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