Change Your Brain Every Day - How Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment Saved Grace’s Life – Part 3 of an Interview with Shannon Kenitz

Episode Date: June 1, 2017

Executive Director of The International Hyperbarics Association, Shannon Kenitz discusses with Dr. Daniel Amen and Tana the role that SPECT imaging plays in hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Shannon shares her story of how SPECT scan analysis allowed her to see the progress in her daughter’s brain, allowing her to heal.

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. Welcome back, everybody. We're here with Shannon Kennetson having so much fun in our week with kids with challenging needs, hyperbaric oxygen. And today we're going to talk about imaging. And one of the parts, of course, I love about your story is when you took Grace to Florida and she was in the hospital, you said, can she have a spec scan? And they sort of rolled their eyes at you. It's like, well, what would that tell you? Right. And so how did you first hear about SPECT?

And why was that important to you? So I first heard about it. So I heard about hyperbarics to other parents. And when I started then to do some research, I saw some of your literature and learning about, you know, you can actually measure blood flow. You can measure different things in the brain. And because, you know, Grace had that brain biopsy and we knew that there were issues in her brain, I was like, okay, I wanted to know that hyperbarics was working, not just from the outside where i could maybe see improvements with grace but i wanted to make sure that her brain was repairing because that's the kind of personality i have and then i wanted that evidence basically i did it because i i knew that if i had that proof and i felt that that scan if it improved that that would be my proof that i could take it to places and make them change the rules so your first scan so your first scan was a before scan?

Yes. You wanted it before you started the hyperbaric oxygen? We did it before hyperbarics. Then we did it right around 45. And then we had probably five or six after that as well. Oh, wow. Yeah. And did you see steady improvement? Or did you see that it went forward and backward?

What did you see? We always had steady improvement. And then the last two pretty much were the same, which really correlates with the last two muscle biopsies that she had that really just remained in that 85 range um so we even though we were seeing it clinically but 85 means that your kid went to prom and walked across the stage and yeah went from being taken off life support to having a very functional high functioning functioning life. Yes. And I think that, you know, for me also with having the scan done was then there was other things I could be doing too as well. And I think that, you know, for a lot of people having that, you know, piece, I mean, it was

very enlightening to see that scan in front of me and the doctor say to me, you know, this is why you need to let your daughter go. Look at her brain. You know, you need to let her go, you know?'m like okay well I can't give back five dollars or a dollar worth of pennies to the neighborhood boy scouts that you know gave me donations and so I'm going to try it and then then getting that second scan and seeing the different colors on the scan and seeing the areas were starting to fill in and things were starting to look better gave me hope wow you know because i saw you know i actually had an image to look at to say that you know it can be repaired you know well and one of the things see if she would have saw me

we would have seen the devastation but then i have a program that'll actually tell me how much better can she be so I can actually tell you the prognosis of so for example I saw a girl from Alaska and she had a door fall on her head that was terrible and cracked her skull when she was two years old and she killed her frontal lobes and just had no judgment beautiful but when i put it through the program she wasn't going to get better because she killed her frontal lobes what i needed to do was get her a guardian to help her with decision making so there are times you can all the other things right but i wouldn't want to tell her parents oh making. So there are times you can tell. All the other things. Right. But I wouldn't want to tell her parents, oh, she's going to get better.

Because then she's in trouble. But with Grace, because I saw Grace's after scan, and if I would have dropped the threshold or put her through my program, I would have went, this is a kid that can get better. And 98 times out of 100, there's a positive prognosis for people by doing the right thing. And I have a new paper coming out on autism. And what we discovered, it's not one thing. Stop saying it's one thing because it's not. It's 10 different things at least. But for the kids who have low blood flow, either because of an infection or a toxin,

it can be improved. And hyperbaric is just one of the safest things to do for it. And I think what you said is really important because people don't know when they come here what to expect or when they get a spec scan and i think that one of the controversies about it is like oh we give false hope or and that's not true what we help you do is come up with a rational plan right we tell you the truth like we know like like you said this person has the potential to get better this person you need to make different plans for so you need to get a guardian for or whatever and that's that's really

important to know is that it's not just you know pie in the sky thinking it's like you can't change what you don't know well think of the alternative which is not to look which is to make diagnoses based on symptom clusters and your daughter would not be here with us right right right if i had not and i'm like i mean just listening to you talking like reading your the papers that you've been sending me and stuff like my next big thing is i'm getting my 20 year old in here to be scanned you know i mean i carry the gene and she has some little things besides just being a pain in the butt 20 year old girl um that you know it'd be i it's beneficial for you know to just have that looked at

to say you can see that maybe she's going to have trouble in these areas because of A, B, C, and D. So I think that that's an incredible thing and people are so lucky to have an AIM clinic. And it's not just for people who are troubled. No. That when you look, you get serious about brain health yeah even our 13 year old we use it for optimization and our 13 year old's awesome but her scan was so helpful because it showed she

really had sort of an ocd rigid brain which used to make me crazy so i didn't understand why she couldn't just let it go and so seeing that i'm like okay and so brain-driven behavior it's not will-driven behavior so it led us to okay here are the right supplements for you and she now she takes the supplements willingly because she understands it right and her cerebellum which is a hugely important part of the brain that people just ignore but was really low in activity and so she was never the kind of kid that wanted to play basketball quit and i used to get mad that she quit i thought she was just like i'm like you cannot quit stuff like you have so i was like irritated that she would quit stuff and what i didn't realize is that she felt incompetent

so she didn't want to do it was a who was a little on the worried side And rigid side Who felt incompetent It's like they didn't think about it once They think about it a thousand times And so now she knows it And she knows coordination exercises Are part of her plan to have a healthy brain So she dances

Like 15 hours a week Because she knows it helps her So exciting Because that's like all about the prevention that i was talking about that our country needs to go to i mean you know the scanning it would be a huge thing but people go it's expensive and it's like no no being sick is expensive having an unoptimized brain is is expensive um one of the things we we discovered with our special needs kids is some of them had brains that were just on fire that their brains were working way too hard

and i needed to calm them down other times they were just devastated. And so I needed to really find ways, appropriate ways to stimulate them. But if I didn't look, I couldn't tell by talking to them or by talking to their mom and dad. And that's still the standard way kids with special needs are diagnosed with autism or non-verbal learning seems very archaic it just doesn't seem in this day and age so just kind of walk me like i'm gonna kind of ask you a question like walk me through this because i get a lot of calls from parents and they because they know that grace has had spec imaging and they know that i'm a proponent of i'm always telling parents that they should do this. And their biggest thing is, okay, well, is it a radioactive dye? How do I get my kid to sit still? Do they have to sit still?

Are you going to sedate them? So, you know, what are the answers to those? So it's not a dye. So nobody has an allergic reaction to it. Like with a CT scan, it's a radiopharmaceutical. So nuclear medicine has been part of medicine for 60 years. And they get a little bit of radiation. It's about the same as a CAT scan. So if you fall down the stairs, immediately they're going to do a CAT scan. So hundreds of thousands of CAT scans are done every day in the United States. So it's not a dangerous level of radiation. It's sort of a normal medical level. And according to the US government, you can have this level of radiation times 10 every

year. So it's not a big deal. But the critics will get hysterical about it. And I'm like, well, you don't get hysterical about an abdominal CT if somebody's got belly We did several in a day sometimes in the trauma unit. You do have to hold still. And that's why the triple-headed cameras are so important. Because when we first started, we had single-headed cameras, and it took an hour to get a scan.

You're not going to get any kid to sit still for an hour. So we can do it in about 15 minutes. But you do need to hold still. Otherwise, you know, like if you move when you take a picture of somebody, it's going to blur the image. For kids who can't, and we have great technologists who are just sweet and loving and kind to get most kids to sit still or lay still.

You don't go into a tube. Nobody gets claustrophobic from it. Mom and dad can stand right next to you. You can put on cool music. You need to lay still for 15 minutes. For some of our autistic kids or some of our demented patients, if they can't, we'll sedate them. Now, you can't sedate them before you inject the medicine because otherwise you get a picture of a sedated brain, which is not what we're after. Even if they're screaming, it's okay. And we don't like it, but we need them awake. Sometimes it's necessary.

We need them awake and then we'll sedate them so that they can lay still. We have a nurse anesthetist, she comes and does that. We've done thousands of sedated scans. I know some people, they get the diagnosis of autism. They just automatically sedate them. We're not like that. You know, it's like, well, let's talk about, you know, can we bribe the child? We're not about bribery. We're absolutely not about bribery.

But generally, it's an easier procedure. So we did at Stanford a head-to-head study with SPECT and fMRI at Stanford many years ago. And they had just a heck of a time getting the kids to be in the MRI tube because it sounds like machine

gun fire. And it's literally claustrophobic feelings. And with SPECT, we didn't have any problems getting the ADHD, you know, the hyperactive kids to, you know, lay still for 15 minutes because we're bribing them. And they're not in this big tube that's firing at them, you know. And, you know, there are lots of myths and misconceptions about SPECT. It gives you a diagnosis. It doesn't. It tells you the underlying physiology of the problems you see. I mean, I can tell in about 10 minutes if somebody has ADHD or

they're depressed or they're bipolar or autistic because I've been doing this a long time. What I can't tell is what's going on in their brain and what they're likely to respond to. I can't do that without a map. And you've heard it said a picture is worth a thousand words, but a map is worth a thousand pictures. A map tells you where you are and gives you direction on how to get to where you want to go. And that's what you got with grace. And then periodically, like you're on a journey yes you map it and you go well how am i doing so we give it sort of like GPS for the brain well that was perfect I'm gonna use this on my website my parents exactly what I want because I

had they people know that I love that I tell them they need to do scans for various reasons because I think it is important and And I think the brain mapping is incredible. And I think that's the way of the future. And I just got it from the best person ever. So I'll be able to put that on my website. Was that all of your questions? Did that answer sort of the questions? Yeah, that did.

Because the parents are. Well, we are just so grateful to Shannon. And you can learn more about her and her work at shannonandgrace.com get.com.com shannonandgrace.com so you can learn about um special needs and the medical academy of pediatric special needs maps where i'm blessed to teach you can You can get a link to that website to find a doctor that's been trained. A completely different way to look at helping children.

You can also learn about her work with the International Hyperbarics Association and all the other amazing things she's doing. Thank you so much for being with us. Thanks so much for having me. Thank you for listening to the Brain Warriors Way podcast. We have a special gift for you. It's an opportunity to win an evaluation at the Amen Clinics. All you have to do is subscribe to this podcast, leave a review and rate us on iTunes. To learn more about Amen Clinics and the work we do, go to amenclinics.com. You can also learn about our

nutraceutical products at brainmdhealth.com. Thanks for listening.