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Parkinson’s: An Athlete’s Journey is for athletes navigating Parkinson’s, the coaches and clinicians who train them, and anyone who wants real-world strategies for performance and longevity. Hosted by Eric Von Frohlich and Todd Vogt, the show focuses on tactical takeaways: how to train, recover, manage symptoms, and stay consistent when the rules keep changing. Expect honest conversations, tested routines, and guest experts who go deeper on what works.
Eric (00:31)
so life of an athlete, did you get diagnosed?
Todd Vogt (00:39)
Let's see, so I started having symptoms in fall of 2017. I'm in this, I guess you'd say, like Rolodex group, Rolodex boat with a bunch of guys. We raced a couple times per year, either in San Diego at the Crew Classic, or at Head of the Charles, which is always the third weekend of October.
Eric (00:56)
You were still competing as an athlete. Yes. I mean, you were 40.
Todd Vogt (01:00)
I was I was a nationally competitive Masters rower. I wasn't a full-time athlete at that point. row or work out once a day. At that time, was head coach of a local rowing program. I had a pretty busy job.
And so I'd row once a day. And anyways, we had this training program that we did every Fall. We started in about August it would consist of like a couple workouts per week on the rowing machine or on the water. And it was put together, one of the guys in our group was an Olympian. He rowed in 2012 in London for Croatia. So there was like one really hard workout every week, like a benchmark workout, It was one workout you're guaranteed you're gonna see God every week, you know.
Eric (01:44)
Right. ⁓
Todd Vogt (01:45)
And the
fun thing about the group, I'm giving you a lot of background here, but, there was like 15, 20 guys in the group ranging in age from say 35 to 70, early 70s. They were all competitive rowers. And so it was fun in that we had a little like text chat group. And so, you know, we talk trash to one another. The fun thing was that there was always like, the guys on the faster end of the spectrum were like really fast. Like they were talking like just barely outside of the national team.
the guys were in their seventies were you know fit seventy year old
Eric (02:17)
So on those guys, what were they running 2K in? Subsect, obviously, right?
Todd Vogt (02:24)
the guy who's sort of the ring leader, guy, Ante Corazon, he goes about anywhere from 6.05 to 6.15 at slowest. yeah, the thing that's impressive, like, and the one guy in our group now is like, there's a couple guys under six minutes in the group now, so those guys are like in a whole new, they're in their, that's crazy fast, especially for those guys who have like, Ante, like the guy, the ring leader, they have like jobs and lives and kids, you know, so it's incredible.
Eric (02:32)
Okay.
A of a life, I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure. You're calling it a life.
Todd Vogt (02:55)
So yeah, that's I think kind of the fun part of it is like you had a lot of sort of benchmarks relatively speaking. Like there's one guy in this group would always wait to do the workout like Friday or Saturday or something like that. Cause then a couple of the guys, I would see what everybody else did and I would say, okay, Hughes average, whatever 150 on this workout. So I knew that I had to get 149.9.
Eric (03:17)
Anyway, you talk shit next week.
Todd Vogt (03:19)
yeah, exactly. see how close you get to Ante. Anyway, so I was doing these workouts and I don't know, I just felt like, I just felt tired and I felt like I was getting a little slower on the rowing machine and I felt like I was like rowing oddly. I didn't feel like I was rowing like efficiently. I felt like just like, I felt strange in the boat when I was on the water as well. And I just felt like I was struggling to get through the workout just like a little bit, you know? Just like enough like I could perceive it and you know, the times were maybe like slightly slower.
Eric (03:47)
This is like a canary in the coal mine.
Todd Vogt (03:49)
Yeah,
exactly. Exactly. That was like at the time, this is fall of 17. So I got diagnosed in summer of 18 formally. So at that point, like I didn't think much of it, honestly. I just thought I was like, I don't know, I'm guessing that I'm getting old. I guess I got to do some yoga or like maybe I needed to lift a so that was like October. Anyways, later that fall.
Eric (04:11)
Or in all due respect, grow up and get a real job.
Todd Vogt (04:15)
Yeah, exactly. Well, maybe I'm working too much and it's like impacting my recovery. I was working a ton. So the next thing to happen is like in later in the fall, I don't know, December, November, I noticed my left arm like stopped swinging when I was walking. I didn't think much of that at the time. I had a bad shoulder injury on that side.
Eric (04:16)
maybe I'm a little...
Mm.
Todd Vogt (04:37)
I didn't
have surgery, but I had a rotator cuff injury that took a long time to heal. So I just thought like something was weird was in my shoulder.
Eric (04:43)
Did someone point that out to you or did you notice that yourself?
Todd Vogt (04:47)
I noticed it myself, yeah. It just felt, I'm like, what's going on? Why is this not swinging? This feels odd. But I just thought like my shoulder was acting funky. take us like fast forward to maybe March of that winter, March of 18. I started noticing I had this like teeny little tremor in my left hand, just like little teeny tremor when I was just sort of sitting on the couch with my wife, with Heather. Like I was just like, huh, what's going on? My fingers are sort of just tremoring just like a teeny amount.
Eric (05:13)
Any correlation to like stress or did something bring it out or?
Todd Vogt (05:18)
Not necessarily,
along the same lines though, was working a ton that spring. Essentially they had me doing two jobs at the Throwing Club. I was head coach and executive director. So was in like 60, 70 hours a week, easily. I was working seven days a week. I just thought I had some sort of adrenal fatigue or I was just really stressed out and tired. So at that point I was like, okay, something's wrong with my body, but I don't know what it is. So I went to see a naturopath.
So, and she examined me, some acupuncture, gave me some symptomatic relief, then she did a bunch of blood testing, like see if something was odd. when all the blood work came back. This is like April or May of 2018, at this point. So the blood work comes back and it's all normal. Everything looks good, like testosterone, cortisol, all my hormones. At that point, she's like, you need to go see somebody else. You need to go see a neurologist, I think.
That's what I'm like, boy, something's seriously wrong at this point. It's not just like I'm overworked and stressed out. So then I went to see he examined me, he thought, you know, he's like, well, Parkinson's could be an option, they had me do what's called the DAP scan, like the dopamine transporter test, where they inject the radioactive dye. And after that, took like a month for the results to come in, and after that,
That's when I got formally diagnosed. It was like the beginning of August. I guess here's a funny story along the way, I don't know.
Eric (06:45)
Funny stories are appropriate, so by all means, just go with it.
Todd Vogt (06:50)
So the one thing they were trying to rule out is Wilson's disease, which is a copper processing disease, which the symptoms of Wilson's disease can mimic symptoms of Parkinson's disease. So Wilson's disease is a genetic disease where your body doesn't properly process copper. So in order to test the first, first two things, I guess are funny. First to test this, you might've done this too. You have to pee in like a container for 24 hours. You have to like collect your pee for 24 hours. So I was coaching at the boathouse. So I had this like,
Eric (07:18)
That's better than having to pee straight for 24 hours.
Todd Vogt (07:21)
Yeah, exactly. So I'm like peeing in this jug like in the corner of the boathouse for like a day, you know, as everybody's like working out anyways, the other thought the joke that Heather and my wife and I had was that we're you know, when the options were either Parkinson's or Wilson's disease, I was like, come on, Wilson's disease, come on. I was like rooting, hoping to have Wilson's disease. I was like, come on, genetic disorder. So
Eric (07:43)
Anyway, I went through that with ALS. Anything but other than ALS, I'm gonna come out ahead.
Todd Vogt (07:46)
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, I remember him getting like an MRI and they're like, well, at least I don't have MLS, or ALS, excuse me. ⁓ Well, yeah, that's it. Then I got diagnosed in beginning of August.
Eric (08:02)
And what was that like? They basically, you know, for me, they patted me on the back and said, go home and forget everything I told you about Parkinson's and just live your life. And I was like, what the hell am I doing with that?
Todd Vogt (08:15)
Yeah, exactly. don't I mean, when I got first diagnosed, I really liked that neurologist. He was great. I mean, he's subsequently retired. He's no longer my ⁓ neurologist now, but he was great. You know, but he didn't, he just kind of like, he's like, yes, you know, he.
Eric (08:26)
No
Todd Vogt (08:32)
Come in to see him, go in his office and you sit down, you chat for a second. He's like, yes, you have Parkinson's disease, know, the results of the test. And then at that point, he gave me file folder, full of like resources like the Bryan Grant Foundation OHSU like Parkinson's Center and the Parkinson's Resource Center, like just a bunch of like pamphlets. He's like, here's a bunch of pamphlets and brochures, you know, go take a look at these and good luck, you know.
Eric (08:39)
Right.
But you're not the first person to go through this.
Todd Vogt (09:01)
Yeah, so then, you know, I remember, yeah, I walked out of the doctor's office and I called Heather. was like, yeah, I have Parkinson's. She's like, well, what do we do now? don't know. Yeah, exactly. Let's read the pamphlet to see what's next. So yeah, that was it. I mean, how'd it go for
Eric (09:12)
Read the pamphlet.
Yeah, it's kind of similar, although it's a little... I don't have quite a clear recall. I have to get Deborah to kind of chime in on some of the details. once I got the diagnosis, the takeaway was, it's not going to kill you, but you're going to die with it. And, you know, just go out and do what you're doing because lifestyle-wise...
Todd Vogt (09:37)
Yeah.
Eric (09:43)
much like your own journey, you were exercising, you were paying attention to your nutrition, you were optimizing your sleep, all the things that the non-athletes should be doing when they find out they have Parkinson's. We were already living that lifestyle. I was already kind of optimized and looking for any other biohacks that I could just to get better performance out of my body and more longevity. So there wasn't a whole lot of
adjusting to do as far as lifestyle goes.
Todd Vogt (10:16)
I drink alcohol very sparingly and I don't smoke like I don't work in a mine or anything like that I never really worked in so it's like I mean my diet is good but it's not perfect but at the same
Eric (10:22)
Alright.
So
for a guy who exercises as much as you do, it's as plain as it needs to be. It doesn't really need to be so...
Todd Vogt (10:33)
Yeah,
exactly. said that, it's not like I eat fast food. I don't eat fast food at all, basically. I can tell you last time I've been to McDonald's or whatever. It's probably been 15 years, but...
Eric (10:42)
The last time I was at a McDonald's was to get my dog something to eat for dinner. Legitimately. was on a road trip and I ran out of dog food and I was like, well, there's McDonald's, we can pick them up a couple burgers. And I felt guilty. Unfortunately, feeding my dog McDonald's.
Todd Vogt (10:59)
Exactly.
only thing I haven't been to McDonald's in a long time, but I went to Wendy's like 10 years ago maybe. The only reason I went is like when you're driving like you have when you're transporting as a coach like a lot of times you have to end up driving the Shell trailer and the Shell trailer is huge. So the only place you can stop a lot of times is truck stops. You know, so like this is I remember we coming back
Eric (11:20)
Give people a sense of what we're talking about, the boats themselves are...
Todd Vogt (11:25)
Yeah, an eight-person shell is like 60 feet long.
Eric (11:29)
And
you have a couple feet for the bed of the truck and a couple feet behind it. So you're pulling something that's essentially 70-75 feet long.
Todd Vogt (11:38)
Yeah, I mean, it's nerve wracking. I kind of hate driving the trailer, but it's like sometimes a necessary evil. it's like a tractor trailer, right? You're driving a tractor trailer, but
Eric (11:46)
precious cargo too, like fragile precious cargo.
Todd Vogt (11:50)
Oh, absolutely.
If you have a fully loaded, if you have all of your team's gear on a Shell trailer, an eight-person boat is like 50 grand. So if you have, have a couple of eights and couple of $25,000 fours and some $15,000 doubles and pairs and singles, you easily will have a quarter million dollars worth of equipment. So anyway, sometimes you can't exactly pull into the underground parking lot of a Whole Foods.
Eric (12:06)
Yep.
Good stuff.
Todd Vogt (12:16)
the day I got diagnosed, I had ridden my bike, we were only like two miles from where my doctor was. So I had ridden my bike there and I remember it was like summer day and I remember like I was feeling good so I was just like flying to the doctor's office, like passing people along the bike path and I just remember coming back downstairs and being like, you know, like having sort of cognitive dissonance I guess you would say. Like how physically like.
Eric (12:36)
Yeah, definitely.
Todd Vogt (12:38)
what my physical capability was even at the time versus like what I was diagnosed with.
Eric (12:45)
Yeah, you instantly feel like you're stuck in mud. You know, kind of come out and it must be a placebo explanation for it because I don't think your physiology changes that that quickly. Yeah, exactly. But certainly.
Todd Vogt (12:51)
Yeah.
Eric (13:02)
That realization in the magnitude of it has an effect on your nervous system that is more profound than just finding out you're, insignificant happened. I mean, it was kind of life altering when I heard I mean, I was relieved that,
I knew what it was and I was relieved that it was an ALS and even said that to my doctor. I'm like, well, this is like good news. And I felt, you I built a lifestyle that was going to optimize my experiences as well as anyone else was going to have. that all being said, there's things that kind of creep in to your existence that get
Todd Vogt (13:27)
Yeah.
Eric (13:47)
super complicated. Like I had a back injury about six months after getting diagnosed and all of my double and triple workouts and everything I was doing kind of went out the window because I couldn't walk more than five feet without having to stop and stretch and just relax and try to get ⁓ my back to move me another five to six feet. And that's when I quickly realized the impact that exercise really had on
Todd Vogt (13:52)
Come in.
Eric (14:16)
on the progression because without exercise it was a completely different ballpark and then soon thereafter followed depression and everything else that you kind of go through when you can't directly impact your day way we're used to doing it. You wake up and you have a game plan and you attack the day and you hit your exercise and you stack all your modalities of biohacking to optimize your experience and
you can't access that stuff so it just becomes a very very deep hole very quickly to try to figure out how you're getting out of it.
Todd Vogt (14:55)
did you tell Deb right away, or did she come to the?
Eric (14:58)
I told Deb right away, but I kind of had to process it a little bit and wrap my head around, you know, how I was going to let it affect my life other than, you know, the impact it was going to take, regardless of how I responded to it. So there was going to be like a natural progression, but I kind of felt like I needed to
Todd Vogt (15:02)
Yeah.
Eric (15:23)
have some direct impact on it, otherwise it made no sense that it was a part of my life unless there was something good that was going to come out of it. I started looking for purpose and meaning right away. And Deb was, I think, very supportive that, but it directly impacts your partner's life as much as it does your own in many ways, perhaps more because they don't have the struggle of working through it.
Todd Vogt (15:31)
Yeah.
Eric (15:51)
something that's kind of that that side of the equation is something that gets underappreciated, unfortunately.
Todd Vogt (15:59)
⁓ 100%. Yeah. So were you running Row House Studio? What were you doing for job wise when you first got diagnosed?
Eric (16:05)
Ironically, we just came out of COVID and the Row House was still so there was a compound effect. We came to the West Coast to have a vacation and I met Deb. I was coming back from a ski trip and met Deb in California and we thought it was going to be two weeks off in March and back to New York and everything would resume. And that was the
inflection point when COVID went from being this rumor to being full blown shut down, know, everything closed.
The magnitude of kind of came to a inflection point during those two weeks. So we went from running back home to hunkering down in Newport, which ironically was the best place to be because the beaches stayed open.
Yeah, the the pool was a block away. The kids were safe and and the community was resilient enough to get sucked up too much in what was going on with the protocols and the masking and the distancing and all that stuff that they dragged us through. So it was it was a blessing to be here. But, you know, we were kind of in the middle of this.
very unknown territory and we had businesses and employees that were all wondering what was going on and we were nowhere to be found. We were accessible but we weren't in New York. was kind of a weird, weird place. So we went from.
that into my diagnosis, essentially. And so it was an incredibly stressful point. So all the things like the tremors was becoming more prevalent, the stiffness, the slight hitch in my gait, the lack of arm swing, all of those things were indicating that it was something neurological. But I could only see it through my lens of muscular, skeletal.
experience and movement based and kept thinking that it must be just the stress of shutting the business and not knowing where everything was going and wondering if the world was ever going to put back on its axis and going to rotate like we expected it to. in lots of ways that never really kind of happened for us because it went from that Parkinson's diagnosis. And so the sense of community and
Todd Vogt (18:23)
Yeah.
Eric (18:35)
friendships and all the stuff that I had left in New magnified because I didn't have any of that to really reach out to of share what I was going through or at least kind decide who I was going to share it with. A significant portion of our community was doctors in the Upper East Side of New York. So it was a very informed, very, educated, very successful group of
practitioners who were on the cutting edge of everything. So to have maintained access with them would have been incredibly beneficial. But was feeling very disconnected in addition the diagnosis, in addition to COVID and transplanting my family and not having my community and my own family around anymore. They just kind of stacked up. And then when I had the back injury,
It just became like too much too soon and shut down and basically decided I was going to lone wolf this experience until I figured I had a grasp on what I was dealing with. No, I took two cortisone shots. And that got me moving a little bit and got me feeling a little better, but it took me I lost a significant amount of fitness and. ⁓
Todd Vogt (19:39)
Do to back surgery?
Bye.
Eric (19:55)
and movement because of the Parkinson's primarily and then not exercising. So there was this dramatic shift very quickly. I would say I got two cortisone shots over the course of eight was really probably pretty close to eight months before I was from when the injury happened to when I was moving again well enough to hop on a rower
or work out or feel like I could actually walk on a treadmill or stair climber or do some low impact type of modality to get my body moving again. So it was ⁓ quite a revelation. The depression didn't get alleviated, unfortunately, The back allowed me to exercise more and I figured I could deal with this better, but...
I was kind of in a pretty deep place to dig myself out of at that point, eight months in with no exercise and just medication and sitting in my house, not being able to being bedridden. It was like being bedridden and just dealing with the magnitude of it. So I thought I would do a better job having built my life to overcome adversity.
challenges but at the same know you get the thing that you're probably not ready for it and not the thing that you've been preparing for it so the mental aspects of it were challenging but I think I learned a lot and it certainly taught me the importance of community and having a support group around you and friendships and and a lot of this stuff I'm sure you found the same way
that you're going through, can't really, you don't want to lay it on your partner because they're worried about you to begin with. You start sharing what you're, how you're feeling and you're too honest about what's going on and you're just going to scare the hell out of them. And there's nothing they can do about it anyway. So that was, that took a while to kind of shake off. I think the hard part about that was
Todd Vogt (22:00)
Yeah.
Eric (22:10)
not having a community or support group around me and not feeling like it was something I could talk to a therapist, which would have been a viable option also. just figured like I was moving through hell and I was going to just keep walking forward until I got out. the problem was is that everyone else in my life didn't realize that I was moving forward psychologically and working through it. And so they just, were kind of on.
eggshells about how to deal with me and trying to get me motivated to live life again and get engaged and starting to find things that I can do that maybe didn't highlight what I couldn't do.
Todd Vogt (22:48)
Yeah. I mean, that's a double whammy, right? You know, obviously. So you can barely, if you're struggling just to move because of your back injury, then you add in a little Parkinson's to it. You know, that's tough.
Eric (23:00)
Yeah, exactly. But it's but you know, come through the other side and you get moving again and you start finding hope and purpose in in figuring this thing out or at least figuring it out for yourself on what modalities work best together nutritionally, spiritually, recovery. You know, you start checking off your categories and you have to make sure that you're addressing each one of those because.
the erosion that you're losing to Parkinson's every day is like whack-a-mole. It's your balance, it's your your mobility, it's your dexterity, it's your speech. I said it to someone the other day, we were in New York holiday and I was seeing some old friends I hadn't seen in a while and we took a picture together and.
I was like, you one of the things I never really mentioned to you is I kind of feel like Parkinson's stole my smile. Like my ability to be visually expressive and a friend said, well, you just need to choose your words more because people can't tell from your what you're feeling or how you're expressive or your inflection or your tone. So it it just highlighted to me the need to make sure that I.
Add some more vocal and inflection and so maybe some acting into my into my personality and exaggerate everything so that I'm moving bigger, I'm moving quicker because my brain is basically shutting down and telling me to move slow and move small and conserve energy and stay balanced.
And I kind of feel like, you know, you have to have enough energy to be super expressive and have inflection and tone and
all the things that we struggle with day to day and don't necessarily realize that we're losing it. And then you turn around and you realize, I was barefoot somewhere and I was scrunching my toes up and I was like, wow, I don't do any foot drills. I need to do more balance work on a single leg, more jumping work and just all the modalities that, you know, it becomes exhausting
Todd Vogt (25:05)
Exactly. why I was just thinking like that's I think the hard part about Parkinson's is just like all this extra, all the extra energy that's just required to sort of get through the day. like, you know, it's exhausting. It adds up, you know.
Eric (25:17)
Yeah, we were in New York running around from like 10 in the morning to 10 at night. And just being on my feet for 12 hours was challenging. And then walking 20,000 steps was challenging. you know, the energy you put out to be gracious and grateful for all the friends and family that are surrounding you, because you have to approach everyone with a degree of your best version of yourself. You can't just show up and be like, I'm dragging ass and life sucks.
Todd Vogt (25:45)
I think that's the hidden part about Parkinson's that people don't perceive is that everything just takes a little more energy than it otherwise would,
Eric (25:52)
Yeah, but stack that across 30 different functions and it gets exhausting.
Todd Vogt (25:58)
Yeah, absolutely. by, this is probably like by, you know, seven o'clock at night, you're just
Eric (26:02)
it's certainly a challenge the athlete kind of conditioned to overcome because in any given workout on any given day you get your nutrition wrong. You still got to perform and you still have to do your workout. think that just being prepared for the unknown the unknown a little less scary.
Todd Vogt (26:25)
Yeah.
Eric (26:26)
And so we just have to keep checking the boxes and my working all the things that I know I need to work. And so I kind of feel like I should have a deck of cards. It used to be a workout where you pull out a deck of cards and you know, had an exercise and a number of reps and kind of feel like there's a randomness to it Parkinson's kind of throws at you be beneficial if I was working on my dexterity.
and then working on my speech and then working on my facial expressions and working on it. And at a certain point, you just take a deep breath and you're like, fuck it, this is exhausting.
Todd Vogt (27:03)
Absolutely,
exactly. like, well yeah, mean you can only do so much in the course of the day. But you're right, it's like, I should be stretching a little more or I should be doing little more mobility work or okay I need to take a nap or I don't know. ⁓
Eric (27:16)
Right, the
nap option I forget about. That's something that that's super beneficial as well. You know, even even the benefits of napping for people without Parkinson's is great. but it makes for an experience because on any given day, it's something pops up that you weren't expecting. And so it's kind of like a surprise.
Todd Vogt (27:19)
Yeah.
Eric (27:39)
And when you figure out what that thing is, whether or not you have the energy or the right exercise to do to undo it is another story. one thing to be confronted with the problem, but then having solution for it is the bigger challenge.
Todd Vogt (27:56)
Yeah, definitely. I want to ask you a question. So I was, I, I gave late on my timeline. I was trying to figure out like your timeline. So this was 2020, you got diagnosed and right after COVID that had been like spring and then you, you stayed in Newport. You just stayed there indefinitely, right? You haven't gone back.
Eric (28:12)
You right six weeks became six months became six years before we knew it. we're still out here.
Todd Vogt (28:20)
Yeah, that's how I try to figure out the path exactly from.
Eric (28:25)
Yeah, and know, consequently, life life goes on despite your your struggles. You know, the kids fell in love with being out here. And so I was fortunate enough that that first year I was able to surf with my son every day. And then I, you know, we kind of established a pattern with homeschooling that we would surf every morning. And we got to do that. And I got to spend time with my with my kids and in a very physical way, because the.
symptoms of Parkinson's didn't affect me until I had that back injury. That was probably the first time I difference that was so impactful that I couldn't hide it anymore. so playing basketball with my my nine-year-old, I played a lot of lot of hoop through my something that if you told me I had to struggle to get a rebound and pass him a ball.
Todd Vogt (29:05)
Yeah.
Eric (29:19)
Compared to what I was doing just a handful of years ago or a couple years ago was dunking basketballs and you know playing full court for hours on end that would be kind of mind-blowing and it's sometimes doing the the simple things that you took for granted that take a tremendous amount of effort now. I had shoulder surgery and bicep surgery so that got the Parkinson's. The recovery took longer.
Although everyone tells me you're doing great, it certainly doesn't feel like I'm doing great when I'm struggling to put a coat on after four months. You know, there's certainly ⁓ there's certainly challenges. Brain fog would be one of them. And right now I'm on a tangent. it's I apologize for for that. But it's sometimes you just forget where you're going. And so it's ⁓ something to hopefully pull me back.
directionally wise.
Todd Vogt (30:14)
I just don't know all the details. I feel know more of my background than I know of your background just from giving that talk in Indianapolis.
Eric (30:24)
Yeah, the background that's relevant to this is that I was a fitness professional many, years, 20 plus years. a background in jujitsu and surfing and skiing. And I was a guy
was 80 % of any of my friends who were athletic and committed to one sport. was 80 % of what they were, but never wanted to commit to one sport to get the extra 20%. So I would seasonally go from skiing to ice hockey to basketball to swimming to surfing to whatever kind of was lighting my boat.
It was a stint where I played some polo for a couple of years. Oh, that's cool. just kind of, which was super cool. I'm glad I had that experience. just so movement sports were kind of my lifestyle. I would go out clients out, stand up paddling. And if I had four clients, it was eight hours of stand up paddling on any given day. That's cool.
And, a life with my client base around the movements and hiking and things that I loved that was great for them. And we could get outside and, you know, I could be as much ⁓ a trainer as I could be a life coach. And we talk about life and philosophy and what was going on and, spend my days in the spiritual and mental performance category of people's lives.
directly impacting that. seemingly was built with this type of adversity because I was helping people deal with their adversities, you know, pretty much on a daily basis and using exercise and sports and movement to help them kind of make sense of it. happening. had three kids.
ranging in age from currently 22, 14 and nine. Opened Row House in the process in between the nine year old and the four year old getting born. Deb was taking an award from Goldman Sachs for a that she was a invitee of, She was
given an opportunity to do a program called businesses. And it was an initiative from Goldman Sachs on building entrepreneurship. And she was invited for Row House and she accepted the award. She graduated that program two days after she gave birth Magnus, our eight year old. it was, you know, there was a lot going on.
Yeah. And a lot of life being lived in very kind of compact moments, fitting in, opening new businesses. We had two businesses in New York. had EVF Performance, which was a CrossFit gym, a performance center for movement and weight training. And then we had Row House. So we were running two businesses. We had three kids and we had the complexities of navigating COVID and
Parkinson's all kind of thrown into each other in the course of a handful of years. So there was a lot I guess, intensity for lack of a better was just a lot of life being lived. And we were moving around a lot between the Hamptons and New York City and travel and all the things that kind of were required to building a business and expanding it and then selling it.
You know, there was a day where we literally didn't have coverage for our kids. And so we flew into California for a meeting in the morning and flew back home the same afternoon so that we could wrap up a deal and get things done. And that's like the pace of life we were kind of living at that point.
Todd Vogt (34:23)
sounds pretty exhausting for... for somebody with Parkinson's, you know, so...
Eric (34:29)
Well, at that point, unfortunately, as you know, the symptoms precede the diagnosis by a handful of years. And so, exhaustion is easily masked between just being busy and living life and having a lot going on. And you don't account for the Parkinson's stuff until you get diagnosed a handful of years later. And then you go, ⁓ it all makes sense now.
Todd Vogt (34:36)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I can look back and even before that time I was talking about fall of 17, I can look back at incidents where were clearly like Parkinson's symptoms like messed up sleep or, you know, like weird stuff would happen when I run with my calves, like really isolated incidents, there clearly Parkinson's.
Eric (35:11)
Yeah, the
sleep is something we should totally tap into because I started waking up at like three in the morning and was getting incredibly frustrated that I couldn't get through a night's sleep without waking up. really? It drives me crazy.
Todd Vogt (35:24)
I didn't know that specifically myself, but the only thing I noticed from 2016, short of time period, it's a couple years before I was formally diagnosed, whatever, I was kicking and fighting in my sleep, that type of stuff.
Eric (35:38)
Yeah,
yeah, I always for years, even when I was like as young as like 17 or 18, my arms would like twitch and kind of punch out and have like these spastic movements that were explosive and stuff.
Todd Vogt (35:52)
Yeah, so stuff like that happened. I remember I had my left calf would occasionally cramp up when I would be on bike.
Eric (35:59)
Yeah, what the fuck is that? Tell me about that because I went through the calf cramping and the foot cramping and the quad cramping quite a bit.
Todd Vogt (36:08)
was
like really isolated incidents and it would just happen like maybe once or twice over the course of a couple years cycling I'd just be riding and at the time when it happened I remember thinking like well maybe I'm just dehydrated or something like that you know so because that's what you I don't know I mean that's what you normally would expect think in that situation so
Eric (36:27)
And perhaps you were because it definitely, the cramping thing started happening to the point where my fear was if I'm gonna have leg cramps for the rest of my life, that's gonna be something that I'm gonna have to wrap my head around because it was incredibly painful and never convenient and always when you're lying down and was a big challenge. But fortunately, whether it's my change in nutrition or hydration,
That hasn't been a problem for quite a while, so I feel blessed.
Todd Vogt (36:59)
I haven't
had experience that very much anymore,
Eric (37:02)
That's good. What other crazy symptoms have you come across? Did you get the micrographia?
Todd Vogt (37:10)
No, I haven't actually had that. I some symptoms have progressed over time, right? It's been seven years or so since I've been diagnosed, right? So yeah, approximately seven years. So at the beginning it was like just what I listed before, like fatigue and maybe some minor tremor. then things have progressed since then. I mean, the tremors gotten worse clearly.
Eric (37:31)
Primarily in your hands.
Todd Vogt (37:32)
Yeah, definitely. my left hand, left hand and my, now it's progressed to my left foot as well. So I've got that a little bit, but that's not as bad to my left foot. So the only other symptoms that evolved that have come on the last couple of years, like within the last, two years, I started having some sort of, I was having like neuropathy, get occasional like neuropathy, like pain in my toes.
like particularly when I'm sleeping I noticed that actually the first time I noticed there was a problem with neuropathy was in was in the Olympic Village actually in Paris in 2024 during the games
Eric (38:07)
Wow.
That's a hell of a time to find out your neuropathy.
Todd Vogt (38:12)
I would say it was weird. We had these room air conditioners. You might have heard about the Olympic Village was really hot for some athletes. Team USA, the nice thing we had is they provided us with room air conditioners for all of our rooms. The rooms are pretty small, but luckily I had my own room to myself, so I would just crank the AC in that thing. Anyway, so I would go to bed. There's two beds in there, so this is relevant to the story. I would go to bed and
it kept feeling like the air conditioner unit was blowing on my feet the whole time I was in there. So I would start putting on multiple layers of socks and my feet was still like freezing. I couldn't figure it I was like moving the air conditioner around in the room to make sure there was no airflow on my feet. there was two beds, but I was the only one in the room. So I started putting two sets of blankets in there. I remember one night, so I like had all these pairs of socks, all these blankets like wrapped around my feet and they're still freezing. So I remember like,
touching my feet and feeling they're like, my feet are like sweating, they still, they're like, like perceiving them as being really cold. Yeah, which is really strange. So ever since I did that, the Iboga experience, the Ibogaine thing back into April that went away. We're like right after that.
Eric (39:14)
Yeah, we should dive into that. mean, the symptoms we can cover at another point. Certainly the voice is something that comes to mind more than me. I'm more surprised by the softness of my voice and the lack of inflection than anything else. But I think that if I can remind myself to be more amplified and articulate better, yes, probably would go a long way to having people stop asking me what I just said.
Todd Vogt (39:41)
Yeah, it's funny because I was somebody who would talk fast before. guess maybe you had this problem too. You're a New Yorker, right? I don't know. always spoke fast before. now it's like people could barely understand what I was saying before. And now I'm mumbling and speaking fast. I definitely make a much more concerted effort to be articulate, like you said.
Eric (39:59)
I
Well, where were we going before I pulled it back to symptoms? We were just going to talk about.
Todd Vogt (40:10)
Oh, we were talking about like, I think I was talking about the neuropathy in my foot maybe, that part.
Eric (40:13)
Yeah, think the neuropathy and...
Todd Vogt (40:17)
this Ibogaine ceremony.
Eric (40:19)
That's what I was scratching at, the Ibogaine. When did you do Ibogaine?
Todd Vogt (40:25)
was like first week of April of this year.
Eric (40:27)
of this year. how was that experience?
Todd Vogt (40:31)
It was incredible. mean, for a lot of different reasons. I went down to Costa Rica. So I heard about this place called Root and Wisdom through my naturopath. My naturopath here in Portland, he's no longer here. lives in Sedona actually, which is like the hub of the US. I didn't realize this at the time, but that's where like a lot of the psychedelic, there's a lot of like naturopath and shamans.
Eric (40:52)
We're gonna be going to Sedona over Christmas, actually. Maybe I need to get some info from you.
Todd Vogt (40:57)
Absolutely,
Andy is great, he's awesome. Andy Swanson, was my old naturopath here in town. Oh, He's like an ayahuasca shaman now and he's a really good naturopath and he's in Sedona. Fantastic. Yeah, I'll give you his contact info and I can put you in touch with him. I know, think initially, I it started initially, I saw a podcast, it Joe Rogan podcast with what's his name, Brian Hubbard, who's the physician.
this physician guy who's sort of the leader in the United States as far as ibogaine treatment for veterans. he was also Rick Perry, former governor Rick Perry, who's a big advocate for ibogaine treatment for veterans as well. Because there's some evidence that it's really effective for things like PTSD, particularly with people like, know, like I said, with veterans who have pretty extreme cases given experience. So anyway, so I listened to this and...
asked my naturopath about it. He put me in contact with another guy who put me in contact with this guy, Troy, who runs this place in Costa Rica. Talked to Troy, really interesting character, like really knowledgeable in lot of different fields like chemistry, psychology. Anyway, so after talking to him, it sounded like it could be something that could be potentially helpful for my symptoms. So I went down there. with my brother-in-law, my sister as well, and all three of us did the ceremony
Eric (42:13)
But that was cool that they did it as well. I presume they don't have Parkinson's,
Todd Vogt (42:17)
they don't. None of them Each of them will for their own reasons. My brother-in-law is into psychedelics. He's done ayahuasca before. He had heard about ibogaine and thought it could be an interesting experience, guess she would say her own psychological health anxiety type issues. She thought it could be helpful as well. I think they wanted to go down to support me too in the process.
went down to this place like in the two hours in the jungle. made me when we were going there at first and maybe think of like Apocalypse Now the movie. Right. At the end when they go meet when they go meet whatever his name Marlon Brando's character Kurt's like into the jungle and it's like this compound
Eric (42:55)
Enough time surfing in Costa Rica to know that that's legit.
Todd Vogt (42:59)
Yeah, it's like this compound built into the side of the mountain and it's beautiful. It's awesome actually. So we did two ceremonies over the course of a week. and you do a lot of preparation integration, I guess they would call it, know, talk about what your goals are beforehand. And then we did the ceremony the first night and you're under the effects of the drug were taking iboga
Which taste terrible. It's like it tastes like ground up coffee beans if you're just taking that Yeah, exactly We took it like nine o'clock at night and it lasts about 12 hours the trip so Maybe even more because I got a large dose the first time so I think Troy's theory was he just wanted to like flood my brain with this stuff
Eric (43:26)
It's totally bitter.
wow.
Well, you're an athlete, you probably figured you needed a little extra experience. Yeah.
Todd Vogt (43:46)
I think being an athlete helped actually. This is what I heard. This is kind of what I anticipated. We were told about what to expect about how the trip goes. It's pretty intense. We were told it's a pretty intense experience. The first four hours or so, I guess they call it clearing the cache, if you were to equate your brain with a computer, which means you sort of like a life review as well, You just see images of your life for the first, that just come out.
Eric (44:13)
Are you being led through that experience or is that just happening because of the plant medicine?
Todd Vogt (44:19)
Yeah,
it just happens. Okay, so to give you a little more detail, there's my wife Heather back there.
Eric (44:25)
Hello Heather. Hi. Nice to meet you.
Todd Vogt (44:28)
You too. This is Eric.
took the drug took about maybe 45 minutes for it. We were sitting around the fire around the campfire We did the actual like ceremony and sort of what they would do in Africa as the guy Troy Who runs the places He's been initiated into several different African tribes to use this Plant medicine I guess you would say so Okay, so we sit around fire we take the root like he tells us some stories like 45 minutes later you start feeling
One of the symptoms of ibogaine is as meaning like your loss of balance, you can't really walk very well. So they escort us like by, they take us by the arm individually over to the temple area, to like the deck area of the temple. there's like, there's only 10 of us there doing the ceremony. So there's 10 little inflatable mattresses on the deck. This is like April in Costa Rica, so the weather's really nice. they like have us lay down on the beds. They give us an eye mask and they sort of tuck us in.
Eric (45:22)
And then you feel you feel ⁓ compliant, right? You're not fighting this at all.
Todd Vogt (45:29)
⁓ You're good. mean other than the fact that you're like wobbly and you feel a little sort of out of it you feel fine and the one interesting thing about this drug too about the Ibogaine is when you're laying down and you have your eyeball mask on you're like in the trip and the experience but once you take your eyeball mask and sit up you're lucid like we could almost have the same conversation too so you feel a little odd but you don't sort of have visions and things like that just like just with your eyes open sitting up.
But as soon as you your eyes and put the eyeball mask, you're in the trip. Yeah. So you do this life review, which is pretty intense. Yeah, you see the images from your childhood and a lot of images from your childhood. And you can kind of think about it a little bit. But at the beginning, they're coming at you very quickly. And then they kind of just are evaporating. So it feels like you're... Which is a little intimidating. It kind of felt like I was having my mind erased. And I knew...
It was actually a little scary near the beginning because it's pretty intense. And I was thinking like, I have eight more hours of this. this is, don't know how.
Eric (46:33)
That's the part that would kind of mindfuck me a little bit. You know, when you're in your mind, the only thing I could relate it to would be doing a deprivation tank. And I used to do a lot of those. There are moments though in there where a minute feels like an hour and an hour feels like a minute. And so that would definitely get, I would have to remind myself pre,
Todd Vogt (46:46)
I love those things,
Yeah.
Eric (47:03)
inducing the drug that I have to trust the process.
Todd Vogt (47:08)
Yes, exactly. think that's whenever it would start to get really intense, I would just sort of like focus on my breathing a little bit. so that happened for after about maybe four hours or so, it backs off just a little bit. And so after about four hours or so, you can sort of manipulate the sort of images and things you see through and you can think about them and sort of process them, which is kind of the cool part. But also, I think part of the experience to it just the whole thing, especially the first time, like there's like this weird African music playing and like the
It's I think it is I think it's bongo of some sort of but it's like some sort of weird percussion whatever they use in gabon, know for the ceremony So you've got this like weird music playing in your background and at one point I thought they'd brought in like a live band I would like look around and I so I'd sit up and take a look around and then there'd be nobody it's just like speakers But I remember thinking like how do they get the band in here? Like one in the morning in the middle of the jungle, right? There's so your perception gets a little funky too. So anyways
Eric (47:38)
Bongo drums?
Todd Vogt (48:09)
so that goes on to about like eight in the morning around eight in the morning they escorted each of us to our bedrooms and you just kind of, you're not able to sleep. It prevents you from sleeping, Ibogaine, so you're like, so you're kind of half awake at that point and you're just kind of still under the effects of the drug. And I felt that way until about maybe noon or one o'clock and at that point I would feel like sober again, I guess you would say. ⁓ I felt like I'd ran sort of a marathon, of mentally and physically almost.
Eric (48:34)
Yeah, I can see that.
Todd Vogt (48:35)
Like in both the good and yeah, like you feel pretty physically drained and sort of, but you also feel good. You like feel pretty good at the same time. So.
Eric (48:43)
Did
it give you clarity as one of the benefits or was there other benefits besides clarity that you expected or didn't expect?
Todd Vogt (48:59)
Well, I'll mention a couple things. I think I'm stealing a little bit from what my brother, Ryan, said, but it feels like you did like six months of psychotherapy in the span of eight hours almost, kind of, you know? So that part's pretty intense, but more relevant for us is that, going back to what I was saying, I was having this neuropathy in my feet and toes. was also, the other symptom I didn't mention, but that's relevant here is that
Eric (49:12)
Yeah.
Todd Vogt (49:24)
speaking of sleep, used to restless leg syndrome, that's where I was going, restless leg syndrome, which is not very good. So was taking a drug, this drug called NEUPRO it's a transdermal patch, it's a dopamine agitus. ⁓ That handled the symptoms of the restless leg, but I stopped that two weeks before. I stopped taking pretty much any medication, like two weeks out before the ceremony, so my restless leg was coming back.
Eric (49:37)
Aha.
Including your Cordova and Lovadopa? Or you kept that?
Todd Vogt (49:54)
I
stopped it, I stopped that as well. So I was like completely off the drugs. I felt pretty terrible to be honest, like into the ceremony. I was like walking slowly, my tremor was bad. Yeah, and I was having restless leg. Like I was not feeling great prior to the ceremony, but yeah, the weird thing, the strange things from our perspective is after the next day after the ceremony, like two days after the first ceremony, I had like zero Parkinson's symptoms at all.
Eric (50:19)
wow.
Todd Vogt (50:20)
It knocked out my restless leg, knocked out the neuropathy, I felt like my tremor was gone for a day. Amazing. It was pretty amazing, Ultimately the tremor came back.
Eric (50:32)
I had a, when I had shoulder surgery, Deb realized that my left arm, the tremor was completely gone. Yeah, when I was out of ⁓ my anesthesia, my hand was as quiet and as still as it could possibly be and she was just blown away by that.
Todd Vogt (50:37)
Yeah.
really?
amazing
actually.
Eric (50:52)
Yeah, because I got the anesthesia on my right in my right arm and obviously it the tremor and it stayed like that for a handful of hours. Wow. But there's definitely something to that. so you must have been feeling amazing with no Parkinson's symptoms.
Todd Vogt (51:09)
I
was like, I mean, I was trying not to think, but I was like, my God, this is pretty incredible.
Eric (51:14)
Right, were you thinking that was going to be the norm going forward?
Todd Vogt (51:19)
think a part of me hoped it. I was trying to be realistic about things and thinking, well, we'll just see how this goes. But when that happened, I was like, oh my gosh, maybe this could be the new sort of scenario. But the tremor came back, unfortunately. But the point of this I was going to say is neuropathy in the restless leg were gone.
They're starting to come back now, so it's been maybe seven months since the ceremony. I'm just starting to have a little bit of neuropathy and restless leg, like within the last like two weeks. But for the last seven months since the ceremony, prior to last two weeks, like the neuropathy and the restless leg were totally gone. I stopped taking like the dopamine agonist, so I'm deciding like, do I want to take the dopamine? It's only happened maybe within the last two weeks, like maybe three or four times,
Eric (51:55)
That's amazing.
Yeah.
They just switched me over to CREXONT C-R-E-X-O-N-T. And it's a time release tablet of dopamine and levodopa. Of chordopa and levodopa. Yeah. And I've been able to cut down my medication a little bit because I take it three times a day instead of four times a day.
Todd Vogt (52:09)
Okay.
⁓ yeah, for sure.
Eric (52:29)
And so there's some benefit to it. I've yet to figure out if there's more benefit to it yet, but it's ⁓ definitely,
was interesting.