Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - The Brain Scan That Explains Everything About You | With Braincode Centers
Episode Date: July 10, 2026Anxious? Unfocused? Burned out? The answer might be sitting between your ears 🧠⚡In this episode, Rachel Lambert and Angie Noack of Braincode Centers are exposing what the mental health industry s...kips over — brain mapping and neurofeedback. We're talking everything a EEG brain map actually reveals and how you can retrain and optimize your brain naturally.Thank you to our sponsors!TAYLOR DUKES WELLNESS: Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% off your purchaseGEVITI: Use code "ALEX" to get 20% off of your first purchaseBEEKEEPER'S NATURALS: Use code “ALEXCLARK” for 20% off sitewideJASPR: Use code "ALEX" to get $200 off your purchaseTOOTHPILLOW: Use code "ALEXCLARK" for a free video review upgrade MASA CHIPS: Use code "REALALEXCLARK" for 25% OFFOur Guests:Rachel Lambert and Angie NoackLinks:WebsiteSchedule a consult and use code 'ALEX100' at bookingInstagramFOLLOW ALEX:Instagram | @realalexclarkInstagram | @cultureapothecaryX | @yoalexrapzYouTube | @RealAlexClarkSpotify | Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark Apple Podcast | Culture Apothecary with Alex ClarkSubscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.DISCLAIMER: This content is for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. Always talk to a qualified healthcare professional for any health-related questions or decisions.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You actually reversed your bipolar completely naturally.
You can teach the brain how to correct that activity.
Then you have the opportunity to reallocate where that energy is put in the brain.
I honestly can tell you I don't even remember what anxiety feels like, truly,
that I haven't had a panic attack since I did neurofeedback 10 years ago.
Why is brain mapping or neurofeedback ideal for somebody trying to get off a medication?
You're essentially teaching the brain to do what the medication is doing synthetically,
organically from a learning perspective.
Millions of people have spent years believing that they are anxious, depressed, burned out, have ADHD, are bipolar,
they're just emotional, maybe lazy, unfocused, or even broken.
Meanwhile, the real story may be sitting right between our ears.
The brain is the most powerful organ in the human body, and yet most of us have never actually
looked into it.
Today we're talking about brain mapping, neurofeedback, and what happens when you stop
treating symptoms and start looking at the source?
Joining me is Rachel Lambert, founder of Brain Code Center's licensed psychotherapist and board-certified
neurofeedback practitioner. After neurofeedback transformed her own mental health as a teenager,
she dedicated her career to helping others better understand and optimize their brains.
And then there's Angie Noak, Senior Vice President of Brain Code Center's licensed professional counselor,
neuroscience educator, and brain optimization expert.
Following a life-altering traumatic brain injury, Angie turned her recovery journey into a mission
to help others unlock the brain's ability to heal and perform at its best.
Watch this episode on the real Alex Clark YouTube or Culture Apothecary on Spotify.
Please first leave a five-star review for the show.
This helps us climb the charts and become discoverable to new listeners,
as well as continue getting the best guests.
Please welcome Rachel and A&G from Brain Code Centers to Culture Apothecary.
Everybody just says, this is how I am.
Take it or leave it.
This is how my brain operates.
There's nothing I can do.
I'm just stuck with it.
I have a messed up broken brain.
Is that really true?
Everybody has different patterns, right, from an intellectual standpoint.
This is why there's CEOs of companies.
This is why there's people that are engineers and this is why there's creatives.
So it's not that our brains are messed up, but oftentimes our brains lack the ability
to state shift exceptionally well.
And so our brain will get stuck in different physiological states, right?
And this is then when people have blind spots where they can't focus or they're feeling
anxious or they can't fall asleep at night.
So we are under the belief that your brain is never broken.
And your brain is always neuroplastic.
It's always willing to change and it's capable of change.
But you just have to give it that catalyst in which to do so.
If I showed you a brain scan, could you tell me if somebody was depressed or anxious or addicted or headed for burnout?
Absolutely we can.
Yes.
So really, nothing can hide from us in a brain scan.
We're looking at all of the different brain waves that people are creating and what's overactive and underactive.
And that tells us things, right?
It's really like a tapestry of your life.
You probably already know if you experience feeling.
of anxiety or experience feelings of depression. But it's more so as a culture we're very hooked
on diagnosis, right? That we are, everybody's diagnosed with everything and going to make sure that
they're diagnosed with something. But really when it comes down to a diagnosis, all that is is
symptoms, right? That's not actually looking at the underlying biology of what's happening.
That's what we're doing. We're looking at the underlying biological force of what is pushing these
symptoms out. And that's how we're able to determine that. How many people are walking around
convinced that they're lazy, they're crazy, they've got ADHD, they're anxious, depressed,
when the real issue is that their brain just isn't functioning properly.
How many people do you know friends, family members that are just self-diagnosed ADHD?
When the fact truly is zero percent of people, zero percent of people that actually have
either self-proclaimed ADHD or they have a diagnosis of ADHD have actually looked at the
very organ that creates symptomology in the first.
place, right? We are not as a society measuring the brain before creating a diagnoses or a plan.
All we do is look at symptomology. And so what we believe is if you're curious about ADHD or insomnia
or sleep issues, why are you not looking at the brain for answers? So utilizing QEG brain mapping,
you can actually look at clinical patterns. So you can really understand whether the brain is or
isn't falling into certain distribution of brainwave activity that's going to create those patterns for people.
We look at brainwave activity. It's not about the brain functioning properly, right? It's about optimal activity and the ability to have good neuroplasticity. Because ADHD from just a brainwave pattern isn't necessarily a negative thing. Even a pattern of anxiety, right? If it's well managed, there can be so much benefit to that. So it's never about taking away someone's God-given strengths, right? It's really just optimizing the brain's activity so that it can move in and out of these different states really well.
Okay, let's start at the beginning here. What exactly is a brain?
brain map? A brain map is a QEEG. It's a quantitative electroencephalogram map. So it's similar to an
EEG, right, except for we're looking at the quantitative analysis of that. So an EEG is if someone has,
let's say, epilepsy, right? They're going to go in, we're going to look at brain waves. We have the
ability to quantify that. With that, we're looking at brain waves. All humans have the capability
of producing the same brain waves. Delta deep sleep, theta drifting into sleep, alpha is kind of a
receptor that helps move the brain around and give it flexibility. Beta should be clean focused energy.
High beta is fight or flight. And we need all of them. However, when we have certain things,
let's say happen to us, right? Maybe we experience trauma or prolonged stress. Okay, now our brain
sits in a place of hypervigilance and fight or flight. Or maybe just biologically, we move a little
bit slower and we produce excess theta wave activity in the brain, which might look more like an ADHD
pattern. Neither is bad or good, right? All brains are good. It's a matter of understanding what drives
our brain, right? Kind of which brain waves are speaking the loudest. So we start with that brain map.
We do a full review with people to go over it with them. And we can do this from anywhere, Alex. So
we literally work with people across the world to do brain mapping and neurofeedback. So we ship them
equipment, help them do the brain map via Zoom, put a cap on their head, go over all the data with them
so that they can understand exactly where are these symptoms coming from and why are they happening?
Yeah, I think when people hear brain map, then maybe they're thinking of like being inside an MRI machine,
but that's not what's happening. Like, what are you guys actually measuring?
Yeah, so we're measuring brainwave activity electrically. So if you think about Dr. Amen, right,
the Aman Clinic in California, that is a blood flow scan, but also a brain map.
Ours is an electrical neurological scan. So we're looking at all of the electrical,
wave activity happening in the brain. Is there a difference between what he's able to test with
what he does and what you guys are able to test? There's a lot of overlap of hyper or hypoprofusion
and excess brainwave activity, right? So whether we're looking at inflammation of the brain,
or is there an excess amount of brainwave? Brain waves in your frontal lobe, that's usually going to be
correlated with also an overproduction of blood flow. So there's a lot of continuity between the two scans,
but they are fundamentally a different type of scan and report. However, they are looking at very similar
patterns, right? DSM diagnoses, ADHD, anxiety, depression. So with a spec image, you can actually
get a formal diagnoses. With QEG brain mapping, we're looking a lot more at patterns so that people
can understand. So it's not just telling you, hey, you have patterns of depression, anxiety,
or ADHD, or bipolar, or whatever. It's also, then you're able to actually reverse those
patterns and kind of help reverse some of these things that people struggle with.
That's what we love about what we do is neurofeedback, which is the therapy.
that Brain Code Center specializes in is the modality of therapy that we utilize to help optimize
these patterns that are unfavorable. So unlike an MRI or a CAT scan or even a spectim,
right, it gives you great information. But a lot of times clients leave those and they're like,
well, what now? What should I do now? I'm already taking the supplements. I'm already doing
the behavioral, you know, things that I'm supposed to be doing. I've already made lifestyle
modifications, but they're still feeling stuck. And that's what we love about neural feedback is
You give information, you empower clients with what's going on, but then there's a perfect solution
of here's what's next and here's what we can actually do to change fundamentally how your brain is
operating.
You know I will not gatekeep anything that makes my mornings easier and actually taste good.
That's why I've been putting the Taylor Diggs Wellness, strawberries and cream protein in my smoothie
almost every single day for the last year.
And I swear it is elite.
Like if strawberry milk and a clean ingredient list had a super hot baby, it's bone broth based
so you're getting collagen naturally for hair, skin, nails, joints, and gut health.
Totally dairy-free, no junkie fillers.
Zero weird aftertaste, organic.
You get 20 grams of protein per scoop, and it blends so creamy that my smoothie feels like dessert.
No fancy kitchen skills required.
This isn't just a protein powder.
It is a morning game changer.
If you've been wanting to increase your protein intake, support your beauty from within,
and finally start making healthier, delicious choices for yourself, this is it.
Go grab the strawberries and cream bone broth protein powder at Taylorduxwellness.com.
Use code Alex Clark.
That's Taylorduxwellness.com, code Alex Clark.
Your mornings totally upgraded.
We have somehow accepted that every kid needs braces.
Like, it's just part of childhood.
Oh yeah, little Tommy seven, time for soccer, multiplication tables, and 20 grand worth of orthodontics.
Nobody ever stops and asks, why are all of these kids jaws too small in the first place?
You know, we act like mouth breathing and snoring and bedwetting, grinding teeth, ADHD symptoms, chronic congestion and crowded teeth are just quirky little personality.
traits or something that they grow out of. They're common. Okay? Yes, but that does not mean it's normal.
One of the coolest companies that I've found is tooth pillow because they're focused on helping kids
while they're actually growing between ages three and 12 when jaw development can still be guided.
The program is designed to support natural jaw growth, proper tongue posture, and healthy nasal
breathing instead of waiting until everything's already developed and then you try to fix it later.
As somebody who has spent years talking about why we need to ask better questions about kids' health,
This just made so much sense to me and also finding out that so many of my best friends who are moms have used this and swear by it was just the icing on the cake.
If your child mouth breathes, snores, grinds their teeth, wets the bed, has crowded teeth, or constantly sounds congested, has hearing issues.
That's another big one.
Don't just assume they'll grow out of it or maybe that it's some crazy genetic thing, right?
It could literally be mouth breathing.
Go get them evaluated.
Start with a free virtual assessment.
A tooth pillow airway dentist will review how your child.
is developing and help you understand what comes next. Visit tooth pillow.com and get your child
assessed free using code Alex Clark. That's tooth pillow.com and get your child assessed free using
code Alex Clark. What does the appointment actually look like with you guys? So we actually
ship people equipment, two sets of equipment, the brain mapping equipment, and then the actual
headset that they're going to keep and do their neurofeedback with. But the brain map, it's a full
cap that we help them put on their head. It has little electrodes in it. Those electrodes are
monitoring and reading the brainwave activity. Brain waves look like a bunch of little squiggly lines,
heartbeats basically, but they're little brain waves. And basically we take a bunch of information,
eyes open, eyes closed, so that we can see the states that the brain is shifting in and out of,
but we're not going to ask you to do something. Right? We always get that question of like,
are you going to have me do tasks? Are you going to ask me questions? This isn't a stress test,
right? I'm not like trying to put you into a place of anxiety and then measure what your brain is
doing. I want to see what your brain is doing almost at a resting state, right? When you're
see people's thoughts or their memories or what is it? It would astound you what people think that
we can see. You would think that I can see like your deepest, darkest secrets, just like digging in
your memory, right? What is that movie that like bird flu or the cuckoo's nest or whatever? You would
think that we can see some whack stuff. Absolutely not. We're looking at brain waves, right? But our
expertise is then analyzing those brainwaves and looking at, okay, you know, the people, you know,
we have, I mean, almost 100 years of data with neurofeedback, QEEG brain mapping. So I'm looking at
years and years and years of patterning to go back and say, all of the people are 90% of the people
with this patterning showed these symptoms. Is that something, you know, Alex, that you experience?
And I mean, 90% of the time people are, yeah, are like, yeah, that is. And some people sometimes
people are going, not necessarily. This is kind of an art and a science, right? It's really us,
you know, digging and asking questions and looking at patterns to analyze exactly why is this
person suffering in the way that they're suffering. So what sorts of personality things or behavior
things do you guys see when you're doing these scans on somebody? I mean, if we're looking at the
main symptomology that people are going to experience, just the regular top 10 symptoms, right,
anxiety, like I said, depression, ADHD, and insomnia, you name it. So we can filter people into,
okay, these are the top 10 symptoms you're going to experience basis as brain map. But it's a lot
more than that, right? Like, let's talk about anxiety, for example. People can have 50 different
experiences of anxiety, right? Some people have heart palpitations. Some people have more racing
thoughts. Some people experience it very somatically, other people, not so much at all. And so basis where
the brainwaves are, right, if they're too high or too low in a different location of the brain,
if the timing and communication of the brain isn't dialed in, then those patterns are going to be
expressed in a different way. And so that's what's really cool about brain mapping is we're not
just looking at the symptom, but we're looking at the intricacies of how the brain is or isn't
moving optimally for that person to get very, very, very dialed in about what's going on with
them. Same thing, too, when we're talking about attachments, right? There's patterns for us to
see, does somebody have a little bit more of an avoidant or an anxious or a disorganized
style of attachment? And if people don't know what attachment styles are, it's how do you attach
well? Did we learn as a baby to develop secure attachments with other people? And we,
people. Oftentimes, that looks very different because of traumas or the way that we grew up or did we have a
narcissistic parent or did we not have a parent at all, right? We've had a lot of grief and loss and dying.
All of a sudden, our brain digest that information, right? And so then when we get into a relationship with a
loved one, maybe we find ourselves not being super secure in having some avoidant tendencies.
The question we look at is why is that happening? Because there oftentimes is answers that we can look to
from a neurological perspective to glean us that information. So it's just this beautiful, we say
they're visual forms of grace for us to just understand how someone's wired and why they maybe
have different blind spots they're not proud of, but also the beauty and the strengths that
they have as an individual. Honestly, we can see all of that on a brain map, which is incredible.
What can't a brain map tell you? So a lot of times we do get questions about, you know,
serotonin or dopamine or are you looking at the chemicals in the brain? No, this is an
electrical neurological scan. However, all those things are correlated, right? If someone has excess high
beta, which is excess fight or flight wave activity in the brain, can I deduce probably that they're
going to be in a heightened state of stress and they're going to be producing stress hormones,
cortisol, you know, things like that? Yes, I can deduce that. But is it directly showing me
coming out with a report saying, hey, your serotonin is here, your dopamine is here? No. You were diagnosed
bipolar. If that same teenage Rachel walked into a psychiatrist's office today, would they still
diagnose you? Oh my gosh, no. No, I don't fit any of the criteria whatsoever to have the
fitting of bipolar whatsoever. And I think that's the coolest thing ever is bipolar as a diagnosis is
typically a life sentence of medication management or your life might be incredibly difficult.
And I just look at it as I had the opportunity as a teenager for my brain to learn.
a better way of functioning. My brain literally got to create new neurological highways that I got to
run down so that my brain could have the flexibility and ultimately I then was back in the driver's
seat. I think most people, if they have a diagnosis of bipolar, they don't feel like they're in the
driver's seat. Well, yeah, I think it's kind of positioned or messaged as a lifelong sentence.
Like, you are bipolar for life. That's it. Medications for life. That's all. But you actually
reversed your bipolar completely naturally. I wouldn't necessarily use the word reverse. I
I would say there was areas of my brain that were over and under firing. If we fundamentally,
as neurospecialists, believe that you can teach the brain how to correct that activity,
then you have the opportunity to reallocate where that energy is put in the brain. I mean,
whether it's reversed or helping the brain reallocate its energy, that really is, I think,
the process that I went through. And it was incredible. I mean, truly, truly incredible. And it's
really what lit a fire inside my soul to help bring this therapy to more and more people.
How did you even know to try this therapy as a teenager? God bless my parents. Thank God my parents
fought for me. I was pretty stubborn by nature, so I didn't want to be reliant on medication my whole
life. So I was very resistant to the idea of, you know, having to fill up a medication bottle
every single week for the rest of my life. And I had tried traditional talk therapy and it was helpful
and we're both licensed therapists. So there absolutely is a time and a place for traditional talk
therapy, but it wasn't seeming to really get to the root of what was going on. So thankfully,
my parents found out about brain mapping and neurofeedback, and it was kind of my last,
last ditch effort. And I'm so thankful that we did it. She got a lobotomy.
Woo.
Kidding. There's no lobotomies in this. I honestly think Alexis might upset some people,
but we do not feel like diagnosis have a lot of validity. And let me, you know, explains.
We're like, oh, diagnosis, right? Even right now we're talking about, we're like, anxiety, depression,
ADHD, bipolar. So,
The DSM-5, Thomas Encel, who was the director of the National Institute for Mental Health,
said that the DSM-5 has a lot of reliability, right?
That we as counselors and we as therapists and psychiatrists all reliably agree that X, Y, and Z symptoms
create X-diagnosis.
In no way are we looking at the underlying biological reasons of why that is happening.
That is what creates validity.
So Rachel was diagnosed bipolar with no brain scan, right?
That somebody was looking at her going, oh, my gosh, you're showing X, Y, and Z symptoms.
Therefore, you are this.
right? Now, when she did a brain scan, okay, yeah, some of those things, some of those things fit.
But we honestly see a lot of what we would consider to be misdiagnosis, right? So people are walking in
being prescribed all of these different medications with a reliable amount of research,
but not a lot of validity. Think about the PHQ9, which is a traditional depression scale.
And you might already know about this, right? The PHQ9 is just a slew of questions that then
people are put in a box you're depressed or you're not depressed, which interestingly,
enough, Pfizer is the huge company that funds a lot of these mental health scales. So the fact that
we're relying on scales to put people on medication, I feel like we're really missing the nail for
that. These blood work companies are often lying about the price. I keep seeing people say,
oh, it's only $30 a month. No, that is not actually what you're going to pay. Here's what happens.
You sign up, great. Then you need your blood drawn. Well, that's extra. You want to talk to a human
about your results, that's another fee. You need supplements, separate purchase. You need real
treatment like hormones or peptides. Sorry, not available. Go find another doctor and then pay again.
So that cheap membership that you guys are thinking about doing for getting your biomarkers tested
and all of your blood work actually turns into this expensive scavenger hunt where nothing connects.
So this is why I switched to Jevity. Unlike a lot of these other testing companies like Function Health
or other ones that are super popular, Jevity is not only going to give you all of the answers in your
blood work. They have an entire team to go through your blood work with you and then come up with
plans, right? Like, okay, based on your blood work, what supplements would we recommend? What nutrition
goals should we set? What lifestyle goals should we set? Nobody else is doing that. So with Jevity,
the price is the price. You get comprehensive blood work, over 90 biomarkers tested, a personalized
longevity blueprint that actually explains what's going on. You get provider visits included, a care
team that you can message, supplements, peptides, hormone support, all managed in one place based on
your labs. And they retest every six months to actually adjust your plan. That's the difference.
It's not just testing. It is testing, explanation, and actual action. And if you've already
wasted money somewhere else and you're sitting on labs that you don't understand, Jevity just
launched a free tier. Now, this is important. Listen to me. You can upload your results from previous
blood work that you've gotten done that you have no idea how to understand without paying anything
on gojevity.com. And they will tell you what it means. Gogevity.com. This is all free. You can use
code Alex, okay? Gogevity.com, code Alex. I just got a message from a listener that said,
Alex, I thought air purifiers were hype until I got a jasper. Within one night, I was sleeping better,
breathing easier, and wondering how I've ever lived without it. And that is the reaction that I hear
over and over again. Most people do not think about air quality, and they also don't even know
that they have bad air quality until you get a jasper. Because it's not your typical air purifier.
It is the first air scrubber, specifically built for home use using commercial grade technology,
powerful enough to tackle wildfire smoke, mold spores, dust, pollen, pet dander, and even the
VOCs released from household products and furniture. What I love is that it doesn't just mask
problems, it actually removes them, and that's especially important during seasons when
windows stay closed, whether it's wildfire season, allergy season, or winter when we're spending
more time indoors. The air inside our homes can often be more polluted than we realize, which is why
so many people notice improvements in their sleep, breathing, and overall well-being after bringing a
jasper into every room of their home. Plus, it's backed by a lifetime warranty, so this isn't just
another gadget. It's an investment in your family's long-term health. Go to jasper.com, use code
Alex for $200 off. That's Jasper. J-A-S-P-R.co with code Alex for $200 off.
Angie, you had a traumatic brain injury where you had to literally relearn how to walk.
And you're obviously, like, thriving and doing fantastic. So did this stuff also help you with
a traumatic brain injury? So like Rachel, I had parents, my mom, especially, who was crunchy
far before it was cool to be crunchy, who, yeah, when doctors were saying, hey, this is probably
as good as it's going to get 19 year old in a walker, she said, absolutely not. You know, that is,
that is not going to be our future. So I did a lot of different things that were more kind of Eastern
type medicine, right? Fascial work. What happened? How did you even get a TBI? Yeah. So this is,
it was not some like wild situation. I went and donated blood. I was home for the summer between
sophomore junior year of college, passed out when I went to leave. And I, I,
The way in which my body locked up and I fell, it was on linoleum over cement and fractured the occipital plate in my skull.
And, oh, rough.
And all the bleeding was internal.
So unfortunately, because it was an external bleeding, I didn't go to the hospital for quite some time.
But couldn't walk, started throwing up.
It was a whole situation spent a couple of weeks in the intensive care unit.
And then, yeah, when I was released, I had serious vestibular issues.
Like my brain had no idea if it was standing or not.
Did you have personality changes?
Yes, I did. Yeah, honestly, for a long time, I would get so overstimulated in crowds. I couldn't be in a group of 20 people. I would freak out, have to leave. I wasn't a cryer before I had a brain injury. Like, I never cried. My grandparents would pass away and I was very saddened by it. I just wasn't hyper emotional.
Like commercial on TV of a cat being homeless. And I was like, oh, God. I mean, I was.
People around you notice these changes? Yeah. Yeah, I was really reactive to stuff.
my mom did a lot of research on brain injuries and went, okay, this looks like psychosomatic,
right? This looks like a personality thing. This is because of a brain injury. Then even 10 years
down the line, I was having some really severe anxiety and insomnia from the brain injury. And
I was introduced to neurofeedback. Honestly, I feel like neurofeedback found me. I did not find it.
I ended up doing some neurofeedback. And it was, I honestly can tell you, I don't even remember
what anxiety feels like, truly, that I haven't had a panic attack since I did neurofeedback.
back 10 years ago, wouldn't even think it would ever happen to me.
What's something that most people don't understand about traumatic brain injury?
It's a very invisible injury, right? That when you break your leg, you have a cast on your
leg and someone's going, oh, look, you're obviously hurt versus a lot of things about brain
injuries look like personality issues, right? So again, that's where you're probably receiving a
diagnosis of, let's say, bipolar or let's say depression or let's say anxiety. I mean, we have a lot
of ex-NFL players who are trying to commit something at 36.
years old and we're going, oh my gosh, what's going on? They have had multiple compounding concussions
for the last 15 years. Ooh, let's speculate. Do you think OJ had a traumatic brain injury before he
killed his wife? We're just going to speculate. We're just going to throw stuff out there.
I mean, a couple screws loose, I think. One, he obviously had some very serious issues. It would be
really interesting to look at, I mean, let's not even talk about OJ. Let's talk about anyone who's outdoing
really horrific crimes, right? Who, let's say we can go back and look, did that?
person suffer a traumatic brain injury or do they have a past history of trauma? One, the answer is yes,
right? Rarely are we ever going to see someone sociopathic who came from a very loving, secure
attachment, all this stuff. All of these things come from somewhere. But that is a really good question.
And I'm forgetting the name of the study that was done. It was a railroad worker who had a spike.
It's a very famous study who had a spike literally go through his brain. Real lobotomy. Oh my God. Real lobotomy.
He lived, which is incredible. But he was a completely different person after because literally of
where the spike went, it shut down areas of his brain, one of them being empathy, right? So areas of our
brain that are shut down that are creating empathy, now you experience no empathy, right? So I heard
someone, I literally experienced nothing from it. So that's a really good speculation. Now,
I don't know because also a lot of football players have had multiple compounding concussions and they
don't kill anybody. So, you know, why you versus that? But maybe did OJ grow up with some trauma,
then had a traumatic brain injury? Now he's doing horrible things. What do you guys think is up with
those people that are like in a coma and then they wake up and they speak Spanish or they're like
fluently Chinese Mandarin or whatever. Have you ever seen those stories? That's wild to me. Or they have a
British accent all of a sudden. They're American. I actually don't know. One, because even if we did a
brain scan on somebody who was in a coma, like what, I mean, what would we see from that?
Just crazy. They'd be putting out, yeah, all slow wave activity, right? So it's not like we could
read something. But is that what area of their brain is that unlocking that now they're, you know,
especially the accent, right? They have like a perfect.
Mandarin accent. Like, what?
Yeah, that's so funny. How much of your recovery do you attribute to neurofeedback?
It came along at a different time, right? So it came, you know, 10 years down the road from my
original, maybe not 10 years. Actually, it was probably more like seven years down the road
from my original injury. But honestly, God's timing is perfect because before that, I was fighting
from my life. I, you know, if somebody had been like, hey, let's do some neurofeedback,
I wouldn't even have known, you know, what to do with that. I was, when you're relearning how
to walk and trying to be a real person and then get through college and stuff, it was, you know,
I was having to worry about that. It came at such a time in my life, though, where I feel like anxiety
was starting to take over. Rachel knew me then. I was sleeping three, four hours a night,
max every single night. And yes, I was functioning, but you can only function so long on that,
right? At some point, that's going to come back and bite you. And I knew that because I'm a neuro expert,
I was like, this is, this cannot be forever. So doing those sessions and learning what my brain was
capable of even down the road. And this is something that people don't understand about brain
injuries is that your brain is always neuroplastic. So when you are told, let's say by modern medicine,
after two years, that's as much as your brain can heal no more. Absolutely not. Your brain is
always capable of change. It can always learn more. I don't care age. I don't care what has
happened. Your brain is capable of that change. So even 10 years down the road, my brain was still
capable of healing. How many people listening right now could potentially be dealing with the concussion
and they don't even know? Many, many people have had concussion history. I mean, Rachel and I,
ask all the time on consultations. Hey, do you have a concussion history? Let's say middle-aged guy,
55. Absolutely not. I'm like, oh, did you play contact sports? Well, yeah, I played football through
college. I'm like, okay, no concussion. But at that age, it was called getting your bell rung.
We never even talked about concussions, right? Or I've had, you know, we maybe see something in a
brain map. I ask some questions. The client goes and asks their parent, and they're like, well, yeah,
oh my gosh, I actually dropped you as a kid when you were five. You had, you know, we had to take you
to the hospital, but you've healed from it. You're good.
The brain does not forget. The brain will always show those patternings. And now is what you're experiencing now because of that concussion? A hundred percent, probably not. But it's a contributing factor. What is the weirdest symptom of brain injury that people never connect to the brain?
It's going to see, we get a lot of like, like you were saying, psychosomatic, but I do feel like people connect that to the brain. But there's so many people that maybe they're having vision issues or vestibular issues and they're just thinking I need to do like PT or vision therapy.
but then they exhaust that therapy. And then we look at their brain and we're like, oh my gosh,
no, you absolutely still have some neural work that needs to be done. So I'd say I feel like a lot of
vision issues that if I feel like that's normal for us to understand, but a lot of people don't
put that correlation together. That and honestly social, right, that people who, if you meet
somebody, you're like, a person is a little socially weird. A lot of times that's a brain
injury, right? That, you know, they're not even necessarily connecting. There's areas of their
brain that are no longer like firing and wiring together as well. So, you know, you know,
You might be reading a facial expression and they're like, I'm throwing this out well.
They're picking up what I'm putting down and you're not because their brain can't necessarily connect that now.
Okay, so you guys did a brain scan on me.
And I kind of talked about this on my Instagram stories and people like, wait, what is this that you did?
What did they find out?
Explain everything.
So when you looked at my brain map, what stood out first?
Okay, so we went over it together.
And what I like to do is break it down with the different waves.
And the first thing that we talked about was your sleep.
Right now you're a very high functioning.
you go 100 miles per hour, you're traveling, your schedule's kind of off sometimes. But the first thing
that stood out to me was sleep. And so we talked about sleep and how you're like, oh, it's absolutely
something that I need to get my brain to do better. So that was like the first thing that stood out.
The second thing was you have a very fast pattern, which anybody listening to this podcast,
right? No surprises fast. Talks fast, processes fast, very, very smart girl, which we love.
That is going to have a pattern that's exhibited too. So if I knew nothing about you, I would obviously
see that your brain has quite a bit of fast momentum. So that's going to be everything from an
executive functioning standpoint, from just being more hyper aroused from going 100 miles per hour,
from getting a lot of work done during the day, maybe having a little bit of edge of anxiety or
running off of adrenaline. That was the second thing. The third thing that we looked at was that
attachment center. So there's an area of your brain. It's called T6. So it's located in the right
hemisphere of the brain in the temporal lobe area. And a lot of that is going to show us kind of that
social emotional side of things, how well do we attach to others? And so I asked you about that.
And you can even expand a little bit more on that, but we kind of denoted that it was probably from
some past relationship stuff, maybe some grief, lost dying of certain loved ones in your life,
and how that can create a little bit of disconnect on how we attach. Like, is this safe? Is it not safe?
Can I trust it? Is this person that I love going to die? There's a lot there that the brain can have
to process through it. Literally within like not even a year,
less than a year. My dad died, got into those toxic relationship of my entire life, like, put on
silent treatment for like multiple weeks at a time, like horrible, horrible, painful stuff.
And then my boss, Charlie Kirk, was murdered. So that all happened, like, very close to one another.
And so it was interesting because then right after that, you know, we do this brain map and, like,
that stuff is lighting up. So based on my brain patterns, what attachment do I have, attachment style?
You'll feel a little bit, I think we were saying kind of a little disorganized, maybe a little bit anxious about it, right?
oh, okay, you know, is this person going to leave? Can I trust this situation? Right. So when you've
had a bad breakup, when people unexpectedly that you love die, that's going to create a response,
right? We all have defense mechanisms. It's not necessarily like we're all going to respond
securely in every situation. It's where do you tend to to move into, right? Some people, when
horrible things happen, they dissociate, they shut down, they turn away. Other people might
get a little bit hijacked. It's like, oh, well, I don't want to lose someone again, right? So that's more
of that anxious style attachment. So your brain had more high beta in that area, which is going to show
more of a pattern of that anxious style attachment. Was there any other interesting things for my map?
I believe you have, I'm thinking back, that you have some beta on the cingulate. The cingulate is
the top kind of ridge of our brain. We almost call that like the CEO pattern, right? That that is
fast wave activity kind of right where you want it. It feels really good. It feels super motivating.
You're somebody who gets a lot of stuff done.
Now, if we have beta spindling during our sleep pattern, our sleep pattern should look very smooth, very slow.
And if we have these kind of little blips happen within that, then it wakes us up at night.
But it can feel very motivating during the day.
So that's another thing that we saw.
I went to Disneyland recently, and the first thing I noticed was the amount of iPad kids, like full-blown toddlers and strollers watching YouTube while sitting inside Disneyland.
I'm thinking, we flew here, waited in line, and you're watching an unboggling.
and you're watching an unboxing video.
But the other thing I notice is that Disneyland
is basically a giant petri dish.
You're touching railings, ride handles, lap bars, churro counters,
the same services that tens of thousands of people
touched five minutes before you.
So I came prepared.
I had my beekeepers natural's propolis throat spray in my bag,
and I was spraying it throughout the day.
If you've never heard of propolis,
it's what bees use to protect their hive from germs.
For us, it helps support the immune system
with 300 plus beneficial compounds,
including inoxidants and bioactive nutrients.
So I keep the propolis throat spray with me when I travel,
but I also use their propolis nasal spray at night as part of my bedtime routine,
which helps cleanse and soothe nasal passages when you've been breathing in,
well, Disneyland farts, coughs and burps.
We all need to keep good immune system hygiene.
What I love about beekeepers naturals is they're reinventing the medicine cabinet
with clean, effective products, no dies, chemicals, or junk.
A throat spray from beekeepers natural cells every 12 seconds.
It's one of the most popular and effective wellness products of all time.
Go to beatkeepers naturals.com.
code Alex Clark and you'll get 20% off your order. You cannot get that in stores. But if you want to get it in
store, you can anywhere, basically, Target, Whole Foods, Walmart, Amazon, CVS, and Walgreens. But again,
my discount, which is Alex Clark, is only available on their website, beekeepers naturals.com and you'll
get 20% off. I used to babysit for this family whose kids were absolute terrorists. I mean,
these children were not being raised. They were conducting psychological warfare. And we
One of them bit me. Not when he was a toddler. He was like nine. Another one looked me dead in the eyes and said,
you're not the boss because my dad owns a boat. I still don't know what that meant, but it felt threatening.
One night, I finally got them to bed, sat down on the couch, and then I made the mistake of eating one of those
healthy, I'm saying that in quotes, tortilla chips. Well, halfway through an episode of Rock of Love on VH1,
which was so much better than Love Island ever would be, I felt like I'd swallowed a Home Depot receipt.
Okay? I turned the bag over. Of course, there's seed oils, preservatives, natural flavors,
the ingredients look like they were approved by the CIA.
I mean, I didn't know anything about health then,
but I knew that that wasn't good and they tasted awful.
That's why as an adult, I only keep masa chips in my house now.
Three ingredients.
Organic, nextimalized corn, sea salt, and 100% grass-fed beef tallow.
That's it.
No seed oils, no mystery chemicals, just real food like your great grandparents would have recognized.
You will love the hatch chili flavor.
They actually taste incredible.
And unlike every other healthy chip out there,
you don't feel bloated or gross afterwards.
you actually will feel satisfied and satiated.
You won't be looking for another snack.
Ready to give Masa a try.
Go to Masa Chips.com.
Use code real Alex Clark for 25% off your first order.
One thing to know, because Masa uses real ingredients
and makes everything in small batches,
certain flavors go out of stock regularly.
So I got my hands on the hatch chili again
after it was sold out for weeks.
Don't wait if you're curious about trying.
That's Masa Chips.com.
Use code real Alex Clark for 25% off
or click the link below or scan the QR code.
now after learning that stuff about myself by doing the brain map, if I do absolutely nothing,
what does my brain look like in 10 years? While we're not going to know what you're going to go through
in the next 10 years, whether trauma or you decide to get on some sort of medication or you have
mold toxicity in your home and it was, you didn't know about it, right? So there's now some neuroinflammation.
I mean, there's a lot of things that can happen in our environment that will impact brain patterns.
But let's say in 10 years, life's gone pretty similar.
Not a lot of changes have happened.
We can map you again.
And we're going to look and be like that.
That's Alex Clark's map.
So I've mapped my brain about every one to two years over the past 10 years, pretty much.
You can see, like, that's Rachel's map.
That's Rachel's map.
So really it's more like a fingerprint, but looking at it from a neurological lens.
Now, if somebody changes something fundamentally, right, neurofeedback is an incredible,
incredible tool to actually help change brain patterns. So if we see an overproduction of high beta,
which is keeping people up at night, we can teach the brain how to not spindle and how to not produce
all that beta so that they can fundamentally have a better sleep hygiene. If somebody starts to take
peptides or major supplement changes or they're starting to optimize blood work, can we see some
quantitative changes? Absolutely. But for the most part, fundamentally by age 20 to 25, our brain
electricity is going to be pretty dialed in.
Why is brain mapping or neurofeedback ideal for somebody trying to get off a medication?
First off, think about what nobody asks what medication does to the brain, right?
Like typically, we're not like, what is this little white pill going to do to my brain for the
rest of my life?
But you would think we are lobotomizing people with neurofeedback.
What is that going to do?
How does this work?
Are you putting brainwaves in?
But we don't ask that when we're taking medication for our whole life with all of these wicked
side effects. So to be able to get off medication, what's awesome is we know when we're taking medication,
it's going to change the electricity in our brain. But then our brain metabolizes from that medication,
and then we go back to baseline. So if you can actually teach the brain, let's say, for example,
you're on Adderall. Adderall suppresses theta, which is a slow brain wave, and increases a little bit
of beta, which allows people to get outside of themselves to feel focused. But if we can do that
naturally, right, we're inhibiting a theta production for somebody and helping their brain to
produce beta. Naturally, all of a sudden our clients are saying, oh my gosh, I've tried to get off
this medication that I've felt dependent on for the last decade. And oh my gosh, do I not have to take it?
Or wow, I'm not feeling the withdrawal symptoms as much as the last three times that I've tried to
get on this medication or off this medication. So that's what's so cool is you're essentially
teaching the brain to do what the medication is doing synthetically, organically from a learning
perspective. Can neurofeedback help make somebody more successful? So let's first talk what is neural
feedback. So neurofeedback is operant conditioning, which is reward-based therapy. So all we are doing
is teaching the brain how to regulate its own activity and suppress unfavorable brainwave production.
So the way that we do that, right, is we're utilizing auditory and visual feedback to teach the brain
a better way of operating. If I were to ask you, hey, Alex, you know, if you really put in the
work, do you think you could learn Spanish? Yeah.
Hey, Alex, if you put in the work, do you think that you could learn how to play pickleball?
Yeah. Now, you might get a tutor, you might get a coach, but you fundamentally would never question
if your brain and your body has the ability to learn something. That is literally what neural
feedback is. All you are doing is teaching the brain, utilizing reward, how to learn a better way
of functioning. So when our clients do these sessions, right, they put the headband on, there's little
sensors where we can actually read and monitor EEG activity. And then the reward comes on the app.
So they download our brain code app.
And then let's say someone wants to watch your podcast.
You can literally plug your podcast as a reward mechanism on the app.
However, it's like their brain has the remote control to the experience.
So when the brain is performing how we want it to, your voice and your app would start
to play on the screen.
And then when the brain gets distracted or anxious or out of focus, the video and the sound
would go away.
Well, nobody's going to want to be sitting there watching the screen, you know, be blank for
them. And so their brain makes auto corrections, just like you would if you were playing pickleball
and your ball goes far right. Like you would hopefully try to make a correction over the course
of time to not get that same negative output. That's the same thing with neural feedback.
So we are just teaching the brain via that reward how to correct its own activity. So yes, back to
the original question, like neurofeedback can fundamentally change the way the brain is operating
so that then those symptoms are not present. So if somebody is experiencing, you know, ADHD or
anxiety or sleep issues. They've gotten their blood work done. They've gone to see a talk therapy therapist.
Nothing seems to be working. They're not getting better. Could this brain mapping be ideal for them to
figure out what's going on? Oh my gosh. Absolutely. So we work with honestly, not too many people,
the first thing out of the gate when they're experiencing negative symptoms go, maybe I should try this
brain mapping and neurofeedback thing. Often we work with people, honestly, on the back end.
I've been on a medication roller coaster for years. I'm taking this meant for the side effect of this
at or hey, I've been in talk therapy for years, but man, I'm really still experiencing
X, Y, and C symptoms. How do I then change that? That really is where a neurofeedback can come in,
right? Because ultimately, we're not just dealing with it on that symptom level. Think about
your brain like a computer, okay? And if you have a computer that's having issues, probably the first
thing that we do is go look and see, do we need a software update? Okay, yeah, let's software update.
And that can, that can maybe take care of some of what we're dealing with. At the end of the
day, though, if we have a hardware issue, a software update really can never touch that. We have to at some
point address the hardware. There's an amazing book called The Body Keeps the Score by Bessor van der Kolk
that talks about how our bodies and our brains hold on to things like trauma on that cellular
level. That is neurofeedback, getting into the biology and understanding it and addressing it there.
And can neurofeedback make you more successful? That's such a funny and interesting question.
So twofold. Number one, we work with a lot of professional
athletes. We work with a lot of high performers. And so it's interesting, right, because people are
already operating at such a high capacity. So the question is, like, are we getting the one, two,
three percent better? Yes. I mean, if your brain is that much faster, that much better from a
communication standpoint, if the timing is that much more dialed in, success should be an outcome
from that, right? On the other side of that, how many people that are super successful deal with a lot
of high stress. Yes, their tolerance is high. Yes, their capacity is high. Maybe they're not
sleeping. Maybe they crash and burn. Maybe they're sprinters. They run circles around people, but man,
they get payback for weeks. If you can teach the brain how to have that amazing sustained energy,
but filter it in through this really crisp, clean level, of course we believe people can be
more successful. Also, I mean, working with some of the top professional athletes in the world that
are doing incredible things and they start neurofeedback and all of a sudden, like, Rachel, Angie,
Like I had my, I dropped my handicap, you know, two strokes.
Or, oh my gosh, like I had the best game I've ever had in the history.
Or, oh, my gosh, I was able to stay in flow state way more than I've ever experienced in a game.
So absolutely we were biased, but I think neurofeedback can for sure make you more successful.
What do you say to people who say this brain map neurofeedback stuff sounds a little woo-woo.
Snake oil.
Swoon, woo-woo.
I mean, we hear that kind of stuff all the time.
First off, I don't think it's my job to convince you that neurofeedback is the best.
thing ever, right? That we do before and after brain maps on clients day in and day out. That is the
testimony. I'm like, if you go on and you look at it before and after brain map, it would be if somebody
said, hey, exercise is so woo-woo. Exercise is stupid. It doesn't work. And then you look at before and after
pictures of people who have built muscle and g and leaned out and all these different things.
You're going, oh my, that's pretty hard to dispute, right? Like, hey, proof is in the pudding.
We're looking at before and after brain maps as well as having testimonies of people saying,
I used to really struggle with focus and motivation, and now I haven't sustained energy.
I'm sleeping better. I haven't had a panic attack in years. I've never had to be on medication
for bipolar disorder, right? That I don't have to convince you that that's a thing. If neurofeedback
is not for you, it's not for you. However, I do believe that the world is looking for more natural
forms of medicine and for more natural options for things like mental health, and neurofeedback is one of those
options. If somebody listening has spent years believing, I'm anxious, I'm depressed, I'm burned
out, I'm broken, I have bipolar, I have ADHD, or they just think, like, I don't know,
I'm just not enough. Like, I just, like, I'm not as smart as other people. Give the elevator
pitch on what this could do for them. Ultimately, your brain is never too far gone. It doesn't
matter the trauma that you've been through, the story that you unfavorably were served. It doesn't
matter if you've had a brain injury or you've been dependent on medication for so long and you feel
fearful that without it, you're going to be a mess. Like, our brains and bodies are designed to
learn and they can become stronger and more flexible and have better endurance. And if we ever
question that, right, then you're fundamentally questioning like how you were designed. We never,
ever, ever question if a baby can learn how to walk. Yet we question every single day if we can
combat anxiety or get rid of depression. You never,
question if a baby can learn how to talk, usually unless there's some sort of underlying
diagnoses. Talking and communication is such an incredible, complex task for anybody to learn, but we
never question that yet. We question if our brain is capable of getting through really hard
mental health struggle. So we always say, like, your brain is so capable of change. It is worth
the change if it's creating stressful things for you. But, yeah, you ultimately just have to give
your brain the opportunity to learn. What is something like this cost? So with our remote
program. So I know I said earlier, people can do neurofeedback from anywhere in the country,
anywhere in the world. We work with people everywhere doing remote neurofeedback.
I would say the span is going to be between, and we do 100% free consultations for everyone.
We want to meet with you, talk with you, understand kind of what your goals are.
And if this is a right fit for you, it's going to be anywhere between probably, you know,
1,800 to 3,500, depending on, you know, kind of how much maybe accountability you need, right?
So the actual neurofeedback does not change. It's always going to be the neurofeedback.
feedback that you need. It's going to be completely tailored to you. But some people feel like,
hey, I have a peloton at home and I hang my clothes on it. I've never sat on that. Other people are like,
I have a home gym. I work out every single day by myself. Do you have a lot of personal accountability
or do you need us to come alongside you and really, hey, did you do your session today? We need to
get on it. That kind of depends on, that can vary cost a little bit, but that's going to be kind of
the range. How do people set up and get an appointment to do this? We love education. So first off,
Let's get all the myths, the questions debunked, the snake oil, if you have questions around that.
But we love doing that initial consultation. We get to meet you. We get to answer all your questions,
allow you to feel really confident in this. Because most people, they don't know about neurofeedback.
They don't know about brain mapping. So let's really bring this process to life for you.
But yeah, ultimately, after we do the free consultation, then we can set people up and get them set up on their journey.
Where do they find you online? Yeah, they can go to at BrainCode centers. Our Instagram,
Rachel actually runs our Instagram. She's fantastic. So if somebody's DMing you,
It's not somebody on the back end. It's literally Rachel. So you can DM us on Instagram. We're happy to
chat there. And then braincodecenters.com is where you can pop on and schedule a totally free 30-minute
consultation. And 90% of the time it's going to be Rachel or myself. And a lot of times,
too, if you don't want to sign up for the whole neurofeedback program, do the brain map.
It costs you 300 bucks. Get information in front of you. Allow yourself to feel more confident
in the process. And then you can decide if you want to commit to the therapy.
I ask every guest this at the end of every episode. So each of you can do your answers. I'll start with you, Angie. If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture physically, emotionally or spiritually, what would it be? I would offer people discernment. So, and I know that sounds, you know, we're doing brain mapping and neural feedback, but there's so much out there. There's so much information. We live in the day of information, right? That it is at your fingertips. But if people were able to discern what is right for them, because not everything is right for everybody. And there are things out there.
that have really big promises and can't necessarily deliver. So I would want people to be able to
discern what do I need right now, what is going to get me to that next level of wellness. That's what I
would want. I would just say that companionship that whether it's with a significant other or a friend,
I think more than ever, right, we have social media and we have a million besties, but online.
And we need to get back to this, like get back to just being with people and feeling people's
presence and being able to exchange that energy. I think energy exchange with really amazing humans
is such an undervalued gift. And I think having incredible companionship does so much harmony for
our systems. Rachel and Angie, thank you for coming on Culture Apothecary. Thank you for having us.
Thank you, Alex. This conversation taught us anything. It's that the brain is far more adaptable
than most of us have been led to believe. New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday at 6 p.m. Pacific, 9 p.m.
Eastern wherever you listen to your podcast or watch on YouTube. Please leave us a five-star
review on Apple or Spotify. It's been a while or you just never have. Let us know which
episode really brought you here and converted you into a regular listener. It takes like two
seconds to do and it really helps us out. This content is for informational purposes only and it's
not intended to be taken as medical advice. Always consult with a qualified healthcare
professional regarding any questions or decisions related to your health or medical care. I'm Alex
Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.
Thank you.