Latest / Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman / Brandt McCartney: Brain Trauma and Hope.Exploring Alternatives Beyond Prescription Drugs. Ep. 17

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Brandt McCartney: Brain Trauma and Hope.Exploring Alternatives Beyond Prescription Drugs. Ep. 17 · Broken Brains with Bruce Parkman

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: uh hosting another segment of our amazing podcast, broken brains.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: I want to apologize initially for the delay and and the release of uh additional segments.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: We went through two hurricanes here been a lot of picking up, a lot of packing up, but we got through it.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: This podcast, you might know, is focused on the issue of mental illness and repetitive brain trauma from two aspects repetitive head injuries or repetitive head impacts, like contact sports and hitting your head in the military, and repetitive blast exposure, which is a significant cause of brain degradation and mental health in our military communities.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: And throughout these segments we try to bring on we actually do bring on the industries you know just some of the most amazing people to come on this podcast and talk about their experiences with these two issues.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: And talk about their experiences with these two issues and what we need to resolve them.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: As they are the two.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: They represent the largest form of preventable mental illness, health illness or mental illness in this country and we need to fix this.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: And this is what caused so much pain throughout our athletic and military communities and that's what we try to address.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: But before we get started with the show, get some amazing news.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: We have now been the beneficiary of a donation from the Washington Commanders to host an amazing special operations tailgate at the Army-Navy game December 14th of this year.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Amazing software Please check them out.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: And Horse Soldier Bourbon, who has won a massive amount of awards, and that company is actually founded by Green Berets who participated in the invasion of Afghanistan and they have an amazing story behind their whiskey.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: There will be all you can drink, all you can eat, and we have the top ranked ACDC band, razor's Edge, out of Melbourne, florida, that'll be hosting an amazing ACDC concert.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: We'll provide testimonies.
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: We're going to have veteran service organizations that support veterans in mental health and this will be focused on raising money to support alternative treatments that are not available through TRICARE or the Veterans Administration.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: So I just wanted to put that out there.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: Today I want to introduce our guest, brant McCarthy from the 38 Challenge.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I've known Brant for quite a while.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: Unfortunately, both of us have shared similar circumstances, with the loss of a close loved one from both RHI and RBE.
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: In his case, he's one of those rare combinations of both those issues coming to the forefront.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: Brant is an athlete himself.
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: Played football at high school and college levels.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: He has started the 38 Challenge in the name of his brother and has been a dynamic force in raising awareness about the issue of repetitive head impacts and repetitive blast exposure in the athletic communities, in our military communities, and he is the co-founder of an amazing organization called the Brain Optimization Lab that offers unique therapeutic approaches to athletes and military personnel who have suffered the impacts of brain degradation from their military service and athletic careers, and he focuses on improving their brain health and getting them back and resolving some of those issues and helping them live a much fuller life.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: Brant, can't thank you enough for coming on the show.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah, man Stoked to be here.
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: Love you like a brother and a mentor and a father figure, Bruce.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I've been excited for this one for a while.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: I know.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Thank you, man.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Hey, I understand that you just recently relocated to Tampa Florida, just in time to experience some of our unfriendly weather here.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: It was an awesome welcoming party man Just right into Hurricane Helene and then Milton, so I didn't even think about it when I was moving down here.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: And then, you know, sure as shit, when we get down here, they're like, hey, we're having two, two massive hurricanes, the worst in 100 years, so welcome.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: But I was excited man, I was uh, I uh bought into it.
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: You know, I was able to get out to to anna maria, um, you know, and, but I mean just the, the destruction man and and um, yeah, it's uh gotta feel the lord brother gotta feel the lord.
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, man, yeah, the destruction was pretty severe and not unlike the destruction that you and I both know of what's going on in our military and athletic community.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So, uh, man, tell, tell, tell our.
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: You know, you know, tell our audience your story.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: How did you get started into brain health before even diving into some of the amazing things that you've?
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: done in your life for sure.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, yeah.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: So you know, as you kind of alluded to, my story starts about three and a half years ago, so unfortunately lost my brother, united States Marine Corps Captain, matthew Brewer, to suicide.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: So you know, matt played, matt was a, was a all state linebacker and running back in high school was an all state wrestler.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Got to the Naval Academy, went to the prep school there was a two-year starter as a linebacker there Wore the number 38, hence the 38 challenge.
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: Was a heavyweight boxing champion there and then, after his decorated career as a football player, he went in the marine corps doing heavy artillery special operations, right.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: So, um, you know, matt was matt was by a superiors called the captain america of the marines.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: You know was um, was continuing to climb the ranks, highly decorated um.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: But yeah, man, once we, once we lost him, we were just, you know, as we all are, rudely introduced to this world of mental illness and brain injuries.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: So at that time, man, you know, god just kind of put it on my heart to channel that grief and energy into something positive, right, and you know, very similar to the Mac Parkman Foundation.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: So I created the 38 Challenge.
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: You know, I got Matt's dog tags tattooed on my back, attached to a crown of thorns next to a cross, when he was alive, right.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: So he I mean he was, he was my best friend, he was basically raised me, um, and that dude loved to work out, and he loved to go through some, some, some pain and suffering, so I thought you know what?
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: What?
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: Um?
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: Better way to honor him than to create a brutal workout, so I created the 38 challenge.
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: You've done it before, obviously, bruce.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: It's a 400-meter run 38 push-ups, 38 sit-ups, 38 squats you do it as many times as you can in 38 minutes.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: The beautiful thing about suffering, though, is that it's different to everyone.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: So you've played the bagpipes and I've spoken at our events.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: We've had toddlers crawling there to adapt, with athletes in wheelchairs, to elderly people walking around the stadium.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: So, really, the purpose of the 38 Challenge as an organization is to challenge the stigma associated with being vulnerable, right?
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: How do we empower a hard population, which is military and athletes, how do we empower them to do a hard thing, which is to ask for help, right, and to really reduce that stigma of mental health, and, thankfully, in society, you know, we're definitely going towards that direction, right, I think a lot of people understand that you know it's this whole you know tough guy macho thing doesn't work, and that you know you have to kind of embrace the vulnerable side too.
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: The other half of the organization of the 38 Challenge initially raised dollars to go towards funding research at Boston University's Unite Brain Bank Dr McKee's work up there really looking at the effects of blast exposure, of repetitive head impacts, for the military and athlete population.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: Um, I ended up running the military programs there for a little bit by the concussion legacy foundation.
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: Um, they're doing fantastic work.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Um, I just felt like in in the concussion legacy foundation does a lot of things on the legislation piece, right?
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: Um, how do we, how do we?
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: Um raise awareness of this problem, right, and how do we prevent it in the future, which is incredibly necessary.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: I felt in my heart that you know God was kind of calling me to to find different ways of healing the brain, right?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: How do we, for these guys like my brother and like Mac who who have experienced these level of brain injuries, what can we do now to help, to help to resolve some of the challenges that are faced by repetitive head impacts and blast exposure?
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: So at that point I created the brain optimization lab, as you alluded to, and the brain optimization lab is really right now positioned as a research and development company and our thinking is that, you know, the best approach to brain health is probably a multimodality approach, right?
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: How do we combine emerging non-invasive modalities into protocols and then how do we collect data on those protocols so that you know people understand the effects of something like sauna, cold punch and breath work on a population that's, you know, that's experiencing these challenges?
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: Because right now in the industry there's a lot of there's I wouldn't even say a lot.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: There's research on siloed research on these, on these modalities separate of each other, none of them really looking at how it impacts the specific population of military and athletes, but there hasn't been any research on the entire protocol of sauna, breathwork and cold punch.
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: And those are just a couple of our modalities, obviously, bruce, as you know.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean obviously my partner there is Jordan Reed.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: He's a former Pro Bowl tight end, amazing dude who had to retire due to too many concussions.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: So we are making waves, for sure.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: It's a slow and uphill grind, but we're looking forward to it.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean amazing story.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Brandon, I can't thank you enough for what you're doing, what you're doing with Jordan.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: We'll unpack some of this.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: I mean, when we come to your brother, that's what we want the audience to understand.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: I mean, when it comes to brain health, your brother, like my son, did everything wrong, right, you know boxing, football and then he becomes of all things in the Marine Corps.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: You know an artilleryman, all right, and a lot of people might not have read the VA study which the VA said was linked, but it absolutely looked at suicide rates by what we call military occupational specialty or MOS, and we did see that anybody in the indirect fire, artillery, special operations, explosives communities had significantly higher suicide rates than the rest of the military population.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: So you know For sure, yeah, and I think you know, I think, the significance of what you know you're putting on for the Army-Navy event.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: I mean, these guys who are playing in that game, like my brother, they're, as you said, a very unique population of guys who have played football their entire lives, since they were six or seven years old at the highest, I mean almost the highest level you can play at.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: And then after that, these guys who are type A dudes, who joined the military and went to the academy to blow people up and to protect their country, most of them go into things like special operations or heavy artillery, especially at the Naval Academy.
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, you know, it's the only, it's the only service academy where you can be an officer in the Marine Corps, which is known for being on the ground, right and combat.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: But yeah, man, I think you know, I think there's a couple of things, a couple of directions we can go in, but I think important to note, like you know people that I've talked to, you know my brother, um, he experienced the trauma piece of it.
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Right, he served in Mali, africa, where you know he saw dead children on the side of the road, like that certainly has a, has a, leaves a scar on your, on your conscious, and then and then obviously all the blast exposure as well.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: But I mean he would say, you know they'd go in and the.
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: The guidelines say no more than two rockets a day and these guys are shooting off 10.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: And and when they get back there they're throwing up, they don't remember how they got back to their, to their, to their units, like it's it's serious.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: They don't remember how they got back to their units, like it's serious stuff and it's not unique, right, it's a story that's told over and over again in this heavy artillery and special operations community Guys trying to push the limit right, to blow past the guidelines.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: And I mean, you know it's especially for the military community.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: It's like, where do we find this fine line of these guys are preparing for war?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Right, they're, they're preparing for, for, for war, which is, which is, you know, the art of, of killing, right and protecting, and so, but we need to find this, this, this middle ground of, of, of being able to, to, to protect them.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: And then you know also the importance of this game and I think you and I've talked about this a little bit but also differentiating the difference between CTE and blast exposure.
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: Right, there's this misconception that a lot of operators and heavy artillery guys are experiencing CTE and that might be the case if they played sports growing up.
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: But what the literature's finding and what the doctors are finding is that the real problem in the military is this repetitive blast exposure, which, from a symptoms perspective, looks almost identical to something like CTE, but it's very in science and in health.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: It's very important to differentiate those two things, because the way that we solve for those issues and the way that we prevent them might be completely different.
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: No, you're absolutely right, man.
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: There's so much stuff you just said I want to dial into.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: But on that last statement you know there is significant disagreement that military exposure to RBE does not cause CTE because it does not produce the symptoms.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: The same findings that repetitive head impacts do find, especially when it comes down to PTAL and some of those key discriminators or identifiers of specifically of CTE and so.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: But the root cause of the mental illness and the brain damage that's causing that is from that repetitive blast exposure which causes different forms of damage to the brain.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: But just like repetitive impacts, the first indication we have that we have somebody's you know different or somebody's that has a problem, is mental illness and we are completely untrained.
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: But you, you, you know you brought up a good part when you talked about the concussion legacy foundation and research and I want to take that a little bit into women's sports, because rugby right now is the fastest growing women's sport and I think in North America, I know it is in Canada and I was, you know I was really pissed off when I saw a female researcher get up and tell an entire room of neurologists and brain specialists that well, I've been told that if you're not tackling it, ain't rugby?
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm a semi-pro rugby player and it doesn't matter.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: She was actually endorsing, as a neurologist, that women and children, like girls, tackle in rugby because they can really experience the sport, which we know is the root cause of repetitive head impacts, it is RHI and it leads to brain damage and eventually to CTE.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: In your opinion, I think we need a lot more research on this.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, most of the research we've seen is in high school football players which are 100% male in the studies.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: So how do we?
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just wanted to get your thoughts?
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure, I mean.
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: The first thing I think of is I had a conversation with a guy who's attached to a university that has a brain bank.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: It's not Boston University, you know.
• 15:30
  Speaker 2: He said that.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: You know, the number one issue that they face at UNC is actually the number one population is women's soccer.
• 15:38
  Speaker 2: For people who are experiencing CTE Now, with the people that I've talked to, that might be a very biased brain bank.
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think if you look at the overall, like, who are the most impacted people by this?
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: It's men's football players and boxers and those types of things.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: However, the interesting thing about women is that they have longer and weaker necks, right.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: I'm not an expert on this, but what has been told to me is, like things like rugby or things like, you know, women's soccer, right.
• 16:09
  Speaker 2: Maybe it's a thing where it's not because the impacts of the brain are are more impactful because the neck is is is longer and weaker and weaker.
• 16:20
  Speaker 2: You know, maybe the course of getting to something as severe as CTE might be quicker.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Maybe it requires less impacts to the head, right?
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: Maybe the impacts don't need to be as severe.
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: So these are just things we have to keep in mind.
• 16:38
  Speaker 2: But I mean, you know, and we've had multiple conversations, bruce, about the need of tackle football in children like Jordan himself.
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: Right, who's one of the best tight ends ever, right, um, he says gronkowski can't touch him on running routes, man I mean, we had a, we had a conversation a little bit better baby
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: yeah, no, we had a.
• 16:54
  Speaker 2: We had a conversation with bronx manager um or his, uh, his marketing guy and he, you know, he was like oh, we were just talking about jay ray the other day, like gronk was saying how, how badass of a route runner jordan was.
• 17:04
  Speaker 2: So I mean, I mean, he's, he's very, very well respected as a tight end goes and has done things that you've never really seen on the on the field before.
• 17:10
  Speaker 2: But his perspective right is like you know, you don't need to be tackling as a, as a seven-year-old right like like you can, you can learn the skills of how to tackle right, um, and can learn you can get all these other things like hard work and camaraderie right, like you know, as a kid.
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: I think running sprints when you're seven or eight years old to throw up, I think that's valuable right, because I think it adds character and it adds suffering, but you don't have to bang heads, right, it's like you know.
• 17:39
  Speaker 2: I always say like, hey, if I saw a seven-year-old you know going up to a wall and just banging his head on it, I'd be like what the what's going on?
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: Like why is that kid doing that?
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: That's that is going to be detrimental for his health and also like, why is he doing that?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Is he okay?
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: Um, but it's like you know, that's that's what's happening in in, uh, in, uh, in in child sports.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: And I mean you know the, the it's like you know, it just doesn't.
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: You know it doesn't, it's, it's not necessary, right, like you can teach.
• 18:09
  Speaker 2: You can teach these girls these skills um and um without putting them in danger.
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean to the next.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It is.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: It is actually a fact that's in my book that you know women have a longer neck to body ratio and a weaker neck muscle structure.
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: That's how God made them your comments on.
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: Does that lead to faster CTE?
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: You would think that, given the same amount of exposure, they would actually get damaged a little bit more easier.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: You know you.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Look at my neck.
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: I have no neck.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: I've been called a turtle my whole life.
• 18:40
  Speaker 1: Man, that's why I carry rucksacks okay, right, but you know it's just a different neck structure.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: And Blackjack's okay, right, but you know it's just a different neck structure.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: And follow that Gronk marketing guy.
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: We need to reach out to him for the Army-Navy game see if we can get them on Just a little side note there.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: For sure, yeah, but you know the way that we look at kids' football and the way we look at the military.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: It's all about exposure and there are better ways to train.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And I was talking to a father yesterday who said his son was being lined up.
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: No, I was talking to my nephew, who is an NFL coach in Germany, and he was telling me how he went up to his youth football team that he manages and the coach had these kids lining up 10 yards away and just running each other.
• 19:27
  Speaker 1: No ball, no skills, just run into it.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: He said what are you doing?
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And he goes.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: Well, I want them to.
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: You know, experience contact.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: He goes.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Number one.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: You don't need to experience contact, especially without any skills involved, and you need to limit that, because I've lost my nephew to this stuff and here's a man who's in the sport wrestling with the loss of his nephew.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And how do we make it easier and safer.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: The big thing is safer.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: You know, we're not going to get rid of contact sports, we're not going to get rid of the military, and in the military conversations are look, if you know, the problem that we have is that these men and women have either been in war or training for war for 20 something years, man.
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: So the exposure is much like if you allow your kid to play football all year round is relentless, it's unprecedented and there are consequences for taking that reign.
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: And for girls, we have had some unfortunate tragedies young women and men who liked to practice heading the ball and they would head the ball for hundreds of times a day, not knowing the parents, not knowing that each time they head the ball that brain shifts and there's no known way to stop that.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: So, on the Brain Optimization Lab, it seems like you and Jordan are starting to address these issues with, you know, therapy with treatments.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: How did you select the treatments that you're working with right now and what are some of the benefits you're seeing with with their application to some of the to the, the athletes and veterans that you're working with?
• 21:03
  Speaker 2: For sure, for sure.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we, I think important to note, like and I always say this, like we, we in the brain health space, right, the reason, like the problem that I saw, right, and I and I found this problem at the concussion legacy foundation because there's so much skepticism of different treatments that are out there, and that skepticism is for a good reason, right, the a lot of data that's presented for these emerging modalities, which I'll discuss.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: A lot of them are produced by marketing companies, similar to, like you know, pharmaceuticals, right, like you know, of course, they're going to say that it's effective, and also there's a lot of inconclusive data, meaning, you know, some studies say that it's effective, some that it's not effective.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: A lot of the different protocols that were used for some of these modalities are very inconsistent, so we can't really draw to the effects of that because we don't have it.
• 21:51
  Speaker 2: We just don't.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: We don't have enough data, right.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: So that's kind of the problem that we're trying to look out for at the brain optimization lab.
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: We are technology agnostic one.
• 21:59
  Speaker 2: We don't care what that like if if freaking, you know sniffing the sharpie helps with brain health, which which it doesn't.
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: But if it did, we would research it, don't try this at home.
• 22:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah, don't, seriously, we would try anything that if and my approach is keeping my ear to the ground what is going on in the special operations community, if these guys are trying and saying it works, so, with that caveat, and we by no means have a solution, we hope to someday find saying that works right.
• 22:26
  Speaker 2: So, with that caveat, right, and we by no means have a solution, right, we hope to someday, you know, find something that works.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: But that's kind of the journey that we're on.
• 22:33
  Speaker 2: So how we selected the modalities is really just looking at what modalities are out there and what does the research say, right, are they promising, is there rigor behind the data, et cetera.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: And then also looking at the problem that is faced in our military and athlete population.
• 22:50
  Speaker 2: And I'll just go through it really quickly.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: But you know, you talk about the brain injuries, right.
• 22:54
  Speaker 2: So, and that leads to all these, all this symptomology, right, lack of oxygen in the brain, you know, parts of the brain not working as they should, working as they should.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: You have the endocrine dysfunction, right.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: So you've got hormonal levels are off.
• 23:11
  Speaker 2: That's caused by stress, high stress, high performance environments, as well as brain injuries, and then you have this kind of the spiritual trauma piece of it as well.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Right, a lot of you know you and I have talked about this for a while, bruce, but you know just childhood trauma and things that we bottle up, that we don't even know that we're bottling up to things that we experienced through life, like, um, that also has an impact on your entire body and brain.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: So so, um, so, looking at the mechanisms of what the problem is and really the, the, the big difference between military, like professional athletes or high performing athletes and veterans, like it's very small, right, like the veterans have this life experience kind of to the max, where you see somebody die or you take a life, or you know and you're also you also experiencing this, this blast exposure, but in terms of, like the, the types of personalities, the types of pressure and performance, like very, very similar problems.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: So when we're looking at these modalities, we're looking at, kind of, how do we restore, how do we solve for those problems which I just mentioned, right, so what modalities have the mechanisms to solve for those problems?
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: So we have a couple of different buckets that we take our modalities from.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: The first is brain restoration, so brain oxidation, blood flow to the brain, and then brain stimulation.
• 24:32
  Speaker 2: The modalities that we use under that bucket is hyperaric oxygen, photobiomodulation or red light stimulation, and then we're kind of playing with things like TMS right Transcranial magnetic stimulation, things like TMS right Transcranial magnetic stimulation.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: The next bucket is nervous system regulation right, when you go to war or you're an athlete and you're constantly tapping your adrenal glands and your cortisol is always up here because you're always under pressure and always performing and always in these stressful environments and that taps our nervous system.
• 25:04
  Speaker 2: So when you come back to real life, that's where this kind of ptsd coming in right, this, this hyper vigilance.
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: Someone cuts you off on the road and now you want to murder them, or the rest of your day is ruined and you're constantly battling anxiety, right, all these things are been there, you know yeah, exactly, again, it's, it's a common problem and, um, this is caused by that, by that, uh you know, overstimulation of the nervous system.
• 25:26
  Speaker 2: So the modalities we use there sauna, cold, plunge, breath work is being able to regulate that, that nervous system, so that they can kind of handle the adversity of life with um more easily.
• 25:36
  Speaker 2: And what we're finding, um, which we can touch on this or not, but even you know, something like sauna, cold, plunge breath work, that the mechanisms of those things just strictly, not even looking at nervous system, but just strictly looking in the brain, there's a, there's a lot of promise and that they'll be able to help this population.
• 25:53
  Speaker 2: The third bucket spiritual fitness and moral injury, right, so how do we, how do we make sense of the traumas of life, right, how do we?
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: How do we kind of guide a warrior back to that warrior ethos, right, understanding that because the uniform came off doesn't mean that you're no longer a warrior.
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: How do we kind of, you know, find that community?
• 26:14
  Speaker 2: How do we help them find community?
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: How do we find them build a life that's worth living?
• 26:17
  Speaker 2: Right, because we can do anything for your brain.
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: But you know, if you don't like your life, man, and you don't have something to look forward to, then what's the point?
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: You know, man, and you don't have something to look forward to, then what's the point you know?
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: And then the last piece is that those kind of biochemical gaps, right, so you know, especially in the military and athletic population, you know whether you use performance enhancing drugs, you know whether you, you know, took testosterone or whatever, obviously that's going to be an indicator that you're probably going to have a hormonal problems down the road.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: But even, as I mentioned, like with that um, with that um, high level of stress, right, that's going to, that's going to mess up your, your endocrine system.
• 26:55
  Speaker 2: So, kind of looking at the different biochemical gaps, obviously you know, um, the work you're doing with, with with Mark Gordon um, is a fantastic example right Of um, right of kind of the types of things we look out for.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, that's kind of how we chose the modalities that we use and we're constantly looking for more technologies to implement.
• 27:20
  Speaker 2: And, man, if our research says that hyperbaric oxygen doesn't work, then we're going to present that, you know, like we're again we're, and that's valuable information, right.
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: But the two studies we're doing right now one's on hyperbaric oxygen paired with photobiomodulation.
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: The hypothesis is that what will get better results?
• 27:33
  Speaker 2: When the combination of those two modalities used in a protocol you know will yield to better results, because the mechanisms you know make each other more impactful.
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: And then the second study is sauna, cold, punch, breath work, not only looking at how it impacts the brain health, but then how does that experience getting 12 dudes in the sauna and jumping in the super, super cold water and breathing together?
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: How does that lead to this sense of collective this, this, this sense of collective consciousness, this, this sense of community which again is a, is a, is a massive, massive problem faced by our military.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: So that's, you know, long-winded answer.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: But those are, those are kind of the, the different, the different routes we're going down right now.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: That's well, sounds like you're.
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: You know way down the and you know two issues.
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: Number one you know I was part of a SOCOM brain health initiative not too long ago and you know we talk about the stigma and the macho thing.
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: I don't know, but I think it would be a tough sell to get 12 men on an ODA to go into a sauna and jump into a pool.
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: But there's suffering there and I think that's what we excel at.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: It's like all right, let's go through some pain together, because that's what combat does to us, that's what training does to us and that's what training and athletic sports does.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It drives us together as a group and we love that.
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: And that's the beauty of contact sports, it's the beauty of any sport, right?
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: It's that camaraderie, that team, the same thing that we have in the military, and that's the hardest thing to find when we leave these communities and what we try to replicate.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: And that's why, you know, making these activities safer from a brain perspective is so important, because everybody wants to be a part of that.
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I mean, I dream about being in the military three nights a week and I left it 23 years ago for crying out loud.
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: But, to your point.
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: A lot of the modalities you're talking about are not FDA approved or evidence-based backed, and all this crud that I keep hearing as a reason not to offer them, not to cover them.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: Yet, when we look at mental illness, the approach of and I'll keep saying this to the audience of drugs and and and and therapy does not work.
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: It hasn't worked and that's why we still have 22 guys a day and girls taking their lives.
• 29:53
  Speaker 1: And it's time to look outside the box at things that might work, because when it comes to the end of a life, we have to take those risks.
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: But your, your comments and you see me at my worst right With my experience getting off of those of those pharmaceutical drugs.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: Oh good.
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: Lord, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a, I mean it's.
• 30:11
  Speaker 2: I understand that problem firsthand.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: I understand what it's like to battle those thoughts of not wanting to be here, like, I mean it's, it's, it's it's hell on earth, man.
• 30:19
  Speaker 2: And you know, I'm excited for this new legislation, this new group coming in right, rfk jr.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: I mean, he's made it very clear.
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: Um, I saw something that the, the, the five ceos, the top pharmaceutical companies, had an emergency meeting after trump won.
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: Love it.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: They know that.
• 30:38
  Speaker 2: You know people are coming after them because, I mean, it's, you're giving people, you know, addictive substances, right, that that there's maybe one molecule difference of what's being sold on the street.
• 30:48
  Speaker 2: And then you're, you know it, and it's like, and even with, like, mental illness in general, right, like, like I talked to a psychiatrist for 15 minutes and now he's diagnosed me with something based upon a cluster of symptoms.
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: They give me medication.
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: It's like, what do you like?
• 31:25
  Speaker 2: It's ridiculous, right, and so, but, yeah, I mean so we're taking the approach of healing the root cause.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: As I mentioned, as I detailed, right, there's a specific root causes that are causing these people to, to, and it's complicated and it's complicated and it's multifaceted, but we believe there's approaches to help these guys out.
• 31:32
  Speaker 2: And then, from the brain optimization perspective, we're either taking someone who's at suboptimal or suffering and taking them back to normal, or we're taking someone from normal and we're optimizing their brain health Right.
• 31:37
  Speaker 2: So like these guys, yeah, like might be a little sus getting into a sauna, but it's like, if we can show data where it's like this is going to make you a more lethal killer, get in the damn sauna.
• 31:43
  Speaker 2: You know this is going to make you sleep better at night and recover better, these guys be like okay, I'll get in the sauna.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: So this objective data where we can show these guys, where you know if you get in the sauna and breathe and get into the cold like you're becoming more lethal warrior, you can go kill more bad guys oh, and, by the way, you're, you're awesome, but you got to get rid of that mentality of you know toughening up because I almost died in my sauna because I, I did my 15 minutes.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I'm like I'll do 30.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: You know, more is better.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: Right, after about 20 minutes, my, my, my, my heart rate was I thought it was going to die.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: Dude Cause I'm stupid.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, more is better, no, not.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: And so, understanding those limitations and getting them away.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And it's also like you know, if you're a tough guy and you get into a 210, like you know, like for 15, 20 minutes, like it's not easy, you know, like it's no, you know, like for 15, 20 minutes.
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: Like it's not easy, you know, like it's not.
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Once the military knows or an athlete knows, this can help, and everything that we're talking about is what bothers me.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: All right, I'm just going to make this statement because this is the crux of what you just talked about.
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: I do believe you know, and that there have been more men and women Well, I know this for a fact.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: Well, let me say this that there appears to be more men and women that have taken their lives under the care or under the effect of these drugs than have died in combat.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Okay, and we have.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: We're still doing it.
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: We're still doing it.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I just talked to a kid the other day that was prescribed a benzodiazepine for sleep from the military.
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: What are we talking about?
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: A highly addictive substance given to a kid.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: I asked, I want to know that doctor, and they all shut up, wouldn't talk to me.
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: But we are unbelievably, you know, just medicating our community with very, very bad drugs for things that could be affected, improved through non-life-threatening modalities, everything you just talked about.
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: It is not going to kill you Now.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: You could pass out in a sauna and die if you're just an idiot, but sauna therapy is not like a drug that over time is going to kill you or make you dependent or cause you to have symptoms that require another drug.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: And then I come to like veterans, man, these bags of drugs that they get you know for their illnesses is crazy, and I think that athletes that have the same problem, man you know For sure, yeah, I think you know it's.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I mean, and it's the system, man, like you know, I think I was caveat by saying like there's good people within the VA that want to help, but they've they're.
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: The system by itself is incredibly flawed.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: Got to be evidence-based.
• 34:17
  Speaker 2: You know it's um, one in, you know one in, and their evidence is is backed by its pharmaceutical companies and that's a whole nother conversation.
• 34:24
  Speaker 2: But it's like, okay, one in every three veterans are prescribed 10 or more pharmaceutical drugs.
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: One in every three 10 or more pharmaceutical drugs.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: When you're withdrawing from benzodiazepines, the chances of suicide are 800% more greater 800% when you're withdrawing.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: Benzos and alcohol are the only two withdrawals that will kill you, kill you, oh yeah, right yeah 100%.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: And it's like and again, benzodiazepines are supposed to be used for like you're on a flight, right, and you have horrible flight anxiety and the only way you're going to get on that plane is if you take a Xanax right, that is the use case for benzodiazepines.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: Or maybe you're an incredibly stressful week of your life and you need to take one for a week.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: You need to take it to sleep, maybe, but the fact that benzodiazepines are prescribed for insomnia or some of these sleep issues, and then you understand one, and the brutal thing is, is like that guy you're talking to, who has given these things, it's going to work, and it's going to work well.
• 35:25
  Speaker 2: He's going to get the best night of his sleep, for the best sleep of his life for a year, two years, and then he's going to start to feel this kind of side effects.
• 35:32
  Speaker 2: And then he's got the choice of going up in dose, which is a horrible decision, or trying to taper off, and when he tries to taper off, he's going to go through hell, and that's when that 800% increase of of.
• 35:41
  Speaker 2: And then it's the same thing with SSRIs.
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: You know it's, it's, it's, and these are frontline medications, and I think the reason I think what happens is, in my opinion, is you go to a, you know, you finally take that step.
• 35:58
  Speaker 2: I need help, right, I'm going to go to the VA.
• 35:59
  Speaker 2: I'm going to go to a psychiatrist and get some help.
• 36:00
  Speaker 2: Okay, now you're diagnosed with PTSD.
• 36:02
  Speaker 2: You're diagnosed with depression, anxiety.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: That becomes a part of your identity, right, I am these things, I have PTSD, I am depressed, right?
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: Um, then it becomes a part of your identity.
• 36:11
  Speaker 2: Then you're given this thing called an antidepressant beautiful name, great marketing.
• 36:15
  Speaker 2: Then you're given this thing called an antidepressant Beautiful name, great marketing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Right, this is going to get rid of my depression, you know.
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: And then this anti-anxiety medication, and this is going to get rid of these things.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: And then, when you start taking them, you realize this isn't working.
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: There's a black box warning saying that hey, actually there's a greater chance that you'll actually kill yourself.
• 36:34
  Speaker 2: Just heads up.
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: And then when you realize by law to be mentioned, there's actually legislation pending right now mandating that veterans or veterans anyways are told that this drug has a blackboard box warning that suicidal ideation could occur, and they're not told that.
• 36:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so, so, so then.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: So then they're put on these medications that are either not working for the most part, 20% that it works, 20% of people that works, that's probably inflated.
• 37:06
  Speaker 2: And so you had just given these hope I'm going to take these pills, I'm going to feel better, I'm going to start, I'm going to start feeling like I'm back to my old self.
• 37:13
  Speaker 2: Right, once you leave that doctor's office, you have this hope that these medications are going to work, and then, when you realize that these medications are either making the problem worse or not working, then that hope is then stripped away from you again and then you throw the pills in the toilet, not understanding that ripping yourself off of medications without tapering off is detrimental, right.
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: So, and that, in my opinion, that's when, that's when veterans kill themselves is because their hopes taken away again, they don't think that, you know, the medication's not working and their, their brain chemicals are thrown off.
• 37:45
  Speaker 2: So so much because they're, they're kind of, you know, throwing all these prescriptions on the toilet.
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: In my opinion, that's when someone's most vulnerable to to take their lives.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, I think there's a lot of logic behind that All right.
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: Well, look, we've got so much to talk about, but we're going to have you come back on the show, like you know, 300 more times.
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: But look, for all those of you who haven't done a 38 challenge.
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: You think, ah, 38 minutes, go try it.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: Right, and I've done a bunch of these.
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: Man, I still do them as part of my.
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: You know, I want to mix things up.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: 38 minutes doesn't sound like a lot of time.
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: You'll get one heck of a workout, courtesy of Captain Matthew Brewer and Brant McCarthy here.
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: Brant, as we close out, tell us a little bit more about the Brain Optimization Lab.
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: How do they find you?
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: And then you know what else are you working on?
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: And we'll go ahead and move on to the next.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: For sure.
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, I think the most public stuff is at the 38challengecom.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: So go there, you can learn more about my brother, learn more about, kind of what we do.
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: On the organizational piece, All the money now raised, the 38 challenge will go towards veterans going through our protocols, through the brain optimization lab.
• 38:54
  Speaker 2: So I think you know, be on the lookout, for we're going to start recruiting for different studies, right.
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: But if you want to get free sauna, cold plunge, breath work, get a free wearable device, right.
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, Meet other like-minded people.
• 39:08
  Speaker 2: You have to have break oxygen treatment and you know we had a conversation with a SOCOM physician assistant.
• 39:13
  Speaker 2: These guys are looking for these modalities anyways, right, and they have to pay $20,000, $30,000, $40,000 out of pocket.
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: So if you want it for free, come to the Brain Optimization Lab.
• 39:25
  Speaker 2: Right, We'll take care of you and I mean that's our hope.
• 39:29
  Speaker 2: Man, you mentioned not FDA approved.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Where we're going is we're trying to do it in a.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: We're trying to follow the healthcare scientific model, right, where we can prove the effectiveness of these protocols and start to layer them into each other so that these modalities can be covered by something like the VA or TRICARE.
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: So, yeah, I mean go to 38challengecom and you know it's a lot of exciting things in the works.
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: Well, brent, really thank thank you for coming on the show.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Can't wait to see you.
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: I know you're coming to our Army-Navy gig and really thank you for your time For all our audience out there.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: Just a reminder December 14th Army-Navy game Army is 8-0, could go to playoffs.
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: Navy's up there too, man, and this is not an Army, we just we got.
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: This is not an army.
• 40:14
  Speaker 2: We got to turn it around.
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: We got to turn it around.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Oh okay.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: Well, it's still going to be one heck of a game, oh yeah it's going to be fantastic.
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: It's going to be great man.
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: I think both the president-elect and the president will be there.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: We've got an amazing tailgate at the center, the sports center adjacent to the stadium.
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: We've got an entire parking lot.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: Acdc, poor Soldier, berman, blue Fusion We've got all kinds of veterans support organizations there.
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: Really want to get the word out.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: Please go to wwwmpfactcom.
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: M-p-f-a-c-t that's the Mack Parkman Foundation for Adolescent Concussive Traumacom.
• 40:52
  Speaker 1: Look at the wedding site.
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: Also, do not forget our book, youth Contact, sports and Broken Brains, is free.
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: You can go to the website.
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: You can download it.
• 41:03
  Speaker 1: Please spread the word.
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: Every life we touch with this book is saving lives.
• 41:07
  Speaker 1: It's creating awareness and remember.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Our goal is to make sports safer as we work with the military, to make training safer, because these are the largest preventable causes of mental illness that we're aware of and we can fix this.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: We can fix this, we can fix the people that have been impacted and we can fix things so that people that are going to participate in our military, in our sports, are covered, they're not impacted as we go forward.
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: So, anyways, really thank you for the attention.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: Brant, cannot thank you enough for coming on.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: You are a driving force for brain health and we love you, man.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: You take care of yourself.
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: We'll talk soon.
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: Love you too, bruce you.