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Invisible Wounds: Overcoming Brain Injury and Addiction with Epic Brain Centers · Healthy Happy Wise Wealthy

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Welcome back to Healthy, Happy, Wise, Wealthy. I have with us today Jeff Hadwick with
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Epic Brain Centers. And I'm so excited for this
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podcast. And one of the main reasons that I started
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the podcast in the first place was to bring stories where it didn't feel
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like maybe there was hope, but it turned out
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that there was hope and just a story that, you
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know, a big turnaround story. Because I think
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there's a lot of good thought leaders out there where they have
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good wisdom, but they've not lived hell in adulthood. And
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it's a different message when you've lived hell during adulthood and not just
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had maybe a story from early on in life. It's a
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way different story, and I think it's a way more powerful message.
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So, Jeff, thank you for coming on.
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I want to just introduce him for a minute. So Epic Brain Centers,
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they have a treatment that really does help, that's pretty
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revolutionary for helping with brain injury,
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addiction, different things like that. And I went and
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talked to them earlier this year, and Jeff actually did the whole
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scan thing on my brain with. I got a little bit of
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cptsd, I think, and turned
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out not to be the right thing for me, but I know kind
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of the. The basics of it. But, Jeff, you
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had this treatment too, so I. I want to just start with your story.
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Yes. Well, thanks, Mary, for having me. I appreciate it.
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Fortunate to be here and to. To share
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the message. Right. As we say in recovery terms, because of course, I'm in
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recovery. But, yes, I
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had the treatment probably started at
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Dr. Jin's protocols, and we can kind of talk a little bit about who
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he is. But, yeah, I had it. I first had it
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about eight years ago. I'm over eight, almost eight and a half years
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clean and sober. I think that is the. The main driving
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force behind my life is that piece of it. Any of us that can
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raise our hand in a meeting and identify as having
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issues with the substance, whatever that substance is, alcohol,
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drugs. But if I'm at the point, this is where we're a
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coworker and I, we're both in recovery, we always are talking about it.
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If I can raise my hand and identify in a group of people, I
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have a problem. And I think most people that
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maybe aren't at that point or haven't come to that realization
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kind of don't understand what that problem
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really means, you know. And so my entry point was as
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a patient, much like you on how we met
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was a patient journey to getting
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healthier. And so, yeah,
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it's. How do you do it? Yeah, I was broken.
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I think it's easy way, you know, we've all, as we
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were talking about, we're all on this journey
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and most of the time the journey has a lot of ups and
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downs and if you've lived long enough, you've probably had a few of
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each. Yeah, for sure. I'll be 52
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in January. It's so crazy for me, you know, to say
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that I meet someone older and they're like, oh, you're just a. Kid, but
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you don't look that old. So that's at least, that's good. I appreciate that. Right.
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My body would express differently. But yeah,
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I was, you know, I think
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a lot of people's entry point to where I can raise my hand
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in a, in a, in a recovery meeting doesn't
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start where we think it's going to start. You know, I was learning
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disabled when I was in school.
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So going, you know, bouncing back between the brain, which is what we do,
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and what got fixed in me that really made the change in my life
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is my brain got healthy, is there were signs
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that my brain wasn't functioning well from the start. You know,
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head trauma as we were kids fell and hit my head multiple
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times before I was seven. And then I played youth
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football from seven until 12
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and then stopped because I was too big and had to play against older kids.
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And that scared me. And then I reentered football in high school
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and then I took that pretty far. I happened to be lucky
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enough to be decent as a big kid.
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High school, college football, a little bit of pro football.
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And so I have a lot of years of playing football where I'm hitting
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my head again, you know, back to the brain.
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Had a lot of head trauma without truly identifying head
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trauma, you know, concussions and daily practice.
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And I was alignment and so contact to my head
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at a time where your head was used as a battering ram. It's
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not good for your brain. And so only
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after do I see the path that
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got me to where I was broken. And what I mean by
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broken is I was miserable. Miserable in
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that I had major anxiety and major
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depression. I wasn't sleeping well. I had no joy in
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my life. And it, it, you know, it
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kind of gets stolen from you day by day when
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we have mental health issues, you know,
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what the category that we talk a lot about. But what is mental health?
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You know, it's for me, it's, it's with
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or without, right? When my mental health as well, I have mental clarity,
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meaning my thoughts are clear. I can express myself
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in a. In a. In a concise fashion. I have
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logic. You know, my. Make sense. I can.
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I can start on a point and finish that point without getting lost in the
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middle of that point. That's a really good definition. I almost want
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to repeat it, because I don't. I mean, like, it is a really good definition.
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Right? Yeah. Good mental health is being able to
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start a thought and then finish it without. With some clarity
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and. Yeah. Is that what you're saying?
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Yeah. Yeah, exactly. No, you're right. We have a path. And
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I only. You know, a lot of what I am is I reflect off
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of what I wasn't before. Before, you know, what did it look like before,
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what does it look like now, and what's changed? And I. I
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think as I, you know, kind of divert when I see people here,
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we try to define things for them because we're. Especially in the
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medical industry, we're classic for labels that are giant
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umbrellas, you know, as when I was in school, learning
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disability. Well, what is that? You know, what does it mean
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when you're. When you have learning issues? What does it look like?
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Because it'll look differently for people. You know, I had dyslexia,
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which meant it was hard for me to read. And if I can't really
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read because the words are not looking the way
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they're supposed to because of the way my brain is functioning,
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that's gonna cause an issue with everything else down the line. Right.
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Reading, writing, expressing ourselves, concise
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thoughts. And so that's kind of the way I
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think of a piece of mental health. Because then there's
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the emotional side of it, which is anxiety and depression and
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irritability, kind of the easy three that we look at. Right.
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Being extremely nervous and
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fearful is a good way, I think, to describe anxiety without
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a reason. If I'm waking up in the morning or if I'm sitting on the
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couch kind of relaxing, and my body
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is showing signs that I'm extremely nervous
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and fearful, then that starts to
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identify. There's some issues happening. You know,
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same with depression. Depression being
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the kind of opposite.
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Unmotivated, extremely tired, but in a different
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kind of tired way. You know, like
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exhausted mentally and emotionally and not interested in
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anything, particularly things that I used to be interested
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about. Right. Passions and
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foundational principles that I based my life on. When I stopped caring
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about those, you know, that's more of a sign
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as you lean toward depression. And so here at the clinic, we try to
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help people define that. Is this how you're feeling because this is kind of how
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it looks, you know, it's not necessarily
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just, where are my keys? You know, where's my phone? You
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know, these are kind of mundane things that if we change places on where
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we put them, we're probably not going to remember
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the train of thought. You know, it's the intentions. What are the
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things I'm doing today that are meaningful in my life?
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And then I forget, you know, that's mental
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fog, you know, brain fog. The opposite of the
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clarity. And so I was experiencing so much of that,
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you know, during the. As I came out of my football
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career and
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started to settle down, you know, got a regular career, became a
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teacher. I had gotten married, was trying to start a
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family. And so I,
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during all of that time, I started to slowly
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experience all of those symptoms. My mental clarity was going away.
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I couldn't remember anything like what we were supposed to have for
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dinner. You know, a great example was
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a little later. I have two daughters. They're 21 and 19
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now, but they were, you know, two and four at the
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time. And I drop them off at preschool and I had a list of
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questions that my wife at the time wanted me to ask the
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preschool teacher. So I get there, I drop them off, I ask the questions
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three or four. You know, I mean, as you can imagine, it's not rocket science.
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You know, what's the schedule for Friday or what's the holidays look like? It's
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something simple. And then by the time I got home from the
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day, I didn't remember the answer. And so
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she's asking me the answers to these questions. And I know
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I was there, I asked the question, but I have
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no idea what they were. And so
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as we interact in these personal relationships with my wife, at the time,
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I didn't have an answer. And so it, as you can imagine, then
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it be. And it comes across in a way when
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we're looking at, to an intimate relationship
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that I don't care, you know, because
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maybe in her mind, you know, I didn't
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ask the questions, I just blew through it. It wasn't a priority of
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mine. I'm not invested in being a dad. You know, you
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can roll this really far down the hill in terms of
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how I could be viewed in terms of my engagement in the
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family, but that wasn't it. I don't remember them. So how do
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I say that? How do I tell her that, no, I asked the
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questions, but I just don't remember the answer? That's a hard
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message to relay to somebody. At least it was in
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my relationship, the way I was, you know,
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because I didn't know what was going on. Why don't I remember? You know,
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it was just a highlight, one of those. An instance that I vividly
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remember that started to create friction in my life,
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you know, in a marriage. Right. And
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morning voice. That's gonna be so fun. This is the
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earliest I've ever done a podcast, so I'm gonna have to
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remember from this point on to do some vocal exercises before I get on.
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Do an early morning one. I was just gonna say it just feel.
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It feels like, though, like so many of these symptoms. If there's
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any kind of intern brain injury, we might call it,
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you know, from concussions or whatnot, and then anxiety,
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depression, dyslexia, those are all invisible. Right? So it's,
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you know, if, like, you're. If you have a shoulder injury or an arm
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and your arms and a sling, everyone's going to ask. Or if you're on crutches,
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they know. They know. But when it's internal,
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nobody knows. And so they just can really
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deem you as being lesser than. No one sees
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all the. The years of whatever it is that.
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That's causing these issues. But they're real, right?
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Right. No, and I think that. That you bring up a great point, because
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they are invisible, and
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because they're invisible
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the individual. So in this case, myself,
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you know, you're wondering too, right? Because I remember at
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that time how I used to function, and now it's different and it's not as
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good. You know, if we look at my football career, that was rarely the
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case. Where in the. In the current moment that I'm
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reflecting on, I was always better than three months before.
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I was bigger, stronger, faster. My performance was better,
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you know, then all of a sudden, I get catapulted into this new
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arena where now I'm not. I'm declining, you know, from. From
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the way I used to function to the current place. That. Or
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referencing. I'm not as good. And
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I think we as humans have a hard time handling that
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because I don't. When I look in the mirror, I don't see the reason.
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Like you were saying, you know, I get an X ray on my. On my
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broken arm. That's the reason it hurts. And that settles something
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in us. In our. In our human condition, like, oh, that's why.
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That's why I'm having pain. That's why I can't use it. You know,
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all the things that would come with that when we're talking Mental health, brain issues.
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So you brought one concussion, but the other also is
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emotional trauma. PTSD or pts. I know
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they've kind of changed the acronym now, but those
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two in particular are going to cause
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communication issues in the brain, which then
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is going to present as a lot of these symptoms that
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you and I are talking about now, you know? Yes. And so
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again, fast forward to my treatment journey. That was when I
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discovered that I was having issues with my
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brain. You know, all the things that I had
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gone through because of how I felt and how I was functioning,
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both were horrible. I wasn't feeling well,
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anxiety, depression, brain fog,
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wasn't sleeping well, had no joy in my life, no
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interests. I was in a lot of emotional
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pain. And.
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And it's hard for men with that too. It's hard for women, but I feel
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like especially hard for men. No, I, I agree.
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I, I think. And still to this day, that's why I think, you
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know, as we champion, it's okay to not be okay.
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Most of our society still doesn't really believe it. You know,
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even some of the big sports,
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the big sports world, right? Whether it's football, baseball, basketball, some
15:35
of the big three, hockey, you know, all these pro
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sports, military police, it's
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still not really okay. We
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may talk, right? A lot of people talk a good game, it's okay to
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not be okay, but go behind closed doors, and I don't think it's
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still acceptable. You know, the way I think of it is when I was being
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raised, and I love my parents, they were amazing people, but it was the generation.
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You fall down, you scratch your knee as a boy, and
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you're told to get up to stop crying.
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That. That's not something you should be crying about. That's the
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message I think we as males
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a lot of times get. Or really the generation
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I'm from and before really received is you had to
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be the breadwinner, the big, strong, tough guy. I
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can't really cry. I can't have these negative
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emotions. And so I start to
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ignore them or stuff them. It's how I used to
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say on. That topic, a generation, because we're about
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the same age. So I know, I look back, I've thought about this,
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and looking back, it's like our parents were raised by.
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Their parents were in the world wars, right? And so you look at the world
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wars, it feels like that's so long ago, but we're still experiencing
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the. We're still living. We are still actively living
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the, the repercussions in some ways, because all these
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men come back and I was gonna say
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ptsd. That's not what they say anymore. Pts. Pts,
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yeah. Post. Just post traumatic stress instead of post
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traumatic stress disorder. Instead of a disorder Disorder.
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Not a disorder anymore. That's helpful.
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Has changed that. It's almost a good
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example of the pendulum how
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it's in so much of the worlds that
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we're a part of, right. The medical industry or if you education
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or you know, it's the labels. We're changing the labels
17:43
because we labeled everything, you know,
17:47
years ago and now we're trying to label
17:51
less today to completely remove
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a lot of the terminology on how we label things.
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So I think in my personal opinion, you know, that's
18:04
where they're trying to, you know, rewrite the
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verbiage to be less derogatory.
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You know, I think a lot of times we, everywhere we
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go, sometimes we need a label in order to access
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services. So that's a big one. In the medical industry, you have
18:23
to have a diagnosis in order for my private insurance
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to open a pathway
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for me to access something that's hopefully going to help me feel better. Without
18:34
that diagnosis, you don't have access to those services. You know,
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if I'm going to have my hip replaced, well, I need a diagnosis
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that tells the insurance company what's wrong for me to
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access the services to get a hip replaced. So
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it's a fine line, you know, in the education system, learning
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disabilities, it was a way to access services. Now I was
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learning to say, well, long before IDEA
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Individuals with Disabilities act of 1997, you know, I
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was in the NFL in 1997, I
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was in the 80s in high school and they didn't have that, but they were
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still recognizing that kids learn differently and we have to support
19:15
them. And so that would be
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a good one. Right? It opens federal funding so then I
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can have a different set of classes so I could be successful
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to graduate high school. You know, but from the
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individual, the label can be negative. You know,
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we can kind of, you know, swing back into what kind of
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happened to me is
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that label. As we talk about 20 being learning disabled and
19:45
special ed and all that, I was in all of that all the way from
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third grade until I graduated high school. I was in special ed. The special
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classes, they were pull out models back then,
19:56
kind of self contained classrooms. Which means you had a
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gamut of different emotional and
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mental health challenges that students were facing. Yes,
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you know, to severity of, you know, down syndrome,
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down syndrome, autism, stuff like that. To
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somebody like me, where I Was dyslexic, I had trouble reading
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and I wasn't able to keep pace with the normal class.
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Yeah. So they would pull me out and. I was
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listening to my mom. I, my mom was actually a special ed teacher in the
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80s. Oh, okay. You know, I kind of have that,
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you know, sense from that other perspective of, of, you
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know. Yeah. You know, that, you know, you're teaching and like you're saying
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it's such a, it's a, such a wide variety and it's probably difficult
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to be put into my, all the categories
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that are in there, you know, and people. Yeah. I have a special
20:54
place in my heart for special ed teachers. I'm a teacher. I have,
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I had a teaching credential I was licensed in,
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it was family, consumer science or home ec. They changed the language,
21:07
culinary, child development, stuff like that. But I also had a credential in special
21:11
ed and that was only because of my journey.
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And Susan Davis was the special ed
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teacher I had in high school and she was the only reason that I
21:22
became eligible to be able to go to a four year college to get a
21:26
full ride football scholarship right out of high school. Because
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she asked me early on my freshman year, as I'm getting
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recruited back then, what I wanted to do.
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You know, I always go to the sixth grade. What do you want to be
21:40
when you grow up? I tell my 12 year old son, the guy on the
21:44
corner with the street sign that is clearly homeless and
21:47
hungry and having challenges that wasn't on his sixth grade. This is
21:51
all I want to be when I grow up. Yeah, because we need to
21:55
see people. That wasn't where he imagined himself being.
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Just like, wasn't where I imagined myself. Because I was homeless
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for, you know, a little over three months
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before I found recovery. She asked me what I
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want to do and I said I want to play college football. And
22:14
because of her devotion to helping people,
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you know, as a teacher, she put in
22:22
so much work so that I could take the right classes
22:26
to be able to be accepted to a four year university out of
22:30
high school with all the support that I needed to be
22:34
successful. And that was before IEPs were a
22:37
thing, long before IEPs were a
22:41
thing in terms of having special requirements
22:45
on homework and tests and stuff like that.
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And it was only because of her, it really was because of her I was
22:53
able to get catapulted into, you know, the accepting
22:56
the full ride scholarship, getting the degree, becoming a teacher and what
23:00
ultimately led me here today, which is, you know, one of the owners
23:04
of epic brain centers and, and being able to, you
23:07
know, pay forward what I was given, which was treatment.
23:11
Yeah. Well, good for her. The power of the. The power of a good
23:15
teacher. Amazing. I'll never forget her. You know, I think we all have people
23:19
in our lives that are like that. That made a difference, you
23:23
know, made a difference in a positive way, as we call like a role
23:26
model. You know, that's a real role model to
23:30
me because she, she helped me without any
23:34
extra benefit in her life. You know, it was because it
23:37
was the right thing to do to ask me and
23:41
then put all that work in to make sure that
23:45
I was being supported so that I was successful in these college prep
23:49
classes, as we call them. Right. Not special math and
23:52
English study hall, of course. I had all of those.
23:56
But she was a big catapult into all of
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that. Definitely. I love it. Well, tell us a
24:03
little bit about how, you know, like the.
24:07
When the rubber was meeting the road there for you and like how
24:11
you got in, you know, into substance abuse and
24:14
then. And then how it led to healing. And
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I do, and I think I said this to you before we started recording, but
24:22
this being the holiday season, I know there's families out
24:26
there. This is, it's an extra painful time when there's anything going
24:30
down in the family that's. Yeah, that's, that's
24:34
not going well. So I think your story can bring
24:37
a lot of hope to people. And. Yeah, that's
24:41
why I'm so thankful you're. You're here today. And the work of, you know,
24:45
of. Of Epic Brain Centers and in Dr. Jin and
24:48
everything, so. Yeah, for sure. I agree.
24:53
So kind of,
24:56
I think as I go into, you
25:00
know, college, I didn't, you know, I didn't drink in high
25:04
school. You know, my dad worked for a beer company. He
25:07
was a supervisor for a beer company. I'm from the Bay Area, so they were
25:11
based in Oakland and it was Schlitz was
25:15
the name of the beer company. You know,
25:19
during that time, they were able to bring home
25:22
two cases of whatever they wanted at. With every paycheck.
25:27
But my parents didn't drink, either my dad or my mom. And
25:30
so he would bring home Gatorade and soda because they, they were
25:34
distributor. So they had a whole bunch of beer and wine. But then they also
25:37
had soft drinks. Yeah. So rather than beer,
25:41
it was Gatorade or soda. And so I wasn't
25:45
really exposed to any of that in. On that level.
25:50
And I would choose not to, you know, so I really didn't drink at all
25:53
in high school. Didn't. Didn't do anything. I didn't really know
25:57
anyone that did. Let's be real. It's kind of the circles we roam
26:01
in. And everyone has the
26:04
same group of high school friends. My 15 year old
26:08
daughter today versus my 15 year old self my
26:12
freshman year in high school. The kids are all the same.
26:16
Really early. Right. You have the smokers, the skaters, the athletes,
26:20
the, you know. Right. The kids that are
26:24
struggling. It's the same thing for me. So it was around,
26:29
but it wasn't something that I was interested in. So my real
26:32
entry point, even in college, you know, I came to
26:36
Nevada, the University of Nevada, and played football. And
26:39
so I drank a little, you know, more socially. I smoked some
26:43
pot. I was introduced to that. But
26:47
my substance journey wasn't really until later on. And
26:51
so my real entry point was
26:55
in 2010, I got diagnosed with Crohn's disease.
27:00
I had just got my master's degree in secondary administration
27:04
in 2010. Good for you. Yeah, I know. Thank you.
27:08
That was hard. It was hard. You know, and that's
27:11
where not to completely sidebar it, but
27:16
our mental health struggles don't always look the way we think
27:20
they should look. You know, I was probably near
27:23
my worst on how I felt and functioned while
27:27
I was in my graduate program. And I got a 4.0 in my graduate program.
27:32
I worked really hard. I was raising young kids,
27:36
trying to maintain a marriage. I was working as a teacher
27:40
while I was going to graduate school.
27:44
And that was hard. That was really hard. It was a lot of
27:47
sacrifice. I was not well during that time
27:51
either. I was having a lot of anxiety and depression. I was
27:54
in therapy. I was probably going twice a
27:58
week to therapy because I was having issues,
28:03
anxiety and depression, and the stuff that we kind of alluded to when we started.
28:08
And so I made it through that, that graduate
28:11
program. And it was
28:15
a couple weeks after that I got my degree. I had finished the last
28:19
class and we went on vacation to celebrate.
28:23
And so we went to Cabo. And during that week, I started. I
28:27
came down with the symptoms for Crohn's disease, which
28:30
was how it kind of played out for me, which
28:34
is. It's called a perianal fistula. It's a
28:38
gnarly 50 cent word there. I had a hole in my colon. Oh,
28:41
geez. And so there were things happening before that that you ignore.
28:45
Right. I played football. You know, it was one of those things that pain
28:49
was my friend while I played. And so A lot of times I don't
28:52
acknowledge pain, although I'm a big baby, as my wife
28:56
says now, if I have a headache, my life is sideways. But
29:00
obviously, during that time, there were other symptoms. Looking back, but
29:04
so halfway through this week, I start not feeling well. We
29:08
get home, and that Monday we got back, I
29:12
went and saw a specialist, and that was where I got diagnosed with
29:15
Crohn's disease. And at the time, I had never even heard of it. I
29:19
didn't know what that meant. And so we look
29:23
at the things that happen to us that change the
29:27
way the brain communicates. So concussion is a big one. The other
29:31
one is emotional trauma. And I remember
29:34
it like it was yesterday, just sitting here today, reflecting on.
29:38
I could. You know, the look of the room, the exam
29:42
room I was in. The smell of that exam room, it left
29:46
a mark because this. This doctor came in, a
29:48
gastroenterologist, and he told me
29:52
that I had Crohn's disease. He actually called me boy.
29:56
He had a Texas accent, and he said, boy, you've got
30:00
Crohn's disease. And I remember turning. It was after this. This
30:03
really gnarly physical exam. As you can imagine,
30:07
diseases in your colon and your digestive
30:11
system. And so I
30:15
remember turning to her, and I had asked her, what the F is
30:19
that? I had never heard that term before.
30:22
And so I was devastated.
30:27
I remember. I don't think for the next
30:30
six months, the trauma of trying to process
30:35
what that meant, coupled with the physical
30:38
symptoms I was experiencing, I was
30:42
stuck in that moment. You know, we talk about what is pts,
30:46
you know, post traumatic stress. Yeah. I was stuck
30:49
in that moment for years. My brain was
30:53
replaying it, trying to process it. These challenging things
30:57
that happen to us, our brain has to process it, has to
31:00
process through it. Not, you know, it's the. It's get
31:04
over it. You know, I remember my mom saying that a lot to me as
31:07
a kid. Just get over it. That's bad. Which I don't think we get over
31:11
anything. We just need to get through it. Our brain needs to process
31:15
what's happened to us. Yeah. And when it's not able
31:19
to process it properly, it gets stuck.
31:23
So I have this emotional attachment stuck into
31:27
it. Right. And every time something comes up that reminds me of
31:30
it, I relive it emotionally with all the
31:34
symptoms that come with it. And so I was stuck in that
31:38
moment. You know, why all these things, you know, life sped up on
31:41
me in that moment, and that was my entry point to pain medication.
31:47
Sorry to Interrupt. I just want to, I feel like I want to highlight it
31:50
because there's. When people say something that I feel like is really important, I just,
31:55
But I do still think this for society is the stimulus sticking
31:58
point where they think it's a real quick fix.
32:02
You know, just stop thinking about it, just think positive.
32:06
Just, you know, forgive, forgive. You know,
32:10
you're just, you know, just stop being stuck. That is such
32:14
a thing. That's still in society. And, and I say this with good
32:17
people, well intentioned people have said that to me
32:21
in different ways a lot to get over it. And
32:25
it's not a thing. So you've got to stop saying it like it is
32:29
not a thing. If you want to destroy someone, say that. That is not
32:32
how we work. No. So you know.
32:36
Yeah, no, you're totally 100
32:39
correct. We, you know, it's not a thing, you know,
32:43
and, and language matters, the way
32:47
we talk to people matters. But when we,
32:51
with people that we encircle ourselves with loved ones,
32:55
you know, we're parents, if we're lucky enough to be a parent or an uncle
32:58
or an aunt or, you know, young people that we're trying to
33:02
help, influence, to raise, we're
33:05
teaching them skills whether we know it
33:09
or not. And a lot of it is
33:13
what are we doing
33:17
to reflect what I want them to do? You know,
33:21
my kids, they're not really paying attention to what I'm saying. Let's
33:24
be real, you know, I have 12, 15, 19 and 21.
33:28
I've been around, had a lot of kids, 15 years of teaching.
33:33
They don't really care what you're saying. What are you doing? How
33:36
are you showing them the right way to do things?
33:40
You know, and I show and then I can explain
33:44
what they just saw. I think that's a better model than
33:48
talking down to people, you know, rather
33:51
than talking to them. That's how we learn, you know, that's how I
33:55
learned in a. Not really a good fashion
33:59
to get over it. Well, what's that mean? And what
34:03
is what, what happens when it doesn't work? I just can't get over the
34:06
fact I have a hole in my colon. I don't know what this, this term
34:10
is and I'm not well.
34:14
So many things happening. How do I just get over all of that? The impact
34:18
it's having in my life. I couldn't sit down in
34:22
a normal fashion for six months. How do you just get over that?
34:26
You know, and that's what we,
34:30
when we tell someone, we'll just get over it that's what they're
34:34
basically saying is everything that's happening to you isn't really
34:38
relevant. You know, just keep moving, right? Keep pushing.
34:41
I agree to an extent, but I need some support
34:45
along the way. And I need to be able to stop at
34:49
these points that are not okay for me and
34:52
have someone work with me, whether it's me on
34:56
me or loved ones or someone I've given authority
35:00
to speak into my life. Therapists are great because they have
35:04
a formal title where they can speak into my life to
35:07
help me figure out what's happening and to become
35:12
more accepting of it. But
35:16
that's a process, you know, and we all move through that process
35:19
at a different time. As a
35:23
another way of looking at it, the grieving process, you have these stages
35:27
of grieving and, you know, when I first learned them in
35:31
college, there was a set of steps. Well, no one
35:34
ever really said, maybe those steps don't go in order for you.
35:38
And maybe you recircle steps. You know, you definitely
35:42
have pieces of them that we all go through, but they don't always look the
35:45
same. And so when I'm processing something that has happened to
35:49
me emotionally, that's too much for me to handle, I
35:53
need the ability to help process through it.
35:57
Now, I think for me, with
36:01
the challenges I faced was when my brain isn't working
36:05
properly. So when we look at the brain,
36:09
we have several different lobes that make up the brain, right?
36:12
The frontal cortex, the center brain, the back of the brain. Without getting too
36:17
neurology on everybody, they're separate,
36:21
all those regions are separate. And they have to talk to each other
36:24
in order for the jobs to get done properly. Right. If I think of
36:28
them as a radio station or a car radio, I think
36:32
it's a good analogy. It doesn't work perfectly, but it helps us
36:35
conceptualize the way the brain actually functions. Is in my car,
36:39
I have six preset stations. So to kind of look at the way the brain
36:43
intercommunicates within itself is it has a set of its own
36:46
six preset stations, and those were preset from birth.
36:50
They have a call number, let's say like 102.9.
36:54
It's actually my favorite radio station. I'm a rap and hip hop guy.
36:58
But the brain has that same call number
37:02
and it has five others, and it uses them to intercommunicate.
37:06
Information comes in, needs to be sent to the frontal cortex. Because it's
37:10
the computer program of the brain, that
37:13
communication is vital on
37:17
how I feel and function, right? And so
37:21
as the radio stations become out of tune, in
37:25
my brain there starts to be static, just like your car radio,
37:29
right. The it's not as loud, it's not as clear.
37:32
It can even be a whole nother radio station. And it's not supposed to be
37:36
on as a way of thinking. As the brain starts to break down
37:39
in the way it communicates. And then I start to have
37:42
symptoms, I start to have brain fog, I start to have
37:46
anxiety, I start to have depression, I have impulse control issues. I
37:50
can't multitask. That's what it really looks
37:54
like when the brain starts to miscommunicate.
37:58
What causes that miscommunication? Just in general,
38:02
concussions are going to do it. Think about driving in your car and punching the
38:05
radio. It's probably going to change the channel a little bit. So take
38:09
an analogy to every hit I have to my head comes, can start to
38:13
detune those stations just ever so slightly.
38:17
Then the other main reason is emotional trauma.
38:22
The medical field and neurology is slowly
38:26
starting to identify and understand that
38:30
emotional trauma does the exact same thing
38:33
concussive trauma does to those radio stations. It
38:37
starts to deep, you know, and back to this
38:41
people who champion mental health. It's so important because
38:45
everything we have said, you can't see. It doesn't look like anything's wrong.
38:49
The only way you really can start to look at it is through
38:52
recording how that communication is taking place. And that's one of
38:57
the facets of our treatment that Dr. Jin has created.
39:01
Dr. Jin is a psychiatrist by trade. He was
39:05
working with brain and communication as
39:08
psychiatry does. Right. A long
39:12
time ago. And so he, you know,
39:16
was exploring more ways to help the
39:19
brain start to work better. It's the easiest way to think about it.
39:23
Psychiatry, their main tool is medication, right.
39:27
Mental health medication is pharmaceutical substances
39:31
that are trying to make the brain work better. Right. They fail
39:34
miserably for a lot of the things that they're actually
39:38
trying to correct. Right. Without going down that
39:42
rabbit hole. And so
39:46
the EEG is like an X ray for the brain
39:50
and it looks at that communication. And so
39:54
that was my entry point into
39:59
more of an understanding of now being able to conceptualize,
40:02
start to see where my brain wasn't functioning well.
40:06
You know, it no longer was invisible like we
40:10
had talked about earlier. It was the X ray of the brain that shows
40:14
that it was broken. And
40:18
I remember my
40:22
first EEG doctor review. So you
40:26
record the eeg, produces a report to evaluate,
40:30
much like an X ray. You know, the little thing they stick up on
40:34
the X ray machine that. That shows you what's going on.
40:38
You meet with the doctor and you kind of go from there. Yeah.
40:42
So I could. That was the first time in a long time
40:46
that I could take a deep breath because I thought it was just me,
40:49
you know, I thought it was just me kind of to
40:53
circle back. I got my graduate degree. I got diagnosed with
40:57
Crohn's disease. I'm having all these issues that I'm not okay
41:01
with. I'm emotionally traumatized.
41:05
I end up finding out I had post concussion syndrome. So all those
41:08
years of football, I had long term concussive symptoms.
41:13
It's on its way to CTE.. CTE is.
41:17
There's a lot more understanding for what that is. And a lot of
41:21
it is directly related to major
41:25
brain concussions, whether it's a TBI or long term
41:29
concussion. Can you tell people
41:33
what that stands for? CTE and TBI, in case they don't know. So the
41:37
TBI is traumatic brain injury. So it's almost
41:40
like a major concussion
41:44
as you start to go from mild concussion to
41:48
severe concussion. And that's reflective on the
41:51
symptoms. What kind of symptoms are you having?
41:55
How severe are the symptoms and how long are they
41:59
persisting? The headache, the sensitivity to the light to
42:02
sound, the disorientation, the not knowing where you are.
42:07
Those are some of the basic ones. The major headache,
42:11
how severe are they and how long do they last? Right. Starts
42:14
delineate what category of severity would fall into.
42:18
Then a major TBI would be an
42:22
extreme version of that, you know, And TBI is a little
42:26
trickier because it also can fall into the category
42:29
of permanent brain damage, like severe brain damage.
42:33
You know, if I get in a motorcycle accident or I get in a car
42:37
accident and I am severely debilitated because
42:41
I hit my head, the brain took such
42:45
an impact of force that parts of it die
42:49
off. They're no longer plugged into the system.
42:54
The TBI can go all the way into that. Right
42:58
to where I lose ability to
43:01
function at any level. CTE is chronic
43:05
encephalitis. Basically, it's
43:09
a similar thought process of that major
43:12
tbi. It's where neurons start to die.
43:17
And when neurons start to die, obviously when
43:21
they're linked into a system, that the system starts
43:25
functioning properly. So that's a short
43:28
synopsis of, of what that is. Let me
43:32
Chronic. Chronic
43:36
encephalitis is CTE. Yeah,
43:39
okay. Right. So
43:43
with that particular CTE, they have to be able to
43:47
dissect your brain in order to actually be able to officially
43:51
diagnose you with a stage of it. I think there's four stages of it.
43:56
And so without, it's post mortem, so you
44:00
have to die and then they can dissect it. So
44:04
when you're not dead yet and you're showing symptomology
44:09
of what that would look like. So not to overgeneralize,
44:13
but post concussion or concussion symptoms,
44:16
tbi, cte, they all have
44:20
a very, a lot of similar types of symptoms.
44:23
And so we can circle back to the
44:27
miscommunication in the brain. As that
44:31
starts to increase, the radio stations start
44:34
to get even more out of tune
44:39
that I start to have major symptoms. And a lot of those
44:43
major symptoms. Are. Not
44:46
only anxiety and depression and brain. Frog,
44:50
frog brain fog.
44:54
You know, we start to lose our ability for impulse control.
44:57
That's a big one. And our personality and
45:01
risk taking starts to, starts to change.
45:06
If we look at football players in particular, there
45:09
have been a lot of good examples of what that looks like in somebody's life,
45:14
how they become a different person. And so they're usually
45:18
marked by late onset substance use disorder,
45:22
criminal activity and
45:26
other types of issues that really decline
45:30
their ability to function in society. And
45:33
so because it's housed in the frontal cortex, my
45:37
impulse control and my personality, my morality, if I were
45:41
to put where that's located, it's in my frontal
45:44
cortex, which is the program of the
45:48
brain. And when I start to
45:52
hit my head quite a bit, if we're looking at sports,
45:56
that communication starts to change and it
45:59
eventually is going to start to change my moral
46:03
compass, my personality and my impulse control.
46:07
So I start doing things I normally wouldn't do because I don't have a
46:11
check and balance system any longer that's in there
46:15
simply because the communication is broken down,
46:18
you know, and now emotional trauma can get there as well.
46:23
You know, if I have one
46:26
or many, because it can just be one, it can be one devastation
46:30
that's happened in my life. As an example, a death of a child,
46:35
that the severity of that is just
46:38
like being completely knocked out on the football field.
46:43
You know, we've seen some examples if you're an NFL fan, where
46:47
quarterbacks or receivers in particular, they get knocked out and
46:50
they're on live TV and they have a physical symptoms.
46:54
Their arms come up and their fingers lock and,
46:58
and it's not a pretty look
47:03
and that's doing damage to that communication.
47:08
So we have marks of emotional trauma.
47:11
Most people do. And so over time
47:15
it will lead to a very similar Conclusion,
47:19
which is how I'm feeling and functioning, starts to
47:22
greatly decline. And then I start doing risky things. I stop
47:26
caring. You know, where I used to not believe in
47:29
stealing, now I steal because I don't care
47:33
anymore. I don't have that impulse control to help
47:37
regulate my actions and my feelings.
47:41
And so that's the.
47:45
Some of the down the road issues that
47:48
we encounter that people have that have had some. Some
47:52
challenges in their life, you know. Yeah. And so we're human.
47:56
We are human. Most of us experience a little bit of both,
48:00
you know. Yeah. Well, and I know,
48:04
you know, when I did my brain scan and Dr. Jin looked at it, he's
48:07
like, yep, you have. I thought he said ptsd,
48:11
whatever. He's like, you definitely have some post traumatic stress issues.
48:15
Yeah, he would still use ptsd. Yeah, he does. Okay.
48:19
He's like, your brain is not. Your brain does look like people who've,
48:23
you know, been to war or
48:26
whatever. Yeah, yeah. And this isn't
48:30
normal. And you're never awake and you're never asleep.
48:36
It's like delta is really high during the day and my brain's really active at
48:40
night, so. And never asleep. Right, Right.
48:44
Sounds like hyper vigilance in a way. But yeah, so,
48:48
yeah, that's how it's the exact same conversation he had
48:52
with me when I first had that EEG done
48:55
was very similar in terms of. That EEG
49:00
is a visual representation of where
49:03
dysfunction is happening in that brain. Communication. You get to see it.
49:07
Yeah. It shows you in a report form and you meet with a doctor to
49:10
go over all that there are in these reports.
49:15
The brain is going to tell the tale of our life. It's the easiest way
49:18
to put it to kind of have people that are
49:22
unfamiliar and a lot of people are unfamiliar with how the brain
49:26
actually works. Even those who work with the brain are pretty
49:29
unfamiliar with how it works. Right. It's one of those things. We are learning
49:33
so Much more in 2020, almost 20, 20, 26,
49:37
about the brain and the way it inner. Inner functions. And because
49:40
there's so much going on in the brain, you know, for.
49:44
I would say we're still fairly in the dark on a
49:48
lot of what's happening with the brain, you know,
49:52
how we address it. But I think in
49:55
our little lane that we work with here and with Dr.
49:59
Jin's brilliance, we know a lot more in terms of
50:03
lane we live in. We still don't know a lot
50:07
about the brain in general, but
50:11
in Dr. Jin's work and the lane that we're in, which is we use
50:15
Dr. Jin's technology. If anyone out
50:18
there wants to learn more about Dr. Jin, you can go to the Brain Health
50:22
Leadership dot org correct. Brain Health.
50:25
Brain Health Leadership Foundation. So it's BHLF
50:29
Foundation.org that's
50:33
where you'll find there that platform, it's a non
50:37
profit that
50:41
this machine cycling. Sorry,
50:45
it's a non profit then the platform is to share
50:49
knowledge and information about the brain and the work that we do,
50:53
which is how an off label version of TMS,
50:57
transcranial magnetic stimulation is the
51:00
platform of Dr. Jin's treatment. But it's the first of
51:04
its kind. It's the most cutting edge form of
51:08
medical treatment out there. That's tms. So it's a magnet,
51:11
but it's actually EMBP.
51:17
The terminology we use for the treatment, it's variable
51:21
pulse TMS. And so what the vario pulse
51:24
means is back to those radio stations we talked about earlier.
51:28
It's introducing all six radio stations back
51:32
to the patient's brain with the call
51:36
numbers that their brain is supposed to be tuned into.
51:39
So it's only reintroducing where their brain was originally supposed
51:43
to be functioning. And it's done very gently
51:47
over two weeks. So you get one a day for 3:30
51:51
minutes. The stimulation is only six seconds
51:54
per minute. It's not like you're under the treatment for the whole 30
51:58
minutes. There was a little bit of sensation that's placed on your forehead
52:02
in a very gentle fashion in a comfy chair
52:06
and it's delivered six seconds at a time.
52:09
And you have one a day for two weeks,
52:13
10 treatments. And over that time it's
52:17
reintroducing those natural frequencies that the
52:21
brain is supposed to be working under. And so it's starting to tune
52:24
it in. It's making the neurons or
52:28
gently nudging the neurons back into the
52:32
frequency range set that they're supposed to be functioning under
52:36
as well as the brain. If I go back to the
52:40
six radio stations, there's six different regions of my brain.
52:44
They have to be on the same station at the same time also.
52:49
Right. There are instances where your stations are
52:53
tuned in, but the different lobes are on different
52:56
stations at a different time. So that's
53:00
also another form of miscommunication. As an
53:03
example, Rock 145, Wild
53:07
102.92 local radio stations here in Reno. One plays
53:11
rock, one plays rap and hip hop. The back of the brain is on the
53:14
rock station, the front of the brain is on the hip hop station.
53:18
They're not communicating properly because they're on a different
53:22
panel. Right. So EMBP
53:26
does both. It reintroduces those natural
53:29
stations to tune them in, but it also
53:33
reintroduces the pattern. The brain should be changing
53:36
station so it starts to unify both pieces
53:40
of it. As that takes place over a course of two
53:43
weeks, people start to feel better. The things that we've
53:47
kind of been talking about, you know, through the first 40 minutes of
53:51
our conversation about these negative symptoms that come
53:54
from that miscommunication, they start to go away.
53:58
Anxiety starts to get better, depression starts to go away.
54:03
Mental clarity starts to re show up where I'm
54:06
able to stay focused, I'm able to carry a thought,
54:10
I'm able to express myself in a clear, concise fashion
54:17
over that course of treatment. Then after 10,
54:21
we do another EEG, you meet with the doctor again.
54:25
So you get to look at pre treatment brain,
54:28
after 10 treatment brain on how, how the
54:32
communication from what your brain is telling us is getting better.
54:37
Right. And of course the patient testimony matters. The
54:40
course over two weeks, people start to feel better and they start
54:44
to see it. Not everyone,
54:48
A lot of times it's their loved ones that tell us they
54:52
are doing better because of, you
54:55
know, how do I know when what I don't know if I don't know
54:59
it. Yeah, there's a circle. You're really not doing well.
55:03
You're also not aware of yourself
55:06
as much. No, we point that out to a lot of people.
55:10
Now. If you're weird like me, I pay attention to the
55:14
way I feel and function almost obsessively because there was
55:18
a time where I wasn't well. But not everyone
55:22
pays as much attention to that as I do to. Am
55:25
I able to remember my shopping list without a list?
55:29
Because I remember at a time where I had a
55:33
shopping list so I could get the 12 things I needed at the grocery
55:37
store because there was no way I was going to remember them. But then I
55:40
forget where the list is. It's all
55:43
obsolete. Right. I have a list so I don't forget it, but I forget where
55:47
the list is. I don't have to do that today. For the most I feel
55:50
like that's common. Well, I know, right? And we kind of get used to
55:54
some things that would be kind of common. You know, we, we can go off
55:58
on rabbit holes on a lot of our memory is how much I care,
56:02
right. If I, if my brain's functioning pretty well and I
56:06
meet somebody new, do I remember their name
56:10
right? A Lot of times it's how much
56:13
do I care? Do I need to remember their name?
56:17
Yeah, we just sometimes blow through it. Now, I
56:21
might be busy, I might not be focused. I mean, there's other things, but
56:24
let's, in general, I kind of need to care
56:28
a little bit to be able to be present, to hear the person's
56:32
name, and then I have to link it to something that'll help me
56:35
remember it. Right. Not to go down the way we
56:39
were able to actually memorize things and
56:43
stuff like that. That's a whole other topic. But, but.
56:48
Yeah, so I, I, I love how
56:51
there's, there's a, you know, like, we very, very quickly
56:55
went through this, this whole thing of hopelessness.
57:01
My brain is, you know, it's so many, so
57:04
many different issues that you were dealing with that made it in,
57:08
in most situations would have been impossible to heal
57:12
from because there wouldn't have been a solution. Right. And then
57:15
this very practical treatment that came in that
57:20
really did kind of solve the issues.
57:23
Right. And now you're here offering this to other people.
57:27
Yeah, that's a, that's a beautiful story.
57:31
Yeah, it's, it's, I'm lucky. It's amazing. But
57:36
there, what we do here is a piece of the journey
57:40
for people. Depending on what's going on, kind of,
57:44
again, circle back to me.
57:48
You know, I'm not a shiny quarter. A lot of people, we do a lot
57:52
of tours, we introduce the technology to people because it is the
57:55
most cutting edge, advanced
57:59
medical treatment that's in the brain health world. That's medical
58:03
treatment. It's not behavior, Mental health,
58:06
behavior health. This is medical treatment. It's a Class 2 medical device,
58:10
just like an MRI machine is. Both of them are the EEG
58:14
device and the TMS device. But
58:19
it does certain things very well. And so
58:22
back to, you know, kind of where I was at. I get
58:26
introduced to pain medication through my Crohn's disease
58:29
diagnosis. And
58:34
I had all of the post concussion symptoms happening as well,
58:38
which was the anxiety, the depression, the brain fog. I wasn't sleeping
58:42
well. I had no memory. I wasn't, I didn't have any joy in
58:46
my life. I didn't have hobbies any longer. I
58:49
was, you know, really not doing well. And because of
58:53
that anxiety, so racing thoughts, I was nervous all the time. I
58:57
had butterflies. I would have these emotional outbursts. I remember
59:00
several times I would be driving my daughters when
59:04
they're two and four, we'll say to preschool on my way
59:08
to work, and at a stoplight I would
59:12
all of a sudden start crying, and I didn't
59:16
understand why. ......We will continue this amazing conversation next week. Tune in Thursday.