Change Your Brain Every Day - Healing Traumatic Brain Injuries of Firefighters and Football Players With Jerri Sher

Episode Date: April 28, 2021

Dr Daniel Amen and Tana Amen talk with director Jerri Sher about the various methods used to treat traumatic brain injury, including transcranial magnetic stimulation and hyperbaric oxygen.

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 here with our friend, Jerry Schur, writer, director, producer of Quiet Explosions. I love this movie. It's so important i actually got to do the opening voiceover for it and i didn't know when i we got to preview the movie i'm like recognize that voice i like that voice i like that voice too so the big meth that people have is you can't treat traumatic brain injury. They send people home to rest. And it's like, no. It's like if you had a broken arm, would you just go home and rest?

You would not. You would put it in a healing environment. And I love the movie. The movie talks about transcranial magnetic stimulation. It talks about hyperbaric oxygen. It talks about natural supplements. And it talks about balancing hormones. And what a lot of people don't know is if you've had a traumatic brain injury, it's jostled your pituitary gland and all of your hormones can become out of whack. So when my mother fell and she had a really nasty fall, they tested her hormones up because we told them they had to test her hormones because most people don't know.

She had none, zero, everything was flat. They had to replace everything. So important. So, Geri, talk about the hope that you saw. And we can dive in a little bit to each of these treatment modalities. Well, the biggest hope is amazing. Now, the firefighter, Sebastian, who had hyperbaric oxygen therapy in New York every single day for like six to nine months, Dr. Alan Scher, he could not even put a sentence together after he was so traumatized from 9-11 because he was pulling out all of the bodies of his fellow firefighters. He was completely a wreck.

This guy could not speak. He was really in bad shape. Dr. Alan Shearer said, let's put you in hyperbaric. He treated him for nine to 12 months. He still treats him. And this man now is like another human being and the kindest soul. I mean, he helps other people. And we are just so grateful that Dr. Cher in San Francisco told us about his father, Dr. Cher in New York. And then he told us about the firefighter, Sebastian. The hope is that not only are these people well again, but now they're helping other people.

Each person of the movie is doing something so fabulous to give back because they're so grateful that they have their lives back. I mean, look at Mark Rippin. He, a quarterback who, he built a pediatric hospital in Spokane to help children. I mean, this man has a heart of gold. And we toured the hospital and spoke to some of the families. What he has done to help society and through Dr. Amon's clinic and working on TMS, which is transcranial magnetic stimulation through Dr. Sammons in Colorado, he's getting better. And it's remarkable. Yeah, it's awesome. So hyperbaric oxygen. Had you ever heard of that before you

did the movie? I did not. And you know what? People don't know about it. Most people don't know about it. In 10 years, it'll be more common, sort of like what CTE and MRI was like 30 years ago. But unfortunately, Americans don't know about it. It's very prevalent in Israel. It's huge in Israel. I mean, they put 200 people in a chamber at once and they have 10,000 people on the waiting list. Wow.

Well, when we, because we've got them in our clinics and when COVID happened and no one was coming in to use it, I'm like, we're moving one to my house because I love it so much. So they weren't being used. So I'm like, I'm going to use one. Um, so I moved it to my house because I needed to do it. And, um, I love it because I'm not claustrophobic. In fact, I love the, like being in the little cocoon. And it's like, that was my way during COVID when there are so many people in the house, it's like, I get to get away from everybody. This is my little meditation spot. It's so amazing. I feel so much better.

So I first learned about it maybe 15, 20 years ago. I was at a conference with Mike Usler. Mike was a nuclear medicine professor at UCLA. And he showed me before and after SPECT scans of people who were in hyperbaric chambers. And SPECT is a study we do at Amen Clinics. It looks at blood flow and activity, looks at how the brain works, and they were so much better. And so I've been following the research and we do it at Amen Clinics and it's just so helpful. And there are virtually no side effects. And that's what, you know, they taught us in medical school. First, do no harm. Use the least toxic, most effective treatment. So heal with oxygen under a little bit of pressure. Why not? I remember my dad, he wasn't doing well. And he started, remember, he was having these nightmares at night.

He was seeing things. And, you know, and I scanned him. He had low blood flow. I was waiting to put him in a hyperbaric chamber. And it just brightened his brain up. And I published a study on soldiers who were involved in blast injuries and significant increased blood flow to the brain and we published it in the journal neurotrauma but then the traditional brain imaging doctor's like oh don't believe that, you know, it's placebo.

And it's like, look at this scans before and after. You can see it. It's just. But more than you can see it, you can feel it. I mean, that's the important thing is, you know, when people are functioning better, that's what's important. So oxygen is free. You know, like they say in the movie, the reason that it's not, you know, talked about so much is it's not a pharma company where they're going to make money to sell more drugs and more pharmaceuticals. It's sort of a catch 22. This happens in life in many industries, as you know.

So eventually, though, people are going to realize. And I believe I'm pretty sure that in the military for anyone in the military, it's there's a way to do it for free through various uh va hospitals yeah probably because i mean the machines themselves are you know where the expense lies isn't the actual machine because it's got to go under pressure um but probably for the va i would think that soldiers have a have an advantage to be able to get them. Well, and then, so there's hyperbaric oxygen, transcranial magnetic stimulation, which is becoming way more popular. There are TMS centers all over the world now. And we're basically using energy magnetic fields to either increase activity in the brain or to decrease activity in the brain. And you told some stories of how incredibly helpful that was.

Well, Mark Rippin and I was just so grateful that he actually let us sit in on one of his sessions and film it while he was having TMS. And it was so ironic because we were in Spokane, Washington, and that would happen to be the day, which is once every three months that Dr. Sammons comes to Spokane. So we got to meet him and see him and interview him. And honestly, the magnetic stimulation that was happening in Mark's brain, which sounded almost like a woodpecker to me at the time, he swears by it. Mark Rippin said this really brought him back to life.

I mean, this was one of the methods. And he's used many methods and also been seen at the Emmy clinics. But he really felt, and he'll go every now and then every few months for like a pickup kind of thing. He just swears by it. And Dr. Sam is having tremendous, tremendous positivity with other patients as well. Well, in our experience,

especially when you do scan guided TMS to really have a sense of should I stimulate it or calm it, that that's important. And then you developed a very special relationship with Mark Gordon, who's an endocrinologist that helps balance people's hormones. And that's a major part of getting people well again. Absolutely. And how did you meet Dr. Gordon? Well, he was written up in the book that Andrew wrote. And when I read the book, I was taken with Andrew Marr, but I was more taken with this doctor who lived in my backyard in Encino. And he's like, they're saying he's a neuroendocrinologist. And here he's helping this guy. I'm like, this does not make any sense to me. I have to find out more about this because

it's so compelling. And it could help so many people. And when I first met Dr. Gordon, you know, I just couldn't believe that an endocrinologist had figured this all out because Andrew was really very severe. I mean, he was one of the sickest persons of the movie. And this guy who was a Green Beret and helping, you know, people was a blast guy. So he would blast buildings in Iraq, Afghanistan, and blow them up. And, and, and all of these blasts were, you know, IEDs were happening near his head. So months later, he couldn't function at all. I mean, he was severe. So he'd be in a closet in the fetal position, just rocking and crying for like 12 hours. And his wife was so scared. He tried to take his life a few times. So he had tried every modality. And when he finally, Mark Gordon reached out to him when he heard about him and he said,

oh, what the heck? It's another person. I'll just try it. You know, he just thought at this point, no one could help him. And when Mark looked looked at his blood work it was so astounding that he was missing all of these 18 hormones in his brain and the minute they started replenishing it andrew said he felt like cinderella like he had glass slippers on because his whole life had come back to him it's like lazarus it's it's crazy um and that's not a surprise to us because we see it all the time i mean i saw it with my own mother um so who was just circling the drain at one point it wasn't good and then she just like bounced back so I mean we know how important that is you've got to get you it's it's not what I love about this what we're talking about is it's not one thing

you need to really check all of it it's biopsychosocial spiritual you need to really check all of it. It's biopsychosocial, spiritual. You need to really look at all of those circles. Well, we developed this mnemonic, bright minds. If you want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it, it's headed to the dark place. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind, like blood flow and retirement and aging and inflammation and genetics and head trauma and toxins. The N is neurohormone disorders. And, you know, I've just seen this epidemic

of low testosterone in young men. And it's horrifying. And part of it's our diet, but it could be- Part of it's the toxins. I don't know, Jared, if you saw the new study, but we should have done that on Brain in the News, that the size of male genitals is decreasing because of the exposure to toxins. That people who had a higher environmentally toxic load had a lower sperm count, which is devastating for young families and smaller genitals, which would just horrify everybody. So hormones matter, all 11 of those risk factors matter, but a lot of people in SkyTree never think about DHEA,

testosterone, progesterone, and other things risk factors matter. But a lot of people in Skytree never think about DHEA, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, prolactin, and so on. And you go after a lot of that in this movie. You really address a lot of the things that happen that most people don't address. So in Quiet Explosions, I love the movie. We went to the premiere and I just thought it was great. But what I thought was so interesting is that you didn't just go at it from a very traditional medical perspective. It was like, we're going to address all of these things that don't normally get addressed. And those patients got well. And that was just a really cool thing

to see. And that's what we see is, you know, you have to think outside the box. You've got to be looking at all of it. Day in and day out. And now that we're in the middle of this pandemic, COVID-19 is going to become one of those risk factors. The second I in bright minds is immunity and infections, which obviously we're dealing with. So maybe that will be something you work on next. Well, there are wonderful things happening and I'm,

I'm in talks and discussions with people and I never worry about the next thing because honestly the right thing happens. So what I'm supposed to do next and I really believe in my heart and the universe. And what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to give people a compelling story that entertains them, but at the same time educates them yes different from maybe going to a lecture or different from reading a book it's just look they say a picture is worth a thousand words and that's exactly what happens in these movies

that i make because there's four frames in a second and And we have visuals, we have animation, and we have music, and we have all of these elements that form in your brain. And it really is indelible in there. So people learn a lot from the movie, just as much as they would if they were to read a book. They do. And you become attached to the outcomes of the people in it. And that's really cool. I remember, I mean, I was fortunate to be at the premiere, so I got to meet them and that was just awesome. But even in the movie, you're on the journey with them. So you're seeing the pain and you're feeling their pain and just what they've lost. And then you're watching them just, you know, come back. And it's, I think for so many of us, we've got people in our families and that's what we want. We want that hope. So it's just, it gives you that hope to be able to see people come back. Well, when we come back, we're going to talk more about hope and how you are not stuck with the brain. You have that. You can make it better. And in quiet explosions, healing the brain, um, Jerry just does a masterful job of giving people hope. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always

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