Change Your Brain Every Day - The Brain Scan that Saved A Professional BMXer’s Life with Josh Perry

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

BMX rider Josh Perry was living out his dreams, travelling, competing, and rising up through the professional ranks when he suffered a horrific crash. The doctors ordered an MRI, and what they saw in the scan changed his entire life. In the first episode in a series on traumatic brain injuries with Josh, he recounts his incredible story to Daniel and Tana Amen.

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. Well, welcome everybody.

We have a very special week for you. We have our special guest, Josh Perry, who is a professional BMX writer, TBI, brain tumor survivor. He recently went to our Atlanta clinic and underwent a full evaluation. He developed his passion for BMX riding in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. What an awesome place. I love teaching there. Where he was born and raised. When he was 17, he moved to Greenville, North Carolina to go after his career as a professional BMX athlete and ride with some of the best riders in the world, like Ryan Nyquist

and Dave Mira. Josh won his first pro contest and best trick contest. It means he has an amazing cerebellum, in 2009, winning him a brand new Harley Davidson motorcycle. Following the big success, he made his first appearance in the X Games and to continue to compete in the Do Action Sports Tour. At age 21, in April 2010, Josh had surgery in order to remove a brain tumor taking up the entire left side of his brain. This was a major turning point that put him on track to learn about taking better care of his brain and body and nutrition. In November, 2012, Josh had gamma knife radiation treatment, actually pioneered by one of our friends, Chris Duma, to treat two new tumors. This was a new eye-opener experience for Josh and his health, which led him to look deeper into holistic health and nutrition.

It's amazing. Welcome, Josh. And I have a question. For people who don't know what BMX is, because we have a lot of people who like different age ranges, it's bike racing. And so you had bikes and motorcycles and all the things as a neurosurgical ICU nurse that were like, ouch, did you ever crash? Yeah, I mean, of course. First of all, thank you guys so much for your time for having me on. Like I said before, it's been five years in the making, uh,

to be able to have a conversation with the both of you and, uh, I'm expecting it. So I'm, uh, beyond grateful. And yeah, right.

That's something you accept from a very young age. I mean, whether you're going to advance to where I've wanted to go or not, it's just, you fall down and that's just part of life. So I'm like, it's just a little bit more risk, but I should clarify too.

So with BMX, it's like a bicycle 20 inch rims on like 26 inch rims are bigger for mountain bikes but what i competed in is the tricks like x games like backflips tricks i didn't ever race i found out about racing later on so it would have been a better development to the fundamentals uh having gone that route but i always had to clarify that So I do like the tricks and the more crazy riskful things. Right. Right. So interesting. So you, that's already a brain risk. That's a very big risk for a brain. And then you developed a tumor. That's pretty scary. So tell us about that. What happened? Yeah, a little bit. So thankfully, I had fallen. I hit my head. It was March 2010. I was trying a new trick outside of the foam pit.

So the foam pit is a big, long rectangle full of foam blocks that we built a ramp into and kind of spill that technology from gymnastics so we can safely try a trick. So I wanted to do this trick in the next contest. So I got to try it at home on the real ramp first. I over-compensated the rotation and the flip of the trick. I got on my side, hit my head, and got knocked out. Now, a year prior, I'd gone to the emergency room, urgent care, multiple times with these headaches and migraines that lead me to bruise my vision and throwing up. They denied me every time I asked for a scan. I didn't care what

kind of scan, just something. They said, no, you're healthy, you're young, you just have headaches, pretty normal in this country. You have some pills come back to me more so moving to march 2010 that crash literally saved my life because it forced them to give me an mri and i remember driving there just thinking oh i hit my head you know i got knocked out this is just an evaluation brain post you know concussion didn't think anything of it just how long till i can ride again you know and i'm sitting there waiting for anything of it. Just how long until I can ride again, you know? And I'm sitting there waiting for the results to come back. And I'll never forget, like, the doctor walks in and he says,

we have your report. There's no swelling. There's no bleeding. So, you know, the concussion, that, you know, takes some time off, but that's checked out. But there's something in your brain that shouldn't be there. And I remember laughing out loud and asking, like, what do you mean there's something in my brain? I didn't put anything in there. How could there

be anything in there? I got a skull protecting you. And he followed up with, you know, there's a large mass taking over a good portion of the left side of your brain. We don't know if it's the kind of cancerous. Would you know if you want to show up and preserve your life, you have to have surgery immediately and you may still not wake up and you'll probably never ride the bike again. And I'm by myself. I turned 21 november prior and i'm just thinking what like i just heard cancer never gonna ride your bike again you may die and everything just started shutting down i just the only way i can explain it is it's all broken you know just kind of like you don't ever expect that at any age let alone when you're 21 like a few years

into living your dream and i'm thinking you're just getting a concussion for it. And if you have cancer, you have a tumor, whether it's benign or not. That's crazy. So you actually were how old when you were diagnosed with cancer? Mine was not nearly as, they didn't tell me I was going to die. But I remember hearing the word cancer. My experience was a little bit different. I refused to hear it.

It was so surreal that I was like, what are you talking about? I'm the healthiest I've ever been. I couldn't take it in. And I just thought they were insane. And I just kept, it's so, it's such a surreal experience, but to hear you're going to die. I didn't even hear I was going to die. And I went into a deep depression. It was such a weird shutting down process. Just like you said, it's like everything just begins to collapse on itself. I think at that age, you think you're invincible. And when you, that sudden realization that you're not only not invincible, but you're actually fairly fragile. I mean, everything could shut down is such a bizarre realization.

We just don't expect that at that age. You just don't expect it. But then in your case to hear that you could die is, I think, I mean, I can't even imagine. Especially for a young guy who's riding bikes and racing. I mean, you're just like at the prime. Well, and for those of you listening to this, Google Josh Perry BMX, and you'll see the amazing tricks that he could do. And so you had gotten all this attention for being, you know, just really at the top of your game.

And now to hear you're not going to ride again had to be pretty crazy. Yeah. Like I said, it wasn't anything I had, like it never went through my head on the way there sitting, sitting and waiting like this may happen. And, you know, of course fear set in, you know, anxiety, stress, worry, you know, all these things. And then the victim mentality, you know, I literally was thinking like, why is this happening to me?

Like, what did I do to deserve this? Am I such a bad person that like this is going to happen now? And it was a pretty quick transition from diagnosis to surgery. It was about a week and a half, two weeks where I went to Duke university and saw Dr. Alan Friedman. And three things that helped transition me from fear to fuel,

just, no, like I treat it like an injury. Like how long, when can I get back on my bike? What do I do? It was my mom's story about like colon cancer and she's alive and well today.

I saw her go through that and she hid a lot of that from me when I first left home so I could pursue BMX. The BMX community that I created a name for myself worldwide. Let me know like, Hey, we got your back. We're thinking of you.

You got this to stay strong, whether they knew me or not. They just heard of me. And then learning Lance Armstrong story to me, that was a BMX. You see a trick for the first time and everyone else started doing it. It's like this, this, you see it and you can do it. And so seeing Lance Armstrong, another cyclist wheels on the ground, for the part a little different than my style of riding but to me he went through brain lung testicular cancer to me at the time i was like hey i'm going through a third of this and they don't even know if it's cancer it's like he had cancer you know like he did this came back to

the level of riding he did no matter what people's opinion is of how he did that right to get to that level after going through something like that is unballable. And I'm just going through the brain tumor of all things that he went through. So you had a mentor to watch in essence. Yeah. We think that's really powerful. Yeah.

His mother who went through cancer and Lance Armstrong. Right. So that's a really powerful thing to tell people to do. And then the support of your community is really important. So he's a really powerful thing to tell people to do. And then the support of your community. Yeah. Huge. Is really important. So we had the psychology, the, so we talk about biology, psychology, your social circle, your social circle and your spiritual circle. And you definitely had the psychology and the social circle down. I don't know about the, and the biology, even because you were young and you

were fit and you were, you, you were eating from what I understand, you decided to start eating really healthy and pay attention to what you were doing. Um, and I don't know what the spiritual circle was, but you had those three down, which is really important. Um, and that's what we talk about. This is those four circles. They're like four wheels on a car, right? So one of those wheels is flat and it's a little harder to recover, right? It's hard to drive the car. That's so funny because I know you guys are really big about community. And that's one of the biggest things I learned about holistic health in general is all these communities, they have that. They're not isolated. They're not living in a box with no light. Like

they're enjoying themselves and it's contagious, that energy. And it was after diagnosis, I got new new nutrition, but it's funny because ever since I was younger and my parents and my family, I was like, you know, work hard for the life you want. Anything is possible. Just put the work in. And there is like BMX and sports in general, teaching me like, there's no failure. You fall down, like audit what happened, re reverse engineer the path to success, try again. So now my biggest thing, my biggest passion is mindset it's not any of the things i've gone through brain tumors or nutrition it's literally

the psychology and i have a lot of great virtual mentors that i refer to them as virtual mentors you guys are some of them that i've been able to connect with and which is amazing but that's the first thing i talk about now like whether someone's like hey man like how do i do this trick or how do i you know change up my diet? Let's figure out why you want to do that. What's the purpose behind it? And really, let's figure out your psychology, your subconscious beliefs. And it's funny seeing, I mean, I'm 30 now, reflecting the last 10 years even,

how big of a factor that was, the success I had. I didn't really know it. It was embedded in me subconsciously. And now I'm very aware of it and trying to learn more and share more of that because I think that's the biggest piece is that mindset. Did you go back to writing after the brain surgery, the first one? Five weeks later. Five weeks later. Wow. And what did the neurosurgeon say about that? So Dr. Friedman was like, yeah, it's about four weeks for the skull to fuse back together. And I was like, whoa, I thought I was out of year of S-case scenario. I didn't do much research.

I was just, let's get in. And he's like, let's take another week. You know, we'll just see how it goes. So week four went in, the four titanium screws holding the skull back to place or everything settled well, fused back. Let's take another week. Just make sure you're good. Helmet pads back on the ramps. We bought it. Two months later, I was competing again. Let's take another week. Just make sure you're good. Helmet pads back on the ramps.

Two months later, I was competing again. That's crazy. I want to, I want to mention something that is insane. Yeah. But he's young and he's, you know, passionate. I want to touch on something you said, cause it's been a huge thing in my life. The falling, you said you fall down, you get back up. So I practiced martial arts and it was so powerful for me. And why are you laughing at me? As always, he's laughing at me. He has this thing about laughing at me. I'm thinking everybody's insane now. Right. Brain surgery. Because people don't get brain surgery is a traumatic brain injury. Somebody's messing with the physical functioning of your brain. I'm looking at your scans and I can actually see where the tumor was, where they took it out. And for him to green light you back on your bike,

which is highly risky if you watch the videos. How many times before the first surgery do you think you fell and hit your head? So this is where Dr. Ali and I were going over. My report was, I was like, there's not enough space. Let's talk about this. So up until that point that I can vividly remember was one, two, there was, there was four from the time I started riding about 12 or 13 till that point that I know I got knocked out for sure. One of them, I was 16 actually with a seizure from it that my friend informed me of after riding about 12 or 13 till that point that I know I got knocked out for sure.

One of them, I was 16 actually with a seizure from it that my friend informed me of after I woke up. But now that I've learned a lot more about concussions and how you don't need to get knocked out to get a concussion or an MRI can still clear you to be concussion free. Like, man, I've hit my head quite a bit to where I saw stars or I was just like, and that hurt. And I had a headache for a day or so. So up until that point, I'd say comfortably, I would, I would say I had about seven times I hit my head,

whether I got knocked out or I hit it hard. And that was a big wake up call was a brain tumor. Let's talk about brains. Wow. When we come back, we are going to talk about more of the impact of traumatic brain injury. Stay with us. If you're enjoying the Brain Warriors Way podcast, please don't forget to subscribe so you'll always know when there's a new episode.

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