Latest / Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman / Dr. Daniel Avesar on Brain Injury Recovery, Neuroplasticity and Mental Health | Broken Brains Ep. 111

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Dr. Daniel Avesar on Brain Injury Recovery, Neuroplasticity and Mental Health | Broken Brains Ep. 111 · Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman

• 0:08
  SPEAKER_02: Hey folks, Bruce Parkman here with another episode of Broken Brains, the official podcast of the Mack Parkman Foundation, where we look at repetitive brain trauma from two aspects: repetitive head impact from contact sports, and repetitive blast exposure from military service.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And what these conditions are doing to the brains, the mental health, and the futures of our veterans, children, and athletes.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_02: Why is this important?
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because the correlation between repetitive brain trauma, damage to the brain, and mental illness is not taught in any nursing, medical, or psychiatric curriculum in this country, meaning that most of our medical stakeholders that we entrust our children and ourselves to are not well aware of this issue and what to do about it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_02: So that makes you the first line of defense.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_02: And that's why we bring on amazing researchers, scientists, doctors, and authors so that you get that 360-degree perspective on treatment, awareness, diagnosis, and all the different ways in which we can take our children to either prevent these situations or encourage them to heal and grow and recover themselves through proper treatment and modalities.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: On our show today, another amazing guest, Dr.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Daniel Avisar.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_02: He is a neuroscientist, traumatic brain injury survivor, brain injury advocate, podcaster, and educated educator, who's dedicated to increasing awareness of the often overlooked invisible challenges associated with brain injury.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_02: Drawn from both the scientific background and lived experience with brain injury, Dr.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_02: Avisar works to bridge the gap between clinical understanding and the day-to-day realities faced by survivors.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_02: His advocacy focuses on helping others, families, clinicians, and communities better understand the cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and neurological changes that that may persist long after the initial injury.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_02: He's the host of the Experiencing My Brain podcast, where he engages brain injury survivors in in-depth conversations about the invisible effects of their injuries and the realities of their recovery.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: He also leads the Building Brain Awareness BBA to help support brain injury recovery talk series on YouTube, featuring presentations from clinicians, researchers, support organizations, and other experts exploring brain function recovery and therapeutic approaches.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_02: Sergeant Major, big word Wednesday.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Through his advocacy, educational platforms, and one-on-one work with survivors.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_02: Avisar is committed to giving greater visibility to the challenges of brain injury while helping those affected better understand their brains, their experiences, and their paths towards recovery.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Dr.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_02: Avisar, welcome on the show, sir.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: That was quite a mouthful.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you, Bruce.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I agree a hundred percent with what you were saying, especially in the introduction about what people aren't both what people are dealing with and what isn't taught out there.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: And we live with these issues.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_01: We know about it because it's our brains and our minds.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: And so anyway, thank you for having me on.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm happy to be here to talk about it.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, super excited.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_02: So excited.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: So before we start talking about your ex your lived experience, let's talk about your background, sir.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_02: What got you into uh the medical community and brain health in the first place?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: My brain injury, a hundred percent.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was so unlike some um with repetitive injury, and I know a lot of athletes and some people in the military.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'll be honest, those worlds I haven't really been able to speak to in great detail, but I know individuals.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I had a subdro hematoma, my buddy's car flipped, my head was crushed.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, like I was airlifted to Cedar Sinai, I would have been dead otherwise.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was like um a subdro hematoma that took a long time to heal.
• 3:58
  SPEAKER_01: They had all these tubes sucking the inflammation and all the fluid out um so that I wouldn't die.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then the recovery from that was like, what has happened to me?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_01: What has changed in me?
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: How can I improve?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then that led me into I was studying biology, but really I got into neuroscience and philosophy to think of the mind and think of understanding, and because I injured thinking, I was like, what what has how do I make sense of this?
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that's the background, and it's obviously connected to the brain injury.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_02: So were you um so this happened before you became like were you a teenager or yeah?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: I started college, it was the third week of college.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: I'd gone to the first Coachella festival.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was 18, and I the seven years after that, I learned how to.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: So the name of my podcast is Experiencing My Brain, and that means like this kind of like view of what am I dealing with, what are the internal problems, and then learning the like baby step progress, how to improve it.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And that was a seven-year journey that that was weirder or as weird as the injury, and I did my and then I I used my undergrad towards the later half of that to rebuild my thinking.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Then I got into neurosciences, and then I did PhD and postdoc.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I'm like in my 40s now, but I did all that stuff in my 30s.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I couldn't have done it when I was a kid, yeah.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, that's a long answer.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_02: No, we yeah, no, we had we also uh had a um a technical hiccup there while you were talking.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we we lost some of it there.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_02: But um so it was seven years for you to start and in how and how full would you say your recovery was after seven years?
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_02: Were you just starting out on a new chapter, or that just gets you to a certain baseline um and uh you know to start from?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: It the the recovery continues, but in those seven years, I rebuilt my cognition, which was so the the biggest, like let's call it the most glaring problems I had were the double vision and cognition, any aspect of thought, like from the getting information into my mind, like you say something, I have to picture it in my head to respond.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't injure language, but I injured the way of getting thought into my head, the gears of thought, and then yeah, it I had a about six months with a speech therapist, and with her it was like addition over time, basic addition numbers, and just the act of getting it into my head, having the gears of thought happen, and then spitting it out to answer two plus two, let's say, is four, was where it started, and I just I kept that going.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Double vision was another problem.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Fortunately, I I got with a experimental vision therapy.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is in 1999, they didn't have maybe they had the prism lenses, but it wasn't offered to me.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the the vision exercise was to learn how to like try to move my eyeballs, try to move my eyeballs, and it was so hard to do.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so those problems plus feeling like I wasn't myself, flip circadian rhythm, hearing, super, super sensitive hearing, um, hyperacousis, that one's called just a bunch of problems.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: Also, derealization, depersonalization.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: I was my mind was not my mind, and the world wasn't real.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't feel real, but didn't feel like something else.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not like these problems present themselves in sequence, it's like a big mishmash of mess in your head.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I I I'm good at like introspection and just like what has happened to me.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so as I improved it, it's like the first two years I was back at home.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I was 18, 19, and then I went back to school, which no one wanted me to do, but I had to.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there's just this the process, like you go to the store, what has happened to me?
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: Why can't I deal with this?
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't have the vision issues, but I had the hearing.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it just um I would exercise everything I could in my life in repetition, like an athlete, you know, might shoot free throws or do something, but it was the act of getting to the bookstore, the act of getting the book open, the act of getting the reading to happen.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_01: It was just, yeah, just a crazy life.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and over those seven years, I really, really got better.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: And towards the end of that, I got into neuroscience, but it was like straight up, what is going on in my brain?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's a physical injury that changes your metaphysical mind and self and all these things.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I just, I wasn't satisfied with the although the doctors obviously that saved my life did a good job, but no one really understood what I was dealing with.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: And also no one understood what I was dealing with as I was trying to get help.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because my parents were supporting me in that time.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was able to just focus on school and focus on trying to get my old me back.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, the seven years I was like 10, 20%, then 30%, then 50%, and then around like 60 or 70%, I realized that this was a pattern.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so then I just got really good at it.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_01: And then after school, when I went to grad school, I met my wife, um, emotions, dealing with you know, your partner and now having kids.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_01: I've I've learned how to I use like the rebuilding process for dealing with feelings and dealing with all these other problems.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Other things have come up over the years.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_01: I can't think of all of it now, but yeah, it's a it's like an ongoing process.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I learned how to work on it.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_01: And then as a neuroscientist, I was like, how can I I had to make sense of how to think about the brain, how to think about how the brain works and what I injured.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: And then once I made sense of it, I wasn't doing that kind of research.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very um vacuous.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was left on my own with it.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that led to the podcast and the talk series because I was like, I can talk to these people about what they're studying, but always try to frame it.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: These are the invisible problems that come with brain injury.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: This is at the root or at the core of what a lot of people are dealing with, and they're all different, but they have this nature to them.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: If people understood that, they could help us.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I self-advocate, I learned how to do that, but I've also been helping people at that end.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a really strange um place to be.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'm glad that you know people like you and we can relate on this stuff, but it's otherwise very isolated and strange and internal and invisible.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I mean, it's not even just an in well, to uh to your point.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's not just an invisible injury, it's like an entire invisible pandemic, an invisible gap in care, a visible gap in understanding.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, what you're discussing here, Doc, is, you know, and you're talking back, you know, 25 years, right?
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: That we're still in this point with all the leaps of science and research and AI and all this stuff, we are still no better treating brain injury survivors than we were, you know, many years ago, outside of better surgical surgical techniques and saving lives.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_02: It's that post that post-injury time frame, that recovery, the healing, the treatment, the assessment.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_02: I don't think personally we've made much movements or much improvements at all.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_02: What were the Yeah, I would agree.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: And I've seen a few places now where they're almost like these oasises or this clinic is doing a good job, this city has this group that's doing a good job, but they're really um having that uh brings hope.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: But otherwise, I would agree with you, and that was that was my experience.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_02: And there is there is hope, and uh I'd like we'll we'll go ahead and uh dial into that a little bit.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: But what were the you know, what were the modalities or the the you know the the you know that you that helped rebuild you?
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_02: Did you, you know, did were the I I mean I don't know back then, I don't think there was you know really access to HBOT, no, you know, neurobiomodulation, photobiomodulation, psychedelics or whatever it is.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_02: I mean you just did this through grunt work, huh?
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, grunt well, grunt work and learning.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um learning, I I had known how to learn, and then relearning, which is the rebuilding.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: I kind of I kind of break it down to two fundamental like um focuses or mental tracks.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: One is the learning how to baby step, which means like in the beginning, I couldn't really brush my teeth because I couldn't think of the steps to brush my teeth.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: And that example carries to later when I had so the work became like step one, get the toothbrush, step two, put the toothpaste, step, you know, and then you get into brushing, and then and then the um muscle memory of it wasn't injured per se.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then now what?
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like like you want to just have your day.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_01: So the steps of getting dressed, planning.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: I that speech therapist had taught me that if we do enough of this small addition over time, I can do a larger thought.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then the other really drastic issue was the fatigue.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: Because if you push, I think so.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you as a neuroscientist, I can say that the brain injury has or sorry, the brain has all these networks and layers of neurophysiological, chemical, biological, ionic, just all these parts.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: And when that gets injured, it doesn't work right, which I remember trying to do an algebra problem, and I'm trying to think.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_01: And it was almost like turning the ignition of the thought put me into a fatigue where I couldn't get out of bed for three or four days.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't a fatigue like you're tired, it was like my mind didn't work.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And that happened a few times, and then I learned that there's this like invisible threshold, an invisible cliff.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: So if I fall down that cliff, I can't function.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_01: So um, the baby stepping of what you need to improve, and then learning to stay in that 50-60 eventually became 60 to 80 percent rule, which means there's a cliff of invisible function, and I can't get that far.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I just balance myself.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: The first four years, I was hitting that all the time, and then around the fourth year of my brain injury, by that time I got good at um the basic stuff.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So doing the things you need to do in life, which was a lot of work.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: The first two years was a lot of work on that.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: Also, the double vision meant I had to like I don't know, it put it this way, navigating the brain injury problems to improve them and work on them, but not hit the limit.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: And obviously, I had support.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: That's a crucial thing because when people are left on their own, um, there's a completely let's let's say it's a different situation, but in my experience, I would push it and then I would hit the wall.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd push it, hit the wall.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Don't hit the wall.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: And then I stayed in that 60 to 50 to 60 percent range, and I felt this slow like re-gaining.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it happened in eight stages over the first seven years.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: The first the first one, my mom says I was like a toddler.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't even think, and I don't remember this one.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And she says that her and the speech therapist would read like basic books, kid stuff, art books.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: And she said one day my reasoning clicked back on.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then that's when I remember being like, what the hell has happened?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And also the double vision.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: I had to like walk to line up the world this way, because as soon as I turned, it would be two worlds.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, it's just a big mess of internal stuff.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: So learning to improve it, learning to not hit the fatigue, and then you you live like that, and it's very strange.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I call it um it's almost like a small life, or like you can't do much.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I was so focused on gaining back what I had lost, I kind of didn't care about anything else.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: The alexithymia, which is feeling all of it and really feeling the trauma and the pain and sadness and rage, came on way later, which I'm fortunate for because I think if I had that in the first years, I wouldn't have been able to function.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: But um, so my experience then and being a neuroscientist helped me think of you know, there's systems for cognition.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: There's so many, every system is so complicated, but it has a capacity.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: If you talk to a brain-in-jured person, you can discuss with them what is really hard, and that's like the core problems.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: And then it there's primary problems, then secondary problems, and there's layering.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: Learning how to not push yourself and learning how to work on the primary problems is the way to improve.
• 16:07
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I'll say also that the people I've met who have improved, their method fits that enough.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or that that's like their key features of how they actually improve.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So it gives me like this um almost like a battle plan or a plan of how to deal with this problem on a larger scale from the perspective of the person who's brain injured, who's who has the symptoms.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, obviously, I mean, you were pretty successful.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: You became a neuroscientist, man.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's did you did you start that journey at the end of the seven years, or as you got um, as you improved uh, you know, brain health-wise, you decided to start that journey?
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_01: In the fifth year, because I wasn't studying neuroscience, I was studying logic and philosophy of science.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: It was I was trying to get at the mind, and I couldn't get at it.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then I got a neuroscience, and then I had finished my undergrad that year, and then I wasn't sure what to do.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I had already um, I mean, I guess I could talk about it.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: I had done an internship at like I was at UC Irvine, I'd done the internship at the hospital.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: I did some research with a uh a professor, and I also did an internship at the Amen clinic, and it was more observing what they were doing, and I was like, nobody's really talking about brain injury, and as I I would always like try to share, like I need this because they don't understand it.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So then I stopped sharing.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So it led me to the conclusion that people don't understand what I'm dealing with, which continued for many years.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then I tried to do uh brain imaging.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I did a like a technician job at UC San Diego at a brain imaging lab.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: And once again, I was like, they really don't understand brain injury either.
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: So then I thought how to go, what where's the level where I can start to think of that this is a good thing to talk about because I I kind of forgot about this or I haven't talked about this in years, to think of how is the where does the brain and mind meet?
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: How does the physical thing that is our brain create us?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: And it led me to neurophysiology.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I don't know, I met this I I applied to grad schools, I got into a few, and I went to to Dartmouth, and there was a new faculty there, and they're like, you should meet him, you'll you'll like him.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we got along and just recording um all the research I did was with mice, but it was with the brains of the mice, how the parts of the brain interconnect.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's an important feature of their brain because of the layers and layers of connectivity, has actual like anatomy to it.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So that's what I ended up getting to do with him.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: And during that time, I also I remember I was like trying to talk to them about my brain injury, they didn't understand, so I was like, okay, I'm not gonna share it.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody understands is how I felt for 17 years.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: So when I was studying the brain, I was still like in the back of my head thinking about brain injury, but I don't know, I didn't have a plan.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just wanted to study it and understand it.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, that was the the process.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, I mean, that's um I mean, that's it's that's a heck of a process.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I think um, you know, when we start talking about what you I mean, it's uh an important concept when you brought up is the mind and the brain, right?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_02: You know, or you know, you could say our soul and the brain, or wherever, you know, I mean, we've just got so much in there that uh, you know, it's so interconnected that, you know, I want to talk about the fragility here of the brain a little bit.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_02: But uh to your to your perspective, uh when when you when we have an injury, I mean, we we have not just a physiological injury, but we also have you know, you know, behavioral or cognitive, we have we have a mind injury as well.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, as we start looking at healing the brain, I want to, you know, dial into some of the modalities that are out there and your thoughts on them.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_02: We also have to heal the mind.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_02: And in your experience right now, how how how do we heal the mind?
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: Because we also know that a lot of you know, with a lot of brain injury comes a lot of mental health challenges as well.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um how do we heal the mind?
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_01: I I I end up always breaking it into the parts of the mind that are changed.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: For example, I don't like the term behavior, and for me, with my cognitive injury, so many subparts of cognition got injured.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So it's like the behavior usually comes from a lot of internal problems.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And then for me, what if I could like wave a magic wand and create this system, I would say, what are you dealing with?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: Each person, what are you dealing with?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then on top of that, there's all the emotions and the loss and the grief and the day-to-day um, you know, like okay, going back to your question before to answer both of them, how did I manage myself?
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: I learned number one, the exercise and my sleep was so horrible, and I had to get all these basic things functioning, but the exercise helped my mood um helped me manage my aggression and helped me manage how do I even start to approach for me.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was a cognitive issue.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: For other people, it's whatever.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_01: And some sorry, I'm getting called, sorry about that.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um whatever the problem is, like how do you manage it so it doesn't get worse, and how do you try to improve it?
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I did have to eventually deal with the there's so many emotions that come with this, and so much you know, there's a day to day trauma once you have a brain injury, and also the trauma from some people have it from what happened, just all of it becomes things to work on.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: But there's um put this I think there's like a hierarchy to it where if this issue is so pressing, being my double vision or deing, you know, when they put the play.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: In my head, I had this headache that if I would have still had that, I don't know how I would have managed it, but it was excruciating.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then over a few months it went away.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, but it becomes this micro list of problems.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then learning how to deal with the issue of what you've lost, I'm still working on that actually.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_01: Like connecting with other people, really, really feeling the feelings, going through the pain.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where you know the psychedelics and having the right modalities, it's all like a chipping away of improving.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like because you're in a hole and you're chipping away, meaning getting a little bit better, learning how to manage it, learning how to change.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: The cool thing is people can change in ways that are actually very, let's call it beautiful or productive in different ways.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: You're just a completely different person.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: And oh man, the mind, you know, my mind was not my mind, meaning my inner me was gone and my thought was gone and the world looked different, and I lost like they say I ripped out the trach and I lost, I couldn't eat, so I lost like a hundred pounds.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_01: I was like super skinny.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as I recovered, I mean, I got started going to Tommy's, you know, when I was in college and enjoying eating, but it was like I was so thin and I was a different person.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so there's all these pieces that it that's how when the support groups are there, they have to, or it'll be helpful for them to help with all the issues, or at least what's in the front, what's in the what's the biggest problem, and then the people around us for them to understand that that's really what I'm trying to target.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: Like I have this problem, so I need you to understand that I need this and this, and then it's a slow, it's a slow and very, very long process to um I don't think everything heals 100%, but it improves to a great extent, and then you can get a life back.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um answer.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, but that that it's all so important, right?
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_02: That we do know that we can, you know, heal the mind and we can improve, you know, that we can improve mental health as well as we improve brain health.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's also getting the the the you know a society to understand that you know we have like two point something million TBIs happen in this in this country every year, right?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, every year and that doesn't count that doesn't count the millions of Americans that are suffering mental illness as a result of contact sports and domestic abuse and and military service.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_02: And yet we have an entire network that just doesn't seem well, it's not just set up to support these conditions in terms of what you're just talking about, that these brain injuries, we can make them better.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I had my own brain trauma from all my service and being shot in the face in a training accident and you know, years, decades of military rugby.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I had my own, you know, you know, stuff.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, at the end, uh the because I had learned about this, I was able to kind of do an okay job of myself.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_02: But we have an entirely, you know, let's just say uneducated, you know, medical and psychological and mental health community out there when it comes to brain injury.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: Mental health, good, but then you're talking about mental health that's that's you know originating from a you know, not just you know, childhood trauma or something like from a brain injury.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do we address that?
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: How do we uh you know make folks aware that you know they're when you're dealing with the comorbidity of a brain injury and mental health, you actually need two treatment paths.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: And and so that's um very well said, and I agree with that from my experience and my observation of others, I keep seeing that relationship.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, one of the things about brain drive, it's like once this part of my brain has been injured, in the beginning, that problem is excruciatingly present, meaning the act of thinking, the act of light, the act of whatever the brain drive problem is, it's so debilitating and you're so tired.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: And as you get better, there's like this slow arc or slow evolution or progression.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: So during the different stages, that comorbidity is going to be different because of where you are, you know, you're not really sometimes you're not really present when you're in the hospital and in the early stages.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you come online, and a lot of people I talk to have this realization point.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that interconnectivity, number one, I would say that because of that interconnectivity, they need to, or the outside world would benefit from understanding that it's no longer the same scenario.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: That mental health issue with this brain injury problem, it's just a different, um, a completely different situation.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_01: I was talking to someone about this once, and they're like, so the drink is like the mental health, and the whatever you add to the drink is the changing to it.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: If you add lime or tobasco or whatever, and then I said, No, the brain injury is the drink and the mental health is the other thing you're adding to it, you know, because it's so strong and so present in us.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: And then as you learn how to manage it, and man, the work, the emotional and psychological work, like I said, I'm not I don't like to talk about that, I can share about my experience, but that's really, really hard.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: But with the right help and the right help understanding that the other brain drive problems are constantly there, also can they can improve.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_01: And that improvement's really weird, but that combination is what they need to where they need to start.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: And one piece of it, some the one interesting thing is that a lot of the stuff or remedies or mental health approaches that they have can fit with brain injury, but the other stuff needs to be cared for in the right way.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_01: And because it's different for each person, it it doesn't even make sense.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_01: But for me, if you start with the what are you dealing with, I say to the person, you know, what are you dealing with?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: Then you understand their brain injury problems, then you can begin to approach that interface, you know, because the mental health stuff, we're not um completely foreign, we're not completely different, but there's enough that is injured in our brain that makes it so different.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, so I I I would like, if I could again wave that magic one, I would take like a slow progression with like 10 people, then 100 people, and then hopefully like expand it to help this problem.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And um, it takes so much time, months, scale of weeks, months, years.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody's looking at it at that level, but that's really um brain injury has completely changed my view of time because of the year, the year progression of it.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um so that support that changes over time needs to be there in those ways.
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it really is crazy.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the cool thing I've as I interview brain injured people about what are you dealing with, the things people tell me, my memory sucks, but the things people tell me reminds me of what I had dealt with in a way that I'm like, oh wow, this is similar.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: This has a brain injury nature to it.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um and then it has to be studied.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: The over the last five years, the research has gone a lot better.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that's good, but it it can get better still.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: So when you on unfortunately, yeah, you know, when we deal with mental health, you know, our our our first as a society, our first course of action are is pharmaceutical intervention, right?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_02: And we all know that a lot of these drugs that are prescribed, you know, black box warnings, there's side effects, you know.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: In your opinion as a as a neuroscientist, what are the implications when you have a brain injury and you know with mental illness, um, you know, what are the what are the cautions that of of of prescribing these medications and and um and and what what are their impact?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what can what can be their impacts on a dambby's brain?
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what their impact is at a neurophysiological level because I haven't studied that enough, but I have the the main trends that I see sometimes a medication actually helps a person in a unique way, which is great.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_01: So the um biomedical industry or medicine, let's say, is very medication driven, and so it's probably good to some extent to test those things out.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: But if it doesn't work and it doesn't help, then it becomes like um people just describe like I'm a zombie because of the brain injury or I'm a zombie because of the medication, and they don't know how to get out of it, then they have to fight the systems that put them on the medication to get out of it.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're then working on getting off of the medication, but you're not improving the zombie part of the brain injury.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: I I love that well, I don't love it, but I I appreciate that people say that to me because it's been said to me so many times, and um in everyone has it in their own words, but they're aware of these changes and issues.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think for the most part, the medication doesn't help.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I can say, as I've thought about this a lot and studied some of these systems, there's a presentation of the symptoms that looks like what the outside world sees from certain psychological or neurological or neuro, whatever the condition is, but the basis for it is different because of the brain injury part.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And the medication is not gonna help that.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_01: And then when there's a um occlusion, occlusion in the sense that like if you have like a spotlight and then you're shining a small light within the spotlight, you're not gonna ever see the small light because the occlusion, the big light is the way the world thinks about these things because of all the other neurological and psychological medications that are out there.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I've been running into this right now with the frontal lobe paradox, which is an interesting.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: The frontal lobe paradox is a paradox for the clinical world where they say that people can test okay, neuropsychological and not just neuropsychological, any testing, but then their problems are in real life.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a paradox to them.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: But if you have a brain injury, it's obvious that the testing isn't looking at what we're dealing with.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: So I see that I feel the same thing about medication.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um again, because sometimes it helps people, then it's like, okay, let's just find you the right medication.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: But really, it should be an approach of I think of it like these parts of my brain, which create these parts of my mind, got injured, learning how to work on that.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: For some people, um, let's say you have like a glaring pain, or certain problems, they're um so overwhelming that you may need a medication for that, or maybe you need rest, or maybe you need something to deal with that first.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then as the other problems come out, um, my mother-in-law, for example, she had a brain tumor removed.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: She couldn't function, she couldn't initiate, and it was so crazy to watch.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_01: But as she got better with that, that was like the first big hurdle, and then confabulation presented itself.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, I have to go back to work.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: I have to go, she had to go to things that were 19 years ago.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so then dealing with that was the next hurdle.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: And she actually got a lot better.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: Um, my point is that there's it's like this long list of problems, and then they're complex, but medication is not going to fix it.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: And if you have this, people call it a holistic approach, but holistic's not the right word.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's brain injured, brain repairing, and then it, and then maybe you know, maybe medication can help as well, but it's it's just such a slow process that I don't think they have the patience or the right lens for it.
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_02: I I I would agree.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we we are aware now that outside medication, um, you know, there is you know a host of modalities out there from you know, electronic modalities, HBOT, neurobiomodulation, contrast therapy, you know, TMS MERT, you know, stellate ganglion blocks, you got the entire range of psychedelics now that are showing great promise in uh treating a lot of our veterans that are suffering from you know extreme suicidal ideation and mental illness when nothing else has really helped them.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_02: Um where where do you sit on the applying, you know, because you you know it would seem that if these modalities, non-pharmaceutical inventions, can help heal the brain in any way, shape, or form, you know, whether it's you know dealing with neuroinflammation, increasing plasticity, whatever it is, that you know, there is a path forward for them, but right now there's no path because nobody will pay for them.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well that so that um to have a system that understands that the neuroplasticity is both a plasticity towards improving what is injured and improving those highly debilitating issues.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: Because um I thought a lot about this in that nature.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_01: Like some brain injury problems are just really restricting your life, and then some of them are a loss of a capacity.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Inflammation is there and it's on top.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: The outside world talks so much about inflammation, but I'm like, there's broken brain parts underneath fueling the inflammation.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I that's what I believe I felt.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, having the the put it this way, the severity of the brain injury, it's like this deeper, deeper hole.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then as I got better, I'm like, oh, I'm talking more and more to people with concussions and other forms of injury.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I have spoken of severe TBI survivors, but yeah, it's um sorry, I'm getting off track, but it it's yeah, it's it's about this those remedies.
• 35:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's not like HBOT's gonna fix you.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: HBOC's gonna help, and those other things, especially like with the pain and certain management of the really debilitating symptoms, you know, it's like stage one is get you a little bit functioning, and then stage two, now you're gonna have these other problems in that stage.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's an ongoing um, it's kind of like a treadmill.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And then on the treadmill, there's other treadmills.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_01: So you're just chasing it and always functioning to improve it.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so the H-bot's not gonna fix you alone.
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: The this is not gonna fix you alone.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: It has to be a combination of factors.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I have these model across my brain injury.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: I've seen what I've dealt with, and then I keep seeing it in other people.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that's in this model I have is there's the baby step progression to improve.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: There's the downward spirals when all these injury brain injury problems intermix and cause you, you can't even function in that stage.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's the pitfalls or trapdoors or setbacks where um I had one a couple months ago.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I hit myself with a car door and I started having double vision.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or no, I had um confocal divergence, convergence, insufficiency.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: That was a new symptom.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been working on that for several months.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_01: I found a good therapist, it took two months to find one, but um, so it's like this needs to be managed for this to be managed.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: Those vision problems were leading to such bad headaches, so I learned I'm like, I can't use my eyes, I can't function the way I want to.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: Then as I did the therapy and I added HBOT, it was like, wow, this really is getting better.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I still had to do the baby steps of the progression.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: This is my disc for practicing convergence and divergence.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I just I'm exercising that system.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't had the headaches in months, but it was so debilitating that I got over it and then just focusing on my vision.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this weird hierarchy or order to how to manage.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_01: And for each person, again, it's different.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: So when you're brain injured and you're expected to do this, it's not really possible, or it's very, very hard, let alone the system not understanding.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: So it it needs to, it's like a systemic um hauling of the system, a rebuilding of the system is what needs to take place.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it there's there's just you know so much here.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_02: And now one of the things our audience is sorry, can I say one of the things?
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I like ibogaine, the psilocybin, all those things I think, because it's um one of the brain injury discussions I had, it's like you're on a you're like floating in this like muddy river and you're trying to get out.
• 38:33
  SPEAKER_01: So anything that can help, um, I think the ibogaine is a really good potential resource to improve, to then improve more.
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so I'm a big fan of those things.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I mean it's um it's something that I've done as part of my research.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: I've been through, you know, most of the modalities themselves.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and and I needed them initially, you know, pretty pretty badly.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, one of the things that, you know, in talking about Ibogain and some of the research that's been done, I think a lot of our audience is starting to understand how fragile and complicated the brain is, and which is why we have to protect it not just from car crashes, but from preventable situations like contacts, you know, you know, areas where we can control the amount of exposure or the amount of impacts as well.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk to our audience as a neuroscientist about the brain?
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: How just how complicated this motherboard is that we have in our head, that you know, it's just something you we you you we should not be smacking around, you know, uh, you know, at will that this this this this organ can be in injured, that the brain does not adequately protect it, and that we've got to understand how important this organ is to our you know our futures, our socioeconomic status, who we become, and that you know, by you know damaging it, we put ourselves, our li our kids, we put it, we put a lot at risk.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: That's a yeah, that's a good point.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think um there's another piece to this, which is most of the therapists, and not all, but the vast majority are um women, and I talked to them and I had good help from them.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, I was a crazy guy.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I did um martial arts, kickboxing, I surfed and snowboarded, and I had a lot of like I love to fight, I love to um I do jujitsu now.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Years after my brain injury, I started that.
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, and when you're in that phase, you are like you feel immortal.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: I was also 18, I mean 12 to 18.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you are, you are, yeah, and you are, but then you're not.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so once I see once the brain gets injured, there's a vulnerability.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: The layers, someday I want to write about this.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's just hard to explain, but there's the layers of the anatomy, let's call it the circuits, the cells that connect with each other, and all this other microglial cells that support it.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_01: And then the the chemical, it's I don't know if it's more complicated than the heart or our muscles, but it's very, very, very complicated.
• 41:12
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's more complicated, and it creates our mind and ourself.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_01: And once it's been injured, now we're like more fragile.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_01: So like I looked at it as like I had to heal.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, the first seven years I was really good at not having any setbacks, but then I had a few.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: I had a car accident 17 years later.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_01: I had the thing that happened to me now.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_01: That was 24 years later.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_01: But overall, I'm like, I need to improve, I need to improve.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I just learned to not try my best to not hurt myself.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be like sometimes moving through things that are like, you know, I've got to block my head.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, it's because it's so when it's efficient and not injured, it all moves seamlessly.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: But when it's injured, it's more fragile.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not to say that it can't improve.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Like I do jujitsu and I appreciate it and I like it, and it's an outlet, and I I'm very covering myself, but I have to um we don't have the same abilities that we had before the brain injury.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there is a before and after in that sense.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it's just it's just super, super complicated, and physically can physically get injured, alcohol, drugs, bad sleep can aggravate it.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: And that that's part of the learning to manage the fatigue part of what I said in the beginning, because that learning to not push yourself to that limit has so many forms.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, because if once you've had that injury, you're you're different.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_01: It's a different brain, it's a different ecosystem.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, there's uh there there you just yeah, you said a lot there, Doc, that just makes sense.
• 42:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um and and um you know, and hopefully we'll start improving, you know, the the way we treat, you know, brain injuries.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I I I was asked um to you know to to to work on some national movement papers.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I honestly believe if we if we treated the brain the way we treat the heart and then you know our neurological system symptom system, and you know, and that and and we could make brain assessments, you know, when there's a new technologies coming out where any doctor can have you take a quick test and tell you if you're on a decline, if you've been impacted, you know, now that can lead to some deeper questions.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_02: But I do believe that optimizing brain health in this country is the the the that could would lead to the largest improvement and and and almost any factor, economic output, you know, in overall health, you know, lower mental health, lower abuse, lower carceration.
• 43:43
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it would solve so much.
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_02: But I don't know yet how we prioritize brain health.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everybody treats it like, you know, it is and it is.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I know we know less we know more about outer space than we know about the brain, but it doesn't give us any excuse to not prioritize.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: Prioritize it when it is that important to what's going on in this country with this pandemic of mental health, you know, protocols that do not address the problem, which in in these cases like yours and mine, which is healing the brain, not just therapy and pills.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: And we've proven that through a thousand, 130,000 dead kids, that this doesn't work.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: So how do we change this?
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, uh, you know, you you have a, you know, you're building brain awareness, right?
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you got the whole YouTube channel on this.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: How's that working?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: And what can we do to help society understand that if we start focusing on brains and protecting them better and treating unfortunate conditions like yours, you know, more adequately, we could we could we could change the paradigm.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: We could, we could, we could relieve a lot of suffering.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's a really good point and a good question.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um the approach that I've had so far is um my podcast is about brain injured person, what are you dealing with internally?
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_01: What are your invisible problems?
• 45:09
  SPEAKER_01: And one front of how to deal with this is for people to learn how to we do have a responsibility and it's a huge amount of work to take better care of ourselves.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Oftentimes, especially in the with the fatigue and early stages with brain injury, we cannot do certain things.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: Our society expects us to push, and it's a part of success and part of achievement to push, but you can't push yourself with brain injury, at least not to the extent that you could before.
• 45:38
  SPEAKER_01: So being okay with it looks like self-care, but it's much more brain health care, especially when you have a brain injury.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_01: So learning to not push ourselves, learning to take care of ourselves, it means a lot of sleep and diet and certain things that are really hard to do and are sometimes looked down upon because other people can push through it.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: Without a brain injury, you probably can't push through it.
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_01: Then the other thing is for the outside world to understand, because we need so many different modalities, different ways of help, and different um yeah, that the outside world needs to step it up in that sense to better understand it.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no one thing will lead to the right solution, but it's an aggregate and an overall improvement.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's why the building brain awareness of like outside world experts, what are you dealing with?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: What are you studying?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: And yes, I've been collecting those two sides because that's how I would um approach it.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, there's a lot of things that we need to approach better, and I think you've done an amazing job of pushing through and and helping people understand, you know, these are long-term impacts.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you know, you know, as you're as you're demonstrating right now that you can be a successful um, you know, survivor of some of these issues.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_02: What do you feel is the number one um uh you know aspect?
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what what has helped you get through this?
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, you're back to doing the jujitsu, you're you know, you're you know, you're a you're a successful neuros you know scientist.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_02: Um what got you out of that?
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm no longer a scientist.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_01: I got out as too competitive, and I was like, towards what?
• 47:18
  SPEAKER_01: I asked you.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because it was you know, you're writing these grants for these cellular mechanisms, but my mind was how do I help brain drive?
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_01: I have a wife and two kids, and my wife works, and I I work on this at home, and I'm hoping to expand it.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um I there's a drive part, there's a push to this, but there's also a let's call it an impetus to try to improve, but uh it has a million fronts.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like this day I'm dealing with this, this day I'm dealing with this.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_01: Once I began to learn how to feel dealing with that, um, it's like having to deal with the brain injury.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: It's its own condition and it's a real thing.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: It's very strange when nobody knows what you're dealing with because it doesn't feel real, but it is real because it's your mind and brain that is injured.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: So find like um let's say around the fourth year or fifth year, I was like, wow, I'm so much better than I was when I was in that 30% range.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: So then I believed that I could improve.
• 48:25
  SPEAKER_01: So having that hope and belief, plus that let's call it a drive to improve it, it it can be improved.
• 48:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of narratives out there and a view that it can't improve, but it really can.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_01: So that is um, I don't know, maybe I had that.
• 48:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was like a robot trying to fix myself, so it was really weird.
• 48:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but then as I did improve, I was like, okay, there's a pattern to this.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that that can help people.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then having the right supports, having the right help.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: Every person I've interviewed describes different brain problems, but they each describe what is at their core, what is at their root.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: And so that person needs help for that.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it's very strange and it changes with time.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_01: The time scale is huge with this.
• 49:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's um, I'm a patient person, so I think that can also help.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, it's just an internal mess that takes a long time to get better, but um, it can, it really can.
• 49:16
  SPEAKER_01: It truly can.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: And finding a way to do that, um, I wish I had more support from people that I could like relate to who've been through the things, you know, like having that connection and um all all these pieces together help overall.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_02: So well, I think you're gonna be meeting some of those people in two weeks at our summit.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of guys like me that have been hurt and put ourselves back together or trying to, right?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: And uh so I had a lot of questions as you were explaining.
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're I'm like, oh, what about but um yeah, this is uh maybe I'll interview you sometime.
• 49:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, all about it, man.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: I'll come on, man.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_02: It's it was no fun.
• 49:54
  SPEAKER_02: Um and it's been one hell of a journey, both spiritually and and physically, to get back, but it's it's been worth the fight.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_02: And unfortunately, uh I paid with the life of my son, but we can we can talk about that anytime.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: So as we get ready to close, Doctor, you know, tell people how to find you, right?
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: How do they find okay?
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: This is the time for you to talk about all about Dr.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_02: Daniel Appsark.
• 50:17
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, what do you have going on?
• 50:19
  SPEAKER_02: Uh what's what's what what's going on in your life?
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_02: How do people find you?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_02: What's next?
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: How do they talk to you?
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so have at it, man.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_02: Let's let's what's what's uh what's going on in your life, sir?
• 50:29
  SPEAKER_02: What's next?
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 50:31
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the two things I have that are out there are my podcast, which is on like Apple Podcast and um Spotify, iHeartRadio, experiencing my brain.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it is just it is these recorded discussions with each individual that I've been able to sit with and get into their invisible problems.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: Then I have the building brain awareness to help brain injury recovery.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's a longer title than I should have done, but I call it BBA, and it's a YouTube channel, and that's a discussion with these experts.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_01: Plus, the people in the audience, I it's open, like um if you email me or message me through there, it's open to everyone.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_01: So the the audience are brain-tracked people, family, clinicians, and the discussion they're having is really good there.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm actually trying to expand.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_01: I need to get a website and I want to build like this kind of um a more open forum discussion.
• 51:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm working on that.
• 51:23
  SPEAKER_01: But those are the two things I have out there.
• 51:25
  SPEAKER_01: And really what I'm trying to do right now is literally transcribe everything I've recorded to do like um to pull out the pieces through thematic analysis and other things to talk about these invisible parts.
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_01: So that's that's gonna take me some time, but that's what I'm doing nowadays.
• 51:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's good stuff.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: Well, Doctor, thank you so much for coming on the show.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_02: I really appreciate your insight.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, it's uh really uh your determination, uh, you know, your desire to get well is uh, you know, not you know, you mentioned a lot of important things, you know, patience stuff.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_02: But you know, having hope and determination, I mean, that's just good old, you know, gotta get it done, right?
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta reach deep and knock it out.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_02: So um as you go on your journey, you're part of her family now.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_02: We wish you the best and you know, stay in touch and uh I'll see you in a couple weeks, you know, and and uh yeah, we'll I'll you know come on your podcast and we'll and we'll talk about brains, man.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: I I talk a lot about it, obviously.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 52:24
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I appreciate your questions and thoughts.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: All right, have a good one.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: All right, sir.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_02: Well, folks, another amazing episode of uh Broken Brains.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: Really appreciate the time that the Dr.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_02: Davisar uh came to talk on about.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is this is a huge problem.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: You know, 2.7 million TBIs a year, a lot of them adequately treated and then not really adequately addressed post-incident.
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_02: And we need all the help we can get out there.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, remember, in two weeks now, we've got our big summit, 16th and 17th of September, right here at the Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation in partnership with the University of South Florida.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_02: Seats are filling up fast.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: You better get in it.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_02: We got amazing speakers this year.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it's gonna be bigger than ever, and we really appreciate it.
• 53:13
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, remember, the book, the new book, updated book, is gonna be on the website here very soon.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_02: It's for free.
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_02: Download it because right now that is the only book for parents out there to get smart on the issues of repetitive head impacts and what it's doing to our children.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_02: And if you are, of course, if your child has played, what you can do to help them out.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we have our app on the uh Google and Apple store, Head Smart.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_02: Please download it.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: It's full of information.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's the only app out there, repetitive head information.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_02: So go ahead and grab that for you and and and and present yourself.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: If you've liked what you heard today, please like us, subscribe to us, um, you know, push us out there throughout your networks.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_02: We are one of the fastest growing podcasts on brains on the internet today.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's because this is such a huge problem.
• 54:00
  SPEAKER_02: It's impacting millions of Americans, and a lot of people are just finding out about it and how large this problem really is.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: So remember, till the next time on broken uh on Broken Brains, the official podcast of the MA Parkman Foundation.
• 54:14
  SPEAKER_02: We thank you for your time.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: We thank you for your patience.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: And remember, your children only have one melon.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: Let's take care of it.
• 54:21
  SPEAKER_02: They bruise real easily.
• 54:22
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next time on Broken Brains, and God bless.