The Joe Rogan Experience - Joe Rogan Experience #1056 - Dr. Mark Gordon & Andrew Marr

00:00:02.000 Three, two...

00:00:03.000 We need like a digital counter.

00:00:09.000 Three, two, one.

00:00:11.000 If you're going to drink that, Andrew, be very careful. 0.99

00:00:14.000 It's 270 milligrams of caffeine in that bitch. 1.00

00:00:17.000 Mark, let me donate it. 0.99

00:00:19.000 Is that allowed?

00:00:20.000 You can have that.

00:00:21.000 My friend Brendan drank one of those yesterday and a cup of coffee.

00:00:26.000 And then on top of that, he drank a...

00:00:29.000 What did he have?

00:00:30.000 Something, a venti with a shot of espresso in it from Starbucks?

00:00:33.000 All doing it while he was fasting.

00:00:36.000 So halfway into the podcast, he starts hurling, runs into the bathroom, throws up, then comes back, and then throws up in a bucket at the end of the podcast.

00:00:45.000 Literally didn't make it out of the room.

00:00:47.000 So there you go. 1.00

00:00:47.000 He could have had a heated seat if he had to take a shit. 1.00

00:00:50.000 Yeah, we have a heated seat. 0.99

00:00:51.000 That would have been awesome.

00:00:52.000 He got it.

00:00:53.000 270?

00:00:54.000 270 milligrams.

00:00:55.000 Yeah, caveman coffee.

00:00:57.000 Nitrogenated.

00:00:57.000 It's basically like espresso with nitrogen in it.

00:01:01.000 It's good stuff.

00:01:02.000 You get used to it.

00:01:03.000 Good.

00:01:03.000 I'll take it before bed.

00:01:04.000 Yeah, that's a good move.

00:01:06.000 You'll have some weird dreams.

00:01:07.000 I take espresso before I go to bed.

00:01:08.000 Andrew, I'm not used to this clean-shaven Andrew.

00:01:11.000 You're like a different human.

00:01:12.000 You could sneak up on people.

00:01:13.000 That's the point, man.

00:01:15.000 My daughters, about a year ago, said they had enough of the beard, so it had to go.

00:01:20.000 When my daughter was one, a friend of mine died, and on the internet we had all had this guy Evan Tanner, who was a former UFC champion, and we had decided that we were all going to grow beards for him, because he had this crazy giant beard. 0.98

00:01:38.000 And so a bunch of us on the internet did it, and I just grew this fucking werewolf beard. 0.76

00:01:42.000 And then I got to a point where I was like, you know, time was up. 0.99

00:01:45.000 I was going to shave it off.

00:01:47.000 And my daughter had no idea what I really looked like.

00:01:50.000 So I shaved my face.

00:01:51.000 She started screaming. 0.96

00:01:52.000 She thought it was somebody else.

00:01:53.000 And she started crying.

00:01:54.000 And I'm like, touch it.

00:01:55.000 This is my normal face.

00:01:57.000 And then she's confused.

00:01:58.000 She's like, I know that voice.

00:02:00.000 Like, who are you?

00:02:00.000 That's what it looks like.

00:02:02.000 Oh, nice.

00:02:03.000 Yeah, same thing that happened with my boys.

00:02:04.000 They were young, too.

00:02:06.000 So they'd never see me without it.

00:02:07.000 So they thought you were a stranger, right?

00:02:10.000 That's trimmed, too.

00:02:11.000 You see that?

00:02:12.000 That's because we're on TV. I trim the cheek areas because it'll creep up to my nose.

00:02:18.000 I GQ'd it up.

00:02:18.000 Got it.

00:02:18.000 I GQ'd it.

00:02:19.000 Yeah, I'm trying to look fresh.

00:02:22.000 Well, I have to admit the fact that after 30 years of not having a beard, meeting you, I ended up with that beard and then started speaking Arabic.

00:02:29.000 Right.

00:02:30.000 Out of nowhere?

00:02:31.000 Out of nowhere.

00:02:32.000 How weird.

00:02:33.000 It's more academic, too, you know, when you're lecturing on the lecture circuit.

00:02:36.000 Yeah.

00:02:37.000 Of course.

00:02:38.000 But for a guy with your experience, that kind of beard is normal.

00:02:44.000 Yeah.

00:02:45.000 Yeah.

00:02:45.000 I mean, guys who have lived your line of work...

00:02:49.000 I don't know, man.

00:02:50.000 It's like counterculture, so anti-establishment in the establishment, so that's part of it, you know, and like anything else, you get into, I don't know, it felt normal, right?

00:03:01.000 So it was like probably a crutch a little bit and something that felt right for a long time.

00:03:06.000 I don't think it's a crutch, but I think it's definitely a mark of the occupation.

00:03:11.000 I remember I read Dick Marchenko's book.

00:03:14.000 Am I saying his name right?

00:03:16.000 Marchenko?

00:03:17.000 I read one of his books way, way back in the day.

00:03:19.000 Like Rogue Warriors or something like that.

00:03:23.000 Guys who address how they didn't fit in with regular military guys.

00:03:28.000 Yeah.

00:03:28.000 No.

00:03:28.000 Totally.

00:03:29.000 Totally.

00:03:31.000 Unconventional would probably be the way to say it.

00:03:33.000 You know what I mean?

00:03:34.000 Not in with authority.

00:03:36.000 Not in with...

00:03:40.000 Yeah.

00:03:45.000 Yeah.

00:03:48.000 Yeah.

00:03:51.000 Yeah.

00:04:00.000 It is interesting. 1.00

00:04:01.000 I don't want to make distinctions, but the baddest motherfuckers in the military are the ones who dress like just regular savages. 0.99

00:04:14.000 There's something odd about that, right? 0.99

00:04:17.000 I don't know, man.

00:04:19.000 I like the idea that you have to earn it.

00:04:22.000 Yeah, you got to earn it.

00:04:23.000 And, you know, it's like you get so tired of doing what you're told and you want to do what you think you need to do for the job.

00:04:30.000 Right.

00:04:31.000 You know what I mean?

00:04:31.000 So like, what, what is it?

00:04:33.000 How, how do I see that I need to accomplish this task, whatever it is, I don't need to be dictated from somebody who's not going to be there telling me how to do it.

00:04:41.000 And so that goes all the way down to even like, okay, well, what kind of boots am I going to wear?

00:04:45.000 What kind of What kind of uniform do I need to accomplish this mission or do these things?

00:04:50.000 That's the way those guys are.

00:04:52.000 They're always thinking about not how to fall in line, man, but how can we think differently to solve problems?

00:05:02.000 The uniform is just one of those things.

00:05:04.000 This is very interesting.

00:05:05.000 Now, just so this is a standalone podcast so people don't have to go back and listen to the first one that we did, we have Dr. Mark Gordon here, a good friend of mine, and Andrew Marr, who is the founder of the Warrior Angels Foundation.

00:05:19.000 Yeah, me and my co-founder, me and my brother Adam Marr, who was also in the Army.

00:05:23.000 And we did a podcast a while back, but for the people that didn't hear, explain what the Warrior Angels Foundation is and what you guys do.

00:05:30.000 Yeah, can I get some context to that first, Joe?

00:05:33.000 So we talked about I was Special Forces Green Beret for a better part of a decade, you know, so I would say somebody defined by my vision of the future.

00:05:44.000 And so that always led me to doing what I wanted to do in life.

00:05:48.000 And so, you know, Special Forces, Spec Ops type dudes.

00:05:51.000 They're in life and death situations pretty regularly and perform, otherwise they don't live.

00:05:57.000 You know what I mean?

00:05:58.000 And so that was kind of life for the better part of 10 years, being in life and death situations on a regular basis.

00:06:05.000 And so going from that, you know, I would say a high performer by every metric.

00:06:12.000 To one day after my last deployment, I woke up and I was on 13 different medications.

00:06:19.000 I couldn't remember how to drive home from the same route that I've been driving home every day.

00:06:25.000 I was just in chronic pain all the time.

00:06:28.000 I had these balance issues where I couldn't walk in a straight line.

00:06:32.000 Blurry vision would go into double vision and I have these horrible migraine headaches.

00:06:36.000 So just debilitating that way and then started to have become depressed and this was like this was just mind-boggling to me because I was living I thought my life's purpose right doing the job I wanted to do with the people I wanted to be with married to the woman of my dreams had the family that we always wanted but yet here I am I have all these physical problems now I'm starting to be depressed and I don't have a reason to be depressed And then I started having panic attacks in public,

00:07:05.000 in our weight room, at home, in front of my kids, you know, like just breaking down, crying, and not knowing why and not being able to do anything about it.

00:07:15.000 And then I started to have, you know, and that was, again, like my...

00:07:20.000 The structure of reality was fracturing around me, and I didn't know why or what was going on.

00:07:26.000 And the first thing you can think to do and something like that was to drink.

00:07:30.000 I was like, I've got to stop this, and I don't know what to do.

00:07:34.000 I think I have some screws loose or what's going on, but all I know is this is so disastrous.

00:07:39.000 Maybe if I just drink, I can put the brakes on this a little bit.

00:07:44.000 And things just continue to get worse, and then my behavior just continued to skyrocket out of control. 0.98

00:07:51.000 And it wasn't like I was making conscious decisions to be fucked up. 0.91

00:07:55.000 Like, I'm drinking and driving on a regular basis. 0.97

00:08:00.000 And I never even crossed my mind like that was a wrong thing to do.

00:08:03.000 It was just like, hey man, I can't function unless I drink.

00:08:07.000 And I gotta drive, so that's what we're gonna do, you know?

00:08:11.000 Start producing just horrible effects on my family with that line of behavior.

00:08:17.000 And it got to the point, and as a special forces operator, man, all you want to do is operate.

00:08:21.000 All you want to do is be on the team and go and do the things that we signed up to do.

00:08:26.000 Didn't have any problem with that.

00:08:28.000 It wasn't like, oh, you know, all these combat scenarios are weighing on me and it's been too much and I just can't handle it.

00:08:35.000 Like, that's the only thing I felt comfortable doing.

00:08:37.000 I wanted to get back to it.

00:08:39.000 But again, I'd never had any of these symptoms before.

00:08:43.000 So life is just spiraling out of control and not sleeping and everything else.

00:08:48.000 And so finally, you sit on it until you can't sit on it any longer.

00:08:52.000 And it got to the point where I was like, not only am I a detriment to myself and probably society, I can't go out and operate right now.

00:09:00.000 These guys can't depend on me.

00:09:02.000 And so at that point, I was like, I got to raise my hand and I got to get some help.

00:09:06.000 And, you know, that well-intended people wanted to offer as much help and find answers as they possibly could.

00:09:16.000 But again, all that got me was 13 different medications.

00:09:20.000 And I was told, hey, you've had so many head injuries, you can't afford to take another blow to the head.

00:09:26.000 And this is probably going to be the new you.

00:09:28.000 You're going to be on these medications, take a pen and a pad everywhere you go, and learn how to live within these new parameters and schedule out your meds.

00:09:38.000 And this is going to be that.

00:09:40.000 And so it was a medical retirement.

00:09:42.000 It got so bad, Joe, that my wife was nine months pregnant with our fifth child.

00:09:47.000 And she had to ask me, hey, Andrew, can you keep your drinking down today in case I go into labor so I don't have to drive myself to the hospital?

00:09:54.000 You know, so that's how bad it was getting.

00:09:56.000 And that wasn't enough to stop me.

00:09:57.000 And so she actually, our son had a genetic lymphatic malformation in his neck and he got sick.

00:10:05.000 He's like 13 months old and he got infected and it blew up to like the size of a softball.

00:10:10.000 And this is when she's nine months pregnant. 0.81

00:10:12.000 So we have to take him to the emergency room, and my calf had been killing me for about three days at this point.

00:10:18.000 I didn't think anything of it, I just wrote it off.

00:10:20.000 But we're in there in the emergency room, like he's having trouble breathing, like it's bad, like a softball on his neck.

00:10:27.000 It turns out he has to go into emergency surgery, and then Becky goes into labor.

00:10:32.000 So he's up on like the fifth floor getting emergency surgery.

00:10:35.000 Becky's giving labor to our youngest son on the second floor.

00:10:38.000 So I'm going back and forth between the fifth floor and the second floor, and I'm like dragging my leg at this point.

00:10:45.000 Because it just stopped working.

00:10:47.000 But, you know, I was all in and refused any care until I could get these two taken care of.

00:10:51.000 Well, we get Jace out of surgery.

00:10:54.000 You know, he's on the road to recovery.

00:10:56.000 Get down for the birth.

00:10:58.000 We have our son, Jojo.

00:10:59.000 He's good to go.

00:11:00.000 And then it turns out they finally rushed me into imaging and I have a blood clot in my leg.

00:11:05.000 And it's broken off into both lungs, so now I have a bilateral pulmonary embolism.

00:11:09.000 And at this point, they're like, hey man, we have a very small window here.

00:11:13.000 This is very high mortality rate.

00:11:15.000 And I'm like laughing at them, because I was drunk at the time. 0.99

00:11:21.000 No bullshit. 0.99

00:11:22.000 And I'm like, you guys think this is going to kill me? 1.00

00:11:26.000 Get in line.

00:11:27.000 This is a long line of offenders here that have won a shot at that.

00:11:31.000 So anyway, so I'm sitting there in the hospital room, and I'm just wondering and waiting for somebody to come explain to me how life has spiraled out of control like this.

00:11:41.000 And somebody's going to say, hey, this is a reason that you have these blood clots.

00:11:45.000 You know, here's what's going on with your head and all these things and it just, it never happens.

00:11:49.000 And I remember like I got to go down and visit my son who was in emergency recovery and I was there at his hospital bed and I had a bottle of whiskey or airplane bottle of whiskey and I popped the last pain pill I ever took and I shot down the whiskey.

00:12:06.000 That was just normal 24-7 how I operated at that time.

00:12:09.000 Tried just to cope.

00:12:10.000 And I had this epiphany, you know, that, hey, if I continue on this same track, and I continue to just wholesale buy everything the medical system is telling me, it's going to kill me, and it's going to ruin everything that I love.

00:12:27.000 So I can stay on that route, or I can decide to act and to change what I don't like.

00:12:32.000 And at that point, it was everything.

00:12:34.000 And so I made the promise to my son right then and there, That I was going to do some things.

00:12:41.000 One, I was going to get off all medication and I was going to return to the man of my pre-injury status.

00:12:47.000 Two, I was going to find a way to heal myself.

00:12:53.000 And then three, I was going to turn around and do that same thing for somebody else.

00:12:57.000 And so right then and there in that hospital's bed, and I mean, this is honest to God, true story.

00:13:03.000 I said, I don't care how.

00:13:05.000 I don't know how, but I've had enough.

00:13:07.000 I've had enough of people telling me that my life is over, and at that time, you know, my identity was in Special Forces, and that was taken away because of the medical injuries, and I said, I don't care anymore.

00:13:18.000 I'm still a husband, I'm still a father, and I'm gonna get better.

00:13:22.000 And that was enough to pull me out of there, out of that negative spiral that I was in, and to start being proactive again and start being defined by a vision of the future.

00:13:34.000 And my vision of the future was just what I said.

00:13:37.000 And I didn't know it was going to lead to where we're at today, but that was the catalyst.

00:13:41.000 And so I started going and looking for alternative therapies.

00:13:44.000 And it turned out, like, the government didn't want to pay for anything that wasn't covered by their insurance.

00:13:48.000 Well, that's fine.

00:13:49.000 I'll charge it.

00:13:50.000 I max it on credit cards.

00:13:52.000 That's fine.

00:13:52.000 I'll get more credit cards.

00:13:53.000 I don't care.

00:13:54.000 I don't care if it's a million dollars.

00:13:55.000 I will get the money and I will get better and I will solve this problem.

00:14:00.000 And then I started getting objective about it.

00:14:02.000 And I was like, you know, talking to everybody out there who's having head problems like, hey, what's working for you guys?

00:14:08.000 And I got real interested in why did some things work for some people and then not work for others?

00:14:14.000 You know, you know, precursor to meeting Mark, but I'm starting to get really scientific minded or, you know, want objective data.

00:14:20.000 To be able to support things.

00:14:21.000 And so there's all these other treatment modalities out there.

00:14:25.000 And I did every single one of them.

00:14:28.000 And some of them were a little bit of benefit in the short term.

00:14:33.000 Some of them, you know, reversed or made symptoms worse.

00:14:37.000 But it was leading toward that that we got some publicity out of it.

00:14:42.000 Mark read about it and just contacted me.

00:14:45.000 And he didn't know anything else about me at that point.

00:14:47.000 But he said, hey, you know, We've been treating TBI for a number of years now.

00:14:53.000 Here's my credentials.

00:14:54.000 Here's the background story on it.

00:14:56.000 Here's some media that I'd done.

00:14:59.000 And it was a podcast that you guys had done a couple back when you had Matt Gosney on.

00:15:05.000 And I'm listening to Matt tell his story. 0.66

00:15:07.000 And for the first time ever, through hearing him, I was like, holy shit, this isn't specific to me. 0.96

00:15:14.000 Like, I got so wrapped up in myself. 0.96

00:15:16.000 Like, I thought, like, the whole world's on pause, and this is just my problem.

00:15:21.000 And I realized, oh my god, this is a much bigger problem that has...

00:15:30.000 We're good to go.

00:15:32.000 We're good to go.

00:15:37.000 We're good to go.

00:15:43.000 An underlying condition for all of the things that we were just talking about and we can measure it objectively.

00:15:48.000 And like that just blew my mind because I was like, here I am on 13 medications and there wasn't one objective measurement where somebody said, let's put them on anti-depressant.

00:15:58.000 Let's put them on another antidepressant.

00:15:59.000 Let's put them on anti-anxiety.

00:16:01.000 I was like, there was nothing objective about that.

00:16:03.000 I was like, wait a minute.

00:16:05.000 So you're saying there was nothing they were measuring?

00:16:07.000 Somebody's subjective call.

00:16:08.000 There's a level of this that we need to move up, there's a level of that we need to...

00:16:12.000 Right.

00:16:13.000 Yeah, based off the symptoms and the complaints I had, it was just...

00:16:16.000 They were just throwing darts.

00:16:17.000 Like I said, 13 medications, you know, from a person who never had any issue before.

00:16:22.000 And to all the guys that have served, that have gone through this kind of thing, and not just guys that have served, but also when you're dealing with TBI, we're talking about athletes, we're talking about former fighters.

00:16:33.000 A lot of guys that I've been in contact with on a regular basis have these issues.

00:16:38.000 And what Mark has done, which has been just phenomenal, was open up a new door for treatment to these people.

00:16:46.000 And I have talked to so many people.

00:16:49.000 I've been in contact with so many people that heard about you through the podcast that we've done together and heard about your work and have gone on to completely remove these medications from their life.

00:17:00.000 Correct.

00:17:01.000 You know, that's the problem in psychiatry.

00:17:04.000 Is there are no real biological markers.

00:17:07.000 They're trying to use radiographic studies like spec scans, MRIs, PET scans, and what have you, as rationale for starting people on medication.

00:17:16.000 But there's absolutely, you know, in the biomarker or the biomarker panel that we have, there's a direct correlation between someone having had head trauma, regardless if it was mild or a blast trauma like Andrew had, Or a slip and fall, or someone coming up and hitting you behind the head,

00:17:32.000 or MMA, or boxers, or Muay Thai.

00:17:36.000 And there's absolutely zero that they use to regulate what they're doing.

00:17:39.000 It says, okay, today's Thursday, let's try this drug, or this is Friday, or else this month we're giving you this satchel of meds, as many of the vets have come up and told me, depending upon the day of the week, dictated what groupings of medications they were given.

00:17:55.000 But let's break it down for people.

00:17:57.000 What do you feel is the underlying cause of all this that's related to TBI? Okay.

00:18:02.000 Great question.

00:18:03.000 And the answer is, number one, from the head trauma, it elicits chemical changes in the brain that we call inflammation.

00:18:10.000 And this inflammation leads to disruption of chemical processes.

00:18:15.000 It's like, you know, the old alkaline batteries or the car batteries where we used to put distilled water into it.

00:18:20.000 Well, if you put Coca-Cola in it, it totally changes the ability of electrons to be conducted, just like in the brain.

00:18:28.000 So the chemistry of the brain is altered by the inflammation and it starts shutting down systems so that the nerves in the left side of the brain can't talk to the right side or the frontal lobe of the brain can't talk to the temporal lobe of the brain.

00:18:40.000 So you have disruption of executive function, which is your ability to make correct decisions about things right and wrong.

00:18:48.000 Why do we have over a million veterans incarcerated?

00:18:52.000 That's because they can't make the right, correct decisions about how to respond to an innocuous approach by an individual that they don't know.

00:19:01.000 And they respond by assault or with physical or anger or yelling at people.

00:19:07.000 And that leads them into jail or into incarceration.

00:19:11.000 So anyway, the inflammation leads to hormonal deficiencies in the brain.

00:19:16.000 And what we found is that there's, since 1986, Dr. Beilou out of Paris found that we have enzyme systems that take cholesterol.

00:19:24.000 And convert it into hormones that actuate and regulate our brain function, from schizophrenia to ALS to Parkinson's disease to bipolar to all the different disorders.

00:19:36.000 There was a recent article that I sent out to our journal group, and Andrew's in it, and it was about management of neuroinflammation, brain inflammation, to treat psychiatric diseases.

00:19:48.000 In the past six months, we've been starting to see a lot of articles talking specifically about inflammation creating all these things that we're trying to treat with medications that are ineffective.

00:19:58.000 Last month, I had a class in Arizona.

00:20:04.000 And I presented a group of articles and one of the key articles was the fact that they found people with atypical depression.

00:20:11.000 That's depression that doesn't respond to traditional medication.

00:20:15.000 So you're on a whole bunch of 13 medications and you're still depressed.

00:20:20.000 So they found in 61% of these people who were still depressed with atypical depression that they had growth hormone deficiency.

00:20:28.000 And then when they replaced the growth hormone, within one to two months, their depression disappeared and they had some beneficial side effects.

00:20:35.000 They slept better.

00:20:37.000 They had more mental energy.

00:20:38.000 They were socially more adaptable.

00:20:41.000 And their reactive scores that creates, you know, an assault situation, they were calm.

00:20:46.000 Someone said boo to them, and they said, oh, who do you?

00:20:49.000 As opposed to getting into their face.

00:20:51.000 So it's a very clear, and it's becoming clearer and clearer in the literature around the world now.

00:20:58.000 We've been doing this since 2004. The inflammation is really the problem.

00:21:04.000 So unfortunately, there is no specific medication.

00:21:08.000 They talk about use of aspirin and ibuprofen in things like Alzheimer's disease, which is an inflammatory disease.

00:21:15.000 I know I shared it with you in the past that if a football player has one major concussion on the field, he's 19 times at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's between 30 and 49 years of age because it's an inflammatory illness.

00:21:32.000 It's not, you know, genetics by itself.

00:21:34.000 There are people with genetic predisposition to it because they generate this thing called beta amyloid.

00:21:38.000 But trauma, any kind of trauma to the head can elicit increased production of beta amyloid and lead to these problems.

00:21:47.000 Traumatic brain injury causes this inflammation and there's a process that goes on when the brain is dealing with this inflammation and that's what's disrupting all of these normal functions, executive functions.

00:22:00.000 Absolutely.

00:22:01.000 And, you know, we have different relay centers in our brain that regulate whether or not You're going to be calm or you're going to be hyper, have anxiety.

00:22:11.000 One of the products that we use is 100% natural, about 80% of our treatment is all natural products with 10-20% being pharmaceutical products but no psychotropic or brain altering medications.

00:22:23.000 So what kind of products do you use?

00:22:25.000 Pregnenolone.

00:22:26.000 Pregnenolone, there's 6,160 articles talking about its beneficial effect on anxiety.

00:22:32.000 So we have people who come in on a multitude of anxiety medications within three months.

00:22:36.000 They're off all their medication.

00:22:38.000 And what is Pregnenolone?

00:22:39.000 Pregnenolone?

00:22:39.000 Pregnenolone is called the mother of all hormones.

00:22:42.000 It's the precursor.

00:22:43.000 It comes right off of cholesterol.

00:22:44.000 The first change to cholesterol becomes pregnenolone, which goes down one pathway to become testosterone and then down another pathway to become cortisol, which is the anti-inflammatory product.

00:22:55.000 So we get benefits of anti-inflammatory effect by having pregnenolone.

00:23:01.000 If you're on any kind of statin drug that decreases the availability of cholesterol in the brain or the body, you lose.

00:23:08.000 I've heard nothing but bad things about statin drugs.

00:23:10.000 Don't get me going.

00:23:11.000 I want to get you going because there's so many people that have this very meager understanding of cholesterol and a meager understanding of what is the difference between having high cholesterol, low cholesterol, what's healthy,

00:23:28.000 what's not healthy.

00:23:29.000 What's your cholesterol, Mark?

00:23:31.000 My cholesterol is 350. My LDL is, and it should be, according to the present standards, less than 200. My LDL cholesterol is 273, which is the LDL is the lousy kind.

00:23:44.000 And my HDL, which is the happy to have the healthy one, is like 23 to 40. How did the numbers change over time?

00:23:51.000 They're all the same.

00:23:52.000 No, for the standard of where they used to measure from the 70s till now.

00:23:56.000 In my infancy in medicine, back in the late 80s, it was 349 and then went to 329, then 279, then 249, 229, and less than 200 now.

00:24:09.000 And we would expect our nutrition is changing, the quality of foods that we eat, and the fact that we have since 1986 statin drugs, which are $36 billion a year, we would anticipate that the rate of cardiovascular disease should be diving.

00:24:24.000 Getting lower.

00:24:25.000 It's not.

00:24:25.000 It's going up.

00:24:26.000 So what does it tell us?

00:24:27.000 It tells us, like a SmithKline Beecham study that was done, 50% of all heart attacks happen in people with normal or low levels of cholesterol.

00:24:35.000 So the question is, then what's causing it?

00:24:37.000 Well, it turns out inflammation.

00:24:40.000 If you start looking at inflammatory chemistry, there's a group of inflammatory markers that we have, which SDLDL, homocysteine, LpA, there's a whole group of them that can predict better than cholesterol your risk for heart disease.

00:24:56.000 And what we do in the office is we have a biomarker panel for cardiac inflammation.

00:25:01.000 Person comes in, they've got a history of elevated cholesterol, One of my closest buddies, Keith, ex-fighter pilot, his cholesterol 140, 150. My cholesterol 300, 350. We went and had an ultra-fast CT scan that looks at the heart,

00:25:16.000 and his calcium score was greater than 2,000.

00:25:21.000 Which if it's 100 or less is good, greater than 400, horrible.

00:25:24.000 Mine was zero.

00:25:25.000 And I had cholesterol that was three times his.

00:25:28.000 So after he had his open heart surgery and his new arteries put in, we went and had this panel called an LP6. My cholesterol sky high, but all these inflammatory markers low.

00:25:40.000 In Keith's situation, his inflammatory markers were sky high, even though his cholesterol was very low.

00:25:47.000 Yeah, there's a simplistic understanding of what's causing these issues, and people peg it on cholesterol.

00:25:55.000 And you hear it so often, so many times, and you're like, boy, how do I even begin having this conversation with people?

00:26:01.000 I would like to, if anybody's listening and you want to really get into this, Dr. Rhonda Patrick went pretty deep on it in the last podcast that we did, and the newly found connections between Refined sugars and refined carbohydrates and saturated fats, the combination of the two seems to be a gigantic issue,

00:26:18.000 whereas saturated fats on their own are not an issue.

00:26:22.000 The small particle versus large particle LDL, small particles are the dangerous ones.

00:26:27.000 SDLDL is dangerous, but it's at greater risk when you have an enzyme called the PLA2 in the blood, which causes the SDLDL, the small density LDL, to fracture into two parts that cause the immune system to be called in.

00:26:42.000 And once the immune system gets there, it creates all this inflammation.

00:26:46.000 And there's something that happens with LDL when you combine it with refined sugars that's extremely bad for you.

00:26:54.000 Makes it worse.

00:26:54.000 Yeah, extremely bad.

00:26:56.000 Sugars, corn syrup, things that people are drinking, you know, sodas and cake and bullshit, all the refined bread and wheat products, all that stuff is fucking terrible for you. 0.98

00:27:06.000 Well, it's just adding more inflammation on top of it. 0.98

00:27:09.000 Yeah, and it's being conflated with saturated fats and with cholesterol, and it's not what the issue is.

00:27:16.000 Correct.

00:27:16.000 So think about if you have a brain injury and you're eating like that.

00:27:19.000 You know what I mean?

00:27:20.000 You're pouring gasoline on a fire and having no idea about it.

00:27:24.000 That's an issue that we face a lot of the time.

00:27:26.000 So there's the inflammation response and then there's also the issues with the pituitary gland and the hormonal deficiencies.

00:27:36.000 Well, it's not only the It's a pituitary gland which generates the signals to the thyroid gland or the testicles or the ovaries to make their hormones or the adrenal glands.

00:27:46.000 But it's the fact that we call them glial cells which are astrocytes and neural cells which generate their own hormones.

00:27:55.000 And it turns out that the hormones produced below the neck have a genomic effect on the body which is slow.

00:28:02.000 It means it turns on genetic switches to do things.

00:28:05.000 But the hormones produced in the brain called the neurosteroids, they have immediate effect because they influence the membranes of neurons to do things.

00:28:16.000 So our ability to be rational because you're taking different parts of the brain and they're all working in unison as opposed to having this section that deals with, you know, how you respond to someone talking in a high voice to you or pointing a gun at you or pointing a pencil at you.

00:28:32.000 So you lose that integration of the different parts of the brain.

00:28:35.000 That's what each of the lobes is responsible for is how we integrate signals coming in.

00:28:41.000 The whole thing is so fascinating because it seems like there's so much to understand.

00:28:47.000 And for the average person that goes to your general practitioner and the general practitioner says, oh, I've got high cholesterol, you need to be on a statin drug.

00:28:54.000 And then you find out about all this.

00:28:56.000 People get extremely angry.

00:28:58.000 I've talked to so many people that were on statin drugs and suffered all sorts of health consequences because of that.

00:29:04.000 And then realize, oh, what about... 0.99

00:29:06.000 Cutting all the fucking sugar out of my diet. 0.98

00:29:08.000 What about doing all the stuff that has been shown in all these more recent studies to have a significant effect on your health? 0.99

00:29:15.000 Absolutely.

00:29:15.000 It's unfortunate that when science comes out, and it's really good science, that it takes another 20 to 30 years before it gets into the medical community.

00:29:25.000 And there's no obligation for your general practitioner to be up on this stuff.

00:29:28.000 Absolutely not, because it's status quo.

00:29:31.000 And it's changing constantly.

00:29:32.000 Yes.

00:29:33.000 And that's what has me in frustrated state all the time is because the science that's been sitting on the bench, what I do, what I've been told I do, is called translational medicine, where I take the research that's on the bench that's already been done, and I look at it in large groups and then apply it into the clinical practice.

00:29:51.000 And that's how we've had our success.

00:29:53.000 It's because we've taken the stuff that's sitting there ready to be used that's not being used because we're in the paradigm of don't do anything for 30 years.

00:30:03.000 I mean, every generation a little bit something better happens, but it takes 30 years.

00:30:09.000 It's incredibly frustrating.

00:30:11.000 So, Andrew, please go back to how you found out about Mark and what changes you made and what happened.

00:30:18.000 Yeah, well...

00:30:20.000 Because I've only known you since you've been happy.

00:30:24.000 It's been a good run, man.

00:30:26.000 But, you know, if you lower cholesterol, Mark, it ruins all the hormonal production.

00:30:34.000 Correct.

00:30:34.000 Right?

00:30:35.000 And so that's not understood.

00:30:36.000 But so Mark found me.

00:30:39.000 I looked into everything I was just saying, went over, listened to that research, did my own research.

00:30:46.000 Found out about the neuroendocrine system and ran it by my own people.

00:30:50.000 And so I went and saw an endocrinologist.

00:30:52.000 I was still in the army at this time.

00:30:53.000 And I was saying, hey, do you think that any of these problems were based off of the hundreds or thousands of explosions that we are around on a routine basis?

00:31:02.000 He's like, no, I don't think so.

00:31:04.000 And I was like, well, can we test and replace any hormones that I'm missing?

00:31:10.000 Because, I mean, at that time we had done some tests and I knew that I was deficient in things.

00:31:13.000 And he's like, I'm going to test you for anabolic steroids because I think the reason you're having these problems is you're abusing anabolic steroids.

00:31:21.000 And if you pass the test and you prove that you're not on anabolic steroids, which will take about four to six weeks, then we'll talk about a replacement treatment program. 0.97

00:31:30.000 And I was fucking irate, man. 0.98

00:31:32.000 He accused you? 0.99

00:31:33.000 He accused me of going to him. 1.00

00:31:35.000 A fucking doctor? 1.00

00:31:36.000 Because his levels were so low. 1.00

00:31:38.000 Yeah, he was like, I've never seen levels this low unless somebody was abusing anabolic steroids.

00:31:44.000 And so you must be abusing anabolic steroids.

00:31:47.000 And then you're here essentially trying to score.

00:31:51.000 Drugs.

00:31:52.000 So he thought, if people don't understand what you're saying, when you take antibiotic steroids, your natural testosterone shuts down.

00:32:00.000 A lot of times when people get off steroids, then they'll go to a doctor, their natural testosterone is shut down, and they'll go to a doctor to try to get hormone replacement therapy.

00:32:08.000 Because the only way a doctor is going to give you hormone replacement therapy is if your levels are low. 0.57

00:32:13.000 And so one of the reasons for having low levels is that you've put all this exogenous shit in there and it's, you know, your whole body is all confused. 0.90

00:32:22.000 Yeah, so thanks for clarifying that, Mark. 0.98

00:32:27.000 I was like, hey man, you think I'm coming in here putting all this personal stuff on you?

00:32:31.000 Right.

00:32:31.000 Because I like to make things up.

00:32:33.000 Just because you want steroids. 0.83

00:32:34.000 Because I want steroids.

00:32:34.000 Or you want testosterone.

00:32:35.000 Like, you think my life's a disaster and I think this is funny.

00:32:38.000 But it's just crazy that he would accuse you.

00:32:39.000 You know what I mean?

00:32:40.000 It happened.

00:32:40.000 It happened twice, Joe.

00:32:42.000 Twice.

00:32:43.000 Back to back.

00:32:43.000 Well, don't they understand that there's other issues that cause your body to have low testosterone?

00:32:48.000 That's what's crazy.

00:32:49.000 So this is what pushed us in this direction, man.

00:32:52.000 So I was like, well, at that point, I started reading some of the literature and I was like, it's not even black.

00:32:57.000 I mean, it's not even in the gray area.

00:32:58.000 This is black and white.

00:32:59.000 There's like blast trauma can, through inflammation, affect the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland and downregulate all these hormones.

00:33:08.000 Anyways, I link up with Mark in Southern California.

00:33:13.000 We run the labs, but we don't get the results back for two or three weeks.

00:33:17.000 But he gives me what he calls a provocative testosterone injection just to see how I react.

00:33:23.000 Up until this point, my life has just been a complete disaster.

00:33:28.000 I've put a gun in my mouth several times and actually had thought about...

00:33:33.000 If this is how life is going to continue, and I continue to have this type of negative effect on my family, I think I'll just end it, man.

00:33:40.000 You know what I mean?

00:33:42.000 And I got to the point where I was just like, I can't do it for my family alone, and just kept driving.

00:33:49.000 So I found Mark, Mark found me, got the information, actually was there to see him in his office in Encino.

00:33:55.000 Get that injection.

00:33:56.000 I'm driving south on the 405. I'm in bumper to bumper traffic like two hours later.

00:34:01.000 And usually, man, like me and traffic just didn't mix.

00:34:04.000 And to say that I had a hostile temper was like the understatement of the year.

00:34:09.000 And I realized like, hey, I'm all of a sudden, I'm cool.

00:34:11.000 I'm calm.

00:34:12.000 I'm collected.

00:34:13.000 I'm not having any issues.

00:34:14.000 I'm like, whoa, I don't feel any anxiety.

00:34:18.000 Like for the last year and a half, I like had this fist like coming out of my stomach, man, like at all times, 24-7.

00:34:24.000 It was horrible.

00:34:25.000 And it was gone.

00:34:26.000 And I was like, if this is any taste of what could be, this is incredible.

00:34:31.000 And I call my wife and we have a conversation for like an hour.

00:34:35.000 And that's the first time that we had talked more than two minutes in like a year.

00:34:39.000 And I didn't just say yes or no because I just wasn't capable of anything else at that time.

00:34:44.000 And so fast forward for a few weeks from there, you know, he gets the report back and he's like, hey man, you're deficient in everything, you know, but we can fix this.

00:34:54.000 And so we get on anti-inflammatory protocol and we replace and replenish the hormones that are deficient or insufficient.

00:35:04.000 And life slowly and surely started to turn back on little by little by little by little to where I'm at today.

00:35:12.000 I'm off all medication.

00:35:14.000 You know, I'm clean, I'm sober, performing as good, if not better than my pre-injury status.

00:35:21.000 We started up an organization called the Warrior Angels Foundation to deliver this same level Of healing to other people who are in the exact same predicament and situation.

00:35:30.000 And now I'm excited to say, man, three years later, we've delivered it to over 200 people with incredible results.

00:35:36.000 So it meets with the scientific criteria.

00:35:38.000 We can predict, we can measure, and we can replicate.

00:35:41.000 And now it's not just my story.

00:35:43.000 It's not just Matt Gosney's story.

00:35:45.000 Mark's done this like 1,400 times.

00:35:47.000 We've done it 200 times through our organization where somebody, like we did a A three-year TBI study cohort, we took 58 of those 200 people, just the ones that attempted suicide, 58 individuals attempted suicide.

00:36:02.000 We showed that within three months, what was it, 91% had a 50% improvement.

00:36:10.000 Correct.

00:36:10.000 So almost everybody had at least a 50%, this is in their subjective analysis, improvement.

00:36:16.000 After one year, 73% of that population was off all medication.

00:36:23.000 This is unheard of.

00:36:24.000 This is unheard of.

00:36:25.000 And this is people that actually attempted to take their own life, I think a minimum of two times in our study.

00:36:31.000 So we're producing results that have never been annotated before.

00:36:36.000 You know what I mean?

00:36:36.000 And it's through the scientific model that Mark's come up with his protocols.

00:36:39.000 It's unbelievable.

00:36:41.000 That's on our website.

00:36:42.000 We got all that research on our website, too.

00:36:45.000 Give the website address out.

00:36:47.000 W-A-F-T-B-I dot O-R-G. And it's on my Twitter as well.

00:36:51.000 Yeah, I got Mark's presentation.

00:36:52.000 We got an incredible media page, a library of all this information that didn't exist three years ago.

00:36:58.000 It's now all in one location and all the stuff that I'm saying here, please don't take my word for it.

00:37:02.000 You guys can go out and fact check it.

00:37:03.000 And I can't tell you how many guys have come up to me after shows that have either been in contact with you or have been in contact with other doctors because of the information that you've given out and we're so thankful and so and they're like you're changing people's future you're literally giving them an option that they didn't know existed they thought they thought their world was black and then you open the door like oh You can be okay.

00:37:27.000 When Andrew first came to me, Andrew wasn't the first veteran that I had seen.

00:37:31.000 The first guy that I took care of was in 2009. He was active Green Beret in North Carolina at Bragg.

00:37:38.000 And his wife, I knew, she was an emergency room doc, and she called me up and told me about her husband getting ready to get a less than honorable discharge after four or five tours of duty.

00:37:48.000 In Afghanistan.

00:37:49.000 And she explained it to me.

00:37:51.000 I said, let me send you a kit.

00:37:52.000 So I sent a kit out and we got the results back.

00:37:54.000 I told her what to do.

00:37:56.000 She put him on to treatment.

00:37:57.000 He lasted another two sign-up tours or two tours of duty.

00:38:02.000 And was doing phenomenally well.

00:38:04.000 But the key that drives me on this is guys getting back into life, going to Pepperdine Business School now.

00:38:13.000 A guy who was...

00:38:16.000 Attempted school five times, and the fifth time he was on our protocol for two or three months.

00:38:21.000 He ends up getting honors, and now he wants to go back and give back to the VA for them not having treated him optimally by going into sociology to try and help them to understand what he had gone through with us.

00:38:34.000 We have guys who are in Wall Street now.

00:38:36.000 All over.

00:38:37.000 I mean, Harvard, business school.

00:38:39.000 I mean, just all kinds of very prestigious things.

00:38:42.000 They've got their life back.

00:38:42.000 They've got their family back.

00:38:43.000 They're recalling their Parents.

00:38:45.000 This has only been going on for a couple years.

00:38:47.000 Yeah, we didn't give them a self-help book.

00:38:48.000 We didn't give them any spiritual teachings, anything else.

00:38:51.000 Just fix what was deficient.

00:38:53.000 And they were able to come back and make their own choices to get their life back on track.

00:38:57.000 That is such a giant factor in this whole equation that people need to understand.

00:39:02.000 It's not just about motivational speeches.

00:39:05.000 It's not about memes that you put on your Instagram page that make you feel better about life.

00:39:09.000 It's literally about the chemical balance in your physical vehicle.

00:39:13.000 And if it's off, you're gonna be off.

00:39:16.000 And if it's off because of diet, if it's off because of injury, whatever the factors are, you gotta figure out what those factors are and you gotta correct them. 0.89

00:39:23.000 You gotta correct them before self-help, before all that bullshit.

00:39:27.000 Correct your diet, correct whatever is deficient in your hormone levels, whatever's deficient in your nutrient levels. 0.98

00:39:34.000 It's so goddamn important.

00:39:36.000 Absolutely. 0.70

00:39:36.000 And I don't mean to, you know, focus only on the neurosteroids and the inflammation, as you just said. 0.70

00:39:43.000 Physical fitness and nutrition.

00:39:45.000 You know, my daughter Allison is a naturopathic and she works with us with the Warrior Angel Foundation to help with getting the gut-brain In sync, so that you don't have the glutens, you don't have all the junk we talked about because they generate, the poor nutrition generates more inflammation that passes through the gut into the blood into the brain.

00:40:06.000 And they've actually, there was a study that came out of It was on the BBC's last week where they were talking about, oh, we finally figured out that if you have peripheral inflammation, like disease like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, that the inflammation goes into the brain and can cause depression.

00:40:22.000 Well, it's been in the literature for 30 years.

00:40:24.000 They finally are starting to understand that things that happen on the periphery can affect our brain's functioning.

00:40:30.000 So nutrition, very important.

00:40:31.000 It's part of what's going on that's just the human body is so insanely complex and there's so much to understand and so much to...

00:40:39.000 You have to kind of be like you are.

00:40:41.000 You have to be obsessed with all this stuff.

00:40:43.000 I didn't think I was obsessed.

00:40:45.000 You're obsessed, buddy.

00:40:45.000 Okay.

00:40:46.000 Pull that microphone up to your face a little bit more.

00:40:48.000 Okay.

00:40:49.000 What you're doing, though, is just...

00:40:51.000 It's so important and so...

00:40:55.000 There's just so little of it out there for people.

00:40:58.000 This is part of the problem.

00:40:59.000 It's like you have to really go looking for these solutions.

00:41:02.000 I mean, you've got to go through every door and every channel and try to find out.

00:41:07.000 And so many times they want to offer you some sort of a pill, some sort of a pharmaceutical drug, some sort of an antidepressant, anti-anxiety medication.

00:41:16.000 And if that one doesn't take, they give you an anti-anxiety medication on top of the anti-anxiety medication. 1.00

00:41:22.000 Fuck! 0.99

00:41:23.000 We had lunch or dinner with the Admiral in Virginia Beach in the beginning of this year. 1.00

00:41:29.000 And one of the stories that he was sharing was the fact that his wife was diagnosed at a VA as having a thyroid-related issue, so they started treating it.

00:41:40.000 And in the course of treating it, she felt worse because they weren't giving her the ample amount of replacement hormones.

00:41:46.000 So the next thing that the doctor offers her is an antidepressant.

00:41:50.000 Saying the reason why you're still not feeling well is because of the antidepressant.

00:41:54.000 And when we got to her and checked out her hormone levels, her hormone levels were off. 1.00

00:41:57.000 And did they even check her hormone levels?

00:41:59.000 No.

00:41:59.000 No, of course not.

00:42:00.000 You know, they hand those goddamn antidepressants out like fucking candy. 1.00

00:42:03.000 That's what was crazy with me. 1.00

00:42:04.000 So I was like, there's got to be an underlying condition.

00:42:07.000 Like, can somebody tell me what that is?

00:42:08.000 I know we're managing symptoms, but can we do that?

00:42:11.000 And can we do it objectively or scientifically?

00:42:13.000 And that's the beauty of the protocol.

00:42:15.000 Because again, To break it down, for everybody out there, TBI, it's a two-phase injury.

00:42:20.000 Phase one is that physical trauma or assault.

00:42:24.000 You know, it could be explosive blast wave, blunt force trauma, acceleration, deacceleration, slip fall, roller coaster, anything that causes that anti-inflammatory cascade to start.

00:42:36.000 A roller coaster can cause it?

00:42:37.000 According to Mark, you can in the literature.

00:42:39.000 But just think, man, Mark calls it the neuro-permissive environment.

00:42:43.000 So if you don't have a good internal environment, like you're eating a bunch of processed foods, sugar, you're leaving just a low quality of life, making poor lifestyle decisions, those things that are compounding interest over time are being like low-level blast waves.

00:42:57.000 And it could be something as simple as one of those woof.

00:43:00.000 300-mile-per-hour moving roller coaster is going to rock your head back and forth.

00:43:05.000 That could be enough to be, you know, hey, that's enough.

00:43:07.000 That could cause the inflammatory cascade. 0.96

00:43:10.000 And then that causes the hormones to become deficient or insufficient.

00:43:14.000 That's what we found through our research, at least.

00:43:17.000 That's what our research suggests, is that's the process.

00:43:20.000 And if you don't get rid of the inflammation or bring the body back to a balance...

00:43:24.000 If you don't replenish or replace those hormones that are lost, you're going to have all the physical and psychological manifestations that we all know about and talked about.

00:43:34.000 And so that's the deal.

00:43:35.000 Can we be objective?

00:43:36.000 Yes, we can.

00:43:37.000 Can we measure it?

00:43:38.000 Yes, we can.

00:43:39.000 Can we predict and replicate?

00:43:40.000 Well, we've done it 1400 times, so we can.

00:43:43.000 So now it's like, okay, well, how do we continue to take this to the next level to make sure This goes mainstream.

00:43:49.000 It's, you know, disseminating information on platforms like this.

00:43:52.000 We're working projects with the government like right now.

00:43:55.000 We think we might be able to actually affect change on a real level here in the next few years.

00:44:00.000 It's so incredible that there is finally some sort of a resource, that there's something that people can turn to.

00:44:07.000 But we need to lay it out.

00:44:09.000 Like, it's got to be every point, right?

00:44:12.000 It's got to be nutrition.

00:44:13.000 It's got to be exercise.

00:44:14.000 Correct.

00:44:15.000 It's got to be reducing the inflammation, it's got to be replacing the hormones, all those things together.

00:44:21.000 When an individual is suffering with symptoms, I call it symptomatic TBI. I don't really agree with the term PTSD or PTSS, especially when there's a history of trauma, trauma to the body or trauma to the brain.

00:44:36.000 Yeah, it's not necessarily...

00:44:37.000 I think people think of it as stressful situations that guys have been through.

00:44:40.000 And one of the things that I've found in talking to a lot of guys who are operators is they don't have a high stress level because of what they've seen.

00:44:50.000 They're the actors.

00:44:52.000 They're the ones who are doing the things.

00:44:55.000 A lot of the stress level comes from a lot of the guys that were not being proactive.

00:45:00.000 They're waiting around for something to happen to them.

00:45:02.000 And those are the guys who are the most affected by stress disorders.

00:45:07.000 The guys who were wondering when they were going to be attacked.

00:45:09.000 Whereas guys who are operating You know what I mean?

00:45:34.000 You're on security mode In a non-combat environment, and so these guys get stuck in these fight-or-flight modes, and they can't figure out why.

00:45:42.000 Why am I in fight-or-flight?

00:45:44.000 Like, this situation does not call for that type of response.

00:45:49.000 And then you look at it like, if you're deficient in these things, what's the body going to do if he's got these mixed electrical signals or their shearing of neurons?

00:45:58.000 It's going to come out as a fight-or-flight mechanism.

00:46:01.000 And that's why they're stuck in this, and it's called post-traumatic stress.

00:46:05.000 But when we treat these so-called psychological issues as a physical injury and replace and replenish, lower the inflammatory cascades, guess what?

00:46:15.000 Those symptoms resolve themselves.

00:46:17.000 Whether they were on the defensive or offensive, you know what I mean?

00:46:21.000 That's fascinating.

00:46:22.000 But there's definitely a psychological difference between someone who becomes a SEAL or a Ranger or a Green Beret.

00:46:28.000 Oh yeah, there's no doubt that's well documented.

00:46:30.000 Yes.

00:46:31.000 There's a difference in the mindset.

00:46:34.000 And, you know, those people are some of the most important people we have in the planet.

00:46:39.000 Correct.

00:46:40.000 You have to have them.

00:46:41.000 You want to have a safe world?

00:46:42.000 You have to have the elite of the elite.

00:46:44.000 You have to.

00:46:45.000 And people who don't understand that, you need to go to some really terrible places in the world and understand what's out there.

00:46:50.000 You know, looking across the spectrum of special ops and then the regular army, we've talked about this in the past.

00:46:57.000 The pattern that I've been seeing, also in civilian population, is those people who are more A-type get better faster.

00:47:06.000 They want to get better as opposed to the people who really don't want to get better.

00:47:10.000 We've seen it time and time again.

00:47:11.000 If you have a clear vision of the future and it's like, hey, I'm going to get better.

00:47:16.000 I don't care what anybody else says.

00:47:19.000 We're like the 10th stop that they've come to.

00:47:21.000 We've tried everything.

00:47:22.000 We just found out you guys.

00:47:23.000 We're going to do something.

00:47:24.000 Let's get this going.

00:47:26.000 Those guys get better.

00:47:27.000 Not to mention, of course, objectively, we can look at it.

00:47:31.000 But people come to us and they're like, ah, I don't know.

00:47:34.000 Life doesn't work out.

00:47:35.000 Everything goes my way.

00:47:36.000 You know, I hope this goes, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

00:47:40.000 Anything else?

00:47:41.000 Those people will talk themselves out of getting better.

00:47:43.000 And I wouldn't have believed it unless I've seen it time and time and time again. 1.00

00:47:47.000 Those people will mentally fuck themselves out of life every step of the way. 1.00

00:47:50.000 Joe, we've watched them put a gun in their mouth and pull the trigger. 1.00

00:47:52.000 You know what I mean?

00:47:53.000 Unfortunately, we've lost people to doing that.

00:47:55.000 And it wasn't like, hey, we got you the help.

00:47:59.000 And then it was like, well, it's such a hassle to take the medication at the prescribed times.

00:48:06.000 And I'm like, what?

00:48:07.000 What?

00:48:08.000 And then I looked into that, and that's a thing called non-compliance.

00:48:12.000 The Glaucoma Research Institute put out a study like, 60% of glaucoma patients don't take their medication on time, knowing that that will cause them to go blind.

00:48:20.000 Because I needed to justify losing some people that I couldn't wrap my head around.

00:48:27.000 And why won't they be compliant? 0.93

00:48:30.000 People get in this rut and they memorize these emotions and they get in this negative fucking place, man, and they talk themselves right out of life. 0.85

00:48:40.000 And people become super comfortable with repeating these really negative patterns. 0.96

00:48:46.000 They get comfortable because they know those patterns.

00:48:49.000 It's very disturbing when you see someone who's...

00:49:02.000 Yeah.

00:49:17.000 It's scary to people.

00:49:18.000 It's the devil they know, opposed to the devil they don't, you know what I mean?

00:49:21.000 And I think at a neuroscience level, right, they can memorize an emotion, because those thoughts will freak you out.

00:49:27.000 The thought will restructure the brain through neuroplasticity, and that can be their new status quo, right?

00:49:33.000 How do you get people that are in that mindset?

00:49:36.000 How do you get them free of that?

00:49:38.000 I mean, how do you get someone who's this, woe is me, it never works out, you know?

00:49:41.000 Is there a way?

00:49:42.000 I mean, is there a tried and true way?

00:49:44.000 Man, I wrecked my health, kind of.

00:49:46.000 I wrecked my health, kind of.

00:49:47.000 There isn't, but we've had a couple of guys who had stopped their protocol because they didn't feel that anything was happening from it.

00:49:54.000 And they send me an email after they've been off for maybe a month that says, geez, I don't feel as well.

00:49:59.000 Maybe it was working.

00:50:00.000 Or they say that we're working with the devil and go all kinds of weird...

00:50:04.000 Oh, boy, those guys.

00:50:06.000 Yeah.

00:50:07.000 But I stopped January accepting PI cases, you know, legal cases, because what's the impetus for them to get better?

00:50:15.000 Yeah, zero.

00:50:16.000 What is PI? Personal injury, like motor vehicle accidents.

00:50:21.000 They want a disability check.

00:50:22.000 Yeah.

00:50:23.000 Yeah.

00:50:23.000 So I stopped taking PI cases.

00:50:25.000 That's unfortunate.

00:50:26.000 Well, it's that mindset.

00:50:27.000 Because there's got to be some people that have real personal injuries that would like to get better.

00:50:32.000 I talk to everybody.

00:50:33.000 So I filter them.

00:50:35.000 But generally speaking, I've cut down.

00:50:37.000 I've just come to the conclusion, you know, like, hey, I can't make the decision.

00:50:41.000 I can't make anybody get better.

00:50:42.000 You know what I mean?

00:50:43.000 Like, all we can do is give out the information.

00:50:46.000 You can't put someone's shoes on and make them go to the gym.

00:50:48.000 I literally made myself sick, like, worrying about people, like, oh, my God, you know, we're going to lose.

00:50:52.000 And I can't, like, man, I can't do anything.

00:50:54.000 All I can do is I can control my attitude and my effort.

00:50:58.000 And I can push out this information to the best of my ability.

00:51:02.000 And people got to meet us halfway, you know what I mean?

00:51:05.000 Like, there's nothing we can do to make somebody want to get themselves better.

00:51:08.000 Talking with the guy tomorrow, his brother's at wit's end, and just wrecking everything that he comes in and out of every rehab program just is a horrible place.

00:51:19.000 I don't see it ending well.

00:51:21.000 And I'm going to talk to him tomorrow because he wants to know, how can I make my brother want to get better?

00:51:24.000 And I'm like, brother, I love you, man, but we can't.

00:51:28.000 You can't make someone want to get better.

00:51:31.000 And the disaster, I don't know, the tragic part of that, I think, is the person's not thinking right because their judgment's clouded because of a head injury, you know, serving the country.

00:51:43.000 It's a bummer.

00:51:46.000 One of the battles that we have also is that people...

00:51:49.000 Relationships.

00:51:50.000 I speak to wives that are estranged, husbands that are estranged when we take on a new veteran or patient to let them know that the person that they've been dealing with post-traumatic brain injury is not really the person they want to be.

00:52:05.000 That's an effect of the hormonal dysfunctioning.

00:52:08.000 So they're depressed, they're angry, they're, you know, they're difficult to be around.

00:52:13.000 So I try to get them to help in the protocol to get them better.

00:52:16.000 And what we've seen are couples getting back together.

00:52:18.000 We have a 77-year-old Vietnam veteran who lost everything.

00:52:23.000 He's back with his kids now.

00:52:24.000 He's out and back chopping wood in Boston.

00:52:29.000 That's the reward.

00:52:30.000 That really is the reward.

00:52:31.000 But people have to understand that if they've had traumatic brain injury, anticipate within one year's time total change in the person.

00:52:39.000 Total change.

00:52:40.000 They're no longer the person that you anticipated.

00:52:42.000 How long did it take you for that transition?

00:52:46.000 Well, it was...

00:52:47.000 I started first having symptoms like six months after I got home.

00:52:51.000 You know what I mean?

00:52:52.000 So that's the difficult part.

00:52:53.000 Like, you're not missing a limb.

00:52:54.000 So you don't think anything.

00:52:56.000 Like, we were rocking and rolling.

00:52:57.000 Come back.

00:52:58.000 Good to go.

00:52:59.000 Happy to be alive.

00:53:00.000 Let's get ready for the next one.

00:53:02.000 And then, boom, stuff starts happening.

00:53:04.000 And it's like, oh my gosh, what's going on?

00:53:06.000 You know?

00:53:08.000 But you can't see anything.

00:53:10.000 And you just keep going.

00:53:10.000 You keep...

00:53:12.000 Seeing this low quality of life and then you want help and you can't get help.

00:53:18.000 You ask for help.

00:53:20.000 You're getting medication.

00:53:21.000 Start drinking.

00:53:23.000 Sleep gets messed up.

00:53:24.000 Nutrition gets messed up.

00:53:26.000 Start wrecking relationships.

00:53:28.000 Then start thinking about, I'll never be able to do what I thought I was supposed to do.

00:53:33.000 Nobody understands me.

00:53:36.000 What's the future gonna be like like this?

00:53:38.000 You know and it doesn't get and that's how you get trapped into these memorizing these negative states because you know stuck in that for you You heard mark on the podcast How long did it take you to act and how long did it take after there to for you to become who you are now?

00:53:54.000 So I made that decision at my son's bedside and that was Several months before I met Mark.

00:54:01.000 What year is this?

00:54:02.000 How many years ago?

00:54:02.000 This is 2014. Yeah, I was on your show January 2014. This is September of 2014, and I didn't meet him until December 2014, right?

00:54:13.000 So it was all of 2014. It was just a disaster, right, leading up to the hospital scene.

00:54:20.000 So I made the decision, like, hey, at that point, it was like, you know what?

00:54:23.000 I've always been defined by my future, but all of a sudden, like, you know, like...

00:54:42.000 I think?

00:54:45.000 What does that mean?

00:54:47.000 This is just getting rocked.

00:54:49.000 So being rocked by circumstances knocked me for a year and a half.

00:54:54.000 It knocked me.

00:54:55.000 I wasn't prepared.

00:54:56.000 I wasn't ready.

00:54:57.000 I didn't know how to deal with it.

00:54:59.000 And it wasn't until I made that decision that I was like, no, I've always been defined by going after the future that I want to create.

00:55:06.000 I'm going back to that.

00:55:08.000 And it was like, so there was like a will, you know, that was to it.

00:55:11.000 Like, I don't know where it came from, but like, I could observe my thoughts.

00:55:15.000 And I was like, these thoughts that are being produced now are not me.

00:55:17.000 I don't know where they're coming from.

00:55:19.000 But there's a will inside me that says we're going to fight this and we're going to we're going to find a way to come out on the other side.

00:55:24.000 So that happened in September, you know, fast forward to finding Mark.

00:55:31.000 It was quick.

00:55:33.000 After three months of the protocol, physiologically, I felt like myself again.

00:55:38.000 I was off all medication, everything else.

00:55:41.000 How long did it take you to get off the medication?

00:55:43.000 I quit till Turkey.

00:55:45.000 They say you should never do that, right?

00:55:47.000 Should never do that.

00:55:48.000 Did you talk to the VA doctors during this time?

00:55:51.000 No.

00:55:52.000 I was at a place in my life that I was like, hey, I accept whatever fallout could happen, but whatever I'm going to feel, it's not going to be artificial.

00:56:02.000 I'm just going to feel whatever it is, and I'm going to deal with it on my terms.

00:56:07.000 I'm not going to be zombied out.

00:56:09.000 It was rough, bro.

00:56:11.000 It was rough.

00:56:12.000 So I was off all medication before I got to Mark, you know what I mean?

00:56:17.000 And so I didn't have control of my mind the way I wanted to, like the way I do now.

00:56:24.000 So I had to work very hard not just to lose it on people.

00:56:27.000 For instance, when I was with my wife, we were in a fast food restaurant picking up some food for my youngest daughter.

00:56:36.000 And so I'm going there, grabbing some food.

00:56:38.000 I see this kid, teenager, in the parking lot.

00:56:40.000 I don't know, this kid throws his cup down, he's cussing, he's causing the scene.

00:56:44.000 I felt like I needed to intervene.

00:56:45.000 I don't know why.

00:56:46.000 So I'm like, hey man, pick your cup up, throw it in the trash, quit yelling cuss words everywhere, families are here. 1.00

00:56:51.000 And he tells me to go fuck myself. 1.00

00:56:53.000 And I'm like, dude, go pick up your stuff and put it in the trash. 1.00

00:56:56.000 And he said the same thing.

00:56:58.000 And before I knew it, I just backhanded this kid across the face, dropped him on the ground, and then I picked him up and I threw him into oncoming traffic.

00:57:05.000 Oh, Jesus.

00:57:06.000 Yeah.

00:57:07.000 Well, the parking lot took offense to that. 0.89

00:57:11.000 Rightly so.

00:57:11.000 You know what I mean?

00:57:13.000 And so I got people swarming me.

00:57:15.000 Next thing I know, like, I dropped, like, three dudes in the parking lot.

00:57:18.000 And I look up after dropping the last guy, and, like, my wife's breastfeeding. 0.91

00:57:23.000 And three of my children are looking at me.

00:57:25.000 And, like, they're in, like, horror is on their face.

00:57:28.000 Just horror struck.

00:57:29.000 And I'm like, my God, man, if I don't get control of myself, like, not only...

00:57:34.000 Is this going to possibly kill me? 0.92

00:57:36.000 I'm going to kill somebody else. 1.00

00:57:38.000 You know what I mean? 0.99

00:57:38.000 I felt like I didn't know what happened. 0.99

00:57:42.000 Something happened.

00:57:43.000 Boom, I came to. 0.98

00:57:44.000 And it was like, dear God, I just dropped a parking lot and I'm doing evasive maneuvers in my fucking minivan trying to get out of the parking lot. 0.98

00:57:53.000 Oh my god. 0.98

00:57:54.000 Funny, but not funny.

00:57:56.000 You know what I mean?

00:57:57.000 So it was this process of...

00:58:00.000 So it was rough, man.

00:58:01.000 It was rough coming off medication.

00:58:02.000 I don't recommend it for anybody else, but it was like, hey man, I went off of that because that just made me a zombie.

00:58:09.000 I was just like drooling on myself, zombie.

00:58:10.000 So what steps did you take as far as your diet and exercise and then Mark's protocol?

00:58:16.000 I eat a, you know, basically try an anti-inflammatory diet, you know what I mean?

00:58:21.000 And that's just based on my individual needs.

00:58:24.000 At that time, I was just remaining active.

00:58:28.000 What did that mean by anti-inflammatory diet?

00:58:30.000 What did you do differently?

00:58:32.000 Well, just learning what causes inflammation, right?

00:58:35.000 So what we talk about like refined sugars, refined carbohydrates, getting away from things that were packaged for me, you know what I mean?

00:58:42.000 Going back to more wholesome, whole foods.

00:58:44.000 And this is before Mark's protocol or No, this is after I'm on it.

00:58:50.000 You know what I mean?

00:58:50.000 So I didn't make any changes until I got into Mark's protocol.

00:58:56.000 Started to return to normalcy.

00:58:59.000 And then when you get to that level, you start feeling really good again.

00:59:02.000 You're like, well, what else can I do?

00:59:04.000 You know what I mean?

00:59:05.000 And that's been the steps that we've seen in so many people.

00:59:08.000 We don't have to make any lifestyle changes initially.

00:59:11.000 They'll make them on their own.

00:59:13.000 So get them back to a homeostasis, a balance, a neuro-permissive environment, as Mark calls it.

00:59:19.000 And then you start looking at, like, well, what else do I need to do in my life to optimize it?

00:59:23.000 And for me, man, it was like, I'm going to take a look at water, I'm going to take a look at light, sound, EMF, like every external, you know, stimulus I want to optimize and make sure, like, it's as optimized as possible.

00:59:38.000 Wow.

00:59:38.000 So did you do any changes to the way you exercise?

00:59:43.000 Let me think about that.

00:59:44.000 Not really, man.

00:59:45.000 I was kind of into Olympic lifting at the time and stayed with that.

00:59:52.000 Always remained physically active through the whole thing.

00:59:55.000 Which is probably the only thing that probably kept you sane.

00:59:57.000 Yeah, absolutely.

00:59:59.000 And another reason they said that I lived through the blood clots was the level of cardiovascular fitness that I was in at the time.

01:00:05.000 You know what I mean?

01:00:06.000 So, uh, yeah, but yeah, that was like, you know, one go to like, I just always worked out.

01:00:11.000 I always been, that's always been a part of my life.

01:00:13.000 And so that was always there.

01:00:14.000 So stuck with that.

01:00:16.000 So three months in, how did you feel?

01:00:19.000 And what was the difference?

01:00:21.000 I felt night and day different.

01:00:22.000 No more anxiety.

01:00:24.000 No more depression.

01:00:25.000 No more balance issues.

01:00:27.000 No more double vision.

01:00:28.000 No more blurry vision.

01:00:30.000 No more migraine headaches.

01:00:32.000 No more memory problems.

01:00:34.000 Like, back on.

01:00:36.000 Like, I could go back to operating.

01:00:38.000 You know what I mean?

01:00:39.000 And, hey, 33 disabilities, according to the VA. 100% service-related disabled.

01:00:45.000 33. What were they?

01:00:48.000 Name them.

01:00:50.000 Every kind of psychological disorder that you could think of, like double-digit, I was given.

01:00:56.000 You know what I mean?

01:00:57.000 Depressed, anxiety, insomnia.

01:01:01.000 Psychotic.

01:01:01.000 Yeah, just all these different things.

01:01:03.000 And then just a whole host of physical injuries as well that have been documented over time.

01:01:08.000 But they're just like 33 disabilities, 100% disabled. 0.96

01:01:12.000 I'm not missing a beat, man.

01:01:14.000 I'm not in any chronic pain.

01:01:15.000 I don't have any symptomology of any of those things.

01:01:19.000 And that's not specific or special to me, right?

01:01:22.000 Like, Mark, how come we've been able to take so many dudes come off of their pain medication without going into withdrawals?

01:01:28.000 Absolutely.

01:01:29.000 You need to talk about that.

01:01:31.000 That's crazy.

01:01:32.000 Matthew was here.

01:01:33.000 Matthew was on 16 medications.

01:01:35.000 One of the medications was OxyContin.

01:01:37.000 He was on 80 milligrams a day.

01:01:38.000 He was on morphine sulfate, 240 milligrams a day.

01:01:41.000 He was on fentanyl patches.

01:01:44.000 And in six weeks...

01:01:45.000 Fentanyl patches?

01:01:46.000 Fentanyl patches on top of it.

01:01:47.000 Every anesthesiologist that I run by with what he was on said, the guy shouldn't be walking.

01:01:54.000 Well, he flew down from Washington to come in.

01:01:58.000 So his tolerance must have just been off the charts.

01:02:00.000 Tolerance.

01:02:01.000 And, you know, he had six pins in his jaw, shrapnel out of the left side of his head, and his right leg was shot.

01:02:09.000 And that's the reason why they justified all his medications.

01:02:12.000 Six weeks after starting the protocol, unique for him based on the biomarkers, he was on two medications.

01:02:19.000 A year later, he's off all his medications and he moves to Hollywood to become an actor and a screenwriter.

01:02:25.000 Fully function, no pain. 0.97

01:02:27.000 That's going to fuck him up more than anything else. 0.99

01:02:29.000 He'll need to go back on 17 medications, right? 0.96

01:02:33.000 No, but the question was, I started seeing this pattern, as Andrew brought up, where guys were getting off of their medications and no withdrawal.

01:02:42.000 So I went back to the literature and started seeing these things about cannibinol A and B receptors, the opioid receptor alpha and beta, the mu receptors.

01:02:51.000 And it turns out a lot of the things that we do modify it and modulate it.

01:02:55.000 And then more recently, talking about pregnenolone, which is that mother of all hormones that comes off of cholesterol, where they're using it in people who are addicted to benzodiazepines, which are Valium and so forth.

01:03:08.000 We're good to go.

01:03:27.000 Pregnenolone is what should be given instead of giving someone benzodiazepines.

01:03:33.000 So that's how we've been able to get all our people off of anti-anxiety medication is with this pregnenolone because of how it functions.

01:03:41.000 And it's all out there.

01:03:42.000 I didn't invent anything.

01:03:43.000 It's just reading the literature.

01:03:45.000 That's incredible.

01:03:46.000 I love breathing.

01:03:46.000 So it fits into the same cell receptor?

01:03:48.000 The same receptor called the benzodiazepine receptor on the GABA-A. That's crazy, man.

01:03:53.000 Yeah.

01:03:53.000 It is crazy.

01:03:54.000 And like we've seen dudes that were, I mean, I didn't know what we were going to do.

01:03:57.000 And like they're on pain-free.

01:03:58.000 Yeah.

01:03:59.000 No pain.

01:04:00.000 None.

01:04:00.000 And coming off the meds without withdrawals.

01:04:03.000 What narcotics were you, did they put you on?

01:04:05.000 Tramadol or?

01:04:06.000 Yeah.

01:04:06.000 Yeah, it was, man, I don't even remember, but it was.

01:04:09.000 Yeah, it was a long time ago because you've been off of it.

01:04:11.000 One of the things that disturbs me the most about this is What if someone like you wasn't around?

01:04:17.000 You're kind of an outlier in the medical community that you've really gravitated towards helping soldiers, helping people with TBI, athletes, football players, fighters.

01:04:28.000 What if you weren't around?

01:04:29.000 I mean, I'm not hearing about this from a lot of guys.

01:04:34.000 Andrew and I, in 2015 when my third book came out on traumatic brain injury, we started giving classes.

01:04:42.000 Very inexpensive classes for docs to come in and get trained.

01:04:46.000 So to date we've trained specifically on the technology about 400 docs and they're going through a process of training and exams and so forth before they become part of our network.

01:04:58.000 It's Wire Angel Foundation Network.

01:05:00.000 So that we can disseminate the information and have more people involved.

01:05:06.000 It's such an important thing and it's such a common factor.

01:05:10.000 There's so many people that are suffering from depression and anxiety and all these different issues that very easily could be attached to traumatic brain injuries.

01:05:18.000 And people that don't even think they've had traumatic brain injuries, sub-concussive trauma.

01:05:24.000 There's a lot of people that have just had a knock-and-tumble, rough-and-tumble life, and they don't realize it, but they've caused damage to their brain.

01:05:33.000 We have patients who come in under our wellness program, and when they're asked, have you ever had any traumatic brain injury, they say no.

01:05:42.000 But you look at the biomarkers and you see the pattern that they've had head trauma.

01:05:47.000 And then they say, oh yeah, when I was 18, they're 53 years of age or 47 years of age.

01:05:53.000 Oh yeah, when I was 18, I was in a car accident and I hit my left side of my head against the driver's side window.

01:06:00.000 I wasn't knocked out, didn't have nausea, didn't have vomiting.

01:06:04.000 And you think because of that, that You're immune.

01:06:07.000 Well, it turns out that 85% of all traumatic brain injuries are called mild for a reason.

01:06:13.000 You don't have any symptoms.

01:06:15.000 Yeah, some people might have a little bit of a headache, you know, or feeling fatigue, but for the most part, they feel nothing.

01:06:21.000 And then there's 15% that make up the moderate to severe where they're in a coma for periods of time.

01:06:26.000 And we've actually had people who are in coma, some of our vets who have been in coma told Connors, who was told that he'll never walk, he'll never be able to You know, take care of himself.

01:06:37.000 He'll die young and so forth.

01:06:38.000 The guy's married and he's walking.

01:06:40.000 He's bicycle riding on, what is it, Facebook.

01:06:43.000 He shows his pictures and so forth.

01:06:45.000 Listen, this guy couldn't walk.

01:06:47.000 They told him he wouldn't walk again.

01:06:49.000 We've got three guys like that.

01:06:50.000 And what was...

01:06:50.000 Why were they saying he'd walk?

01:06:51.000 They looked at the imaging, right, Mark?

01:06:54.000 And it still shows damage in the, what, the gray matter?

01:06:57.000 Oh, the white matter.

01:06:58.000 In the white matter.

01:06:59.000 But he's made new connections.

01:07:01.000 And so now that's why he's able to do it, because the protocols allowed him to go back into this neuropermissive environment.

01:07:08.000 So what does that mean?

01:07:08.000 That means that he can experience his new things.

01:07:10.000 The brain's rewiring itself, even though there's physical damage to certain lobes, because he can rewire itself.

01:07:17.000 He can get better.

01:07:18.000 He's walking.

01:07:19.000 We've got three guys like that.

01:07:21.000 It's crazy.

01:07:21.000 All the hormones that we talk about, the testosterone, estrogen, progesterone, we relate to them as gender hormones, male or female, reproductive hormones, sex hormones.

01:07:31.000 It turns out that each one of them has a secondary function.

01:07:35.000 Testosterone stimulates the immune system to increase the white blood cells to the We're good to go.

01:07:58.000 We're good to go.

01:08:04.000 You need to have your hormones looked at because they regulate all these things and it's documented up to, you know, kazoo or wazoo.

01:08:11.000 What about the interpretation?

01:08:12.000 That's also where your unconventional standard means.

01:08:16.000 Well, I've looked at it from a shift, you know.

01:08:22.000 Hormone X, whatever it is, has a range of 10 to 90. So you go to your doctor and you get the blood test and it's 15. And you've got all the symptoms as though you're at below 10. And the doctor says, you shouldn't be having any symptoms because you're within that range that we call the reference range.

01:08:41.000 But it turns out that not all of us are identical genetically and function very well at that specific level of 15. So what we do is we bring people up to what's called the median.

01:08:52.000 10 on the bottom, 90 on the top.

01:08:54.000 You add it together, you get 100. You divide it by 2 and that's the statistical median.

01:08:58.000 So we move people from that 15 all the way up towards that 50. Some people hit 20 and say, geez, I feel better, 25, 29. And then there's a population who have had the greatest amount of head trauma, traumatic brain injury, where they need to go up between 50 and 75 percent.

01:09:15.000 And we still keep everybody within the normal physiological range as per dictum by traditional medicine, classical medicine.

01:09:25.000 And that's where we get the benefits.

01:09:26.000 And that's the reason why A lot of these guys have had a missed opportunity by their primary care doc to improve them is because they are still functioning on the old paradigm, which in 1975, two major biostatisticians came out with these two books that are like eight pounds each.

01:09:45.000 And all they talked about is how all this science, all this chemistry that we do for people That it doesn't apply to you and I. It applied to the people that were part of that study to set the standard range or the reference range.

01:09:59.000 Because I wasn't part of that group, so my what's normal for me wasn't part of that.

01:10:05.000 So what the two guys said was, what's best is to develop your own reference range based on your body.

01:10:15.000 And he should do the same as I've been doing over the past 60 years.

01:10:19.000 So a guy comes in and he's an 11 and they tell him what?

01:10:23.000 He's normal in this hypothetical situation.

01:10:25.000 And he still has all these symptoms.

01:10:27.000 Right.

01:10:27.000 So what we do in a provocative testosterone testing in a guy, and I also do it in females, is we test the theory out.

01:10:33.000 Okay, if it is the case, I'm going to give you a shot.

01:10:36.000 What did you say you felt like for 60 hours?

01:10:40.000 Cinderella.

01:10:40.000 Yeah, you felt like Cinderella.

01:10:42.000 I got three daughters, so I know the Disney well.

01:10:45.000 Okay, fine.

01:10:46.000 So he received his injection, and he drove on the 405, talked to Becky for an hour, and she told me this story like she was in amazement.

01:10:54.000 Who's this guy?

01:10:55.000 Yeah, totally.

01:10:57.000 She didn't think it was me.

01:10:58.000 That was good.

01:10:59.000 But anyway, he sends back, what happens is after they get their injection, they send back, five days later, this questionnaire that says how well they did.

01:11:08.000 And in big letters in the area that's for comments, he says, I felt like Cinderella after the ball.

01:11:15.000 And for 60 hours, he was just cruising.

01:11:18.000 And we're using physiological dosing of testosterone.

01:11:22.000 I don't believe in, you know, everybody who comes to the office is not a bodybuilder.

01:11:27.000 So we give physiological dosing because if you give it more consistently, they get a better response.

01:11:32.000 So he was given 60 milligrams of a blended testosterone.

01:11:36.000 It had a phenomenal...

01:11:37.000 You had a good response?

01:11:39.000 A good response.

01:11:39.000 The crazy thing is we're talking about from 2014. We're in 2017, almost 2018 now, meaning we're less than four years, and all this change has happened.

01:11:50.000 Correct.

01:11:50.000 That's what's amazing, that you've started the Warrior Angels Foundation, that you have helped so many soldiers since then, that you've gotten the word out through your foundation.

01:11:58.000 We're dealing with a very short amount of time, and so many people have been helped to this amazing extent.

01:12:05.000 Correct.

01:12:06.000 And, you know, we ask people how they hear about us, and thank God that we started back in 2014 on your show.

01:12:13.000 The first one, so many people have commented to me, look, if you see Joe, would you thank him for us?

01:12:19.000 We have list and list of people who would like to thank you for the fact that you...

01:12:24.000 I believed in what I was doing enough to have us on the show the first time back in 2014. It's evergreen, man, and people keep hearing it for the first time.

01:12:34.000 It never ceases to amaze me.

01:12:36.000 Every week I get just a ton of mail from people who heard it for the first time.

01:12:41.000 I didn't think there was any solution out there, man.

01:12:44.000 Well, I think this is a really good time to do this again.

01:12:47.000 This is one of the reasons why I was excited about this is because the podcast has grown exponentially since then.

01:12:51.000 So it's much, much, the audience is much larger now.

01:12:54.000 So I think we're going to be able to affect and help a lot more people.

01:12:58.000 So for people that are interested, people that want to find out more information and then they want to try to help themselves, what's the best steps?

01:13:06.000 Well, so we set up the organization.

01:13:08.000 We had such an outpouring because of all the media, like it was an overwhelming almost to get to everybody.

01:13:16.000 So basically what we do now is we grant Millennium Health Centers so much money and we'll help to subsidize costs like that.

01:13:24.000 So they'll go...

01:13:26.000 With our grants to Mark's facility, they'll go there.

01:13:30.000 They'll fill out information through his website, which is tbimedlegal.com.

01:13:37.000 That's tbimedlegal.com.

01:13:41.000 They'll fill out a new patient information packet, put in all their information there, and then they can be seen that way.

01:13:46.000 And let me tell you this about Mark.

01:13:48.000 Every time I go to visit him for a doctor's visit, he won't let me pay.

01:13:52.000 He makes me pay for other soldiers.

01:13:55.000 That's what he does.

01:13:56.000 He picks patients out and he goes, let's pick some guys out and you're going to pay for them. 0.97

01:14:00.000 And that's how he does it.

01:14:01.000 And you have.

01:14:02.000 And they're appreciative.

01:14:03.000 Absolutely.

01:14:04.000 What you do is beautiful.

01:14:05.000 It really is.

01:14:06.000 The corporation, our corporation, Millennium Health Centers, Inc., has a fund, and what it does is it underwrites a portion of the veterans, and then Warrior Angel Foundation underwrites another portion of it.

01:14:21.000 So, you know, revenue that we get from some of the products we sell and so forth goes to help pay for it.

01:14:29.000 So people have to pay for it, Joe, but we found that they need to have some skin in the game.

01:14:33.000 Yep.

01:14:34.000 You know what I mean?

01:14:34.000 That enables us to be met halfway.

01:14:38.000 So again, we've subsidized the rate where we've made it.

01:14:41.000 It's affordable, period.

01:14:43.000 Now it's really affordable because insurance is not taken for a whole host of different reasons.

01:14:48.000 But so we've made it that way.

01:14:49.000 And so now, like we used to handle every case individually with the Warrior Angels Foundation and fund them.

01:14:55.000 And this is a HIPAA mess and everything else.

01:14:58.000 So now we fund them directly and work to subsidize these rates to make it affordable so we could help more people get treatment.

01:15:04.000 And talk about that, about having skin in the game and how important that is.

01:15:08.000 Just psychologically for people, it seems like if you give people things for free, they just don't appreciate it as much as you make them work for it.

01:15:15.000 It's unfortunate because there's a lot of people that really will work hard for something.

01:15:20.000 They just don't have the financial means.

01:15:22.000 But there's so many that that applies to, that if you just give it to them, they don't appreciate it.

01:15:28.000 It's too easy.

01:15:29.000 It comes too easy.

01:15:29.000 Well, fortunately, very few people have responded that way.

01:15:33.000 The vets have been really good.

01:15:35.000 They've heard about us from either your show or from one of the shows or from their colleagues who are in the program.

01:15:42.000 And they see how well it is and they look at how dismal their life is.

01:15:46.000 Right.

01:15:46.000 And they have a choice.

01:15:47.000 Make a choice.

01:15:48.000 You want to live the life that Andrew had in the past or the enjoyment and the love of life that he has now?

01:15:54.000 And how can someone like me donate?

01:15:57.000 It's on our website, waftbi.org.

01:16:01.000 We're a 501c3, so it's tax deductible.

01:16:04.000 And you can go in there.

01:16:05.000 On top right is the donate.

01:16:09.000 We have a film coming out called Quiet Explosions.

01:16:13.000 Top, there you go.

01:16:17.000 That's our trailer right there.

01:16:19.000 So we've got an Emmy Award winning director.

01:16:21.000 Here it is.

01:16:21.000 Can you play that, Jamie?

01:16:22.000 Go full screen.

01:16:27.000 The average blast wave travels at 163 miles per hour, it says.

01:16:32.000 Whoa! 0.71

01:16:33.000 Jesus.

01:16:36.000 That's a great picture.

01:16:38.000 You've got to see this video, folks.

01:16:39.000 The people that are just listening to the podcast, you've got to see the impact of these blasts.

01:16:44.000 Explosives, so any type of entry that we needed to get into a place that was denied for whatever reason, be it a door or whatever, I was the guy who would place those charges to get us in.

01:17:05.000 You're not the person that you used to be.

01:17:07.000 I can't remember things, driving home, I don't know where I'm at.

01:17:10.000 Five years I've driven that route every day, all of a sudden I look up, you don't know where you're at.

01:17:17.000 I said to myself, you know, this is going to go one of two ways.

01:17:21.000 I'll continue on this path and it's going to kill me.

01:17:24.000 Or I can make a decision to quit blaming my circumstance and decide to act.

01:17:30.000 It says in 2014 you met Mark Gordon.

01:17:33.000 Hormone deficiency and suicide are connected.

01:17:49.000 Now a lot of this is for the people listening.

01:17:52.000 It's something you need to see.

01:17:53.000 It's just a lot of the text on the page talking about the benefits of this and how much it's helped Andrew and What is the name of this video, Jamie?

01:18:03.000 So people could...

01:18:04.000 Quiet Explosions.

01:18:06.000 And we just started production this month.

01:18:09.000 Right, Mark?

01:18:10.000 Yeah.

01:18:10.000 Correct.

01:18:10.000 This month.

01:18:11.000 And so if you want to donate to that, you can donate there.

01:18:15.000 That'll also be a tax-deductible donation.

01:18:17.000 And this is a documentary that you guys are doing?

01:18:19.000 And what do you...

01:18:20.000 So we're going to do three different stories, all people through the foundation.

01:18:24.000 So we have two other incredible stories.

01:18:27.000 And then the top minds in science, in neuroendocrinology and neuroscience, neuropathology, are talking about traumatic brain injury and the protocol.

01:18:37.000 So it's kind of a concussion, you know what I mean?

01:18:41.000 Identified a problem.

01:18:42.000 We're identifying a solution.

01:18:43.000 So not only are we bringing up for the first time ever You know, what is the real underlying condition behind traumatic brain injury?

01:18:50.000 Here's a solution.

01:18:51.000 Here's all the science behind it.

01:18:53.000 Here's the specialists in their field confirming, you know, what the literature has been saying.

01:18:58.000 And so we hope to bring that out in 2019. And what are you going to do with it when you bring it out?

01:19:03.000 We're just to disseminate the information.

01:19:05.000 I mean, are you going to release it online?

01:19:06.000 Are you going to release it in movie theaters?

01:19:08.000 Yeah, it'll go to movies.

01:19:10.000 Yeah, all of that.

01:19:11.000 All of that.

01:19:12.000 So there's as many places as you can.

01:19:13.000 Absolutely.

01:19:14.000 Absolutely.

01:19:14.000 I'm not sure how it's going to all be distributed.

01:19:17.000 Yeah, the goal right now is to disseminate the information.

01:19:20.000 That's it.

01:19:20.000 As we have more potential individuals who are suffering listening to this, We've been training doctors.

01:19:28.000 We've been getting through multiple avenues through the military, through the different divisions, getting them on board, supporting us.

01:19:36.000 The Navy SEAL Foundation has supported us.

01:19:39.000 That's all we're trying to do.

01:19:41.000 And we've got enough groundswell in our population To justify it, as Andrew has said multiple times, it's reproducible, predictable.

01:19:51.000 And there's something that I want to impart here.

01:19:53.000 There's a stigma with men in particular in this country when it comes to hormones and replacing hormones.

01:20:00.000 They're very embarrassed by it.

01:20:01.000 They don't like it.

01:20:03.000 It disturbs them.

01:20:04.000 And they start to think of it as cheating.

01:20:06.000 They start to think of it as steroids.

01:20:08.000 They look at it in...

01:20:12.000 An illogical way.

01:20:13.000 And that illogical way is connected to, I think, in my opinion, the stigmas in our culture that are attached to performance-enhancing drugs, like for cheating in sports and the Olympics.

01:20:24.000 And you always hear about them in this sort of negative way.

01:20:26.000 So there's a lot of guys that, they shy away.

01:20:29.000 I've talked to many friends who are very smart.

01:20:45.000 I'm talking about from The physical action perspective and I tell this to people and you see it go in one ear and out the other I don't want to take any testosterone I don't want to I don't want to go to a doctor that's gonna get me human growth hormone I don't want to look at my hormone levels and like but you're just you're depressed and you're tired all the time and You're you're trying all these different things.

01:21:12.000 You're taking Zoloft. 0.98

01:21:14.000 You're getting magnet therapy I know people have gotten ketamine shots and all these different things to try to cure depression I'm like why don't you look at your fucking hormones Yeah, they can look at it. 0.98

01:21:25.000 It doesn't mandate that they have to take it. 0.98

01:21:27.000 But they should know.

01:21:29.000 But they should know.

01:21:30.000 Absolutely.

01:21:30.000 What Mark's talking about is your physiological optimal level, right?

01:21:35.000 Yes.

01:21:35.000 And so in that hypothetical scenario that he gave earlier, if you're at an 11, you know what I mean, and you're just one point above normal, well, guess what?

01:21:43.000 That's not normal.

01:21:44.000 You know what I mean?

01:21:45.000 You're on the perceived lower end, so he has a completely different sliding scale to measure that.

01:21:51.000 To me, it would be take an objective analysis and just get a snapshot of where that's at.

01:21:56.000 Maybe just see what it would be like to push it up a little bit and see if life improved.

01:22:00.000 Not at supra-physiological.

01:22:03.000 Physiological, based on you.

01:22:04.000 Normal, healthy levels.

01:22:05.000 Yeah, you might find out that, hey, man, I went up 10 points and I'm great.

01:22:10.000 Or you had to push it really high.

01:22:12.000 Different strokes for different folks.

01:22:14.000 What I'm trying to figure out is, why would someone rather take a psychotropic medication Then fixing what God has given our body to manufacture that because of trauma, because of genetics or whatever, you're not producing it at the level.

01:22:27.000 Another fallacy for me, a fallacy is that as we get older, it's acceptable to have lower and lower levels of hormones.

01:22:36.000 Well, how about this?

01:22:37.000 The reason why they're getting lower and lower is because the shitty food you're eating, the fact that you had 60 years of traumatic brain injury which have interrupted the brain's ability to regulate homeostasis, to regulate your hormone production.

01:22:49.000 That's the reason why.

01:22:52.000 The levels are lowered.

01:22:53.000 So bringing it back to 25 to 35 years of age, which has been the dictum in our office for the past 27 years, has been key. 0.80

01:23:01.000 Yeah, one of the things that jumped my testosterone up a bunch is cutting out processed carbohydrates.

01:23:08.000 All the refined carbohydrates, it just jumped it like 50%.

01:23:11.000 It was like it doubled it.

01:23:13.000 I was like, this is insane.

01:23:14.000 Right.

01:23:15.000 So it tells you how important the biochemistry is of the body to regulate other aspects of it.

01:23:22.000 Yeah.

01:23:22.000 And the diet and exercise and sleep and all these different factors.

01:23:27.000 But when I saw that my testosterone, it bumped up and then ultimately doubled, I was so confused as to why it took me so long to figure this out, that eating pasta and bread and pizza and And all the bullshit was having an effect not just on,

01:23:43.000 like, body fat, but it's having an effect on your whole body being able to process all these chemicals.

01:23:50.000 You've got to think of yourself as a machine, and people don't like to do that, but think of your body as a machine.

01:23:57.000 If you have a machine, or an engine, or any, think of it as a vehicle.

01:24:03.000 You need spark plugs.

01:24:05.000 You need coolant.

01:24:06.000 You need gasoline.

01:24:07.000 You need all these different factors.

01:24:09.000 And if you don't have the proper amount of engine oil, if you don't have the spark plugs aren't working right, the vehicle's not going to work right.

01:24:15.000 Your body is far more complex than a car, but similar in that respect.

01:24:21.000 An analogy.

01:24:22.000 I like car analogies.

01:24:24.000 You've got a brand new Porsche 911 Carrera with four flat tires.

01:24:29.000 Choose one of them to fill up and drive.

01:24:32.000 You're not going to be able to.

01:24:34.000 The four cardinal hormones of our body, and I see colleagues of mine who only focus in on one hormone, how are you going to be able to have a nice level ride if you don't look at all four of the key hormones?

01:24:46.000 And also the insanely complex way that all these different nutrient levels and hormone levels interact with each other and that they're all a part of this incredible system that takes forever to just scratch the surface of understanding.

01:25:01.000 Correct.

01:25:01.000 I mean, I read a lot.

01:25:03.000 I've just scratched the surface of understanding what's going on.

01:25:07.000 And I'm not sure I understand it.

01:25:08.000 It is so complex.

01:25:10.000 But when you see the results, you know that at least you're down the right pathway.

01:25:15.000 It's a symphony.

01:25:17.000 That's what you always say.

01:25:18.000 It's a symphony.

01:25:19.000 But how better did you feel after cutting out those things in your testosterone?

01:25:23.000 Way better.

01:25:23.000 Almost immediately.

01:25:25.000 The big one was the not needing a nap. 0.99

01:25:28.000 In the middle of the day, I just assumed that I would get up, I would eat breakfast, then around 3 I'd be like, fuck, I need a crash. 0.99

01:25:35.000 Testosterone deficiency, 3 o'clock. 0.99

01:25:36.000 There's that, and then there's also the insulin dump from the shitty processed foods and carbohydrates.

01:25:42.000 I came off all protocols at 2017 for seven months for this year, just because I wanted to see what would happen.

01:25:49.000 One, I thought, like, the brain and body went back to a neuropromissive environment and the hypothalamus and my pituitary gland would turn back on.

01:25:57.000 Wasn't the case.

01:25:58.000 We had, you know, two labs to follow it up.

01:26:00.000 But I had to prove to myself, I guess, emotionally, spiritually, that, you know, I could slay that dragon, and I could live life without it.

01:26:08.000 But it wasn't, by no means of the imagination, optimized, you know what I mean?

01:26:13.000 And then when I went back on it, man, my body composition changed again, and I noticed increased energy.

01:26:19.000 And I thought I was doing well, but I was like, life is better.

01:26:22.000 I'm a better person when this is optimized.

01:26:25.000 And so I've proven to myself that I can do it without it, but life is not better.

01:26:30.000 I mean, we might be looking at some time in the near future where they can do something genetically, where they can alter the way your pituitary gland functions with CRISPR or with many of these genetic manipulation tools that they're working on right now.

01:26:44.000 But as of right now, that's not the case.

01:26:47.000 No.

01:26:48.000 You have to get tested and then replenish back to physiological levels all the hormones, not a select, all of them.

01:26:55.000 Yeah, because if you just do one, you can mess up the whole thing, right?

01:26:58.000 Is there a network of doctors that you've trained, that you trust their work, that you can recommend?

01:27:06.000 Is there a way that people, so they don't have to travel to California to meet you?

01:27:09.000 Right.

01:27:10.000 On the website, there's...

01:27:12.000 Can you give that website address again?

01:27:14.000 TBI Medlegal.com has under...

01:27:24.000 TBI Network and Training.

01:27:26.000 It has a list of doctors.

01:27:28.000 We've trained doctors in Spain, United States, Canada, New Zealand, Australia.

01:27:34.000 I'm going to Southeast Asia to train a group in Cambodia and Vietnam for a project which is to establish centers.

01:27:45.000 In Southeast Asia because there's a lot of retired vets there.

01:27:48.000 Pull it up again, Jamie?

01:27:49.000 A lot of retired vets to set up centers so they can offer treatment.

01:27:53.000 And if you look at the website, it's listed all in alphabetical order.

01:27:56.000 We have California, there's Arizona there, Colorado, Florida.

01:28:00.000 The ones without the names on it are people who are in the process of getting their certification.

01:28:06.000 So there's a four-hour exam they have to take.

01:28:09.000 And pass it with at least 70% and then present two cases showing they have the ability to utilize the information.

01:28:16.000 So there's doctors available in many, many states.

01:28:19.000 Correct.

01:28:20.000 And that's been our goal, to make this network of doctors where we can reach people at scale in the same way, like train trainers or train doctors.

01:28:29.000 And that's what we're working on with the government right now.

01:28:31.000 What's incredible is how much you've accomplished in such a short period of time.

01:28:35.000 That's what's really incredible.

01:28:37.000 Obsessed?

01:28:37.000 Yes.

01:28:38.000 You're driven.

01:28:39.000 I like driven better.

01:28:40.000 There's nothing wrong with obsessed.

01:28:42.000 I'm obsessed with everything.

01:28:44.000 People have a hard time with that word.

01:28:46.000 They think it's gotten away from them.

01:28:48.000 How about passionate?

01:28:48.000 Passionate's good.

01:28:49.000 I like that as well.

01:28:50.000 I mean, we're taking action, but like for the right reasons and like opportunity just continues to present itself.

01:28:55.000 I think that's just a byproduct of a right way of doing things.

01:28:58.000 You know what I mean?

01:28:59.000 Like, hey, let's be proactive.

01:29:00.000 Let's go out there.

01:29:01.000 Let's make things happen.

01:29:02.000 Let's go do it.

01:29:03.000 He said to me in the beginning, he said, we're going to be doing the right things for the right reason.

01:29:08.000 And what will happen is things will shake out of the trees and land in front of us.

01:29:13.000 And that's what basically has been happening.

01:29:15.000 We just, you know, money...

01:29:17.000 It's not the issue.

01:29:18.000 Just get the work done and the response and the reaction of our vets.

01:29:23.000 Well, the reaction and the response has been incredible as far as what I've heard and what's come to me about it. 0.99

01:29:29.000 And hopefully we're shaking that fucking tree today. 0.96

01:29:32.000 Dude, because of this show, because of you, this information has been widely disseminated, man. 0.97

01:29:38.000 You helped promote our book and give us a blurb for that, so thank you for that.

01:29:42.000 Tales from the Blast Factory supports what we're doing.

01:29:46.000 That comes out next month, if anybody's interested in that.

01:29:49.000 Matter of fact, we did a thing on Amazon, Joe, where they can get it for 99 cents, so we want people to get that book.

01:29:55.000 Wow, beautiful.

01:29:55.000 Yeah.

01:29:56.000 Beautiful.

01:29:57.000 All right, so any closing thoughts that we need to get out there for these people?

01:30:03.000 Think we covered it all?

01:30:04.000 I think we covered it all.

01:30:06.000 You know, my last closing statement is thank you so much.

01:30:11.000 Listen, thank you.

01:30:12.000 I'm forever in your debt, and I think that what you guys are both doing is incredible, and I'm honored that I could play a small part in getting this out there.

01:30:22.000 It means everything.

01:30:24.000 Thank you.

01:30:25.000 Thank you from the bottom of my heart. 1.00

01:30:26.000 All right, fuckers. 1.00

01:30:28.000 That's it for today. 1.00

01:30:29.000 We'll see you tomorrow.

01:30:30.000 Bye-bye.

01:30:30.000 Where's the scotch?

01:30:31.000 Get in on this.

01:30:33.000 Donate.

The Joe Rogan Experience - December 27, 2017

Joe Rogan Experience #1056 - Dr. Mark Gordon & Andrew Marr

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