Change Your Brain Every Day - Can You Overcome PTSD After Being Away At War? PT. 2 Denny’s Story

Episode Date: February 7, 2018

Denny Salisbury returned home from Iraq a different person. He had suffered a traumatic brain injury during a horrific car bombing that took the lives of others in his vehicle. The medication that the military subsequently prescribed for him only made things worse, and after attempting to take his own life, Denny decided he needed a different option. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana Amen are joined by Denny as he relays the story of finding his path to recovery.

Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. I'm Dr. Daniel Amen. And I'm Tana Amen. Here we teach you how to win the fight for your brain to defeat anxiety, depression, memory loss, ADHD, and addictions. The Brain Warriors Way podcast is brought to you by Amen Clinics, where we've transformed lives for three decades using brain spec imaging to better target treatment and natural ways to heal the 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 nutraceutical products to support the health of your brain and body. For more information, visit brainmdhealth.com. Welcome to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. All right, welcome back. We're with Denny Salisbury talking about Iraq and IEDs. Hard story. And multiple psychiatric medications. And so Tana meets Denny on a survival weekend, which, as she said, I was ambivalent about. He wasn't ambivalent.

He was clear. I was in the Army for 10 years. He was clear. He was not going. I did enough survival training. He looks at me and he goes, do I not take good care of you? Do I not put a really

nice roof over your, why are you going to go sleep out in the wilderness? Anyways, she was so excited when she met you and thought our work could be helpful. So she invited you to the clinic. What was that like for you? So before I mean Let me back up for one second because he probably thought I was a crazy lady because I hear his story and I'm like trying to tell him hey this is what we do like I'm like I

jump in like my maternal kind of way that I do and he probably thinks I'm psychotic so and I'm trying to tell him what we do and then I'm reaching out to him and he's probably like who is this crazy person? You know, so I mean the whole way that it came up was probably a little intense for him. I'm suspecting because I can be intense.

Really? A little bit. So I'm going to guess that it probably was a little weird for you knowing me, which I don't try to be, but I am, a little intense. So tell us from there, like what you were thinking and then how you came here. I like to emphasize when I teach that everyone has something to teach.

You know, you can learn from everyone. It doesn't matter if you're the instructor. And so when I tell my story, that's kind of like my hopes is to entice people to maybe share their story with others within the class, you know, explain to them even why they were there or why they're excited about being in a class about wilderness survival. So to hear you come up and talk to me, I mean, it was awesome because it was about a topic that I was passionate about. You know, I enjoy, I enjoy understanding about my injuries so that I can

overcome them better. So not everyone thinks I'm crazy. Okay, good. Go on. And what did you think when you were coming to the clinic to get scanned? So I was nervous, obviously driving. I mean, before, because I had no idea what to expect. And then we finally, it took us three hours to get there from Ventura. So I had a lot of time to think about it. And it was, it was nerve wracking. And then I show up and it's just this really nice facility and I kind of again

didn't know what to expect I've never had some radio radioactive dye put in my blood before so well if I could if I could jump in because when I meet Denny and we're out in the field with this wilderness survival he's really bright really confident really on his game. He's like got everything under control. And so when you come into the clinic, he was nervous. Like he was, he was voiced being nervous. He's like, I'm nervous about seeing my brain. And I'm thinking, man, this is this like really tough Marine who like had everything under control and now he's nervous, but that's not an abnormal thing. Right right this is not my point that i want to make wait the point i want to make is it's not abnormal i'm a trauma

nurse and i'm used to having things under control and i was nervous but and that's not an abnormal thing for people to go through so just i just want to like paint that picture he's like i don't know what i'm going to see and it makes me a little uncomfortable okay so so you were nervous and then we went over your scan now the holes um he does not have any holes in his brain but what he had was very significant decreased activity in his frontal lobes so that's that's decreased blood, right? Probably from the blast injuries. Very decreased activity in his left occipital lobe. And so that's what we call a coup, contra coup injury where the front part gets hit and it'll slam the brain against the back part of the skull. Like shaken baby. So Shaken Baby where you see damage in both.

And so even though he's done a great job at his own recovery. More better than most. That there is significant healing that can still occur. And so I showed you, well, here is what it is now. And it's clearly hurt, but here is the potential for healing. And that always gets me excited. So when you left after you saw your scan, what was going on in your mind? So before you showed me what was wrong and how to improve it i was still you know i still had to go through the testing that you guys had and i

remember just being almost like angry at myself because i could see myself choosing the wrong answer every time like before i clicked the button it's like oh that's wrong and i still press the button and but so I mean again still nerve-wracking but then when I when you showed me that how I can improve it that's once that's when it started like settling down for me I seen that there was a path to getting better and that's kind of been something I've been trying to do my since I rap really it's just find the problem understand how to make the solution and and then continue with the path. And that's basically how I viewed it for the entire trip back.

And since, I mean, once you showed me that, I just see that there's a way to recover, and I enjoy that. Well, and I got a really cool text from you. I wasn't expecting it as quickly as I got the text from you about a week afterwards. And you said after only a week, you were starting to feel better. You felt more hopeful and more positive that you noticed your energy was a little better and that you had more energy to go outside and do things with your daughter and that you were excited because you had a plan. So that's what we love.

Usually we get that a couple weeks later, and that was a week after you had been here. So how long did it take before you really started to feel pretty good about it? What we did, just to, so we put you on a group of supplements, multiple vitamin, high dose fish oil, brain boost, and then something to really help with focus and energy. So I really wanted to significantly increase the blood flow in your brain. And given your experience with medication, that's really not where I wanted to go.

I wanted, you know, can we do this naturally? And this is, it's the same protocol we used with our NFL players so we've scanned and treated 200 or more now NFL players their brains actually look very similar to your brain because you know they have thousands of subconcussive blows and so I was really confident we could make a big difference in your life. And you've been really cooperative from what I understand. I mean, that's often what it takes. It's give your brain the nutrition it needs, stop doing anything that hurts your brain, and let the healing accelerate.

Let it begin. And I have a couple questions. So in our last segment, you guys brought up a couple of things, and I think it's sort of relevant here, and I want you to sort of talk about it because looking at his scan, you actually published a huge study where you could see the difference between PTSD and traumatic brain injury. So listening to your story, I'm, I'm shocked. I'm astounded, but yet we hear it all the time

that number one, the military doesn't have a better way of assessing these, these poor kids, their kids before they put them back out in the field. I'm just stunned by that, but it sounded to me like they did not assess well. Okay. He had a massive brain injury and they did not assess well. He had a massive brain injury, and they did not assess that well. He also had, when I early on in the segment said, oh, wow, when he first got there a month later, he had PTSD and a brain injury before he even had his big blast injury. And you're like, wait, wait, no, he didn't.

I don't understand the difference, because I'm thinking an IED goes off, there's a crater next to me, and everyone, 12 people in my car get a concussion. For me, that's PTSD. Okay, so help me out here. But this is really important. Not everybody who's exposed to a trauma develops post-traumatic stress disorder. So if you think of a bell-shaped curve, 10% of people exposed to a trauma will end up

with longstanding PTSD. But 80% will not. And 10% of people will actually develop this thing we call post-traumatic growth. So this is interesting. This is important. And so we can't just say, because he experienced something bad,

that he had PTSD, you can't do that. After the second blast where your friends are dying and you know, you know, and it sounded clear you had PTSD and you had the effects of traumatic brain injury. And when I looked at your scan, you obviously had the traumatic brain injury. No question in my mind at all. But you also have PTSD. And I published two studies actually on veterans and then a large one on 21,000 people showing what we can separate is this PTSD or TBI or is it both? And it's very clear you had both and people using the tools they had, they

tried to help you, which ultimately hurt you. And there's just such a better way to do this. And the VA has such inertia. It's just, it makes me crazy because I've actually been to the highest levels of the VA going, this is a better way to do it. And they go, oh, that's really interesting. And then nothing happens. And it's a scandal in my mind. We could be doing better and we're not doing better. And it's because people aren't making smart decisions. But that's not why we're here today. Where we're here today is to talk about you and the scan sounds like motivated you, gave you information and hope. And since then you've taken the supplements. What else have you done to help your brain? So I'm trying to get back to fitness, especially with this surgery

on my shoulder. It's just been stagnant. I mean, I'm trying to regain that motivation because I know that, I mean, I got a hopeful future and I want to spend a lot more time doing what I love, which involves a lot of wilderness training and teaching. So I know that I have to get back to that point. In order to get back, I need to be able to help myself. And it's interesting that you guys talked about the PTSD because it's similar to what they taught at Menlo Park through Stanford, which was put on by the VA. They basically said that, and I agree with them, that trauma can happen to anybody. Your interpretation is whether or not you have PTSD. If you grow up and say, you know, your childhood's wonderful and nice, and you experience something that's crazy and bad, that right there can give you trauma,

and vice versa. If you grow up living a terrible, you know, existence at the beginning, and then you experience something nice that you've never seen before, that too can give you trauma. People that, you know, have it neutral, a little bit of both that are able to overcome it the best. And maybe that's how I had it because the PTSD has not been so much of an issue as the TBI for me. I feel like Menlo helped me really recover from the PTSD. I interpreted it and understood what it was wrong, what it was that was wrong with me. So, I mean, just like that, just like the brain scan, that's how I feel. Right. I see the answer to my TBI, whereas I've seen the answer to my PTSD before. And it's exciting, very exciting.

And I know that I have to work hard to get back on track and nutrients and being healthy and eating right is obviously key to that. I mean, along with exercise, like you said, and you had a number of other insults that people usually don't consider insults. So how many times have you had general anesthesia? Oh man, seven. Yeah. And general anesthesia is not good for your brain. And so just coming out of the shoulder surgery it just means okay that's an insult i just need to keep doing the right things to put my brain in a healing environment and your brain can then heal from it but if you eat bad food if you don't sleep, if you are not exercising, you're under chronic stress, you scan, which, you know, we should do fairly soon. Odds are we're going to see it much better. We're going to celebrate that. And for the rest of your life, because your brain has been hurt, you want to be on a brain healthy program. And ultimately, that will allow you to be the best teacher, the best partner, the best father.

But it starts with loving and rehabilitating your brain. And so it's got to be a lifelong commitment to loving and rehabilitating your brain. I'm just curious, Denny, did they teach you meditation? They did, but at that time, I wasn't really in the mindset to begin meditation. It's definitely something I would like to try and pursue in the future. So on BrainFit Life, we have an online community. If we've not given you access to it, we should. BrainFitLife.com.

There's actually meditation audios, brain enhancing music. They help you if you're not used to it. There are hypnosis audios for things like pain and sleep and relaxation. All of those things are natural, right? You're not going to have any side effects from them. But putting them as ways to decrease stress can be really helpful did i talk to you about hyperbaric oxygen you did you said that was one of the best ways to get yeah so if that's something you can do um you know at home or near your home that would be a great thing to help us accelerate healing for your brain so i've definitely kept that in mind i've uh asked a few people that's about it i haven't

it's on the top of my list for healing my brain that's for sure um it's just unfortunately at the moment i had to i've had to focus on my shoulders so i i mean there's a lot going on for me i just gotta stay in the be present and be aware that there is a path for my healing. I mean, if I lose track of that, that's when I slip into the hole of PTSD and start having the issues that so many veterans are experiencing. So that's, it's just being active and aware of it all the time. I'm the same way. Activity for me is critical. I think some of us, for some of us, exercise is medicine. For me, it is certainly medicine.

But I will tell you, because there have been times in my life when I have not been able to be active and it really gets to me. Meditation is like medicine as well. And so when I can't be active is when I really focus on meditating. So if you're not able to meditate on your own yet, cause you're not used to it, sometimes those guided meditations like what Daniel was talking about

can be very, very helpful. And I even have a couple I can send you that I've actually done for my community too. Yeah, no, you should do that. And on BrainFit Life, there's a guided one. So all you have to do is do it with me. Called the loving kindness meditation. Very powerful.

Simple. But great. Yeah. And actually has been shown to help with people have PTSD. So that can be really great. All right. Well, we should plan in a month or so or whenever you feel like okay I'm back from the surgery and you've been on the supplements consistently for three months you should come back and we should scan you and

and this the scan probably going to be better whatever it is is good news because you know we're going to see what you have and and then we'll make more recommendations to try to continue to heal and optimize your brain. And we need to do something on post-traumatic growth and how people can turn their PTSD into post-traumatic growth. Well, and some of the things, Dani, I want you to think about since you've experienced this. So there are five areas of post-traumatic growth. A new appreciation of life, that I'm alive, that I survived, as opposed to the guilt that I survived and other people didn't. How you relate to others, which is different than before.

Your personal strength, new possibilities, and spiritual growth. So those are areas we can talk about. Maybe that's why I don't focus on... You do all of those from your traumatic childhood. And do you know what's interesting? I don't know if you ever experienced this, Denny,

because I hate the idea of being a victim to anything or the idea, like I hate it so much, which is why I sort of like that warrior metaphor for my life. And I focus on martial arts and things that are empowering and notice that when, like when, whenever someone has a message that is sort of puts you in a victim, like we went to church recently and the message was on sexual abuse, but they kept focusing on making women victims. And I got so upset and my head started to hurt. And I think it's because I've spent so much time focusing on not being a victim to it, on turning it around and making it something that I've grown from that you can't sort of tolerate being a victim anymore. So it's really important.

That's like the glass half empty or glass half full kind of people. You know, you can either be a victim or you can be a survivor. Yeah, or a warrior. Well, and by you teaching survival training, I mean, I just think that's a very special metaphor. And you're good at it. Well, that's one of the reasons you fell in love with him. Yep. All right. So stay tuned. You're listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We will have Denny on again. Thank you, my friend. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. Go to iTunes and leave a review and you'll automatically be entered into a drawing to get a free signed copy of the Brain Warriors Way and the Brain Warriors Way cookbook we give away every month. Thank you.