Change Your Brain Every Day - Brain Trauma: Finding the Right Recovery with Josh Perry

Episode Date: July 24, 2019

BMXer Josh Perry knows a few things about brain trauma, having experienced multiple concussions, some of which had resulted in loss of consciousness and even seizures. But while Josh has done many bad things to his brain in the past, he’s now become a brain warrior and is constantly taking action to improve the function of his brain. In the third episode of a series on brain injuries, Josh tells Daniel and Tana Amen how he found his personal roadmap to recovery.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. In our podcast, we provide you with the tools you need to become a warrior for the health of your brain and body. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we have been transforming lives for 30 years using tools like brain spec imaging to personalize treatment to your brain. For more information, visit amenclinics.com. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is also brought to you by BrainMD, where we produce the highest quality nutraceuticals to support the health of your brain and body. To learn more, go to brainmd.com. Welcome back. We are back with Josh Perry, our BMX racer and, well, trick writer actually, and brain cancer survivor. And what a story. This has been a

fantastic story, Josh, and I love this. And we want to start with a question and a challenge for our listeners and our viewers. And so we want you to post, if you will, what brain challenges have you had and what have you been, let's say, I don't want to say feeling sorry for yourself about, but what have you been struggling with? Let's put it that way. I certainly struggled in the past with having cancer. You certainly struggled when you first heard about cancer, but you have been such a warrior in turning it around. And I want to hear what have you guys been struggling with and what can you do to make it better? So at the end, post that for us. You can tag us or you can go to brainwarriorswaypodcast.com and we'll read that out loud and we'll read your questions.

But welcome back, Josh. And this has just been a fantastic story. So yeah, you want to talk about- So before we jump in, last night, three of our five grandchildren came over to the house and Haven just turned one. And Haven is now walking. But in the process of walking, every seven, eight, maybe 10 steps, she falls on her butt. And she doesn't get discouraged by falling on her butt she laughs and then she gets back up and i imagine in learning to be a world-class um bmxer is falling is part of it and when you learn when you fall it's not failure as you were saying in martial arts. It's just part of the process. And to see her giggle and just be so happy with herself. Because she's learning every time she does it,

what to do better next time. So yeah, it's great. All right. Big lessons from your experience. I love that you went to IIN. It's called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, where I'm one of the teachers. It's really a great course to teach people that food is medicine or it's poison. Right, or not. Or not. Yeah, Tana and I often say the weapons of mass destruction. Everything you put on the end of your fork matters. ISIS has nothing on our food industry that, yeah, we can do so much better.

So big lessons. What comes to mind when you hear that question? There's three that I love sharing and I'll say those after, but you mentioned a few things I wanted to talk about and like the whole following aspects. I've learned that the desire to accomplish something,

you don't see failure because you're so focused on the desire and that you don't have the outside influence of society you know brainwashing to a degree but like subconsciously programming you so like oh like let's not try again because i'm afraid that what they may think or i'm afraid like you don't have those blocks so from a young age learning about that subconsciously even through bmX or any sport, injuries happen, but it allows you to progress throughout life or maybe larger events that take place. You know, it helps you a lot. And that's what I've seen. You know, I've had a couple of friends and family members take on lives. I've been to my own battles of depression. There's so

many things, but I did not have that foundation. I don't believe I would have been able to get through them as strongly as i have because of that perspective and so that was one thing i wanted to mention and then i am was more of me just freaking out of all this conflicting information i was learning and really wanting to be the best version of myself and do the best i could and thankfully i got into dr promoter's work straight before i am the month before but i was just like he's talking about eating more fat These people are saying fat causes cancer and heart disease. What do I do? And so I am was that I talked to a few people, I graduated, and it's gonna be great. The first thing Joshua said, when we're in there was we're not here to teach you what to think we're here to teach you how to think. And I remember getting just like pissed off. I was like,

what? Like, I paid all this money to learn, but it ended up being great. And it made sense as we evolved. So that's obviously where I found Dr. Eamon's work and now here. So I'm really grateful for that. Now, the three things that I've summed my 30 years up into, and number one, I talked about this earlier,

but perspective and context is essential in life. And I argue that gratitude is the key to abundance because whatever your belief is that gave you life and everything around you, if you're not grateful for even the pain you're dealing with, how can you expect to have more? You're a living human being. Some people don't wake up. That's a fact. We've all experienced that, but

you woke up. You have the chance to make yours work better. And that leads to number two, health is internal. I learned that the hard way. But I'm aware that it's not just what's on the outside. It's not what's on the scale. I was a picture for example of health for the doctors. And I thought they know all. I'm just

a civilian. What do I know? And it happened to be something internally wrong with me thanks to hitting my head again. I found that out. I don't suggest people have to hit their head to learn, but that's what did it for me. And then number three is our reality is the manifestation of our choices. Choices and thoughts, beliefs, doubt, self-talk, food, sleep,

or lack thereof, like all these things. Literally, our reality is based on the choices we make every single day. And it may not happen right away. It may not be easy. But if we want to create a new reality to live in, then we have to make changes. Otherwise, to me, it's not possible. Absolutely true. I love that. I also believe that when we, I believe people have to be careful. We just did a podcast on language because

what you're thinking, it all starts with your thinking. Like you just said, the decisions you make, what you think leads to the decisions you make, and that becomes your reality. But when you put words to it, it becomes your experience. It becomes, when you label something, it becomes the experience you have. And so when you think something and then you just start saying it over and over and over, it seals it. It becomes the experience you had, right? And it may not have even been that, but you've labeled it that, now you've just sealed it. So how we say things- It's basically Dr. Joe Dispenza or Nicola Perra. Yeah. You know Dr. Joe Dispenza or Nicole LaPera. Yeah. You know Dr. Joe Dispenza

really well. Yeah, Joe and I are friends. Joe has referred many patients to the clinics. So I got into his workshop about three years ago and that's when I started

learning about subconscious and like all these things. I was like, man, like at first, I was like, I don't understand any of it. And now I'm just so into it. I'm like,

it doesn't matter what someone's talking about. I'm like, I'm always thinking like, well, I wonder what their experience has been leading to that thought or that program and things like that. So yeah. I think your subconscious doesn't have a sense of humor.

So you have to be careful what you put there. So be careful how you talk to it. It's interesting because you mentioned thoughts creating our emotions and our experiences. And I know Dr. Joe talks a lot about that. But something a friend shared with me that's helped me a lot and I've shared with other people is something called the TERRA method. And it stands for thoughts, emotions, actions, and results. Or I like to put reality.

So if you start with an emotion, stress or fear, whatever those are common, what are your thoughts that are triggering that emotion? That's creating your emotional state. That's leading you to taking action one way or the other, less than the result. So if you don't like the reality you have, well change our thoughts create a new emotional being instead of sitting on the couch or being in bed sad for ourselves

we'll get up and take action right you can't help with any outcome that's just something that's helped me a lot whenever you mention me um your go-to that's just one line that i'm sharing yeah it's fantastic yep so when you saw your scan, what was that like going to the Atlanta clinic, seeing Dr. Unir Ali? Walk me through that a little bit. So Dr. Ryan Lowry and I, we had a lot of chats beforehand. We were going over what we expected to see. We were prepared. And then going through the initial um evaluation that we call like the breakdown debrief uh after all the scans we did a third additional scan with exogenous ketones uh but really like here it is like that anxious excitement feeling and then like oh like

my thoughts were wasn't as bad as i thought and. Ali explained a lot of the changes I've made in the last four or five years probably helped that, of course. But it still was like, man, like seeing a hole in your brain, even though it's not a legit hole. It feels like a hole, right. You can't help but feel crushed. You're like, man, this is weird.

That's how I felt, yeah. I'm a perfectionist. So it was a mixture of feelings and i i prepared myself between a lot of the different scans you know and i was right but still but see that's good because that's the thing that makes you want to be better that's the athlete in you that's the thing i can improve on i mean that's what i do it's like i'm always looking for the thing i can do better what can i how can i like keep making it better and that's not a bad thing so as long as you don't let it get you discouraged that's okay so you know i tell people whatever we see

is good news because you have what you have and if we can make it better if it's awesome just keep doing what you're doing but if it's not awesome we have we need to ramp up our rehabilitation and our training. And it gives us a map. And so that's what's exciting. It's basically giving us a starting point. Ryan and I were filming just like takeaways beforehand. Like what do we expect? The thoughts, I was like, man, like I'm scared,

but I know this is going to be great because it's going to show me really what's going on. And then we can make changes thereafter to help improve so exactly you can't you can't go somewhere you want to go unless you know where you're starting exactly and just the health of that and what changes did you make since seeing your scan so um starting with supplements took some out that weren't doing as much as i thought but then really added in high dose of mega fish oil or mega three fish oil, um, on the brain MD brain and power memory or brain and memory power boost. Um, we did a lot of lab work after,

which I've never done besides just full lab work from the doctor that I went to. So I looked at a lot of different things. My vitamin D was a little bit lower than we expected. And testosterone was relatively high. I think it was, what, 1,100 at the 0 to 900 scale. Wow. So someone who's had multiple traumatic brain injuries, that's unusual. Yeah. That's what we were really interested in.

And then to see my free T3, I think, was a little low. But I'm still learning a little bit more about that with my eating patterns and things. But for the most part, everything was fairly great, despite what we expected from the traumatic brain injuries and tumors. So yeah, just adding in some supplements like that. I'm also using the DOPA Plus supplement because learning with me and ADHD and prefrontal cortex deficiency and blood flow and energy has me seeking out stimulants all the time and makes sense why i can flip and spin at the same time within two seconds and know where i am right but also hinduism in other areas so um yeah it wasn't too many changes that i wasn't already doing it was more just like getting detailed lab work and detailed supplements and so fine tuning and what about hyperbaric oxygen? Did he recommend that for you?

Yes. I need to follow up with, I forget his name, that Gigi kept me with to reach out about getting that sort. Because there was a debate a little bit about hyperbaric oxygen in the four tumors I still have and that being an issue, but I think we're being on the side it may not be an issue. So that's the next step is getting the hyperbaric oxygen, which I've never done before. Yeah, I would, for sure, I'd check with your neurosurgeon and see if he has a take on it, but we've seen hyperbaric oxygen significantly increase blood flow to the brain. And what do you think the percentage of ADD in BMX bikers? Maybe I'll do it. I just got to leave out that 5% for the one-offs.

Yeah, it's up there. Yeah, I would suspect because in a way, in order to do some of the tricks you've done, that you have to have not impulsive because because i i to do what you've done and not die you have to be pretty disciplined but to want to do that excitement seeking for sure to want to do that yeah it's sort of like jumping out of a helicopter so i'm gonna assume i'm gonna assume they probably told you you need to like not get your head rattled much anymore if you want your brain to be good. Yeah.

And it was two months ago that we had the scan and we go back in October for a six month follow up scan. So I decided to take a whole six months off of riding because although I don't compete anymore, I'm still very able to maintain that level of riding and I enjoy it. But now I'm like, all right, my own health, of course, but then also so we don't mess up the results. Right. So now it gives you something to shoot for, right. I'm in a new movie called Quiet Explosions. And it goes through three of our patients. And one of them, Sean Dollar,

is a world record holder for big wave surfing and 62-foot crazy um and he he did some things between his first scan and his follow-up scan um but his follow-up scan wasn't better which made him and i really ramp up his treatment and he And he's just been so grateful. For him, it was hormones that he really got dramatically better after that. So the next scan is just what it is based on what you're doing. Our hope, obviously, is it's better. But if it's not, it just teaches us, okay, we need to be serious, even more serious about what we can do

to rehabilitate your brain. Well, and one thing that no one talks about, and this is the neurosurgical ICU nurse in me, I've taken care of multiple people, actually several people who, one was motocross, but two BMX bikers who broke their necks. They had helmets on, but they don't, they don't protect you from compression fractures, right? So when you land on your head, your head can snap backwards or you can land and it can actually do a compression fracture if you go straight down. And, um, oh yeah, no, one was a quadriplegic, one had to wear a halo. Um, so it, they don't protect the neck. Huh? Was one of them Stephen Murray? I't remember this was a long time ago um so I was there at the event where he landed on the back of his neck broke his spine he's been um for the

most part head down paralyzed but this was like 16 years ago so yeah so it was a long time ago all right when we come back in fact what was the question that you wanted everybody to ask so if you have struggled with something you've heard about your health and it's really, you took a big hit from it, what have you struggled with and how can you now turn that around and become better? So with the information you've heard, we want to hear from you. What have you really struggled with? I know when you heard cancer, you said your world just began to collapse. They told you you might die. What kind of news did you get that really, did you fall? You fell flat on the mat, right?

Like I talk about in martial arts. And how can you get back up? How can you now make that become purposeful with that? Or how can you at least turn it around and, you know, become better with that? Go to brainwarriorsway.com. Leave us a message. Or you can tag one of us on Instagram or Facebook. So Tana Amon orway.com. Leave us a message or you can tag one of us on Instagram or Facebook. So Tana Amon or Daniel Amon, leave us a message. We want to hear from you. We want to

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