Change Your Brain Every Day - Racing Towards Trouble: A NASCAR Driver’s Troubled Brain & Misdiagnosis - Pt. 1 with Chase Mattioli

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

Former NASCAR driver Chase Mattioli knew his life was heading in the wrong direction. In addition to being diagnosed with depression and bipolar disorder, he had suffered concussions and tons of toxic exposure from life on the racetrack. In the first episode of a four-part series on his incredible success story, Chase tells Dr. Daniel Amen what his life was like before he decided to make a change.

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. I have a guest host this week, Chase Mattioli. I'll introduce Chase in just a minute. I am bummed not to have Tana, but so excited to have you. Just read a couple of reviews from Plata Poem. That's an interesting name. These two people are the most dynamic duo that I've ever listened to.

I love that. So inspiring and everything they say resonates and makes so much sense. It is just straight facts backed by science and it is just so unbelievably soothing and comforting to listen to when you're hurting. I'm so inspired and it has changed my life. My husband and my two daughters are noticing and wanting to learn from me now. How to have brain envy. So cool. And then one more from Lotus London from the United Kingdom, which I'm off to tomorrow. I love the clarity of the podcast, highlighting concordance, association between sleep disorders,

such as sleep apnea and psychiatric disorders. It's something I'm mindful of in clinical practice. I look forward to reading The Brain Warrior's Way. So thank you for listening. podcast is hearing from you. This month at Amen Clinics, our theme is it's insane not to look at the brain. And I think that really applies with your story. So Chase actually works with us here in data analysis, and he is the stepson of our CEO, Terry Weber. And when Terry brought your stepsister here. She got so much better that when you were struggling, she was thinking you would really benefit from this.

Definitely. So let's start. We're going to divide this week into four podcasts. We're going to talk about Chase's story, a wrong mental illness diagnosis. And we're going to talk about what he learned from imaging. We're going to talk about where he is today and what are the steps. So it's really about transformation. And then we're going to talk about, well, how do you know if it's something like bipolar disorder, head trauma, or depression, and really the big problems with psychiatric diagnoses. So tell everybody who you are and how this all came about. Well, like you alluded to, I came to

Amen vis-a-vis my stepmother, Terry Weber. She had noticed that my mental health was somewhat deteriorating and my depression was going through the roof about a little over a year ago. And my whole life, I've had a history of, let's say, making less than smart decisions. I was always kind of like a daredevil, whether it was snowboarding or doing extreme sports. I always liked to be out there and kind of taking more risks than I should. That led me to the sport of racing. My family has a history in the sport of racing. We own a NASCAR track in northeastern PA.

And because of having that family relationship, I've been driving cars since I was five years old. So your family owns the Pocono Speedway, which is incredibly famous and part of the NASCAR circuit for a long time. Yep. We were one of the original tracks. We were one of the first ones in the Northeast, and my grandfather was able to found that in the 1960s. So it was really cool, and it's really awesome that it's still in our family. And because of that, it's like less of a company or business for us and more of just like what we do. It's our family.

And because of that, I became a race car driver. And being a race car driver means you crash a lot from time to time. I mean, being a bad race car driver. I don't know if I was the best. Well, even a good race car driver, you cannot control the brains of those people around you on the track. Right? I mean, just the thousands or tens of thousands of scans I've seen, whenever I'm on the freeway and I'm just thinking about all the brains around me, it's a wonder that I can make it from Orange County to LA alive. And so if you take

all race car drivers and what I've seen, there's a lot of toxicity because of the gasoline fumes that you've been around since you were a little boy. There's a lot of toxicity. And how many race car drivers have never been in an accident? Probably not very many. Probably less than 1%. Right. It's like saying a football player hasn't been tackled. So you just see all, so you're on a track with all of these vulnerable brains. Oh, tons. Yeah.

Well, and within the sport, it's not even just the gasoline. There's so many aerosols for cleaning products. I mean, we use lubricants on everything. Even in the car, the oil heater is right behind the driver, and they have to preheat the oil before every race. So you're literally sitting on a cooking vat of oil for about an hour before every race and just ingesting all that. Yeah, there's a lot of bad things about the air quality in NASCAR,

but they are making a lot of improvements since I've been in the sport, and it's definitely getting better. But unfortunately, the issues it caused for me weren't the ones that you would think right away. You know, you think of a car accident, you break your leg, you break your back, break your neck. For me, just got a bunch of concussions, which in racing aren't real injuries. You know, it's one of those things that you can still race the next week. Most times they don't really test you. So, and also within racing, we don't have backups. So it's not like I can get hurt the previous week and miss the next week. You have to show up if you're going to get your points. So a lot of the times, whether it was an

injury from a wreck or a concussion, you just kept going. So it wasn't exactly the best health choices at the time. Wow. Yeah, I was definitely making a lot of non-brain healthy decisions at the moment. So you're around toxic fumes you've had multiple concussions you've even had because I know your history you've had concussions outside of racing mm-hmm and then so what were your symptoms what were you experiencing before you went to see your first psychiatrist? So I've had depression my whole life, I would say. Like probably my first fit of depression, I was maybe 10 years old. Went and saw a psychologist. From there, you know, it was just general depression and anxiety.

So talk more about when you say depression when you were 10. What did that look like? For me, it was if I had a test the next day, I would get crazy anxiety. So I'd start sweating, couldn't sleep, just talking to my mom, I can't do this, tons of negative self-talk. I mean, it was something that I had my whole life. Like if I had a big presentation tomorrow or anything going on, It would just almost build up inside of me. And it's got that emotional, it's kind of hard to put a label on it, but it's like your chest gets tight because you can feel it really hard. And so I've always kind of had that,

which then led to a sadness. I can't do this. Like it's too much for me. And most of my decisions in life are kind of fed with that kind of thought process. So you had a high ant population. High, super high. So ants, for those of you that listen, we always talk about them, automatic negative thoughts, the thoughts that come into your mind automatically and ruin your day. And in school, no one ever taught you how to eradicate or how to manage the ants. Well, and it was kind of crazy for me because I had all this anxiety for performance and, like, doing well in school.

And I always did great in school. So when I would talk to my teachers and they'd see me freaking out or, like, having an issue, they're like, why? They couldn't understand why I was anxious or why I was upset because I always did a good job. And that was, like, the hardest thing. Nobody could help me. Nobody knew why I was getting so riled up. They had no way of teaching me, like, hey, it's not a big deal. And nobody even thought about the concussion you had.

Your first one was how old? I was seven years old, I think, or eight years old, my first concussion. And what happened? That one, I fell out of a tree. Yeah, a lot of bad decisions. Falling out of trees, snowboarding, basketball. If I could hit my head, I'm pretty much done at doing everything. But yeah, nobody thought about that. And then when I got to be 13, it became a little bit more emotional. So when I'd get that

anxiety, I would kind of get mad or just like kind of angry for no reason. And you can see I was tense. Like you can almost see it on my face. It'd be building up kind of get mad or just like kind of angry for no reason. And you can see I was tense. Like you can almost see it on my face. It'd be building up kind of like that pressure I was telling you about before. And when I'd get mad, I'd get mad. Like not like kind of like, oh, I'm grumpy at you. Like, oh, these are all the worst things I can think of. And I want to make sure you know all of them real quick.

So it wasn't very healthy, not a way I wanted to manage my life. So how would people know you were mad? You would yell, you would scream? Yell, scream. I mean, it's kind of like those things like you think about a conversation and you know those one things you shouldn't say, like there's some things that are off limits. I would say those things.

Like it was to the point where there was no, like, I'm going to regret saying this later thing. I would be super mad. So you'd have no supervisor, no filter? None, none at all, yeah. If it'd have no supervisor, no filter? None, none at all. Yeah. If it was in my mind, it was coming out and it was coming out as aggressive as possible. It's usually not helpful. No, wasn't the best way to make friends. I always say, you know, Jerry Seinfeld said the brain is a sneaky organ. We all have weird,

crazy, stupid, sexual, violent thoughts that nobody should ever hear. And when you hurt the front part of your brain, the break in your brain, those things get out. And the problem with the brain is it has memory. So people then remember and become afraid of you. Oh, definitely. And I can see the people that I had those interactions with, they always kind of look at me differently. It's like, oh, I really don't want to make him mad. It's not something I'd take pride in or anything. Okay. And so then what happened? So at that point, it's like, all right, maybe there's something more going on. So I went and saw a therapist and he made me take, it was some kind of test on his computer and I can't remember what it was. But essentially afterwards, he's like, oh, you're bipolar. And I was like, are you sure? And he's like, yeah, no, you're bipolar. So from a questionnaire, you get diagnosed with bipolar and then what happens?

So then he started prescribing me different drugs. I was on maybe eight different, maybe 10 bipolar medications in my life. And they normally go in about a year to a six month stretch of like, hey, let's try this. Let's see if this helps your program. None of them ever really helped. And if they helped, it would be like, all right, I'm a little less upset and angry. But I've also got like, skin's bright red and like I can't taste stuff or I put on a ton of weight or, you know, I had no bad emotions. I was never angry, but I was never happy. I was never anything. You're flat. Exactly.

I call it being cardboard, you know, just nothing, just taste. So anyway, went through that for years and had acne, had bad skin. I mean, so none of that stuff is going to help you with the depression and everything else. Nobody once ever said, you know, hey, take a look at your diet or anything else like that. Just here's a new pill. Here's a new something else. And, oh, that one didn't work? Well, we'll try this one.

And it never really got me. So you're on multiple medications that flatten you, that help, but don't help you feel joy. And no one's talking to you about your life and your lifestyle. Yep, not once. All right. When we come back, we're going to talk about Chase's visit to our New York clinic. Stay with us. Use the code podcast10 to get a 10% discount on a full evaluation at amenclinics.com or on our supplements at brainmdhealth.com.

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