Episode 82 – Andrew Marr – Warrior Angels Foundation

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[00:00:56] community and to create awareness of traumatic brain injury. In this episode, we cover the gamut

[00:01:03] of what traumatic brain injury is, from its potential causes to its symptoms to Western

[00:01:09] medicine's lack of proper diagnosis for this disease. And then near the end, we get into some

[00:01:16] practical, actionable ways in which you can directly affect your everyday life if you're

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[00:01:59] The Human Experience is Healing Traumatic Brain Injury with my guest today, Mr. Andrew Marr.

[00:02:05] Andrew, my good sir, it's a pleasure. Welcome to HXP.

[00:02:08] Xavier, happy to be here. Big fan of the show since the last time we talked. So I've got a

[00:02:12] chance to check you out in a lot of the episodes. Keep doing what you're doing, man. Love it.

[00:02:16] Yeah, brother. It was clear to me when we first met that we needed to bring you onto the show.

[00:02:24] And not only your own experience with the Special Forces, but just the clarity that you express when you're talking about traumatic brain injury.

[00:02:35] I'd like to just set the foundation for how you got into this work. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself, about your background?

[00:02:42] Yeah, I was, I grew up in Texas. I was an athlete, was a college athlete. I graduated in the summer of 2006 and kind of thinking, you know, what am I going to do with my life now? Because I just, you know, I had visions to go into the NFL and that didn't pan out.

[00:02:59] And so the kind of the logical step for me was to jump in and join the military.

[00:03:06] You know, I was aware of what happened or the results of the consequences of 2001.

[00:03:13] And, you know, I was kind of pursuing my own interest going to school and, you know, playing sports.

[00:03:19] And it kind of weighed on me.

[00:03:21] But I said, well, at least, you know, I'm actively engaged.

[00:03:23] But when that story ended, I felt a strong desire to go and to serve something bigger than myself.

[00:03:31] And, you know, I thought my talents and my leadership abilities could, you know, do well in the military.

[00:03:37] So I looked at, you know, all the different branches and definitely knew I wanted to go into special operations.

[00:03:43] Looked at the Army, Special Forces, the Green Berets, and I really liked their mission.

[00:03:49] I liked that their guys seemed to be more mature and relied on kind of being autonomous and thinking outside of the box and not going with the status quo, kind of like the opposite of what you think about when you think about the rank and file military.

[00:04:04] And I was like, well, if I'm going to do this, that sounds like something that would be more in line with my strengths.

[00:04:09] And so I jumped in and graduated August of 2006 from college.

[00:04:16] I enlisted in October of 2006 to go right into basic training and then went right into the Special Forces training pipeline, which took two and a half years from the start of that to being fully functional Green Beret.

[00:04:30] Yeah. And you founded the Warrior Angels Foundation and you're doing a lot of good work there with helping veterans. But you, as this special forces combat engineer, you experienced this traumatic brain injury over and over. I mean, what were you doing specifically in regards to explosives and what they found out with your brain later?

[00:04:53] Well, part of my job as being an engineer on the teams was dealing with explosives.

[00:05:02] So I was a demolitions expert.

[00:05:04] And so that I was dealing with IEDs, improvised explosive devices.

[00:05:09] I would either disarm, disable, or blow it in place in combat.

[00:05:15] And then I would place charges on whatever we needed to destroy, so to speak.

[00:05:23] And part of that role had me as what we call an explosive breacher.

[00:05:28] And so I would make a surgical explosive charge to place on a denied point of entry,

[00:05:35] be it a door, window, wall, whatever the situation called for.

[00:05:40] Then we'd blow it and go in and do our jobs.

[00:05:43] And so we didn't make any correlations really between the head trauma and explosive blast waves

[00:05:51] and all of the signs and symptoms that we're now seeing kind of rampant through the veteran community.

[00:05:58] It just wasn't anything.

[00:06:00] The awareness wasn't there.

[00:06:01] But I was a college football player too, and it just wasn't thought about.

[00:06:05] You got a concussion, you went on the sidelines, and then you got some water and you went back in.

[00:06:10] There wasn't anything thought about it.

[00:06:11] We just didn't know.

[00:06:14] Probably as counterintuitive as it sounds, it's not a good idea to bash the head around.

[00:06:18] And so an operator is literally in and around thousands of explosions through training and prep work and then doing the job downrange.

[00:06:31] And so sometimes in very close proximities.

[00:06:34] We know now that repeated exposure to that concussive blast wave is very detrimental to the well-being of the brain.

[00:06:43] So the brain is cased or housed in cerebral spinal fluid, and we know that an explosive, the blast wave that's propagated from an explosion moves outward in a 360-degree direction, and then it fills up every air-filled organ of the body.

[00:07:01] So as it passes through you, it's transferring that energy.

[00:07:04] And it's literally knocking the brain back and forth against the skull.

[00:07:10] And that can cause what we call DAI, diffuse axonal injury.

[00:07:16] And basically it means shearing, shearing of the neurons and shearing of key blood vessels and things of that nature.

[00:07:23] And it pretty much it goes unseen, right, because it's inside you can't see it.

[00:07:28] So nobody has any problems.

[00:07:29] It might not be that there's any problems right after that happened.

[00:07:34] It's a repetitive process over time where it gets to be like, okay, it's building up,

[00:07:41] and it's like, you know, there's brain injuries or like snowflakes.

[00:07:46] There's no two injuries.

[00:07:47] And then when you repeat it over and over and over again, that's when we start having these detrimental effects.

[00:07:53] There's two parts to a TBI.

[00:07:54] The first one is blunt force trauma, be it explosive blast wave, acceleration, deacceleration, getting hit in the head, falling, roller coasters, you know, these types of things.

[00:08:06] Falling off a ladder is really common, I think the most common way to get a traumatic brain injury.

[00:08:11] And so that's the initial phase one of the injury.

[00:08:15] The second phase is post-traumatic inflammation, post-traumatic neuroinflammation, and fancy word that means swelling of the brain.

[00:08:24] And the thing is, Xavier, that can happen a week, a month, or years after the first injury.

[00:08:32] That can start to becoming manifesting as a real problem, and here's why.

[00:08:38] The brain starts to swell, and what that does is it creates this chemical cascade that is very necessary in the acute injury.

[00:08:46] But if it goes unchecked and it becomes chronic through a process of cavitation, it begins to move and swell out into other portions of the brain.

[00:08:56] And that's causing the death of brain cells.

[00:09:00] And so it's that slow brain cell death that mounts.

[00:09:04] So at first it might not cause any problems.

[00:09:06] You might not miss a beat.

[00:09:07] But over that period, from that inflammation growing through cavitation and more and more brain cells being damaged, that's when we have all of a sudden somebody has all these neurological deficits and these behavioral and cognitive problems that kind of come out of the blue.

[00:09:24] And they're like, we don't understand why Johnny has all these new problems because we can't correlate it to anything.

[00:09:29] But all of a sudden, he's having these new issues.

[00:09:32] And that's a lot what goes on with the brain injury, the silent part, so to speak.

[00:09:37] for a lot of people to understand, be it the person that had the injury or their family.

[00:09:43] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And you're touching on why it's known as a two-phase

[00:09:51] injury. And a lot of the times it seems to go undiagnosed by other traumas, both in

[00:09:57] civilian life as well as

[00:10:00] combat veterans like yourself. In civilian life, what can cause these CBI events to take place? And also, what is Western medicine doing and not doing to address this?

[00:10:15] Well, great questions. I think first, you know, it's good to kind of define what is a traumatic brain injury. And it's basically any period of a complete loss of or decreased sense of consciousness, but it doesn't, you don't necessarily have to be knocked unconscious.

[00:10:32] All right. So then you can it goes to any memory loss relating to the event before or after the injury.

[00:10:38] Neurological deficits like loss of balance, coordination, disruption, problems with vision, changes in speech, language, cognitive issues, sensory loss.

[00:10:51] And then any alteration in a mental state at the time of the injury, such as confusion, disorientation, slow thinking, you know, difficulty concentrating, you know.

[00:11:03] So it's kind of a broad term there.

[00:11:06] And again, there's, I think, 5 million traumatic brain injuries in the U.S. every year.

[00:11:12] But again, that's only the ones that go to the emergency room.

[00:11:15] So a lot of times I know we've all probably experienced something similar to that.

[00:11:21] any alteration in brain functioning, some of those things we just said, can result in being

[00:11:27] from a traumatic brain injury. And we know that those negative consequences can then happen

[00:11:32] later on. But it goes back to what's called a neuropermissive environment. And so what we need

[00:11:39] the brain and the body to be in is that neuropermissive environment, which is an enriched

[00:11:44] and balanced lifestyle where you can have neuroplasticity. And neuroplasticity means

[00:11:51] basically that your brain can regenerate, it can make new neural connections and rewire itself.

[00:11:59] So neuroscience tells us that the neurons that fire together that wire together. So

[00:12:04] learning something new, something novel, and then personalizing it, that is going to,

[00:12:09] by definition, be able to rewire the brain. And that neuro-permissive environment is going to

[00:12:15] allow for neurogenesis. So the creation of new brain cells, synaptogenesis, the synaptic

[00:12:21] connections that we make, and then steroid genesis, which can lead to positive epigenetic changes.

[00:12:28] On the flip side of that coin, when we have a non-neuro-permissive environment,

[00:12:33] that is the exact opposite. So something has caused the brain to not be in that balanced state where

[00:12:41] neuroplasticity cannot happen. Neurogenesis, synaptogenesis, steroid genesis is all stymied.

[00:12:48] And it comes down to three things and three things only. And disease basically comes down

[00:12:54] to three things as well. And that's trauma, toxins, thought. Trauma, toxins, or thought.

[00:13:01] And so for traumatic brain injury, for instance, we know that, okay, that trauma comes from some kind of a blunt force injury, and then that leads to the two-step process.

[00:13:11] Blunt force injury, inflammation, and then we now know inflammation can lead to the deregulation of hormones, hormones produced both in the brain and in the peripheral glands as well.

[00:13:24] And when we have that downregulated, that dysregulation of hormones secondary to the inflammation, again, that's where a lot of the problems we see in our culture today and specifically with people that have suffered a traumatic brain injury.

[00:13:40] The way Western medicine treats it, the way the military medical model treats it is basically with medication and psychotherapy.

[00:13:50] So when I first started having problems, everything I was experiencing was completely foreign to me.

[00:13:58] So going from a high performer in situations of life and death to going to where I couldn't function.

[00:14:07] I was having nervous breakdowns, anxiety attacks, became depressed, but I didn't have a reason to be depressed.

[00:14:14] I was doing the job I loved.

[00:14:15] I was married to the woman I love.

[00:14:17] I loved my family.

[00:14:19] I couldn't understand why all of a sudden I was depressed and why I would have panic attacks.

[00:14:24] Why would I cry in public and not having any control over it?

[00:14:28] You know, a while all of a sudden do I have horrible migraines that lead to double vision, blurry vision to double vision.

[00:14:35] Why can't I balance?

[00:14:36] Why can't I walk in a straight line?

[00:14:38] Why can't I remember how to drive home?

[00:14:39] You know, just all this, and it happened in a rapid succession.

[00:14:43] And so you go from being a high-performing individual to saying, hey, I need help.

[00:14:48] and what we got was a bevy of psychotropic medications that in the end only further

[00:14:58] exacerbated the problem. So I went like, it wasn't like there was one time in my life where it was

[00:15:05] like, okay, this is a serious head wound and we got to go to the hospital type thing. I was only

[00:15:10] knocked unconscious once in combat and it was brief, you know, because I had to get up and

[00:15:15] realized, okay, we're still fighting, so I better get back to work. But never thought,

[00:15:20] gave it much thought and continued to function at a high level through the rest of that deployment.

[00:15:24] I came home and it was about six months later when I started having these issues and I woke up,

[00:15:31] found myself on 13 different medications. I was now an alcoholic. Our wife was pregnant with our

[00:15:37] fifth child and her request to me was, baby, can you keep your drinking down for the day in case I

[00:15:42] go into labor so I don't have to drive myself to the hospital. And it was kind of the first time

[00:15:47] I was like, what I've been sold is not working. It's not working because it's not treating the

[00:15:54] underlying condition. And so all the medication, all the psychotherapy, it didn't do anything to

[00:16:00] improve my life. It just made matters worse. And then you add alcohol onto that. You add not being

[00:16:06] able to sleep onto that. You add the neurological deficit and now not being consumed about

[00:16:13] Am I ever going to be who I thought I should be? I'm not going to be able to do what I thought I should do. And people are wronging me. The system is wrong. Just being caught up in the self. And that produces this massive non-neuro-permissive environment that leads to all these detriments.

[00:16:31] And, you know, we started having guys, Xavier, committing suicide in special forces.

[00:16:37] And I remember when it first happened and we were just baffled.

[00:16:41] We thought, man, how can that person who is a proven leader in combat who makes decisions, you know, who's paid to make difficult decisions, how could he think that was the best decision?

[00:16:55] You know, what a coward.

[00:16:56] But it was kind of just ignorance on my part and our culture's part as a whole, just not understanding the effects that were taking on to these people.

[00:17:04] And it wasn't until I got in and I was in that downward spiral and I was like, my God, this is the reason things are happening.

[00:17:12] People are affected. They can't function the way they used to function.

[00:17:15] They put on all these medications. It makes things worse.

[00:17:18] They start drinking. They're affecting and treating their family.

[00:17:22] And the result is all kinds of negative outcomes.

[00:17:26] And but they don't want it to be that way.

[00:17:28] And they start to think maybe it would just be better if I just checked out.

[00:17:32] And that's kind of when the light went off with me.

[00:17:34] I was like, my God, this is this is the cycle and nobody's doing anything to fix it.

[00:17:39] So I was like, you know, if you don't like it, you fix it.

[00:17:42] So that's when we kind of started to find a way like, hey, how can we make a difference?

[00:17:45] How can we start, you know, changing the tide on this?

[00:17:48] And that was kind of the genesis, if you will, of the idea to start the Warrior Angels Foundation.

[00:17:53] Yeah, man.

[00:17:53] Wow.

[00:17:54] What a touching, heartbreaking story.

[00:17:57] And I feel like you nailed a lot of different points that I was going to touch on.

[00:18:03] But your own struggle and the struggle of other veterans that are coming back, they're

[00:18:09] serving our country, they're fighting for our freedom, they come back and they get sort

[00:18:14] of tossed away by the Western medicine system that is just prescribing these pharmaceutical

[00:18:20] drugs.

[00:18:20] I mean, I suspect that most of these brain injuries don't show up on MRIs or CAT scans.

[00:18:27] So, you know, maybe it's a psychological issue.

[00:18:29] Maybe it's in your head.

[00:18:30] It becomes a very dismissive environment when you're going to a doctor and they're telling

[00:18:34] you that it's just it's just your thinking you're depressed.

[00:18:37] I mean, even for myself, and this is difficult to talk about for me because there's one of

[00:18:43] my family members is going through this process and suffered a TBI.

[00:18:50] the hardest three years of my life. And another reason for me to really bring you onto the show

[00:18:58] and create more awareness about this, just because it seems like Western medicine is just going the

[00:19:04] opposite way. People do feel like they want to check out. And that's why we're having this

[00:19:12] conversation. That's why we need to create awareness about this. Where do you think the

[00:19:16] most important step that we can take to change this thinking or create awareness about this

[00:19:23] thinking? Well, I think you just have to look at the process. And so if a person, an individual,

[00:19:29] is put on an antidepressant and they're still depressed, then we need to start looking at

[00:19:35] alternatives. If you put a person on an anti-anxiety medication and they still have anxiety,

[00:19:41] then maybe these things are not the underlying condition.

[00:19:46] And so what the Western medicine is now premised on is not preventative care.

[00:19:55] It's disease care and symptom management.

[00:19:58] And that's

[00:20:00] the issue. So what we need to do is to identify and then treat the underlying condition. And we're saying that science has revealed a way that we can do it objectively.

[00:20:14] And through that analysis, we'll be able to tell objectively, is there inflammation?

[00:20:20] Is there dysregulation of the hormonal production?

[00:20:24] Are there other things, other markers that are pushing out red flags for something?

[00:20:29] And we can start to triangulate and figure out, hey, where is the actual, really the

[00:20:33] leak in the dam at?

[00:20:35] And let's go right there and figure out how to fix the problem and then get that person

[00:20:41] back on to, you know, having a quality of life. So going from no quality of life to having quality

[00:20:47] of life. And again, it always goes back with identifying and then treating the underlying

[00:20:53] condition and then treating everybody as an individual. So they need, we need a personalized

[00:20:58] approach because no two people are the same, no two injuries are the same. So they're going to

[00:21:04] need what might work for one person or, you know, we're talking about a reference range for a

[00:21:11] person, a healthy 30-year-old male comes in and says he's suffering from depression and other

[00:21:17] issues, neurological issues and behavioral issues like that, and we test his testosterone,

[00:21:23] and a normal level is between one and, or it's like two and nine, and he comes in at a two,

[00:21:30] then the doctor's going to say, you're fine, you're within range. But a healthy 30-year-old

[00:21:34] should not be at a two. He should be like at a seven or a six. And so, you know, that's what

[00:21:41] hey, treat the person.

[00:21:42] Don't treat the reference range.

[00:21:44] Treat the individual.

[00:21:45] How's the individual saying?

[00:21:46] If there's nothing else in his life,

[00:21:47] then it was only logical for us to think

[00:21:50] that that might be some part of the issue.

[00:21:54] And one of the things is,

[00:21:56] is like a lot of the imaging that we have today is phenomenal.

[00:21:59] FMRI, spec scan, PET scan, I think you hit on a couple of them.

[00:22:02] But they're not going to show the damage to the neurochemistry.

[00:22:07] If there is a dysregulation or downregulation of the neurochemistry,

[00:22:11] And it may or may not show if there's inflammation there.

[00:22:13] And so if we can't get a really good grasp on that, that doesn't do us a whole lot of good.

[00:22:18] Now, if there's structural damage, absolutely, absolutely we need to see that.

[00:22:22] We need to look at that.

[00:22:24] But the neurochemistry or biochemistry, that's what runs everything.

[00:22:28] Everything that runs in our body runs off our chemistry, biochemistry, neurochemistry.

[00:22:33] So it's only logical to think that would be the first step in checking that before we put anybody on any type of psychotropic.

[00:22:41] medications or any other type of medication for that matter. I can feel the passion and just the

[00:22:46] sheer essence in everything you're saying. And it definitely hits home for me. And a lot of this

[00:22:51] feels like it has become sort of post-collateral damage where these war veterans and civilians,

[00:22:59] even they're just being swept under the rug. And as you said, you know, they're treating the

[00:23:04] disease through this sort of process that is flawed. Enter Dr. Mark Gordon, because there's

[00:23:11] an intrinsic relationship that you guys have with the Warrior Angels. What is Dr. Mark Gordon's

[00:23:18] role in what you guys are doing? Mark Gordon, Dr. Gordon is a neuroendocrinologist and a world

[00:23:26] renowned one. And so he's the medical director for our foundation, but he's the medical director

[00:23:31] for his Millennium Health Centers. He's the medical director for CBS Studios. He's an

[00:23:38] assistant professor at the USC School of Medicine, Keck School of Medicine. So just a fascinating,

[00:23:44] really forward-thinking guy who had suffered five traumatic brain injuries of himself.

[00:23:50] He kind of was put down or went down the same road. He was put on, you know, became depressed,

[00:23:55] had all these new things that were just completely out of character for him. And it wasn't until the

[00:24:01] Some of the processes came around for treating hormonal deficiencies or came widely known.

[00:24:08] So he paid a lot of money, went out to Las Vegas, got checked, and he was deficient in three hormones.

[00:24:14] And so once they replenished those hormones, he was back to his old self, living life again, going after a black belt, studying and speaking and lecturing again.

[00:24:26] And he started to understand that the neuroendocrine system played a vital role in the overall well-being of ourselves, ourselves as humans, and that traumatic brain injuries definitely could disrupt that neuropermissive environment.

[00:24:49] And so Dr. Gordon then went on to read some literature that I think it was pugilist boxers in Turkey talking about all the head trauma that they suffered and then the problems they had later on in life.

[00:25:05] And they were found to be deficient in all these hormones.

[00:25:08] And that was the first time like the light went off in his head.

[00:25:10] He's like, oh, my God, this is the direct correlation.

[00:25:13] and then he went back to his clinical practice and he started going to people that was basically

[00:25:18] unsolved files saying hey was there ever any head trauma you know in your life and a lot of times

[00:25:23] people would be unaware of it and they would say no and he's like okay well you said here you broke

[00:25:28] your leg when you were 13 how did that happen well i fell from a two-story building he's like

[00:25:33] you fell from a two-story building and you don't think that might have caused any head trauma

[00:25:36] and he started thinking my gosh there's probably more to this than it's meaning to eye and so then

[00:25:43] Millennium Health Centers there, seeing if there would be any positive response.

[00:25:48] And a lot of what we were seeing is if we can identify through the lab analysis if they're

[00:25:54] deficient in these ever-important hormones called neurosteroids in the brain, and there

[00:25:59] is inflammation, we can reduce, get rid of inflammation, replenish the hormones, quality

[00:26:07] of life improves.

[00:26:08] And he started seeing it across the board in his practice.

[00:26:13] you know, playing a bigger role in this, went on into endocrinology and then into neuroendocrinology.

[00:26:19] And then that's where he's at today. He's one of the leaders and the pioneers in treating traumatic

[00:26:25] brain injury. And Mark got a hold of me when I was looking for different ways to treat my injury.

[00:26:33] And he said, hey, man, we've been doing this for a long time. We've been working with veterans here

[00:26:38] for like the last five years.

[00:26:40] Here's a, listen to this Joe Rogan podcast

[00:26:43] and see if this is anything that you're interested in.

[00:26:45] If you are, give me a call

[00:26:47] and we'll talk about moving forward.

[00:26:49] And I listened to the podcast.

[00:26:51] He had one of his patients on there,

[00:26:53] a former Navy guy who, man, had a really rough go,

[00:26:58] was shot several times, blown up,

[00:27:01] had his jaw, like seven screws

[00:27:03] and a couple of plates in his jaw,

[00:27:05] was just in a bad spot.

[00:27:08] medications and had attempted suicide. And then he found out about Mark's program, got on that.

[00:27:16] And today, two years later, he's off all medications. He's living life again. He's

[00:27:22] screenwriting out in Los Angeles. And what threw me away, what really threw me was like every

[00:27:28] problem that Matt was talking about on that podcast, I was like, that's me to the T.

[00:27:36] Everything he's saying is I'm having that problem.

[00:27:40] And then hearing Dr. Gordon talk about how all those problems are directly related to this two-phase injury that we're talking about and then the downregulation of the hormones produced are completely to – is how we account for all that.

[00:27:56] It's like, therefore, it's a simple process. We get rid of inflammation and we replace replenish through to the natural physiological level of what that person should be. And we see incredible results. And that's exactly what happened with me, Xavier. We tried it out.

[00:28:14] before I even got on a full protocol, Dr. Gordon was like, let's just give you a what they call

[00:28:18] provocative test of testosterone and see how you respond. And within three hours,

[00:28:25] for the first time in a year, I was without depression. I was without anxiety. And I knew

[00:28:31] it because I was driving south on the 405 in bumper to bumper traffic. Usually that would

[00:28:36] have just been a very difficult ordeal for me, just full of rage and anger and just not pleasant

[00:28:41] to be around. But I was having a great time. And I was like, holy shit, man, like, maybe this is

[00:28:45] really working. And things only continue to get better from there. So 18, two months, two years

[00:28:53] later, for me, I'm off all medications. I'm performing, I'm sober, been sober for two years,

[00:28:59] I'm performing as good, if not better than my pre-injury status. But it's not exclusive to me,

[00:29:04] It's not a special or isolated incident, uh, incidents. Um, it's more the, the standard that

[00:29:12] we're being able to produce and we're doing it scientifically. We can predict, we can measure

[00:29:16] and we can replicate. And now we've done it over 160 times through the warrior angels foundation.

[00:29:22] And Dr. Gordon's has over a 1300 documented cases through the millennium health centers,

[00:29:27] uh, out in Sino, California. That's amazing, man. I mean, what you guys are doing with the

[00:29:34] remarkable. I really want to kind of rewind a little bit and get back to like TBIs and the

[00:29:43] civilian aspect of this. And is there a range of age groups where you find this more common? I mean,

[00:29:51] are 25-year-olds getting TBIs and not knowing about it until later? Does this manifest in a

[00:29:57] certain age group or demographic within

[00:29:59] the civilian group differently?

[00:30:02] I mean, how does that work?

[00:30:03] Well, the most susceptible to it is the very young and the very old.

[00:30:08] But again, it's an individualized thing,

[00:30:11] whereas if that brain has gone from a neuro-permissive environment

[00:30:16] to a non-neuro-permissive environment, that could take years to happen.

[00:30:20] So you could have an accident as an adolescent,

[00:30:23] and through that process of that inflammation continuing to kill off brain cells,

[00:30:29] to come, I'll come to the rubber's going to hit the road eventually. And you're going to be like,

[00:30:33] oh my God, I have problems, but I don't know why, or I don't know how that that's what makes it a

[00:30:38] difficult to kind of understand. But I think the, I think it's not like we need to isolate any

[00:30:45] sect of the population and be overly cautious or overly worried about this. You know, we know that

[00:30:50] 44 million children in America are playing sports. We know that the, you know, then the elderly,

[00:30:55] We know our success can have this more easily because of prone to fall.

[00:31:01] But just knowing that this can happen, that we can have a blow to the head or to the body, and this can produce this non-neuropermissive environment, it's important to know that we can take some really easy measures to ensure that the body is ready for this and it can recover.

[00:31:17] And that's just making sure that you're taking things that produce a anti-inflammatory effects.

[00:31:23] Because if you can stop the inflammation from occurring, you can stop the further damage from ever happening.

[00:31:29] And so for the usually with the minor traumatic brain injuries, it's not the initial trauma that's the problem.

[00:31:37] It's this inflammation over time that then leads to the deregulation of hormones.

[00:31:43] And so if you can put the proper things back in your body, the proper anti-inflammatory measures back in your body, you can stop the train from ever coming off the tracks.

[00:31:54] And so if I had known what I know now, I never would have had the problems because I would have had the right anti-inflammatory preventative package to prevent this.

[00:32:07] And so it's really easy. N-acetylcysteine, NAC, is what we've used with great success through the foundation. We know that vitamin E's, stuff in high in vitamin E, to call it tocopherols, is wonderful for anti-inflammatory. Omega-3s are great.

[00:32:26] And we had a guy on named Dr. Michael Lewis who calls it the Omega Protocol, but he suggests 5,000 milligrams a day of Omega-3s for just preventative maintenance and putting healthy fats back in the brain.

[00:32:41] So, I mean, those are three really easy areas right there that people can take right now in any combination or by themselves that is going to be able to reduce inflammation when and if it occurs.

[00:32:56] that, we know that we can stop the big problems that we're having right now. And the army even

[00:33:01] put out a study on this with the NAC and its incredible anti-inflammatory benefits in specifically

[00:33:09] dealing with traumatic brain injury and why they're not instituting it. You know, it's for

[00:33:15] them to say, but they're not instituting it. But the science is out there. It's not even up for

[00:33:21] debate. Like we know these things stop the inflammation from occurring or getting worse.

[00:33:28] Yeah, it's truly, truly fascinating. So I mean, these are just neurosteroids that change

[00:33:34] the neurochemicals in your brain and put you back into a state of balance,

[00:33:39] your hormones back into a state of balance?

[00:33:41] Yeah. So neurosteroids is kind of a new concept. It was discovered, I guess, revealed,

[00:33:47] I should say, by a Dr. Bailu out of Paris, France in 1986. And what he found was at the first time

[00:33:54] that was when it was first found out that hormones are not just produced in the peripheral glands,

[00:34:01] you know, the testes, ovaries, thyroid, things like that. It's also produced and synthesized

[00:34:07] in the brain. And these neurosteroids are produced in what's called the glial cells. So you have

[00:34:14] neurons and you have glial cells. It used to be thought that glial cells just played a supportive

[00:34:21] role in brain functioning in that they just held the neurons in place. And that was what was thought

[00:34:27] for a very long time. And then it turns out, oh, you know what? These glial cells that take up 90%

[00:34:34] of the brain, they actually have a very big role. They can even turn on or turn off neurons.

[00:34:40] They are responsible in producing the myelin cover, the sheath, that protects the outer neurons.

[00:34:48] It allows the electrical signals to pass back and forth, you know, the way that they should.

[00:34:55] It's responsible for neurogenesis and synaptogenesis and all these other things in addition to producing, you know, hormones in the brain.

[00:35:05] And so think of neurosteroids produced in the brain as the microhormones and then what they call neuroactive steroids, hormones that are produced in the peripheral glands as macrohormones.

[00:35:19] And so macro is running the body. Micro is fine-tuning those neuroelectrical circuits in the brain. And when those are disrupted through inflammation, through diffuse axonal injury, through the micro tearing and shearing that's caused by explosive blast waves or traumatic brain injury, that causes that deficit.

[00:35:45] That causes those chemicals to be leaked out and then to become deficient in them.

[00:35:52] And they're directly related to all of our behaviors.

[00:35:57] And so all of our neurobehavior and neuropsychology, and it's directly related.

[00:36:05] So it just makes sense.

[00:36:07] Like when that no longer is able to be produced or heal itself, then it can't heal the neurons.

[00:36:15] right, the neurochemistry can't act right, and guess what? Everything else in your body and in

[00:36:19] your life is not in balance. It's not the way it could be, and it's now, we now know it's directly

[00:36:26] related to these deficiencies in neurosteroids, and you know, Dr. Gordon is just in the clinical

[00:36:32] application of it, but he was able to hypothesize this without like going in the brain and saying,

[00:36:38] okay, well here's an actual case where I can show these micro tears. It was kind of a hypothesis,

[00:36:43] this, but that was supported through the clinical application of what he was doing and already,

[00:36:47] you know, implementing the science that was already out there. But this year, a Dr. Pearl,

[00:36:53] who is a neuropathologist out at Walter Reed, issued a report about finding these new micro

[00:37:04] tears in post-mortem brains of soldiers with blast injury. And it was in the Lancet. So,

[00:37:13] medical journal out of England. And what the article went on to say was that he said,

[00:37:20] I have never seen, I'm paraphrasing here, but this is the essence, I've never seen

[00:37:24] in the 40,000 other brains that I've looked at post-mortem, any type of trauma like this that

[00:37:30] produced this type of micro tearing in the gray matter of the brain. And we know that that can

[00:37:39] be directly related to all of these behavioral issues that we're seeing in the military community,

[00:37:47] you know, oftentimes diagnosed as post-traumatic stress. And so the paper went on to say that

[00:37:53] he believes that post-traumatic stress is usually a misdiagnosis of physical injury, of brain injury.

[00:38:01] Hmm. Wow. You know, it's interesting because this research, I mean, it's relatively recent. I mean, just looking at my notes for the show, it was the mid-1990s. There were a couple neuroscientists in Europe that were able to define neuroplasticity or cortical plasticity.

[00:38:20] Before this, it was as if the brain was hardwired. There was nothing that you could do to change.

[00:38:26] And once your brain cells were gone, they were gone. And that was the sort of neuromysticism

[00:38:31] that was prevalent in our culture, in our society. And that myth, that is changing. And we're

[00:38:37] learning more about the brain every day. And finally, the science is catching up to actually

[00:38:44] start to treat these things. So which brings me to the Warrior Angels Foundation. This is a

[00:38:50] created. It's a nonprofit. Why don't you tell us about this? Because I find the work that you're

[00:38:55] doing with this is phenomenal, game changing. Yeah, well, certainly appreciate that, Xavier.

[00:39:01] What we were doing was I just, I came so close to losing it all. But what was once what I looked at

[00:39:10] was the worst thing that ever happened to me that could ever happen in my life is now the best thing

[00:39:16] that's ever happened to me and happened in my life because I had to go out and I had to look

[00:39:21] for new information. I had to challenge old belief systems or trusted belief system. I had to be able

[00:39:28] to rely on my intuition to say that just doesn't seem right to me. And so, you know, what I said

[00:39:34] was, I was told that, hey, this is the new you. This is what you have to expect. So basically,

[00:39:41] they were saying, this is your new life sentence. And I refused to accept that. And I didn't give

[00:39:46] a shit that the doctor or any doctor said that. I went from seeing a neurologist to an endocrinologist

[00:39:53] to a hematologist to a psychiatrist to a psychologist, on and on and on and on and on.

[00:39:59] And

[00:39:59] nothing was getting there.

[00:40:01] So I said, there's got to be – I'm getting some bad information here and it's not adding up because I learned about neuroplasticity.

[00:40:11] And I was like, if there's neuroplasticity and the brain can rewire itself, then how could you tell somebody that they're going to remain the exact same?

[00:40:21] Which they will. They keep thinking that.

[00:40:23] But if they start going and trying to look for new information and teach themselves something different, then they can rewire the brain.

[00:40:30] So it just didn't make sense to me.

[00:40:31] And so I went to look to the scientific literature, and I started looking up at, you know, is there any correlation between hormonal deficiencies, which I knew I had, and chronic blast wave exposure.

[00:40:44] And, my God, I found a lot of literature supporting that.

[00:40:47] And I was like, why is this not like being like the first line of effort?

[00:40:53] Um, and so again, looking at like, okay, well, I don't just want to complain about it.

[00:40:58] I want to fix it.

[00:40:59] How can we fix it?

[00:41:00] And we wanted to come up with a system to do that.

[00:41:02] So that's why we started the warrior angels foundation.

[00:41:05] We, uh, enact the protocols.

[00:41:07] Dr. Gordon's the medical director that identify and treat the underlying condition for a traumatic

[00:41:14] brain injury.

[00:41:14] And we do it through a laboratory analysis.

[00:41:16] Then once that, uh, that analysis is reviewed, we get rid of inflammation and we replace

[00:41:23] replenish the hormones, the neurosteroids that are needed.

[00:41:27] And guess what?

[00:41:28] Quality of life improves.

[00:41:30] I've got over a hundred cases of it with people who were on multiple double-digit medications

[00:41:37] and multiple attempts at suicide that are now back living a life to their fullest potential

[00:41:44] again.

[00:41:44] Back out creating jobs, being a family man again, being a wife, being a husband, being

[00:41:51] a father, being a mother.

[00:41:53] incredible effects we're able to produce about it. Our intent, Xavier, is to get these protocols

[00:42:00] implemented into the DOD, that's the Department of Defense, and the Veterans Administration by 2020.

[00:42:06] But I want to say, man, we're not narrow-focused only on veterans. But what we can do right now

[00:42:15] is affect what's going on in the veteran community. And you look at trauma medicine,

[00:42:20] It usually comes off of the battlefield first. Those lessons are learned on the battlefield, and then they come over and they trickle down into the civil sector, and we benefit as a society from some of those hard lessons learned. That's my hope. That's my intent is that this new road that we're paving can make its way to the civil sector, and we can help this problem with all of humanity, not just veterans.

[00:42:47] Yeah, absolutely. And I hear that, brother. Andrew, for anyone listening to the show that may be questioning, I mean, maybe they have someone in their life that could be experiencing these symptoms or maybe they're experiencing this depression and they're recalling some sort of fall or injury or head trauma.

[00:43:07] What do you have to say to that individual? And what is one thing, if we can take one thing away from this conversation, what can we give to that person who is maybe listening and is unable to find the support and the care they need?

[00:43:23] Yeah, well, come to our website, waftbi.org. That's waftbi.org. We have a ton, a ton of

[00:43:35] information on there about the injuries, about for ways to look for help. And then you can get to

[00:43:42] Dr. Gordon or somebody in our affiliated physician network to see if you can get this treatment. And

[00:43:53] laboratory test and let's see what it says. Let's take some objective measurements and see if we can

[00:44:01] triangulate or dial in the underlying condition for your life. But after that, you have to decide

[00:44:10] as an individual, if you're still at a functioning capacity somewhat, that you need to decide that,

[00:44:16] hey, I want to live a life worth living. And from there, you know, things are start to,

[00:44:23] mindset. And from there, you need to define what is the reason that I'm doing what I'm doing?

[00:44:30] Is there a bigger picture behind it? And try to tie your existence into a bigger why.

[00:44:35] And if you don't have a why, you don't have a purpose, then you can usually find a purpose

[00:44:42] by trying to serve somebody else. And my dad put it to me like this. I was having a real tough time.

[00:44:47] And he said, son, you know, I know you're having a hard time and I can't understand everything that

[00:44:53] through. But I know that if you found a way to make your new mission about helping somebody else,

[00:45:02] find a way to put value back into somebody else, I think that'll be able to help you.

[00:45:06] And really, Xavier, that's what saved me. It was understanding that I needed to decide to live a

[00:45:13] life worth living again. And then I needed to find a reason to do it. First, it was, okay,

[00:45:17] I want to get off this medication because I was medically retired. I can't be an operator anymore,

[00:45:24] I'm still a father.

[00:45:25] And then after that, I was like, okay, well, I know there's a lot of people suffering out

[00:45:30] there through these same ordeals.

[00:45:31] Is there any way I can help them?

[00:45:34] And, you know, having that why again, going back for a reason to exist was the reason

[00:45:40] I was able to kind of pull myself out of it.

[00:45:42] And I think that's universal.

[00:45:43] If we can find a way to make what we're doing in our life about somebody else, we'll start

[00:45:48] the path to healing will be illuminated.

[00:45:53] Andrew and, and your, you know, the challenges that you faced and your own living example of

[00:45:59] this recovery that you've made happen for yourself. Yeah. You know, and, and, and again,

[00:46:04] it was, it was, I was at several crossroads and one of them was having to do with alcohol. And,

[00:46:12] you know, I was drinking just massive amounts of alcohol every day to, you know, try to function.

[00:46:17] And I was with a functional neurologist in Texas and he said, Andrew, we know that you've had a

[00:46:23] of head trauma, but the rate at which you're drinking is going to kill you quicker than

[00:46:29] anything else right now.

[00:46:31] And he went on to say, you know, what's more important to you?

[00:46:33] Is it your wife?

[00:46:35] Is it your five children?

[00:46:37] Or is it having another drink?

[00:46:39] You know, and I was like, well, you know, it's my wife and five children.

[00:46:42] He's like, all right, well, then you're going to have to make that decision the next time

[00:46:45] you sit down and you want to have another drink.

[00:46:48] What's more important?

[00:46:50] Because you're going to have to make that choice every time now.

[00:46:54] And that hit me right between the eyes.

[00:46:57] And I just made a decision right there like, hey, man, it's either put up or shut up.

[00:47:01] Either my family is more important to me or drinking is more important to me.

[00:47:07] And that was 26 months ago.

[00:47:09] And I've been sober ever since.

[00:47:11] But I don't say that to highlight myself.

[00:47:12] I'm saying that we all have that power inside of us to come to that crossroads and say, I've had enough.

[00:47:19] And I don't care what it's going to take.

[00:47:22] I don't care how much money.

[00:47:23] I don't care how much time. I don't care if somebody says it can't be done. I want to do

[00:47:31] things better. I want to make better choices, drive better outcomes, live a higher quality

[00:47:38] of life. And I'm telling you that it can be done and it starts with our thoughts and then it goes

[00:47:45] into emotions and it's produced as actions. And if you've had trauma to the pituitary gland,

[00:47:50] the hypothalamus, sometimes you can't produce the right level of thinking that you need to.

[00:47:55] So now we know that we have these alternative means that we're highlighting today in the show

[00:48:00] that can definitely, we can identify it and treat it. So now, you know, you have the power,

[00:48:07] you have the information, you can act on it. I couldn't have said it better myself, man. You know,

[00:48:11] it is so important to have that self-actualization of wanting to make your life better and that

[00:48:18] proactive sense of, okay, I want to make a difference. And your philosophy of I'm going

[00:48:24] to get this message out no matter what it takes, no matter how much it costs, that's huge, man.

[00:48:28] And that's why I respect your work so much. I definitely appreciate your time with me today.

[00:48:35] And I know that you're working on a show with Chris Albert with Warrior Soul. Huge shout out

[00:48:41] to him. He's a good friend of mine. Tell us about the work that you're doing and more about where

[00:48:48] Chris to another mutual friend of ours funny story but you know what I was finding with the

[00:48:53] population that we were treating the small population that were even though we were shown

[00:48:58] to have a massive improvement in their in their laboratory work they were still claiming to have

[00:49:03] problems and that's when I started looking more into neuroscience and you know the the power of

[00:49:11] our thoughts and the power of our emotions and what I found was man we can we can get rid of

[00:49:16] somebody's inflammation, we can balance their hormonal system. But if we continue to think the

[00:49:22] same unserving or negative thoughts, and those negative thoughts continue to bring up the same

[00:49:28] unserving and negative emotions, then we're going to continue to make the same unserving,

[00:49:34] unloving actions. And a lot of times it's I found just because we don't have access to this

[00:49:40] information. I know I didn't before I started looking into it. I was like, really, your thoughts

[00:49:46] actually have the power to maybe make you sick and they actually can maybe have the power to

[00:49:51] make you well but then you look at the placebo effect and the nocebo effect that's a that's a

[00:49:57] real thing like a new

[00:49:59] drug has to be shown to work better than the placebo effect, and I think it gets written off oftentimes too much.

[00:50:06] And it basically says that, hey, this person was given an inert substance, and they got better almost a third of the time in all studies.

[00:50:17] How crazy is that?

[00:50:18] So what that says is that person thought that they were going to get better, and they got better.

[00:50:24] A nocebo effect says we gave the person the correct medicine, and they thought that it was not going to work.

[00:50:31] And guess what? It didn't work.

[00:50:34] And so what we wanted to do with the Warrior Soul was to bring out information that allowed our audience to understand the importance of living their best lives

[00:50:45] and to change what they don't like about their lives.

[00:50:49] And we can do it.

[00:50:50] We don't have to go find some guru or go in the Himalayas.

[00:50:54] We can do it by going inside and saying, hey, man, like I need to be conscious of my thoughts.

[00:50:59] And if they're not producing, you know, a positive effect, if they're not elevating me and elevating everybody I come in contact with, then I got to maybe think about how I'm thinking about things.

[00:51:10] Because then you think, OK, a thought becomes an emotion and emotion becomes an action.

[00:51:15] And if you're not happy with the quality of your life, then you need to go back and retrace those steps and start improving it.

[00:51:22] And so, you know, we're seeing a lot of that in the veteran community.

[00:51:25] And it's almost like a victim type mentality.

[00:51:27] And we just wanted to say, hey, man, like we're in control of our lives, nobody else.

[00:51:32] And you have the power to do it.

[00:51:34] We're going to give you the information from the professionals that, you know, I'm blessed to come in contact with on a daily basis.

[00:51:40] and you can make, you can again be presented with new information and decide to apply it or not

[00:51:45] apply it, but at least you'll have information. And so that's, that's the whole, the thesis of

[00:51:50] our kind of our, our forming together was, you know, trying to just come up with positive ways

[00:51:54] to, to impact the people that we come across. And, uh, it's a veteran audience, but I'm told

[00:51:59] there's a lot of, uh, other people that are, have nothing to do with the military that enjoy the

[00:52:02] show also. So if you want to check it out, it's the warrior soul podcast with my amigo, Chris

[00:52:07] Albert. Yeah, I can't recommend that enough. Chris is just such a warm guy, him and Shauna.

[00:52:13] It's beautiful, beautiful people. Oh, Chris has a phenomenal story. You know, he was a successful

[00:52:19] entrepreneur, ran his own gym, hit the recession, became homeless, was living out of his car,

[00:52:25] and he built himself back up slowly but surely. And now again, he's running several successful

[00:52:32] businesses. He's a social media guru and is producing a high-level podcast. So a really,

[00:52:40] really incredible dude, incredible story. And I know I cut you off there, Xavier. Sorry to do that.

[00:52:45] Yeah, no problem, man. I can't think of two better people, two better minds to join forces

[00:52:50] and create awareness about this. Andrew, where can people find the website, your work, Warrior Angels,

[00:52:56] Warrior Soul

[00:52:57] give us the links

[00:52:58] yeah we got

[00:52:59] everything can be found

[00:53:00] on just one location

[00:53:02] and that's

[00:53:04] waftbi.org

[00:53:05] from there

[00:53:06] you can navigate

[00:53:07] all our social media

[00:53:08] our podcast

[00:53:09] Warrior Soul

[00:53:09] all the information

[00:53:11] as far as

[00:53:12] on head injuries

[00:53:14] you can see a lot

[00:53:15] of our testimonials

[00:53:16] and so hear it

[00:53:17] from first hand

[00:53:18] encounters

[00:53:19] other than my own

[00:53:20] about how this has been

[00:53:21] beneficial

[00:53:22] to somebody else's life

[00:53:23] we are a non-profit

[00:53:24] a 501c3

[00:53:26] If you're looking for a nonprofit to support, please do your homework on us.

[00:53:29] And if it's something you think is worthy and something to get behind, we certainly would welcome and appreciate that.

[00:53:35] Beautiful. Perfect. Andrew, thank you so much for your time, brother.

[00:53:38] I really, really, truly appreciate the work you're doing and just the friendship, man.

[00:53:43] Thank you so much. Any last words here before we cut out?

[00:53:46] I want to shout out to you, Xavier. Thank you, man.

[00:53:49] And, you know, again, it was in October when we linked up for the first time, but I dove into the podcast deep.

[00:53:57] And, man, this is just an incredible forum.

[00:54:00] So thank you, man, for throwing out new information, new ideas, you know, stuff that I would never have access to before, never thought to look at.

[00:54:09] So it's been a benefit to my life, which means it's been a benefit to my wife and to my children and other people I come in contact with.

[00:54:16] And so that's how we start making the world a better place.

[00:54:19] by one, we just start trying to make the system better and you're doing it, brother. So shout out

[00:54:23] to you, my man. Oh, it's heartwarming, man. Thank you so much. Guys, this is the human experience.

[00:54:28] We will make all the links and everything that Andrew mentioned available in the comments and

[00:54:33] the section below. This is the human experience and we will see you guys next week. Thank you so

[00:54:38] much for listening.