Change Your Brain Every Day - How a Traumatic Brain Injury Affected My Life with Josh Perry

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

It’s been said that the act of failing only occurs if you don’t get back up again. No one knows this concept more than pro BMXer Josh Perry, who has fallen (both figuratively and literally) countless times. In this episode of The Brain Warrior’s Way Podcast, Dr. Daniel Amen, Tana Amen, and Josh describe what it’s like to get back up when recovering from something like a traumatic brain injury.

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're here with Josh Perry, BMX biker, champion, brain tumor survivor, brain trauma survivor. And you were just telling us in the break that,

was it after a year coming back? Yeah. Surgery was April, 2010. And this was about July, I believe it was July, 2011, Ocean City, Maryland. What happened? So we had a contest back then called the Dew Tour. That's another story. They built a course on the beach in Ocean City. It had been a little over a year. Like Dave Mayer said, you do the homework, the test is easy. I was doing the homework. I was practicing all day, training, started learning about nutrition, drinking more water, less sugar, less alcohol, things like that. I was just ready.

It was just practice. I was going around one of the lines in the ramp to get the feel for the route I wanted to take during my contest run and i came up short on this ramp so it was a six foot ramp and i was about i think like eight feet above that and i was coming my back tire tagged and i went straight over the bars to my face like the left side of my face on the flat bottom so i was about eight feet when my bike hit i was on top of it straight to the ground and my friends and the medics on the sidelines you know watching so they heard me snoring soon but hey it was actually on

the perimeter ramps of the course they said i hit so hard i was snoring instantly the medics rolled me over when they got to me they said my heart had stopped about 30 45 seconds and i actually woke up in the ambulance throwing up and i just was so confused and it's what it came that i have like a huge lump down my right hand my knuckle was broken and I didn't even I just was like what happened you know throwing up actually so uh that that was about 14 months after brain surgery oh god there are so many pieces to that story people wouldn't understand are important like brain surgery all by itself has general anesthesia people have general anesthesia so children who have general

anesthesia have a higher incidence of learning problems adults who have it have a higher incidence of dementia there's controversy about that there's studies for and against but general anesthesia is generally not good for your brain so we have trauma we have the tumor, general anesthesia, and then your heart stops. And any form of anoxia where you don't get oxygen to your brain. Because your heart stops. Heart stops.

Can damage your brain. So you've got multiple insults. And your scans show it. But the exciting thing that I want people to really get is when you get serious about brain health, that you can very often make it better. But then when did the tumors come back? So that was July 2011. It was September 2012. so that was july 2011 it was september 2012 just one of the yearly mri showed a small like blueberry size mass in the front in the rear of the same area the original tumor was located in

dr freeman said it was due to the complications once they got in the tumor was wrapped around the optic nerve and an artery and so it was actually six hours surgery that's supposed to be like four and i remember meeting him five years later again and he just didn't miss a beat he knew he was like he remembered everything and he said it was because of that so that's when the um the two regras came back was 2012. so let's just pause for a minute and talk about the impact to society of traumatic brain injury um one of the things that shocked me, so I'm an army trained psychiatrist. I trained at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. And when I trained in 1982, we had a lot of Vietnam veterans. And so we actually had talked about traumatic brain injury and the impact it could have on your mental health but i had no idea that literally 40

of the patients that come to amen clinics have had a significant traumatic brain injury at some point in their past it is a major cause of psychiatric illness and nobody knows about it it's a major cause of anxiety depression suicidal ideation ADHD school failure drug and alcohol abuse homelessness incarceration when you damage the brain if everybody and I think most people believe your brain is involved in everything you do how you think and feel and act, how well, you know, Tana and I get along. Your brain is involved in everything. If you hurt it, it's going to hurt your ability to be your best self. Yeah, for sure. And you seem pretty healthy and you seem, yeah, I haven't been there through the whole healing process.

Obviously I'm sure there were a lot of ups and downs. Um, but you seem like you've taken a very proactive approach to getting well, I've heard you mentioned several things and you seem very purposeful and being purposeful is a big part of it. And, and as we mentioned before, you mentioned the falling piece, you know, falling is just part of it and you get back up. And I wanted to touch on that before. Um, we talk about that in martial arts a lot. And for women, that's a, that's a hard thing. We want to be perfectionists and BMX, maybe you do too, but you can't be. So falling is just a, it's an important part of learning strategy. It's important. It's like built in you fall. It's not considered failure. It's like, Oh, it's just, you only fail if you don't get back up. And that was such a huge awakening for me. It was like, oh, you're supposed to fall. You're

just supposed to learn how to get up safely and quickly, right? And move on. And you learn from it. And that was huge. That was a huge metaphor for me for life. And it was really important. Yeah, for sure. I mean, you said a bunch of things that come to mind is I remember, you know, when I first heard Dr. Amy speak at at ian it was brain envy and so i remember being on that path and it started with you know watching documentary that led me here on youtube and google and all over the place and then i found dr promo's with brain brain just before i rolled the ian and i was like man i started making massive shifts and dr amon's work and then mark citizen spoke in there and dr mark hyman and i was like all this stuff makes sense um so it was just like let's be proactive making massive shifts and Dr. Amon's work. And then Mark Sisson spoke in there and Dr. Mark Hyman.

And I was like, all this stuff makes sense. So it was just like, let's be proactive. I was still a fearful state and learning, learning a little bit about epigenetics and, you know, the ability we have to make changes with our health. Let's just keep doing this.

But then as I've gone on and I've learned about, you know, mindset being my favorite thing to talk about and really just perspective. In context is essential in life. That's one of my biggest beliefs. And my perspective was altered by the first brain tumor. And then it's obviously shifted a lot since then. It's progressed.

And then you mentioned purpose. And a friend of mine told me a story that he was at a job one day before he started his business. And the boss was like, hey, Isaac, are you on self or you're on purpose today and oh i love that yeah so i have a bracelet that says off self on purpose and the third diagnosis this few years ago was one of those wake-up calls i was like there was no feeling sorry there was no feeling anything of course it was a little bit of frustration but it was literally like what can i do to benefit from this experience and how can i help people and that's when i stopped competing it was 2017 because i was like man like

our sport's not that big it was like nba i have a bigger reach you know but no one cares if i go compete or not they just care what i represent and let's let's take all that energy time focus and put it on purpose to serve and support and let's create more abundance for everyone and that's just where my mindset is now. It's like, what can I do to bring value instead of hearing people like, how can I, you know, how can I learn this? Or how can you help me? It's like, how can I help you? And in doing so, it's just a by-product that, you know, more opportunity comes to me, more opportunity to help people.

And then just, it's a, it's really fascinating how that your world shifts with these perspectives. Yeah. That's actually fantastic. I love that. Are you on sulfur? Are you on purpose? That's fantastic. I really like that.

One thing I do when something's going really badly and I've had to train myself, it didn't come naturally, train myself to do when something's really bad or I'm really nervous. And I love this because what you're describing is what we call the warrior mindset. You have a warrior mindset, not a warrior, but a warrior mindset. And that's really great. Um, what I like to do is I ask myself a series of questions. The minute something's going wrong, it's I, I built it in just like I built in, you know, I like the ICU trauma nurse training. It's what can I learn from this? What can I be happy about? What can I be grateful about?

And what can I be purposeful with? Right? So when something's really going bad, like if you can, if you can instantly do that, it just instantly shifts your mindset to, oh my God, I can't believe this is happening to me too. What can I be grateful for? What can I learn? What can I, you know, how can I be purposeful? And it's like, it just instantly puts you in that warrior, you know, proactive state

of mind. So it's a really important thing, but it takes training. You know, if the training is hard, the battle is easy. Right. So when we come really important thing, but it takes training, you know? It takes time. If the training is hard, the battle is easy, right? So when we come back, so we've talked a little bit about Josh's story. We've talked about the impact of traumatic brain injury. Now what I want to do in the next two podcasts is talk about, well, what are the big lessons you've learned? What is it that you really want to share with our audience? And what questions might you have for us after you've gone through the evaluation process? I also want to hear when you saw your scan, what that was like.

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