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The HeadRush Podcast with Paul Frase takes you inside the reality of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) through the lens of football. With firsthand experience in one of the most punishing sports, Paul shares stories, the lasting effects of head trauma, and the fight for awareness and support.
[instrumental music plays] This is the Head Rush Podcast with Paul Frase.
Welcome to the Head Rush Podcast, where we talk about everything related to brain trauma, traumatic brain injury, chro- uh, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, traumatic encephalopathy syndrome, and repetitive head impacts. We cover how traumatic brain injuries can and will cause mental health issues, such as d- as depression, addiction, lack of executive function, memory loss, even suicide ideology, as well as many different de- uh, degenerative neurological issues. These symptoms can be found on the Mayo Clinic and Boston University's, uh, websites under s- symptoms of CTE. Our mantra, how to cope and find hope, and we focus our energy on finding therapies and sharing hope through education and w- raising awareness. And our guest today is going to... He- he's had an unbelievable story of, uh, how, uh, some, uh, therapies have helped him and given him hope in, in his, uh, uh, search for, uh, neurological he- uh, health and, and brain wellness. And I'm gonna let Corey Barry, our, our co-host, uh, introduce our guest.
Well, before we introduce him, last ep- two episodes ago, I asked you the hardest hit was Eric Dickerson.
And then the last episode, I asked you the biggest concussion, worst was a Steelers player, running back.
Mm.
So what's a good question to ask you today?
[laughs]
What's your greatest play? What are you most famous for in the NFL?
Oh, no, I'm not... I, I, I, I had the opportunity to be a hero, but I, uh, ended up-
Dan Marino.
Yeah. The, the fake spike play. I was, like, three inches from his arm when he threw the... He completed the pass to beat us. We were ahead by 18 points going into the fourth quarter, and he beat us with, uh, uh, I think, like, three minutes left. He threw his third touchdown in seven minutes. So it was... Yeah, I could've been a hero that, that day, Corey, so thanks for bringing that up. [laughs]
I asked you what your greatest
play was, not the worst.
Well, the w- probably the, my, my, the, the, the play that I remember-
Your claim to fame.
Well, I didn't... I re- well, I sacked Dan, Dan Marino one time. W- do you, do you remember the year that they had the fewest sacks? Uh, they led up the fewest sacks in the history of the NFL. I think it was, like, 13 sacks.
Right.
Actually, I, I actually got him... I was one of those 13 sacks, so that was pretty cool. Yeah.
I gotta say this, folks. I'm very happy.
I used to be a great 49er fan, huge 49er. You don't talk during the games. I never missed a game. I was a 49er fanatic.
I thought for sure you were gonna talk about when you sacked a Niner. Thank God you didn't, and you mentioned Dan Marino. I appreciate that. [laughs]
I, I did not hit Steve Young. Th- I was not the first to get him. Uh, I think Scott Mercerau was, uh, already on the ground grabbing his feet, and I, I kinda buckled him over. But yeah, that was, that was pretty cool. Steve Young, he was, he was pretty big. He was big time.
Not as big as Montana.
Well, how, how many Super Bowls did Steve, Steve win?
Two.
All right.
How many Montana win?
Two.
Th- four.
Four?
Didn't they only have four Super Bowl wins under that, in that era?
No, had five, but M- Young got one of his rings, I believe, when he was under Montana.
Ah.
Trivia question.
Trivia question.
Introduce our, our guest here, Steve. [laughs]
You answer that question, and I'll send you a free Head Rush Podcast ball cap.
So my guest
has a great story to tell.
Nicholas LeDuc, he's a professional saddle bronc rider,
and he's still competing. Matter of fact, we may go watch him tonight,
um, compete.
And he's still out there competing, but a few years ago, he ran into some issues, and he went and saw the Amen Clinic in California, correct?
Correct, Northern California.
Northern California, and got scans. Change your brain, change your life. We're actually reading this and the 20 Superfoods, and we're gonna talk today about diet-
Mm
... and insulin, and getting everything proper that will help you and give you more hope with this disease and what helps you.
And so with that, I wanna introduce Nicholas LeDuc. Andrew, can you download that picture of him for me riding? And there he is, ladies and gentlemen. What rodeo was that?
I think it's Redding, maybe.
I can't tell.
That's the Groundy hor- or Tim Birdwell horse.
Is that a Birdwell?
Yeah, the Groundy brothers or Tim Birdwell. I don't remember what year this is right here.
That's-
Judge by the color of my chaps that it's probably a long time ago.
Northern California, possibly?
Mm-hmm. Redding, I think.
And I think I looked on prorodeo.com, and you can't find me on there because I'm no longer active.
But I looked up, and it was 2003 you got ranked up to 29th in the world?
Uh, seven- 2017, I was-
Oh
... in the 20s. Uh, I've been in the 30s-
Wow
... a handful of times, in the top 40 and top 50.
In the world?
Uh-huh.
Wow.
Yeah. And that, that's with a inch short leg and a- ... pretty damaged brain. God only knows what I would have done without a damaged brain and an, and even legs, you know?
Right. [laughs]
So what took you to the Amen Clinic?
Um,
finally just got to a place in life where I knew I wasn't me anymore, you know? Like, it was... I was walking dead, and
we had a lot of things coming on us, me and my wife, and a lot of stresses coming to us with some new stuff that was about to happen. And I just wasn't... I couldn't contain it no more. And I-
What were some of your symptoms?
Uh, well, I'd always been messed up from the get. Like, school was really hard for me, even though I got a bachelor's from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Like, I had to do things pretty specific in organization to be able to process and, and keep up with the, the stuff. And nobody ever knew it, but, I mean, I worked really, really hard inside my head for my whole entire life. And-
So did you have, uh, l- learning, uh, uh, trials? Or, uh-
Mm-hmm
... I don't wanna say a learning disability, but did you-
There was a learning disability.
Right.
Like, my mom, uh, was able to get me in a special school in Pleasanton, California when I was a little kid, and they had programs, uh, to kinda suit. They called what I had a perfectionist disorder, and when we go to the Amen scans, we know that it... there's no such thing as a professionist- perfectionist disorder. I had OCD backed by ADHD and some other early childhood development brain issues going on. But, uh,
you know, I... it was interesting. I, I got through all the school by a way they taught me how to organize a binder.
Hmm.
And then I just organized that binder and always showed up to class, and that's how I graduated from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, was never missing a class and keeping a super organized binder. 'Cause my short-term, when they diagnosed me, even at the Amen Clinic years later, I was in the 20th percentile for short-term memory.
Wow, okay.
So even like today, like, if we had a business, if you guys had a business and I didn't have a notepad-
[laughs] Right
... I'd be your biggest headache.
[laughs] Right.
That's me today. [laughs]
Well, let- let's talk about... So y- you, you, you knew you were struggling. You knew that you had struggles in, in, in, in school from a young, a young kid, right?
Mm-hmm.
Um, and you decide to go ahead to the A- Amen Clinic and, and, and, uh, I'm assuming you heard of, uh, the SPECT scan, right? Is that-
Never. I never heard of any of it.
Never?
I honest to God, I went to a psychiatrist when I first knew I was having health and I needed help, and this, this was post me retiring from rodeo in 2019, from like full-time, full-time rodeo. And, uh, so I don't have anywhere to channel kinda the stuff that I'd kinda had wrong with me for a really long time. Um, and it was piling up, and I did... I, I just couldn't point it nowhere. So I go to another psychiatrist, tell him I won't take any meds, work with him for, like, four sessions before I realize, I'm like, "I got friends as smart as this guy."
Right. [laughs]
Like, a PhD and MIT was my training partner in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and he was the one that, a year before I'd even looked into it, told me I needed to look into this Wim Hof technique, breathing technique.
The breathing, right.
So, I mean, a year before, I'm, I've already got PhDs in my friend group. I've got smart people, and I'm not scared of talking. I could sit down any one of them guys and be like, "Hey, let's have a intelligent conversation. You mind for... about me for about 20 minutes?" I'd-
Mm-hmm.
That wouldn't pass me. So all by accident, my wife Google searches another option, and it was 40 minutes from the little ranchette that we were developing there in the Delta country in the Bay Area, California. And, uh, I just thought we were going to another option.
So... and she kinda thought that too. I don't think ne- neither of us really overthought it.
Mm-hmm.
So when we get in, working with this clinic, all by just the mercy of God, uh, Miley Cyrus is on the Joe Rogan podcast, and my wife hits me up one day when she was at work, and she's like... And this is once I'd already started working with them. And, uh, she's like, "Fast-forward to the 28-minute mark on the Miley Cyrus Joe Rogan podcast." And, uh, I do, and she's on there, and she was the first person I'd ever seen
openly talk about being a part of the same network that I was working with.
Right.
And I was like, "Oh, crap. These people are gamers."
Mm-hmm.
They took this girl and got her away from ve- veganism and got the, her omega-3s up and taught her why she has to eat meat and all that stuff. And I was like, "Heck, if you can do that with her..." And then fast-forward to her account. Like, this girl in 2020 is putting on a concert in Miami, right?
Right.
On New Year's. And then the next year, she has, like... or two years later, she's got Dolly Parton and the Hilton girl, who you have to... I'm sure there's some babysitting going on.
She, she was... she got, she got back on top. So-
So the moral of the story is her brains were firing.
Right. Right. L- let me ask you a question-
Miracle of steak.
[laughs] Right.
She wasn't allowed to eat that steak. Mir- miracle of that, that organic, uh, free-range chicken, I think.
Exactly, yeah. Or the fish, the salmon, the wild-caught salmon, right? Maybe, right?
Wild-caught, wild-caught fish, yeah.
Let me, let me ask you a question. You said, uh, you, you didn't wanna take... you were s- seeing a psychiatrist. You didn't wanna take drugs. I'm, I'm assuming, uh, SSRI drugs and, and different, uh, antidepressant or whatever, Adderall, whatever.
Well, that... what I led into, uh, outside of the show about my history with-
I was gonna ask you, you, you-
... it all was back to that. I'd seen enough people have issues with barbiturates. I'd seen people die. I'd seen all this different stuff. So for me, you know,
it was a discernment inside of my spirit that, that was, "I'm not gonna take no meds."
Right.
'Cause I, I knew inside of me, I'd already been on meds early on in my life, and- I just, in my intuition, I knew that there was a better way to do it.
Right.
And I, without it, it turns out there was.
Yeah.
And, and that was cool, you know?
What, um... I, I wanna... Okay. Let, let's go, let's fast-forward. You went to the Amen Clinics and, uh, and, and, and you learned about the SPECT scan. You didn't read the book first, did you? Or did you read the book first?
Nope. When I'm in there-
Hey, Andrew, put up the SPECT scan so we can look at it, please.
Oh, yeah. When I'm in there working with them, uh, there was two options. They gave me two options of books I could get for free, and one was an ADHD book, like how to deal with ADHD, and then one was this book that dialed in to more of the diagnostics. And I just, for some reason, I was like, "Man, I wanna read that one. I, I can figure out this other thing later."
Right.
Um, and I started and, like I insinuated, I got about a third of the way into that book-
I, I wa- I wanna hear that story. Go ahead. So-
Yeah. So, so I started reading two books, or, uh, uh, one book, th- the Bible, I started reading it first and, uh, from the start. And then I get into this situation with the Amen Clinics, and I get this book. So I'm reading these two books at the same exact time, and I get about a third of the way into the Change Your Brain book before my new Jack Russell puppy come in there and ate everything I'd just read and left me with, like, the rest of the book. And I took that as a sign from God that I'd learned enough from, from, uh, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life, and I was left with chapter 20, which is the file of all the foods that they'd studied. And I'm like, "You know, that's a forever thing on my bookcase, is having access to all them 52 foods."
Right.
"And knowing which ones they are and not having to remember them when you have no memory like me." Um, so anyway, I took it as a sign, so I stopped reading the book. And I still read the Bible and haven't finished reading the Bible yet 'cause I read about two pages a time, but...
What, uh, has your faith, um, always been with you? It's like, I'm a preacher's kid-
Mm-hmm
... so I grew up in church and, and... But d- did you have a faith from a young child, or?
Yeah. My mom, you know, my father, he left when I was two, so, uh, she was raised in the Catholic Church and, and that thing. So I think the one thing I always had in my camp was, you know, a mom that, that knew how to pray.
Yeah.
Or maybe she didn't even know how to pray, but she prayed.
Right.
And, uh, and from there was exposed to enough faith. But when you're a little kid with Wolf-Parkinson-White syndrome and you have your first tachycardia at eight months old and you grow up with this situation where, you know, they might have to rush you to the hospital so you don't die, you know, and you don't have a, like a dad figure for a couple years inside of that. And then your wonderful stepfather comes in who, you know, we all know that blood's different than the deal, but man, great man, loving man, amazing human.
But there's no genetic relatabilities, so there's stuff I'm gonna do that he's not gonna understand 'cause it's not him, you know? And he might only understand the mom's side, you know, when he's like, "Oh, yeah, I seen, I seen his mother do that." You know?
So my point with where I was at with my faith is, uh, there's a lot of internal talk with me being kind of an ADHD, autistic kinda individual. You know, you, you kinda feel alienated in groups a lot of times, so you spend a lot of time in self-reflection. So when I look back at some of the situations I'd got in, God was the only thing that got me out of it.
Mm-hmm.
So I believe by the time I get to this point and I actually wanna read what's in that book to try and help figure some stuff out I got going on in my life, like, uh, it, it started a new,
a new cycle, a new cycle of hell, but it was... I, I already believe I already had an ability to understand when it was God that saved your ass
or when it was, you know, just
normal.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
You know, my hard work got me out kinda thing.
All right. Let's,
let's go
fast-forward again from that.
I wanna know, and you, you've, uh... Well, first of all, when you're talking about the ADHD and the spectrum or, uh, I, I, I've heard you... We've, we've talked a few times, you know? We've had-
What is that SPECT scan exactly?
The neuro-
Andrew, can you put it back up and have Nick explain it to us what you see in your brain?
You'd have to get a doctor. The only thing I can tell you is left temporal lobe damage is correlated to violent tendencies.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Um, so the scariest one that I know of on that brain that's pretty easy to spot is left temporal lobe damage.
Mm-hmm.
But that, uh, the way those red marks and stuff intercorrelate, the, the team there can explain what each one of them meant. But inside of those pictures, there are seven major places of brain damage. I can't tell you where they are. I can't tell you which ones they mean, but I, I know that there were seven major functions. And I'm damaged in the same way, uh, that a lot of, like, violent criminals that they've scanned-
Right
... are damaged.
And they've, they've-
And that's post. I mean, I'm way better now. We need another scan to see where I'm at now.
Right.
But...
They, the, the, the Amen Clinics have, have scanned hundreds of thousands of, uh, probably closer to a mil-
250,000 I think is what, uh, the last stat that Dan, Mr. or Dr. Daniel put on the internet.
So what does that show? What does that scan show? You, you've talked about it, you know, in our conversations.
Scan, scan kinda shows that I should be a scary dude-
Right, right, right
... but I'm not.
Right.
You know? And, uh, the scan showed, uh, frontal lobe damage, which means I should just tell you what I think when I think. Um, the scan showed, uh, the scary dude coming from, like, the left temporal lobe and some other interconnection of the damage there.
Mm-hmm.
Um, and then it showed them, uh, ADHD and OCD that, that Dr. Johnson said was there from either right before birth- Or right short thereafter. You know, I'm born in a household with, you know, a mom that has now thyroid issues.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, you know, there was obviously problems between mom and dad. And then with that, I come out of the womb, eight hours later have my first tachycardia.
Mm-hmm.
So there's a lot of stuff that manifested right there that could've put me on more of that neurodivergent cycle back with-
Mm-hmm
... the, the OCDs. And OCD, for anybody that doesn't know, it's not like I'm gonna go obsessively organize this and dust this for no reason. It's a reoccurring thought.
Okay.
So obsessive-compulsive disorder-
So, so it's, it's in the mind and-
Right.
Okay.
So you program the wrong thing in that reoccurring thought, and you can take yourself down a bad road, right?
Right.
So I think where I, I understand when you read in that, that book there, he talks about you have to master a spiritual circle to master all the rest of it. Like, it's all interconnected. And in that, like, that's a basis for having a strong moral fiber is you don't let yourself go down trails of thought that do not match up with the moral code that you would read inside of the Christian Bible.
So it's a comprehensive, uh, [laughs] task to
work on the spiritual side, work on the food side, work on-
Yeah, when we get into the heal up, like, you, you gotta touch all these different things at the same time. And if you don't, like, there's a group called Heroes and Horses. They're a Navy Seal bunch. Uh, one of the guys on their board was a Team Six member that picks up bucking horses now at pro rodeos. And I've, uh, you know, I've cornered him every once in a while and asked him too many questions and probably-
[laughs]
... annoyed the crap out of him to get down to what they do up there. And it was all the same stuff that I did in, in the first eight weeks of-
Mm-hmm
... of me figuring out. And there was no, there was no tie between me and them, and they did not, they did not get this information from the All In Clinic.
So we're, we're gonna go there.
Okay.
And, and I'm excited to go there. Um, when I was, uh, blood flow. I mean, the-
Oh, yeah
... oxygenation, the blood flow, the SPECT scans show that as well? Or how, how does, uh-
So, uh, you know, like, e- when I stopped reading that book, I, I stopped reading that book, right?
Right. [laughs]
But what I know is those doctors could see it.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
And in that, you know, the dents and all the stuff in there, you know, the, that was kinda your oxygenated blood flow ends, right?
Right.
So when you, when you, when you start pressurizing oxygenated blood properly to the brain, you start filling the brain in. So if we were in a place where we had a re-scan, um, to see-
It should be a little smoother-
It'll-
... a little fi- filled in a little bit more.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I bet it'll be-
Yeah
... a lot better.
I know. Uh, we, we wa- I, I was introduced to, uh... Well, I, I've known about the SPECT scan, but I, I knew, I found out more about it, uh, through Quiet Explosions.
Mm-hmm.
Uh, uh, the movie. Did, have you-
2020. I watched it.
Yeah, yeah. And, uh, and, um, you, you, you know, you see somebody who's, uh, had a, a brain that, uh, has, has been damaged and for years and years and years, and you see those dent- indentations, and you see the lack of, you know, some of those vacant areas.
Mm-hmm.
And then you see the brain after a year of treatments or whatever, you, you see a more, uh, filled in and, and-
A fuller brain.
Yeah, a full, fuller, yeah.
What I can say about that picture too and why I have harassed more people about it, and they need to do it,
especially if you, if you don't, if you're in a bad place. If you are in a bad place
and you don't feel like you're being heard, you need to go get a scan, 'cause those doctors can tell you exactly why you're in a bad place. They can tell you from a blood flow perspective, from an activity perspective why you're in a bad place. And then they can tell the rest of your team why you're in a bad place. So when you got people in your life that might be, uh, pushing a moral something on you and trying to make you out to be the problem,
there's a little more of a godly reckoning here. Like, if you're looking at a man with a, or a woman with a badly damaged left temporal lobe, and you know that they've done a really good job to not murder anybody-
Mm-hmm
... right?
Right.
They've stayed out of prison.
Right.
Maybe tell them, "You know what?"
[laughs]
"Good job."
"You're, you're doing good." [laughs]
"You're doing good. Let, let's focus on the fact that we're doing better."
Right.
"And let's try not to press you in the wrong direction, and let's start healing."
Right.
Because until you feel understood-
Mm-hmm
... how do you really let that-
Okay
... cortisol off enough-
No
... to allow the insulin to start dissipating-
Yeah
... to heal?
You're always into defense mode.
Right.
You're always, you know, "No, I'm not like that." "You're, you're saying I am?" "No, I'm not like..." You know, yeah.
Right.
[laughs] Oh, gosh. I, uh...
Okay, so you went from getting scanned. Now, when you, when you g- got your scan and you're talking about the doctors, you know, giving you free feedback and saying... Did they, did they, uh, were they right, spot on, or were they 50% right about your, uh, your, your mind and the way you think?
Man, I was all in on what Dr. Johnson was saying because everything he articulated
was something I had gone through.
Really?
And this man, uh, his testimony, he asked me if I had any problems, 'cause I'd been doing their protocols for a while by the time I finally talked to him-
Mm-hmm
... during COVID on, with the Zoom call with my wife, right? So I'd already been in the cycle for a little while. And he asked me straight up, he was like, "Are you having problems with anything?" And I said, "Well, the only thing is, is I, I stink. I smell different." And he's like, "Oh, don't worry about that. That's ketosis." And then this guy's gotta be in his 60s, right? And he's like, "Yeah, back when I was in med school,
one of my roommate..." Or undergrad maybe, I don't know. "My roommate, he used to smell like that all the time." So I thought about this, and I'm like, a psychiatric doctor that decided he was gonna do something as rational as figure out what this SPECT imagery means to help in mental diagnostic can, could give a testimony about 30 years before
with a roommate that already understood that that food pyramid that they're pushing on you might not be the best idea.
I like sugar,
and I like chocolate chip cookies. I like-
Have you got to the point in that book where they talk about-
No
... sugar-
No
... heroin-
No
... and cocaine?
No, no.
Sugar, heroin and cocaine have the same addictive principle to it.
I- I've heard, you know, I heard a year ago that sugar-
My wife's addicted to it.
Yeah, the sugar?
Yeah.
I- I heard, like, a year ago that sugar has almo- the same addictive qualities as cocaine.
Yeah.
Is it so... Oh.
Yeah.
But I-
So if you did cocaine one time and di- never did it again because you're like, "Man, if I did that again, um, that- that's not good."
Right. [laughs]
You know? Like, too many things happened here that I really, really liked.
Right. [laughs]
Yeah, man. It's the same shit.
This episode of the Head Rush podcast is brought to you by the Patrick Rischia CTE Awareness Foundation. Their goal is the, to spread awareness about the dangers of RHI, repetitive head impacts, after losing their son, Patrick, to CTE. Sadly, there are too many like Patrick that have lost their families, jobs, and sometimes their lives. And this foundation is working hard to stop the devastation than, that can come from not protecting the brain. This foundation provides parents of school-aged children with information about the dangers of sports, concussive sports, and activities which involve head trauma.
They advertise on social media, print media, and billboards. Please follow them on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok, and share their ads with others. And please visit their website, stopcte.org, to find ways to help people recognize the disease if confronted with it in their family, and how to prevent the suffering that can come to families when a brain is damaged. The website has medical forms to take to doctor's visits and advocacy letters if you want to help make change in your community. And their most recent campaign is geared up to help coaches build brain-healthy teams. You can use the information on stopcte.org website to understand CTE,
live with CTE, and prevent CTE. Please visit. Thank you. And don't knock it,
stop c-
There you go
... stopcte.org.
[laughs]
After you got your scan and you talked to your doctors and they were spot-on about everything you told me-
Mm-hmm
... they, you, they didn't ask you questions. They were telling you what your problems were.
Yeah, 'cause I'd already... In the diagnostic, you know, we're, we're like four weeks in by the time I talked to the doctor, and we'd al- I'd already kinda been given all my assignments. Because honestly, what did, what do the Allman clinics do with most of their people? Well, you get their omega-3s up. You teach them how to eat better. You get them on a track to know that hyperbarics is gonna do a good thing to oxygenate blood, raise your blood oxygen in your brain, all this stuff, right? So I seen their system.
Mm-hmm.
You know, they had... There's a system that you're paying a lot of money for, and the only benefit is that when you see your scan, it's your proof that when you don't wanna be a bad person, like, in your heart, the reason why you're there is 'cause God sent you there-
Mm-hmm
... 'cause He knows you're not a bad person and you got, He's got another plan for you, you know? Like, that's your business card to say, "Hey-
Mm
... everybody..."
And w- I'll jump ahead so we can... and then we'll get back on track. The, one of the deals that I'd done for three years in a row after that 2020, and I didn't do it this year just 'cause I didn't feel like I, I needed to as much, but I'll go two months without taking in anything over... It has to be less than a gram of sugar. And when you look into sh- that
and you, and then you're intermittent fasting, I would intermittent fast as long as I could-
Mm-hmm
... too, in the process. Um, did that three years in a row. Um,
like, uh,
I set mine over... I started mine October 30th
and didn't, for two years, and didn't end it till December 30th.
During the holidays?
Yeah, so this was my logic-
Oh
... right? My logic was...
[laughs]
This was my, this was my logic in this, though-
Okay
... is my wife had seen firsthand me, you know? She's seen the real shit.
Right.
My mother and my stepfather were getting the CliffNotes.
Right.
So what, what a better way when you need to teach people, you know, if they're gonna cook a meal,
be aware that I need a different meal.
Mm.
So it was pretty selfish of me, actually.
And I did it over Halloween through Christmas because I wanted everybody in the family to learn how you feed a neurodivergent kid.
No candy over Halloween?
Because... Oh, I'm sorry.
[laughs]
Yeah, so I went, uh, sh- yeah, I went no sugar. And we're talking, when you look into it, cranberry sauce, you looking into all that stuff, right? Like-
There's more than a gram of sugar.
More... Yeah. L- you look at the wrong lettuces. Like, I think iceberg even got more than a gram of sugar.
Really?
One of them, romaine maybe, one of them lettuces has more than a gram of sugar, too. Like, there's greens you would think, "Oh, I can eat this green bean." Nope. More than a gram of sugar.
Oh my gosh.
Like-
[laughs] So he, Corey, Corey's looking at me because he committed to you a month ago. You were challenging him to, to get on, you know, get it under-
And then he ate some rice the other day. I'm like, "Hey, man, that's, that's too much sugar. Those simple carbs are way too high there."
My insulin is lower.
Well, you're on the hormones. That, it should be lower on the hormones.
Well, it, I, I was talking to Corey the other day. I mean, with you
doing that intermissi- intermittent fasting and the diet, not diet, but eating the, the right foods-
The protocol, yeah
... the, the right eating foods, that actually raises your hormones and e- equalizes your hormones where they should be anyway as well, right?
Right. And the one thing I'll never know until we talk to Dr. Johnson or one of the Amen docs is, was I a candidate for hormone therapy with their original blood draws and all that?
Right.
And with me just inside of me saying, "No."
Mm-hmm.
"Right now, no. We're gonna do this the old-fashioned way." Um-
And that'll...
Was it a ch- is it a chance for them to study a guy that, that has some internal communication-
Right
... that was even deeper than maybe what they get to see in a normal-
Mm-hmm
... normal situation? So there's a chance that they could tell us, "Well, heck, that guy did even one more." Like you just pointed out, his testosterone and his hormone levels all came back by him just overkilling this protocol for two months when we probably only told him to do it for, like, a month or six weeks or something.
So, do-
And we got Dr. Amen. I talked to their, uh,
publication people.
Right.
Publicists or whatever you wanna call it.
Mm-hmm.
And Daniel Amen said he'll come on at the end of this year when his new book comes out.
Cool.
So we're gonna get-
Cool
... Dr. Amen on to talk about more of this because-
I'm glad he's not allergic to cowboys. That's good. [laughs]
[laughs] Well, we won't tell him about your book, that the, the doc, the docs -
Dude, I would love to tell him that I stopped reading his book after, after a third and... 'Cause it was so well-written that I understood what was going on.
You got it. You got it, right?
Yeah, if I need to go... If I ever come into a situation with one of my children or a, a, somebody I'm around in the sports world and I need to go get the whole book back again to figure out what they got going on wrong-
Right, right
... we'll do it. I know where-
We'll do it
... I know where to buy it.
[laughs] So what was this ins- insulin neutral or insulin what?
Insulin sensitivity.
Yeah.
Right. What is it... What started you... Because after that, you started that, right?
Mm-hmm. So I never knew what insulin sensitivity was. The time I was a little kid, you know, I'm on medications for all my stuff. I do believe that those medications dull your system and, and take you away from insulin sensitivity. And then my, my parents weren't uber educated, you know? They were good people, but they weren't uber educated.
Mm-hmm.
So we ate... Excuse my burp. We ate the way the, the pyramid said. You know, we didn't know anything about-
Right
... glyphosate. We didn't know anything about soap toxins. We didn't know anything about your detergent, your hair product, all these things that can toxify a system. And we sure didn't know I was ADHD. I was neurodivergent, right?
Mm-hmm.
So we don't know that I have issues detoxing. And, and my mother, you know, with her behavior, if she ever got scanned, I guarantee you she'd be on this, th- th- be OCD, maybe ADHD. So
moral of the story is, is, um,
it was just God's time 'cause, like, the Amen Clinics got me bought into to this is a thing.
Mm-hmm.
All my other friends that had kinda led me down trails in previous years, like,
it all came together at the same time as, like, light bulbs going off between me and my wife. So the Amen Clinics didn't, didn't necessarily do anything other-
Than connect
... than connect the dots and say, "No, yeah, that's a good thing." You know, like, "That, that cold therapy you're doing right now, that- that's a good thing."
Mm-hmm.
You know? And, uh, so when I interconnected this whole wellness thing, it was all just timing-wise, it was perfect.
Uh, definitely, we're gonna get back to the insulin se- sensitivity. I have a question. When you were doing... In three years in a row, you did October 31st to, to, uh, December, the end of December.
How did it affect you the next eight months?
It was great. So the reason why I quit after about three years was I'd been working so much out here in this Texas heat, uh, for, you know, what, six, seven months out of the year. It can get pretty warm when you're doing what we do outside. And, um,
I started realizing, like, the sugar cuts, like, going low and not eating the fruit and not, not doing that at that point, like, it was... I was not functioning very well. Like, I, I didn't feel like... I was, I was starting to pack a insulin tank again, this whole thing. So I just knew at that point, I was like, "Man, I got to that same level that some of my buddies that fought in the UFC that don't eat the ox- the high oxalates." Like, I was eating piles of spinach, organic spinach.
Mm-hmm.
And then I got to a phase where
I had to incorporate blueberries, and now I, I eat bananas and blueberries. And that's... And then, too, like, my... I- I'm healthy enough that every once in a while, I'll be like, "Let's go eat some cookies."
Yeah.
But if I eat too much ice cream and cookies, like, if, if I tried to eat what I used to, I'll start sweating through my face. I'll feel gross. I'll have to go move a little bit.
How, how will it affect any of your cognitive... Uh, will you feel that ev- or, or-
There-
... is your system clean enough right now where you can handle it for a f- a couple times?
I can, uh-
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I can see some changes. There are some energy drinks out there too that if I get into, like, the wrong, not even sugars, but the wrong chemicals-
Mm-hmm
... uh, busy-mindedness at night-
Mm-hmm
... maybe lock into a thought that was kinda not worth anything, maybe dark, maybe whatever, right? And, uh,
so th- those are the, the, the, the busy brain is a governor.
Mm-hmm. So you can, you, you sense it. You, you, uh-
It's so nice. It's so nice. Like, I quit chewing. Um, this last summer, I'd quit drinking coffee, you know? I don't, I don't have a craving for alcohol.
Mm-hmm.
And I mean, that was a big part of my life from the time I was, like, 16 to, you know, 36. So-
Well, and then you had a bout with alcohol too, right?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I, I just, uh, I stopped, uh, seven years ago. Yeah. And-
And you won't even have a drink now.
No, no. I, I, I don't... I, I drink by share. [laughs]
And for me-
Well, what did you say the other day-
... for me, it was excellent
... that we're privileged enough now that we don't have to be at the bar?
Well, I, you, I, I told my co- my CHP buddy that had a major TBI and went through the, the Amen's and the hormone deal, and he's doing really well now. Um, I just told him when I was rationalizing, because we train jiu-jitsu in his garage, I was like, "Man, to me, it just seems like, you know, some people go real, like this their whole life, you know? And they have their eight to five, and they stay in that zone, and they can go drink a few beers with the boys at the whatever the thing is that weekend, you know? And they can do that dang near till they die at 80 years old or whatever."
Mm-hmm.
85. I was like, "But guys like us that got to have all the fun up front, you know, like, just seems like to me, you hit that place in life where you're hitting the line that he talks about in that book."
Mm-hmm.
"And you know what's on the other side of that line, and it just not, isn't worth it anymore." And, uh, I think insulin sensitivity is a blessing from God-
Mm
... that I would love to see the CTE people, you know, start evaluating that line that Daniel Amen talks about, insulin sensitivity, and then being able to build that line back. Because I didn't straight totally just cut alcohol till this last spring.
Mm-hmm.
Like, I've had a little coffee and a couple ranch water tequilas.
Mm-hmm.
I could handle them fine without any bad thoughts or nothing. Um,
so my insulin sensitivity allowed me to keep that stuff in my system for four years after the diagnostic,
and I feel like I'm getting better, getting better, getting better. And the reason why I quit was due to some breakdowns in immune, immune issues, like getting sick. And I was like, "I know why I got sick." Right? No point now, now that I don't need that stuff-
Mm-hmm
... like, for me, I'm like,
"I'm good." Unless one of my buddies that has something big to celebrate, like-
Right
... I don't need to crack back out.
Right. [laughs]
And I might not even need to crack back out for that, but I might crack back out for something really, really big.
Now, my question is, is
we were just on a podcast with Bruce Parkman and Karen Siegel from the Parkman Foundation, Mack Parkman Foundation, and the Patrick Grisha Foundation, and they did a study. Mack Parkman pushed it through Boston, and they did a study on younger people.
Mm-hmm, 30 and under.
30 and under. And-
That played a lot of, uh, uh, concussive sports.
Mm-hmm.
Football, boxing, wrestling-
Hockey
... hockey, s- soccer.
Mm-hmm. And they found that
Bruce's son did not get diagnosed with CTE.
Mm-hmm.
And he went back to Boston University and said, "Was there any brain damage?" "Well, I don't know. I just checked for CTE."
How can they check for CTE?
Because she's trying to be bi-
Did the child die?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, yeah.
The child passed away.
Committed suicide.
Okay.
And, um, he said, "Well, I wanna know about brain damage."
So he had frontal lobe damage from too many contacts.
Mm-hmm.
And so he pushed Boston to do a bigger study, and then when they got the study back, he said, he did deeper and deeper into the study and said, "No, this is the reason here." And he's pushing it out, and it's all about repeated head impacts. And talking to him and others, you know, I'm TES diagnosed from repeated head impacts,
and
it takes a lot to get that. You have to prove repeated head. You have to re- uh, prove all of this in order to get it.
Can I ask you a question about this, this case study? Uh, how much marijuana did this individual take in and how much alcohol?
... he actually, uh, if he found... The father found out later he was, uh, self-medicating with marijuana.
So when you look in, in, in Allman's files, you can see the, the damage to front, the frontal lobe, the perception and, and, and all that stuff. You can see brains.
So-
Like, when you're talking about... when they're talking about that right there, I mean, they gotta go down a trail.
There, there's a lot of... Yeah, there's a lot of, uh, uh, possibilities. Yeah, there was 162, uh, uh, uh, participants, uh, deceased, 30 and under, all those sports. And every one of them had-
100%.
100% had mental health issues-
Mm-hmm
... along with frontal lobe, or, I mean, brain problems, yeah.
Yeah, so they're, they're, they're not... they can't see the world.
Right, exactly.
If your frontal lobe doesn't work-
Yeah
... you can't-
Right
... you can't, you can't evaluate what's going in, and you can't evaluate what's going out.
And I got, and I got frontal lobe atrophy.
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
And so with this being said, you know, me and you have talked about RHIs, repeated head-
Head impacts
... impacts.
Mm-hmm.
And you've had a bunch. You know, I wrestled in high school, football, you know, wrestled before junior high, you know, boxed, karate. I had a bunch of head impacts.
For my confirmation here, I fully support wrestling and jiu-jitsu 100%.
Right, right.
Because it's not boxing. It's not karate. It's not getting kicked in the head. It is a good form of development.
Mm-hmm.
So... And getting choked around the neck, that's a pressurized blood push right there, too. So-
Is that good? W- with oxygen?
Hey, Helio Gracie's 95... died at 95 years old, and he was born with, like, some, some physical issues.
Right.
And this was one of the fathers of Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
Oh, okay.
95. The dar- the, the master that I've trained under, he's in his 70s, and this guy is more ripped than you have ever seen, and he's running a healthy lifestyle. So okay-
Well, we're gonna-
... back, back to what you're saying.
Well, we're gonna, we're gonna get th- to that because-
I just wanted to make sure. [laughs]
Well, what you, what, what you have done, you know, through eating the right nutrients to feed your body has absolutely healed you of a, a number of maladies, right? Or, uh, another-
I, I think so. So I, I know for a fact that I'm still willing to engage people different than a normal human being.
Yeah.
That's probably frontal lobe damage still. Um-
But that's probably... I mean, that's part of the ADHD or the neuro di- diver-
Diversity too, yeah.
Well, fini- finish your, your statement or your question. Uh, were, were you going...
You were talking about your own, uh, frontal lobe issues from repetitive impacts throughout your, your life with, uh, uh, martial arts and the wrestling and the footballs and all the things.
Rodeo and air-
Yeah
... race cars and everything I did.
Oh, yeah.
Um,
and
you were talking about healthy and all of this.
Do you worry about the repeated head impacts since you're still competing today?
No, because I've settled into saddle bronc riding, and I've also settled into it at a level where nothing's bigger than my family and nothing's bigger than God. So I- I'm, I'm 41 right now with a body to still do it because I never did push that extra bit to go make the NFR. I didn't take those injections. I didn't, I didn't go get my leg operated on so I have two legs that are the same length. Like, I left myself with disabilities, and when it was time to go home, I wasn't a rich kid. I didn't have enough money to stay out there. So moral of the story for me is I, I do not worry about that. I feel so much better in four years after the start of this process. And, and every year I feel better, and every year God sends me cooler things. M- I know people can heal.
I know you can. It's just
the dip in my lip's gone. The beer's out of the question and, and, uh, and that whole thing. So... And I'm also... I've seen so much turnaround for myself from being walking dead. I felt like I was dead, alive and dead. Um,
so much turnaround from then. Like, the guy that retired from rodeo and went to that clinic, I physically couldn't do what I can do right now.
Wow.
I couldn't. I, I had to retire for two reasons. I knew I wasn't gonna make enough money to keep a daughter with a heart condition, and I also knew that I wasn't getting any better. Best I could've done was probably finish in the top 30 some in the world again and go back to, you know, the Ram National Circuit Finals and go win a Jiu-Jitsu World League national title again at a lower level. Like, I had pinnacled, and there wasn't enough money there to, to, to keep doing stupid things. So I tried to transition, and when I tried, I, I couldn't. I wasn't menic- men- mentally capable of the transition.
That's when you, you, you were having the men- mental health issues as well.
So I'm at this place of being dead, and where I feel now is alive. And I so much understand my faith better. Like, but on the other side of that is, I'm not 55.
Mm-hmm.
You know? So it's like the more you get up in age knowing that you've weathered this kinda stuff, the more science is gonna tell you that your expiration date's right around the corner.
[laughs]
Right? So in that-
Hopefully not.
Right.
[laughs] It won't be.
[laughs]
I guarantee you, I guarantee you for two months, if you really fi- found it on your soul to do the sugar deal and go all in, cut the Copenhagen, cut the, the caffeine, back to a decaf cup of coffee if you need it, and no alcohol-
I had decaf last night.
Yeah, w- because it was 9:00 at night.
Mm-hmm.
And the only reason I know this is a fact is my buddy who had the hormone issues, he did no substance. This was the straightest-laced cop you've ever seen. And his wreck had his pituitary gland in his brain and sideways, and they could see that in the SPECT imagery. This guy, orthopedic surgeon with the 49ers is who he was, Ting, is the guy's-
Mm-hmm
... Dr. Ting.
Mm-hmm.
He had the highest level staff, and they could not get to the bottom of that. And I'd already been through the deal, and I was... He called me up. He's like, "Nick, I know you've been hustling me about that. What, what's that all about?" And I told him how to, to go do that deal, and he did. Well, they figured out this, and then he goes down the hormone route. And, uh,
but I was telling him that he was being a pussy for not cutting the sugar. He, he got it down to three grams. So I-- In my crazy head, I'm still brain damaged enough to think that those-
Three grams is good, isn't it?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Come on.
Real good, real good. But for me, that wasn't no under a gram of sugar cut for two months. I was like-
You went back to the OCD and, and you overthink it.
And he's, and he's, he's telling me, he's like, "Nick, dude, I'm good. I promise you I'm good. It's something else." Well, then that's when he figures out the hormones. And when he got his hormones right, after he had already gotten his nutrition 100, he said, "My insulin sensitivity went to another level." Well, this conflict I'm having with him, not conflict, but me being pushy,
was me not knowing that I got all my hormone levels balanced back naturally-
Mm-hmm
... and he hit a place with that sideways pituitary gland that he wasn't producing. So when he's not giving some of the same testimonies about having this freak insulin sensitivity guiding your whole life easily, like, I easily put the chew down. I easily put all this stuff down, when before it was a addiction.
And, um, and he wasn't, you know... And he's cleaner than me, but having a little rougher deal. I'm like, "It's 'cause of them two grams of sugar, you P-O-S S-Y. Cut it. Black belt Brazilian jiu-jitsu, whatever."
[laughs]
And, uh, anyway, well, when we keep hashing back and forth over about a year and a half deal, you know, after he'd
been six months good, me and him talked, and then he just accidentally mentioned it. I don't even think it was enough of a, a memory in the conversation that he felt pushed or anything. So, uh, I was like, "Oh, no crap." A, a person can only get so far depending on what is damaged in your body and brain. And if certain things are damaged, you do have to go down a, whoops, a hormonal... See? Short-term memory is bad. [laughs] Um-
Andrew's loving you when you do that.
I love it. [laughs] Um, so that's where I got a better education as to more of what your guys' situation's gonna be through him. And that was when he was straight
as it gets-
Mm-hmm
... but still had to outsource to some hormonal therapy to get him to the level of sensitivity that I learned after six weeks.
Well, well, that's, that's interesting you say that because Quiet Explosions goes through that. A, a couple of... A, a few of the patients or clients-
Mm-hmm
... on Quiet Explosions were started at the Amen Clinic, and, and he took them-
They have them
... he took them as far as he could go.
Right.
And then they, they, uh, he, he sent them-
Mm-hmm
... uh, Amen sent them to Mark Gordon for the, you know, the ho- hormone therapy. This episode of the Head Rush podcast is brought to you by our personal doctor and team of doctors, [laughs] uh, Dr. Mizel, Mizel DeMayo, and she's with the Paradise Behavioral Health. And we are in the-
Brain Well program, which is also part of the Millennium Health Center. Uh, Dr. Mark Gordon, you've seen him on Joe Rogan and even on our show, the Head Rush podcast.
[laughs]
Um,
and, uh, hormones. And Mizel is awesome. We love her.
She's, she's our doctor of psychiatry. She works with the Mark Gordon program with the hormones and, uh, and she j- she adds her twist of genetics and, um, and it's, it's... It basically is melding two wonderful, uh, uh, mediums together, and we're getting great help from Dr. Mizel DeMayo.
So please check out her website at paradisebehavioral.com.
She's-
Look up the Brain Well program. Get involved.
She's sponsoring us. They're, they're sponsoring us for the next year, so we are excited to, to have them on board and, uh, and, and shout the new- the good news to everybody, uh, th- that is watching these broadcasts. So-
Is she helping you, Paul?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
She's helping me, so go check her out, paradisebehavioralhealth.com.
We've been dancing around what you did. I wanna know, I, I... The 40 days or the 42 days, or, uh, uh, I mean-
Yeah, so for me-
I wanna know-
... I went, I went eight weeks 'cause they, they told me, like... I don't even remember what they told me, but me, at that point, I'm like, "I'm gonna do more.
Like, I'm gonna do more than what they say."
Right.
So I go on a, a sugar cut,
eat nothing but, like, organic,
uh, turkey, ra- free-range chicken, no antibiotics, no nothing. Um,
extra virgin olive oil at... organic at the highest quality, not cut up, the kind that leaves you with that tingle in the back of your tongue, you know? Um,
the only thing I kinda biffed a little bit was I would cut up that oil w- with, uh, like, avocado oil-
Mm-hmm
... which is a higher omega-6,
um, and just to get the fats. But there was a Dr. Berg. This chiropractor guy is probably the best nutritionist I've ever seen on Earth. And he was already... I was already reading his tutorials and stuff, and he talked about adding more fat. So I did that, and it made me eating these bucket loads of spinach. So an athlete knows spinach would be bad. Like, that's a high oxalate food. It leaves, you know, issue in your guts and this whole thing. But it was, uh, Dr. Johnson told me it was a good option because of the potassium level- levels.
So a couple principles I'll lead into, like
they got in my head, whether this is true or not, this is what I believe. So I'll just talk from a belief standpoint now. Mm-hmm. And you're not gonna change my belief, even if I'm wrong. [laughs] Right. Or they were wrong. Because you've had results too, so- Because I feel so good. Yeah. So the first thing was, was they teach me, reminded me, because I did go to a college at one point, that a cell- But UNLV was a party school, though, wasn't it? Or- Not really. Did you ... Oh, really? I got a bachelor's in sociology. I had a bachelor's in the devil. Okay. [laughs] The devil's work. Okay. So I was really good for this last four years. Right. I understood what they were doing. Right. I was educated in sociology. Right, right. It's great. Yeah. So anyway, [coughs] uh, potassium and sodium.
Oh, they're ... One's a negative, one's a positive. Oh,
we're energy. If your negative and your positive isn't working properly,
your battery's not gonna work. And then I remembered not a few years before, my negative and my positive on my tractor battery got screwed up, and I fired it, and that thing went off like a car bomb. Mm-hmm. Scared the poop out of me. Mm-hmm. So positive and negative is really important, right? Mm-hmm. So what they, what he got in my head with was
s- uh, sodium gets pretty free in and out of the cell, and sugar conducts it, right? Mm-hmm. Sugar can speed it up. Look at old school Gatorades. Right. Look at Coca-Cola- Mm-hmm ... if you're hot as like all get out. Mm-hmm. You'll get that spike back real quick. Mm-hmm. Well, another doctor brought to my attention that maybe, just maybe, a sugar conducts the sodium to the cell. Well, what Dr. Johnson let me know was that the sugar blocks potassium to the cell. So whether sugar is blocking potassium and allowing sodium to have a free run at the cell, or whether, you know, it's the insulin doing this thing and blocking it, I was just under the understanding that in my situation, I could not heal cellularly until I got potassium flowing back through my cells. Didn't spl- explain a bigger interconnection to the magnesiums and all these other things that you have to be right in. Just got in my head and said, "If, if sugar's in there, the potassium's not getting there." Hmm. So I'm like, "Okay, that's easy to understand." Mm-hmm. So then he gives me organic spinach as a weapon, and he gives me avocado as a weapon. And I eat more of that crap than I probably was supposed to, and I didn't even know that a high oxalate was a thing. So I'm thinking it's just super healthy. And when I'm over here peeing, I'm just like, "Whatever, this is super healthy. I'm intermittent fasting. I'm gonna eat all this like a ravage- ravaging this beast," you know? And, uh, and in the end of just sit- simplifying all that,
um, going with the cold therapies, so just like two, three minutes in the shower, and then the Wim Hof breathing. From kind of a competitive standpoint, like I had m- myself on a clock. Mm-hmm. I wanted to see how long I could hold my breath on this technique, right? Mm-hmm. Because he's telling everybody that you wanna get to two minutes and then be done. And I'm like, "Well, I know that guy holds his breath longer than two minutes." Mm-hmm. So there's kind of still like a messed up competitor in me that's like competing with myself. How far did you get? How many minutes? Uh, three. Three, yeah. So like them big wave surfers, those guys will get to like four minutes. Right. So I'm like still ... I'm, in my head, I know I'm still inferior as all get out- [laughs] ... because I'm like, "There ain't no way you're trapping me at the bottom of an ocean under that." What, what'd you call that, a wussy? Oh, I ... [laughs] Yeah, I just call them pussy. [laughs] Yeah. Pusillani- pus- pusillanimous. If you look up the word pusillanimous- It means- ... in, in, in the dictionary, you'll figure out that it, it means like an inferior- Oh, really? ... or fear-based and ... So anyway- Right ... there's a way around that, that meaning another thing. Right. Um, but yeah, we get there to that point, um,
off the cold therapy,
off of disconnecting from people.
You know, like I had my family team that was still kind of there, right, on a daily. Mm-hmm. But I disconnected. I disconnected from everybody. I got with my horses again, and, uh,
maybe one day of jujitsu a week really kept my sweating down, um, and went ... You know, I was gonna go for two months without sugar, and I did. But I remembered at the six-week mark, I, I blew my talus bone, so my navicular bone got blown out of my foot by a wall at the Will Rogers Coliseum in a bronc, and, and the existing rod in my leg shot my tibia through my foot. And it lacerated, it tore out the whole inside artery supply to my foot. So I would go to bed every night with a foot that would lock up, and I'd be dang near on crutches every morning. Um, and I won a lot like that. Like, anyway, um,
six weeks into it, I was waking up with the same amount of range of motion and no pain that I was going to sleep with. Hmm. And then I had a ... I've had an MRI or CT or whatever on ... It was on my right shoulder that showed a tear in my labrum in my shoulder, and six weeks later, the pain was gone in that. And fast-forward five years, the pain has never come back in that. Wow. Is your shoulder stable? Yep. Oh, yeah. Wow. All the way stable. Yeah. And I mean, like you talk to any of the people at the jujitsu gym I go to, like they'll validate that I'm like- Right ... handicapped strong. Mm-hmm. Um, so that was all at the six-week point. So what bought me into this, knowing that this was real-
Mm-hmm
...
was enough of my past history
kinda
guided my own brain in this situation. I'm still pretty crazy at six weeks, but I feel good. I feel good, you know?
Mm-hmm.
Like, I'm starting to get my life back. I don't feel dead anymore, but I'm still pretty crazy.
Right.
I'm still not the guy that you wanna piss off.
[laughs]
And I'm not saying 'cause I'm a badass. I'm just saying 'cause I, I would make bad decisions.
Right. Mm-hmm.
Um,
so but what I knew about my injuries and having this inch-short leg is I knew about all this body pain
prior to everything. And, uh, two years before the scans, I had decided to start wearing a lift in this inch-short leg to compensate. So for my adult life all the way up to, like, 33, 34 years old, 35 years old, from 17, I never compensated for this discrepancy. I just went with the pain.
So by the time I get into this
want to heal up, at six weeks, I knew it was gonna work, 'cause they didn't have to tell me that my body was gonna heal before my brain. But when you have orthopedic surgeons saying, "You're gonna have to have a shoulder operation," and other orthopedic surgeons saying, "Well, just go on that ankle. You're gonna need a replacement," and then you change your lifestyle and eating after six weeks, and you're like, [scoffs] "I don't need a surgery on my shoulder."
Was the pain gone throughout the body or just the shoulder or-
Everywhere.
Everywhere. Wow. Yeah.
Everywhere.
Yeah.
And it allowed things to start setting up, and it allowed me to meet some other people, like a doctor that worked on Patrick Mahomes-
Yeah
... who knows some, some, some muscle activation techniques through, like, nerve pressure.
Mm-hmm.
And, uh, like, his stuff, he did some stuff on me that set, set. It stayed-
Mm-hmm
... for a long time.
Mm-hmm.
So it opened a lot of doors for me to understand some other things. I got one really funny story.
Yeah.
I am working out in Onnit back when Onnit was owned by Joe Rogan and Aubrey Marcus and, and, uh, the former combat athlete manager. He's a guy named Andrew Craig, fought in the UFC, and, uh, he was Aubrey and, and Joe's comb- bad athlete manager. Well, his cousin was where is the lineage line that I had originally started jujitsu with years before in, uh, in, like, Cypress, Texas.
And, uh, so I knew Andrew from way back then. So we're showing up to the Austin Rodeo, and, uh, I knew they had that high-profile deal. And my UFC fighting buddy had just lost his contract via an email,
and his name's Brendan O'Reilly. And I f- I told him he should fly out, that if he flew out, I'd pay all the bills if he just wanted to come out. And I took him to Rodeo Houston, and we went, started at, like, started at Houston, then I took him to Austin and the whole deal. So I'm like, "I've got this black belt in Brazilian jujitsu savage from Australia with me. I'm gonna call Andrew. Let's go figure if we can get in there on their mats and, and train a little jujitsu in our downtime in and out of the rodeo at Austin." So we go over there, and after this class,
I'm standing around with these freak athlete specimens,
and I'm, before ever knowing this stuff, I've got an insulin tank on me, but obviously one of the better bronc riders in the world.
Mm-hmm.
You know? But, but, you know, I got the tank.
Mm-hmm.
And these boys are standing around fit, ripped out of their minds, I mean, healthy dudes, and they went to talking about cryo. And, uh, after I'd heard this, my funny ass lifts up my sweaty shirt, and I said, "You think cryo would handle this?"
And I didn't know nothing about it, and they all kinda laughed.
[laughs]
They're like, "Ha ha, that, that's nutrition, Nick."
[laughs]
And I'm like, I'm like, "Okay, whatever." I'm like, "Let's go eat some donuts and drink some beer and work out like freaks and go hard," you know, 'cause we were told to... You, you go hard, you work out hard, you eat whatever you want, you know? And, uh, I just laughed. And, uh, well, it was, like, three years later that I learned out, learned what they meant.
Right.
And the other side of that insulin sensitivity healed my body in six weeks.
Wow.
And you've got Heroes and Horses testimonies about these guys doing their 41-day, uh, classes up there in Montana-
Mm-hmm
... doing the same exact natural stuff, and all these guys are coming back off their meds, you know? All these guys are coming back insulin-sensitive. All these guys are coming back with brains ready to re-inject into society.
Right.
And all they did was ha- hide their cellphone, hide them away from power lines, get them out in cold therapies, get them out in saunas, and then go ride 100 miles, 400 miles on horses while they had a gym with a mat room and, and the whatever, you know?
Mm-hmm.
And the guy that's telling me these tales is one of the board members, and he was saying when they first started it, they just knew they feel better when they went up there. They didn't know nothing. Hell, they'd go to the bar. [laughs] You know, everybody go to the bar, and then they'd go back and, and them better-minded guys from their teams were still feeling better coming out of that environment, right?
Right, right.
Because of the energy-
Mm-hmm
... away from all this technology.
Mm-hmm.
So they're literally... The, the potassium, sodium's flowing better 'cause there's no charges that are getting in the way of this cellular healing, and they can still do their neurotoxin. Well, they figured out that after a few years of that, he's telling me this, that they had to, they had to renegotiate some things. Well, I meet him years after they've renegotiated all this stuff, and I'm- ... pulling information out of him, and it's like pulling teeth with these guys, right?
[laughs]
And if I wasn't neurodivergent, I would probably feel uncomfortable even trying to pull teeth with people-
Right
... of their- Mm-hmm ... status.
Right.
And it's not weird for me because I am who I am. So by the time I, like... And he did a Dale Brisby podcast to, like, spill all the beans 'cause I think he was tired of talking to me, so he's like, "I'm just gonna let this whole crew of people know what's going on through this podcast." It was great. I left him alone after that.
[laughs]
Um, but moral of the story is
they figured it out by accident. I figured it out by accident. It was no one doctor that just put the protocol together.
Right.
The best thing I ever could have done is that because it gave me empathy for myself. It gave me, um, an understanding of where I can draw a line with people.
And
when you can offload
some stuff onto others-
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
... even if your mom doesn't like it, right? And even if you're being kind of a P-U-S-S-Y at that point in your life to even be 36 years old and say, "Mom, what'd you do?" You know?
Who cares when you're at that place of mental health?
Mm-hmm.
If you, if there's a way to literally, by science, defer...
I'm gonna defer to this person. That was their business. Then but God had to figure out why something happened right there at birth thereafter, right? And then there's a trail, you know, my, my lovely mom, thyroid issues. She, her thyroid don't even work.
Mm-hmm.
So we know that that, that ain't no different than diabetes, really.
Mm-hmm.
That ain't no different than dementia. That is an imbalance that comes from not being blessed to be around smart enough, you know, science, smart enough science-
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm
... to know what you have to... the methylated vitamins you have to take, the food you have to eat for that brain set, for that DNA set. And that's what you guys are going through with your DNA-
Right, right
... and your, and your hormones. Mm-hmm.
Right.
Mm-hmm. So it's like,
man,
the only thing past that book and getting a scan, getting with one of them people like Gary Brecka. Like, that guy's fixed more people than all these doctors.
Right.
And he didn't even...
I mean,
we were doing the sugar thing before he was.
Right.
I'm just gonna put it that simple.
Yeah, yeah.
And, and, and one of the 10X,
the 10X ag and ranch guy was in my first wedding. Mm-hmm. So, so
one of Brecka's proteges was in my first wedding, and I remember telling him after I got done with this, he asked me if I knew Gary Brecka. "I don't know who Gary Brecka is."
[laughs]
After I told him the formula. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then sugar becomes more of a focus. Mm-hmm. And God bless those people- Mm-hmm ... 'cause they took the understanding of the science of that-
Right
... in four years-
Right
... faster than I ever could have if I held onto it myself.
Right.
So God bless the fact that maybe, just maybe, some dumb cowboy slipped some information to another cowboy who's a future billionaire- Mm-hmm ... and then it crept on in. I, I don't care. If I had a role, cool. If I didn't, cool.
Right.
But all I know is they, they upgraded their, their,
their approach to teaching people how to get insulin sensitive after that. Mm-hmm.
So that, this book will help us understand-
Not really.
No?
Unless there's a place in there.
What, what about, what about the, the chapter 20 or whatever, the food?
Chapter 20. So the 52 superfoods?
Yeah.
If you're not trying to do a reset and you just wanna live your healthiest life,
there is... I don't have a problem with any of the foods in there. I-
My, my blood sugar has been going up for the last 10 years, and up and up and up.
Mm-hmm.
Like, pre-diabetic, up and up and up.
You need to do it.
So I need a reset.
Yeah, yeah. You need to do the reset.
So where, where do I find out that information?
From this book, or-
Dude, I'm so... I-
[laughs]
I have people tell me what I did was completely crazy. Like, the amount of pu- uh-
Yeah
... the amount of spinach that I ate-
Sure
... the amount of high oxalates that I ate.
Yeah.
Right? And, uh, so what I know is the, the Heroes and Horses guys do not... Their high oxalate is a potato, which still has sugar in it. Mm-hmm. So that's about the only thing they're eating with any sugar is a potato up there for 41 days.
Can you have, uh, sour, sour cream and cheese and butter on your potato?
So I think, uh-
[laughs]
... Amen wants to cut, wants to cut the dairy. And I think the very first time, I cut dairy out.
Yeah.
But the next two times, if it was a dairy product with less than a gram of sugar, I still kept it in.
You, you were able to do that, or-
Especially if we're talking, like, unpasteurized raw products.
Right.
'Cause there's so much good bacteria.
Right. Mm-hmm.
And, like, if you get into a cream with no sugar and it's a raw cream-
Mm-hmm
... y- you can re- buil- rebuild your gut function at the same exact time that the, the, the, the spinach being high in, uh, chlorophyll, so you're healing your body on it, but it's tearing your guts up at the same time-
Okay
... if you have a sensitive gut. So I would think an intermix of, like, raw dairy, but not the raw dairy with the sugar, like your cream side of it, your cheese side of it. Like, you could rebuild your gut biome pretty easily, but the thing is, is it's illegal-
Mm
... right?
The, the, the raw-
The raw-
... unpa- unpasteurized-
The raw dairy.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
So, you know.
Yeah. Understood. All right. I, y- you've gotta go riding. Um, we have to talk again because he challenged me.
He told me about your challenge to him and talking about this six weeks and reset and all that stuff. So, Corey, you and I got a lot to talk about.
Yes, we do. [laughs] And unless you have a food allergy, you can go down that 52 food list and know... You wanna bump your protein, the, the healthy protein intake up during the intermittent fasting 'cause that's what supplies the long-term fuel-
Mm-hmm
... and converts it if you do need sugar for your muscles, right? So you wanna go a little higher in your, in your healthy proteins that are listed in that book. Um, but other than that, anything else in there that goes below- ... one gram of sugar, less than one gram of sugar-
Mm-hmm
... it's fair game to just eat as much as you want. If you give yourself a seven-hour window of eating-
Okay
... I gored it out.
Mm-hmm.
Like, there was no limit. I ate till I was full.
Yeah.
I ate till I felt good. And then honestly, like, four or five weeks in, three weeks in even,
I'm intermittent fasting past the window of time that I even needed to without even thinking, just going on the ranch and working.
Right.
Because you're so well-fueled at that point that your body's not even looking for food.
Mm-hmm.
So it becomes pretty easy. And that's why I did it for too many years. Like, I did that process for too many years, and then I realized there's another side to that where you gotta take the sugar from the, the healthy fruits, you know, the blueberries, organic blueberries, get some watermelon back in you during certain points of the year with the... I like Baja Gold salts as far as getting all of that-
Okay
... back in you. And I spent three years without really eating any fruit.
Hmm.
So it took dang near three years before my body was like, "Yeah, you better start."
You can, you can introduce it back.
Yeah, I need, I needed to.
Yeah, you needed to.
I needed to.
Yeah, yeah. Awesome. Wow.
So we end every episode... First of all, if you want hope with R-H-I-S-T-E-S, suspected CTE,
dude, here's hope right here.
Yo-ho.
[laughs]
He changed his life. He changed his diet. He changed everything. And he's still out there competing today, actually gonna compete tonight.
It's against, uh, 20-somethings, right? Uh-
Yeah.
Yeah, that's pretty incredible. Yeah. Well, you look, you look really young. Y- really young anyway, so...
I appreciate it.
[laughs]
Well, at least I got brains. People wouldn't even believe me if, if I didn't have a brain scan to prove that I was-
Right. Yeah.
And they said one of the worst cases they had ever-
Hey, real quick, since we're joking about brain scans, Andrew, can you put up my brain scan here real quick? This is a PET scan I had,
and it's a video, and it shows the different degrees. And this is actual blood flow and color, so I got a blood flow color scan too there, Nick. [laughs]
[laughs] So now put up the other scan, and then, then we'll have doctors come in and describe them and see which one's more palatable for somebody-
There you go
... to understand.
Oh, [laughs] but we got a cowboy competition right now, so... [laughs]
So we end every episode on what would you say for hope, to give hope to someone that's suffering like me,
uh, like Paul, and for others out there that are affected by RHIs and imbalances and genetic issues like what you had.
My hope comes from, uh,
godly discernment.
So if it doesn't make sense,
it doesn't make sense.
Hmm.
And the one thing that made sense about my hope is, is, uh, I had hope in Christ, and that hope in Christ in the Bible in turn translated to me getting to learn about the science of hope.
And until you've been brainwashed into understanding exactly why
you do what you do by a normal-looking doctor that looks healthy and looks like he walks the walk, he's not, like, not doing some other stuff, right? The guy literally looked like he walked the walk. And, and you, and you realize that they can tell all this stuff just by a set of scans and a diagnostic. Like,
hope comes from not guessing.
Hmm. That's great. That, that's great.
So Dr. Amen, if you need a spokesman [laughs] for the Amen Clinic and change your brain, change your life, I know a saddle bronc rider that lives in Oklahoma that lives, breathes, and dies by your spec scans. So-
Yeah, by the spec scans. And I went... I live, breathe, and die, die on your, on a, on a two-month reset.
Right.
But I know what-
But-
... the omega-3 levels look like in grass-fed, uh, organic beef-
[laughs]
... non-vax beef, and they're the same level as wild-caught salmon. So don't you think a cowboy like me is not gonna be eating all the omega-3-
[laughs] Yeah
... in that product until I realize I need to diversify back to maybe some more magnesium-filled, uh, meats, you know?
[laughs]
Well, I'm, I'm excited. You, you, you mentioned that, you mentioned science, you mentioned the Bible. You look... If, if you read the Bible, you see a lot of science in the Bible. And, uh, it's, uh, I, I, I appreciate your, your words on that and, uh, uh, godly discernment. That, that's, that's so important for all of us. So, um, awesome. Appreciate it. I'm sure we're gonna have you on again and, and explain, uh, more of, uh, your journey and, and more of the program. And, and Corey and I may [laughs] we might even, uh, do a reset-
Challenge ourselves.
Oh, is that... Okay. Ch- challenge ourselves and do a reset maybe? I,
I don't know. I, I need to. I have to, because I'm down a wrong... Like I said, my, my blood sugar numbers-
Right
... have been going up, so I have to take it seriously.
Especially with your history.
Yeah.
Your history, you don't play that deal-
No
... for that long-
No
... to not be... Uh, you're doing good right now.
No. We'll, we'll definitely, uh... I'll be w- reading chapter 20 in, in the 52 super foods or whatever they are, and I'll figure it out. I'll go to Whole Foods. Do you, do you shop at Whole Foods, or you grow some of your own food or what? [laughs]
If you can grow it, grow it. Um, Whole Foods is game. Sprouts is game. Honestly, most grocery stores-
They have, uh, some-
... they have a section
... organic, organic.
Just know if it's a fruit, which doesn't play ball in this game, and avocado is the only fruit that he says in that book that you can eat-
Right
... organic or inorganic.
Right.
Avocado's a fruit?
Yeah.
Yeah. So the moral of the-
Learn something new every day.
Toronto.
It's the only fruit with under a gram of sugar too.
Oh, really? Okay.
So-
There you go, honey. You love your avocados.
So-
You got under a gram of sugar, and it's a fruit.
There you go. So moral of the story is I don't even remember where I was going there.
[laughs]
Um, and, and we'll end it on that.
[laughs]
Okay? [laughs] No, I -
No, you're, no, you're acting like me. You're, you're acting... Well, you... I, I was talking to Corey, you know, six months ago about y- y- what you guys do, and every time you go forward and backward, every time that horse brought a box-
Especially in the event he was in.
Yeah.
I only did his event for, like, three years.
Yeah. So it was a little dif- different?
And that's why my leg, my, my leg's an inch short because of his event.
Oh, gosh. Wow.
Horse crashed it.
Um, appreciate it, uh, Nick. Great meeting you.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, absolutely.
All right. And we'll end it on this, folks. Have a good time. We'll see you back in studio in two weeks.
Yep.
And stay alert, stay alive, and have a great evening, folks. Thank you.
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