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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 Von Frohlich (00:50)
So welcome.
Jorge Armando Quintero (00:51)
Thank you so much, Eric.
Eric Von Frohlich (00:53)
So did what did I miss on your ⁓ on your profile?
Jorge Armando Quintero (00:57)
That's pretty much it. There's a lot of elements going on in there. So if you want to dive into any one specifically, I'm more than happy to. But just to summarize, I I am an engineer by trade. I got my bachelor's in electrical engineering from Rice University. got in clinical neuroscience from University of Florida. I've worked in the operating room with people with Parkinson's to implant DBS stimulator devices.
And I currently am a certified personal trainer that started NeuroGym as well as assist Gaia in running the Parkinson Power protocol.
Eric Von Frohlich (01:34)
Excellent. So t tell me ⁓ how did you get from engineering into neuroscience? What was leap there?
Jorge Armando Quintero (01:41)
Yeah, the leap was really just my dissatisfaction with the reality of being an engineer day in and day out. I found the material and the subject matter to be very interesting and it was my passion at the time. But once I started working in an office environment and dealing with the Houston traffic, which I'm sure you've heard about is ⁓ not great. it took a toll. And so I s I did some soul searching. I realized that I wanted to do something a little bit more entrepreneurial.
Eric Von Frohlich (02:01)
Yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (02:09)
I had a stint in the real estate market for a little bit and that was the bridge I joined previous company that I worked for called Alpha Omega that was assisting the neurosurgeons and and neurologists in the operating room implanting DBS. I joined that company because I really wanted to get better at facing roles and there was no better opportunity than
Eric Von Frohlich (02:29)
Okay.
Jorge Armando Quintero (02:35)
than to do that. But what I ended up leaving with was just a very deep passion for health, neuroplasticity and neurotechnology.
Eric Von Frohlich (02:46)
if you're gonna be an electrical engineer you might as well work on the most complex electrical system there is. So that's hats off to diving in full full force and Why Parkinson's specifically though.
Jorge Armando Quintero (02:52)
Right.
Yeah, I didn't have a choice. When I joined the company, Alpha Omega, they were creating brain recording equipment that was used during the procedure. And it's such a niche technology that it's only used for deep brain stimulation surgery. So I only saw people with Parkinson's, people with the central tremor, and occasionally people with dystonia getting these devices implanted.
Eric Von Frohlich (03:24)
⁓ for those that don't realize or don't aren't familiar with deep brain stimulation, you wanna summarize that talk talk to that a little?
Jorge Armando Quintero (03:30)
Yeah, deep brain
stimulation. Deep brain stimulation is what's called neuromodulation therapy. It's essentially using a device to change activity within the brain. Some of these can be non invasive, but then you have ones like brain stimulation or DBS that involves a physical implantation of wires or electrodes that provide the electrical shock.
to a specific part of the brain. So people with Parkinson's, once they develop things like dyskinesias or the levodopa no longer becomes effective on its own to manage symptoms, this is when DBS becomes a potential option for people with Parkinson's.
Eric Von Frohlich (04:04)
Yeah.
this way. ⁓
And so you witness these procedures firsthand. You have any stories that jump out on the impact that it's had on patients or who makes for good candidate for DBS?
Jorge Armando Quintero (04:25)
Yeah, I can comment on both of these. I think, you know, the whole reason why I I got my master's in clinical neuroscience was because when I saw my first deep DBS surgery, the patient had very bad tremor. Like if you if you're familiar with the way that neurologists will rate symptoms on the UPDRS scale, it's usually from zero to four with the most severe symptoms being a three or a four.
So imagine someone with a really severe tremor, like a three or a four, coming into the operating room. And within three hours or so, we turned on the stimulation and their tremor was completely suppressed without any medication. Yeah, without any medication. They came off when they came to the operating room and they left just a complete different individual. this person actually cried in the operating room, which was very touching.
Eric Von Frohlich (05:07)
Amazing.
Jorge Armando Quintero (05:21)
And I didn't have a good understanding of the brain at this moment. So I was just like, what is this? This seems like almost a miracle. I need to understand how this works, what's going on in the brain. And that just led me down a a major rabbit hole that after a few years got me enrolled into University of Florida to do my masters.
Eric Von Frohlich (05:32)
And awesome first.
that you're just copying both.
It's pretty amazing. Obviously it was very inspiring to you. It's ⁓ so who makes for a good candidate? Is it based strictly on the severity of your symptoms or is it other factors that kind of roll into that?
Jorge Armando Quintero (05:49)
Absolutely.
There's definitely several factors. would say the most critical one that gives you the quickest access to DBS is if you were very responsive to Levodopa medication. and you also want to be ideally within a certain age range. Typically, the ideal candidate is under 70 years old. patient cannot have any
Eric Von Frohlich (06:24)
Okay.
Jorge Armando Quintero (06:25)
severe
mental health issues or potential cognitive decline because DBS can actually exacerbate some of these symptoms of cognitive decline or mental health issues.
But every case is a is a case by case basis. So just because I give you these rules right now, could still get DBS even if you didn't respond super effectively to Levadopa. You can still get DBS if you're older than 70 years old. And there are also cases of people getting DBS that are even 75, 80 years old that I've been a part of. So it's really important that you get screened.
Eric Von Frohlich (06:49)
Okay. ⁓
Yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (07:06)
Because the right candidate will get the best outcomes from DBS.
Eric Von Frohlich (07:11)
And that's screening by a movement specialist, by a neuro neurologist, a
Jorge Armando Quintero (07:17)
Yes, it'll probably include a visit with the neurosurgeon just to talk about the risks of surgery as well as looking at your brain. It will definitely require an extensive screening process with your neurologist or movement disorder specialist and there's potential that you could have some other people involved like a neuropsychologist, to assess the more cognitive and emotional aspects of your brain health.
Eric Von Frohlich (07:42)
So is this the cutting edge of what we have available for treatment currently or is there something that's looming on the horizon that you got your eyes on?
Jorge Armando Quintero (07:54)
Yes, currently the the gold standard of treatment is going to be the prescription medication. So either the levodopa, the dopamine agonist, or the MAOB The other option, obviously, when those stop becoming effective, is going to be DBS. We have a new version of DBS called adaptive deep brain stimulation, which is just the next version or generation of this technology.
And what it's doing is it's essentially recording the electrical activity wherever it's placed. And based on the activity of your brain, it can essentially extrapolate whether you're on or off and change the stimulation current accordingly to help you have more on time. So it's a it's an adaptive system that is listening to your brain activity and then adjusting the settings on the device on its own.
Eric Von Frohlich (08:32)
Yeah.
It's not that the same and
Jorge Armando Quintero (08:50)
so that you have greater on time. Now in terms of some other stuff that's on the horizon, one that is really exciting for me is this is actually in clinical trial right now. It's called bemdaneprocel.
Eric Von Frohlich (08:50)
⁓
Yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (09:06)
so this is a stem cell therapy, it had very promising results. So, what stem cell therapy is, when you're in as a fetus, most of your cells are stem cells. And benefit of having these stem cells is that they are very versatile in how they mature and develop over time.
Eric Von Frohlich (09:26)
⁓
Jorge Armando Quintero (09:28)
We can use stem cells as a way to create new cells of a specific type in a certain tissue. So you've probably heard of stem cells in different tissues. it's becoming more common to try some of these stem cell therapies in the brain, but this is not specifically restoring the lost dopamine-producing neurons in the brain.
Eric Von Frohlich (09:47)
possible.
Jorge Armando Quintero (09:51)
This is implanting
stem cells in a part of the brain that typically receives the dopamine. So by doing that, by implanting it in this, we'll call it post dopamine site, it seems to have really improved the circuit dynamics and the connectivity of motor regions within the part of the brain that has been shown to reduce people's scores by over 20 points in the UPDRS scale. Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (09:54)
And I'm right back. Got it. So
Mm-hmm.
wow.
So it's significant.
Jorge Armando Quintero (10:20)
So
it's significant and it's it's a pretty medium sized population of about a hundred or so people. So this actually called the expedite two trial, if you want to ⁓ look it up.
Eric Von Frohlich (10:35)
it's very interesting. is is this where you see the taking us in the near future, or is there another direction that you think is more viable?
Jorge Armando Quintero (10:45)
I think ultimately the best medicine is gonna be preventative as well as Proactive in the sense that we're not just waiting for Parkinson's to set in and do its thing. We're doing everything we can to increase something called cognitive reserve so that even as the brain degenerates, the person themselves do not exhibit or
Eric Von Frohlich (11:04)
Mm-hmm.
Jorge Armando Quintero (11:10)
behave in a way that appears pathological or clinical. So what that means is that it's possible with Parkinson's to induce something called neuroplasticity sufficiently that the person can appear pretty much normal, functional, and independent, even though their brain appears very degenerated from the Parkinson's, if that makes sense.
Eric Von Frohlich (11:22)
Okay.
Mm.
So give me a good definition of neuroplasticity for those that this is new to
Jorge Armando Quintero (11:41)
Yes, neuroplasticity is my favorite topic in the whole world. I have so much to say about this. But in a in a nutshell, it's the reason why our brains are so moldable and adaptable. it used to be thought in neuroscience that after you reached about twenty five years of age that your brain pretty much fully developed and you know the connections that you cemented in your childhood was what you had.
But that has been since been completely overturned. And what we know now is that the brain is extremely flexible, rewirable, and it can change all throughout life. In fact, I want to highlight an example that I think will be pretty inspiring for your listeners. There was a 44 year old French civil servant that he was married, he was working a job, he had a family, completely normal life.
Eric Von Frohlich (12:09)
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (12:39)
One day he notices that his leg was having some weakness and he goes to the doctor to get it checked out. The doctor's like, okay, we gotta do a scan on your brain. And what they found was that this man was missing 90% of his brain. he had a hydrocephalus that was going unchecked for his whole life. So, what hydrocephalus is, is if you look at this brain that I have here.
Eric Von Frohlich (12:44)
Okay.
And it's less than Oh my god.
Jorge Armando Quintero (13:08)
if I open this up you'll notice there are cavities that are within the brain and these cavities are filled with fluid called cerebrospinal fluid. Yeah, I will.
Eric Von Frohlich (13:18)
Can you hold that up just a little higher? Okay,
I'm sorry. There we go. Perfect.
Jorge Armando Quintero (13:25)
Yeah, so you'll notice that
there's there's there's canals and and a space here and this space is filled with CSF. So this this French man, his brain was producing too much fluid, and so that fluid had nowhere to go. It starts pressing on the brain, and the outside part of the brain starts pressing on the skull, and it was just slowly.
increasing in size to the point where his whole brain was just a a thin disk. yeah. And so even though he was missing 90% of his brain, he lived pretty much a fully functional life. And in fact, this was a comment that I wrote down because I thought it was pretty comical. this was the the cognitive psychologist that was actually studying his case and and ⁓ and published it.
Eric Von Frohlich (13:55)
it's incredible.
Jorge Armando Quintero (14:18)
He basically said that this man was living a normal life. He had a family, he worked. His IQ was tested at the time of his complaint, which was the leg weakness. And his IQ came out to be 84, which is slightly below the normal range. So the person was not bright, but he was perfectly socially apt. And this was a man with just 10% of the total brain volume of a healthy brain.
So
Eric Von Frohlich (14:45)
Well, I've been accused of only using ten percent of my brain, so I can certainly relate on some regard, but
Jorge Armando Quintero (14:52)
That's also a a myth. We use all of our brain just not at the same time. That would be a seizure. That would be a seizure. but but the the point is is that neuroplasticity was the whole reason why this man was able to live a normal life despite his brain sh shrinking over time to the point where he only had ten percent of it left. also a nun study where they
Eric Von Frohlich (14:56)
Right.
It's too funny.
Jorge Armando Quintero (15:18)
They had a convent of nuns agree to have their brain studied after death. There was about 700 brains that these researchers looked at. And the the nuns were anywhere between 75 to over 100 years in age. And what they found was that even though there were brains that looked demented by all of the hallmarks and characteristics that we would think is part of a demented brain, these same nuns
Eric Von Frohlich (15:29)
Anybody can any items.
Thank
you.
Jorge Armando Quintero (15:45)
exhibited no symptoms of dementia in their life. Which is to show that even though their brain looked demented, their behavior was not. that's the power of neuroplasticity.
Eric Von Frohlich (15:49)
Amazing.
is that
and I would imagine community and purpose and all the other mindset qualities that we try to factor in, right?
Jorge Armando Quintero (16:04)
Absolutely. And so here's here's the kicker with neuroplasticity. It's a double-edged sword, which means that there are two sides to this coin. The first side is the traditional side of neuroplasticity that we tend to ⁓ blame on aging, which is that we just lose our cognitive abilities naturally over time. You know, our memory gets weaker, our attention gets weaker, our ability to is impaired.
And we think that's a normal process of aging, but really, this is just neuroplasticity in the context of not training your brain. If if we don't put any demands on the brain to pay attention, to remember things, to learn new things, to push the brain beyond what it's currently capable of doing, you will see this decline in your cognitive abilities just passively because neuroplasticity really just cares about
Eric Von Frohlich (16:43)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Okay.
Okay.
Jorge Armando Quintero (17:02)
the networks that are constantly used and it will strip away or delete, erase, kill off, whatever you want to call it, the connections that are not being used. On exactly, it's to be more energy efficient. And it's also because your brain has an excess of connections. When you're when you're young, your brain has a ton of connections.
Eric Von Frohlich (17:02)
⁓ the camera's awesome use.
Each case of every one of the connection.
Is that just to be more efficient?
Jorge Armando Quintero (17:27)
And then over time, as you adapt to your environment, you become better at being a human being and living in society, there's a lot of connections that are unused that the brain starts stripping away. So that is essentially losing cognitive reserve over time because these connections could have been used as a way to compensate for illness or disease or challenges later in life. But because they because the brain was not stimulated.
Eric Von Frohlich (17:45)
Yeah, ⁓
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (17:54)
To use these pathways, we lose them over time. So on the on the flip side of this is what we'll call adaptive neuroplasticity, which is what I want everyone on the on the show or the listeners to take away,
which is this is a a process that we can choose to direct in a specific way to create adaptations that we desire. And the adaptations can be anything from
Eric Von Frohlich (18:12)
contribute to practice to read that patient that we
Anything
Jorge Armando Quintero (18:21)
from motor improvements, so learning things like how to walk again in Parkinson's,
Eric Von Frohlich (18:21)
I'm pumping.
Jorge Armando Quintero (18:25)
how to balance again in Parkinson's, how to have better control of your handwriting or your speech as you speak, all of those things are trainable. Your emotional well-being can be trained, your cognitive abilities can be trained, you can improve your focus, your short-term memory, can improve your ability to sequence and plan things throughout the day.
Eric Von Frohlich (18:35)
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
You can go to team as a time all
these things that can be trained.
Jorge Armando Quintero (18:49)
All of these things can be trained
by placing demands on them. Neuroplasticity then takes over and says, Hey, we have to do something, we have to build connections to make this easier the next time. And so as we repeat these new habits that are challenging and uncomfortable, we become more proficient, those connections become stronger and more automatic, and then they become these highways.
Eric Von Frohlich (18:55)
No lastly and eight first things have to be something about the open actions.
Okay.
Jorge Armando Quintero (19:16)
That almost become habitual or automatic without any conscious effort.
Eric Von Frohlich (19:18)
Yeah.
Wow. So is there truth to the statement that the mind dedicates more estate to hand movements and hand and than it does any other part of the the body?
Jorge Armando Quintero (19:35)
Yes, it does. I would say the face and the hands are the two most overly represented areas of the body and the brain. And the reason this is is because of the sensitivity and the control that we have with the face and hands.
Eric Von Frohlich (19:51)
Interesting. It's interesting how it you know, masking is such a obvious sign of Parkinson's and that to what you were just saying.
Jorge Armando Quintero (20:01)
Yes, not a coincidence that people with Parkinson's tend to struggle more with their feet than their hands because of the number of connections. we we have less sensitivity in the lower body than we do in the upper body, as we said, the face and the hands. So these are t these tend to be a little bit more robust.
Eric Von Frohlich (20:08)
Wha why do you think that is?
Jorge Armando Quintero (20:21)
But the feet tend to be one of the first ones that you get bradykinesia with, shuffling, freezing of gait, things like that. That is a a representation that your brain's map of your lower body is breaking down.
Eric Von Frohlich (20:35)
Got it. So if you're showing symptoms in his section, then it's probably emblematic of that.
Jorge Armando Quintero (20:41)
Yes, exactly. we have found that by improving the connection of the brain to different parts of the body, like we have clients in the PPP that are struggling with freezing of gait. What we started doing with them is increasing the amount of sensory information coming from the feet, from the calves, from the shin, like that part of the lower body. And then training single leg balance, training
Eric Von Frohlich (20:59)
Yeah, I think.
Jorge Armando Quintero (21:08)
other systems of the brain that are associated with balance and they have been seeing improvements in gait and their freezing of gait.
Eric Von Frohlich (21:16)
It's amazing. So something as simple as walking around barefoot beneficial because it gives you more sensory feedback?
Jorge Armando Quintero (21:23)
Yes, and I would I would also say doing things like myofascial release is gonna be also very important because myofascial release you can control where you're feeling sensations and you can put it on different parts of your feet. Like you could do it on the top side, on the sides, on the bottom. Same thing with the calf. You can get the the lateral part of the calf, you can get the full calf, you can get the Achilles tendon, you can do it all. And and you really
You really want to improve that map of your body in your brain because if the the brain's body map is already distorted in Parkinson's, we understand that. But the more distorted it is, the less confident and certain the brain becomes when it be it's time to move. So for example, let's take this freezing of gait example that we've been walking with. If I go into a hallway that is narrow or a doorway.
Eric Von Frohlich (22:06)
And it's a certain point of school is not true. So for example, let's this picture of a
It's
Jorge Armando Quintero (22:20)
do you freeze? It's not that there's anything inherently scary about that. It's the fact that your brain's map, like it's understanding of your boundaries of your limbs and your body, as well as where the outside is, like where the walls
Eric Von Frohlich (22:20)
I might use very screen. It's the fact that your brain's understanding that your boundaries of the things are. ⁓
Jorge Armando Quintero (22:35)
are, where the where the door frame is. It doesn't have a good concept of that. So it has to slow down.
Eric Von Frohlich (22:37)
Yes.
So is is
in in a word, is that just proprioception? So your body's ability to orientate itself in time and space is
Jorge Armando Quintero (22:45)
Exactly.
It's
it's not just that, it's also aspects of posture and balance.
Eric Von Frohlich (22:57)
Uh-huh.
Jorge Armando Quintero (22:58)
if the brain doesn't feel confident in gait, for example, and walking forward, it will start taking smaller steps as a way to offset the need to shift the weight forward over a larger distance, if that makes sense.
Eric Von Frohlich (23:12)
It it made sense why I shuffle at three AM going to the bathroom as opposed to marching across the floor confidently and quickly.
Jorge Armando Quintero (23:20)
Right. So let's let's break that down, Eric, because there's something really key here that we'll talk about with balance. So most people think that improving your balance is gonna be just standing on a bosu ball and like improving your ankle stability, right? But balance is actually a complex neurological task that has multiple inputs. One of these is gonna be proprioception.
Eric Von Frohlich (23:35)
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (23:45)
The second one is vision, and the third one we'll call it the vestibular system, which is the inner ear next to the The vestibular system, for those that don't know, is just a system that is detecting head rotation, so up and down, side to side, or to you know, tilting, as well as acceleration, so how my head moves and accelerates through space. The combination of that, vision and proprioception are the three key elements that
Eric Von Frohlich (23:50)
I'm just
And we'll pass it on the three.
Jorge Armando Quintero (24:14)
balance in the brain. So for you, Eric, when you're when your lights are off at night, what's happening is that typically in Parkinson's, most people have poor proprioception. They've also have never trained their vestibular system. So they're completely relying on vision as a way to balance when they move. And so if if we cut off the visual input because it's dark, now suddenly your brain has no good information to rely on.
Eric Von Frohlich (24:28)
Mm.
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (24:42)
For movement.
Eric Von Frohlich (24:44)
Yeah, it makes sense.
Jorge Armando Quintero (24:45)
so you are going to freeze more, you are going to shuffle more. But if you were to turn on the light, I can guarantee you you would have a higher quality of movement because your brain has higher quality information.
Eric Von Frohlich (24:57)
it's fascinating. So I have to get a motion detector apparently.
Jorge Armando Quintero (25:02)
You don't necessarily need to get a motion detector, but what you do need to do is think about how can I support my brain to make confident decisions.
Eric Von Frohlich (25:10)
Right.
So when you have clients showing up to NeuroGym, do you approach diagnosing what you want to work on first? I'm sure there's a lead domino that you're looking at, but there's everything seems to be downstream of of the symptoms.
Jorge Armando Quintero (25:26)
Yeah.
Yeah, of course. I think with Parkinson's it's a little bit more straightforward. but with things like mental health, I will typically look at the symptoms that the person is struggling with the most. And typically the symptoms are reflective of changes that happen in that person's brain over time. So again, neuroplasticity, but this is a neuroplasticity that has trapped the person in kind of a bad loop that they don't want to be in.
An example would be like anxiety loops or ⁓ doom loops. So based on those symptoms, you can get an understanding if you're a neuroscientist of what brain regions, what circuits are implicated. And then we can actually combine training with some cognitive challenge that is going to stress that system that needs to either come back online or suppress it a little bit. And the combination of exercising with the cognitive challenges.
Eric Von Frohlich (25:55)
Yeah.
Right.
That's pretty good. And
It is I ⁓
Okay. ⁓
Jorge Armando Quintero (26:25)
boosts the benefits of both as opposed to doing them separately. So you get boost you get quicker and more effects by combining these two together.
Eric Von Frohlich (26:26)
And it's a both at the post necessarily kind of
Excellent. So the main focus of what you're At NeuroGym?
Jorge Armando Quintero (26:40)
Yes, exactly. We're we're trying to sculpt the brain the same way we sculpt the body. And the way we think about sculpting the brain is we take the pain points of that person. So for Parkinson's it could be symptoms that are not necessarily addressed by Levodopa or the dopamine medication and starting to train those things.
Eric Von Frohlich (26:59)
Mm-hmm.
it's fascinating. So I would imagine there's lots of dexterity and hand drills and balance drills and things that footwork and the benefits of foot ladders and all all the things that we used to do athletes seem to be beneficial for the same reason.
Jorge Armando Quintero (27:09)
Footwork.
Yes, and what we know just from all of the examples of people living with Parkinsons as well as the literature is that this having a more athletic multimodal approach to training is the key to slowing Parkinson's down for the whole lifespan.
Eric Von Frohlich (27:37)
It's fascinating. There's like so many tangents I wanna g I wanna like threads on. speaking of neuroplasticity, you're familiar with the Stanford study and psilocybin and alleged benefits of outcome? Is that something that you are hopeful for or you think that that's ⁓ a bridge too far at this point?
Jorge Armando Quintero (27:56)
I'm very hopeful for this, but again, it's tapping into the same principle of neuroplasticity. So I want people to understand that most most treatments and neurological improvements that you will experience with with anything is always going to come back to neuroplasticity in some shape or form. And the psilocybin is a great potential option for people that have Parkinson's that are also struggling
some kind of psychiatric disorder or illness. So this could be
Eric Von Frohlich (28:27)
So depression
or apathy or stuff along that line?
Jorge Armando Quintero (28:31)
Yes. But I also ⁓ wanna point out that I I recently came across a study was just a case report. So this is one woman. She was bedridden with dementia. She hadn't spoke in ten years. She took a high dose of psilocybin. And after that dose of psilocybin, she started moving again, out of bed, she started talking again. She essentially had
a complete reversal of her dementia just from a single dose of psilocybin and effects weren't just like transitory they lasted for at least a few weeks after the event. So there's a lot of things that can come from from something like psilocybin. It still needs to be studied in its full context because currently all of the data points to its use for mental health.
Eric Von Frohlich (29:02)
Amazing.
Jorge Armando Quintero (29:25)
But as we see with the dementia case, there could be some elements here of just rewiring the brain in a
and robust way for many different domains of of cognition, not just emotional.
Eric Von Frohlich (29:33)
We can put it on the face.
what inspired you to start NeuroGym?
Jorge Armando Quintero (29:42)
Yes. I I was inspired to start NeuroGym I would say since I was a kid I was fascinated by psychology. I didn't know about neuroscience at the time, but I think it was a foreshadowing that ⁓ I've always been curious about how the mind works. And when I discovered neuroscience I I really felt like this was the biology of psychology, if that makes sense. You know, it's explaining it's explaining the mechanisms by which we behave in specific ways.
Eric Von Frohlich (30:06)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (30:11)
and ⁓ the whole reason I've I was interested in the mind in the first place is because my dad suffered with major depressive disorder, psychosis, and bipolar disorder all at the same time for over twenty years.
Eric Von Frohlich (30:24)
Wow. Wow, that's a lot to grow up with.
Jorge Armando Quintero (30:27)
Yeah,
I know. So he was he was diagnosed ⁓ before I was ten and it just caused a lot of hardships both emotionally as well as financially for my family since he was the breadwinner. And had a learned helplessness about him because he had tried all the prescriptions, he bounced from psychiatrist to psychiatrist and just never really got relief. so as I was studying my master's
in ⁓ in neuroscience, I took this class called the Neurobiology of Behavioral Disorders, which was all about how mental health impacts the structure and connectivity of the brain. And I started putting together theories of like, huh, what if we combine exercise as a way to or sorry, we combine exercise with the cognitive aspects to essentially sculpt the brain, like I was talking about. And I tried it on my dad
Eric Von Frohlich (31:00)
Okay.
Yeah, yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (31:22)
I could only get him to train initially once a week for an hour. That was all he would commit to. He had no history of exercise. And within six months he was completely transformed. If you go on my page on Instagram, you you will see his transformation. you you'll see
Eric Von Frohlich (31:24)
If we actually do me like two
it's amazing. Congratulations
on that. That's gotta be a very proud moment.
Jorge Armando Quintero (31:45)
it is, it is. It it's it feels really great, one, to not hold that bitterness against my dad, 'cause I did have bitterness for a long time. But two, also to be able to like learn enough to pull him out of the of the hole that he was in.
Eric Von Frohlich (31:52)
Right.
Yeah, you
said the you defined it as learned helplessness. Would you talk to that for a second? Because I don't think people are familiar with that as a symptom.
Jorge Armando Quintero (32:06)
Yeah, learned helplessness is basically this belief that you accept that there's nothing that you can do. you you either believe that you've tried everything or nothing's gonna work. And it's just a mindset that you adopt. And so unfortunately we call this a symptom because it makes everything worse. When you've when you've lost hope and you don't believe that you'll get better, your physiology
Eric Von Frohlich (32:13)
Right.
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (32:34)
literally shifts to create that outcome. It's almost like a placebo.
Eric Von Frohlich (32:35)
Yeah,
Nocebo, right?
Jorge Armando Quintero (32:40)
Or
right, right. This in this case it'd be the nocebo because it's negative.
Eric Von Frohlich (32:44)
we talk about it a lot that when people first get diagnosed, it's amazing how quickly the symptoms that they fear seem to become a part of their symptomology. And it doesn't seem to be, at least from my understanding, it seems to be coming from essentially learned helplessness in a way, or apathy, then more so than anything else, because it doesn't seem like the body could respond symptomatically that quickly. But
You know, once you start getting your mindset and you figure out what you can impact and what you can't impact, it's amazing how a lot of those symptoms can pretty much disappear as quickly as they showed up.
Jorge Armando Quintero (33:23)
Yeah. They disappear or their severity is decreased just by thinking differently.
Eric Von Frohlich (33:29)
Yeah, it's it's amazing. Do you you guys do a lot of work on mindset or breath work or anything is maybe a little bit on the fringe that you can share that would be inspiring to people to start looking at?
Jorge Armando Quintero (33:42)
Yeah, I am a big fan of breath work. a big fan of meditations as well as a way to improve proprioception and interoception, which is proprioception, but just understanding what's happening in your like your heartbeat, your breathing, your gut, hormones, things like that. One of the the modalities that I find a lot of success with.
For my mental health clients, as well as these people that want better proprioception, is gonna be something called progressive muscle relaxation. This could be very, very beneficial for people that have a lot of stiffness or tension in their body. It's a process of it's a process of meditating where you intentionally tighten and contract muscles on your body. So you're gonna go section by section. Maybe you'll start with the feet, maybe you start with the traps or shoulders.
Eric Von Frohlich (34:12)
Mm-hmm.
Okay.
Mm-hmm.
And it's an isometric contraction.
Jorge Armando Quintero (34:38)
Yeah, exactly. So you're just contracting as much as you can with your eyes closed and then relaxing intentionally.
Eric Von Frohlich (34:39)
Okay.
Interesting.
Jorge Armando Quintero (34:47)
So you're
you're giving in to any tension that is in your body, then you're intentionally releasing that tension by relaxing, and then you're bringing your awareness to that body part.
Eric Von Frohlich (34:52)
Right.
Interesting. And you find this beneficial immediately? This is pretty I would imagine the biofeedback is pretty significant.
Jorge Armando Quintero (35:07)
Yeah,
it's that's why I say it's very effective for mental health, for stress, for tension. I definitely recommend it before sleep if you have any issues with sleep. It'll help you fall asleep. And again, it's it has this element of contraction and relaxation. So you're not having to just sit there and listen to your thoughts or try to observe your thoughts. You're really just paying attention to your body.
Eric Von Frohlich (35:18)
Uh-huh.
Amazing. And what what's the name of it again?
Jorge Armando Quintero (35:34)
Progressive muscle relaxation PMR.
Eric Von Frohlich (35:38)
Very cool.
Are you familiar with power plate and have you worked with that at all?
Jorge Armando Quintero (35:43)
I have heard of this. I think they they could be useful for sure, but nothing's gonna be just like manually doing this yourself, like building your own connection with your body and not outsourcing that.
Eric Von Frohlich (35:56)
Right. I think the benefit of or the w at least the way I've been using power plate is I'm doing all of these type of drills on on the power plate, so I'm getting the vibration and the balance as a benefit to the frequency and trying to just layer as many modalities on top of each other as I can for maximum effect.
Jorge Armando Quintero (36:04)
Mm.
That's great. That's a that's a neurogym style mindset you've got there, Eric, 'cause I call that stacking.
Eric Von Frohlich (36:22)
excellent.
Jorge Armando Quintero (36:23)
Yeah. So ⁓ one
other modality that I want to bring to the forefront that your listeners are probably not aware of as well is something called rope flow. Have you heard of it? So imagine a weighted jump rope, it weighs about a pound or half a kilo, and you're not jumping through it, so you're not going to be doing like the traditional jump rope motion, but instead you're gonna be swinging it side to side, maybe you're gonna be swinging it behind you. You're you're basically
Eric Von Frohlich (36:34)
No.
Jorge Armando Quintero (36:52)
twisting and turning this rope continuously without breaking the flow.
Eric Von Frohlich (36:53)
Okay.
I am familiar with it. I think it was developed by David Weck and ⁓ he who's also the founder of the Bosu Blah. So his mindset's definitely in the right direction as far as as far as this goes. But you like the rope flow?
Jorge Armando Quintero (37:00)
That's exactly right.
Yes.
I love it. And I think I think it could be very powerful for Parkinson's, for spatial awareness, for proprioception. footwork elements in here. You're getting a lot of hand eye coordination as well. So it's a full brain workout for someone with Parkinson's.
Eric Von Frohlich (37:31)
I'm gonna have to add it to my new list of ⁓ exercises. I used to do a lot of Indian clubs, if you're familiar with similar type of concept in that you're moving or twirling the upper body and different movement patterns for the sake of mobility and and dynamic stretching.
Jorge Armando Quintero (37:38)
Yeah.
Yes. I have I have a YouTube channel that has like a introductory class to a lot of rope flow patterns that you can check out, Eric, if you're interested.
it's the NeuroGym YouTube if you just look up NeuroGym, you'll find it. or you could message me directly, I'll send you a link. And this activity sits under an umbrella of activities that I would consider called motor reserve. So you obviously have your cardio exercise, right? You've got your strength training and mobility work, and then you have this
Other critical piece that most people do not focus on, which is motor reserve.
motor reserve is essentially just the number of patterns, skills, positions, and things that your body successfully move through. to give you examples of this, someone with a high motor reserve would be a gymnast or break dancer or or yeah, or pianist, but
Eric Von Frohlich (38:44)
pianist.
Jorge Armando Quintero (38:47)
The the key thing with the with these other athletes is that their whole body is involved, right? Not just the hands, right? Their whole so dancers, in the circus, for example, kids, kids have high motor reserve just because of the diversity of activities that they do, and you know, they're crawling, they're jumping, they're rolling, And as adults,
Eric Von Frohlich (38:53)
okay. Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (39:08)
Our motor reserve just shrinks over time because we have this belief system about how adults should be moving, which is just standing, walking, running, and sitting or lying. motor reserve is pretty low.
Eric Von Frohlich (39:20)
Yeah.
There's a wonderful ⁓ strength coach named Dan John, who is a Fulbright scholar, and he's up with different training protocols from everything from 10,000 kettlebell swings movement. He was a thrower in college, so track and field was his specialty. And has an exercise called getups, which is basically going from a standing position to a prone position on the floor and then getting back up and
it on your side, doing it on your doing it prone, doing it supine, doing it with one arm, doing it with one leg, and just kinda goes through movement patterns of simply getting up and down on on the floor, which essentially is creating that same capacity as what you're talking about, just a different way of doing it.
Jorge Armando Quintero (40:03)
Exactly.
The key though is that motor reserve is all about learning and trying new things because want to build those neural pathways. The people that have the highest motor reserve are the ones that resist the progression of Parkinson's the most.
Eric Von Frohlich (40:20)
Well, that's certainly motivating.
Jorge Armando Quintero (40:22)
It is. Which is and it also points back to the idea of training like an athlete, right?
Eric Von Frohlich (40:27)
Yeah, definitely. find it applicable for Parkinson's because the symptoms change almost daily in what you're dealing with. And you know, kinda like real time in a fight or in an athletic event, you're constantly making adjustments to terrain, to how your body's responding, to all this biofeedback that you're going through as you go through from the start to finish,
Training anything other than an athletic way almost seems nonsensical in a lot of ways.
Jorge Armando Quintero (40:57)
Yeah, but people don't see Parkinson's as a sport like you do,
Eric Von Frohlich (41:01)
Right. fair. been a challenging opponent to say the least.
Jorge Armando Quintero (41:05)
It is
a challenging opponent. But well you know, going back to the this topic of learned helplessness, people are not their Parkinson's. They're greater than their Parkinson's. so
Eric Von Frohlich (41:15)
Yeah,
I think the diagnosis throws you off because it comes on relatively suddenly and you're given the explanation that you're not gonna die from it, but you're gonna die with it, which kinda wipes out a lot of the hope of quality of life that you're gonna, you know, determine for yourself.
Jorge Armando Quintero (41:31)
Right. But the standard story of just Parkinson's being a trajectory of steady decline is not true anymore. Like we have enough examples that we can say for certain like you have a lot of control over your destiny with Parkinson's.
Eric Von Frohlich (41:40)
Right.
Yeah, I think far more than what we're led to believe initially. If if there was a that that I point to more more commonly than anything else, it's that diagnosis ⁓ what we're talking about of kind of helplessness and you know, you can exercise but it's still gonna progress and you can do all the stuff, but you know, there there seems to be a fatality to it that is to
Jorge Armando Quintero (41:50)
Correct.
Eric Von Frohlich (42:13)
being an athlete because you're always gonna have to overcome the odds. And up to the challenge is is the first step in taking taking that on. often use the expression in in the gym that the heaviest weight's the front door. And so, you know, if you can get people in the front door, then you know, pretty much you can build winnable, stackable moments of success and kind of progress in quickly
building the confidence that's necessary to take on Parkinson's.
Jorge Armando Quintero (42:41)
Yeah, that's totally right. What I will say though even given this story of like, you know, Parkinson's is has an inevitable progression to it, a lot of the risk factor that leads someone to develop Parkinson's is aging. And aging aging is not special to Parkinson's. Aging is just a fact of life, but the rate of aging is very much on your lifestyle.
Eric Von Frohlich (42:57)
Right.
pushed that yeah, that's for sure.
Jorge Armando Quintero (43:08)
So th the more that you can get your lifestyle honed in, the less you're going to age and thereby the less Parkinson's is going to progress.
Eric Von Frohlich (43:17)
Yeah, we had a guest on that was talking about when he got diagnosed and his symptoms were minor, but he you realized that by taking the advice of those he was talking to and exercising more intensely and eating more intentionally and sleeping better, his quality of life overall was much better as a result of the Parkinson's than it was prior to that because he wasn't prioritizing the of each of those modalities and
them in his life in a very serious, way. So it it was exciting to hear someone who, is kind of running ahead of it or outpacing his his diagnosis, which is inspiring to the rest of us to say the least.
Jorge Armando Quintero (43:58)
It's very inspiring and we keep coming back to the same topic of neuroplasticity, but that is the whole reason why people can live well with Parkinson's, is because of neuroplasticity. But it it it has to be self-directed. It can't be a passive process. The passive process is the old story of Parkinson's.
Eric Von Frohlich (44:17)
you find it's beneficial for people to do group exercise or is it more of a one on one thing because they're trying to figure way do you direct that?
Jorge Armando Quintero (44:26)
Obviously, you I don't think it's people can work out with others all the time. Maybe you like that and that's what you do, but for me, like I can't do that all the time just because of commitment and you know I have to drive. But I do think social activities are super beneficial for people with Parkinson's. Social engagement is one of the most important factors of brain health overall, not just for people with Parkinson's. So being isolated.
is not a good thing for brain health. it's not a good thing for your mindset. You want to feel supported, you want to feel cared for, you want to feel like you have friends that are there for you and that you can look forward to seeing. So the social component is a key part of this Parkinson's care package or umbrella that every patient very aware of.
Eric Von Frohlich (44:56)
Yeah.
And you don't care about it.
They keep part of this.
Well, I try to get that in two places in my life. I jiu-jitsu and certainly makes staying on the floor more challenging than having someone who's trying to hold you there. there's there's that benefit and there's an intensity to that and a solving equation that is factored in with jujitsu.
Jorge Armando Quintero (45:29)
Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (45:38)
But then there's pickleball, which is like my other side of my brain, which is more of the social outgoing group of, you know, socialization with an activity as an excuse to get together.
Jorge Armando Quintero (45:52)
Yeah, those are I love the combination of those two things of jujitsu and pickleball.
Eric Von Frohlich (45:57)
Yeah, they certainly seem to go to be compatible, but you never know when someone in pickleball court's gotta get choked out. gotta be prepared.
Jorge Armando Quintero (46:05)
You gotta be prepared. But what I love about it is that it it has different elements, right, that complement each other. having the ball come at you is training your depth perception, for example. But maybe it's not it's not taxing your reaction time as quickly as jujitsu. So you're getting different adaptations in each of these, but you're you're building motor reserve with both of these activities.
Eric Von Frohlich (46:16)
Yeah.
Right.
Excellent. Well, I kind of stumbled upon those because I was in jujitsu as a kid and my physiotherapist said to me one day, you know, you should really go back to that because finding it challenging, know, just day-to-day life. Life can be a lot more challenging if you have someone trying to stop you from doing what you want to do. And so she kinda I wasn't sure I was gonna pick it up again, but my community was so inspired by me showing up that it kind of built its own momentum and
Jorge Armando Quintero (46:56)
Hmm.
Eric Von Frohlich (46:57)
Turned out to be an amazing, amazing addition my quality of life. It was something that I had kind of given up on a little bit because of degree of learned hopelessness, but turned it around as soon as I stepped on the mat. of became a self-fulfilling prophecy that I was gonna continue on my jiu-jitsu world.
Jorge Armando Quintero (47:13)
Yeah. I I kinda stumbled upon the same thing with breakdancing. I have a lot of embarrassment. I have a lot of embarrassment when it comes to dancing. So this is like the ultimate neuroplasticity test for me.
Eric Von Frohlich (47:19)
cool.
I love it. Embarrassment an underexplored emotion.
Jorge Armando Quintero (47:27)
Yeah.
It really is.
Eric Von Frohlich (47:31)
probably one that we need to embrace a little bit more and be a little more
of of the benefits of being embarrassed.
Jorge Armando Quintero (47:39)
Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (47:41)
So you have a breakdancing background.
Jorge Armando Quintero (47:44)
Right, yeah. I my background's all over the place. I I like to try many things. that's how I get an appreciation for like this multimodal approach to training, but I really do believe people with Parkinson's especially, they need to do multiple types of activities. You can't just do one. You can't just do cardio, you can't just do strength training, you can't just do dance, you've got to do all of it.
Eric Von Frohlich (47:52)
Yeah.
Mm.
Right.
Although
breakdancing seems pretty comprehensive.
Jorge Armando Quintero (48:12)
Breakdancing is pretty comprehensive and you don't have to do breakdancing. ⁓ but what I'm saying is y you just wanna expand your activities. Like you don't wanna just do one modality. You wanna try at least two or three. Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (48:25)
Particularly if you're good at it, right? Because
being good at something is a degree of efficiency that your brain is kind of cut down on its neuroplasticity to be more efficient. So how to do things that are different and challenging is probably more beneficial than
Jorge Armando Quintero (48:43)
Completely agree, Eric. You said it perfectly.
Eric Von Frohlich (48:45)
If you have someone showing up to what what's the first thing that you you're getting them to do
Jorge Armando Quintero (48:51)
Yeah, so I I don't diagnose anybody, but what I will do is I'll send them kind of like a questionnaire that gives me a a background about their lifestyle, their history, any medications they're taking, any pain that they're having. That'll give me a good understanding of what's in their brain. and then I can do a brain scan if I need to, like a EEG. We can put a EEG.
Eric Von Frohlich (49:16)
huh. Yeah.
Jorge Armando Quintero (49:16)
We can do a brain scan
and and get an understanding of what brain areas are overactive or underactive. That'll help me tailor the program. But before they start working out with me, I will guide them through a movement assessment, just make sure I understand their limitations. So we can combine the cognitive challenges based on their needs as well as a workout plan that is suitable for their level of fitness and mobility.
Eric Von Frohlich (49:33)
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (49:42)
a pretty quick process, like an hour or so.
Eric Von Frohlich (49:44)
So cognitive challenge could be something as simple as counting down by three from a hundred while you're doing a balance exercise or doing some some other activity, right?
Jorge Armando Quintero (49:54)
Yeah, so for example, a cognitive challenge could be like a a working memory test where I give you a sequence of maybe six or seven digits, you have to remember them, then I have you do like ten push-ups, and then you have to repeat it after the ten pushups.
Eric Von Frohlich (50:15)
This is gonna be something I'm gonna have to add to my ⁓
Jorge Armando Quintero (50:18)
Yeah. Another thing that you can do is like if you wanted to specifically challenge your memory recall, could set up a a drill where you're having to respond to like certain lights, for example, that pop up and the lights mean things. And then randomly I'm having you like say a word that starts with the letter S, but you can't repeat the word.
Eric Von Frohlich (50:31)
Okay. Yeah.
wow.
Jorge Armando Quintero (50:39)
And you're also dealing with these distractions. you can also do something like having a ball, throwing it against the wall, and just catching it. That's test that's testing your reaction time, your hand eye coordination, your depth perception. You could start dribbling this between your hands and your legs, you could start juggling. the rote flow is a cognitive exercise. So there's a lot of things that we could do, but
Eric Von Frohlich (50:58)
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (51:04)
What's important is that you have to start with an intention of like, this is the thing that I want to improve. And then it just take it takes a little bit of creativity and combining that with exercise,
Eric Von Frohlich (51:12)
Okay.
as a general rule, people should try to make an assessment of, even if they're not directly working with you, on things that they want to work at and things that they want to improve and look at adding in some of these modalities to, you know, I'll do the juggling off the wall or with one hand and add like a single leg hold or breath work or something to it, anything to make it a little more challenging. I seem to do better when
Jorge Armando Quintero (51:35)
Yeah, exactly.
Eric Von Frohlich (51:41)
It's more challenging than when it's less challenging. I'm not sure exactly what that says about my brain, but it's ⁓ definitely a benefit seemingly simple things that you could add weight to or take weight away from, or do them repetitively, like putting on a shirt or putting on a vest, that's maybe difficult. After you do it ten or fifteen times, it gets a lot easier and you get more efficient at doing it. So it's
Jorge Armando Quintero (52:02)
Right. So that that concept
of stacking things on top of each other to make it more challenging, this is a concept called cognitive load. And it's the same it's the same way as loading things on a barbell or or picking up dumbbells and lifting them up. You're placing load or a greater demand on your brain to operate effectively under pressure. And this is how you build that cognitive reserve. This is how you strengthen your brain.
Eric Von Frohlich (52:13)
Huh?
Mm-hmm.
Jorge Armando Quintero (52:31)
And this is why I think it's important to combine the cognitive with the physical.
Eric Von Frohlich (52:36)
there's definitely some some increased benefit. What what do you think the benefit of the intensity is higher it goes it seems to be more beneficial?
Jorge Armando Quintero (52:43)
Yeah, I think it has a lot to do with the lactate that is produced. because the lactate can actually leave the muscle. So you know the lactate is not necessarily creating the burn, but it's present with the burn in your muscle tissue. So that lactate can actually go into the bloodstream, go up to the brain, cross the blood brain barrier, and it has neuroprotective effects.
Eric Von Frohlich (52:47)
Uh-huh.
Yeah.
It's probably similar benefits to breath work, right? You're increasing b oxygen supply to the brain and
Jorge Armando Quintero (53:16)
yeah,
that's part of the benefits of exercise. You will get increased blood flow to the brain, but there is nothing on earth that has the systemic effects that exercise has, not just on brain health, but on the functioning of every tissue in the body.
Eric Von Frohlich (53:32)
It's amazing. I remember there was a famous strength coach years ago named Poliquin who recently passed, and he known for working with more Olympic athletes than any other coach. He had like 50 Olympic athletes under his under his watch. And he would say that if you know you could put exercise into a pill, it would be the most powerful drug in the world.
Jorge Armando Quintero (53:52)
a polypharmacy. There's an image that I'm thinking of where it's a figure of like a person running and like s someone did the they did all of the work to show like everything that was released from the muscle during exercise and you just see arrows you see arrows pointing everywhere and it's just it's a great representation of just, you know, how exercise is almost I I wouldn't even say almost, it is a biological requirement for optimal functioning.
Eric Von Frohlich (53:58)
Huh?
wow.
Jorge Armando Quintero (54:19)
It's not that exercise itself is this powerful intervention. It's that not exercising is so detrimental to the body and its functioning.
Eric Von Frohlich (54:20)
Right.
It's a great way to turn it. And so it's not a matter of whether or not you like exercise, it's a matter of whether you you need exercise.
Jorge Armando Quintero (54:31)
Yeah.
Yeah,
and everybody needs it.
Eric Von Frohlich (54:39)
it you kinda wipe away that excuse of I don't feel like doing it or I'm not up for it or whatever people
Jorge Armando Quintero (54:44)
Yeah, it's it's a requirement.
In fact, there's theories that evolutionarily, because our ancestors were so active, like working the land, being nomads, being hunters and gatherers, all of that physical activity was actually programmed into our genetics so that we could only function with the levels of activity that our ancestors had.
Eric Von Frohlich (55:07)
Yeah, I completely agree. I think that, you know, we've traded longevity for quality of life. think the quality of life was probably much better off when we were passing in our mid fifties or forties from a robust and powerful lifestyle and maybe a little bit of danger there. we stripped away and for the sake of safety and sake of comfort, we've embraced this idea that, you know
Jorge Armando Quintero (55:25)
Yeah.
Eric Von Frohlich (55:33)
survivability is more important than the quality of life that you're experiencing. I don't know that that's necessarily a good trade-off.
Jorge Armando Quintero (55:41)
I yeah. I don't know either.
Eric Von Frohlich (55:43)
But you know, I'm trying to I'm trying to work the the system so I have quality of life despite getting older and despite other challenges like Parkinson's and I recently had had to deal with some AFib, which I found is tied to my ⁓ sleep apnea. it was a combination of s stuff that I wasn't necessarily directly Parkinson's was enough of a challenge, but then layered the A fib on top of it with the sleep apnea and it became
more of a systemic picture of what I wasn't dealing with and needed to get under control. So I've been able to address those recently and hopefully I'm on the ⁓ the road back to training at full force and full intention. So when you meet someone new who's diagnosed, what what do you want them to take away from this conversation?
Jorge Armando Quintero (56:33)
What I want them to take away is one, your brain is so much more adaptable than you realize, even in the face of pathology. And is not everything that you are. You still are an individual that deserves joy, that deserves happiness, that deserves hobbies, activities that feel purposeful. So I don't want people to feel like those are taken away from them.
Eric Von Frohlich (56:42)
Mm-hmm.
Jorge Armando Quintero (56:58)
There is a big push to start training right away and immediately. I would say the best way to start if you're not currently working out is to just pick activities that are interesting to you. That you don't even have to like them, they just have to be interesting. because if you follow your curiosity, you will find something that you enjoy that you can stick with. And that ultimately is what matters more than any protocol or s or rigid rules about movement.
Eric Von Frohlich (57:13)
Right.
Jorge Armando Quintero (57:25)
But once you care about optimizing and making sure that you're checking all the right boxes, you would wanna at least make sure that you can keep a routine pretty regularly er each week. And then we can talk about optimizing and getting the right things in, the right buckets filled.
Eric Von Frohlich (57:43)
Yeah, it's it's amazing how many activities they are. If you ever like stop and make a list, there's thousands of things you can do. And it's literally limitless. You know, it's everything from the the obvious ones like pickleball and jujitsu, but there's tennis, there's paddle tennis, there's you know, all the racket sports and all the benefits of racket sports, there's drawing and artwork that certainly can be robust and and fulfilling. There's dance and all the modalities of
self expression that are out there. think it just takes a little bit of curiosity and maybe the permission that finally for once in your life the universe or God is telling you you gotta exercise more. And this is the ultimate excuse to do it because no one's gonna stop you because you have Parkinson's from exercising too much.
Jorge Armando Quintero (58:30)
Yeah, and to your point, Eric, this is the other thing I would say is that Parkinson's fundamentally starts as a movement disorder. so what that means is that movement is the answer. It's ironic. It's a movement disorder, which means it's impacting your movement, but because movement is use it or lose it, you gotta use it.
Eric Von Frohlich (58:43)
Right.
Yeah.
Well it's it's great advice and it's something that I think ⁓ everyone can take away from this because despite whatever shape you're in, even in the height of my A fib that I was dealing with, I was still able to work out. I couldn't work out the way I wanted to, but I was still able to work out and get a lot of the benefits that and physically my body was craving. So it's you know, regardless what your level is or what
current shape is starting is the most important advice I can give find something like you said that's curious and something that's interesting to you and then just start pursuing it and pull that threat until you run out of thread or until you decide that you're you're gonna go in a different direction.
Jorge Armando Quintero (59:32)
Mm-hmm.
Exactly.
Eric Von Frohlich (59:34)
Awesome. Well what what what else can we share with how people can get in touch with you and what you're doing and you and where you're working out of?
Jorge Armando Quintero (59:41)
Yeah, so I'm from Houston, Texas. I offer online programs for people that have with cognition or mental health, as I talked about. And on the Parkinson side, as I mentioned, I work with Gaia Forlani with the Parkinson Power Protocol. is like the flagship program for us to train people with Parkinson's. If you want to get in touch with me specifically, I'm most active on Instagram at
neurojorgeq or at TheNeuroGym all one word.
Eric Von Frohlich (1:00:14)
Excellent.
So I appreciate you, I appreciate everything you're doing for our community and thank you so much, Jorge, and I look forward to our next conversation.
Jorge Armando Quintero (1:00:22)
I look forward to it too, Eric. Thank you so much.