Those fail, they fail. The trash backs up. The nuclear waste stays there and it hardens, and this happens in a head injury. And then the third is is we get some level of inflammation. Now it's not like you're, you're pushed your ankle and it's the size of a grapefruit, it's. You get some level of low grade inflammation and the blood brain barrier gets compromised. So there's all these metabolic cascades that occur from that head bump.
Speaker 2:But here's the point. I like to tell this real quick story. And it says hey, you entered into this drawing and you got a two-week, all expense paid, to fly to Hawaii for you and your family, and you're on your way out the door, on your way to the airport, and a tree falls on your power line in your house. So you're out, enjoying, enjoying, enjoying, and you come back and what happened over those two weeks? Well, your refrigerator and your freezer all melted and it's all over your floor and your hardwood floor in your kitchen is all now warped and full of mud or mold. All your house has been at high humidity in the summer of Florida and North Carolina, whatever, and it's full of mold now. So you come back to this utter mess. You say it wasn't worth it because it's now going to take me insurance claims, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, to try to start rebuilding this. But what if you had a generator that kicked in and ran until you got back? Well, that's my metabolic analogy.
Speaker 2:Concussion 911 is basically. It addresses those three things. It addresses the energy deficiency, it addresses the drain, the glymphatic drains, and it addresses getting natural anti-inflammatories into the head to not turn off the anti-inflammation but to let it keep, prevented from getting to be a runaway scenario. We want inflammation. Inflammation can bring more blood flow. Blood flow can accelerate healing in that damaged area. But too much is not good and too little is not good, just right. So that is why you know I want to give you a fire extinguisher and then when you have that little kitchen fire, you have a little mess to clean up. You don't get the long-term residuals that manifest as anxiety, depression or suicide or GI issues or cardiac output issues or et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1:No. And to your comment on 85% yeah, when we take head injuries, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of people that understand that those head injuries continue to exacerbate the problem, but most of the brain damage that's done by repetitive trauma occurs on sports fields. Okay, that's where, most, because of the repetitive nature, repetitive brain trauma, is just not really found in society, unless you're being abused, playing contact sports or you're in a military occupation where that is part of your job and that is. Those are the areas that you know we look forward to address. But to your point and I want to dial into this too is that, on top of those issues which we address on this podcast, are those other TBIs, that other 85% of those head injuries that occur, that don't make things any better or, in any case, might be the only issue that you're addressing with your protocol.
Speaker 1:Where did we go wrong as a society where products like yours are necessary? Why don't we prioritize brain health? I mean, I don't understand why I go to the doctor and he taps my leg and he checks my heart and makes me breathe, but he never asked me what's going on up here and you so eloquently stated how the brain injury is a body injury. Right, you injure your brain. You've just harmed about everything that could possibly go wrong with your body and you listed all that, those events. So I mean so I guess, two questions is how do we make brain health a priority, which is, you know, probably something we could dive in towards the end? But what are the gaps in treatments that make your protocol that you know that that a requirement like it exists? Why, what? What is where? Are current modalities and treatment plans failing people that have either had a TBI or a series of TBIs, or are suffering from their long-term neuroinflammation as a result of playing contact sport?
Speaker 2:Okay, so you asked a bunch of questions, so I agree with you 100%, if you're in the military and if you're in the football, I'm not bumping my head every day.
Speaker 2:But those young men and women and athletes, they're running around the fields, fall sports. They're bumping their head every day. But those, those, those young men and women and athletes, they're running around the fields, fall sports. They're bumping their head every day. And maybe it's just they're not like two Rams on the side of a mountain in Colorado, but you're still getting head bumps. Right, you're still getting head bumps. We won't even go with MMA. That's just crazy to me. Boxing, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like kids boxing. It's like come on, man.
Speaker 2:Yeah what? I bang your head until it swells, it pushes your brainstem out and you pass out. That's good, so so, but no, it's so, it's, it's. If I'm going into a high risk event, I want to metabolically protect my brain. So people are using these for my product pre, pre event. When you're going out to the artillery range, you take this all. You drink this all. You optimize your brain metabolically to the best of your ability. Yes, you're still going to have to shoot those whatever. 155 millimeter I'm making that up. I don't know the size of these cannons that go boom 155 is a big one, but yeah, 120.
Speaker 1:You know it's interesting real quick, as I was at a conference two weeks ago and I was on a brain health thing and the military now calculates with PSI and various weapon systems by the amount of PSI and then they determine, based on the OSHA standard of 4 PSI, what are the safe amount of rounds that you can shoot. We have a mortar called a 120 millimeter mortar. It's a big mortar. You drop it down, it pops up. Well, guess what? That mortar creates so much concussive pressure that the recommended amount of rounds that you can use safely is zero.
Speaker 2:And our people are doing this every day, right.
Speaker 1:They have to, though, right. Training for war.
Speaker 2:Right. But so that's the so, so right. So of course you want to try to reduce risk and again, you're huge in our conversation about how do you minimize head contact on the field prior to an age, a super smart. But again, there's certain scenarios when you're playing football on Friday or Saturday or Sunday, or whenever you are, you are at higher risk. You've got to prevent your brain. So so you ask there, ask. There's a bunch of things you hit on and let me kind of quickly get through them.
Speaker 2:Why do we see this now, before then before? Okay, essential fatty acids. Most people have a horrible ratio of essential fatty acids, so their brain cells are less squishy and think of that as like friability or pliability. You're walking through the woods on a beautiful day and you say, oh, look at this Mountain Dew bottle that somebody dropped. You pick it up and it crumbles in your hand. Well, that plastic is so brittle. That's friability, right. So the same thing occurs in the brain is partially hydrogenated soybean oil. The same thing occurs in the brain is partially hydrogenated soybean oil. Our kids' whole generation, the last 30, 40 years, has been Crisco and partially hydrogenated soybean oil, and now they're trying to get it out. That changes the squishiness of the cells, and the less squishy they are, the higher their injuries they have. So that is why I think we're seeing this more.
Speaker 2:In addition, I mean I'm 55 and I'm six foot and probably 160 pounds. I would have been on a larger size of a football field. I didn't play in high school. My father said no. But now I mean you got monsters there and these monsters they're hitting these weights. So again, you hit so many great points. You got the real world where these people have to have exposures. You got to nutritionally, metabolically protect the brain before exposure. But I think, yeah, keep going.
Speaker 1:No, no, I mean there's no doubt that there is a requirement for products like yours because our football players got to play football, they got bills to pay, right, or they got a scholarship to achieve. And there's other ways that we can look at minimizing their total aggregate amount by taking the contact out of practice. Wait until 14 before we start exposing them to, you know, some cuts of trauma. I say 18, but we're not going to get football at high school, you know. But if we remove the contact from practice, that's 80% of the exposure. Then, when they are exposed, products like yours are going to help them right, they're going to optimize them for the impacts that they're going to suffer because, like you said, the artillery guy, he's got to shoot those rounds right.
Speaker 1:The Green Berets and SEALs, they got to go in that building, you know. And Rangers are blowing things up all the time, infantry the whole nine yards. And we're finding out now that our fighter jet pilots and our special boat operators, absolutely Just from the shaking of their head, hitting waves or slamming down on carriers, is causing the same kind of pilots is insane.
Speaker 1:The damage is different to the brain, but the fact that the ability need to normalize or improve brain health or the environment is absolutely paramount to surviving these occupations and not having mental health issues when you retire.
Speaker 2:Yeah, correct. I mean, again, your brain is a cumulative of all your bumps and bruises and if you can mitigate and reduce when you have those exposures or those injuries, if you could mitigate the damage and have it far less, they don't add up right. So you can now make them isolated things as compared to cumulative of the one you had six months ago and six years ago and two practices ago. Really again, my, my, I was pulled to here because I, if somebody has a brain injury, you know you can manage it, but you're never going to get them right.
Speaker 2:You could improve their quality of life, you could get them back to a closer to normal, but if you follow them for 40 years and this jump to came out of Finland this year the kids that have a head injury in sports and Finland's a very unique bubble. Finland is a very homogenized, socialized medicine, so it's not like you're jumping between Cigna and United Blue Cross, blue Shield, blah, blah, blah. They can do that. If you get a head injury of not even a big magnitude in Finland as a child, you have a 15% less likelihood of going to college. That's insanity. That came out this year. So your whole socioeconomic potential has changed because, whatever, you fell backwards on your chair in fourth grade.
Speaker 1:It's probably the reason I had to join the army. Then I didn't go to college, right? Besides, my dad told me to get the hell out of the house. But no, to your point. And I've been to Finland, man. It is a crazy insulated culture. My nephew married a Finnish woman, but you would figure in that environment. There were access to data and be able to follow him. So that's what it showed, and again, that's 2025.
Speaker 2:That's 2025. But we had a really big sample size bubble, right. Oh, I did six people, great, six people, that's great. But again, it's nice, but it's not looking at a society of four million. You can't no-transcript. They fall, they hit their head. We got to get that brain back online to keep them independent. So, again, it's as much as I want to focus on kids and that's super, duper important, they have the most years I want to keep everybody independent and if you have a brain, all the brains work metabolically the same. But if we can address those three things and the joy of it.
Speaker 2:It's a stupid, silly stick. It's a powder. You open up, you put in a drink, you drink it. You drink it, depending on weight, 10 to 14 days. Interestingly, we just finished with a athletic director's conference where everybody talked with us. I mean, I felt bad for every person that was, every other vendor that was there and everyone was like you can get my kids back into school quicker, so that kid who gets a football injury on Friday, you can nutritionally protect his brain so he's able to manage school on Monday, and that's what the data shows. So otherwise, you miss two weeks of school while you're recovering, that's great, because you're on a low electronic. You know the standard. Go home and hide in the dark, great. But what about school? School, don't stop for you. So now I'm two weeks behind. I'm not catching up. So I've dropped the grade in that, if I ever learned it at all. Ok, yes, yes.
Speaker 1:No, no, no To your point. I mean. That is that. I mean that's super important because you know kids are in school for school. They're not in school to play sports and unfortunately a lot of parents and a lot of children, that's their identities. They're wrapped up, gosh. You take these kids out of sports and they are beside themselves. And I think part of our issue is going back to prioritizing what school is for. And sports, you know. You know are there for sports benefits and sports, you know, are there for sports benefits. And eventually you know, get your college and scholarship and everything knocked out. But we've got to make them safer. And to your point, you know, gosh, I mean, just think if every parent knew that if their kid got a head bump, they had a 15% chance of going to college. And that's what I was talking about. This is the information that's out there that if parents would know, they could make better decisions. And that doesn't preclude the need for your product, because kids are going to fall off bicycles, they're going to end up playing sports anyways. I mean they are right. And then you've got an entire.
Speaker 1:The issue of brain health and brain optimization is an absolute driving requirement for that society If we're going to succeed as requirement for you know that society, if we're going to succeed as a society. I mean, just think of the incarcerated personnel that we just did a study in Florida. Eighty three percent of incarcerated men have had four point three TBIs, right, Major head impacts. A lot of them have a history of contact sports or abuse from parents. And yet, you know, our jails unfortunately don't offer anything but bars and bad food.
Speaker 1:When I mean just, for example right, you know you're talking about, we can put these men on a lifetime of very expensive drugs, right, pharmaceutical drugs and all this other thing which everybody wants to put kids on right. Because the reason, one of the reasons that they're looking at your modality is that the kid's showing some signs of mental health, not just playing sports. The parents don't even know what the sports are doing to their kid. All of a sudden, hey, I got a problem, but they don't even know it's brain related. So we got a whole can of worms to open there. But just in our incarcerated, I'm just saying you know the market for your product from a brain health perspective is. So talk to us about the studies that you've done with this product. Who have you worked with in the past and some of the success stories that you've seen with the concept of optimizing brain health for the oncoming issue of some kind of trauma and concussive.
Speaker 2:So a little bit of information and I'll get to that question. Metabolically, within the first 30 minutes of that head injury, metabolic failures start to occur. So time is critical. You need the fire extinguisher underneath the sink so when you got that fire on the stove or oven or whatever, you put it out. Then you don't go on Amazon and get it three days later or run out to Walmart and buy it.
Speaker 2:Number one, number two Bruce, me and my medical team vetted hundreds of articles, probably even to the point of thousands, because everybody was staying in their silo. They checked this one ingredient, this one ingredient and we're going to see if this makes a change. And a lot of the research actually came out of the military. Hey, and this one ingredient, if taken, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And their designs were poor, because they're giving you again the fire extinguisher analogy. Well, they tried a fire extinguisher a year after they had a fire. It didn't get to do anything, so they set that up.
Speaker 2:So we only have case studies. At our stage. We are trying to pair with schools and universities to say, hey, let's use this and compare your 24 data to 25 data. Let's look at your athletic injuries, your head injuries, and how quickly that person got back to class, how quickly they recovered of course, how quickly they got on the field. But we can't do a sham study. We're going to give two people a concussion of 18 newtons or whatever newtons, and one we're going to give a placebo and one we're going to give a control. Can't do that. But we can look retrospectively. So we're actively. You know, let's look at old numbers. Let's look at hey, in the 24, 25 football season or sports season, you had 80 head injuries and you had 300 days missed to school. Well, you take this for a year. Well, we had still 80 injuries, but we only have 20 days missed to school. So we've gone from 300 to 20. That's giant and we're in conversations with organizations, but it's new, right, and that's not the way my daddy did it.
Speaker 1:My daddy didn't do it that way, so I can't do it that way. People hate change yeah, no, I feel your pain on that one boss. People hate change yeah, no, I feel your pain on that one boss.
Speaker 2:I mean, we have a 23 page white paper and I'll give it to people and nobody and I don't care who's how smart you are, nobody has come to me and said this is the dumbest thing I've ever heard of. You know what I hear 99% of the time. Why didn't somebody think about this earlier? I hear that it's like well, so you're still going to, you're going to use it, and they're going to like we're going to, we're going to do what we did last year, but that didn't work for the last 30 years, so we're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, and maybe we can work on some grants together. We can get a little bit more support because there's some other. I just became aware of a product out in Australia and I'm heading there next week for a conference that you know that can diagnose subconcussive trauma, like it reports it, and it could be a combination of things, but I think you know being able to look. The issue is we got problems with the brain and nobody's treating the brain and we have to be able to provide, you know, some ability.
Speaker 1:We know what goes on with the brain, as you described, neuroinflammation. You know, blood-brain barrier breakdown, kinds of horrible things happen. It's just from the contact sports side, not even talking about car crashes and accidents and all the other 85% of head injuries out there that where nothing really takes place, we look at the modalities and because people are not aware, lawyers are not aware, they don't get the right coverage. People are paying out of their settlements or whatever, or they just go without. When you have products like yours that can help them achieve that and I guess you know your product's not that expensive.
Speaker 2:No, no, no. So real quick, you hit a few things For the diagnosis of TBI and again it's the eyes. The eyes are going to tell you. The eyes and gait are going to tell you more than anything. Right, but me moving my finger in front of your eyes, unless it's so gross, we're not going to pick it up. But there is technology now, that is, you're basically putting your head and you're moving your pupil around and say, for instance, I have a dot that comes here and a dot that turns on here. My eyes should go to here, but if they have a concussion, your eye is looking, looking, looking, looking there. It is no, that's not supposed to be. So it's great for documenting and it's great for documenting progress, which is huge compared to all. Right, follow my finger, I know that, right, I'm especially trained in that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll see you in two weeks, but so that can give a much more accurate thing, but nothing's fixing it. You're still okay, you're blah. You got one. Okay, what do you do, I don't know? Go in the dark, right? So that is where I'm trying to get to a solution of that. Okay, so, so cost.
Speaker 2:Now again, I like to do analogies. Is you or I, as a full size adult male? You're, we're going to need like 135 sticks. So three times three sticks a day, three times a day, 12 to 14 days. But we sell a much smaller version that's going to last you three days. Now, it's not going to get you to the end. But think of my, my amazon. Again, I, I only need a five pound fire extinguisher, I don't need a hundred pound fire extinguisher. And while I'm spraying that fire with my five pound fire extinguisher, I can open up my app and say, hey, I need a fire extinguisher, I don't need a hundred pound fire extinguisher. And while I'm spraying that fire with my five pound fire extinguisher, I can open up my app and say, hey, I need a fire extinguisher.
Speaker 2:So, it's less than a hundred bucks. It's less than a hundred bucks to have your brain safety. What's the value of a brain? What's the value of your kid? I mean a hundred dollars and it's shelf stable. So I mean people are buying them and putting them in the back of their car when they're going to the soccer field. They're buying them for grandma, because grandma lives isolated and hey go, I hit my head in the bathroom today. Grandma, start taking your stuff, right. So we have different sizes. The high-risk people are buying the whole kimono. They're buying the 100-pound fire extinguisher. They're buying the 135 quantity, the vast majority. I say people buy 45, buy the 20 pack, buy the 45 pack. That's enough to start the process. Time is critical. We're talking minutes. You don't order it three days later, right, it's your fires through your roof at that point in time. Your brain has now been clogged for three days and now we've got these long-term residuals. So I mean it's less than $100 for peace of mind, priceless.
Speaker 1:And I want parents to understand, like this is not a reason to go and let your kid play contact sports. Right, because these are things that can affect an impact. It's not going to protect your kid's brain from the damage, the physiological damage that ends up causing the symptoms that these modalities address. And to that point, what should you know when parents you know because it's critical that they have these fire extinguishers right, I drive a boat right, I got my first aid kit, I got my fire extinguisher right, you got everything there. What about individuals that are learning from this podcast that, hey, man, you know I was an infantryman for a long time, or I've been in combat, or, hey, I've been through you know a lot of contact sports, so my son's starting to act up.
Speaker 1:And we get calls all the time from parents whose kids are starting to act up, who are now understanding that there could be a correlation between their long-term participation in contact sports and their problems. Can this also help with that? Like, if they say, hey, man, I think that they might get a QEEG DTI scan, they might get one of these scans that says look, basically they get diagnosed with traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, which is the in vivo form of CTE, just saying that, hey, your brain's been impacted, you've got the mental illness that demonstrates that we validate with scans. Can this modality help them as well, like addressing their brain health, if they've only been given SSRIs for their mental health but they haven't done anything to address what they now know is a potential injury to their brain?
Speaker 2:Okay, so you've hit many, many points, and let's break these down a little bit.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:No, no, and you know what. These are all like conversations in themselves, but let me try to kind of blame them again. So I'm ex-military. I retired after 20 years. I was in the artillery Boom.
Speaker 2:First of all, you can't get the next head bump and I don't care if that's in your garage or your bathroom or whatever. So, absolutely, this is necessary to take the product with your living in a normal day life, you're only going to get limited benefits. Much more important, though, is is how do you get your gut right, how do you get your brain right? So that individual, if they come in, there's three things we do. First of all, we're going to metabolically try to optimize their brain's protection to the outside world, called your blood brain barrier. There's blood tests that absolutely can look for that permeability and look for that vulnerability. Number one, because if we can get your brain in a metabolic best state possible, those plaques might stop. If we've stopped those good, you know what? I had two root canals, but I don't have to pull on my teeth, but now I know how to brush and floss right. So I'm at where I'm at. Number two is I need to get a brain rehab program. I need to figure out where I'm at, proprioception wise, I need to be using things called a Brock string. I mean, these are 10 bucks on Amazon. Nobody's teaching you how to do it. It's $10 on Amazon, right. So there's so much home rehab, but it's somebody comes into me with a history of TBIs or a history of repetitive head injuries.
Speaker 2:As you and I know, it's not always the big one. It's the boom, boom, booms, the bangs. We get there. We reestablish their gut brain, the blood brain barrier. We reestablish their gut brain, the blood brain barrier. We reestablish their gut brain access. To maximize that benefit, sometime I'll bring in neurofeedback to help clean up the anxiety, depression, the attention, amazing modality, right. But if your brain's, if your brain, is a metabolic mess, you got to solve that too. So you know, this is good. This is excellent for acute, this is excellent for high risk prevention. But I don't want people. I don't think it's as effective, as I've had 20 concussions and I have. Whatever I'm going to take it every morning. Everything in there is good for your brain, but I still think it can even be better optimized for those individuals. But they bump their head in an auto. They bump their head in their garage or kitchen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, wherever, I don't care if it's on their headboard.
Speaker 1:This is what they got to take right away, because the next one could be the one that pushes them over the edge. Okay, and talk to the audience, because I learned you're full of really cool uh, you know tidbits, but we started talking about um probiotics and how you uh the. You put them in spores or something like that. So they right, they get through the the body. People have no idea how important their gi system is to the overall function of their body and their brain. Like what? 80 of the serotonin is made in your gut? In your gut?
Speaker 2:And so yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that was you know, I mean, it's a lot of people don't understand that and how it affects brain health. What's your quick synopsis on that for our audience?
Speaker 2:Our food supply stinks. You've got to figure out which foods you're intolerant to. So I do an EEG of their brain and my neurofeedback role Largest in the mid-Atlantic. Again, we have people around the world country fly in. We do a QEG and it tells it's a check engine light. Doesn't tell me there's a problem or not. Then I get into some history. But you do blood work. You do blood work and you figure out you can't eat gluten and corn and tapioca and okra. I don't care, but your body. That's neuroinflammatory. If it's neuroinflammatory for your gut, it's neuroinflammatory for your brain. We got to pull those toxins out. You pull those toxins out. You get the right probiotics in the gut from that. Looking at the gut-brain barrier, we use a lab called KBMO, k-b-m-o. They're amazing. Not only are they looking for food intolerance but they're looking for gut barrier panel.
Speaker 2:When you swallow something, your snot in your body is just going through a tunnel. During that tunnel your body throws stuff out, goes to the commode. Same thing, same time it's absorbing stuff. So when the body's trying to throw stuff out and I tell people, you get that glass of water in the front of the went, you're driving down the road, everybody's in the car. You get your water and you say I don't want this anymore, and you throw it out the front window. The back people get sucked in. Same thing happens in your gut. Your body's trying to throw stuff out, but then it's getting resorbed. So now I got this neuroinflammatory cascade going on loop that your provider got a break.
Speaker 2:Well, there's no drug for that. Yeah, you got to think. You got to understand physiology. You didn't just puke it out for the test. You've got to understand hey, the hepatic system goes to blah, blah, blah. The probiotics, as you say, the right bacteria there's more bacteria in your body than cells in your body create the happy hormones that make your brain happy. That gut-brain axis, that connection is bidirectional. You've got to talk, so you can't just be looking at one, one thing. You got to look at the whole freaking person.
Speaker 1:It's amazing how much is overlooked in our doctor's visits. Right, that can help us out. I mean, and I've gotten into a lot of this, you know, just through our path, not only in brain health, but you know my own personal health and going forward and he's like no, the amount of times I've had to tell my wife that she's right about yoga and diet and all that. But man, I mean I continuously tell my wife, I'm sure you're right about this honey and I'll eat organic whatever, right, but to your point, there's so many things out there that we are unaware of to include your protocol that can help us as we start down this road of readdressing the brain, as you know. I mean, honestly, the brain should be the number one thing we're looking at as a society and just think of alleviating the symptoms of a society that has brain problems. I'm talking about recidivism, crime, domestic abuse, mental illness, suicidal ideation, homicidal ideation. All of these are primarily caused by mental health issues, and mental health issues are caused by brain issues and yes, there are. You know there's trauma. There's no doubt there's trauma out there. But where there is a brain issue, that brain issue remains unfixed for a large amount of people's lives or, in the case of TBIs, not properly treated due to the, you know, the lack of awareness we'll just call that of our practitioners of holistic methods of treating the brain that are, in fact, far more effective than pharmaceutical intervention and other options that are provided by the insurance carriers out there. So that's why your product is so important.
Speaker 1:So, as we get ready to close out, let's talk about Dr Robert Barrett. Okay, this is your chance to promote yourself. Talk about what you've got going on. Talk about the. Neurofeedback is as critical to our people as well as your product. How do they find you? How do they find your product? And, yeah, let's see what you got going on.
Speaker 2:So, fortunately, I have been blessed in so many ways and I do this because I enjoy it and I do it for one reason I do it for your kids, I do it for you, I do it for your kids, I do it for your parents and you are as strong as your brain is strong. So my main is my concussion DR and you can get. You can get Concussion 911, which is basically a small little first aid kit that has the product to help you in your short term while you get more. Can you buy more? Yes, we absolutely have a lot of parents that are buying it as a daily use for their kids in high risk, especially sports teams. But it's primarily that little cut, that fire extinguisher that you give at Christmas. You're giving it to your mom or your dad or your sister or your niece or your whoever. But that whole goal is for the acute concussion nutritional kind of patch and my brain DR is neurofeedback. Those are the individuals that have ADD, adhd, anxiety, depression and insomnia. Those are the ones where we have to go in using operant conditioning behaviorism. I tell people puppy training Kids that come in with squirrel, with attention issues. I tell people I'm a squirrel trainer, and I mean it all started in 1965 with NASA. So there's no, you know woo-woo stuff. 1965, astronauts are having seizures around rocket fuel. In the Gemini program they bring in a guy, dr Barry Sturman. That's where neurofeedback started. Every astronaut gets neurofeedback.
Speaker 2:I'm the mechanic of the brain. Put a cap on their head, goop on their head, gather 20,000 data points. From that we're able to say, hey, this is not optimized. I mean, think of it as you're in a parking lot and you walk around a car. Hey, look, that tire is half flat. Hey, that windshield's cracked. Well, I think we should fix both of those. So, and when you do, oh, my gosh, the car drives better and I can see better and I'm safer.
Speaker 2:Those symptoms that people are having are results and I like to get rid of. I get to the cause. I want to fix the leak in the roof. I want to fix where, where is the problem originating? Cause, then they can get sustained progress. So, yeah, my concussion DR or my brain DR, and you know the concussion, you can buy online. We're about to get on Amazon, we're about to get on Tik TOK and the my brain DR, we, you know, send us a note and if you're in our area, great. We have people that come in, take equipment home with them or we'll try to get you to somebody close to you. But your quality of life is totally related to how well your brain's working.
Speaker 1:And Dr Burke, you also have a book that I saw at that last convention. How would a parent that wants to know more get a hold of that book that was highly informative.
Speaker 2:Just go on Amazon Concussion 911. The book is this thick, that big. They said well, we want to yeah, we want to, we want to, we want. Authors say we want to make it between 250 to 300 pages. That's what sells. I said no, I need to get this to a parent that they could read this in a night.
Speaker 1:And you know, what.
Speaker 2:And in the back there's 123 references. Yeah, good for you, I'm able to. I'm not going to make you a brain surgeon, but I'm going to give you more information than when you go into your whoever and start saying well, what do you think about the GI dysfunction that's going to result of that? Did you read this study, doctor? And of course they didn't. I mean, god for heck, these people got to know everything about everything and they only have seven minutes to do it in. They're not human, they're not. And, yes, your child is the most important to you. They got to chart. They got to see them make a decision, chart and get out of that room in 15 minutes. That's impossible. So that's why I made it.
Speaker 2:It's called a concussion 911. And if you look at my name, robert Baric on Amazon, you're going to see it and it's. It's an easy read and I get comments oh my gosh, I learned so much in this. I didn't know any of this. And if you want more, go read the references. But I'm not going to give somebody a 300-page book that it's going to end up being a paperweight, when I can give them a much smaller book and give them a holy. Oh wait, I learned something.
Speaker 1:I learned something, yep give them a holy account.
Speaker 2:So we did hit Amazon bestseller for a while in that health department, so that health category. So there's definitely a lot of good reception. I had two co-authors, both amazing individuals, far smarter than I am, but we collaborated so yes.
Speaker 1:Well, dr Burke, I appreciate not only your knowledge and expertise, but your humility and ability to come on this program and talk about your product and what you're trying to do for our children and our veterans, and actually our entire population, from a brain health perspective. Your focus on this issue, your drive that led you to develop this product, is commendable. Your drive that led you to develop this product is commendable, and I really appreciate not only your efforts to assist in addressing this significant problem that we're dealing with out there, which is brain health, but also your devotion to our children, our athletes, and I thank you for coming on this show. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me. I mean, it's getting the word out and it's going to be from the bottom up. Uh, by the time it gets through to standards of care, whatever, it's going to be 15 years. The moms are going to pull it out and the mom looks and say hey. Another mom's going to look over and say what do you have? Why don't I have that? Oh, I'm going to do that in a minute and that's where it's going to be, that's where it's going to come from, because they're not going to overthink it. They're not going to overthink it. I mean, we were asked to come up to the. Are you going to be up in DC in October for the Army conference?
Speaker 1:I have not. I'm not aware of that one yet. I think that's the one that Rand is running. I just found out about that a week ago.
Speaker 2:Well, this is going to be 400,000 people. This is the big you know annual.
Speaker 1:Are you talking about AUSA? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:We'll be there, man, we're going to be there. You're going to be running around. You got a booth there, so I, unfortunately, so we do not have a booth. I'm actually lecturing in Europe at the time and one of my assistants is going to be there, but just as a so we'll connect them up. But yeah, okay, I mean it's connected.
Speaker 1:I'll be running around there on both my day job and my night job, so we'll definitely get I'll. We'll square you away, well, thank you so much, doctor.
Speaker 2:I appreciate it. Pleasure, enjoy the day. I look forward to anything, anything we can help Take care.
Speaker 1:All right, and folks, as we close out, another great podcast and another amazing guest for you to expand your awareness and knowledge of what could be harming those that you love. Remember several things. In three weeks is our summit the only summit in the world on repetitive brain health, repetitive brain trauma, here in Tampa. We have Lee Steinberg speaking opening up the event. The most successful sport agent in the world, courtesy of Dr Roy, mr Roy Kessler, who helped Dr Barak and I get together. We have the United States Special Operations Commander opening our conference. Frank Larkin, the sixth from 60 Minutes, on the issue of repetitive head impacts, repetitive blast exposure and how he lost the life of his son. Dr Jim Kelly, dr Mark Gordon I mean we have an unprecedented list of experts in brain health, veterans' health and how to treat and diagnose. So if you have nothing to do, come on down. If you're a doctor, researcher, you're going to be. It's one of the best networking events in brains in the country and, guess what? It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:Then we have our Army-Navy game coming up in December. I think it's the 13th Army versus Navy. We are the hosts of the largest event there with Horse Soldier Bourbon. We have Fuel, the big 1990s band coming in for a concert. Vip tickets, all you can eat, all you can drink, and all funds raised go towards veteran mental health treatment and sustainment programs. So we hope to see you there as well.
Speaker 1:Everything can be found on the Matt Parkman website. Don't forget our free book for you parents. It's on the website. I'm up here right now rewriting that puppy, so it's not as angry as it was back in the day. So again, another great source of information. Don't forget to please like, subscribe and forward our podcast. We rely on you to help us get the word out on this subject and we appreciate it every time that somebody you know signs up to follow our podcast. We cannot thank you enough. So, anyways, until the next time on Broken Brains. Thank you so much for your attention. Remember you only got one melon. Let's take good care of that. We'll see you on the next show. God bless you all. Take care.